They led her down dark corridors, into the bowels of a huge ship that seemed more creature than machine; a vast mass of curving black walls and strange technology and closed doors made of intricate fiber-like materials.

I’m inside their ship!

The walls closed in on her, and Layla struggled to see in the darkness, which was softened only by the soft glow of an occasional blue indicator light.

The entire place gave off a distinctly subterranean vibe.

How utterly claustrophobic.

It seemed these Kordolians could see perfectly well in the dim light, but it took all of Layla’s concentration to avoid bumping into her silent guards. They moved in formation around her; the Sergeant in front, two either side, and one behind. Layla ignored the pain in her chest and ankle as she walked on, breathing heavily. These Kordolians walked fast, and only the threat of crippling pain from that cruel device around her neck kept Layla from slowing down.

None of them spoke. Now and then, they would pass other soldiers, all dressed in the same dark uniform. Curt salutes were exchanged, and at times the Sergeant would act deferent. That told Layla he wasn’t the biggest shark in this pond. She got the sense he was actually pretty low down in the hierarchy.

Eventually, they turned a corner, moving through a wide door that magically parted before them, its countless tiny, writhing fibers unravelling to reveal a cavernous room.

The light was a little brighter in here, thanks to a series of large tubelike structures that nestled against a curved section of the wall. They emitted a faint blue light, bathing the room in an eerie glow.

There was something inside the tubes…

Something familiar.

A gasp of horror escaped Layla’s lips before she could stifle it.

The Sergeant chuckled softly.

Bastard. He thinks this is funny?

Layla didn’t think it was funny at all that the dead bodies of two of her fellow passengers were floating inside those tall glass cocoons. They had been stripped and suspended in some sort of preservation fluid, their lifeless limbs and long hair swaying gently.

Oh my god.

Two passengers. The only other women who’d been on the doomed Malachi. It was said that exposure to the cold vacuum of space did strange things to the human body, but for some reason, these women looked perfectly preserved, as if they were just sleeping.

Layla knew better.

Nausea rose in the back of her throat. She’d spoken to both of them just before departure.

Layla hadn’t caught their names, because everyone traveling to Miridian-7 was seeking privacy, and not asking questions was the polite thing to do, but they’d chatted about Earth and the weather and how irritating it was to be followed by those unregistered surveillance drones.

And of course, they’d both recognized Layla, but they’d been polite enough not to mention anything about her other life, or the scandal that had engulfed her—the scandal almost every citizen in the Federation knew about.

How refreshing that had been.

How normal it had felt.

They’d been nice to her.

But now they were dead, suspended in those awful giant alien fish tanks like specimens in a museum… or a lab.

Was that going to be her fate, too? Layla started to tremble, and it wasn’t just because she was horrified. Her feet were still bare, and the black floor was cold. Really, the entire damn ship was fucking freezing, as if Kordolians preferred to exist in sub-zero temperatures.

Just when Layla thought things couldn’t get any worse, a monster emerged from the shadows.

“Ah. It’s about time, Captain Pradon. Thank you for not killing my specimen this time.” The one who spoke was half Kordolian, half… other, and for some reason, he spoke in Universal, not Kordolian.

As he stepped into the glow of the tanks, Layla froze.

Holy crap. This guy was tall and slender and possessed the deadest yellow eyes she’d ever seen. Sharp, narrow features presided over a thin slash of a mouth, and the slight curve to his lips—a pale imitation of a smile—made her skin crawl.

But what made him look so damn terrifying was the black metal that covered the right side of his face. It meshed seamlessly with his silver skin, reminding her of the ship’s strange unravelling fibre doors. The metal continued down his neck, disappearing beneath his pristine white robes.

This Kordolian was even more monstrous than Captain Pradon and his hard-faced crew.

Layla resisted the urge to flinch as the alien’s gaze snapped toward her.

“A female of breeding age,” he murmured, sounding mightily pleased with himself. “Finally. Now we are going to make some progress. No matter how hard he tries, Akkadian and his trained pack of Varhunds can’t protect all of you, can they, human?”

