Escape (Project Vetus Book 1) Read online

  The guard holds his ground as she approaches, but I can practically see him trembling. Small as she is, Brennan is one scary bitch. At least, to anyone who hasn’t met Dreyer.

  “She’s saying that in the long run, it’s cheaper to breed us than to keep splicing together alien-human super-soldier hybrids,” I call out through my cell door. But that may not be true, as long as there’s only one woman among our ranks. Especially if Dreyer doesn’t give them something to work with soon.

  I have to get us out of here.

  “That, and we want to know how these genes are passed down without scientific interference,” Brennan admits. “When given a fair chance, nature almost always does things better than we can manage in a lab.” The doctor stops in front of my door and looks up at me. “Captain Sotelo.”

  “It’s just Carson now,” I remind her. Even if I weren’t officially deceased, we were all stripped of our ranks when we were dismissed from the Tethys military in disgrace. Thanks to Universal Authority.

  “I suspect your men will always think of you as their captain.” She gestures to two of the guards. “Sotelo will do, for today.” She turns back to me. “You know the drill.” Then she steps into the center of the hallway, and one of the guards opens a narrow slot in my door at waist height, while the others aim rifles at me.

  I stick my hands through the slot, and the guard slides a set of wire cuffs around them. The wire is thin but strong, and should I piss off one of the guards, he can run electricity through it, effectively shocking me into compliance. That particular method of subduing prisoners is still effective on all of us, despite the various physiological changes we’ve undergone.

  “There are some investors in our corner of the galaxy tonight,” Brennan says as the guard opens my cell door. “They’ve come out to watch the first gladiatorial match of the season, and while they’re here, they’d like to see what their credits are paying for. You will put on a little show. Nothing fancy. They’ll be happy with an exhibition of your more obvious new traits. If you perform well and follow instructions, I’ll open the back door and let you and your men play outside for a while.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then I will let the guards knock you out, beat you senseless, then isolate all six of you in individual cells for the next week. No showers. No sunshine. No sounds from beyond those walls,” she says with a glance into my cell.

  Aside from outright physical torture, there is little in the world worse than total isolation. Than going a week without seeing another person or hearing another voice, locked up in a space hardly big enough to stretch out in.

  The last time they pulled that, it took us hours to bring Lawrence out of his own head. Next time, we might not be able to.

  “Fine. But if I play nice, you have to let Dreyer and Zamora out of that room.”

  Brennan rolls her eyes at me. “Not as long as she’s ripe for implantation. Unless you’re volunteering to take Thiago’s place. It would only take five minutes, Carson. You’re strong enough to…make her cooperate.”

  “You’re vile.”

  She scowls at me. “What Lieutenant Dreyer is going through is exhausting and no doubt humiliating. You could relieve her of that burden.”

  And saddle her with another one. Against her will.

  Even if I were willing to do that—and the word “never” doesn’t even come close to expressing my thoughts on the subject—I will not conceive a child, only to turn the poor thing over to a Universal Authority lab, to be studied like a rat in a cage.

  “Fuck off,” I spit at Brennan.

  Her eyes narrow, but surely that’s the answer she expected. If any of us were willing to do what she wants, we wouldn’t have waited eleven long months to volunteer.

  The entrance to Dreyer’s room opens and the new guard steps out, wearing a ventilator. As the door slides closed again, I see Zamora’s bare legs from the shins down. He’s passed out on the floor from the gas they pumped into the room. I can’t see Dreyer, but she’s no-doubt in the same state.

  The wall is sparkly clean.

  The guards lead me down the hall and out the thick front door of the laboratory into the wide-open space that makes up the majority of zone X. I’m surprised to realize it’s cold and dark outside.

  We’re not allowed out here, except when we’re being loaded onto or off of a shuttle, restrained and under armed guard. Not that there’s much to see, other than empty fields full of waist-high rust-colored grass and a huge metal wall in the distance, defining the boundary of zone X. Red beams of laser wire trace the top of the wall—as if any of us could climb it, even if we could break out of the lab—and moonlight reflects off the smooth surface.

