Chapter 175: The Price of Silence
Jun Li was silent as he processed my words. "Turning off all audio and visual devices within the ship," he said suddenly. "I will still be connected via your earpiece, but I will not have eyes."
"Understood," I replied with a nod of my head. It was better to be partially blind than to hand out secrets. "Is there any way you can corrupt what he has already downloaded?"
"I’ll see. But he is going to have the same safeguards in place as this ship. And I don’t think you want to pay Stargazer a visit."
"And deal with that airhead? Can’t say that I do," I chuckled as I stepped over the dead bodies and continued down the hall. One thing that I was finding out was that the layout of each ship was dependent on the species that created it.
For example, in the brief time that I spent on Da’kea’s ship, I noticed that there were no markings of any kind to let you know where you were or what direction you were going in. Even the overly large kill room didn’t have anything outside of it to indicate what was awaiting you in the room. Hell, even the doorways were excessively large, meant to accommodate a species that grew between seven and eight feet tall.
Here, the doorways were a bit shorter, and there were arrows indicating where to go and how to get there. In fact, there was everything but a mall map in the middle of each corridor with a ’you are here’ sticker on it.
I was about to continue walking forward when I heard a low growl coming from behind me. Turning around, I saw that Midnight had stopped in front of a door with a bright red light on it.
Walking toward the wolfman, I studied him intently. "What’s wrong?" I asked, not too sure why he would be staring at a locked door. Then again, who was to say that the door was still locked? If Stargazer opened a few of them, there was nothing holding him back from opening them all.
"Human," my mate growled. "It smells like a human was in there."
"Then we need to go inside," said Da’kea, materializing right beside me. I just a little, not at all expecting that, and turned to look at him.
"I don’t know," I answered frankly. I was pretty sure that I knew what I was going to see when I got in here, and I wasn’t in a hurry to see it again. I might be a psychopath, but I wasn’t a masochist.
"We need to have documentation if we are going to have the Elders on our side," continued Da’kea, looking down at me for a moment. "But I can go in on my own if needed."
"You won’t know what you are looking at," said Ye’tab, removing his camouflage. I pat myself on the back that I didn’t react to him appearing from thin air. "Au’dtair and I didn’t the first time we walked into one of their rooms."
Da’kea nodded his head, not saying anything. The four males watched me, letting me make my own conclusions.
"Fine," I answered with a sigh. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to ’prove’ that the Alliance were dicks, but it would make life a bit easier if they had one less ally to depend on. "But the light is on, meaning that there may or may not be lizards inside."
"Understood," grunted the men, and three of them shimmered for a moment before turning invisible.
"I guess you and I are the targets," joked Midnight as he turned to look at me. If I weren’t wearing my armor, he would have seen the shit-eating grin on my face right before I activated my camouflage mode, too.
"Fucking assholes," grumbled Midnight as he walked up to the door. "I don’t care that my mate is safe, protected, and invisible. That is fantastic as far as I am concerned. The fact that the three of you are so cowardly that you do nothing if you don’t have the element of surprise is what gets to me."
GA, unable to resist the taunt, reappeared beside the wolf. "We are hunters. We prefer to be invisible right up to the point where we attack. Like all good predators do."
Midnight grunted, not at all impressed, before shrugging his shoulders. "Our young hunt at night to be able to blend in and not be seen. The best hunters on our planet make it a point to outrun any prey that might try to get away. It is a sign of strength that they will always be able to provide for their mate, at any time of the day or night."
"It’s a sign of stupidity," muttered GA, cracking his neck from side to side. "But I can appreciate the level of difficulty in the hunt."
"Now that you two are best friends, can we open the door now?" I asked, coming into sight.
"Jun Li can’t work his magic?" asked Midnight, stunned. "Isn’t he in the system?"
"Unfortunately, he isn’t the only one," I answered with a tight smile. Stargazer was proving to be more of an annoyance than his human was. "I had him deactivate all audio and visual."
"Understood," sighed Midnight as he took a step closer to the door. "Just watch out for blaster fire." He dug his claws into the thin seam where the two sides came together and, with a soft grunt, started to pull them apart.
In my head, all I could see was something shooting at him while he was completely exposed and unable to defend himself. Letting out a little growl of my own at that idea, I quickly slipped under his arm as the gap became wider and stood in front of him.
"And just want are you doing, little mate?" he murmured low into my ear. I could feel the strength and power in him as his arms continued to force the hatch open.
"Making sure that you don’t get shot," I replied with a murmur of my own. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, a bolt of light shot out of the half-foot opening and tried to hit my chest. Unfortunately for the sucker that shot first and asked questions later, the beam bounced off of me and straight back into the lizard that fired the shot.
In less than a second, it was over, surprising both me and Midnight. He paused in opening the door to look through the small opening. "One dead," he grunted, looking down at me. "Don’t know if there are more."
"I need to get you armor," I mused, staring down at the dead lizard. It was clearly one of the guards and one of the smaller ones at that. However, that meant that there was an empty room with not much use, or the scientists were hiding somewhere in the recess of the room, waiting for their turn.
"Remind me to try and find you some."
"Fine me some Saalistaja armor?" smirked Midnight as he pushed the door open further. They slid back into the wall on each side of the frame, giving us complete access to the room and the scientist holding a laser to the woman on his table.
"Take another step further, and I will kill her," hissed the Sisalik, his hand shaking uncontrollably.
"Somehow, I doubt it," I snickered, not at all worried. Either way, he was going to die.
Did I care about the human woman lying on the cold slab of a table? Not really.
Now, before you call me cold-hearted and cruel, maybe I should tell you why I don’t give a fuck about a fellow human.
"Mei Xing?" asked Da’kea, coming up beside me. He had deactivated his camouflage mode and watched the lizard turn pale, his hand trembling even more. "We need to be able to save her if we can."
Awe, my sweet-hearted Elder. He had no idea what he was looking at, and still, he tried to play the hero. I would have to dissuade him of that later.
"Do you see those?" I asked, completely ignoring the scientist and pointing to the jars lining the wall behind him.
"Those are her womb," I said, pointing to the first jar. "Her ovaries," I continued, my finger moving to the second one. "Her kidney, her liver, her lung, both breasts and that small thing right there looks like her hyoid. Although why they wanted to take that out, I have no idea."
"She wouldn’t stop screaming," stuttered the scientist.
"Ah," I answered with a nod, completely calm. "That small bone does a lot of work, including making sure that we don’t choke. But it does help anchor the tongue, tongue movement, swallowing, speech, and sound. I guess it was a better option than just ripping out her throat."
I saw movement on the table, partially hidden by the white lab coat that seemed to be yet another universal thing. I looked up at the wall of horror, only to realize that her heart and the other lung weren’t up there... yet.
The woman was still alive.
