Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 56021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Nothing could ruin this moment.
BOOM!
4 UNDER ATTACK
Wrath
The ground shakes all around us. We are deep beneath the city, in tunnels and rooms and natural caves that have stood for centuries without being disturbed. The underground is more stable and safer than any of the constructed buildings on top — or so I thought. Dirt and rocks fall from the ceiling, loosened by the vibrations, covering the bed and everything else with a light smattering of sand.
I look up, wondering what could have caused that level of disruption. It doesn’t feel like…
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Three more explosions detonate in quick succession. I snatch my human up against my body, her naked flesh pressed against mine, her face buried against my chest as she gasps with fear.
The door to my room flies open. It’s a breach of good manners, but I wouldn’t have heard a knock if there had been one.
It’s Zin.
“We’re under attack,” he says, stating the obvious. “I’ve initiated the escape protocols and everybody is evacuating.”
My first thought is that Thorn has come to the end of his tether and lost his mind. I cannot entirely believe that though. Thorn and I have always been at odds, but we have never escalated to this level of violence because we both understand that once you start destroying buildings and massacring innocents, there is absolutely no end to the horror. We may be enemies, but we are not insane.
“Who is doing this?”
“The human ship has de-cloaked directly above us and is bombarding the ground above. Tunnels are collapsing. There are casualties.”
Zin talks in a short, clipped tone, giving me the relevant facts in a near emotionless tones.
“The humans have decided to attack the city,” I say.
“Not the city. The ship is firing on us specifically. I think the humans know where we are. Specifically, I suspect they know where you are, Wrath.”
“How could they possibly know where I am?”
Actually, to be precise…” Zin’s eyes look venomously at Allie. “I think they know where she is.”
She pulls her face from the sheltering line of my body, and her eyes, already wide, somehow go wider. “I know what’s happening,” she gasps. “They must have a lock on me. They must have a tracker in me. I knew they had one on the suit. I ripped it off and threw it away, but maybe that wasn’t the only one. They could have chipped me and put the tracker in the suit as a decoy or back up. This could have been the plan all along!”
Zin pulls a blade from the inside of his vest. I step in front of him as he moves toward Allie with a matter of fact expression that I know bodes ill.
“What are you doing, Zin?”
“We kill her, we throw her body far away from this place, and we never allow another one of these humans to get the chance to betray us like this again.”
On any other day, with any other person, I’d take the knife and do what needs to be done myself. Today is different. I stay standing between Allie and Zin, and I give my old friend a look that has to tell him in no uncertain terms that if he so much as harms a hair on her head, he is going to lose everything.
“Touch her and die.”
Allie
The entire world is shaking. The noise is terrible, and the dust is starting to get so thick it is hard to breathe. With every impact, dirt and stones and rocks are starting to fall.
Lettie is trying to bore her way to us with the charges from the ship, and if that doesn’t work, she is going to fucking bury us alive.
What she is doing is absolutely unthinkable. It is a crime of a kind that will change the course of everything forever. For a while there, we were a sort of entertaining distraction to the saurians. But with this act, we’re not harmless little pirates anymore. We’re committing war crimes on an alien planet.
“Let’s get whatever is in you out of you,” Wrath says.
He tosses me back down on the bed, still naked, and now exposed to both his gaze and Zin’s fierce glower. I lie there, too afraid to move, and yet being prompted to with every single one of those damn detonations which are not letting up in frequency or intensity. He covers my body with his massive scaled and ridged form, and looks down at me, inspecting me.
“It might not look like anything much. It could be as small as a grain or seed,” I explain.
“We need a damn signal detector,” Wrath growls. “Get one, Zin.”
“From where? Half the tunnels to the surface have already caved in. We need to escape now, while escape is still…”
BOOM!
Lettie’s hits are getting closer and closer. She is going to kill me along with Wrath. It is now clear that she doesn’t care about me, or the fact that I could very well end up being a casualty of her war. It turns out someone who is prepared to drug you and drop you on an alien planet as fuck-bait might not be the best friend to have. Who would have thought.