Page 380 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Akri

I hated leaving Jenny alone in that cell, especially after what we’d just shared.

My mind was still playing catch-up, trying to process all the feelings surging through me.

A mating instinct explained so much of what I felt for her, but it was more than that; Jenny was amazing.

She was brave and cheerful, and she never seemed all that bothered by the many curveballs life was throwing at her.

I admired that, and I wished I could do the same—that I could just shrug and take all the things I felt, did, or went through in stride, with the same grace she did. But I couldn’t let it go; I needed my answers. Without them, I knew I would never trust myself completely.

When my internal clock warned me that Scientist Lekri would soon have me fetched from the cells, I had Jenny get dressed. Then I made sure she had my datapad, water, and food tucked under the cot’s mattress while we placed our bags back outside the cells.

To avoid arousing any kind of suspicion, we had to make it look like we’d been locked up all day in separate cells.

But I couldn’t let Jenny be locked in there the whole day without the things she needed; locking her up was wrong.

So, balanced on my toes, I hooked myself up to the base’s network via the camera on the ceiling.

It was a little difficult to get the access I needed through so simple a connection, but I managed to give Jenny full permissions again.

“Stay here. I will be back,” I warned her when I was done.

“In case of emergency, you have the ability to leave this place. I made sure of it. But please, stay here and wait for me. I will be back as soon as I have the answers I need.” She nodded with an unhappy expression on her face, her hands gently stroking my right Liades, the one the scientist had abused with his crude biopsies.

I pressed my mouth to hers, my Liades coiling around the back of her head to hold her to me.

“Stay safe for me, Jenny.” A little rumble stirred in my chest at the thought of her in danger.

It didn’t startle me anymore to hear that kind of sound coming from me. It was starting to feel right, fitting.

“I will, but Akri, promise me you’ll take care of yourself.

Answers might be important, but make sure the cost for them isn’t too great.

” She touched my injured Liades again, as if to remind me that maybe that kind of damage wasn’t worth it.

I had to disagree. To discover what I needed, any price was worth paying—any price but her.

My chest felt tight when we parted, and each returned to our separate cells.

I’d managed to get our timing right, so we didn’t have to wait long before two guards showed up to take me to the lab.

This time, only one of them was an Ovt; the other was a Rummicaron male with one of the coldest expressions I’d ever seen.

That one was not going to have any sympathy for either of us; he was just here to do his job, even if it involved torture.

The sight of his presence opened a pit of worry in my stomach. When the others had previously talked about gut feelings, it always baffled me—guts didn’t have thoughts or feelings. I got it now. His presence was sparking all kinds of alarms. Was Jenny right? Was I taking too big a risk?

They cuffed my hands behind my back before moving me from the cell and urging me down the hallway at a brisk pace.

I cast a final look over my shoulder at Jenny, at my mate.

She stood at the glass, her hands pressed against it, an expression on her normally cheerful face that I could only interpret as pained, anguished.

My chest ached in response; I felt like I was doing something wrong.

I didn’t want her to hurt because of the choice I was making.

“Keep walking,” the Rummicaron grunted, and he wrenched the arm he was holding, making me lurch forward. Right, I had to focus on what I could control right now, and I could control a lot of things; they just didn’t know that I could. I had the upper hand.

The lab was cooler than the floors above it, and I shivered without my shirt, which I hadn’t bothered to put back on, considering how torn it was.

My coat had been tossed in a corner of the lab yesterday, and it was still there when they urged me through the door.

We were on the same floor as the supercomputer, but this was a medical room—with a metal table kitted out with straps and a tray of medical instruments prepped and waiting beside it.

Yesterday, I’d resigned myself to losing a bit of skin, a bit of blood.

I figured it would take me a couple of hours to get what I needed from Lekri, but he was more tight-lipped than I wanted, and he hadn’t kept his personal notes stored on the supercomputer.

He hadn’t let me have access to any other machine until the very end.

I hadn’t had enough time yesterday during that short window of opportunity to do much more than mess with the cameras and guard schedules.

The Ovt male stood on the other side of the table, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

A manic gleam in his reptilian eyes only heightened my sense of unease.

Letting them strap me down was hard; I hated the restraints—they made my physical body vulnerable.

I was fighting this battle with my mind, so I had to let them believe they had control over me in this way.

The scientist hooked me up through my nav port to a medical computer, muttering about getting accurate readouts from my mind.

I tried to contain my excitement. Yes, perfect.

He had just given me access to the base’s entire network.

Because we were in the lab and he had his encrypted notes on my species open, it took me only a moment to get hold of everything I wanted.

“Now, let’s map your brain, shall we?” Lekri announced, lowering a medical device above my head that blocked my view of the room.

I felt a spike of fear. I didn’t like that I couldn’t see what he was up to, and I didn’t understand what type of experiment he was about to perform.

Then pain shot through my foot as he jabbed me with a needle, and I knew—barbaric idiot—this was unnecessary to map anything, even if it would light up the part of my brain registering pain in my damn left toe.

I had only one option: to ride this out so I could get back to Jenny in a few hours.

I’d have to seriously distract myself. So I delved into the system, taking over everything that I could, making myself at home in it.

When I controlled even their communications network, I searched out the Vagabond and made contact for the first time since I started this quest. And on the side, to keep my mind at ease, I watched the feed of Jenny in her cell to reassure myself that she was safe.

*

Jenny

Nobody visited—not even to bring food or water—so it was a good thing that Akri had made sure I had both those things before they took him.

Sitting with my knees pulled up on the cot, I didn’t dare touch any of it at first, unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching me.

Akri was being stubborn, and I was terrified that he was about to get seriously hurt for something that wouldn’t give him the answers he wanted.

He thought he wasn’t able to control the body he was in, the urges he felt.

I knew that was just reality; we all struggled with that from time to time.

He was going to end up extremely disappointed—and possibly injured—for it; this wasn’t worth it.

I knew my mom had often adopted the philosophy that a person had to reach certain conclusions on their own, even when you’d rather protect them from the harm it would bring.

I guess this was me learning that was sage advice.

Akri had to find out on his own that there was no magical answer.

He had to learn the hard way, like we all did growing up.

I paced for a while, but eventually worry did give way to boredom.

I caved and fished the datapad out from under the mattress.

Thumbing it on, I browsed through whatever was on it while I contemplated my options.

I’d promised Akri I’d wait here for him, but what if he was in trouble and couldn’t let me know?

Then my mind strayed to what we’d shared earlier, and I flushed a little with desire, followed rapidly by another spike of fear.

My instincts were screaming at me that something was about to go horribly wrong.

Or was that just my fear of losing people I cared about?

I’d lost my dad when I was in my preteens, then my mom when I had barely started adulthood.

I hadn’t let anyone in since then, too afraid to lose them like I had my family.

Now Akri… Akri had made himself at home in my heart, and here I was, sitting helplessly in a cell while he was being tortured as the price for information he didn’t realize he didn’t need.

The datapad held nothing that could capture my interest, just schematics of places he’d been.

There was data on the amulet, and some notes about a store in Akrod that had crafted the thing.

There wasn’t a single game; Akri probably didn’t go for those, and I had to make sure to introduce him.

I was sure his logical mind would enjoy some good puzzles, at the very least.

When a buzzing jolted the thing in my hands, I nearly dropped it.

A pop-up appeared over the screens, prompting me to accept something.

I rushed to press ‘Approve,’ and a little line appeared in the center of the screen; it wriggled and enlarged when sound came out of the datapad.

“Jenny,” a computerized voice said, “I need you to carefully follow my instructions. I need your help.”