Page 41 of Taken By the Alien Killer
“People,” I whisper, chest tight.
“Dying or killing you,” CynJyn answers, unsentimental. “Pick a route, captain.”
Rayek chooses for me. “Right,” he says. “We don’t get noble. We get out.”
“Copy,” I say, throat rough. “Copy.”
The alarms go feral. The red wash is everywhere now, painting our hands raw. A tremor runs through the duct; a weld somewhere groans; the whole ship sounds like an animal dragged by a bad dream. CynJyn coughs in my ear. I want to wrap her in my body and make her invincible. I want to pry every bolt out of this beast and watch it fall into the bright dark.
We reach another panel. Rayek braces one arm across the frame, pries with the other, and the grate lifts like it knows better than to argue. The space beyond is narrow, stacked with crates stenciled with staccato words: CONNECTORS. FUSES. PRAYER. Someone has a sense of humor.
“Out,” he says, and I tumble through, knees knocking wood, palms skidding, bag thumping my hip. CynJyn flows after and collapses against a crate labeled SPARE TEETH—DECORATIVE. “Gross,” she declares. “Love it.”
“Ship’s turning,” Rayek says, head cocked. “They’re closing bulkheads. We’re going up and forward. Hangar’s wrong; too hot. We go to the secondary bay or we go to hell.”
“Guide me,” I say. “I’m very persuadable.”
He looks at me then—properly looks—and the way his eyes soften for a microsecond is worse and better than any siren. “Stay with me.”
“Try and lose me,” I shoot back, because if I say the real thing I will cry.
A door somewhere opens and a gust of heat slaps my face, smelling of cooked plastic and angry metal. Voices bellow. A volley of shots snaps the air and dies. The lights stutter, hiccup,die to a bruised glow. The ship groans like something got stuck in its throat.
“Move,” Rayek says, and his hand finds mine. His skin is hot, rough, real. Behind us, CynJyn grins like a devil and shoulders the bag.
We run past fire and fury and men who would call me a pet to make themselves feel like kings. We run, and I don’t care about anything but the pull of his fingers and the future in the shape of his back as he clears the way.
“Hey,” CynJyn pants, close to my ear. “Remind me to write a very stern review of this cruise.”
“Add ‘excellent rescue staff,’” I choke-laugh, and then swallow smoke, and then laugh again because I’m alive.
Rayek glances back once, just once, and in that look is a hundred chess matches and every almost and all the yes we never said. The hallway ahead flares bright, a gout of sparks shredding from a popped conduit, and the heat kisses my face like a dangerous mouth. Someone yells our direction, then yells at someone else because their attention got stolen by a different disaster.
“Left,” Rayek says, voice cutting through everything. “Up. Now.”
He drags me toward a ladder throat; we climb; the world shrieks; the ducts roar; the ship tries to throw us. He is a wall and a map and a weapon and a man. I am bruises and breath and a heart that refuses to shut up.
Chaos. Alarms. Blood. Fire.
I don’t care.
I’m with him.
The corridor is a throat choking on smoke and alarms. Heat licks my face; the air tastes burned, metallic, wrong. Every light is an open wound. Rayek runs point, a moving wall, and I staytucked to his spine while CynJyn hammers at a keypad behind us and swears in that gorgeous Kilgari way that could melt steel.
“Left—cover!” he snaps, voice low and lethal.
“I’ve got you,” I shoot back, even as he’s already shifting his body to make my words true. A spray of bolts hisses past like angry bees; the smell of scorched paint and hot ion fills my mouth. He takes the corner wide, grabs a crate with one hand, and rips it free of the mag-lock like it weighed as much as regret. It slams down between us and the incoming fire, sparks skittering across the deck.
“Two on the catwalk,” CynJyn calls, eyes up as she reloads a borrowed pistol with hands that barely shake. “And three dumb ones at the door arguing about card rules.”
“Dumb ones first,” Rayek says, and he moves.
He doesn’t fight like a man. He fights like gravity forgot how to refuse him. He’s taller than every nightmare, all scar and scale and that scarred gold gaze, but there’s nothing clumsy about him; he flows. He lifts into the spray like the noise belongs to him, catches a wrist, turns it, and the bone gives with a wet pop that I feel in my teeth. He plants his heel and pivots and a Reaper meets the wall and loses the conversation he was having with his lungs. Another jumps from the catwalk; claws flash; Rayek drops his shoulder and the body sails, crunches, quiets.
“You good?” he throws over his shoulder.
“Define good,” I rasp, smoke stinging my eyes, the bruise under my jaw singing. “But yes. Go.”
