Page 32 of Elanie & the Empath
“Elanie, what—” My brief moment of relief vanished when her hand whipped out and grasped my throat, her eyes cold and black as onyx.
“Stop,” I tried to plead as she dragged me down the corridor. I clawed at her fingers around my neck, kicked my feet out behind me at the floor. “Stop!”
It was useless. She was too strong.
Turning abruptly, she slammed her hand over one of the airlock sensors.
Craning my neck, I tried to shout, to scream. But I could barely get a breath out through her grip around my throat. The airlock she was about to enter was empty. No shuttle, no escape pod. Only the icy grip of space waiting to crush the life from us both.
I commed her desperately, myheels scrabbling, my lungs burning for another breath.
But she wasn’t Elanie. She was gone. A program following its code, carrying out its orders. All I could do was hope that whatever her programming wanted her to do, it wanted her to do it alive.
“Elanie…please,” I begged, the words tearing through my compressed vocal cords. “This…is…suicide!”
She stopped, frozen in place like someone had hit her pause button. Her grip on me loosened.
I gasped for air, sucking in a lungful. “Let’s go back to deck twelve,” I managed while black spots swarmed my vision, my pulse pounding in my ears. “Let’s go home. You”—I coughed—“don’t want to do this.”
Stepping back from the door, she turned her head, her blank eyes examining the adjacent airlock. Then she let me go, and gravity claimed me. My head rebounded off the floor.
Rubbing my throat, I clambered to my feet and stumbled after her down the hall.
I roared over the comm now that my brain was capable of a thought other thanI’m going to die in my laundry-day boxers.
Elanie pressed her hand over the control panel of the airlock, triggering blaring alarms and flashing red lights.
Captain Jones’s voice filled my head.
Not even halfway through my relieved exhale—because even though someone or something out there was stillcontrolling her, at least she wouldn’t be able to leave the ship—my breath reversed course, sucked back into my lungs as I watched Elanie’s fingers move at warp speed over the control panel.
Awhooshof pressurized air made my ears pop, killing any last vestige of hope inside me.
I commed the captains, defeat thick in my voice as the alarms went silent.
Elanie took no notice of me as I crawled into the airlock behind her. She was too busy entering a code to open the door to the escape pod.
Everything I was about to do was ridiculous and dangerous and would most certainly get me killed. I didn’t care.
Putting one foot in front of the other, I followed her into the pod. A very small, very stripped-down, single passenger pod.Super.
Captain Jones commed.
Elanie sat in the jump seat, buckling herself in with a methodical efficiency, her eyes closed, her brow furrowed in deep concentration. Which could only mean?—
I told the captains.
Isla commed.
When Declan’s voice went soft, my jaw set hard.
Like hells.
I spun around frantically, searching for anything I couldhold on to or buckle myself in with before we shot away from theIgnisarand into the cold blackness of space.
growled either Rax or Morgath. I didn’t really care.
I growled back.
