Page 23 of Shattered Silence

The Kordolian released her, pushing her down so she was forced to slam her hands against the floor to avoid falling on her face. The pain in her ribs intensified, and Layla stared down the long, dark tunnel of despair.

It threatened to suck her in.

“What do you want?” she asked bitterly, picking herself up off the floor. She rose to her feet, ignoring the protests of her aching body, ignoring the faint electric tingle from the crippling device around her neck.

She looked straight ahead, refusing to show them the full extent of her suffering.

The half-metal creature’s face twisted into something resembling a smile. “This is the very last time I will allow you to ask questions, so let me explain it in terms that your simple human mind can understand.” He looked her up and down, his gaze coming to rest on her lower half. “For some infernal reason that only the Goddess knows, your species is genetically compatible with ours, but only an uncivilized soori bastard would actually want to physically mate you.” Disgust crept into his voice. “That’s why I need to study you. I need to know why you can do something that our females can’t.”

Genetically compatible? Mate?

Layla shuddered.

At least he seemed repulsed at the thought of mating with her. On Earth, Layla turned heads and drew stares whenever she walked into a room, but here, she was just another alien, a lowly being these oh-so-superior Kordolians wouldn’t ever find attractive.

Thank the fucking stars for that.

The mad scientist/cyborg/doctor/whatever-he-was turned to the soldiers. “Kash!” he snapped—it was obviously an order. Captain Pradon exchanged curt words with him, sneered at Layla, and stalked out of the room, his men following silently behind him in single file.

She glanced over her shoulder just in time to see the black fiber doors silently weave shut behind them, becoming indistinguishable against the dark curving walls.

There was a sense of finality to it all, as if Layla had just gone past the point of no return.

But instead of crushing despair, she felt something else.

Hatred.

It burned inside her chest like a solar flare, giving her strength. Her eyes snapped back to the scientist. He beckoned to her with his black metal finger. Come.

Layla glared at him, refusing to budge.

She realized she hated these Kordolians. She hated their smug sense of superiority and their mirthless laughter and the way they seemed to get off on her pain and humiliation.

She hated their arrogance, the way they thought they were God’s fucking gift to the Universe.

Actually, these Kordolians reminded her of someone back home, an asshole called Damien who had turned her life into a nightmare.

So when the half-metal creep shook his head, activating a small device he kept tucked into the palm of his cybernetic hand, a device that apparently controlled the god-awful collar around her neck, Layla was able to endure the pain that ripped through her body.

She focused all her energy on hating the man, and found it strangely rejuvenating. It gave her strength. Now she understood what Enki had been talking about when he told her to endure.

He obviously knew his own kind too well.

Now she understood why there had been such venom in his voice when he said these people were his enemies, and that was a good thing, because it gave her hope that not all Kordolians were alike.

As Layla gasped, blinking tears of pain from her eyes, she remembered the small knife she’d hidden at her back. The Kordolians must really not see her as a threat, because they hadn’t even bothered to search her or remove her jacket.

Her captor loomed over her. “Come now, human. You are well on your way to learning that any form of resistance against me is futile. I can cause you immeasurable pain, and I can make it constant. I can deaden your nerves and immobilize your muscles with the flick of a needle. I can sedate you so that you won’t be aware of a single thing, but that would be far too easy for you. What you need to understand is that like all the other lesser species in the Universe, you need to obey.” He delivered his little speech with fanatical intensity, as if he were trying to prove something to the infinite Universe. “Now get up and follow me, little human.”

There was a time when Layla had people at her beck and call, when a single link-command would have had her agent, her personal assistant, and her concierge all scrambling to attend to her needs.

She’d been on top of the world back then, but now she was reduced to this.

A fucking test subject.

Valuable only for the cells inside her battered body.

How fucking foolish she’d been to dismiss the very real dangers of the Universe, to believe the Infinity-8 sales reps and legal advisors when they told her the chances of accident or abduction were one in twenty-five million.

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