“Magnus, where are we going?” I asked, not able to see through the front window.
“We’re moving up, heading into the clouds,” my large friend said through a clenched jaw. If I knew Magnus, he was holding down the urge to slam the pilot’s head into the dash.
“Dinkle, what’s the endgame here?” I asked, feeling stupid for instantly trusting the stranger. We’d fallen right into his trap. Patty had been played by the man she thought she knew.
“The endgame is this: we already have Dalhousie and your other friends up there. Now we have the famed Heroes of Earth to bring as a sacrifice. Rumor has it they want your head on a stick, Mr. Parker. I wonder what for?”
My throat had closed, and I swallowed hard. They knew me. Naidoo had probably sold me out.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, the words burning on their way out. We’d come all this way, and now it was going to end at the hands of this slick television talk show host.
“No, I don’t, but humans have never interested me. Aliens? Now them, I can get behind. They’re going to show me amazing things. Speaking of which, how did you get to Egypt? Inquiring minds want to know your tricks.”
“You really think we’re going to tell you that?” Mary asked vehemently. I set a trembling hand on her thigh.
Terrance was staying far calmer than I would have with the cold steel of a gun against my temple. I had to hand it to the guy; he was cool as a cucumber. Leslie was fidgeting. I hoped she wasn’t about to lunge at Jeff, because her friend would probably end up dead if she did.
Magnus whistled up front, just a light one, but I knew what it meant. It was the same whistle I’d used to teach Carey to roll over. I scanned the seatbelts, seeing everyone was wearing one but Jeff. I got ready. We bumped into some more turbulence, and Magnus made his move. He must have snuck his hand to the steering column because we suddenly were torn to the side, the ship turning hard to starboard. Jeff went hard into the sidewall, still holding his gun. I unclasped my belt just as we came out of the barrel roll and lunged at the dazed man.
“Don’t even think about it,” Magnus said from the front seat, presumably at the pilot, as I arced through the air, the training Slate engrained into me on our previous journey taking over.
Jeff’s eyes went wide as he tried to swing his gun around in time to aim at me, but he was too late. Our bodies collided. My fist went into his gut and he bent over, fighting for breath. Terrance was already digging behind him to the storage area, and when I glanced over, he was passing the pulse rifles to the others.
Jeff was still gripping the gun, but I clasped his wrist while he coughed loudly. Mary came over and pried it from his fingers; soon he was slumped back in his seat, his head bleeding from the side.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” he spat angrily. “They’re expecting us. When we don’t show up, they’ll come looking. Do you think they’ll spare the people in their search?”
“Don’t put this on us. This is all on your hands,” I said, surprised his perspective would allow him to see that vantage point. This type of man always reasoned with himself when he did things. He justified his terrible actions with righteous causes, but at the end of the day, he was in the wrong.
“Take us to Siberia,” Magnus grumbled from the front. He was now pointing a gun at the pilot, whose shoulders took on the inevitable slump of someone caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
I went to the storage compartment and found some zip ties, which we used to tie Jeff’s hands together. He protested, but soon he was sitting in the back on the floor, head on his knees.
“Should we give him something for his head?” Mary asked quietly.
I shook my head. “We’ll figure it out later. For now, I have a hard time showing the man compassion.” I shifted my attention to the front of the transport. “What’s our ETA?” I asked.
When the pilot didn’t answer, Magnus peered over to the console. “Ten minutes. Here, look at this.”
He passed me a tablet and told me to press play. It showed a snow-covered entrance to a large stone-walled prison. Guard towers were visibly manned, and a name was carved in the rock in Russian.
In the video, a stream of people emerged from a Kraski ship. Their hands were chained, and they wore orange jumpsuits. My stomach lurched when I saw who they were. Every few people, the faces were the same. Leslie clenched beside me, a low growl coming from her throat.
“This is where we’re going,” Magnus said. “I found it online. Maybe we should take them and let the Bhlat have this world. I’m sick of the things we put each other through.”
“Just put yourself in their shoes, Magnus,” Mary said. “We chased after who we thought were murderous hybrids, and never came back. They had to do something with them. When the Bhlat contacted Earth, they must have felt like they’d done the right thing. That doesn’t make it right, but it makes it understandable.”
The video kept playing, showing the inside of the building, the lines of cold bleak cells, and a pitiful bunch of hybrids sitting and eating in the mess hall. They were a beaten-down group, and I felt so terribly for them. We had to right it, and even though we were wasting precious time on this mission, it was an important one, no matter the outcome of the impending war.
“Arriving,” the pilot said, all the fight gone out of him. He was a hired hand and most likely didn’t care about causes, only a paycheck and seeing his family at night.
Snow was falling as we lowered from the cloud line, reminding me of Terran Five.
As we neared the building, something was off about it. “Shouldn’t there be lights on somewhere?”
Magnus nodded and mumbled something along the same lines.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Mary said. The feeling was mutual, and almost a constant for us over the past couple of years.
Leslie and Terrance stayed quiet, their gazes never leaving the view of the structure we were approaching. They were so close to their friends, nothing would stop them from getting to them now. I knew we had to watch our own backs. As much as I wanted to say these two were on our side, I knew they were looking out for themselves and the rest of the hybrids first, and I didn’t even blame them.
The transport ship landed softly, near the entrance we’d seen on the video minutes ago.
Leslie was already half out the door, followed quickly by Terrance. Jeff was tied up in the back, and we did the same to the pilot, making sure they had no weapons.
As I followed Mary out, Leslie was standing at the large iron gates. She looked back at us and pulled. The gates swung open. We still couldn’t see any lights on inside, and the towers located around the building looked to be empty.
“It’s like it’s abandoned,” Magnus said, holding his rifle at ready.
We walked past the gates, toward the dark prison.
NINETEEN
The main doors were tall and double wide, large enough to roll through supplies. Magnus was ready to blast them open, but Leslie held up a hand and tested the handle. It depressed, and she pulled the door open.
“This is odd.” Mary looked around, pointing at a camera in the corner. There was no light on it, and it didn’t move with us. Was anyone watching? Wind blew around the building, pushing light snow over us. Visibility of the area was poor, but that might help us get out of there.