Samira

The alien man gently placed binders on my wrists that forced them to cross over each other in front of me. He then activated them, causing me to flinch as they tightened painfully and a thin layer of metal flowed to conceal the locking mechanism.

“I apologize for any discomfort. These were the only ones we were able to find capable of restraining races that can magically transform.” He inspected the restraints before taking a step back. I didn’t respond, not even to tell him that Sora was the only one of us who could shift. I was worried that if I told him that, then he might switch to a pair of binders that were more comfortable. If he did, then there was no guarantee that they’d be made of virinium like these were, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to break out of them as easily.

The bit of discomfort just wasn’t worth the risk, so instead, I just nodded solemnly at his explanation. Which seemed to be enough, because he turned to leave. “Follow me, please.”

I followed, but had to move at an awkward pace in order to keep up with his longer stride. When we got to the top of the stairs in the cargo-bay, he went left to the crew quarters instead of up towards the living area like I expected. “Where are we going?”

“A member of my crew was hurt in the raid, so I'm going to search your medical facility in order to find something that will help him.” He stopped in front of the open med-lab door before turning back towards me. “There are potentially a lot of tools in here that could facilitate your escape. Please wait outside so I don’t have to monitor you while I look for medical supplies.”

“I can help!” I shouted, a bit too desperately. So, I did my best to get my voice under control before I continued. “If your friend is really hurt, then time matters, right? I know where everything is, so I can find it for you faster.”

“Why would you want to help, if not as a ploy to escape?” The man cocked his head to the side as he asked.

“Because…” I paused to think about it for what was probably a suspicious amount of time, but I did eventually come up with some sort of excuse. “Because your friend was hurt by one of my friends, right? So, if I help you take care of him, then you won’t want revenge and you’ll treat us better.”

I wasn’t great at reading people during the best of times, but the man’s environmental suit made it even more impossible to figure out what he was thinking. Eventually, though, he responded. “Very well. Please gather all nano-boosters and healing potions, along with any medicine of particular value, while I monitor you. I would really rather not leave it aboard and have it go to waste.”

I nodded before rushing into the med-lab. Being restrained slowed me down a bit, but it wasn’t too difficult to open the cabinets. We had plenty of nano-boosters along with a few vials of healing potion, so I grabbed those and set them on the counter. Then I opened a few specific drawers but didn’t take anything out. Instead, I climbed up onto the nearby counter so I could reach the highest shelves in the cabinet. This next part was going to suck, and I really wasn’t looking forward to it, but I did feel a bit clever for thinking of it.

“Please be careful.” The alien man stepped towards me, but I waved off his concern.

“It’s alright, I do this sort of thing all the time. We actually keep the more expensive stuff up here.” I reached into the cabinet to grab a bottle of mystery pills, and let out a yelp as I ‘accidentally’ tripped. I made sure to knock over everything on the counter while landing squarely on the open drawers and flinging the bottle of pills across the room.

Falling from that height hurt, and to make matters worse, the drawer I landed on was full of sharp medical instruments. One of which was now sticking out of my left arm. I kind of just laid there cursing while the man stared down at me. “I asked you to be careful.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly used to climbing like that while I’m freaking restrained.” I channeled my inner Sora and held up my bound wrists dramatically. “I could have died.”

The man let out an exasperated sigh as he approached. “That would have been your own fault.”

He lifted me by my wounded arm and my vision started to fade as I scrambled to my feet. Then he sat me down on the bed before mercilessly pulling out the embedded tool. I cursed as I felt warm blood running down my arm. “What was that for?”

“It needed to be removed.” He responded almost mechanically.

“You didn’t need to be so rough about it.”

“Will your nanites be sufficient to seal the wound?”

I nodded, so he turned his back to me in order to start picking the medical supplies up off the floor. I hadn’t been expecting an opportunity to come so quickly, but there was no way I was going to pass it up. So, I leapt at him with the sonic scalpel I had pocketed from the drawer.

He spun around with impossible speed to grab my wrist right above the restraint, he then used another arm to grip my wounded bicep. I gasped in pain and dropped the scalpel into his waiting palm.

“I really wish you hadn’t done that.”

“You need us alive, and damaging Sora’s core might as well be killing them, so you’re not going to do that either.” I spat on the alien and he stood there for a moment before carefully wiping it off his environmental suit. Then he pulled me in close and, without warning, stabbed the sonic scalpel into my lower back. My body stopped responding. It was all that I could do just to continue breathing as he dropped me to the floor.

“Humanoid anatomy really is quite fascinating.” The alien went back to picking up medical supplies as he continued his lecture. “Did you know that nearly eighty-seven percent of humanoid races have a nerve-cluster near the tail-end of their spinal column that, if disrupted, will cause them to become fully paralyzed?” He finished picking up the nano-boosters and health potions before squatting low to be fully within my line of sight. “Even more interestingly, it doesn’t interfere with pain receptors. Now I ask you, what’s the evolutionary advantage of that? And if there isn’t one, then why is it prolific across so many races that supposedly evolved in isolation from one another?”

I glared up at him from the floor, and he seemed to deflate slightly. “It’s no matter, just a curiosity of mine. Now, you are correct that we cannot kill you or Sora, and yes, damaging their core would be functionally the same as killing them. So, we can’t do that either. But based on the amount your bicep has already healed, your nanites are quite efficient. I suspect you would survive an awful lot of injury before it became life threatening.”

He let the threat linger, and I felt a chill run down my spine as he continued. “How this ends has already been determined. Please don’t make it more painful than it needs to be for us to get there.”

