Page 59 of Treasured By the Hunter

“Now we just have to wait for our fighters to clean up and head back.” Lenny turned to me. “You ready to go?” He eyed my bag. “Let me get that loaded up for you.

“Thank you.” I handed him my duffel. “I need to go say bye to my friend. I’ll be right back.”

Still pumped from witnessing our win, I ran into the main building and to the room on the third floor where Riley and I had been staying. I found her on the bed.

“Riley! Did you see? They fucked up the nest real…” I trailed off because Riley looked terrified. “What’s wrong?”

“Ah. Why, if it isn’t our little ambassador?” The voice behind me had me whipping around.

Gabe stood there, a handgun trained on me.

“There’s no point in screaming. Sanctuary’s guards belong to me. They’re all in on this.” He gestured to the door. “Open it. We’re all going to take a little walk up to the roof.”

After too many floors of listening to him complain about Clark and Sasha getting soft and falling victim to alien brainwashing, we were on the roof. And just as Gabe had said, the guards here were expecting us. So was the trade advisor. The traitor!

They ushered us to a spot marked with neon green tape. It only took a few steps before a Xarc’n shuttle appeared in front of us, looking worse for wear. The tone-deaf shuttle! Since it didn’t appear until I was this close, it must have been cloaked!

The door slid open, and Corey stood in the opening, looking smug.

“I don’t know how the fuck you two got to so many of the charging points, but you left one. That was enough to get us to the shuttle. Looks like I win.” He turned to Gabe. “We’ll meet you and your men at the rendezvous point.” He pointed to the woman behind me. “Not her. She barred trade with my group.”

“That was all Clark,” the trade advisor insisted. “I said we needed you guys. I insisted we keep our agreement.”

Corey considered it. “Fine, whatever.”

Gabe shoved Riley and me into the shuttle. If and when I got back to Sanctuary, I was going to apologize to Sasha for suspecting him when Gabe had been the problem all along.

“Shuttle,” I said. “You don’t have to follow his instructions.”

“It’s not gonna work, but good try,” Corey said. “This one is not one of them smart ones. This one does what it’s told. And so will you.” He aimed a gun at me. “You’re going to sit down like a good little bitch until we get to where we’re going.”

I considered for a second if I could wrestle the blaster from him. But the safety was off, and it might end up shooting me or Riley during the altercation. What I really wanted to do was strangle him for everything he’d put me through.

Maybe I’d be able to catch him off guard. But it seemed like as soon as we lifted off, we were landing again, and he marched us out into a warehouse where his friends were waiting.

There was a man I’d never seen before, and he was giving off big boss energy. He wore fatigues with the letters NEM embroidered on the front.

Shit. New Earth Militia!

Boss Man approached us, arms crossed. “Help the others pack everything into the shuttle,” he ordered, and Corey hopped to it, leaving through the side door.

“Now,” Boss Man said, looking at me. “You are going to tell me everything you know about this camp. We know the basics, so I’ll know if you’re lying. When you were there, did you see any machinery that might be able to detect a cloaked shuttle?”

“The other shuttles, I guess.” It was a generic answer anyone would give.

“No. We removed the tracking on our shuttle so that they couldn’t detect us. There must be something else.”

“There was the weird thing that looked like a stasis pod from a bad sci-fi movie.”

He frowned. “That’s for cleaning. “

“Oh. Like to clean clothes?” I asked, playing stupid.

“No, it’s how the hunters clean themselves.”

“Oh. They had showers there. So that was nice.” I hope he bought the dumb blonde act.

“Anything else?”

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