Page 2 of Needed in the Night (The Fortusian Mates, #2)

Our steps sounded much different on cold, damp stone than on marble.

I liked the sound far better, though, and not just because it meant we were getting close to the doors.

Marble reminded me of my own former prisons.

Every footstep on its gleaming surface catapulted me back to nightmares I’d give anything to banish.

The main kitchen bustled with activity. Chefs, cooks, assistants, assorted household staff, and the uniformed crew of the cargo carrier rushed in all directions, carrying crates, platters, dishes, ingredients, and utensils.

Novee's chest was heaving now. She reached out as if trying to grab my arm before she dropped her shaking hand back to her side. At least we’d made it to the kitchen before she started hyperventilating.

If I couldn’t calm her down, the odds of a successful clandestine exit would dwindle even further.

A trilling voice cut through the clamor.

“Ach…Halena, Novee, my loves.” Vila, one of the cooks, hurried to meet us in the doorway.

The little four-armed Manorian clapped both pairs of hands, sending puffs of sweet-smelling flour into the air.

“I am late getting your basket ready. I am sorry, I am sorry. You will come with me to the pantry to choose what you like?”

I let out a breath. If the basket of high-calorie, carbohydrate-laden food Novee needed to sustain herself during a strenuous practice session had been waiting for us, something had gone wrong and we needed to abort the plan.

An invitation to the pantry meant everything was going according to schedule.

The lack of a warning from Brae supported that assumption.

If only my stomach and those little hairs on the back of my neck would get the message.

The carrier’s crew hurried in and out through the wide doors that led to the landing pad, bringing in fully laden antigrav sleds, unloading them, and returning to the ship with the empty sled for another load.

The clock in my head was now ticking so loudly that I almost expected it to be audible to everyone in the kitchen, if not the palace itself.

If timing had been crucial before, now it was everything.

I used the mild pandemonium as an excuse to put my hand reassuringly on Novee's lower back and guide her as we followed Vila across the kitchen and into one of four main pantries.

Provisions filled shelves and cold storage units floor to ceiling on three walls inside the pantry. A cargo carrier crew member wearing a full-face breathing apparatus and coverall was busy unloading when we entered.

“Is full,” Vila said to another crew member, a diminutive Ymarian who approached the door with a full sled. She pointed to the storeroom next door. “Unload there.”

“Yes, madame,” the Ymarian said, all three of their eyes downcast as they guided their sled away.

Vila was no taller and weighed less than the Ymarian, but she had an aura of authority that demanded respect. I worried about her safety once we were gone, but I had to trust the plan we’d put in place with her help. I had to have faith.

The carrier crew member with a covered face put a crate down near the door. I heard a very quiet beep .

The hidden holo projector activated. To hide us from prying eyes, it created the illusion in the doorway that Vila, Novee, and I went about the pantry collecting items for the basket.

“Now,” the crew member said, her voice tinny and rough through the respirator.

We had three minutes. Three and a half at most.

Hidden by the holo projector, and with Vila and the female crew member on watch, I opened a crate at the back of the pantry with a visibly damaged bottom corner.

I pulled out a coverall and handed it to Novee. “Put it on over your suit,” I said. “As fast as you can. Leave the front open.”

As she quickly stepped into the uniform, which had additional padding and body armor to protect her and disguise her slim figure, I was already halfway out of my gown.

Unlike Novee's suit, this ridiculous dress could not be hidden under any coverall.

It would go into the crate along with my shoes and other discarded items.

Under the gown, I wore a bodysuit similar to Novee's. I kicked off my high-heeled shoes, stepped into my bulky coverall, pulled it up and over my shoulders, and sealed the seam in the front.

At the bottom of the crate, under the rest of our disguises, I found a medical kit .

Nausea rose. I swallowed hard, steeled myself, and opened it. Gloves, plasma scalpel, transdermal analgesic and tranquilizer patches, extraction instruments, suture kit. And a collection tube.

“Gods above,” Novee whispered at the sight of the kit’s contents. She sat—nearly fell—onto a nearby crate, her face ashen.

If we had more time, I would have held her close and stroked her hair and said reassuring things until she felt brave or at least less afraid.

But we had no time to spare. I could be brave for her if I had to be.

Someone had done the same for me only three years ago.

I’d been just as desperate to escape as Novee, and just as frightened.

“You won’t feel any pain,” I said. “Keep your eyes on my face or close them. Just don’t look at what I’m doing. I only need thirty seconds. But it is now or never, Novee. Freedom is right outside on the landing pad.”

“A lot of people have risked their lives for you,” the crew member in the respirator said, her voice harsh. Her name badge read ERGIN . “If you cannot be brave for your own sake, be brave for ours.”

I glared over my shoulder. Novee inhaled sharply and straightened her spine. “You are unkind,” she told the woman. Then she startled me by meeting my gaze and adding, “Do it, then, and let us be gone.”

I didn’t appreciate Ergin’s tone, but it had snapped Novee out of her paralysis. Sometimes kindness only got you so far.

With the scalpel, I cut a hole in the fabric of Novee's practice suit so I could access her bare skin just below her ribcage. The tracking device had been implanted where it wouldn’t affect her muscles or ability to bend in the sinuous, almost boneless way necessary for her style of dance.

