I grinned. Tetchy wasn’t how Mack was going to be when he found out, which only made me wonder how he wasn’t roaring through my head, already.
“He’s a little busy,” Abby said, “The wolves decided they needed a small contingent of guards inside the cells, and had them stationed there before the boys locked everyone else out.”
Again, I got the sense of a shrug, and then she continued.
“It’s nothing they can’t handle. And I didn’t want them distracted, so I blocked them out of your implant, when I saw you waiting for them to leave before you started talking.”
She had?
My grin got wider.
“Thanks, Abs!”
“I’ve got your back,” she said, and surrounded me in silver. “Just don’t get yourself killed.”
Like I would, ever.
Abs set me down just inside the room the scans said we might find Hermes in.
“Oh, fuck. Send in the Marines!” was all I had time to think, as the two wolves lifted their heads, distracted from what they were doing by my arrival. It wasn’t enough. I had no idea where the fuck that sort of thing got useful in making an HMT more cooperative, but it made me mad as Hell.
“You hairy sons of bitches wanted to tango?” I shouted, unslinging the two stun batons, I’d been given instead of blades, and I didn’t wait for an answer. I might not be able to kill these bastards, but I was gonna make them bleed, blunt sticks or no.
They let go of the woman they were holding, shoving her so that she stumbled back into the wall behind them, and slid down to the floor. As they did, I landed twin strikes against lower ribs, changed to an overhand smash, and swung out again, keeping both sticks moving and hitting everywhere I could reach. I sure as shit hoped Abs got the team here in short order because one wolf warrior was a big ask, regardless of whether his pants were on or off—and there were two right in front of me. So much for getting in without being noticed. My main concern was Hermes, but the wolves had to go first—and they had to go before any of the wolves in the other compartments came to help them, because the door had been open when I’d arrived, and I wasn’t being quiet.
“And lock the goddamn doors!”
I was shouting, roaring out the order without a care for who the fuck could hear. Lightning flashed through my blood, fizzing with the same intensity of the lightning that brightened the corridor outside the room, and then two Glazer shots zipped past, perfectly timed to miss me as I danced back, wondering when I’d thought it was a good idea to start whaling into two lupar warriors at once.
“Cutter, get the girl. Cutter!”
It was kind of a relief to realize both wolves had dropped when the stun bolts had hit them. Disappointing, but good. I looked towards the woman sitting, rag-doll-style, against the wall.
“Up!” I said.
“That’s not gentle!” Rohan’s reprimand slammed through our link, and I wondered where he’d found the time.
“Since my HMT is in a box and the guards are down. Like you said: we got the easy part. Now, be nice!”
Be nice. Right. Because that was so easy with Delight’s little cocktail racing through my blood. I turned to the woman, moving between the bodies of her two tormentors and resisting the urge to kick them while they were down.
I held out my hand.
“You need to get up,” I said. “We’re here to get you back to your ship.”
“My ship?” the woman’s eyes brightened, and then she realized the boys were behind me, and she blushed.
“Ignore them,” I said, and gestured to the body. “Construct, right? Not real flesh and blood?”
Hermes nodded.
“It can still feel everything,” Abby said, and fury vibrated through her tones.
Well, fuck.
I looked down at Hermes, wondering why he hadn’t taken my hand.
“Let me help you up.”
Hermes shook the body’s head.
“Can’t get it to move. They locked me out of everything but the ability to feel.”
I wanted to ask him why, and didn’t need Rohan’s or Abby’s horrified ‘no’ to stop. Before I could say anything else, one of the team interrupted.
“We got incoming. We’re going to hold the corridor, but you need to move, Ma’am.”
Ma’am? When the fuck…
“Since we said so,” Scarpil said, his voice in my ear, as he slid past me, and lifted the body containing Hermes from the ground.
Hermes screamed, but that was all he could do. Scarpil tightened his grip on the shell, and clamped his lips together, but his eyes demanded I do something, as Hermes panicked, helplessly in his arms.
“Hold on,” I said, sliding the jack from its pouch. If I could at least open the interface between Hermes and Abs, he might calm down. Hell, if I could block the links into the human shell he’d been forced into, maybe that would help, too.
“Whatever you’re going to do, Cutter, do it fast. We can give you another minute, two tops.”
I slid over to Hermes, and slid my fingers through the shell’s hair. The wolves’ base shuddered, but I had no time to ask what it was. I had to focus on getting Hermes through this with as much of his mind intact as I could salvage.
It helped if I thought of the HMT and the woman’s body as two different things. One mattered; the other one we were going to be able to unplug him from. That thing was little more than an oversized doll, anyway. Disturbingly real, but a plastec construct, nonetheless. I remembered what the wolves had been doing to it when I arrived and cringed. Sonsa… sonsa…
“Focus, Cutter,” and I heard compassion in Mack’s tones.
“You out?”
“Plugged Septu into his shell, and he blasted the doors to the storage bay no problems. Boy, dog and Tens are flying free, as well. Doesn’t feel like we’ve earned our keep.”
“You will,” Abs said. “Cutter’s mired in the usual amount
