The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)(108)

The fuselage shook slightly as we lifted into the air. I sucked in another breath under the warden’s supervision, not trusting myself to speak, and she nodded approvingly. “While you are handcuffed to me, you will be silent and calm.” She spoke as if this were any other Tuesday and we were discussing the weather. “In exchange, you may get bathroom privileges and food and water. If you are not, then you can soil yourself and go hungry. Are we clear?”

I felt a burst of déjà vu, followed by a supreme stab of cold rage, and glared back up at her. “She just shot and left her own son for dead,” I stated flatly, but my heart felt like it was being stabbed over and over again with each beat. I tried to keep more tears from coming. I had to stay calm so I could get through this. “After she made him participate in an experimental program where they kept him in a cage and traumatized him for years. No—I am not going to be good for you, her, Elena, or anyone else. Monsters like that deserve nothing short of death.”

The larger woman opened her mouth to say something, her expression barely changing, when the heloship jerked and swung in midair, violently enough to cause me to bounce around in the seat and the warden to reach over me and steady herself using the wall. “What the hell was that?” I heard the pilot say.

If anybody responded, it was lost in the sound of a heavy, tectonic groan coming from the massive bay door in the back of the heloship. The warden over me leaned back, lowering her arm, and then began tugging me up using the chain connecting us.

“Something’s on the back,” Desmond said, whipping around and glaring at me. “Do you know anything about this?”

I couldn’t respond, just shook my head as there was another groan, and I heard the hissing sound of air rushing in as an alarm went off behind me. “I got a seal breech on the bay door,” the pilot announced as the alarm went silent with a crash.

The groaning continued, and I slowly backed up, away from the door, this time tugging on the guard’s arm. She looked over and then took a healthy step back as she realized what I was doing, opting to move with me rather than order me out of the control area. I saw her reach down into her thigh holster, pulling out her pistol. “Give me a weapon,” I said, but she didn’t acknowledge me as we continued to move back.

Lights flickered and then fell dark as the air noise began to intensify. “I’m going to shake it off!” the pilot said, and suddenly we were swinging from side to side. I reached out and braced myself on one of the exposed beams, sliding the tips of my fingers into the coarse webbing that was meant for cargo and holding on as best as my casted hand would let me, my body being flung back and forth against the various things restraining it. The creaking sound continued, the rush of the wind growing louder, and then suddenly sparks shot out from the sides of the wall by the cargo door.

There was a sharper, louder groan than before, a squealing of rending metal, and I felt the heloship shudder beneath my feet. Then the wind was rushing in from the open hatch, kicking up papers and sucking them out of it. I jerked back, my spine hitting the wall, as a dark figure swung into the rear. The figure moved, and I realized it was Solomon—he must have forced the hydraulic door open with sheer strength.

The warden next to me recoiled, and I slammed into her out of pure instinct, hitting her with my shoulder. Her gun went off, shooting over Solomon’s head, and he snarled and loped forward in a crouch. I spun away from her, trying not to get caught up in what he was about to do, but the chain held me fast, and the next thing I knew, I was flying in the air.

I hit the ground with a thud, and then felt an intense pressure on my wrist. I gasped in pain as the entire joint felt like it was about to disconnect, and looked over to see the warden slipping over the edge of the torn-open bay door. Before I could fully register the implications of what would happen if she fell, I jerked out my hand and grabbed her hip, arresting her fall and then yanking her back with a surge of adrenaline unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

Behind me, Solomon roared, and I heard gunshots going off. I focused solely on moving the warden I was attached to farther and farther away from the edge.

Glass shattered in the cockpit, and I fell over on top of the woman as the heloship bobbed and weaved. I turned toward it, keeping a hand on the now unconscious guard to keep her from dragging me back to the edge.

“Help me!” the pilot screamed as Solomon ripped her chair out from the brackets and tossed it aside. Her scream was cut short by the subsequent crashing noise. Solomon turned, surveying the room around him, his chest heaving.

When his dark eyes came across me, he kept still and looked at me, a raw, hopeless kind of pain in his eyes… and a kind of understanding. I saw his mouth moving, trying to form words.

He’d been following me, protecting me, just like he’d always done.

I opened my mouth to warn him, but then Desmond stepped into the doorframe, her back to me, blocking most of my view. I couldn’t see her face, but I could see Solomon’s, his eyes staring at the sight before him. I had time to wonder if he’d seen Desmond since he took her berserker pill—if he still remembered her as the leader of the Liberators, the woman whose cause he’d given his humanity fighting—

“Solomon—” I began, not sure what I was going to say.

Then Desmond made a snarling noise in front of me, her arm jerking up, and gunshots sounded—once, twice, a third time. Solomon stepped back, his hand going to his stomach. “No!” I found myself shouting. She was going to kill him. I looked around for something, anything—