Page 21 of Tamed By the Alien Warlord

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Down one hall. Left at the surgical bay. Behind the coded med-dispensary with the cracked panel I noted earlier. My ringcam pings another door. Open. Unlocked. Perfect.

Inside: records.

Stacks of them.

Data logs, shipments, manifests.

Jasmine’s name hits me like a slap across the face.

Not “employee.” Not “contractor.”

Just one word:SOLD.

The bile rises.

I brace against the wall, breathing hard.

She didn’t run. She didn’t abandon us.

Theysoldher.

I’m going to kill every last one of these bastards.

I dig deeper. My fingers are flying over the terminal now. No time for subtlety. Just extraction. My bracelet syncs and begins uploading encrypted logs back to the Ravager.

Every pulse is a drumbeat of rage in my ears.

Then I hear something else.

A muffled noise. A softwhimper.

I freeze.

That sound wasn’t a log file.

It wasreal.

I follow it, heart hammering, down into the hidden corridors—below the legitimate research zones, below even the Companion holding cells.

This is the deep lab.

The one they don’t advertise.

I find the room by its eerie blue glow.

There, behind reinforced glass, is a slab.

And on that slab?—

Jasmine.

My knees nearly give out.

She’s strapped down, naked and pale, with wires laced into her arms and a thick gas mask clamped over her mouth and nose. Her fingers twitch uselessly against the cuffs. Her eyes are wide and unfocused, but I see the whites and the terror in them.

A tech stands beside her, tapping buttons on a console.

A hiss of gas.

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