I shook my head, interrupting him. “Whatever works. I don’t care where or how we do that. I’m somewhat steadier than I was when I was distressed there. It feels like a lot of time has passed and a lot of things have happened.”

  The second I said it, the more I realized I meant it. Yes, I didn’t care where I was now. I just wanted Blaze, Kellan, Anders, Corbin, and Devil back. I wanted us all safe. Even if we had to spend the rest of our life in false orbit, with fake light, and no solid ground beneath our feet. I didn’t care if the whole universe was shaky. I just wanted us together.

  Climbing off Trenton’s lap, I was bereft from missing his body heat. I shivered, rubbing my arms. It wasn’t cold in here, so I wasn’t sure what that was about. Trenton didn’t miss that it happened to me. He leaned on his hand and spoke to me with raised eyebrows. “Go see Wade. Now, please.”

  I appreciated the please, but I had no doubt he’d pick me up and carry me over to Wade if that were what he thought I should do right now. As it was, I agreed. The shuddering couldn’t have been a good sign. With the ship mostly steady, I headed to the back where Wade stood staring at a small box of supplies.

  “Well, if anyone needs to be rehydrated, the good news is I can do that with no trouble.” He held up a syringe.

  I smiled. “Think that would help me?”

  “Well, it couldn’t hurt.” He held out his hand, and I took it. With his other hand, he stroked his fingers around the dials and readings that told him just how sick I was right now. “How do you feel?”

  I took a deep breath. “Tired. But I’m not sure if that is because I really haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a while. I just had an incident of shuddering. Like I got the chills, but I didn’t feel cold.”

  He nodded as though that made sense to him. “Anything else?”

  “I think that’s it.”

  Wade met my gaze and held it. “We’re going to get you through this. I have some basic antiviral with me. It won’t be as great as what I had on Artemis, but it can help right now. What I want you to do is come get some rest. Good old-fashioned sleep goes a long way, and when you get up, I’ll check your numbers, and we’ll see. If we’re heading for Mars Station, you should have plenty of hours to get some rest. That bed doesn’t look comfortable but will have to do.”

  He nodded toward the edge of the room, and I followed his gaze. He was right. It was a bed, but it looked more like a table. “I don’t think this ship was designed for much of a long ride. We might be pushing our luck trying to get to Mars Station.”

  “Trenton can make a ship do anything he wants it to do.” Wade smiled. “Now if only I was this talented when it came to the human body. I’m limited.”

  Wade. I said his name in my mind because I knew that he’d hear it. He smiled at me. As it was our special thing we did with one another, I knew he’d understand how I felt about him when I did it. His gaze was heated when he met my own full on. “What has happened with me is not your fault.”

  “I know.” He visibly swallowed. But sometimes it feels like it is.

  The ship shook violently, and then a gush of hot air filled the room. Wade threw himself on top of me, taking us both to the deck.

  “What is happening?” I yelled over my ringing ears. My head hurt. I might have hit it as we slammed into the ground.

  “I don’t know,” Wade yelled back. Part of his shirt was singed and torn. Had he been burned? I didn’t get to ask him because he was on his feet and rushing from the room. “Stay here.”

  Trenton. He’d gone after him. I got to my knees. Stay here? Not if they were both going to need me. I pulled myself to a standing position for a second before I puked. I couldn’t stop. The need was overwhelming. That couldn’t be a good sign. But that was the thing about vomit: it was all consuming when the need happened.

  Wade dragged Trenton back in. He wasn’t conscious. I lifted my head. “Is he okay?”

  Shaking his head, Wade hauled Trenton onto the med machine in the far corner of the room. “No, but he will be. And you’re obviously concussed. I can’t do anything about that at the moment. Sit down. But don’t lie down.” He pushed buttons on the machine but didn’t close it before he ran for the cabinet, pulling out a device. My vision was somewhat blurred, but I could see what it was.

