Kelly slowly opened her eyes, focusing on a metallic gray ceiling. She lay on her back on something cold and hard. A metal table perhaps. That deeply rooted instinct, the voice all animals shared that warned them a predator was nearby, told her to keep still and quiet.

A youthful man in white clothing stepped into view. His face was soft, like he couldn’t grow a beard, yet he looked to be at least thirty years old. His brown eyes focused on her shoulder. The memories of everything that happened in Cairo returned to her in a flood, but she was stunned and confused over how she’d gotten here.

Keeping her eyes pointed at the ceiling, she perceived a blue light passing over her wound, the pain vanishing. Acid flooded her stomach, and it felt like her heart turned into a block of ice in her chest.

She was in the Anunnaki ship! The fog cleared from her mind, and she remembered entering the vessel with the possessed teens. She’d been so delirious from her injury that she could hardly believe she’d made it so far. But then what happened? She must’ve passed out, and they brought her here.

Her instincts were correct—laying still was the right thing to do. Hoping she hadn’t done anything to give herself away, she congratulated herself for making it into the vessel. With any luck, the rest of her team was already in the reactor compartment.

Unable to look around, she wondered if she was alone with the Anunnaki doctor. She couldn’t hear anything, but there could be rows of operating tables on either side of her, Anunnaki quietly working beside each one.

Her bloody tank top stuck to her chest, tugging uncomfortably on her skin as it dried. At least he hadn’t needed to cut her shirt away to treat her. She’d be forced to strip out of her clothes in front of the aliens soon enough. Meanwhile, she had to resist the urge to reach up and tug the material away from her body, no matter how irritating it became.

The doctor standing over her was the first of the enemy she’d encountered. While she’d feared the Anunnaki since meeting the rebels, she’d also fantasized about taking revenge. She suppressed a desire to attack him. If they were alone, she was certain she could kill him. The neural upload had furnished her with hundreds of ways to take lives with her bare hands. It would happen so fast that he’d barely have a moment to be surprised.

Unfortunately, until the reactor was shut down, she had to pretend to be one of the possessed teens. He finished treating her, and the table tilted upright. A footrest at the bottom kept her from sliding off.

Once she was in the vertical position, she discovered she wasn’t alone with the doctor. A line of teenagers with slack expressions walked by in front of her. Nervous that the alien who’d just treated her was watching, she stepped forward and turned left into the line. She kept her eyes glued on the kid ahead of her, following the other human slave patients. In the periphery of her vision, she saw injured teenagers enter from the other side and step onto the tilting examination tables after the treated ones stepped off.

The line turned out of the brightly lit healing factory and took Kelly down a darker passageway. It opened into a large holding chamber filled with possessed teens, probably the one in which she’d passed out earlier.

Kelly fell in the ranks behind the patient ahead of her, waiting for the power failure that would set these slaves free. She prepared what she’d say to the teens to get them to attack the Anunnaki. It wouldn’t take much. Pointing out the aliens as the ones who’d killed their parents ought to get quite a few of them fired up in a hurry. With any luck, too much time hadn’t been lost while she was unconscious, and she’d get her armor before the reactor was shut down.

An alarm sounded and lights started flashing overhead. Excitement surged in her veins, and her mind grew clear and focused, as it did when she was attacked by the skin-faces. Kelly kept her eyes forward and her face slack, knowing she had to appear possessed until after the power was cut.

Surveying the closest soldier in her peripheral vision, she planned her attack. The Anunnaki were weaker than humans were. In spite of the armor, her target appeared smaller than she did. Kelly was confident she could take the soldier’s weapon. Then she’d turn and fire on the Anunnaki on either side of her. She would show no mercy. The aliens were responsible for the death of her family and of so many other families on Earth and across the galaxy. How many innocents had they slaughtered? How many teens of different species had they turned into slaves? She let the anger grow in her, ready to fuel her aggression when the time came for attack.

Hopefully, one of the teens would come out of it fast and, without much effort, she could convince them to pick up a rifle and join the fight. She’d never liked how so much of the mission seemed left up to chance, but she came to terms with the odds being against them early in the brutal training.

“Man battle stations,” a female voice said through the intercom at a pause in the alarm. “Emergency lift off.”

What was going on? The ship trembled, and she guessed it was breaking away from its pyramid docking station. Panic gripped her, though she managed to keep the dazed expression on her face. The Aussies must’ve failed—the ship was flying away. She studied the kids around her. They were still in a deep trance—no chance she’d recruit them to fight. She couldn’t let the ship take off—she had to attack. But she was unarmed and the Anunnaki soldiers had full power to their suits. Probably given some command through the speakers in their helmets, they lifted their rifles to their shoulders and took aim at the slaves.

Was the rest of her team dead? Had they been captured? Nothing in her training prepared her for this. Kelly focused on her breathing to maintain a calm demeanor. It was nearly impossible for her to keep still and not do something, but she’d be blasted if she made a move. The ship trembled a final time and became stable. She sensed it was airborne. It was carrying her away from the Earth, away from Nat.

Her eyes grew moist with frustration, but she accepted there was nothing she could do right now. She’d have to bide her time and hope the rest of her team had not been discovered.

“The other ships were attacked and disabled,” a quiet voice to her left said.

In the periphery of her vision, she saw an Anunnaki Shock Troop soldier had stepped out of a narrow passageway and was speaking to another soldier who stood guard by the wall of the chamber.

“Rebels?” the soldier being spoken to asked incredulously. “How is that possible?”

“We’re going to run neural and biological scans on every recruit,” the Shock Trooper continued, ignoring his subordinate’s question. “Keep your people on high alert. Assume there are enemy insurgents on this ship.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kelly’s blood ran cold. She and her team were trained to pass the general inspection that all the slave recruits endured, but they couldn’t hide that they weren’t under the influence of the slave gene if the Anunnaki subjected them to a closer examination. Terror and panic washed over her, but she kept her head. She would do her best to stay undercover. She sure as hell wasn’t going to give herself away by freaking out and attacking the enemy too soon, though that was what every cell in her body wanted to do at the moment.