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Determination restored, Isaac walked over to the left cell block and the guard pulled open the door. Babcock occupied the center cell. The other two were empty. He was lying on his back, arm bent under his head, but he sat up as soon as Isaac entered.

“About damn time,” Babcock muttered. “You would do better to move me to appropriate accommodations and treat me with the respect I deserve. Starving me isn’t going to get you what you want.”

“And what is it you think I want?” Isaac returned. Babcock’s arrogance made what Isaac had to do that much easier.

Babcock narrowed his eyes and pushed to his feet. “I know more about the hybrids on this planet than anyone else. I should. I created you. I know all the secrets locked away in your genetics. Longevity, procreation, boundaries , I can control them all.”

Boundaries? Isaac tensed. Why had the vile fucker added that to his list?

A cold, humorless laugh escaped Babcock. “You don’t know, do you? You’re a Shadow, for God’s sake. How could you not realize?”

“What are you talking about?” Isaac snapped. Head games were a favorite of Babcock’s. It would be foolish to believe anything he said at this point. Babcock was desperate to save his life.

“How did your handlers prevent you from running away during off-world missions?”

Refusing to take the bait, Isaac just glared at his nemesis.

“What happened if a Shadow deviated from their mission parameters?” Babcock arched his brows, eyes gleaming with sadistic amusement.

The answer was brutally effective. The explosive implant would rupture his heart, killing him instantly.

The physical boundary was programmable, but the implant could also be triggered manually.

If his handler disapproved of anything he witnessed during the mission, he was within his rights to trigger the implant.

“Our nanobots were removed long before we left Earth,” Isaac stated, unsure why he was engaging at all.

“Right before departure, every hybrid was given a physical examination. Correct?”

The smug twist to Babcock’s lips sent a chill racing down Isaac’s spine. “What are you getting at?”

“Get me something to eat and I’ll tell you,” Babcock snapped, all playfulness gone in an instant.

Tired of sparring verbally, Isaac shoved into Babcock’s mind, easily locating the information.

Babcock screamed, grasping his head between his hands. “Stop it! You’ll damage me.”

“Undoubtedly,” Isaac countered. He silenced his emotions and focused on his task. Not pausing to analyze what he was learning, Isaac stripped away information layer by layer. Facts and figures, images and emotions. Isaac assimilated it all without allowing himself to be affected by it.

“You’re killing me!” Babcock tried again, charging blindly toward the front wall of the cell. He hit the energy barrier and bounced off, landing hard on his ass. He screamed again and collapsed onto his side, thrashing wildly.

Isaac showed as much compassion to Babcock as the ruthless scientist had shown his victims. Isaac meticulously stripped information from the human’s mind until there was nothing left. Panting harshly, Isaac sent a disruptive pulse into Babcock’s chest and stopped his heart.

His only regret was that Babcock’s suffering hadn’t lasted long enough. “Burn in hell, you worthless piece of shit,” he snarled as he pivoted on the ball of his foot and left the room.

Tara watched Isaac move his food around his plate, but his fork never made it to his mouth.

He’d returned to their cabin about an hour ago and he’d barely spoken a word since.

Jon had assured them that he was on his way back from the raptor village, but he wouldn’t make it in time for the evening meal.

Reluctantly, the other three decided to eat without him.

Or Kyle and Tara ate while Isaac stared off into space.

He didn’t participate in or even react to the conversation, which wasn’t like him at all.

“Are you alright?” Tara asked as she began to clear the table.

“Not even close.” He pushed his chair back from the table and stood.

Tara wasn’t sure if she should go to him or not.

His emotions were seething in the distance, but it was obvious that he was trying to shield his mind.

It had been two weeks since Tara allowed her mates to form an empathic link.

The connection was still temporary, but emotions and thoughts flowed smoothly between them unless one of the participants was shielding themselves like Isaac was doing right now.

“What happened after Kyle and I left?” she persisted, not willing to let him hide.

“Zion finally gave the order to harvest Babcock’s mind.” Without elaborating, Isaac went over to the couch and sat down.

Stripping information from an uncooperative prisoner was a task Isaac hated, but he’d done it before. Besides, there had never been a person who deserved to have a procedure forced on him more than Babcock. So why was Isaac so upset?

