Page 85 of Cruel Master
Hadrian
Forfartoolong,I don’t move. My body locks, trapped by pure disbelief.
No.
How?
Not here.
Not her.
By the time my stupid, useless brain starts to work again, the timer sits at 1:58:37.
Over a minute wasted. Fuck.
I race back to the airlock corridor, but the biometric scanner doesn’t work when I slap my hand on it. I try again. Again. Nothing.
I sprint the other way, horrible certainty settling over me as I check the outside door. Same deal. It’s locked, and my hand doesn’t open it.
I pull out my phone, select Jacob’s number, and call. Out-of-service beepsblare in my ear.
No.
I’m trapped.We’retrapped.
I return to the screen. 1:56:45, and the message has changed.
NONE OF THAT WILL WORK. YOU’RE WASTING TIME.
I thought I’d known panic before, but that timer ticking down rips away everything else. My palms sweat, and the breath drags in and out of my body, painful as if my throat is red raw. My vision wobbles as I slam my hand down on the desk.
“Who the fuck are you? What do you want?”
The screen doesn’t change right away, and every second that ticks down is a knife in my heart. When it switches to a new message, I almost throw up.
WHEN THE TIMER REACHES ZERO, A LETHAL CONCENTRATION OF SARIN GAS WILL DUMP INTO JULIET’S CELL. IT’S NOT A PLEASANT WAY TO DIE.
No.
Please.
On Juliet’s screen, she’s still curled next to Charlie's tank, watching the spider. She doesn’t know what’s happening. I stare at her and can picture it. Her doubled over, convulsing, vomiting.
Glassy eyes staring at me, dead.
“What the fuck do you want?”
I scream it at the monitors, and I swear it takes even longer for the bastard to reply. He’s doing it on purpose.
A SIMPLE TRADE. YOU FOR HER. TAKE HER PLACE IN HER CELL, AND SHE’LL BE UNHARMED.
What?
No demand for money, tech secrets, or anything tangible. Just me, dead, and Juliet left alone here. What would happento her? She’d be given away to someone else. Someone who wouldn’t understand her. Wouldn’t love her. A slave in truth, not in the way she needs.
And I’d be dead.
It’s such a blank, terrible idea that I can’t fully wrap my mind around it. Dead in less than two hours. No future. No life with Juliet. Nothing. All gone. No. It can’t happen. There has to be another way. I just need to get my shit together long enough to work out what this person really wants.
