Page 10 of Relyn
A few moments later and Nora found herself loaded on a pallet cart with a dead police officer. She didn’t like this plan. It was a horrible plan. It required her to be sent to bloody who knows where with a bullet in her side. It was a fucking awful plan. Nora just didn’t have a say in the matter. To speak up now would get both her and Marco dead.
The coast apparently clear, it was a simple matter to cross the street, into the back door of the center and load up the body onto the platform.
“What coordinates?” one of the goons asked.
“I dunno. Twelve, seventy-eight, thirty-two,” Tommy said, obviously guessing random numbers.
“Ready?” Tommy slammed his hand against the large button and the dead cop flew off to who knew where. “Hopefully that’s one of the space ports that don’t have a ship. Think he’ll explode?”
Marco and Jacket loaded her on the pad next.
“Wait!” Tommy shouted. Nora stopped breathing. “We should send them to different places.”
“I’ll pick!” Marco.
“A’ight,” Tommy said. At least Marco had earned his respect. “Hand him the jawn.”
“Done,” Marco announced.
“You wanna push the button?” Tommy asked.
“No, your kill, your honor.”
A moment later the whole world went, black, then fuzzy, then hot and wet. Nora had the urge to throw up, but with so little clearance around her mouth, that would have been disastrous. A few deep breaths, and it passed, but the pain in her side was raging. She was suddenly hot, but not from a fever. Wherever she’d landed felt like Philly in the August. Hot, humid and gross. Being wrapped in plastic wasn’t helping any. She told herself that she needed to hold onto consciousness. That if she passed out, she might not wake again. It didn’t help. The world faded to black as she cursed her decision to stick her nose in her student’s life.
Chapter 5
Nora
The fact that she heard someone talking above her was a good sign. Nora was still alive. It was not, however great that she didn’t understand a word he was saying. That’s right. All women leaving the planet were injected with a universal translator so that they could talk to their husbands. She, however, had not. The male voice was trying to unwrap her.
“I don’t know,” a female voice said above her. Wait. That was English.
“I’ve been shot,” Nora said. Her words sounded weak to her.
“Shit. She’s not dead,” the female voice shouted.
The male voice spoke again.
“Yes, of course I want you to carry her. I may be in shape, but I’m not dumb.”
More male questions.
“Yes, in the plastic. We’ll unwrap her when we get to a med kit. We gotcha, hun,” she said.
A pair of strong arms scooped her up and carried her along and up a hill to a flat meadow, where even through the plastic, Nora could make out a shuttle. He laid her out in the bay and starting cutting the plastic out from around her face with a wicked looking knife.
“Where you from, sweetheart?” The woman looking down at her had a short bob of black hair. The man was busy carefully cutting away the plastic. All she could tell was that he was bald and green.
“Philly.”
The alien spoke again.
“Yeah, she’s Terran.” He didn’t seem pleased with that information.
“I don’t know why they keep sending them all banged up! I’m not an expert! I’m Jane, by the way. This is Zenik.”
“Nora. I have to...”