Kyle followed Isaac into the living room and sat facing him. “Did you learn anything useful?”

Coming out of the contemplative stupor enough to interact, Isaac said, “I didn’t spend a lot of time analyzing each thought, but one thing became unavoidable. Every person on this planet has been injected with boundary nanobots.”

Kyle’s jaw dropped and anger shot across the empathic link. “That sonofabitch!”

“My thoughts exactly,” Isaac muttered, his expression thunderous. “I’d kill him again if that were possible.”

“What are you talking about?” Too anxious to sit, Tara stood where she could see both of her mates. Her pulse accelerated. She didn’t yet understand what it all meant, but their heightened emotions were enough to upset her. “What’s a boundary nanobot?”

“A microscopic computer that tracks our location and ensures that we stay within a designated area, in this case Rydaria,” Kyle explained.

“If we leave the planet for any reason, an explosive implant will rupture something vital, usually our hearts,” Isaac added. “Nuevo Biotech developed the technology so they could control the Shadow Teams during their off-world missions.”

“Can the implants be removed?” Tara asked hopefully.

Voluntarily choosing to build a life on a primitive planet and being imprisoned there were two very different things.

And why hadn’t the hybrids been warned about the nanobots?

Were the people back on Earth hoping the hybrids would die trying to leave the planet?

She understood the animosity toward the scientists, but the hybrids were victims of Nuevo Biotech.

It wasn’t right to treat them like criminals.

“I don’t think any of the scanners on Rydaria are sensitive enough to locate the nanobots,” Isaac told her. “They move around inside the body. And we can’t travel to a more technologically advanced planet without setting off the implants.”

Trepidation tingled down Tara’s spine as a disturbing thought occurred to her. “Was this done to the humans too? Do I have a nanobot?” She’d been thinking in terms of another injustice perpetrated against the hybrids, but Isaac had said every person on the planet, not every hybrid.

Isaac nodded. “It was part of the departure physical that everyone underwent.”

“Did you tell Zion?” Kyle asked before Tara had time to react. His murderous expression perfectly matched the destructive emotions churning inside him.

With another nod, Isaac said, “He’s furious, but not surprised. The human leaders made it clear from the start that we would never be allowed to leave this planet.”

Tara and the other humans had been told the same thing.

Still, a secret part of her always hoped that somehow, some day, she would find a way to escape.

She didn’t deserve to be trapped here any more than her mates did.

She hadn’t been involved in the experiments.

All her tasks had been clerical. Her only fault was working for the wrong company.

Isaac stood up and walked across the room. He didn’t appear to have a purpose. He was simply too upset to sit still. “Even dead, that fucker is torturing us.”

“It’s just another problem to solve,” Kyle concluded with a sigh. “Fixating on it isn’t going to make it go away.”

The main door to the cabin opened and Jon walked in. He nodded to his teammates, gave Tara a lingering kiss, and then hung up his coat by the door. “It’s bitterly cold out there. I couldn’t alter my body’s temperature enough to fight off the chill.”

“We wouldn’t have asked you to return unless it was important,” Isaac stressed.

“I know.” Jon went to the molecular conversion unit and printed a mug of some steaming beverage, likely kidolen . Everyone was obsessed with the spicy/tart cider. “Let me warm up for a minute and then we’ll see if we can network with Juan.”

A tense pause followed as Isaac and Kyle attempted to give Jon a moment to catch his breath. “You guys look like you just came from a funeral. What the hell happened?”

“Babcock is dead, but the scan revealed that every person on Rydaria was injected with boundary nanobots before leaving Earth,” Kyle blurted without his usual tact. “They wanted to make damn sure we never leave this planet.”

“It’s about fucking time Babcock paid for what he did to us, and are you really surprised by the nanobots? Nuevo used them to control us for years. It would be more surprising if they hadn’t chipped us.”

Kyle nodded and silence descended again.

Jon allowed the gloom for only a moment before he asked, “Let’s think about this logically.

Has anything really changed? We have no way of leaving the planet.

The fuckers back on Earth made sure of that.

The nanobots can be removed. We don’t have equipment sophisticated enough to remove them right now, but any spaceship capable of leaving the planet will have sensors powerful enough to detect nanobots.

Our objective is the same. Reconstruct, borrow, or steal a spaceship. ”