Emma's Heart (Brides of Theron 3) (9 page)

She leaned forward and braced her hands on either side of the walls in the vent then jumped. The books that were under her feet slid out from underneath her and crashed to the floor. She was kicking out her legs to help her get the top portion of her body to slide further into to the vent while walking her hands along the walls. Finally, after one last kick, her body was all the way in the air duct.

She rolled over onto her back to catch her breath and rest for a moment. She stared up at the silvery steel ceiling that reflected her image back to her. She laughed at the image she saw staring down at her, “I am so crazy to be doing this. Shit, I didn’t think about bringing a light.” She bit her bottom lip as she thought about leaving the vent and returning to Brylon’s rooms in search of a light to bring with her. “Too late now,” she rolled onto her hands and knees then proceeded to crawl further into the ductwork. It wasn’t as small as she had thought it would be on the inside, she actually had room to sit up against the wall. But, not enough room to stand. She crawled forward until she came to a junction, and she was not sure which way to go. Glancing behind her, she could faintly see the light coming from the bathroom she
came in at. In front of her, she had three options that she could choose from. She decided to keep heading straight until she reached the next junction. She figured that if she had turned left or right it would just lead her over other living quarters and not the area that she needed to go.

Amazingly enough, the vents were not completely dark since there were tiny glowing lights every few feet along the top of the duct. At times, even more light would shine into vents when she passed near an access panel. Occasionally, she could hear the sound of voices echoing through the vents. She wasn’t sure how long she had been crawling for, when she needed to stop and give her knees a break. She sat back and leaned against the wall to catch her breath for a few minutes.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,” she said to herself, “I have absolutely no idea where I am.” She had thought her plan would work without a doubt, but now sitting in the confines of the vent system, she pretty sure that she was hopelessly lost. With no windows, there was absolutely no way for her to tell if she was close to the ship’s docking bay or not. While she was looking out the window last night, the bay didn’t really seem that far away. But, right now the docking bay seemed as far away as Earth was.

Taking a deep breath she got back on her knees and continued to crawl through the maze. The more she crawled, the more her emotions started to get the best of her. Tears started to blur her vision as she cursed silently to herself. She cursed everything from the day she was born to the day that the three aliens decided to take it upon themselves to change her life forever. Why had life treated her so unfairly?

“Keep going Emma. That’s all you can do now,” she muttered to herself. A cool breeze flowed past her as the ventilation system circulated the air in the ship. She would probably get a bit chilled if she stayed in the vents for an extended period of time because she wasn’t wearing the right kind of clothing. But what was the right kind of clothing to wear when crawling around an alien ship vent system, she thought to her herself.

She came up to another vent cover and as quietly as she could, she crawled over to see what she could see through the thin slats. It was an office of some type with a large round table in the middle that was surrounded by chairs that were now occupied with several of the so called warriors. They appeared to be in a meeting because there was one warrior who was standing as he addressed the others.

The warrior that was speaking, she instantly recognized as one of the men that had invaded her home, but she wasn’t sure who he was. He must be someone of great importance because he had the undivided attention of the others in the room.

    “Just make sure that you do not let your females travel around the ship unattended until you are fully mated. We don’t want any warrior who did not buy a mate at this point to get any bright ideas. This is really more for safety precautions for the time being. We are planning on going back down to the planet and acquiring more females. That mission has yet to be determined so for the time being keep your females close, are there any questions?” The speaker asked as his eyes moved over the room.

“Commander, is there any word on the rest of us being allowed to go down to the planet’s surface to retrieve our mate’s belongings?” Emma edged closer so that she could see who had asked the question.

“Not yet, but I am expecting an answer any time now when the council convenes.” Emma stared at the commander. He was one of the largest men she had ever seen in her life. She really didn’t get a good look at him in the rain the other night, because she had been hanging upside down for most of their run through the rain.

“That’s all I have to talk about now. Does anyone else have any questions?” No one else did as she heard the sound of chairs scraping across the floor as the men rose to leave the room. Another voice that she recognized came from somewhere in the room, but she couldn’t see where.

“Commander, may I speak with you for a moment?”

“You can drop the commander, Brylon,” the Zeb said, “What’s up?”

Brylon leaned against the table shaking his head, “Man, are you having problems with your mate?”

The commander threw his head back and laughed, “Am I having problems with my mate? Put it this way, Avery started to throw things at me last night.  Her attack on me escalated to the point that I had to call Zane for a sedative. She nearly took my head off with the plant,” he laughed again while shaking his head, “What’s yours doing? Throwing knives at you?”

“Gods, I hope it never gets to that point, but no. Emma just won’t talk. She ignores me for the most part, but when she does speak to me, it’s to insist that I bring her home. I went to get her stuff and something that I said pissed her off again and…”

Zeb interrupted him, “Don’t tell me you went down to the surface without letting anyone know.”

“Sorry, it was right after you and I had gotten Avery’s things. I thought that maybe if I got Emma’s things, she would warm up to her situation here with me.”

“You should have informed me, or at least asked me to help you, you fool. What would you have done if something had gone wrong and no one knew where you were?”  The commander looked annoyed with Brylon.

“I had it all under control, Zeb. Nothing went wrong anyway. I don’t know what I should do to get through to Emma?” Brylon was pacing back and forth in front of the table.

“Brylon, I hate to say it, but I think we are both in the same situation. I think our mates need time to accept their new lives. But for now, let’s go have a drink.” Zeb slapped Brylon on the back.