Layla blinked as she realized he was speaking to her directly—in Universal—and she had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

She glanced around the room, trying her best to appear frightened and confused. It should have been easy for her—on Earth, her entire life had been an act—but Layla was too shaken by what she’d just seen.

The half-metal Kordolian chuckled.

Really, what the hell did all these bastards find so funny?

“Oh, you don’t have to pretend anymore, child. I know you can understand me. My drone caught you speaking Universal before you were captured. Who were you talking with, human?” He caressed her cheek with his normal hand, gently dragging the tips of his razor-sharp claws along her soft skin.

A gentle-yet-threatening gesture.

Layla froze, her thoughts whirling. Disgust unfurled in her gut, making her want to retch, but there was no fucking way she was going to tell this mad cyborg-scientist about Enki.

The mysterious Enki didn’t know it, but the mere thought of him was the only thing keeping her sane right now.

A shadow of a whisper of a promise was keeping her alive in this dark, terrifying place, and she hadn’t even met the guy.

“I wasn’t talking to anybody,” she said slowly, carefully, injecting a sincere little tremor into her voice. Figuring it was pointless to keep up the charade, she spoke in Universal. “Just myself. That’s what happens when you end up stranded in space for weeks on end. You slowly go mad. You start talking to yourself.”

“Deceptive little human,” Captain Pradon hissed, anger flickering across his face. “So you can speak Universal.”

Without warning, the collar activated, plunging her into a world of searing agony.

Layla howled. The Kordolians watched her with looks of detached smugness, as if this sort of thing happened all the time.

“P-please stop,” she gasped, unable to take it any longer. It felt as if her head was being forcefully separated from her neck.

The mad scientist uttered a word to the Captain, and suddenly the pain was gone, leaving her drained, her legs turned into jelly. Layla’s vision went black. She collapsed to the floor, gasping.

Relief.

Despair.

Humiliation.

This was really happening. The kind of scenario that only played out in horror movies, or her worst nightmares… she was living it, and it was different to anything she could have possibly imagined.

For someone like Layla, who had been used to living like a fucking queen back on Earth, this was beyond brutal.

“Now you understand what happens to you if you disobey, or if you lie to us. And that is only the mild setting. Such a weak little thing you are. I still do not understand what Akkadian finds so fascinating about your kind.” The mad scientist shook his head as he squatted on his haunches beside her. He raked his cybernetic fingers through her long black hair and yanked her head back. “Understand this. I can make things much, much worse for you, human. Do not lie to me, ever.” His stale breath washed over her, adding a hint of bitterness to her misery. “I will ask again. Are you absolutely certain you weren’t talking to anyone else?”

“Th-there was nobody,” she whispered. “Nobody at all.”

The Kordolian stared at her long and hard, reminding her of the way a crocodile might size up its prey. “Even if you are lying to me, there is no help coming for you now. This is an alpha-class battle cruiser, and it is impregnable.” He laughed, a hollow, mirthless sound. “Only a demon could breach our defenses.”

The tiny flame of Layla’s hope grew just a little bit dimmer, but she didn’t allow it to flicker out. How could she have such faith when all she knew of Enki was the sound of his voice; when her captors were so fucking powerful and cruel?

Because I want to live, assholes.

No matter what she was forced to endure, Layla wanted to survive. Even if she never got to Miridian-7, even if she had to go back to the chaos on Earth, she didn’t care.

Suddenly, life on Earth looked pretty fucking good, and all the human-created hassles didn’t seem so bad.

The Kordolian released her, pushing her down so she was forced to slam her hands against the floor to avoid falling on her face. The pain in her ribs intensified, and Layla stared down the long, dark tunnel of despair.

It threatened to suck her in.

“What do you want?” she asked bitterly, picking herself up off the floor. She rose to her feet, ignoring the protests of her aching body, ignoring the faint electric tingle from the crippling device around her neck.

She looked straight ahead, refusing to show them the full extent of her suffering.

