Page 126

Revik clicked impatiently at the other male. “Nearly finished, brother?”

Raddi gave him a respectful nod and keyed through a last sequence. Once it took and the light flashed red, he turned immediately to the wheel on the door, gripping it in both hands. Revik heard the low tone from the panel as the security code was accepted.

“Do you require back up or assistance, sir?” Raddi asked politely, even as he gave a hard twist to the wheel. He glanced pointedly at the gun Revik held.

“No,” Revik muttered, feeling his jaw harden more.

The seer smiled again, subtly that time.

“Very good, sir.”

Raddi twisted the organic-component wheel a few more times without speaking.

Then an audible click echoed in the narrow hall, all the way up to the high ceiling of the converted cargo bay. Revik glanced up at the outer hull of the cell door, just in time to see the main light switch from blue to red, then to pulse, indicating the seal had been broken.

Revik knew once the red light stopped flashing, the room could be accessed via the Barrier proper. Which meant it could be accessed by the Dreng, or Menlim.

Or Terian.

He didn’t intend to leave the door open that long.

As soon as Raddi swung the heavy, three-foot-thick panel open far enough for Revik to squeeze his body through, he was on the other side.

He found himself in another eight-by-ten-meter cell.

Glancing behind him, he gestured a brief command for Raddi to close the door.

He felt and heard as it clanged shut behind him, but didn’t turn to verify.

Instead, he began to scan the greenish-lit space.

He gave the furnishings a cursory look, mainly to know his environment in case something went wrong. That, too, was a habit ingrained from childhood, and one that saved his ass more than once. Anyway, he couldn’t shut it off.

Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t have.

Still, the look was brief, a mere tabulation of the room’s individual physical components.

They hadn’t given her much.

No monitor, console, books, headsets, hand-holds, or anything like the size of the bed where he and Allie slept. His eyes glanced over a single, gray-sheeted, prison-type bed, shoved in one corner of the room next to a metal table and chair. The latter two furnishings were bolted to the floor, likely connected to the internal electronics, and therefore at least partly organic.

The bed and bedding were adequate.

Not meant to be punishing, but definitely prisoner bedding, not guest bedding.

Nothing diverting had been left in the room.

Revik himself had personally ordered them to rip the one monitor out of the wall before she regained consciousness the first time. Thinking about what Terian had just done, how he’d managed to access his and Allie’s room, Revik could only frown.

Maybe he needed to rip the monitor out of their room, too.

Apart from the lack of furnishings and distractions, the room positively hummed with life. Revik could feel the difference in the walls from the one and only time he’d been in here before. They’d definitely upped some of the security measures from the original configuration. If they’d done that since the breach this morning, the security team hadn’t wasted any time.

From what he got off Allie, the breach happened roughly fifty minutes before he got back to their room. Add in his time with Balidor, the time it took to get down here and breach security, plus the additional twenty or so minutes where he’d been hell-bent on fucking her––

He brushed that out of his mind, but not before it made his jaw harden.

Two hours. Three at most.