  Beyond that wall is yet another metal wall dividing zone X from the other zones. The space between the two walls is a buffer, for security purposes. Neither wall holds a gate, which means the only way into or out of zone X is on a ship.

  The pilot lowers a ramp, and the guards march me onto the shuttle, where they cuff me to the far-left seat in the back row. The last two rows are arranged to face each other, presumably so that the scientists can discuss new ways to torture and humiliate us during their commute to and from the lab facility. And so that the guards can keep an eye on prisoners during transportation.

  One guard sits next to me and two sit in the row facing mine, while Dr. Brennan and the other three guards sit up front.

  I stare out the window as the pilot runs through his checklist. I’m sick of the sterile metal surfaces of the lab, and it’s been nearly a week since we were allowed out into the playground. And despite the nighttime chill, the fresh air feels amazing. Until they seal the door and start blowing canned air into my face.

  The shuttle lifts off and we glide smoothly over the barrier walls and out of zone X. I can’t see much of the ground in the dark, but I stare at it anyway, because there’s no telling when I’ll be outside again.

  Several minutes into our flight, all six of the guards’ wrist coms begin beeping at once. Dr. Brennan frowns at her tablet, and through the crack between the seats, I can see that an alert is flashing on it as well.

  The pilot swivels to face us—there’s no real cockpit on a shuttle this small. “Dr. Brennan, we’ve been ordered to make an emergency stop along the way.”

  “No, that won’t be possible. Zone X prisoners are only to be transported directly to Station Delta and back—”

  “There’s been an incident,” the guard directly across from me says, staring at his wrist com. “The party yacht has gone down in zone three. No fatalities reported yet, but there are over three hundred civilians on that ship. Most of them high level investors and Universal Authority executives. The rescue mission has been given top priority.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Dr. Brennan swears.

  One of the guards glances from me to her. “Doc, your zone X investors might have been on that ship.”

  “Either way, we have orders,” the pilot says. “Every ship in this hemisphere that’s below the pyro-shield has been ordered to go directly there to start ferrying passengers up to Station Alpha.”

  Brennan twists in her seat to look at the guard across from me. “But we have a prisoner on board!”

  “Is the prisoner secure?” the pilot asks.

  “Well, yes.”

  The pilot glances back at me. “Is he the really strong one?” He means Coleman. “Or the one who can make you see things?” That’s Zamora.

  “No.”

  “Ma’am, if he’s not a danger to passengers, we have no choice but to comply.”

  I’m a huge danger. But only to guards and evil scientists. And I’m not about to point that out.

  “They want five of us to stay and help with the evacuation,” one of the guards says, staring at his wrist com. “To free up more seats on the shuttle. More men will be available to help you unload the prisoner when you get to Station Delta.”

  Dr. Brennan shakes her head. “Protocol requires a six-to-one r
atio of guards to—”

  “That’s only when the prisoner is on the move, Doctor. And there will be six guards with you before he’s released from that chair.”

  She grumbles something beneath her breath. Then she makes an impatient gesture at the pilot, wordlessly ordering him to get on with it.

  A shipwreck in an open population zone, terrified civilian passengers, and a lower-than-average guard-to-prisoner ratio. This is the best shot I’m ever going to get. And if I can get away with the shuttle, maybe I can get all my men off this planet in the chaos…

  2

  CARSON

  “You so much as twitch, and I’ll stun you unconscious.” The guard points his laser pistol at me to punctuate his threat as the pilot sets us down on the steeply pitched roof of the crashed space yacht.

  I ignore the threat.

  The pilot lowers the ramp, and five of the guards disembark to report for evacuation duty. The sixth stands at the entrance to the shuttle, one hand on the butt of his laser pistol. His focus shifts between me and the people milling around outside. He’s alert, and he seems hyper-aware that he’s now being asked to do the job of six guards, all on his own.

