But as she made for the exit, a collar clamped down on her neck. She screamed, electric currents piercing every nerve fiber as she fell to the floor.
“Chakking leech.”
Dizzy and disoriented, she made out the black uniform of the soldier who had crept up from behind and collared her. Behind his translucent visor spread a sickening smile.
“You’ll pay for what you’ve done,” he said, holding up the shock collar remote.
Rex screamed as she fell, electricity searing her body.
“It’s kill or be killed.”
But as she reached out and grabbed the soldier’s boot, he turned up the dial. White lightning blinded her, and all went dark.
Rex came to in a daze, somehow on her feet, stumbling, handcuffed and collared, as she was being pushed out the main door and down the front steps of the Grand Hotel. Sirens wailed and police and military lights flashed from every direction. People shouted and hollered behind a line of crowd-control Dominion soldiers. She couldn’t understand all the competing languages, or the words drowned by Dominion announcements to “BACK DOWN.”
The darkness inside her shrieked as soldiers led her to a hovering copter, where more soldiers with mechanized armor and bigger guns waited. Only seconds away from a cage—
TRAPPED FOREVER—
The remembered smell of disinfectants and the sting of needles washed over her senses—
Can’t go back—
(Kill them all!)
For the first time in years, tears pricked her eyes. No. No more fighting. No more death.
“Play your hand or die,” she imagined Chezzie mocking her.
She missed one of the steps, but the two soldiers holding her by the arms jerked her up.
Instead of rage and terror, something long ignored surfaced: Fatigue. And on its heels, longing. For the memories she’d recently revived of Algar, of family and home. And of something new; something she’d felt inside the kitcoon’s memories. Something impossible, found in the most desperate and painful times.
Trust.
(Connection.)
“Stop the injustice!” someone shouted above the din.
Rex turned her head toward the speaker. The vendor, pointing his machete at the soldiers arresting Rex, screamed: “Stop the Dominion! This is our planet!”
The crowd shifted, fists rising and shouts growing louder. She didn’t see who threw the first bottle, but the second, thrown by the vendor, struck one of the soldiers gripping her. He wobbled for a second, strengthening his hold on her.
Stop, please—
Tensions intensified as the soldiers holding the line pointed their guns at the crowd. Instead of retreating, a tidal wave of civilians charged forward, toppling soldiers amidst the gunfire. Hot blood splattered her face, the stink of sizzling flesh filled her nose. The soldiers holding her let go to assist their comrades, but the ones waiting in the copter jumped out and ran toward her.
There was nowhere to run, not as the crowd flooded in, battering her from all sides. Shots fired, singing past her ears, blasting into nearby civilians.
Panic sent her heart into overdrive, but the warning buzz of the shock collar depressed her rising instinct to telepathically lash out. In its place spilled the tears she could no longer hold back.
Please… Rex covered her head, shaking, in the middle of the riot.…no more.
An unmuffled hovercycle throttled over the crowd, slowing down long enough for Rex to look up. The USC specialist from sim-stim coffin, holding onto the handlebar with his real hand, reached down with his biomech arm, grabbed her by the jacket, and hoisted her up. The black hovercycle tipped as she scrambled onto the pillion. He didn’t give her enough time to grab onto him, hitting the accelerator.
Rex screamed.
But he held on to her, his biomech arm contorting farther than any human arm could, keeping her pinned to his back as he angled the bike toward the busy skyway of hovercraft a kilometer above the street.
“Watch out!” she yelled as he wound his way around cars. He released her as she hugged his waist and buried her head into his back to protect herself from the freezing winds.
He’s going to kill us.
When he jerked the bike, she peeked from behind his cover long enough to see him jump them into the next level and opposing stream of traffic.
“Or you saving or killing us?”
He grunted.
“Assino,” she said through gritted teeth.
Rex shivered as he flew them higher, into the blue, rain-soaked clouds and above the legal skyways. How he didn’t react to the cold, especially in only a tank top and fatigues, impressed her. Then again, she knew what he’d been through.
Out of traffic, she relaxed her tense embrace, letting him continue to shield her from the weather and cold. She didn’t need her extrasensory perceptions to know that he came back for a reason. One that she could barely yet believe.
A light shone through the clouds, growing brighter as they approached.
An illegal port? she wondered, wiping away the rain from her eyes to get a better look. A makeshift dock and a signal station welded together with parts of old starships and freighters hovered in the clouds on anti-grav boosters. The beacon, alternating white and blue in merc code, rotated at the top of the tower.
As he circled around the port, a black, retrofitted corvette with faded yellow stripes and quad wings came into view. It was an ancient starship, probably from the last galactic war, with lots of patch jobs and exoskeleton rigging to keep it from falling apart.
Unregistered, she guessed. And by the looks of the black boxes affixed to the engines, loaded with anti-scanner tech. A ticket out.
A garage near the aft engine opened, allowing him to land his hovercycle in a carved-out space between stacks of computer innards, metal barrels, and unfamiliar tech. Illegal tech.
Four large, white articulated robotic arms emerged from the tops of the stacks, each arching toward where he landed his hovercycle. It reminded her of something old. Familiar.
Sliding off the hovercycle, she caught her breath as he closed the garage and the atmosphere repressurized.
“Thanks,” she said.
He looked at her, his blue eyes not giving away any secrets.
“Are you not going to talk to me?” she asked as he went to the storage compartment at the end of his bike. He lifted the trunk to a loud meow. The kitcoon shot out, jumped off his chest, and landed on the ground in a frenzy.
But when the kitcoon saw her, he crawled up her pants, claws digging into to her flesh, until she plucked him up and held him in her arms.
“Thanks for helping us,” she tried again. The kitcoon purred and wedged into her elbow.
He stared at her for an uncomfortable length of time, then whispered: “Remy.”
“Rex,” she said back.
He approached her, staring at her neck. She backed up into a stack of computers until he made a motion with his hand around his own.
“The collar?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Hell if I know how to get it off.”
The soldier blinked, then grabbed the recently-stolen-and-returned multitool off his belt.
Not like anything I’ve seen, she realized, getting a closer look. Something he must have customized.
With a few quick motions and a pop, he had it off her neck.