Smiok whined on the floor, attempting to crawl toward the door but lacked the strength.
The old man wiped the saliva at the corners of his mouth from his latest feeding.
“Disgusting aftertaste,” he said with a sneer.
He turned to the third and final guard. He was tall, broad, and a very impressive figure. He had a perfectly round skull and a single eye in the center of his forehead.
“Dispose of him,” the old man said.
The guard picked up Smiok’s shriveled form and carried him easily. Smiok, once so strong and powerful, was now weak and frail. He formed fists with his hands and beat at the guard’s face and exposed neck but he probably didn’t even feel it.
He headed out to the shuttlecraft launchpad, and without hesitation, dropped the prisoner over the edge. He dusted off his hands and headed back inside.
The old man wrapped his arm around my shoulder and smiled into my face.
“Trayem, my boy,” he said, tapping me on the cheek. “Tell me what you’ve discovered. I’ve heard some conflicting reports. Tell me why this riot happened and how we’re going to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
He led me to the sofa. The other three guards stood around us. We knew the old man as Krial but he had a thousand others. The guards were Tus, Rarr, and Annas, my brothers and sisters—in name, if not in blood.
“Yes, Master,” I said.
Harper
“She’s where?” I said, joining the chorus of voices behind me.
Lily had just told us Ivy had gone missing. She was no longer in the prison and hadn’t been seen since the riot broke out.
She wasn’t in the Prize Pool, wasn’t anywhere down the infinite hallways or exercise yards. She wasn’t even in Kren’s cell.
To cap it all off, Kren wasn’t in any of those places either.
They had both disappeared.
“So where did they go?” I said. “They just up and vanished into thin air?”
“We’re not sure,” Lily admitted, turning to survey the gathering members of the Pool. “There are reports of a commotion having taken place in the science lab, followed by the former Supervisor’s shuttlecraft taking off soon after the riot started but there’s no way to verify who might have been on board.”
I shared a look with the other girls. They wore the same shocked expression as me.
I felt a tingle of excitement that began in my stomach and rose up through my arms and down my legs.
I hoped Ivy had managed to escape.
Somebody deserved to escape this shit show.
“What about the others?” I said, addressing the two other empty cots in our shared bedroom. “What about Jixam and Agatha?”
They hadn’t returned to the Prize Pool either. After the guards had retaken the prison, there was no reason for them not to come back.
Unless something had happened to them.
Lily suddenly became very interested in the worn outer edges of her boots. She had the look of someone who had something to tell us but the words stuck in her throat.
“There is something…” she began before shaking her head, causing her shoulder-length curled braids to bounce off her cheeks. “No. It’s probably best not to discuss it.”
A compulsion pushed me forward. Later, when I came to think about that moment, I would have sworn I felt a physical shove.
“Tell us,” I said. “We’re their friends. If there’s some way we can help them, we’ll do what we can.”
“Yes,” Lily said. “You’re good girls. That much is obvious by the way you comport yourselves. But there’s nothing that can be done for them. Not now.”
I gasped and a hand went to my mouth.
It was strong validation of the darkest thoughts that crowded my shocked mind.
“You mean, they’re dead?” I said.
Some of the slower girls joined in my gasp and muttered among themselves.
Lily sighed, evidently revealing more about the situation than she’d intended.
“I really didn’t want to have to tell you this,” she said. “But as you’ve already guessed… And well, you are right. You are their friends. You deserve to know the truth. As you know, Jixam was chosen as Prize by a Lizik by the name of Lark. She was with him last, and while they were together, a gang of prisoners broke into his cell and… They took her. The guards investigated the details and discovered her body. She won’t be returning to us.”
I shut my eyes to block the images that sprung, unbidden, before me. The same thing could have happened to me if Trayem hadn’t rescued me.
Jixam had been a sweet girl, kind and decent. More than once, she had lent me her hairbrush. And now, to think she was dead, forced to serve an uncountable number of monsters that she’d been abducted to service…
It was too much to bear.
A couple of the other Prizes sought comfort in their friends’ arms. They wept freely and no one judged them.
I felt like weeping myself.
I cleared my throat and thumbed a tear from the corner of my eye.
“And what about Agatha?” I said. “Where is she? Is she dead too?”
“She was chosen by Nordar,” Lily said. “Since that moment, we know nothing more about what happened to her.”
I shut my eyes, refusing to believe the news. Agatha was human, from England. She didn’t deserve to meet whatever end had been brought to her.
“She could still be alive somewhere,” Lily said. “All we can do is hope.”
Hope.
That was a joke.
Hope died the moment we arrived in this place.
Hope was escaping this place and there was precious little chance of that happening.
Except in a body bag.
“Listen to me,” Lily said over the wailing cry of the others, still grieving for their lost friends. “We need to put all this nasty business behind us. We survived, holed up in the Prize Pool. There is a lot to be thankful for.”
“Thankful?” I said incredulously. “They murdered one
