“What?” I shifted my body to face him. “You were there. You know that’s not true. The old man shot Ry. He killed her.”
“There’s no telling how Lady Sonja will perceive this.” He released a breath. “I promised Ry I’d help you. Make no mistake, that’s the only reason why you’re even here.”
If Ry hadn’t begged Captain Weston to protect me, would he have left me down on the planet? I blinked away my tears. Even toward the end, Ry had been thinking about me and my safety.
His hands glided over the console as he pushed the hologram controls left and right. Up ahead, a door split open to reveal a narrow landing pad. The pod descended gently onto the platform, and then we were lowered into a large, empty room with sleek white walls and round windows. Of course, the captain had a private garage.
“Looks like Lady Sonja isn’t back yet.” He pointed across the way to another landing pad similar to the one we were on. “Come on.” He pressed a button on the console and the door on my side opened downward to create a ramp.
“Thank you for not leaving me stranded,” I said. Captains were not required to babysit first-years.
“Right.” He pushed himself off the chair and walked off the ship.
I followed him down a long corridor to the elevator bay. The supermax section of the ship was located on tier fifteen. He ushered me to a door and entered the code on the screen mounted outside the unit. My new accommodations consisted of a single cot, and a scratchy blanket in a six-by-six-foot cube of a room.
Captain Weston leaned on the threshold. “The panel will give you access to facilities.” He tapped on the screen and a toilet dropped out of the wall.
“Right.” Solitary was pretty much exactly what I thought it would be—crammed and isolated.
He furrowed his brows then stepped back into the corridor. “Where are you taking these men?”
I stalked over to the door to get a better look. A QEC commando from Ry’s unit had two soldiers in restraints. When the one man was shoved toward Captain Weston, he shook his head repeatedly, eyes wide and red from crying. I knew the feeling well. Being interrogated by the QEC was torture.
The commando holding them glared at me before he met Captain Weston’s gaze. “Sir, they’re being held for additional questioning, Lady Sonja’s orders. She believes they were involved in the fires.”
“Go on.” Captain Weston shut the door and effectively left me out of their conversation.
A couple of beats later, the lights went out, and I was left staring into nothing. I tried not to dwell on the fact that this was going to be my life for the next twelve weeks. I pressed my ear to the wall, but I couldn’t make out what Captain Weston and the others were saying.
How did Lady Sonja find the perpetrators so fast? Of course, Lady Sonja would be in a hurry to figure out who’d given the locals vital insider information to mount such an attack on the Ukruum fields. But what about Ry? What was she planning to do about Ry’s murder?
The old man, Lee, was dead, but we both knew he wasn’t the brains behind the assault. Someone gave him drugs and a deadly weapon to kill an immortal. Could the commandos next to my cell have been involved in that too?
I sat on the cot and dropped my head in my hands. After what felt like several hours, the walls changed to a stark white again and illuminated the bunk. And so it began, switching between light and dark until I lost the ability to tell time. I rested my head on the pillow and brought my knees to my chest.
A ribbon of red smoke filtered through the air vent next to the bed. It hovered over the floor, but as more of the substance leaked in, the cloud started to rise. The citrus scent of it lingered in my nostrils. My throat closed off, and suddenly it was hard to breathe.
The point of solitary confinement was to teach us a lesson in obedience, not get us killed. What the hell was this? Coughing, I stalked away from the fog, and banged on the door. I pressed my nose to the seam along the threshold, but the room was sealed tight. The only oxygen coming in was through the vent oozing red haze. My eyes drooped closed as the room became murky and distant.
No one had ever mentioned that death by asphyxiation came with solitary confinement. I had to get out of here. But the only way out was through the front entrance, which only a QEC commando with the proper codes could open. Ry’s face floated in front of me, but I shoved the image aside. She couldn’t help me anymore.
I padded over to the small screen mounted on the wall and entered in a few number sequences. Of course, nothing happened. Now what? I swallowed and wheezed a bit of air. All systems were required to have some kind of override for emergencies. Suffocating gas definitely qualified as urgent.
I yanked at the blanket and scratched fibers off, balling them as I went. The room turned dark again, but I stayed focused on my fingers and the feel of the strands in my hands.
When I had enough material, I fished Ry’s bullet casing from the back pocket of my pants. My chest tightened at the sight of it. I swallowed back tears and rammed the casing against the plate on the door panel.
I ground metal against metal several times until my make-shift tinder ignited. The fire consumed the synthetic fibers faster than I’d thought it would, but I had enough of it to feed the flame while I carried it to the bed. By the smell of it, I was sure some of my own hair had
