Sobbing now, I cried as she cried, this mystery woman inside my mind. I could hear others as well, fighting and howling with rage.
“Hold on, mate. Help is coming.” Thomar knelt next to me as well. It was as if I were in two places at once, with my mates and with this woman, a human woman. She was being tortured. Experimented on. And there were others. Watching. Fighting. Desperate.
“Oh, god. Prisoners. They’re prisoners.”
Huge hands ripped open the woman’s abdomen and she arched up off whatever table they had strapped her to. I did as well, my body going stiff, sweat dripping from my brow into my eyes.
Her baby. They were taking her baby.
The Hive.
“No.” I shook my head, both me and the woman I was somehow linked to speaking as one. “No-no-no-no—”
She lifted her head and I saw what she did. A baby girl. Beautiful. Perfect.
Integrated.
The Hive doctor, or whatever he was, leaned over to speak to her. His face was blue and silver, eyes black like a shark’s. The woman shuddered in repulsion and terror. I felt the scream bubbling up inside her, but she refused to let it out. Somehow she knew the thing—the creature—looming over her would be unaffected. Cold. Robotic in its efficiency. It would sedate her and she wanted to watch, try to see where they were taking her baby.
“We will care for the child. You will sleep now. You will heal.”
“No.” She protested and I knew she meant it. She didn’t want to live. She knew they—it—the creature--was going to do it to her again. And again.
Like the others.
Her thought, not mine.
What others? What the hell was I seeing? Was this some demented hallucination?
Her vision went black and I came back to myself slowly to find Doctor Surnen kneeling on the floor next to me. Thomar stood behind his left shoulder, Varin behind his right. I was lying on the bench we’d been cuddling on not long ago with the doctor running his scanners over me. An additional male in green was speaking to someone I could not see, and Rachel was leaning over me from above. She had to be on her knees, looking over the edge from the floor the surrounded the sunken seating area. Her dark hair hung down around her face like a frame. “It’s okay, Danika. I promise, you’re okay.”
I was sobbing. Hysterical. Had no memory of how I got in this position or of what had happened to my body in the last few minutes.
But as the woman faded, so did the panic and the pain.
“Thomar? Varin?” I felt bereft. Alone. Where were they? Why weren’t they touching me.
“We are here.” Relief flooded me as Varin’s voice came from the bench above my head and I found him settled there watching me.
I tried to sit up, look for Thomar, but Doctor Surnen placed a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down. “Do not move.”
Thomar placed a heavy hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “Careful, doctor. You are addressing my mate.”
“Yes, yes.” The doctor was clearly unimpressed by Thomar’s presence, too absorbed in whatever gadget he was reading to argue.
Something heavy rested on my chest, right on top of my collar bone. I reached for it, but the doctor grabbed my wrist before grabbed hold. “Do not touch that, Danika. Please.”
“What is it?” I asked. Rachel stretched down to me with an open hand and I reached for her, more than happy for the friendly squeeze she offered.
Rachel answered before the doctor could. “A Hive frequency jammer.”
“What?”
“A frequency jammer. It’s the only thing that brought you out of your trance.”
“I wasn’t in a trance.”
Everyone froze. Thomar. Varin. Rachel. The doctor and the medical assistant. Even Governor Maxim, Rachel’s mate, appeared from somewhere. He froze too, looking at me. In his hand was a comm, and on that comm screen was the face of another Prillon I didn’t recognize.