Page 20 of Rescued By the Convicts
She was panicking. She’d been through so much already since arriving on Veenith, alone and unprotected. Ivan cupped her cheek until her eyes rose to his. Her eyes showed her trepidation. She was physically and mentally exhausted. She needed rest, but he needed answers. He couldn’t ignore this new threat, especially not one that involved the managers. They had ultimate power on this planet. It wouldn’t take much for Thorne to order the guards in the med-center to arrest her and bring her to them the next time she went to work. And Melina would insist on returning to the med-center. Caging her in the bunker again would destroy her.
He ran his fingers over the bump at the back of her head. “Concussion or not, he drugged you to knock you out for a while.”
She looked at him blankly. “Why?”
“To make you hurt in the worst way possible.” Ivan clenched his fists at his side where she wouldn’t see. “He put you in a bag of garbage.” Reece growled and Melina’s eyes grew wide as if she didn’t believe anyone would do that. “You didn’t stuff yourself into that bag, Melina.”
“No,” she said in a whisper.
Ivan didn’t want to press, but he had to. “What did you lie about?”
“I experimented on the spores I took from the spindle tree in Section B.” She hesitated then. He saw it in her eyes and face. She was nervous.
“Go on,” Ivan urged. “We’re in this together. Whatever it is, we need to know.”
She nodded. “I started experimenting on my tattoo with an extract from the spores a few days ago. The spores counteract the serilium in our tattoos.”
Ivan glanced at her tattoo and the familiar yellow glow.
“Not permanently,” she added when she saw him scrutinizing her prison tattoo. “At least not that I’ve been able to affect. When I brush the extract over my tattoo, it disappears for fifteen seconds. I don’t know if the extract hides the serilium from the naked eye or if it’s affecting the serilium in the bone.”
“I can understand why prisoners would want to get rid of our tattoos. It gives us a chance to blend in with the guards, maybe even escape the planet. The real benefit would come once we escape. No one would be able to identify us as prisoners and send us back. But what does having this ability do for Liden? He’s a guard, for fuck’s sake. And whose he working for?”
Reece grabbed the paper and pen and wrotePohl.
“Who’s Pohl?” Melina asked.
“I think he means Powell, his manager at the greenhouse. Reece was going to dump you in the mine.”
She started to turn to Reece, but Ivan took her chin in his hand and drew her attention. “This isn’t Reece’s doing, Melina. He didn’t know you were in the bag. He was probably ordered, by Powell, to dump the bag.”
Reece scribbledYESin large letters. Then added17.
“At my mine, specifically?” Ivan asked, finding that more than coincidental.
Reece nodded.
“Then Powell and Liden are working together, and sending a message to all of us, not just Melina.”
“What message?”
“Warning us all away from this spindle tree and its spores.”
“Why didn’t they kill me, Ivan?”
Reece stood up so fast, he knocked over a stack of boxes. The anger in his face mirrored how Ivan felt at that moment, but he remained seated, watching Reece out of the corner of his eyes to make sure the man didn’t do anything rash.
“You’re still valuable, Melina. As a woman.”
Her arms wrapped around her and her head dipped forward, long dark hair hiding her face. Scared. Fuck, he was supposed to making her feel safe, not scared.
“I need to return to the med-center.”
Reece slammed his fist on the crate, making Melina jump.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Ivan said, hating that he had to do this.
“If they find the extract I made, then they’ll know I lied. It’s not labeled properly, but if they search the lab—”
