I bolted out of my seat and started for the door, basically crawling over Phox when he didn’t get out of my way fast enough.
Someone caught me by the arm so suddenly, I almost fell backward.
“Wait,” Rout insisted as he held me back firmly. “You need to sit down. My people will handle this. We aren’t leaving this ship.”
“What? No! That’s not—”
“You need to trust me, Brinna. This is my area of expertise,” he said.
I shot him a smoldering glare. “What? Buying people like they’re nothing but livestock?”
His hold on my arm slackened slightly. “Just leave this to me. You asked me to do this for you, now I suggest you sit down and let me do it properly.”
My mouth screwed up, tasting all the angry, bitter words I wanted to snap back at him. But I couldn’t. I flashed a glance back at Phox, who was still sitting with his elbows resting on his knees. He nodded once.
Fine.
Snatching away from Rout, I went back and sank down into the seat beside Phox again. A rush of quivering heat thrummed through my body and jittered all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes as I waited, listening for anything—any sound or clue about what might be happening outside the ship. Minutes passed.
I’d almost made up my mind to storm out the door anyway, Rout be damned, when the melodic beeping of the ship’s engines engaging made all the cabin lights dim. Wait—what? Were we preparing for takeoff? Why? Had something gone wrong? No! We couldn’t leave! Not without—
The forward door separating the snazzy cabin from the forward cockpit slid open.
I jumped to my feet, unable to breathe.
In the middle of the doorway, dressed in a baggy, grease-smudged red jumpsuit, a petite girl with strange, greenish scaly skin, and strange hair like silken strands on a fiber-optic lamp pulled into a frayed messy ponytail, stood with her knees shaking. Her gaze panned slowly around the cabin, first at Rout, then Phox, then … me. Her blue eyes went wide and her mouth opened, her chin quivering.
Suddenly, her expression crumpled, tears making her large eyes glossy as she let out a scream and ran straight for me.
I met her halfway, already a sobbing mess by the time I threw my arms around her and squeezed her tightly. “Oh my god! I was so afraid we would be too late!” I sniffled.
She hugged me back, shaking and gripping the back of my jacket as she cried. “Y-You came for me. I-I can’t believe you c-came for me.”
“We under-evolved girls gotta stick together.” I pulled back, managing what was probably the grossest, ugly-crying smile ever as I took her by the hands.
She gave a broken, half-sobbing, half-laughing noise as she nodded. “B-But I don’t understand,” she started to ask, her eyes tracking back to Phox, as though she suddenly realized who and what he was. “How did you find me? And … how did you get here?”
I could hear the confident smirk in Phox’s voice without having to look. “Might wanna sit down for this one, lizard-girl.” He chuckled. “It’s one hell of a story.”
44
RAIDER WITH A CAUSE
“It’s going to be a hard run. Much harder than the last,” Rout observed from where he sat, joining us in the casual lounge as we gathered around the black glass table to go over all the information we’d just received about the next race in the Renegade Run circuit.
Spoiler alert, it didn’t look good—and that was coming from someone who only barely understood all this crap. Race two was going to take everything we had. Maybe more.
“Hard? It’s going to be a freaking nightmare,” Phox complained as he flopped onto the couch, stretching his long arms on the back and muttering what was most likely profanity under his breath. “The Garden? I mean, what’s the point? Save Sienne the trouble and just let the damn planet eat us. Cause that’s basically what we’re looking at here.”
“At least the atmosphere and climate conditions will mean you don’t have to wear any surface survival gear,” Enola offered with a timid smile.
“Oh? Really? Great. I’ll try to keep that in mind when a gaulek or a larnix is gnawing on my intestines.” Phox rolled his eyes and groaned, casting me a sideways look of exasperation. “This is your fault, by the way. I was perfectly content to die in an Alzumarian prison cell. Or out there on Thermax. But noooo, had to bring me back. Had to drag my ass through another race.”
I laughed and grabbed one of his pointed ears to give it a punishing yank. “Oh, shut up. You’ve got more drama than a celebrity Twitter feed.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” he grumbled.
Big whiner. Did he think this was going to be easy? After the first race had almost killed us how many times?
“I’ll make sure your new runner craft is outfitted accordingly,” Rout said, totally unimpressed by our bickering. “But I need you both to complete your weaponry preference simulations as soon as possible. We’ve only got six weeks to prepare, and there’s the matter of press conferences and guest appearances to attend to as well. As the rising stars of the Renegade Run, you’re expected to put on a show.”
Phox gave another groaning sigh. “Can’t wait.”
Enola piped up with an impish grin sparkling in her eyes. “I’ll be working on the mechanics of the new runner craft, finetuning it for the race. When you’re ready, I’d love to work with both of you to teach you how to fly it.” After a few long meetings with Rout, she’d been put in charge of overseeing all the maintenance and outfitting of our ship—which Phox found particularly funny.
According to him, she was hilariously overqualified