  “As long as Sotelo stays cuffed to that seat, this should be fine,” Dr. Brennan assures him. But she doesn’t sound entirely sure of what she’s saying. “He can’t break the cuffs or the arm of the chair.” Because it’s steel. “And the way he’s positioned, none of his alien assets could do anything more than shred the cushions.”

  She’s right about that.

  “So, what are those alien assets?” The pilot stands from his chair to stare at me over the tops of the other passenger seats.

  “I have a monstrous alien cock,” I tell him, deadpan.

  The pilot snorts. He thinks I’m joking.

  Brennan doesn’t even seem to have heard me. Her gaze feels like part assessment—the scientist in her—and part proud parent.

  No, it’s weirder than that. She’s looking at me like a sculptor might look at her art. As if she created me from a formless lump of clay. As if I never had a career, or a family, or a life outside of that sterile lab on this shithole of a planet. As if I didn’t even truly exist, before she got ahold of me.

  Fucking god complex.

  “He’s stronger and faster than any normal soldier,” she says, as if I can’t hear her. “And the genes spliced with his gave him a few other interesting features that have proven useful in the field. In a controlled environment, anyway. That’s as far as the testing has gone so far.”

  “Features, like what?” The pilot’s gaze narrows on me. “Other than the silver hair and eyes, he looks pretty normal to me.”

  “Yes, that was the goal. We discovered with one of our earlier subjects that several of the alien traits remain dormant until the subject is…provoked. We concentrated our efforts on those traits, because they’re the most desirable, according to our preliminary market research.”

  “So the enemy doesn’t see it coming…” the pilot muses.

  “Exactly.”

  “What are his features?”

  “That’s above your clearance level,” Brennan says with a smile. “But I will tell you that while several of our current subjects have acquired some pretty useful extra-sensory abilities, at the end of the day, Carson Sotelo is still a grunt. A very fancy and expensive infantryman.”

  “Well what’s the point of that? We have infantrymen.”

  “Sotelo is worth five normal soldiers. At least,” Brennan informs him.

  She’s underselling me. But that’s to my benefit, so I turn to the window, content to watch and wait. To act harmless.

  There are people everywhere, out on the roof of the crashed yacht. Guards in uniform. Passengers in formal dress, the women struggling to remain upright in heels, because of the slope beneath their feet. There are even a few prisoners, who’re probably used as waitstaff, cooks, and janitors on board the ship.

  Most of the passengers look terrified. The guards seem hyper-vigilant, tasked with keeping prisoners in line and guests from falling off the top of the drastically pitched roof of the yacht.

  The prisoners, what few there are, seem excited by the chaos.

  Having lost five guards, our shuttle can now carry thirteen passengers, in addition to the remaining guard, Dr. Brennan, and me. Within minutes of our arrival, a guard outside starts escorting passengers onto the shuttle. The first on-board are a middle-aged couple who smell like whiskey and look bored by the crash that has clearly derailed their evening—until they see me cuffed to a chair in the last row.

  “Leave the seat next to him empty,” the guard standing by the door says, and for a second, I assume they’ll sit up front with Dr. Brennan, as far as they can get from the scary prisoner. But the wife’s eyes have a mischievous gleam.

  “Gerald. Over here.” She tugs her shirtless husband with her as she takes the seat directly across from me, facing me, and her gaze wanders my body like her hands would clearly like to. “He looks familiar. Is he a gladiator?” she asks. “He looks like a gladiator.”

  “No, ma’am,” Dr. Brennan tells her. “He’s something…special.”

  “So he is,” the wife murmurs, practically fucking me with her gaze. “Those eyes…”

  If she’s seen me somewhere, it was probably in footage of my trial, which was quite a circus. But back then I had dark hair and normal brown eyes, so she’s unlikely to make the connection.

  “I’m sorry, but you can’t sit here.” Brennen tries to wave them out of their seats.

