Page 5 of The Captain’s Bounty (The Collectors #2)

She heard the hum of the drone and her hand moved even as she, lying limp now on the stone floor, arched her head back in time to see the drone drifting through the door. The discs took aim on Dex; she took aim on it.

Pure energy shot from her empty hand and shattered the sphere, sending a rain of broken pieces ricocheting off the walls to the floor.

“Shit!” Dex shouted, jumping back, both from it and from her.

Shit . The curse echoed in her own brain, a startled scream that never made it as far as her mouth.

Her body no longer her own, she sat up and looked at herself. The appalled part of her brain that couldn’t begin to comprehend what had just come out of her hand was buried now under the slightly disgusted alien presence that couldn’t believe her ugly five-fingered appendage was now its hand.

She glared from it to her arm, and then her legs and sighed, and like a switch suddenly being thrown, Lissa was once more in control of herself.

She scrambled off the floor, her legs shaking, the wetness in her pants an unpleasant sensation that did not rank anywhere near high enough in importance for her to deal with right now.

Staring at her trembling hand, she suddenly remembered Dex.

He was standing not far from her side, staring back with the same shocked look on his narrow face.

“What did you just do?” he breathed.

She shook her head. “I-I... I don’t know.”

Except she did know. She knew instinctively that she wasn’t the only being now living in her skin, just like she knew Dex was going to share what he’d just seen with the people who paid his salary.

He was a danger to her now, and the only reason the alien possessing her did not end him the same way it had ended the sphere was because the very thought of seeing anyone, much less Dex, electrocuted in front of her—because of her–made her want to die and that feeling was disagreeable to the entity inside her.

The creature let him live, but it did not do so happily.

“Lissa?” Dex called when her body snapped away from him and, without her permission, walked away.

She wanted to go back to him, but her legs were not her own. They took her through the maze as if they’d done so a thousand times, and her hand took aim on the second hunting sphere, exploding it out of midair almost before she knew the corner she was rounding would bring her into its path.

The symbols on the walls made perfect sense, repeating the warning given by the speaker overhead, over and over again as she marched from the maze into the main corridor.

This wasn’t a temple, or a tomb. It wasn’t a ship, accidentally forgotten and buried by long-passages of time in the sand on what had been an isolated, uninhabited world right up until Corporate discovered minerals barely worth mining some fifty years back.

This wasn’t even a prison, although the creature had come to think of it as such over the eons.

It was annoyed. It did not want to be freed, and especially not by her.

She could feel Dex following in her wake. It could feel the direction of his thoughts. It knew Dex would be in contact with Corporate just as fast as he could make it happen, and then everyone would know it was still here.

Temper erupting, the being snapped her around on her heel, and it took everything she had to resist its determination to reach her deadly hands toward him. To stop the consequences of actions Dex had yet to take.

No , she begged. Please, no .

Its annoyance grew, but underneath that, so too did its fear.

Dex won’t hurt you .

His Corporate will , it groused back. Be silent. Let me think .

Out in the main corridor, its annoyance grew hotter when she spotted Boaz and only one other survivor huddled at the first door, trying to get it to open again.

All were threats to it. All were Corporate men and the only thing it could see as it scowled at them through her eyes was the overwhelming danger their survival would mean for it.

Don’t you dare , she fought to scream.

It raised her arm anyway, opening her palm as it took its deadly aim.

How she broke through the paralyzing force that held her trapped down deep inside of herself, Lissa didn’t know. But somehow she did know, as the being did, exactly which buttons to press to let them escape.

You… idiot… it seethed, seizing back its control over her. Too late, only Dex remained and only just long enough for him to lock startled eyes with her. Then he was gone, leaving only the being and the hurricane of its rage battering at her insides.

He was going to call Corporate, tell them what they’d found buried here, tell them what was now inside her.

We are your Corporate’s next greatest weapon , it furiously informed her. You should have left me buried in the sand .

I didn’t know !

That annoyed it even more. We are hunted now. We must run, and you must eat. With me inside you, if you do not feed, you will expire.

Then get out of me !

It couldn’t. Outside of this place, it could not exist—or escape—without her. She had set it free; it was now stuck with her.

It sighed heavily, no longer angry but thoroughly annoyed.

“Infant races,” it said with Lissa’s mouth, just before it shut the door and sealed it. Shaking her head, it strode off into the labyrinth that used to be its prison and did its best to prepare.