  “Isn’t that Dev’s device?” He’d used it in the station to hide our heartbeats from the others. He grabbed it and put it on Trenton’s wrist before he turned to me.

  With a nod, he closed the med machine. “Yes.”

  That told me nothing. I put my throbbing head in my hands. “Wade, what is happening?”

  “We’re going to be boarded any second, and I don’t want them finding Trenton. They won’t know he’s here if they can’t hear or sense him.” He pushed the machine into the corner. “Have a silent mode. Have a silent mode. Thank fuck.” It was like he spoke to himself.

  “Wade?”

  He rushed over to me. “Evander has us. They’re tugging us on board their ship. It looks like they’ve managed to construct a super ship. We thought we had all of them. It’s quite bad. My guess is that Trenton tried a maneuver that should have worked to get away from this mess, but it blew up instead because this ship sucks. They’re going to tow us on board. Listen, this is important, and I have three seconds before I risk them hearing us. Trenton is not on here. Do you understand?”

  I did. “I get it.”

  “Great. Whatever they do, survive.” He kissed me, hard. I’d just been puking. It should have been gross, but it was one of the sweetest kisses of my life. “I love you. Just keep living.”

  Our burning ship jerked left, and Wade winced. “We’re on their cube.”

  My head was thick, but I had to know how he knew this. “Has this happened to you before?”

  “When they took me prisoner years ago to impersonate me on The Farm. This is what they did. What comes next will be very unpleasant. But they need you, want you. My guess is they will fix your head. I don’t know after that.”

  A loud bang sounded, and a second later the cabin filled with a spray. It stunk like something sour, and Wade covered my mouth and nose with his hand before he followed with a towel. “They’re putting out the fire. It’s a substance that stinks but isn’t toxic. I’m unfortunately used to it.”

  I was having a hard time following everything he said. I closed my eyes, and Wade shook me. “No, stay awake. Easier to keep you healthy if you are. Aha, they’re here. Evander Super Soldiers. Three of them. They’re headed right toward us.”

  I should be scared, but the need to throw up rode me again, and it was everything I could do to breathe through my nose and try not to give into the need.

  Wade rose to his full height. “Leave her alone.”

  “Move, doctor. Or I’ll make this even more unpleasant for you. Where is the other one? The pilot? I was told there would be three of you. We’re bringing you and the girl to the Vice President and getting rid of him.”

  I lifted my head. No wonder Wade had wanted to hide Trenton. He understood how these assholes worked.

  “He died,” I managed to say. “On the planet. He didn’t make it onto the ship with us. That’s why you were able to catch us.”

  “Well, that makes things even easier.”

  The three Super Soldiers were huge, but I was used to it from my guys. These three were completely clean-shaven. Short black hair, big angry eyes. My guys had really altered their appearances when they’d given up the hell that these guys lived with.

  “Why do you even bother with this?” I rubbed my forehead. It didn’t help the ache. “Evander is on the other side of the galaxy. Why not just let this shit go?”

  Yep, I was cursing all the time now.

  “Evander is our journey, our task, our home.” The one closest to me bent over so his face was very close to mine. “And those traitors that you like might have forgotten that, but we never will.”

  “Hey.” Wade leaped at him. One of the men behind the one currently snarling at me, intercepted and knocked him down to the ground.

  My world spun. Then blackness.

  2 Into The Heart Of Darkness

  The air conditioning on the Evander ship was high. Maybe I just noticed it so much as I slowly woke up because we’d been so hot on the planet. The small ship we’d attempted to escape on had been pretty warm, too. I shivered and rubbed my arms.

  The movement must have caught someone’s attention, because I heard footsteps, and then the awareness of a presence staring down at me from above proved impossible to ignore. I opened my eyes and stared at a stranger.

  He tilted his head and smiled at me. “You’re awake.”

  It seemed I was. But I didn’t know who this was, and since we were on an Evander ship, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be. “Apparently.”

