Sail
Chapter Twenty-Four

“Mase—” I started but was cut short by the doctor’s screams. Ellison and I backed toward the car.

Josh scrambled behind the wheel, looking for something, then hopped out to kick a wooden wedge underneath the door. “What happened?”

“The artificial intelligence kicked in,” Ellison said and glanced at me. “I have to get Absidy out of here, Josh.”

He took Ellison by the elbows and touched his forehead to hers. “Go. I’ll hold the A.I.’s off.” He glanced at Mase, who nodded and slid behind the wheel.

Ellison took a deep breath and worked her mouth like she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say.

“Go,” Josh said again and pushed her toward the car. “The bag is in the backseat.”

Ellison nodded and we climbed inside the car. Mase shot off into a tunnel as Ellison turned to stare after Josh.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“My…friend.” Ellison pointed at Mase in front of her. “Who’s this?”

A sudden lightness bloomed through my chest that he sat so close. I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again, if he was even alive, but somehow he was here. For me, or maybe because of me, but still. It didn’t matter anymore that he’d told the captain what I was. All that mattered was that he was here.

“He’s my—” I snapped my gaze up at my slip, even though I had no idea where I was going with the rest of that sentence. Under Mase’s watchful gaze in the rearview mirror, I shrugged, my face flushed. “He’s my Mase.”

Dear Feozva, there was that grin again. “You bet your sweet ass I am.”

Ellison glared lasers into his seat. “Sweet ass? Really, Absidy?”

“I’ll explain later,” I muttered. “Please tell me you have a plan to get us out of here.”

Mase nodded. “The plan is to get you and your big sister off this freaky planet.”

“Great plan,” Ellison mumbled.

“There’s a car coming,” Mase announced. “You doctors back there might want to get low.”

I twisted myself the best I could on the floor of the car while another engine rumbled closer. Mase waved a salute at them, looking perfectly relaxed, but as soon as the car passed us, his face tightened.

“Might want to hang on to something,” he said. He sped around a corner with the ease of a pilot, and I tracked his progress on the map inside my head.

“There are Saelis in these tunnels, too,” Ellison said, gripping my hand at another sharp turn. “If they catch us, they’ll drag us back to their nests. Or eat us.”

“Dinner and dessert,” Mase said. “I guess it doesn’t matter to them which one comes first.”

I shivered, knowing how close I’d come to being both, and peered out the window. “Just don’t get us lost.”

“It’s all up here,” Mase said, tapping his temple.

Lead, tin. He was right; we were nearing iron. How many times had he been through these tunnels? Maybe a few times since he wore the customary black worker clothes. Which meant he’d been here a while. Which meant I’d been here a while.

“We’re about to have more company,” Mase warned over the sound of the protesting engine. “Stay down.”

A loud crack rang out. The glass behind our heads shattered. Ellison and I yelped and ducked while shards nipped at our necks. Mase hunkered behind the wheel.

I turned in my seat to peer over the back. Glass crystals dusted the tan carpet-like material in the rear of the car, and the headlights closing in made them twinkle like so many stars. We sure did have company, a whole army of humans driving after us, all of them hot on our asses. Spikes of fear stabbed up my back. With a gasp, I faced forward again.

“Can you go any faster?” I yelled, but the groaning and sputtering engine drowned me out.

Ellison looked at our twined hands and the blood beading around the tiny shards of glass, her face ashen. She ripped off her lab coat and tore it to shreds at the same time a high keening shivered dread over my skin. Saelis.

Mase fumbled for a radio inside his coat then powered it on. “Captain, we’re about to come out of the tunnel, and we’re bringing company with us.”

“Roger that,” Captain Glenn said through a burst of static.

Another loud pop shattered the side mirror beside Mase. He cried out as bits of glass and metal gashed at his face.

“Mase! You okay?” I yelled.

He answered back with a frustrated growl.

The darkness of the tunnel brightened to a murky blue as we shot out of the tunnel. The car zigzagged, throwing us right then left, while Mase fought for control.

“It’s nothing but ice out here,” he shouted. “Hang on.”

Glacial air burned down my lungs, and I gasped at the pain. Ellison’s lips began to turn blue as she tightened the strips of lab coat around both our hands to stop the bleeding. Both of them. Did she have something inside her blood that would drive the Saelis and their puppet humans mad, too?

Far above our heads, a thick layer of debris darkened the once blue skies where Earth used to be into a starless and moonless twilight. Between us and the remnants of floating broken planet, a clear terraform dome gave The Black its atmosphere. Black ice stretched on for miles over small hills and valleys, with the occasional tree reaching gnarled dead branches in a plea for more light. Other than the car’s headlights and those bouncing behind us, the name The Black fit the rogue planet perfectly.

The air above rumbled, and something crashed behind us. The vague shape of an old titanium transport ship smashed into the opening of the ice-packed tunnel to cave it in. Vicio was stenciled across its sides in faded red lettering, off-center since that wasn’t its true name. Still, it was such a welcoming sight, I squeezed the holy shit out of Ellison’s hand as we rushed toward safety. Toward titanium, not iron.

But something else moved in the sky, something massive and roiling. A cloud of black smoke churned toward us. Billions and billions of ghosts.

Ellison must’ve read my face because she squeezed me to her.

I fished through my pockets with numb fingers for the piece of iron Josh had given me. When I finally found it and threw it in my mouth, it dissolved instantly. That was it. I couldn’t ward the ghosts off, and even if I allowed some in, I had nothing left to force them through me to the other side. I had nothing.

“They’re dying,” Ellison said shrilly. Her wide panicked gaze pinned to mine, she searched underneath the seat and between the cushions. “I don’t see a black bag!”