Then he lifted me onto his shoulder and carried me out of the med-lab. Every step sent a new wave of pain as the scalpel still inside me was jostled, but I couldn’t even complain about it as he carried me up the stairs and into the living room.

“Whoa, Doc, you do realize we were supposed to leave her alive, right?” A new voice asked from outside my field of view.

“The paralysis is just temporary,” ‘Doc’ explained as he finally pulled the scalpel out of my back and dropped me into a sitting position on one of the couches. “It’ll wear off in around ten minutes, assuming my estimations of her nanites’ capabilities are accurate.”

“Hey, no skin off my back so long as we get paid. Mind saving my life now?” The strange-looking man asked. He was covered in fur from head-to-toe and wearing light body armor, but nothing else, and his face looked a bit rounded, almost primitive. He was also bleeding all over our couches from what looked like a sword slash that started on his shoulder and ended just above his waist. Honestly, the fact that he was even still alive was surprising.

“That looks worse than what Anali had described. Are you in much pain?” Doc set the medical supplies on the ground near the other man and started to inspect the wound.

“I was, but now I’m starting to lose feeling. So, there’s that, at least.”

“That is very concerning. Here, drink this while I administer a healing potion.” Doc handed the man a pack of nano-boosters while he slowly started to pour one of the potions evenly across the wound.

“Gross, why does it always have to be cherry?” The primitive looking man scowled at me as he sucked on the metallic pouch of nano-boosters. “Hey, you! Why didn’t you buy one of the better flavors?”

I frowned at him. It wasn’t like I was the one who picked out the nano-boosters. That had been Bryce, and I was pretty sure we mostly bought them for her, anyway. She was the one who was most likely going to need to use them. But hey, I was able to frown, which was probably a sign that the paralysis was fading.

“Hey, Ja’kol, you dead yet?” A female voice asked from what sounded like the kitchen.

“Nah, Doc got to me in time. Need something?” Ja’kol, the primitive man, shouted from the couch. I was just barely able to turn my head in order to see a blonde half-elven woman approaching. She was wearing light looking armor that covered her entire body, along with an array of belts and pouches strung across her waist and chest. I assumed this was the Anali that Doc had mentioned.

“Not right now, but I will in a moment. Castin is fishing Sora out of the engineering corridors, and we still have no idea where the rest of the crew are. Although, it looks like we’ve found Samira. Can she talk?” A feeling of dread washed over me as Anali spoke. I hadn’t been expecting them to find Sora so quickly, and the fact that they had so soon probably meant that they had always known how to get into the corridors.

“Doc paralyzed her. He says she’ll be fine in a bit, though.”

“Cool, let me know when she’s talking again. I’m going to search the captain’s quarters in the meantime. This whole damn place looks expensive. I’m sure there’s something worth taking in there.”

I sat on the couch watching Doc slowly pour health potions into the other man’s wounds while monitoring his vitals for what felt like forever. Until eventually, a half-orcish man came in from the kitchen carrying Sora to the couch to sit next to me.

Castin, the half-orc, was huge. Much larger than any orc I had ever seen. Which was why I thought he was only a half-orc. The other half must be a giant or something. He was also wearing heavy looking armor, and as far as I could tell, he wasn’t carrying any weapons. Not that I thought he would need any.

It was also around this time that I started to get some mobility back. I did my best to hide it, but Ja’kol seemed to notice right away.

“Hey, Anali! It looks like the paralysis is wearing off,” he shouted back towards the captain’s quarters. The half-elf returned a few moments later with the captain’s bedsheets slung over her shoulder in a bundle. It looked like they were full of art.

“Then I guess we can get started.” Anali dropped the bundle of stolen goods by the couch before pulling the coffee table up in front of me and sitting on it. “Hello Samira, I’m Anali and this is my crew. I’m going to ask you some questions, and I’d appreciate it if you’d answer them honestly so I don’t have to hurt you.”

I didn’t respond, or even move, but that didn’t seem to bother Anali as she started asking her questions. “First, I’d like to know where Bryce Virra and her demon have run off to.”

“She’s not a demon,” I responded on instinct and instantly regretted it as Anali smiled back at me.

“So, she can speak, and you’re right, I’m sorry.” Anali sat up a little straighter and carefully re-asked her question. “Where have Virra and her devil gone?”

I held my tongue. There was no way I would tell her that the captain and Thea were in the Hells. It’d be better if she thought they could be back at any moment. But my silence didn’t seem to deter her at all. “Alright, if you don’t want to answer that, then how are they going to return?”

They were going to teleport back, but again I wasn’t going to say that. I’d much rather they have to deal with Thea and the captain showing up out of nowhere when they finished their mission.

Anali leaned back and seemed to think for a moment. “Well, shit. In that case, at least tell me about the woman who attacked us earlier. She was surprisingly strong, and we had to waste the weapon we created for Virra just to take her down.”

“Did you kill her?” I couldn’t see Ithnaa from the couch, and Anali was talking about her in the past tense. Which made me surprisingly worried about the djinn’s life. She had stepped up to defend us without hesitating when she could have just teleported away. It gave me at least a little hope that she wasn’t just using us as leverage against Mother.

“Well, that’s a problem.” Anali stood up from the coffee table and grabbed her bundle of sheets. “Doc, grab Samira and pump whatever drugs you need into Ja’kol to get him walking again. Castin, you take Sora and the djinn. We’ll need to get teleportation dampening restraints onto her as soon as possible. I’ll prime the charges on our way out. We’re leaving and the ship isn’t coming with us.”

“Ch-charges?!” My head was spinning, and I had no idea what was happening as Doc picked me up from the couch.