Page 35 of Star Claimed Omega
‘They’re listening,’ she whispered, rubbing her arm. ‘The vents, they whisper. I hear them when I sleep.’
Soleil ignored her, having grown accustomed to her diatribes by now.
Lilla wandered back into her room, muttering.
Soleil took an inhale.
This bedsit was her last choice given her meager income.
It was also nondescript and out of the way, which suited her need for privacy just fine.
If enduring Lilla was the price she had to pay, then so be it.
She began to mix milk, sugar, and eggs, loving the swirl of pale yellow that became silky and thick.
With no warning, aburningsensation hit her right wrist.
She gasped, dropped her mixing spoon, and clutched her forearm.
Her fingers fumbled to soothe it, but the dermis under her hand throbbed, and she winced even as her pulse raced.
A dull, internal thrum pulsed outward, and her skin reddened in a cuff like a vice around her wrist.
She fell back against the counter behind her, eyes dilating, unbelieving.
‘The fokk?’
Regardless, and beyond her control, from her heated dermis rose a cloud of metallic nanites that formed into a sleek, metallic band that folded over her wrist like a thick bracelet.
Its violation shocked her, and she gasped.
‘What in the Wildlight hell?’ she breathed, panic streaming through her.
The circlet flashed, lighting up in thin fractal lines of crimson and gold.
Above her hand, a hologram shimmered to life.
It coalesced into a face shrouded in static, human, yet glitching through a fluctuating link.
Feral. With eyes that glowed like forge coals and an utterance like gravel dragged through wire.
‘Scarletta?’ a hoarse and guttural voice rasped.‘I see you.’
Soleil glared at him with bile in her throat.
‘Youdid this?Fokkin’ why?’
‘Why do you think? Just keeping tabs on you,’ her handler sneered with oily amusement. ‘You didn’t think we’d just let our precious Scarletta wander the galaxy unsupervised, did you?’
Her mouth pursed. ‘Fokk. When did you do this?’
‘We drugged you,’ the figure said with a grin that exposed sharpened incisors, ‘and inserted it before we released you into the wild, not unlike tagging a feral beast.’
Soleil’s pulse kicked up, and her stomach twisted.
‘We’re using it to trace you. To summon you when we need you. I hope you don’t need me to remind you of your purpose.’
Vern sneered as his visage faded out to a new holo stream that projected a sickening image of a slightly older woman curled on the floor of a cell, flinching as an unseen boot kicked her side, while her voice echoed, pleading for Soleil to get her.
