Page 72 of Heartless

Over my dead body.

That’s what I was saying, woman. You get one asshole’s voice inside our head and you ignore me?

I heard you. But I can’t leave him here. He’ll just do this to someone else.

What can you do? You don’t have a weapon. He’s twice your size.

I know. Shut up and let me think.

I had to stop him, and I didn’t need to survive doing it. He was right about one thing, there was nothing left for me to go back to. Nexus 5 had used me to destroy everyone I cared about.

I felt my way through the dark, my hand along the wall as I bought myself some time. Keep moving. Keep thinking.

Every sci-fi movie I’d seen—and there weren’t that many, I was more of a historical kind of girl—had a powerful hero swoop in to save the day.

No one’s coming. What do they do when they know they’re going to die?

The answer came to me like an arrow through my skull.Destroy the ship.

What?

Nexus 5 stirred, his anger amusing.Do not think such things, mate. I tire of your game.

Maybe he could find me, maybe he could not. I wasn’t sure. All the time I’d spent around him, I’d pulled away. Resisted.

What if I did the opposite?

Woman, this is a bad idea.

Shut up.

I stopped my slow amble through the dark and made my mind quiet. Still. Silent. When his mind moved, I focused on the way he felt. Cold. Slow moving, like a mud slide.

Rather than turn away, I let it flow over me. Around me.

Suddenly, I was there. Inside his head. Looking through his eyes. The connection flowing between him and all of the Hive Soldiers present was like crackling background noise, dozens of radios all tuned to different stations. If I focused on listening to one, I could ignore the others. Move on.

Nexus 5 was agitated all right. Confused. Why did the human female never react in a predictable manner? How was he going to save his people if he failed? Again?

They were all failing. Dying.

I didn’tthink, more like I imagined that I knew how to destroy this place. Had set something irreversible in motion.

His thoughts snapped the idea and formed images. He envisioned me, standing in some sort of control room—

She’ll never find it. She doesn’t know where it is…

I pushed the thought out, away from myself, into the cold sludge and waited for him to find it.

He did. Once more images flashed through my mind. A tunnel. A door.

A hidden room…

Inside the room, large, glowing crystals. Magnetic pieces spinning, spinning, using the energy of the planet to power everything.

Energy…stored in the crystals.

Willow wouldn’t know what to do. She is human. Helpless. She would never…