[Christy]

  “Run!”

  “Wha? How?”

  Her question was answered only by the rumble of machines and a slight thud.

  Crova dark vision was beyond terrible. She couldn’t see a thing. If it wasn’t for the girl behind her guiding her straight on an even path, she would have been falling all over herself. Being told to run only served to raise her heartrate.

  ‘What could he possibly see that was worse than that creature?’

  More rumbling followed that silence.

  “Pup. Follow. Bring that one.”

  Clearly the massive creature and the girl had no trouble seeing. She didn’t know why she had been brought to this spot only to then be brought to another spot. That didn’t make much sense.

  But then nothing about this made much sense.

  They eventually made it somewhere where the girl had to help her through a door. More machine sounds followed and a bit of silence. Then the lights came up and she saw Baylor crumpled against the wall.

  She rushed over to him and checked his breathing. He didn’t seem hurt, but she had never seen the man stop. Even when they were supposed to be sleeping, he was always tossing or checking things. She loved the man, but off was not something he was capable of.

  It worried her.

  “What happened to him? I will sit and listen but please don’t do anything else to him.”

  “Magic.”

  She looked at the creature in bewilderment. Had she heard that right?

  “Um, I think he just passed out. It happens. Also, he did all the things, don’t blame us.”

  ‘It happens?! Passing out doesn’t just happen!’

  She couldn’t argue the other points though. She had been scared when he grabbed her and pulled her back. When she saw the creature behind them, her knees had almost buckled. She had thought his plan was suicidal and was shocked again when he ignored her and ran at the creature. She had only seen him move that fast a few times, using the famed Canirean agility to its fullest, and it seemed he was in full form today.

  She didn’t see how he ended up on the floor. The creature clearly didn’t care for a famed anything.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  It also clearly didn’t care about the laws of physics either. The creature seemed thin. Tall but thin, built more for speed than for any kind of power. When it had picked up Baylor like he was a child, she had been stunned. The creature moving him around as if he weighed nothing and still walking at a pace that was hard to follow. Clearly some kind of advanced robot or technological wonder. Something of an impossibility.

  An impossibility that was set against them.

  They had been caught. Walked right into a trap so obvious they had seen it coming and second guessed themselves.

  She took a shaky breath and looked around. They seemed to be in some sort of meeting room. A table and chairs present. She could see an ultra-violet symbol for a possible panel, but she didn’t recognize the mark. She did her best to sit between her unconscious partner and the others in the room.

  “Alright, we can accept that blame. But we didn’t exactly want to come here either.”

  The girl didn’t seem to like that answer. Her brows coming down and her eyes less than pleased.

  “If you didn’t want to come, why did you come. I didn’t ask for him and you were the one that wanted to see the ship.”

  She took another shaky breath. This wasn’t looking good for her. Everything that had happened had thrown her off. She shouldn’t be having such a hard time with a young girl. She didn’t normally make a mistake that bad and she couldn't afford to make them here.

  ‘Clearly I am not in the right state of mind for a good negotiation. It might be best to go with bluntness instead. I am too rattled to try and out maneuver both of them.’

  “Fine. Everything is our fault. What do you want from us. We don’t have anything to give you, you know.”

  The girl clearly didn’t expect that. A mixture of surprise and confusion on her face as she looked at the creature.

  “Pup, bad talk. Not trade. Small things problem.”

  “Wha-! She said she was a negotiator. It isn’t my fault she is weird. I can’t do better if you don’t tell me the plan!”

  She looked back and forth between the two. Clearly the girl was not in charge.

  “Say, it might be better to just let your captain deal with me, right?”

  “Uh, captain? Do you mean Moose?”

  That seemed to get a reaction out of the creature. She wasn’t sure she wanted the creature to react, but it was good information.

  “No. No Moose for small thing problem. Find trade. Find talking person. No bad talk. No problem Moose.”

  It seemed like whomever this Moose was, she was unlikely to meet them without the permission of the creature. Something they didn’t appear to be getting anytime soon.

  “I found the talking person, it’s her!”

  As the girl pointed at her and the creature turned to follow the finger, she had a sinking feeling.

  “Problem person? Fine. Now find trade.”

  “What? How am I supposed to find a trade if I don’t know what I am trading?”

  The creature shrugged and seemed to not care about that detail.

  “Not Kitty problem. Talk talking person. Moose give orders.”

  This seemed to stump the girl.

  There was an entire dynamic here that she wasn’t seeing. She didn’t know if the creature belonged to this ‘Moose’ person or if that was what its handler was called, but it was clear that the hierarchy didn’t include these two. The girl was just a patsy or disposable pawn, while the creature was just muscle. They didn’t have any information to give.

  “Is this what I am supposed to trade?”

  Or maybe not. The girl had taken a paper out of her clothing. It was so odd that she was taken aback.

  ‘Only rich eccentrics use paper. Where did she get that?’

  The girl passed the paper to her and the creature seemed to have expectations now. As she looked down at the paper, wary of the creature’s sudden interest, she was confronted with what could only be a child’s list of metals. The letters were poorly written and the spelling was atrocious, but she could make out the intended meaning.

  Barely.

  ‘This is going to be a long negotiation’

  She sighed and settled in for what she expected to be the most painful negotiation of her life.