Page 59 of Stars in Halo

‘I’m so sorry, Xion, so sorry,’ she whispered as she approached. ‘I was not willing for this to happen. I tried to call them off, but they have-’.

A side blow from the third brother, who wasn’t holding onto a struggling Rider, shut her up, and she gasped, raising a hand to her cut lip.

‘Do it,’ came the grating demand.

With Xion staring at her, she plunged it into his thigh.

He jolted at the agony and then collapsed as the high dose of toxin flooded his system and immobilised his ligaments.

Katya’s eyes met his for a fleeting moment, and in that gaze, he caught the abject sorrow and regret in their depths.

The betrayal pierced deep, but he couldn’t dwell on it now. Survival was the only thing that mattered.

Limp and unable to control his muscles, the group dragged him out of the suite.

He was dumped into a trolley cart, covered with a tablecloth, and trundled through the silent, abandoned service elevator and corridors.

He guessed their trajectory as they wheeled him to the outside, to the rear of The Grande.

It took all three of the kinais to bundle him into a waiting five-seater flyer parked in the basement garage.

Katya moved to the front beside the pilot, staring stonily ahead.

Flanked by the two of her brothers, Xion slumped into his seat, staring at the passing view, unable to move a single muscle.

Winging over Enia’s bustling streets, his mind raced with thoughts of escape.

But each time he tried to move, a sharp prod of the electrified weapon or slap from one of his captors reminded him of his helplessness.

Finally, the flyer stopped in a secluded aerospace hangar on the city’s outskirts.

Rough hands pulled the Rider out of the craft and into the graceful Ccyth ship he’d seen Katya disappear into days earlier.

Dragged past a luxury stateroom that he glimpsed for a moment, he was thrown in a dark hold in the ship’s lower levels.

The metallic clang of the door slamming shut echoed in the confined space, leaving Xion alone in the darkness.

He wanted to roar with bitterness and anger, but his limbs and muscles were unable to comply.

There was one thing he still had under his control.

He sent a neural command to the Tachy, and in moments, Mirage’s proxy node had located him and the vessel he was on.

The engines of his captor’s ship rumbled to life as their takeoff sequence began.

Follow me, he snarled neurally to the AI, and then he slumped over, unconscious.

A Wicked Game

Xion woke to the distant hum of an unfamiliar engine reverberating through the walls.

Checking around his body, he sighed in relief.

The neuro-toxin had worn off. He had no idea, however, if hours or minutes had passed since he’d been knocked out.

He hedged his bets on the latter, given how efficient his metanoids were at leeching poisons from him.

Moving with caution in the confined space, his hands fumbled in the darkness, searching for any semblance of a way out.

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