Page 31 of Rebel
“Stop.” I stood. “Let me.”
I could see them all by their spots. They wanted to get to the lamps on the counter behind me. I pushed back my chair and grabbed the nearest lamp. It flared to life and bathed the room in light.
“The generator must have gone down,” Tide said.
“It was fine a couple of hours ago,” Xavier replied. “I checked it to make sure something like this didn’t happen during the blackout.” He cursed softly. “I’ll go check it out.”
“I’ll go with you,” Vex said.
I pushed the chair in. “No. I will. If the lamp goes out, then I can lead us back here. You guys stay put and conserve our light just in case we can’t get the generator going again.”
Vex looked like he wanted to argue, but he pressed his lips together. “You’re right. But if you’re not back here in the next half hour, I’m coming after you.”
“Wait.” Tide got up and grabbed another lamp. “I have radios in my room. One moment.”
He rushed out.
“I don’t like this,” Lore said. “The eclipse hits, and then the generator goes off a few minutes later?”
“What do you think happened?” Xavier asked.
Lore shook his head. “I don’t know. It just feels off.”
Tide returned and handed me a radio. Our fingers brushed, and a jolt of awareness shot through me.
His eyes widened slightly. “Keep in touch.”
I nodded and followed Xavier from the room.
* * *
The lamp cast a corona of light six feet wide as we made our way down to the ground floor using the exit stairwell. Metal clattered beneath our boots, and then we hit the hard-packed dirt. The world beyond the circle of lamplight was pitch black, and my exceptional night vision was useless with the glare of the lamp.
But Xavier knew the way and led us out of the building and into the courtyard. The silence was thick and heavy. Unnaturally so, but then what the heck did I know about alien planets?
“This way.” Xavier kept close to the building. “It’s between the shuttle bay and the mech chamber.”
Mech chamber was what we’d call a garage, and the shuttle bay was just an enclosure to park the vehicles. It was also a garage, but not one where you’d find tools. The light bounced across the ground as we made our way past the mech chamber.
I touched his shoulder lightly. “What do you think the problem could be?”
“I have no idea. It all looked fine earlier.”
“Is mechanics your forte?”
“I trained in it.”
“Is that why you could sabotage the ship?”
“Yes.” He glanced back at me with a slight smile on his handsome face. “And I’d do it again.”
He led me under the first floor, into the unit that held the generator. It was a sparse space with a counter running along one side, a couple of lonely-looking tools strewn across the dusty surface, but nothing else of note. The light shone on a huge metallic contraption in the center of the floor, but Xavier bypassed that and headed to a box in the wall.
An open box.
With wires spilling out of it.
“Um, Xavier, is it supposed to look like that?”