The half-metal creature’s face twisted into something resembling a smile. “This is the very last time I will allow you to ask questions, so let me explain it in terms that your simple human mind can understand.” He looked her up and down, his gaze coming to rest on her lower half. “For some infernal reason that only the Goddess knows, your species is genetically compatible with ours, but only an uncivilized soori bastard would actually want to physically mate you.” Disgust crept into his voice. “That’s why I need to study you. I need to know why you can do something that our females can’t.”

Genetically compatible? Mate?

Layla shuddered.

At least he seemed repulsed at the thought of mating with her. On Earth, Layla turned heads and drew stares whenever she walked into a room, but here, she was just another alien, a lowly being these oh-so-superior Kordolians wouldn’t ever find attractive.

Thank the fucking stars for that.

The mad scientist/cyborg/doctor/whatever-he-was turned to the soldiers. “Kash!” he snapped—it was obviously an order. Captain Pradon exchanged curt words with him, sneered at Layla, and stalked out of the room, his men following silently behind him in single file.

She glanced over her shoulder just in time to see the black fiber doors silently weave shut behind them, becoming indistinguishable against the dark curving walls.

There was a sense of finality to it all, as if Layla had just gone past the point of no return.

But instead of crushing despair, she felt something else.

Hatred.

It burned inside her chest like a solar flare, giving her strength. Her eyes snapped back to the scientist. He beckoned to her with his black metal finger. Come.

Layla glared at him, refusing to budge.

She realized she hated these Kordolians. She hated their smug sense of superiority and their mirthless laughter and the way they seemed to get off on her pain and humiliation.

She hated their arrogance, the way they thought they were God’s fucking gift to the Universe.

Actually, these Kordolians reminded her of someone back home, an asshole called Damien who had turned her life into a nightmare.

So when the half-metal creep shook his head, activating a small device he kept tucked into the palm of his cybernetic hand, a device that apparently controlled the god-awful collar around her neck, Layla was able to endure the pain that ripped through her body.

She focused all her energy on hating the man, and found it strangely rejuvenating. It gave her strength. Now she understood what Enki had been talking about when he told her to endure.

He obviously knew his own kind too well.

Now she understood why there had been such venom in his voice when he said these people were his enemies, and that was a good thing, because it gave her hope that not all Kordolians were alike.

As Layla gasped, blinking tears of pain from her eyes, she remembered the small knife she’d hidden at her back. The Kordolians must really not see her as a threat, because they hadn’t even bothered to search her or remove her jacket.

Her captor loomed over her. “Come now, human. You are well on your way to learning that any form of resistance against me is futile. I can cause you immeasurable pain, and I can make it constant. I can deaden your nerves and immobilize your muscles with the flick of a needle. I can sedate you so that you won’t be aware of a single thing, but that would be far too easy for you. What you need to understand is that like all the other lesser species in the Universe, you need to obey.” He delivered his little speech with fanatical intensity, as if he were trying to prove something to the infinite Universe. “Now get up and follow me, little human.”

There was a time when Layla had people at her beck and call, when a single link-command would have had her agent, her personal assistant, and her concierge all scrambling to attend to her needs.

She’d been on top of the world back then, but now she was reduced to this.

A fucking test subject.

Valuable only for the cells inside her battered body.

How fucking foolish she’d been to dismiss the very real dangers of the Universe, to believe the Infinity-8 sales reps and legal advisors when they told her the chances of accident or abduction were one in twenty-five million.

Or maybe she was just really, really unlucky.

Lucky to survive.

Lucky to be found.

But unlucky to be captured.

Layla was quickly losing hope that this mysterious Enki, who might have been just a figment of her delirious imagination, would come for her.

Even if he did, what were the chances he would turn out to be a demon, a creature strong enough to infiltrate this floating fortress and break her out?

Slimmer than getting hit by a micrometeorite storm, probably.

Slimmer than her emergency transmission getting picked up by a lone alien ship.

And slimmer than being captured and tortured and studied, all because her body apparently held the key to the survival of the Kordolian race.

Endure a little longer.

Oh, she would endure for now, but if she ever reached the point where there was no hope left, Layla would do her best to make sure she gave this pompous metal-faced asshole a taste of his own cruelty before she went down.

Because after what she’d gone through on Earth, she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

Never again.