Page 46 of The Program

‘I know you don’t want to leave Addy, Xan, but Bromm is right. I don’t see any other way we all get out.’ Markus stood and moved over to Xander. The strength of their friendship was laid bare for us all to see, from the way Markus comforted him and Xander leaned on him so easily. He wasn’t openly vulnerable with many people, but Markus and Adara seemed to be the exceptions. I may not have liked the guy, but it was obvious there wassomegood in him if the captain trusted him so explicitly.

‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Dorian.

‘Arty gets the kids, Reece and Adara. We use her mission to sneak out undetected while The Program’s attention is on her, and we meet somewhere when we’re all out,’ Markus summarised.

‘Where?’ Bromm asked.

‘It needs to be a planet, one they won’t think to look for us,’ Markus said thoughtfully, stroking the blonde scruff on his chin.

‘It can’t be any of our home planets. We’ll endanger our families and that’s the first place they’ll look,’ Urman said, his expression scrunched into one of agonising loss. He must have quite a few people he would miss greatly. I was lucky enough that the only people I cared about were here with me or would be soon enough. I didn’t envy him.

‘Can we ask your father for sanctuary, Bromm?’ Henrik asked hopefully, but the blue Griknot shook his head vehemently.

‘I don’t think he would align himself with The Program, but there’s no way to be sure. If it protected our people then he’d do whatever was necessary. I can’t say we’d be safe there.’

‘Then where does that leave us?’ Cadmus huffed in frustration.

An idea hooked into my mind, shallowly at first but it quickly dug its way deeper as the room continued to debate back and forth. Soon, the idea had solidified as the only option, but it wasn’t a good one. There was a reason our people had fled…

‘I think I know a place,’ I raised my voice to be heard over them all.

Silence ensued as their attention swivelled to me.

‘Not there,’ Foryk objected firmly, apparently thinking along the same lines.

I cast him a derogatory glance before dismissing him and focusing back on the others. ‘We can’t go to any occupied planet, so that leaves us with the unoccupied ones.’

I waited for understanding to hit, and I was pleased that it didn’t take long.

‘The Forbidden Planet is forbidden for a reason, Ta-‘

I cut off Foryk’s continued objections before he could speak my name. I never wanted to hear it from his mouth ever again. ‘There’s nowhere else. It’s the only place we’ll be safe from The Program. There’s no way they’d go there.’

But Foryk was undeterred. ‘We might be safe from The Program, but we wouldn’t be safe from the creatures that call it home. There’s a reason the entire Tornu race relocated to a different planet. We’d be leaving one danger behind for another.

‘Actually, I agree with T,’ Bromm said, causing Foryk to snap his head the other way to glare at his friend.

‘I do, too.’ That one came from Cadmus.

‘I see no other viable options,’ said Xander. ‘Why don’t we put it up for a vote? Raise your hand if you agree that we head for the Forbidden Planet.’

All hands rose bar Foryk’s, and a swell of pride burst inside my chest alongside the urge to gloat that they’d chosen me over him. Well, my idea, but still.

Take that, asshole.

‘Then it’s decided,’ Xander confirmed with a finality that enveloped the small room. It pressed down on us like a suffocating fog filled with anxiety and anticipation. The plan may not have been ideal, but this was our way forward. Whether we liked it or not didn’t matter. We were getting out of here, and soon.

CHAPTER 16

ARTEMIS

The interior of the ship reemerged around me as I let go of my connection to the web, but my mind was far from clear.

After Bromm had dissipated I’d started convincing myself that it was all in my head. I didn’t know what the consequences of the latest experiments would be, but the only real explanation for what had occurred was an extremely vivid hallucination. It had to have been. There was no way in any realm of existence that Bromm would have held onto his feelings for me after so long apartandall the lies and deceit between us, let alone allow his feelings to grow as strongly as he claimed.

It was just my mind conjuring my deepest desires as a coping mechanism. That was all.

But then I’d thought about it a bit more and realised that I owed it to myself to chase that dream. If by some miracle itwasreal, I wanted to be sure. I needed to know for certain in case I was giving up everything I’d ever wanted and the man I’d fallen in love with, because if it turned out to betrue…

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