Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 42969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 215(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 215(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
“I told you already—to gather blossoms from the tangeline vine,” Sylvie said quickly. “They’re for my research in spinal regeneration. Please—we didn’t mean any harm! If you’ll just let us go, we’ll be on our way and never tell anyone you’re here.”
Dr. Barbarous shook his head regretfully.
“Oh, I think not, my dear. I believe several planets have placed quite substantial rewards on my head—I can’t imagine you passing them up. Also, I need both of you for my breeding program. I’ve been running low on pure humanoid DNA so it’s actually quite fortuitous that you came here.”
“Breeding program?” Sylvie felt cold all over. “You’re not serious—you can’t be!”
“Oh, but I am.” He clapped his hands. “Mandrow, take her to the woman’s cabin,” he instructed the moss-man who had seen her and sounded the alarm in the first place. “And Chopclip, Pushplant—I expect the two of you to lock him in the new specimen room. I’ll begin my work on him immediately,” he added, nodding at Kross.
“What? No! No!” Sylvie cried. But it was too late. The moss-man had already wound his long fingers around her arm and was dragging her
8
SYLVIE
The moss-man named Manlow dragged Sylvie across the compound to one of the huge trees surrounding the glade. He touched the bark and a hidden door opened.
“In!” he commanded, and shoved her inside before slamming the door shut, leaving her in a dim room.
Sylvie stumbled…and ran right into someone.
“Hey—watch it!” a sharp female voice snapped.
“I…I’m so sorry!” Somehow she regained her balance and looked to see who she was talking to. It was a woman about her own age—at least, Sylvie thought she was. It was a little hard to tell since she was extremely strange-looking.
She had purple skin, thick curly white hair almost like wool, and slotted golden eyes with horizontal pupils. They put Sylvie in mind of a goat’s eyes. The woman also had two curving horns growing from the sides of her forehead. She was wearing a ragged tan gown that looked like it was made of some kind of untreated plant fiber.
“So, he caught another one.” It was a new voice.
Looking around, Sylvie saw it was coming from a different woman—presumably also a captive. In fact, there were three other women in the small room carved out of the tree trunk. Counting Sylvie herself and the woman she’d run into, that made five female captives altogether that Barbarous was keeping, she thought numbly.
Two of the women looked like the first woman, with purple skin, curly white hair, and curving horns. They were sitting together on one of the narrow cots that were pushed up against the far wall. Another woman was busy washing something in the small sink—she had pink skin that had strange growths coming out of it at the joints. It looked like she was growing clusters of tiny green and blue flowers from her elbows and knees, Sylvie thought. But that couldn’t be right, could it?
The last woman was sitting on the far bunk and Sylvie couldn’t tell what she looked like except that she had long, straight hair that was a mixture of green and gold strands. She had her back to the rest of the women in the room and was rocking back and forth, making a soft, keening sound.
“So what’s your name, newbie?” The woman Sylvie had run into was studying her with her slotted golden eyes.
“I…I’m Sylvie,” Sylvie said, not bothering to add her credentials. She didn’t think anyone in this room would care that she was a double PhD.
“Uh-huh. And how did old Barbie catch you?” the woman demanded. “Did he snare your ship in his space-net? That’s how he got Shredda and Lorna and me,” she added, nodding at herself and the other two women who looked like her.
“What? No. I came here to collect blossoms from the tangeline vine,” she said. “And do you really call Dr. Barbarous Barbie?”
The girl shrugged.
“Not to his face, of course. But that bastard has held us in this miserable tree trunk prison for the past three years—he doesn’t deserve any fucking respect if you ask me!”
“Three years?” Sylvie asked faintly. “But…didn’t anyone come after you? I mean, doesn’t anyone know you’re here?”
The girl whose name she still didn’t know shook her head.
“No—we were fleeing from the Flay’gobah system. Our planet was mired in civil war and we were trying to get out.” She sighed. “I wish now we’d stayed and taken our chances with the war!”
“It’s not your fault he captured us, Hersha,” the woman named Lorna said softly. “It’s nobody’s fault but his.”
“I still feel responsible. I was the one piloting the ship.” Hersha ran a hand through her thick, curly white hair. “If I had taken another route—”
“There’s no point in trying to rewrite the past—it’s over and done with.”