Girl From Above #3: Trapped by Pippa DaCosta Read Free Book Online

Lyra’s more populated districts.
    “Are you hurt anywhere besides the obvious physical wounds?” she asked.
    “No more than usual.”
    She, on the other hand, looked like she’d been dragged behind a shuttle. Her jacket was torn, her legs were scraped, and her knuckles were bleeding. “You?”
    “Considerably,” she deadpanned.
    “Can you make it back to Starscream ?”
    “Yes, though it won’t do us any good. I couldn’t hack the port authority. Tarik ambushed me in the datacloud.”
    I didn’t care to ask how the fucking synthetic could be waiting in the cloud. The how’s didn’t matter. We were trapped, and he’d come for her, and me, again.
    “Okay … that’s …” I scratched around my head for something coherent and failed, my sentence fading away. Everything was fucked up, that’s what it was, but I had to think, to move forward, even if all I wanted to do was stop. “ Starscream’s hull is impenetrable to any weapon Lyra’s finest can muster and no projectile weapons are permitted here. He’d need cutting equipment to get in, and they don’t sell that shit in casinos. We’re safer on the ship than anywhere else.”
    Her eyelashes fluttered and her focus drifted.
    “Synth?” I swapped sides to sit beside her. “Don’t switch off again. I’m not dragging your unconscious ass back to Starscream .”
    Her lips twitched. “Did my nonresponsive state frighten you, Captain?”
    She already knew the answer. “Fuck no. I was contemplating leaving you there when you found me heaving my guts up in the bathroom.”
    We fell into an uneasy quiet, interrupted only by the electric hum of the pod and the occasional jolt as it jumped its tracks.
    “I gotta say,” I mumbled, “this is one of my more eventful trips to Lyra.”
    “Do you come here often?”
    Some chat-up lines never die. I had to smirk, though she’d never get the reference if I tried explaining it to her. “Sure. Lyra runs are lucrative. The heavy fleet presence scares off novice smugglers.”
    “Tarik will not stop,” she said with a soft sigh. “It is clear he’s been tailing me since Janus, probably utilizing my every connection with the datacloud.”
    “Following the breadcrumbs.”
    She gave me that blank look, the one she often used when I’d reference something she didn’t understand. I smiled, knowing an explanation would be more trouble than it was worth. “Everyone wants a piece of you, synth.”
    “Do you?”
    My smile slipped. I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant. “Why are the nine systems’ most notorious fighting over you? It’s gotta be more than Chitec’s reward credits.” Better to ask that question than to answer the one in her eyes.
    “Because I have k-knowledge.” The stammer wasn’t the first I’d heard from her. It happened whenever the subject of whatever secret shit she had in that head of hers was mentioned. If I pushed for more, she’d breakdown, lose herself to the memory of what had happened to her on Janus. Her past couldn’t help us.
    I settled back in the seat and let my eyes close. The image of Jesse dangling in Tarik’s grip immediately spilled into my thoughts. I jolted at the moment he killed her and snapped my eyes open, my blood rushing in my ears. #1001’s cool fingers brushed across the back of my hand and curled into my palm. I didn’t look, didn’t move. She gave my hand the slightest squeeze. The gesture was entirely human, a selfless gesture offering comfort. It terrified me.

Chapter Four: #1001
    T he spider-crawl of Tarik’s attention skittered over me as soon as we stepped from the pod. He somehow simultaneously existed in the cloud and here, and watched me through both locations.Dismissing my own diagnostic warnings regarding my general state of disrepair, I scanned the busy dockside but couldn’t see him and had no intention of delving back into the cloud to find him. He was there, but holding back. A warning. He knew where we were.
    Starscream’s