Glancing one last time at her daughter, she
pulled on her robe then exited the room.
Confident of their safety on the carrier
and in space, the Galactic Alliance hadn’t assigned them any security. They’d
been housed in the guest quarters, three floors up from Bryce and the rest of
the Defenders.
No one patrolled the hallway at all, making
her passage past the communal bathroom and to the lift easy. “Second floor, Defender’s
Lounge,” she recited to the computer after the doors slid closed behind her. The
chamber softly glowed around her, no buttons or emergency phones on the walls
like elevators on Earth. While Bryce had told her to locate him in the lounge
if she had an emergency, she doubted he’d expect her so soon after he’d left
her. But she couldn’t share her objections in front of her daughter. If they
did end up on Hemera, she didn’t want Katrina to know how much she’d detested
life on her home planet.
“Destination reached,” the computer said in
a neutral tone, neither male nor female.
Peeking out, she spotted no one. With all
the Defenders she’d met on board, she’d expected to run into at least one of
them. Instead, closed doors surrounded the gleaming floor of the large,
circular room. Tables, chairs, couches, and other odd-shaped furniture rested
along the far wall, as if pushed there before one of the crew had cleaned the
floor.
Would she leave marks on the polished surface
if she stepped across it, evidence of her visit to Bryce? Or, worse, set off an
intruder alarm?
The lift door whooshed toward her. Lalia jumped
out of the way to avoid getting squished. She paused, waiting for an
ear-piercing wail, for all the Defenders to come rushing out to see what had
set off the alarm. Yet, an eerie silence hung around her, all the doors
remaining closed.
She tiptoed around the edge of the room,
searching the entrances for some marker indicating which one led to Bryce.
Nothing. They all looked the same, brushed metal without even a window to help
her find him. No number or any sort of identification to tell them apart from
each other. How did any of the Defenders find their own room?