  “If you hurt her, I’ll rip out your eyeballs.” That was Wade’s voice booming in the room. I lifted my head, careful to not get close to the man staring down at me as I looked for Wade. Some glass separated him from me. As he paced back and forth on the other side of that clear partition where he observed me, worry tightened the hardness of his jaw.

  “Your doctor friend likes to make threats he can’t possibly achieve.” The man near me sighed. “If I didn’t think we needed him, I’d put him out an airlock right now. I still might. It would be prudent for him to tone down his attitude.”

  I forced myself to swallow so I could think. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Dr. Patrick Blume. I am a Vice President of Evander Corporation and in charge of this ship. I was charged with getting a hold of you, Ms. MacKinnon, and grabbing you, I finally did. I also managed to recapture some turncoat traitors to the company, and so I imagine management will be very pleased with me when we get back through the black hole.”

  They weren’t getting through that hole. It had been officially closed down. That much I’d gathered from conversations I’d heard while I was on Mars Station. Did these people not know that? Or did they have some way to bust through the closed hole that we just didn’t know yet?

  As I didn’t answer him, he kept speaking. Or maybe he’d have just done that anyway. Some people liked to hear the sound of their own voices more than they required any kind of response.

  “Now the trick will be to keep you alive. And I feel I have the perfect solution. Your doctor over there, he found a way to keep you kicking.” He picked up my arm. “I’m going to let him keep doing so because I believe I have the exact way to motivate you here.”

  I stared at him while I considered the best way to respond. Maybe Kellan was rubbing off on me. I just wanted to beat him to death. But instead, I swung my legs over the side of the medical bed that was more like a table. “If you think for one second that I—”

  He held up his hand. “I know you can zap me. We’ve seen what you can do. It was impressive. You took down a Super Soldier when we tried to get you. I must say that was incredibly surprising. No, listen first. We have your doctor here. We have a spaceship full of Super Soldiers who work for me. And we have your men here, our former Super Soldiers, locked away where I can just as easily end their lives as I can keep them safe. All of that will depend on you and how much you are willing to cooperate with me during our journey.”

  Goose bumps broke out on my skin. I knew they had Wade. He was obviously stuck, or he’d be in here with me. But I couldn’t just take his word that he had everyone else. He might have already killed them. I had to understand exactly what I was dealing with before I spoke anymore to this so-called doctor who was threatening me to comply with him.

  And I had to somehow gauge whether or not they’d found Trenton, who we’d tried to hide on the small shuttle. What had happened with him?

  But I said nothing. Keeping my mouth shut when I wanted to talk was something I’d learned how to do early on. I’d say very little and try to get more information than I gave.

  “I need to see them. I’m not agreeing to anything until I see for myself that they are okay.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “They said you were bright.”

  Who had said that? Who did they know that could possibly have told them that? My uncle who had initially sold me out to them? Did he know me well enough to make a statement like that? I didn’t ask for clarification. That would wait. The doctor put his hand on my arm. “Easy. You were concussed. We fixed you, but take it slow.”

  I took a long breath. “Are you sure you should be in here with me? I might infect you with the diseases you gave to me.”

  He narrowed his gaze. “I was under the impression that Wade had gotten you to where you weren’t contagious.”

  “Well, it’s a day-by-day thing. You never do know.” His statement had told me what I needed to know. Wade hadn’t given him instruction on how to read the device on my arm. I looked down, and it still read a seven. Much as I wished it had magically gone down to zero, it didn’t surprise me. If stress played a role in this, then I’d had my fair share.

  This doctor, Evander’s so-called vice president, didn’t know that it had been at seven for a bit and that I wasn’t a problem for him until it was ten. I wasn’t going to tell him.

  He scowled at me. “I think if you were contagious, then Wade would be dressed to protect himself from you. Since he wasn’t, we’re going to proceed that way.”

  I shrugged. “That’s entirely up to you. You made me sick. You’d know best, I suppose. Show me my men. And then we’ll discuss how things are going to go.”

  I might zap him if I could figure out how to get us all free. I could zap the whole damned ship if I needed to. Even if it knocked me out for weeks, I’d do it.

