Page 39 of Soros
“You wouldn’t leave me out of a mission. You never have,” Nerix replied.
“No. Just like I never told Ziba that she couldn’t arrest a criminal because she was physically smaller than the rest of us. Ziba made hundreds of arrests and did amazing work. It wasn’t my job to limit her.”
“If you had, she would still be alive,” Nerix grumped.
“We all know that our job comes with a risk, Nerix. Your many scars will forever remind you of that. Ziba and Keindra knew that as well and they would have been highly offended if I had told them that they needed to partner up with a strong male to do their work.”
“I don’t care what you say. You failed, Captain. At least own that you made a huge mistake. You should have taken Tania and Star seriously when they contacted you.” Nerix was agitated and his aggressive energy felt as if he was shouting in my mind. “If they had reached out to me, I would have run to their side. They are our responsibility.”
I zoned out from their fight, trying frantically to search for clues in the material I had available about Ko’roz. Anything that might give me a clue to where he would take Tania and Star. One part worried me that I kept going back to. It was a detail that I had shared with Captain Lios and no one else. We had decided to keep it to ourselves as Lios saw no reason to upset the crew with details about what potentially happened to Ziba before her death.
“How about you ask for a reassignment if it’s so unbearable to work under my command,” I heard Lios tell Nerix. “As far as I remember you felt that Captain Malliko was incompetent as well, so maybe it’s just that you want to be the captain yourself.”
“If I was the captain, Keindra and Ziba would be alive, and Star and Tania would be safely back at the hotel,” Nerix responded.
Lios looked to me as if asking for me to back him up, but I was frantically trying to solve a difficult puzzle that would get Tania and Star back to safety.
“What’s with you?” Nerix asked me. “Why do you look so pale and act so quiet? What’s going on?”
“I worry about Star and Tania,” I said with complete honesty. “There are things in Ko’roz’s personality that have me concerned.”
“Besides the fact that he’s a cruel killer?” Nerix asked.
Lios knew what I was talking about and gave me a warning glance. But Nerix picked up on it and insisted, “Tell me what you know, Soros.”
“I went over all the correspondence between the pirates and Ko’roz and there’s no good way to say this, but he’s a sadist who loves to cause his victims extreme pain. Some of the things he orchestrated from a distance were beyond absurd and disgusting. His mind is sick and twisted.”
“You shouldn’t have told him that,” Lios told me.
Nerix uncrossed and recrossed his arms. “How long have you known this?”
“Since Ko’roz became a target on the run,”I said.“But we didn’t think it would benefit the crew to worry even more about Ziba.”
Nerix pushed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and groaned while Lios quickly tried to downplay the situation.
“Ko’roz is a coward. He never touched the victims onboard the pirate ship himself. Every vile action was done by ordering others to hurt his victims. Creeps like him get others to do their sadistic deeds. He’s not going to torture Star and Tania.”
I was too worried about Tania and Star to care about Nerix being emotionally unstable and so I communicated freely. “Just because Ko’roz had others commit the vile things that his sick mind came up with, doesn’t mean he’s incapable of doing cruel, sadistic acts in real life. He killed Ziba and there’s another detail from his past that’s worrisome. When he was much younger, he was accused of a violent rape back on Markatoria. He managed to get out of that case and continued to become a prominent politician, but now that we know how sick and twisted his mind is, it’s likely that he truly did commit the rape.”
Nerix grabbed onto my shoulder and looked me deep in the eye. “Are you saying that you believe he’ll rape and torture Star and Tania?”
I swallowed hard, suddenly lacking saliva in my throat. “It’s possible, which is why we need to find them quickly, before he hurts them and...” Unable to finish the sentence, I looked down feeling a massive knot in my stomach.
Nerix said what we were all thinking. “You mean before he disposes of them like he did Ziba.”
I dipped my chin in a silent nod.
The veins on Nerix’s neck stood out and he flexed his hands as if he was about to explode with anger and once again, he glared at Lios.
I didn’t have time for their internal disagreements. “We’re wasting time discussing this when we should be out looking for Tania and Star.”
“Looking where?”Nerix threw his hands up.“This city is enormous, and we could spend sollumes running in every direction. What we need to do is use the phones we were given.”
Lios pulled his phone from his back pocket and stared at it. “It’s not responding.”
“Let me try.” Nerix moved closer and stared at the device as well. “Maybe it’s broken.Now, this is why we needed our Earth agent, but she’s kidnapped by a disgusting Malbreean.”
Ignoring Nerix’s outburst, Lios looked at me. “I’m asking our contact person at the base for help.”
