Hyperspeed Dreams by Anna Carven
Chapter Fourteen
Suddenly,the rocking stopped.
The ship became perfectly still.
One by one, the tiny blue lights in the walls winked out, leaving them in perfect darkness.
The absence of light was so total that Tasha couldn’t see a thing, even with her enhanced night-vision.
In the background, Nythian was speaking to someone, his voice low and furious and urgent, his tone so much at odds with the melodic nature of his alien language.
Then he, too, fell silent.
For a moment, Tasha felt alone in the darkness; the silence, the oppressive nothingness.
Something wrapped around her neck. It felt like the same stuff that held down her wrists and thighs and chest.
Fluid black metal.
It started to squeeze, pressing against her carotids, her trachea…
Instinctively, she tried to grab the stupid thing, but her arms were pinned in place.
Panic seeped in.
She never panicked, but when one was trapped on an alien ship in absolute darkness, about to be asphyxiated by a tendril of obsidian metal around one’s neck…
Well, that was reason enough to panic, right?
Maybe these aliens had been planning this all along.
Maybe she was going to die here.
Had Lodan fucking lied to her?
“Ny—” she wheezed, but the big guy was already there.
Shick.
In the darkness, something impossibly sharp sliced through the tendril. Suddenly, the terrible pressure around her neck was gone.
She inhaled deeply, again and again, heaving in relief.
She wasn’t going to die.
Was this what it felt like to cheat death?
Was this what it felt like to… want to live?
In that moment, she realized that she didn’t want to die.
She didn’t want to lose to the monsters that had made her into one.
But more importantly, Lodan hadn’t betrayed her.
He’d asked his closest friend to guard her.
And everything he’d told her so far had been the truth.
Shick, shick, shick.The blade sliced again and again; silent, swift, precise. The darkness was so thick that even with her enhanced vision, Tasha barely caught the faint outline of a small dagger-sized knife.
Massive hands lifted her out of the chair. Wired and afraid, Tasha couldn’t stop her hair-trigger reflexes from kicking in.
She lashed out with a blind punch, but Nythian simply clamped his powerful fingers around her wrists, as easily as if he were restraining a child. As soon as she settled, he released her. “Hey, hey,” the warrior rumbled, his voice surprisingly gentle. “Settle down. You still don’t understand, do you? Come over here.” He helped her to her feet and guided her through the darkness, away from the chair; away from the tentacle-like coils of metal that were trying to kill her. “My mate and my sworn battle-brother have both asked me to protect you. You think I’d let some idiotic semi-sentient ship take you? You think Lodan would let this chaos continue? You have a lot to learn, human. Lodan hates chaos—more than most of us. This is just a blip for him. Watch and learn. Wait and see. He’s a freak when it comes to commanding the ships. There’s nobody better. And he doesn’t fail. Ever.”
She stood in the center of nothingness, trying to find some sort of comfort in the Kordolian warrior’s words.
Her fate now rested in the hands of another.
Lodan.
And she couldn’t do a thing about it.
In the darkness; in the chaos, with imminent death all around her and inside her, the realization was utterly terrifying.
But as Tasha stood there with her body tensed, rocking on the balls of her bare feet as the ship swayed and rumbled, something inside her came unstuck.
Suddenly, she felt light and weightless, even as the craving for Ambrosia threatened to consume her.
Her heart pounded like a drum.
Need swirled inside her; raw, desperate need, turning her into a creature she barely recognized—angry-afraid-desperately-longing-filled-with…
Everything’s going to be all right.
Did she dare to even…
Hope?