Nightfire Warriors - A Space Opera

47. Sleuthing With The Enemy

I flinch when he yells at me. "They wanted to know where my dad is," I explain slowly. Everybody listens to me fascinatedly. "I was supposed to meet with Kor but got out of there before I had a chance to. They didn't kidnap my dad after all."

"Is the tracking device still in your stupid, little napper?" A'Dimsyte asks.

I nod, confessing.

A'Dimsyte takes a long pause to stare at me, as if he doesn't believe me. "Take him to the surgical room," he orders. "Pull the parasite out of his head and destroy it, so these invasions stop happening." The Seeker Leader marches away angrily, his temper flaring. "And put them in a damn quarantine!"

Abigail, more grim than usual, takes a loose strand of her hair out of her face. "Well, well, well," she sighs with a disappointing tone. "I think we have more things to talk about. Like how our Nightfire spacecraft arrived there undetected. Kendall, you seem to know all about that. You keep telling me this crazy lie that Frankie—"

"Are we really going to argue about this now?" Kendall asks reasonably. "In front of a warrior he's competing against?"

"No, Abigail. She's right. I saw Frankie at the Cluster's castle." They both look at me in disbelief, and Kendall, who makes the accusation in the first place, is the most startled. "He took the space—"

"Sag!" Abigail stops me maliciously. "Head to your surgery, and I don't want to hear another word about my top warriors from anyone ever again! Are we clear?"

When we're finally dismissed, I notice Lily leave with JT. Not sure where they're headed off to, but it feels like another rejection.

During my surgery, I'm awake the entire time, but don't feel a single thing thanks to the drugs. The Healers and their state-of-the-art medical equipment puts me in good hands. Their knowledge and expertise are more extraordinary than the doctors on Earth, so they're able to do the procedure within a matter of minutes. To distract me from knowing about the fact my head is dissected open, one of the Healers tries to tell me jokes to lighten up the mood. They seem to work, and she gives me a lollipop after the surgery.

My head is wrapped in a bandage, and they used Skin Spray from where they made the incision. It's amazing the drugs they've give me aren't giving me much side effects. No headaches. No after medication and no stitches. Within a few hours, my head will be back to normal, and I won't notice the scar afterwards.

Kendall pulls me aside outside the recovery room, immediately after my surgery ends. "You saw Frankie?" she asks, wanting to make sure what I said the first time was true.

I nod in a haze. "Yes, and I think he was with Isabelle!"

"Isabelle?" Kendall gasps. "Her, too? That's scandalous! Did you confront them?"
I shake my head. "No—"

"What?" Kendall is appalled. "For heaven's sake, Sag. Why?" She puts her hands up in disbelief. "You didn't even say hi to them?"

"You weren't there, Kendall," I tell her. "I panicked. I wasn't sure—"

"No, don't give me excuses," Kendall snaps. "You don't get to do that. Now we don't have any proof that they were there! Come on, Sag! We could have had caught him in the act! You could have figured out how he got there! Or maybe how they got out—Exactly..." she adds questionably. "How did you guys get out?"

"With the spacecraft," I answer. "JT found it; I think on his GPS?" It sounds like a question because I have no idea what his monitor is called.

Kendall narrows her eyes at me and folds her arms across her chest. "Huh," she says. "But you stole Frankie's ride. If Frankie is the one stealing the spacecrafts, how did he get out this time? I mean, I know he's going to be at the bunkers tomorrow and pretend like nothing happened. And there couldn't have been another way out."