Jumped

The element of surprise backfires

Image public domain, modified from original.

Someday, Jacey Komarov would be free. Free of Arne Slocum, that is. Until then, she’d be repeatedly bruised, scraped, burned, marooned — maybe even killed a few times — all for the unsatisfying reason that Slocum couldn’t stop tinkering.

Like now.

“I’ll get us out of this,” Slocum assured her in his unassuring seventeen-year-old voice. A…