The sky sagged down toward us with the weight of the ghosts clinging to it. There were too many, and we needed to escape before the Saelis or humans killed us. There wasn’t time to cross them all over, but they drifted toward me anyway. Without iron, they would find me. And massacre me.

More bullets whizzed over our heads, but I barely registered anything other than the ghosts drifting closer. There were too many. I huffed out a breath while their combined darkness crushed the remaining air from my lungs.

“Mase, do you know where it is?” Ellison screamed.

“I know he left it in here,” he yelled. “It must have shifted.”

She pressed her cheek to the back of Mase’s seat and thrust both hands beneath it again. That time, she grasped a black bag.

The ghosts’ smoky forms watched me watch them, their long fingers reaching toward me. A ghost flung its dark smoke through the car. Another one followed. And then they were all around me, pulling, tearing, shrieking my name, demanding entrance into my body all at once.

I screamed. A hulking male ghost solidified between Ellison and me in the back seat and whirled around to fix me with depthless black eyes. It flashed its arms out to yank my jaw open. One hand clawed at my tongue while it brought its face closer to mine. Chunks of hair and flesh peeled away in the wind to reveal shiny red muscle.

“Let me in,” the ghost roared.

I bit down hard on the ghost’s fingers before they wormed down my throat and pushed at it with all my strength. Pieces of muscle faded away to bone, then the rest of it dissipated through the air

Ellison stabbed a needle into my arm while another ghost took the old one’s place above me. It lifted me from the car while others swirled around us for their turn.

Then it tossed me out. I landed with a crash that whooshed the air from my lungs. Cold, hard ice lanced pain up and down my back.

“Absidy!” someone shouted, but it sounded so far away over the din pounding at my head.

Tires slid past me as the car skidded to a stop. Frigid air stung my eyes. A needle poked from a vein in my arm and bent sideways. I stared down the length of my arm, and underneath the hooked needle, spirits boiled like thick shadows several yards away.

Bullets from the cars behind us whizzed past my ears, and behind them, Saelis wailed. Coming closer. The rest of the cars stirred up a whirlwind of black dust that fused with the shadowy ghosts.

A girl, maybe about fifteen, appeared over me and straddled my hips. Her long blonde hair twisted like tentacles around her black eyes. Skin slid down her face and dripped down her open mouth. She leaned over and shrieked into my face. Her piercing screams raked nails up my neck, and I couldn’t draw a deep enough inhale to scream right back. Even if I somehow survived her, there were thousands more that could kill me.

A tangy cube of iron slipped into my mouth, and she instantly vanished. Trembling hands plucked the needle from my arm.

“Get up, Abs!” Ellison begged.

The iron wasn’t dissolving. Its tart, sweet flavor surged a powerful energy through my body and extended outward. While some of the approaching men with guns watched with frightened gazes, the ghosts shrank back behind them.

I had my iron shield back. Relieved breath filled my lungs. My head spinning, I posted my arms underneath me, and Ellison helped haul me to my feet. But as she did, the black bag slipped from her hands. Little glass vials and iron cubes slid across the ice in all directions.

I glanced behind me at the waiting entryway of the Vicio and tugged at Ellison’s shoulder. “We have to go.”

She yanked out of my grip and sank to her knees. “This is what I came here for!”

Several guns aimed at us, but Mase blocked us from the wall of black-smocked men, his gun leveled at them in a steady hand. Shots rang out, and two of them dropped to the ground, their guns still curling smoke. I blinked over at Mase, whose face swam with a menacing kind of purpose.

Two Saelis had worked their way free of the heaping rubble by the tunnel and raced toward us, rolling their ferocious growls in front of them.

“Make a move, lizard lovers,” Mase shouted while he backed into us.

Ellison shoveled the last of the vials inside the black bag, then she wrapped a hand around my waist to support me. Blood poured down my front. Something rattled inside my lungs with every breath and sounded like I’d swallowed loose rocks, but it didn’t matter. I had my sister back.

Mase herded us onto the ship’s ramp and under the first door in the entryway. Claws screeched over metal behind us. One of the Saelis.

A choked cry tumbled from my mouth.

Ellison gasped.

Mase dragged us forward and shot over his shoulder at the same time, but I couldn’t go nearly as fast as we needed to. The feverish click of claws hurtled toward our backs.

Click. Click. Mase’s gun was empty.

Almost to the second door. I cried out when Ellison touched my side to get a better grip on my waist. Her steps hesitated, but we didn’t have time for that. I gritted my teeth and shoved us on. We were almost through. Almost.

The Saelis’s claws bit into my heels. Its teeth snapped at the back of my neck, then wrenched me backward.

Time slowed. I was falling. Mase and Ellison sailed through the ghost of Doctor Daryl and under the second entryway door without me. Daryl stood outside it, too, his face and neck swollen purple, while hovering over the button that would close it. Before I could reach safety. He poltergeisted the gun out of Mase’s hand. It whirled through the air and tapped the button.

The Saelis toppled me backward onto the titanium floor with a crushing blow that shocked all the air from my damaged lungs.

The door began to close. Ellison whirled around to stare in horror. Mase reached for me a split second before the door slammed closed in front of them.

The Saelis pressed down on top of me, squeezing more blood from my wounds, and swiped at me with its claws.

I tried to scream, but there wasn’t enough air.

Doctor Daryl pushed his translucent form through the closed door and paced the length of one wall, tapping, a malicious glare to his glowing green eyes.

The first entryway door closed behind me. Trapping me with a Saelis and a demented ghost.

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