  “There are hundreds of people out there,” the wife says. “We’re on a prison planet. You can’t leave any seats empty during an evacuation.”

  Scowling, Brennan heads toward the front to argue with the guard. While they debate whether or not passengers should be allowed to sit so close to me, the wife slowly reaches across the narrow aisle. As if she’d like to touch my knee.

  “Phoebe!” The husband smacks her hand, and she gives him a petulant look.

  “What? I just want to feel him.”

  I lean forward and capture Phoebe’s gaze, letting a little heat bleed into mine. “I don’t mind,” I whisper, and her eyes light up.

  I’ve met people like this couple, in the line of duty. Mostly royalty being evacuated from palaces on Erebus. They’re bored, because their wealth has given them everything they could ever want, so even in the middle of their own civil war, they start taking things that don’t belong to them, just to entertain themselves. This woman wants something exotic. Dangerous. She wants to get something out of this trip halfway across the galaxy other than a shipwreck and an aborted vacation. And the large white-haired, silver-eyed prisoner cuffed to his seat will fit that bill nicely.

  If I give her what she wants now, maybe she’ll want more when the shuttle is in motion. Which will help me cause a scene. Which may even get the guard to lean close to me in order to intervene…

  Unfortunately, my wrists are cuffed to the arms of my chair. So this is all up to her.

  Phoebe turns in her seat, and when she sees that Brennan and the guard are still arguing, she leans across the aisle and presses her lips to mine.

  “Mmm…” I groan. Then I shove my tongue into her mouth and give her the deepest, messiest tongue-fuck in the history of kisses. If that doesn’t keep her interested, nothing will.

  “That’s enough.” Gerald pulls her back, but he seems less upset about her kissing a convict than he is about the possibility of her getting caught.

  I don’t understand a man who’s willing to share his wife. On Tethys, unwed people fraternize as much as they like, and there is no stigma associated with the number of sexual partners a person has had or whatever kinky proclivities he or she might enjoy. Probably because the vast majority of the population is single.

  But marriage is sacred. It takes seven years of service—from each partner—to earn a marriage license, and we call it wedlock for a reason.

  On my homeworld, infidelit
y is punishable by death.

  That Phoebe’s husband would allow me to touch his wife in a sexual manner means he is a man without honor. But considering the way she’s looking at me, he’s more of a man than she deserves. On Tethys, she would be cast out to live in shame.

  Yet she’d likely outlive him. Phoebe is calcium-deficient, yet fairly healthy, despite mild substance abuse, and she’s closing in on the last of her fertile years. In fact, she’s ovulating. I know that just from having kissed her, the same way I know that Tirzah Dreyer is in perfect health and at the height of her fertile years.

  The health assessment taste-test is one of the strangest skills I gained from the alien DNA stitched into me like a genetic patchwork quilt. And Brennan has no idea the ability exists. Which is fine with me.

  Fifteen minutes later, the shuttle is full, and Phoebe is still staring at me with fuck-me eyes. The pilot raises the ramp and seals the door as he announces that we’ll be on Station Alpha in twenty minutes or so. The guard sinks into the empty chair next to me and buckles his belt. Dr. Brennan has moved to the seat across the aisle from him, and she’s watching Phoebe like a hawk. Because Phoebe is staring at me like she’d like to rip my clothes off with her teeth.

  We lift off, and I watch out the window as the crashed yacht grows smaller. There are dozens of shuttles swarming around the wreckage, each tasked with carrying high-profile and wealthy passengers off the surface of a planet waiting to eat them alive.

  When we’re clear of the wreckage, I turn to the guard seated to my left, casually assessing him. He’s on alert, focused on me. His holster is on his left hip and his com device is on his left arm, both out of my immediate reach, even if my wrists weren’t bound to the arms of my seat.

  But they are, and that’s the real problem. My cuffs are loose enough to prevent me from losing circulation, but they’re much too tight to get out of, unless I can dislocate my thumb without anyone noticing.