“Vane has claimed me for himself.”
“As what?” he asked.
“As his mate.”
Greyburne started to laugh, a great terrible sound that grew louder and louder. His amusement echoed throughout the cargo hold, horrifying as it surrounded me. I was left with a terrible sense of foreboding and I suddenly regretted the words that had sealed my fate.
“Vane’s very own concubine. I suddenly see my profit dollars returning!” he exclaimed, before turning back to his men. “Seize her. I don’t care about the others, wherever they’ve gone. We’re taking her and leaving immediately. Grab whatever other valuable cargo that you can find and get out of here as fast as you can.”
I tried to fight them, but there were too many. They were bigger and far stronger than me, but I didn’t make their job easy. I wasn’t a meek little human. I was an Aberrant and they didn’t know what that meant.
“Fucking assholes!” I cried out. Every punch I threw was stopped by larger hands than mine. My ankles were bound, stopping me from kicking any of them. Before I knew it, my feet were no longer on the ground and they had lifted me high overhead. In my struggle, the blanket had been whipped away from my body, leaving me entirely naked once more, but I no longer cared. I just wanted to get away.
“You’re going to make me a fortune,” Greyburne said, his smirk growing larger by the second.
“I’m going to kill you,” I retorted, struggling against the bonds that held me tight.
“You can try,” Greyburne laughed. “Many have tried and failed. You won’t be the first.”
I growled and the last sound I heard was my own fierceness reverberating off the metal walls all around us.
Chapter Ten
Vane
When we’d landed on Kraken Prime, things had gone quietly, at least at the start. We’d fueled up without delay and were now prepared to depart and continue on our way to Nassarc to sell off our goods. It wasn’t until I’d received a message from Greyburne himself that I started to feel really uneasy, like things had been too quiet.
He’d requested a meeting with me and my men, an alliance of a sort that he was interested in. For a period of time, I wasn’t even going to go. I feared him openly attacking my ship though, so I finally decided to hear what he had to say, although I was going to be exceedingly cautious. I’d taken the majority of my men with me, preparing for the worst.
Only when I’d gone down to meet him myself, he’d never shown up. A large group of his men had though, and it had turned violent extraordinarily quickly.
They hadn’t stood a chance against us. My men were strong. They turned into berserkers in battle just as they always did. Traditional weaponry wouldn’t pierce our flesh and we didn’t use them against our enemies. Instead, we used our bare hands to tear them apart. His men were strong, but they were no match for my men.
I’d brought most of my crew with me, expecting something like this. My men far outnumbered Greyburne’s, which left us in a very good position. It didn’t take long for the metallic tang of blood to scent the air and for dark color to stain the dirt beneath our feet. The grass soon became slick with it. No one came to stop us. There were no governing forces on this small planet, as most of the fueling process was entirely automated, and many of the other ships at the docks made it their mission to leave as quickly as possible once they realized that there was blood to be spilt.
In no time at all, there was only one man left. My crew surrounded him, leaving me to handle him and dole out his fate. It was something of a tradition for us and they always looked forward to watching me deal the final blow. The man should have been scared, but when I entered the circle of my men, I saw that he wasn’t afraid at all. In fact, he appeared to be rather proud of himself. That was unexpected.
The uneasy feeling in my belly spiraled into open anxiety. There was something going on here that I hadn’t quite figured out and I was afraid of what it might be once I did.
“What is your name?” I pressed furiously.
“Does it even matter?” the man answered giddily. An insane grin broke out over his face and I was suddenly reminded of the glint of madness in my own men once the virus had progressed too far. He started laughing, the sound deviously dangerous and I drew back slightly as a quiet feeling of menacing fear tore at my insides.
“The great almighty Vane. So easily thwarted,” he muttered.
“What do you mean?” I pressed, hiding my dread with fury.
“Greyburne send his regards,” the man answered. Then, in a feat of unexpected strength and gore, the man ripped open his shirt and tore into his chest with his hand, ripping his own heart out with a bloodcurdling scream. He dropped to the ground as blood poured from his open wound. His shirt rustled in the breeze and I could see the vicious fiery red of the very same mark that afflicted my crew surrounding the bloody hole in his chest.
He had the virus too. And it looked like it had gone too far.
He’d descended into madness.
Upon closer inspection, most of Greyburne’s men had the mark. It had progressed to the very limit in all of them. The more we looked at the evidence, the more I was convinced that I was missing something and then it clicked.
These men were meant to be sacrificed because they were so close to the eventual descent into insanity that the virus demanded. Knowing the capabilities of myself and my crew, I also realized that they hadn’t fought as hard as they were capable of. I knew what this w
as now, and I could have kicked myself for not seeing it sooner. Greyburne had sent his dying men into battle in order to keep us busy. He’d distracted me and taken me away from my ship.