  He walked ahead of me, which would have been stupid if a man hadn’t come out of the shadows of the room to box me in from behind. He was huge, an obvious Super Soldier. But when I turned to look at him, I saw none of the light that I was used to in my guys’ gazes. No, this man had dead eyes. I rubbed my arms at the goose bumps breaking out on them. Had my men been like this? Lost to nothingness?

  Or was he just hiding deep emotion? I didn’t intend to find out. I had a plan, or the beginning of one, and I wasn’t going to blow it right out of the gate. Wade banged on the glass between us, and I nodded to him, hoping he’d understand that meant I was okay.

  He visibly exhaled a breath. There were dark circles under his eyes. How much had he suffered until I woke up? I wouldn’t forget that he’d been through hell. Whatever happened next, I would find out finally how to make things okay for Wade. For all of us. Somehow.

  What was funny was I was absolutely a prisoner right now. And yet for some reason, I’d never been so sure that I was powerful, that I was capable of doing what I thought I could do. This wasn’t how my story was going to end. I was sure of it, and for the first time in my life, I believed in myself. Why the miraculous change had suddenly come on an Evander ship, I couldn’t say, but there it was.

  Wade banged on the glass, and I stopped to regard him again. “Let me the fuck out of here.” He spoke to the doctor but glared at the dead-eyed Super Soldier who followed behind me. “Now.”

  I turned toward my captors. “I’d like him out.”

  “We can talk about what Wade will and won’t get to have happen when we get back in here. If you don’t want him left alone in there endlessly, then I suggest you hurry up.”

  It would be so easy to knee the doctor in the dick. It really would, and it was everything I could do to stop myself from giving in to the urge. Wham. He’d be rolling on the ground. Instead, I looked at the man following behind me.

  “Why do you guys follow him? You’re bigger and stronger than he is. What is he giving you to get you to continue with this charade? Your people are on the other side of the galaxy, and you’re never getting back. Why bother with this? Find your backbone or something.”

  The doctor yanked on my arm. “Now, that is just what I’m talking about. Your mouth. That isn’t going to earn you any points speaking to him like that. They aren’t going to turn on me. Or Evander. These men understand where and how their futures are laid out. They will be rewarded for their loyalty, whereas your men will be punished. That is the way of the universe. And if you think that black hole is closed, you underestimate our capability.”

  That was information I needed, and he’d easily provided it. Mental note, this asshole was easy to manipulate. I nodded at him, and he strode forward while I followed. We walked for a while, and I made notes in my head about where we turned and how many people I saw.

  I counted ten other Super Soldiers, including the lethal yet silent man behind me, There were probably more. This ship was huge. How many people did it take to run it? I chewed on my lip when the doctor finally stopped.

  He turned to sneer at me before he opened the door to the room. What struck me first as he gestured like he was showing me a new piece of art he’d designed was the blandness of the place. There was no floating air, no drift of sound other than a constant low-pitched buzz to my ears. Still, it was the scariest place I’d ever stepped into. “This, my dear, is where we keep people who we have placed in cryogenic sleep.”

  I sucked in a long breath. If there were ten, or more, Super Soldiers awake on this ship, there were hundreds upon hundreds of them asleep in pods in this room. It was a bigger space than all of Artemis combined. I rubbed my arms. All of that temporary confidence fled. Did every Evander ship have this many people on it? How had we not known it was this tremendous? Had the guys been fighting this all along or something else smaller and not understood this was still out there?

  “It’s impressive.” He sneered at me again. “Xavier, show the woman where her friends are.”

  I loved how he downgraded what they were to me when he knew full well they were more than my friends. And by loved, I was, of course, being sarcastic in my own head. I hated it. With a passion. But I kept my facial expressions benign as I followed after the now named Super Soldier. Pod after pod was filled with people sound asleep, kept in a stasis until they were needed. People who fought for Evander. People who were very much what my guys used to be.