I slipped an analgesic patch under her suit near the hole I’d made and pressed it to her skin. The drug was strong and its effects would be swift—an absolute necessity for an operation of this kind.

“Put this against your stomach,” I said, handing her a towel. “Press it tight and hold.”

Trembling, she did as I asked.

For her sake and mine, I didn’t hesitate. No time to think or second-guess, or remember when it was me who had to sit still while a virtual stranger cut into my flesh.

I checked to make sure Novee was staring at something above my head and not at her abdomen, and then I cut.

With the scalpel’s plasma edge, I incised a three-centimeter opening into Novee's smooth cerulean flesh. She didn’t so much as gasp. No pain, as I’d promised, and such a fine edge—only nanometers thick—did not even tug at her skin, but blood gushed from the wound. My right side ached in memory.

I dropped the bloody scalpel into the kit and picked up the extraction instrument.

“How many times have you done this?” Novee whispered, her gaze on the ceiling as her green blood soaked the towel.

Not enough times , was what I wanted to say. Not enough to save as many as I wanted to save. Only enough to be a drop in a vast and endless ocean.

“Many,” I said instead.

I slipped the long tip of the extraction tool into the wound. Its sensors found the tracker immediately. The fine teeth at its tip gripped the device, which was no larger than my thumbnail.

Holding my breath, I attached the collection tube to the back of the extractor and activated it.

Novee’s blood filled the tube. Any contact with air would activate the tracking device, alerting the Erotovo that it had been removed—and more critically, cause it to either release deadly poison or ignite an explosive.

Trackers served as jailers and merciless executioners.

Clink . The tracker landed in the tube and was sealed inside by the extractor. I exhaled .

Ergin took the extractor from me and hid it on a shelf. I sealed the wound with a suture patch, took the towel from Novee, wiped up the blood smears on her skin, and glanced at my wristcomm. Time was almost up.

I tossed the towel into the crate. “Seal your coverall,” I told Novee, offering my hands to help her stand. “And put on the respirator.”

She still trembled from fear, adrenaline, and maybe a little blood loss and shock, but she stood more quickly and with more fire in her eyes than I’d expected. Maybe making it through arguably the worst and most dangerous part of this process had given her some confidence.

In any case, the moment that tracker landed in the tube, we’d officially passed the point of no return.

Quickly and silently, Novee and I finished putting on our cargo crew uniforms, complete with gloves, boots, respirators, and extra padding that changed our body shapes and disguised plates of body armor that covered our chests and backs.

The tracker we left on the shelf so anyone watching its location would see Novee was still in the pantry. Everything else went into the crate, which Ergin sealed and left on her sled. The glowing red symbol on the crate indicated it had been rejected as damaged goods.

While I’d focused on removing Novee's tracker, two empty antigrav sleds had been left outside the doors of the pantry, ready for us to pilot to the carrier.

In my mind, I reached out to my shadowbat. Brae, we’re ready to go .

Understood . Brae’s tension crackled through our telepathic link. He knew as well as I did how deadly dangerous the next few minutes would be. I will meet you at the kitchen door.

A surprised sound and a burbly snore made me spin around just in time to see Ergin lower Vila’s limp body to the floor. She’d knocked her out with a transdermal injection .

Novee took an angry step forward. “I wanted to say thank you and goodbye.”

“She knows you’re grateful,” Ergin said shortly.

Novee bared her teeth and hissed. It was the first time since I’d met her that I’d seen the soft-spoken woman so angry.

I’d met Web operatives like Ergin before.

It wasn’t uncommon for an agent to adopt a cold and even unkind manner as a way of keeping emotional distance from those we rescued.

I didn’t like it, and that wasn’t my way.

I couldn’t make myself be harsh toward people who’d already suffered so much, even if it meant my heart might ache less.

Still, I couldn’t pass judgment on those who chose that path.

We all had to find ways to cope with our own nightmares and the pain of those we tried to help.

Some Web agents were in it for the money—especially the highly trained operatives who specialized in the most dangerous missions. But most of us were survivors turned agents, inspired to join the organization that had rescued us and given us our freedom.

As Novee struggled to rein in her anger, the holo projector continued to show a scene of Vila rummaging through the shelves and putting items in the basket as the real woman who’d helped us snored, curled up against a cold storage unit.

Thanks to the drug, once she woke she’d have no memory of what she’d done for us and be looked at not as a conspirator but as a victim of our scheme—or at least that was the plan.

“Get ready to step out of the pantry and grab your sled,” Ergin told us. “Do not speak. Keep your eyes down and walk quickly. You will go ahead of me to the ramp. As soon as we have boarded, the carrier will depart.”

“Understood,” I said.

Novee nodded, her long, triple-jointed fingers clenching and unclenching in what was probably a combination of anger and fear. I couldn’t see her expression underneath the respirator mask.

I took a deep breath and let it out, banishing my unease and doing my best to replace it with the role I was about to play: busy, hard-working crew member ready to be done with this unloading job and get on to the next one.

“Confidence,” I reminded Novee, touching her gloved hand with mine. “We are leaving this planet right now, for good.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you both.”

“You are welcome,” I replied. Ergin grunted.

As the doorway hologram continued to show Vila, Novee, and I browsing the shelves of food, Ergin grabbed the manual control handle of her sled and jerked her chin at the doorway. “Go. I am right behind you.”