Page 43 of A Monster's Light
A loud thud on the roof suddenly rattled the shuttle.
“Shit! There’s something on the ship.”
“Well, get it off.”
The pilot veered, and we all slid toward one side of the shuttle.
“Get out there, soldier,” Dr. Noble ordered. “Get out there and get the fucking monster off my shuttle.”
The super soldier moved, taking me with him.
“No! Don’t take her along, you idiot!” Dr. Noble tore me out of the soldier’s hands, then shoved him at the door. “You,” she said to the pilot, “keep flying.”
The super soldier opened the door and crawled out, leaving me shocked that Dr. Noble had sent him to fight a Kadrixan on a moving shuttle. The super soldier might be inhumanly strong and durable, but he couldn’t fly. But I didn’t stay stunned for long. With the soldier gone, I lunged for the doctor, then immediately regretted it.
She was a lot stronger than she appeared. She didn’t even feel like flesh and bone. It was like attacking a train. She flung me off and threw me across the shuttle like I weighed nothing at all. The world spun as I hit my head against the wall.
“You idiot! I offered you a deal! A generous deal. You could be invincible like me. You could live forever, and all you had to do was make Dr. Kim and I look good and help share our vision with the world.” She grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me so hard it felt like I’d smashed my head again. “You stupid, stupid bitch.”
Determined to go out fighting, I grabbed the first heavy object I could and bashed her over the head with it. Whatever it was broke, thick smoke rising from it. I released the broken shards as Dr. Noble kept shaking me like she was making scrambled eggs with my brain.
The smoke was filling my lungs now, suffocating me. It tasted acrid, vile. This was it. I was going to die here.
Suddenly, the shuttle lurched, and she was being ripped away from me. I blinked through the dots flying in my vision. Fuck! My head hurt.
But I had to keep fighting. I reached out, blinded by the smoke, searching for something, anything, that could be used as a weapon. I was so angry, and I needed to take it out on something, anything. I found something cold and metallic under one of the seats, and I held onto it like it was my lifeline.
Where the hell was that bitch? Fury blurred my vision, making it hard to see or think. The smoke! It was another form of the berserker chemical! The last thing I saw before red-hot rage took over was Dr. Noble aiming a blaster at Gnnar as he climbed into the shuttle.
I lunged for her with a yell, the metal bar raised over my head.
Time seemed to skip forward, and I was staring at a bloody metal bar. Gnnar had already disabled the pilot and was carefully easing the bar-cum-murder-weapon out of my hands. Moments later, he was jumping out of the shuttle with me in his arms.
I watched transfixed as the shuttle crashed into the side of the mountain and was engulfed in flames.
Chapter 24: Dana
I speared another meatball with the tip of my fingers and plopped the bite-size piece into my mouth. These tasted nothing like the ones from the packages; they were infinitely better since Gnnar had made them from scratch himself.
I was recovering in our quarters here in the stronghold because every bed in the infirmaries, both here and in Ellaston, was filled with people who needed more medical care than I did.
One of them was Amir, who was being carefully monitored as they weaned him off the drugs Nova Vita had had him on. He’d known about the drugs and the results if he didn’t return to Nova Vita and had still come here to warn us. He didn’t know the name of the drug he was on, but they’d figured out quickly that it was the same thing Igor had been on when he first arrived. It would take some time, but they were weaning him off slowly.
Despite Gnnar’s reservations, we’d gone over to Ellaston to visit him, and I’d forgiven him for the role he played. Gnnar, not so much, but he’d come around.
During our quick visit, Mark had hired me to be the director of the yet-to-be-formedEllaston Gazette.The pay was still undetermined, considering the colony still ran on barter within themselves and with the surrounding Vokiren tribes. But thatwas fine by me. I got to be the start of something new, and that was priceless.
Besides, I owed them so much already.
There was a knock on my door. It was probably Julie or Tasha.
“Come in.”
The door opened, and Julie came barreling in, waving her tablet in the air. “Did you hear?”
I frowned. “No. What?” I didn’t like not being the first in the know, but Iwasrecovering from a concussion, so I forgave myself.
Also, technically, Julie was my agent collecting data for me. The first thing I did as director of the Ellaston Gazette was bring her on.
