The Star Thief (Star Thief Chronicles #1)(47)
Author: Jamie Grey

Based on the way the monitors lined up, it had to be on this level.

Renna adjusted the camera view, pulling it back to see if she could get a better sense of the space. There. The edge of the door shone glossy and high–tech, like the ones they’d just passed. Okay. She could work with that.

The image on the final screen was another long room full of machinery, but there seemed to be some sort of vat or mixing container tucked into the corner. As she watched, several of the mercs marched into the room, guns drawn on a trio of men dressed in white lab coats. The mercs took up posts along the wall, while the scientists moved to either end of the assembly line. One of them hunched over a keyboard, typing something into the machine’s computer, while the other two donned breather masks and moved toward the vat.

She frowned. Did this have to do with the clay?

“Renna,” Finn whispered. “We have to go.”

Her gaze snapped to his ashen face. “What’s wrong?” His whole body trembled as he sat in the chair, and his eyes had a glassy sheen.

“I don’t know,” he said through chattering teeth. “But…I don’t feel right.”

“Hold on.” She slipped an arm beneath his shoulders and helped him to his feet. His skin felt cool and clammy as her fingers grazed his arm, but she forced her voice to stay light. “I think the exit door is in this corridor. We just have to find it. Did you get a hold of the Athena?”

“No. That facility is still blocking all signals coming and going. We’re going to have to call for help once we get outside.”

She risked another glance at Finn as he sucked in a wheezing breath. Maybe he had more than a broken rib. Internal bleeding? Punctured lung? Whatever it was, he needed medical help. Immediately.

She opened the door and peeked out into the hall.

Still empty.

Letting Finn lean heavily on her, she led them down the hall. Her muscles screamed at her to hurry. Capture could be seconds away. But Finn could barely shuffle forward, his breath coming in labored gasps. He wasn’t going to make it much farther if she didn’t do something.

“You turning into a pansy on me?” she growled. “I expected better from a Marine. What, are they letting anyone in now?”

He grunted, then sucked in a sharp breath. “Get moving, Carrizal. I can keep up.”

“I don’t believe you. Move your ass, soldier.” She forced herself to pick up the pace, dragging him along with her, even though Finn’s sallow face looked like he was about to pass out. She spotted the door at the end of the corridor. If she could get him through it and outside, the Athena could come for them.

They reached the door, and she propped Finn against the wall. She swiped the dead merc’s keycard through the lock, but it didn’t so much as blink, let alone open. “Dammit,” she muttered. Maybe whoever owned this facility didn’t want their people coming or going either.

A few frantic hacks later, the door finally slid open, and she pulled Finn into a small elevator. He swayed on his feet, and she shoved her shoulder more firmly under his. “Buck up, soldier. We’re almost there.”

Her stomach lodged somewhere in her throat as the metal box shot upward.

“Stay here,” she said when it stopped and the doors slid open. She slipped from under his arm and leaned him against the wall, but Finn didn’t answer. Renna’s heart jack-knifed. This was not good at all.

She crept forward into another one of those strange little rooms that looked empty. But she knew better. There was a door here. She just had to find it.

“Scan for imperfections,” she ordered. Her implant returned a faint rectangular outline glowing against the image of the wall. “Oh, thank the stars.”

As she searched, another smaller outline appeared. The keypad.

Renna glanced back at Finn, who was still propped against the elevator wall. His eyes were closed, and air whistled from his lungs with every breath. His skin had turned the color of a dead Ileth—gray and green. She swallowed, tasting the bitter acid coating the back of her throat, and turned back to the wall. How the hell did she get the keypad to appear?

She ran a finger along the wall where her implant said the controls were. It felt perfectly smooth, but by the tingling in her fingertips, she knew something else was there. Her fingers traced it again, searching for anything that would give her a clue. Then her implant beeped softly in her ear.

“Class C electronic device recognized.” Something whirred in the wall, and the keypad rose to the surface, the material sliding off of it like water. Whatever her implant had done, she could have kissed it. A moment later, she’d hacked the door open. The wall here reacted the same way as the material on the keypad, flowing back from the center of the space like a bathtub draining until there was a square door. And beyond it, the dun-colored sand of Banos Prime.

She hurried back to Finn. “Let’s get you out of here,” she muttered, slipping her arms around his waist. He groaned but barely opened his eyes.

His lack of response was like a nanospanner to the heart.

Renna and Finn slipped out into the cold, dry air. “Contact the Athena,” she ordered. She had no idea how much time had passed while they were in the facility. Please let them still be on the planet.

And then she froze. Two of the mechs she’d seen in the crates stood guard in front of them. The machines turned stiffly to face the escapees, their round eyes glowing red.

“Warning. Intruders detected. Please hold while you are scanned for compliance.”

Oh shit. Renna whipped out her gun and shot the first one in the head. It erupted in a blaze of sparks and metal, a bloodcurdling scream ripping from its mouth as it went down.

The second mech’s hands melted, then each hand reformed into a blaster rifle. It raised the gun at them, but Renna was faster. Her bullet hit directly between the mech’s eyes. The machine froze, then exploded, sending shrapnel flying.

Renna’s skin crawled at the long, wavering, almost-human scream it gave before collapsing. She covered Finn’s body with hers and turned away from the blast. Shit. Shit. Shit. That noise would have alerted every merc on the planet.

They needed to get out of there. Now.

TWENTY-ONE

“Athena, this is Renna Carrizal. Are you there? We need an extraction ASAP.”

She forced Finn to start moving toward the rock out-cropping where they’d left Keva and Doyle earlier. She hauled his dead weight as best she could, her muscles quaking in protest. She slipped on a patch of sand, and Finn groaned.