Page 51 of Vicious
Seconds later, Poh bounced inside the Vicious room, her white ponytail streaming behind. Her yellow gaze lit with excitement. “Plan C is in effect. Let’smove.”
“What?” I stood there, my drug-fueled mind likesludge.
The ship’s telecom fizzed with static, then Mase’s voice rumbled through, vibrating with rage. “Poh, get to a telecom.Now.”
She crossed to the one on the wall in the far corner and hit the button. “I’ve explained this already,” shesnapped.
“Well, what are you doing to fix it?” hedemanded.
"I told you. It needs a belt. Not much I can do about it if I don’t have a belt," sheshouted.
“Then make it so we don’t need a belt,” he yelled back. “Parker’s trying to boardus.”
“Now?” Iasked.
The floor dropped out from under my feet and just as quickly slammed back into the soles of my boots with a jaw-crackingshudder.
Poh stalked toward me and pushed me from the room. “This is what you wanted. Plan C if Plan B didn’t work. Well, I’m here to tell you that it didn’t.” She guided me roughly by the shoulder under the swinging light in the hallway, thenleft.
I wrenched away from her, but she held tighter. “No, I’m not ready. I didn’t even get a chance to explain to Mase yet, and there’s still a ghost haunting this ship. If Parker’s boarding, I can’t just leave them like this. Can’t you give the engine more juice for a littlelonger?”
We neared the infirmary, its bright donut circle window like a hopeful beacon. I tightened the fist of my good hand. This wasn’t what I wanted. Plan B was supposed to get us through the rings. But if I’d had more time, I could’ve come up with a slightly better PlanC.
“If I give the engine more juice, it’s fixed,” Pohsaid.
Almost to the infirmarydoor.
“Elli—” I started to scream, but Poh lunged for my face, cutting off my cry while simultaneously binding my wrists behind me in her firmgrip.
Captain Glenn’s tight voice carried over the ship’s telecom. “Ladies and…gentleman… Prepare to beboarded.”
“Fuck,” Mase shouted in the background, then the telecom crackled anddied.
Poh swept me forward, faster now, dragging me along with one hand clenched over my mouth and the other painfully squeezing my wriststogether.
I’d done this. I should’ve warned Mase a long time ago that this was what I had planned. I should’ve never been stupid enough to trust Poh. Whatever happened next was completely on my shoulders. I would be abandoning my pregnant sister—the sister I’d crossed several systems to rescue—to Parker’s company aboard a haunted ship. Parker would feed He to Mase, and I could very well lose him, the father of ourchild.
All so I could get us through the rings. I had no clue if it would even work. Or if I would even see it to fruition since Poh could really turn me in to thepolice.
But what choice did I have? It was too late to stop it since the wheels were already in motion, and I was literally being hauled off this ship. But I had to believe that Captain Glenn was more than capable of protectingeveryone.
The ship trembled under my feet, mimicking the fear squirming through my gut. Poh and I rounded the corner to the hallway that contained the ship’s entryway. Loud footsteps clipped the floor behind us, and soon Captain Glenn rushed past without even glancing our way. Because Poh touched me, we must’ve both goneinvisible.
He drew his gun and punched the button to the inner door. The door slid upward. Instead of the metal entryway bracketed by both the inner and outer doors, a long, hard-plastic tube stretched its length and connected us to Parker’s ship. Heated air wafted through and melted into this ship’schill.
The captain leveled his gun as Parker and his men strode through, their long coats billowing around their ankles. A soft yellow light lit their backs and glinted off Parker’s bald, alabasterhead.
He stopped in front of the captain, his cracked, blue eyes sweeping past him and skipping right over Poh and me. His men exited the entryway and circled the captain, their own guns drawn. She bolted across their eyes and below their noses in almost continuous pulses, as if they’d just had a freshdose.
Parker held his hands out to his sides. “Is this any way to greet aguest?”
“Leave this ship, or I’ll kill you,” Captain Glenn said, his voice low andlethal.
“Maybe you don’t have to do that. Say I pay off your daughter’s and lovely wife’s medical bills if you give me my favoritepilot?”
Bile splashed at the back of my throat at the purr in his voice. I bit down on a whimper. The captain looked on, seemingly unaffected by the mention of the two people who mattered most tohim.
Poh tightened her grip on my arm and nudged me along the wall, closer to Parker and the plastic-lined hallway behindhim.
