• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Hella!”

“I’m fine.” Walking in profile, always keeping her left foot in front of her right so there was no chance of crossing them up and tripping, Hella closed on the lab doors. She whirled around the door frames and swept the rooms with her weapons.

Stampede covered her back and filled the hallway behind her. She felt his presence, massive and unrelenting. She went to the next door then the next.

When she entered the fifth doorway on the left, she discovered the lab where Scatter, Colleen, and Alice were.

Colleen wheeled away from a sensor monitor to face them. On the monitor, the view out in the hallway showed the dead mercenaries, Hella, Stampede, and Ocastya. Colleen aimed a pistol at them and fired.

Hella ducked back into Stampede just before the bullet ricocheted from the door frame. “Colleen, listen to me.”

“Go away! I can save her! You have to give me more time!” Colleen fired again and the bullet ricocheted inside the room. One of the computer banks suddenly sprayed a cloud of sparks.

“If you keep shooting, you’re going to kill Alice.” Hella held her position beside the doorway. When a moment passed and Colleen didn’t fire again, Hella stuck her head around the door frame.

Colleen swarmed over the computer equipment, frantically tapping a keyboard. “Stay out! I’m warning you!”

Seated in the chair, Scatter suddenly strained against his shackles. His mouth opened and his high-pitched screams reverberated inside the lab.

Hella whipped around the door and lunged forward with her weapons raised before her.

Colleen picked up her pistol again and wheeled back around. “Stay back! I said, stay back!”

Ducking, Hella dodged below the line of fire, but she couldn’t shoot Colleen. She felt sorry for the woman and for the small child lying on the hospital bed, but she also knew that whatever had been done to Scatter might be undone by only Colleen. So close in, Hella didn’t want to lose him.

Two bullets streaked over Hella’s head. Before Colleen could fire a third time, Hella morphed her hands back and threw herself at the woman. Grabbing the weapon, Hella wrested it away with one hand and wrapped a fist in Colleen’s lab coat.

“No!” The woman screamed and struggled, but Hella didn’t release her. “I brought Alice here, I betrayed Pardot, to save my daughter. You’re not going to stop me. Let me finish what I started.”

Ocastya ran to Scatter and hesitated before wrapping her arms around him. Scatter didn’t respond; he did not even look at her.

Stampede stood guard over the door. “Can you get Scatter free?”

Picking at the leads, Ocastya shook her head. “I do not understand what has been done to him. He is trapped in some sort of limbo.” She glanced up and looked around the room desperately. “Maybe in one of these computers. Maybe somewhere else.”

“He’s in that chair.”

“His physical self is. Not the part of him that makes him who he is.” Ocastya turned to Colleen. “What have you done with my mate?”

Colleen struggled to get away, but Hella held her fast. “The two of you have lived hundreds of years. Several lifetimes. You don’t deserve to do that.” Tears ran down the woman’s face. Mucus dripped from her nose, and her lip trembled in fear, but Hella didn’t think the fear was fueled by a survival instinct. “My little Alice has barely lived nine years. It’s not fair. She deserves more out of her life. I will not watch her die when I can do something about it.”

“I understand your pain. I have lost people—loved ones—in my life. I would feel pain again if my mate is lost to me.” Ocastya stepped toward Colleen. One of the fractoid’s hands flowed into a long, sharp blade. “I will not permit you to take him from me. You need to understand this.”

Hella glanced at the sensor monitor array on the wall in front of her. Through the shifting images, she saw that Trazall’s mercenaries had broken and were now fleeing for their lives, trying to stay out of the kill zone created by Riley’s hardshells. Although they had taken considerable losses, the hardshells