15
Islouched in my room in the dark, staring out the window at the night sky. I was back at the manor again. Corran hadn’t said a word after he’d dragged me kicking and screaming to the roof of a nearby building where his plane was waiting for us. I didn’t bother explaining why I’d ran or try to make any excuses. The Khonsu’s words had spread through my mind like poison, and once again I found myself thinking of the Vepar as the enemy rather than the lovers I had begun to think of them as.
We landed and Corran had grabbed my arm roughly before practically dragging me into the house and up the stairs to my room. He threw me onto the bed and turned to leave the room.
“So, I’m a prisoner again?” I asked, my feelings irrationally hurt at his treatment of me even though I never should have expected anything else.
“You ran, again. That doesn’t earn you any privileges.”
“So everything that’s happened wasn’t real?” I asked, my voice clogged with the tears that I was desperately trying to keep at bay.
His eyes closed for a second as if my question pained him, but when they opened again, they were as cold as ever.
“Just stay put,” he said exasperatedly, storming out and slamming the door behind him. Surprisingly, I didn’t hear the lock engage. After his footsteps faded, signaling he’d gone down the stairs, I walked to the door to check it. Sure enough, it wasn’t locked.
Feeling slightly mollified, I went back to my bed and laid down, the intensity of the day suddenly catching up to me and making me realize how exhausted I felt. Every inch of me ached.
And that’s what I had been doing for the last few hours.
As I laid on the bed, my mind continued to obsess over what the Khonsu had said. I had to know for myself if it was true. Asking the Vepar obviously wasn’t going to work since they had already told me the story, they wanted me to believe. No, if I was going to find out, I was going to have to do it myself. And I was pretty sure that the answers to my questions lay in that secret room.
I waited until the middle of the night. I still wasn’t sure about Vepar sleeping habits, but I knew that they at least slept for a few hours based on my experience with Derrial in the D.C. hotel room.
Once the clock struck two a.m., I carefully tiptoed to the door and slowly opened it, pausing every couple of inches to listen. When the house remained quiet, I opened the door all the way and slipped out into the hallway. My heartbeat felt unnaturally loud as I crept through the hallways. The journey seemed to take forever since my entire body was on hyper alert sure that one of the Vepar was going to appear at any moment.
I finally made it into the library, and I fumbled with the bookshelf where the hidden door was located for a few minutes, trying to figure out how to open it since it had already been opened last time. My hand finally slipped across a book towards the bottom of the bookshelf that when pulled, released the door. The door creaked as it slid open and my heart stopped as I listened, nervously expecting to hear the sound of feet coming down the hallway.
Five minutes passed and then ten and I finally got the nerve to continue. I slipped down the stairs, the lights automatically coming on as I entered the room.
Everything looked as it did the other day. The holograms still glowed from where they were suspended in the air above the tables. There were still creepy creatures on the side wall. Yes, everything looked the same, but I was sure that somewhere in here was the answer to my questions.
I ran my hand over all the surfaces thinking that there had to be some hidden button that would show me something. When that didn’t work, I searched every nook and cranny in the room to try and find another hidden passageway.
After thirty minutes of searching, I wandered over to the table with the birth and death graphs, frustrated at the fact that I hadn’t been able to find anything and would have to leave soon so that they didn’t find me. I waved my hand in frustration at the hologram...and to my surprise, the screen changed.
No longer was I staring at changing graphs. Instead I studied what looked to be a medical file.
My medical file in fact, and my stomach dropped. It listed everything about me on the screen. Where I’d gone to school, who was my first kiss, my blood type. I waved the screen again and to my horror a mockup appeared of a chamber that looked similar to the images that had filled my head when the Khonsu had been talking.
The chamber rotated in the air, all the specifications listed in a paragraph below. It was labeled as an “incubator.” But I knew that it wasn’t going to be hatching eggs...it was going to be growing Vepar.
My stomach ached with each passing second.
I kept scrolling through the various screens. There was more information about my chromosomes. Pictures of Vepar embryos. And on the last screen was a list of names labeled, “Probable Subjects.” I was the very last name on the list.
It was one thing to hear about such a scenario, but to actually see evidence of a plan to make human women into Vepar surrogates was almost more than I could comprehend. And here I let myself have feelings for these aliens, and I was nothing more than a lab experiment.
Stumbling backwards away from the hologram screen, barely able to take breath into my lungs, I spun to get out of the room.
Much to my horror, Thane was standing in the doorway, a menacing look capturing his expression. Narrowing eyes and a pinched nose, he grunted. And with his curled shoulders, he was beyond pissed.
Dread squeezed around my chest, and I could barely take a breath.
“Find something interesting, pet?” he growled.
I looked widely around the room, my mind desperately trying to come up with scenarios of how I could escape...what excuse I could use.
Thane was upon me in a flash, and I screamed. The last thing I saw was him raising a small black device up to my neck as I struggled to get away.
Then, everything went black.