“That sounds like an excellent idea. I’m buying.” Both men walked out of the room leaving Emma alone again in her hiding spot above the room.

She pushed herself away from the vent cover and laid still for a little while as she thought about what she had just overheard. Brylon was seeking out advice on how deal with her. She knew how to deal with Brylon’s problem quite easily.  They could just put her back where they found her. It was a very simple solution.

“If he thinks that I am just going to accept this so called new life, he’s got another thing coming,” she was talking to herself again as she moved back and to the left. She would stay in the vents for as long as it took her to find the damn docking bay even if it killed her.

****

After having a couple of drinks with Zeb, Brylon headed back to his quarters. He wanted to have a talk with Emma about where things would go from here on out. He was more than willing to give her the time that she needed to adjust.  That is, if that’s what she wanted, but he was going to open up the communication lines between the two of them.

Inside their quarters everything was quiet. The door to his office was open so he thought she was in there with the lights off. As he entered the office, the lights automatically came on as they usually did, but something was not right. He looked around to see why his things looked out of place. That was when he noticed that several of his books were missing from the bookshelf.

“What the hell?” he walked to the shelf and stared at the empty spaces. “Why the hell does she wa
nt books that she can’t read?” He was really perplexed now because all of his books were written in the Theron language. Maybe, she just wanted to look at the ones that had pictures in them. He tried to convince himself, but wasn’t succeeding. Leaving his office he went straight to the bedroom and flung open the door. Again she was nowhere to be found. His heart jumped just before he stormed over to the bathroom door to go in, but the door was locked.

He softly knocked before asking, “Emma, are you in there?” He waited for the reply, but none came. He knocked harder in case maybe she had fallen asleep in the tub, “Emma, open the door.” His voice was growing louder as he continued to knock. Still no answer came from within, so he took a few steps backwards and kicked his leg at the door frame instantly causing the door to fly back and slam against the inside wall.

“Emma…,” he was shouting now. He pictured her drowned in a tub of water as he rushed in towards the tub. Upon finding the tub empty, he swung around frantically taking in the entire room. The shower stood empty, the relieving station was vacant, but on the vanity and the floor in front of it were the missing books from his office. He bent to pick up the books on the floor and sit them on the vanity. He looked at his self in the mirror wondering where the hell she was. That’s when he finally noticed the vent cover sitting in the sink.

“What the hell,” he said to his reflection in the mirror, “She’d better not have gone into there.” He easily jumped up on the vanity and put his head to the vent shaft and shouted, “Emma!” as loudly as he could, “Emma!” He shouted her name a few more times before giving up. What in the hell would possess her to go into the vent system of the ship. It wasn’t safe in there. Some of the shafts in the ductwork dropped off without warning if one wasn’t paying attention to where they were going, and she could be seriously injured if that were to happen to her.

He reached for his communicator to inform Zeb of what the little Earth female had managed to do, “Zeb, we got a small problem here.” He waited for Zeb to reply while he stood on the vanity with his head through the vent.

“What kind of problem?” Zeb’s voice boomed through the speaker.

Rubbing his hand over his eyes before he spoke, Brylon shook his head replying, “My mate has managed to escape into the vent system.”

“What? How in the hell did she do that?”

“It appears as if she pried off the vent cover, and used some of my books to stand on so that she could crawl into the vent.” Brylon jumped down in one fluid movement then stormed out of his quarters. “I am heading to the engine room. Hopefully, I will be able to track her heat signature in the vents from the computers there.”

“I will meet you there.”

Brylon was furious with Emma. Did she feel the need to escape so badly, that she had to endanger herself by entering the ship’s ventilation system? This was not good. Not only could she hurt herself in there, but in certain areas of the ship there weren’t any access panels to the ducts where she or anyone else could get in or out. His only hope of finding her was by looking for any heat signatures within the vents that shouldn’t be there.

He got to the engine room in record time. A couple of his valued staff members were working on one of the air handling systems that needed repairs. They stopped what they were doing and looked at their anxious boss.

“Is something wrong, Sir?” Roran, one of the senior crew members asked while walking over to where Brylon had sat down at the computer work station.

“Well, for starters my mate has crawled into the vent system,” Brylon replied to the question as he started his search.

“Are you kidding me?” Roran said as he looked back at the other crew members who were slowly closing in around the computer station. “Boss, she can really hurt herself in there. I don’t even like going in there.”

Just then the door to the engine room slid open and in walked the commander.

“You find anything yet, Brylon?” Zeb walked up behind Brylon and watched the screen that Brylon was working with. “You need to find her as soon as possible.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“Just focus on finding her,” Zeb said.

Brylon franticly programmed commands into the computer. The vent system finally came into view on the screen. Shafts and vents crisscrossed throughout the ship as freshly generated air was circulated within the ship. The air system was designed to circulate and filter the air to the best possible quality standards throughout the ship. 

The computer was scanning each and every shaft as it made its way through the diagram of the system. Nothing yet unusual was to be found.

“I am going to…Hell, I don’t know what I am going to do to her when I find her,” Brylon was speaking to himself as he watched the screen with his eyes wide and his fingers on the keyboard that was on the desk.  He was keeping this façade of anger in front of the other crew members when inside his heart was breaking.  Emma wanted so desperately to leave him that she tried an escape route that she had to know might bring about her death.  Was he such a bad guy that she would actually choose death rather than spend the rest her life with him?