Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 134725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
“Yeah,” I whispered back. “I tripped when I was running to hide and, and… then he dragged me by it.”
My knee had rugburn, too.
Zane growled as he looked at the ankle. “I’ll get you some disinfectant, ice, and medicine to reduce the swelling and take away the pain.”
I squeaked in protest and held tight to his shirt, glancing back toward the playhouse where the dead guy was.
“I’m not out of your sight.” His chin jerked toward the wall. “I’ll order things from this panel to tend to you.”
I reluctantly let go of his shirt.
He reached toward me and I frowned as he gently took the straps of my dress and re-tied them behind my neck. I blinked. I hadn’t realized they’d still been in my hands, that I’d been exposing my strapless bra. He looked at me soberly and then his palm cupped my jaw just briefly as he gave me a meaningful look that bled regret. He moved to the panel just a few paces away, hit the screen, then growled.
“Power’s out. Shit. Forgot. I’ll be back. Fast. Promise.”
My lip quivered. I didn’t want to be stuck here with the dead guy. And this room had gotten kind of dark. Soon, I was sure it’d be pitch black in here. I was surprised at how long dusk was taking to turn to night.
“No. Here.” One look at my trembling lip made him change his mind. He lifted me into his arms, saying, “I’ll have Nova come in and deal with that… fucking…” He clenched his jaw and his nostrils flared. He didn’t finish his sentence.
I bit my lip.
We were in the hall.
“Go on in, Nova. I have to get supplies. Tanya’s injured.”
A tall, blond man in a uniform reminiscent of a Victorian era police officer crossed with something sort of steampunk-like, was with two similarly dressed men there in the hallway. I saw him from the front and then from the back as they were leaned over two dead bodies. Long-in-the-back pleated cloaks with rounded hems at the front. Golden buttons. The two were standing over two men on the floor, helmet-covered heads face down, dressed in the same grey suits as I’d seen out the window.
“Okay, Zane.” The man’s eyes swept over me, filled with concern. Maybe something else, too. Curiosity?
The other men’s heads turned, and I felt quite small under the scrutiny of so many people.
“In my daughter’s playhouse. Toward the back.”
Zane carried me down to the end of the hall and up a winding staircase. I recognized the elevator and shorter hallway where a few hours ago I’d first met Ollie and Zane’s father. I saw the door to the roof was wide open, held by another uniformed officer, and Zane’s sky car was there beside another one. The other sky car was yellow with black symbols and a large, round light sat in the center of the roof. A flying cop car? It almost resembled an army tank more than a train car.
Two uniformed men carried a guy dressed just the same as the guy that’d hurt me to the cop car. He wasn’t conscious. Was he alive? As Zane carried me in the opposite direction, I saw them shove him into the black and yellow sky car. We went through a set of doors and were inside a big warehouse-like room with a conveyor belt system on the roof holding metal claws similar to the look of the massaging arms in the bathroom, yet bigger, and not with the human-like hands. There were no windows, so this area was dark, only lit by a light Zane shone from his phone. He flashed his light over a panel by the door and then we moved through racks filled with containers until we were at a larger panel on the wall. He held his phone over the screen, then he pressed his thumb against the screen a few times.
“Do you need to put me down?” I asked, jaw jerking toward a long counter at the far end of the space beside a long set of glass doors. His eyes met mine and the intensity in them hadn’t dimmed even a little.
“Why?”
“So you’ve got two free hands, to, um…” I gestured toward what I imagine was an electrical panel. It looked like one, though fancier.
Zane gave a shake of his head and then lights were on and everything began to power up. He took me back into the hall, which was all lit now, and he pressed the button for the elevator.
We were soon back inside the bedroom and he walked to the TV screen beside the black cabinet and pressed icons on the screen.
He put me on the bed, and a moment later, doors slid open on the black cabinet and Zane retrieved a small, c-shaped pillow, and a small metal tin. He sat on the edge of the bed and lifted my sore ankle onto his lap. I winced. He gently removed my shoe and wiped my ankle with a wet wipe that smelled of antiseptic and stung just briefly before going cool. He then opened the tin and smeared salve onto my ankle. It instantly began to numb, diminishing the throbbing, pulling pain. He dragged a pillow from the other end of the bed to use it to prop my foot up and then wrapped the c-shaped pillow around my ankle. It started numbing even further as warmth wrapped around the area.