Page 63 of The Program

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It turned out that I had inadvertently pickedthemost boring job on the entire station. My screen was monitoring a small section of the docking bay, the surveillance cameras pointed directly at a newly docked ship. A ship that was completely and utterly devoid of life.

I’d been staring at the same unmoving image for the past four turns getting increasingly frustrated and restless. I was entertaining myself with examining a logo on the side of the ship – a strand of DNA in the centre of a cog – but I was so wound up that my muscles kept twitching from the tension. My skin felt like it was crawling, and I wanted to tear right out of it.

Markus still had yet to return, and there was no sign of any of the others. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought the entirety of Nova Station was fast asleep. Just like I was about to be.

Morgrid wasn’t faring any better, either. She tried to mask it, but it was evident in the tense set of her shoulders and the way she ground her teeth that she was just as anxious as me. Perhaps even more so. She and her family had been guards for The Program for a long time now. Who knew what they’d been exposed to? I gathered they’d been forced into some rather… immoral positions, but I didn’t hold it against them. They may not have been subjects, but they may as well have been with the cage they’d found themselves trapped inside.

Her son and her mate were still out there, putting themselves in danger while we sat here staring at blank screens. No, she was not holding up well despite her efforts to appear so.

I also got the feeling that Morgrid considered Artemis a member of her family, too. T was strangely obsessed with the woman even if he never said so out loud. There was a history there that hadn’t been divulged, and whilst itwasn’t any of my business I wanted to know more. About how well they knew her. What she was really like.

After all, Addy was determined to maintain her friendship with Mercer. If that was even her last name.

Probably not.

I decided to break up the boredom by being nosy. ‘When did you meet Artemis?’

The question must have stunned her, because she stared at me with wide-eyed surprise for a solid few clicks before she answered. And her answer wasn’t at all what I expected of the infamously private woman.

‘Why don’t I start at the beginning so you can get the full story, hmm? Save you from asking all the questions.’

‘I… Please,’ I stammered. I wasn’t normally so nervous, but this whole situation had been grating on my nerves for over three solars, now. Getting any sort of new insight into The Program let alone one of its most dangerous subjects was going to undoubtedly be a lot to process.

‘It all started ten solars ago. Juffrik and I were approached by a Terran man and offered a well-paying opportunity. We’d just had a scandal in the family, and we were eager to mend our standing among our peers, so we didn’t notice how he left out some essential information.’

‘Like illegal experimentation of live, kidnapped subjects against their will,’ I surmised.

She nodded. ‘Right. Like that. We thought it was just a typical security job for a prestigious, highly classified government program, so the three of us signed up right away. At first we ignored the strange things they were doing. Our job wasn’t to question them or snoop into their top-secret work, so even when we noticed them treating their ‘patients’ a little too roughly we minded our own business.

‘Until Tormik discovered Artemis. He was smitten in a way I’d never seen in him before, but it was forbidden to get involved with the patients. When he started paying attention to what they were doing to her and her friend, Liberty, it was obvious that things were not as they seemed, but by that point we’d already signed a binding contract. We were stuck.’

‘T and Artemis? They were together?’ I asked, unable to picture it.

‘No, not quite. I don’t know how she felt about him, but his feelings for her grew over time, and what had once been an infatuation became something much, much more. Unfortunately, under the ever-watchful eyes of the other guards and the scientists, their relationship never got the opportunity to progress.’

‘Why not? She escaped, didn’t she?’

‘With our help, we were able to get her out. Liberty was sadly captured right as they reached the exit. It was heartbreaking to watch. Artemis fought valiantly, but Liberty was already being dragged back in. She was the one who told Artemis to leave her behind, but we all knew it wouldn’t last. Those two are soulmates. I’ve never seen such devotion before.’

‘So Artemis and Libby…?

It took her a beat to realise what I was asking, but when it clicked she threw her head back and released a loud, boisterous laugh. ‘Stars,no. They’re like sisters, not lovers. Family.’

I almost felt embarrassed for asking, but there was so much I didn’t understand. ‘Why didn’t T…’ I corrected myself now that I’d been given his true name. ‘Why didn’tTormikgo with her?’

Her smile was grim, her sadness over her son’s actions a palpable thing. ‘He has his reasons. That’s not my business to share.’

Before I could offer any sort of response, I noticed a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked closer at the motionless scene on the screen and wondered if I’d just imagined it, but then it happened again.

There was something on the other side of the ship’s closed hangar door that was banging against it so roughly it appeared to be trying to knock the damn thing down. I jumped to my feet when I saw the dents this thing was making, the door barely holding up under the barrage.

I shared a startled glance with Morgrid when the bottom corner of the door was pushed back enough to reveal a large, blood red eye gazing through the hole it had created.

‘What the fuck is that?’ she asked, the fear in her tone something I never thought I’d hear.

One thing I did know was that if the ever-stoic, dauntless Tornu warrior beside me was afraid, that thing was nothing less than a creature of nightmares.

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