Page 25 of Ava Greasemonkey

Feeling self-conscious, staring at him when he didn’t say anything more, Ava shook the meal tray. “We guessed this is what you would be alright eating. Is there anything else I can give you?” There wasn’t much she could do, but it felt wrong to not try to do something small.

Vox blinked. “This is fine. Fruit if you have it.”

Ava nodded and slipped his tray in.

Vox took it and slid the dirty one out. She put it on the cart and murmured her goodbye, afraid to dawdle any longer.

The Vorbax in the leftmost cell still ignored her as she pushed a new tray in. She now believed he was only feigning sleep everytime she looked at him. He apparently became tired of the mess the pile of old trays had been making as those were all shoved out of his cell and spilled into the narrow hallway.

Ava took a minute to pick them up and placed them in her cart until it was in danger of being unbalanced. It would probably take two trips to clear them all out. She stacked the ones she was unable to fit in a neat pile next to his cell for the next crew to handle.

Nodding to Vox, she started her way out, pushing the squeaking cart carefully with it being so overfull. She stopped when the Vorbax on the end, closest to the door, waved her over before she left.

“I’m Lirell,” he said in a whisper. “Next to me is Erox. And the one on the other side of Vox is Rhutg. I heard Vox talking with you and figured it might make it easier if you knew all our names.” Ava looked at him closer. He looked young, and his eyes were wide and earnest.

The one next to him, Erox, pounded on the wall separating his and Lirell’s cells. “Hush, child. You’re not here to make friends.”

Ava heard Vox’s grumbling voice chuckle and Lirell gave a lopsided smile to Ava. Her heart ached for him, thinking he was young and scared.

Ava quickly whispered her thanks.

She glanced at Erox on the way out, but he just looked at her passively and shook his head. His head and shoulders were broader than Vox’s. Rhutg’s cell remained silent.

It was only after she was walking toward the engine hall, replaying Vox’s words in her head, that she remembered she’d mentioned not being a pawn like that, in those exact words, to Ebel only a few cycles ago.

The engine room was lonely without Ebel there. Ava had no one to bounce ideas off of or talk to in her spare time. She invented tasks for herself to do but even that wore thin.

Her head was pounding now that the alcohol had worn off, so the thought of going up to the mess hall again didn’t appeal to her. She didn’t think she could handle the bright lights of the solarium either right now.

Ava resorted to racing the biologics back and forth across their tank. They must be sentient because after the first few passes they seemed to try to swirl in unison to match her pace. They made their own game of it, and Ava tried to switch directions fast to see if they could follow.

It was not enough. Her insides felt uneasy.

The guilt gnawed at her, thinking of Ebel having to be with his queen because of her, doing who knows what.

What if he doesn’t come back and is reassigned instead?The queen was known to shake things up like that. Ava quickly talked herself out of that thought. No one on the ship knew the engine like Ebel. Phor had come and gone but he always stayed. He would come back.He has to.

Ava bit her lip thinking about it, pacing the engine room’s long hall. The biologics still followed her, even though she wasn’t actively playing any longer.

Unable to stay there in the silent hall, Ava suited up, chiding herself for being foolish, and roamed the ship through the vents. She didn’t dare go up by the queen’s area to check on Ebel, but went back to the cargo area to grab more fruit and left some aspresents for the poms. She was a ghost in the vents, in a parallel world.

Eventually she ended up where she knew she would the entire time, over the heads of the Vorbax. There she sat, settling in, and felt the first ease in over a cycle since Ebel went missing.

She watched the one named Vox breathe, matching it herself. Ava didn’t question why she felt so calm, but like any animal gravitated toward it to bask in the relief it offered.

She left when the chime of the next intercom brought her back to reality. She needed to be in the engine hall when Ebel returned. He would return. He had to. She visibly swallowed as she crawled, cutting off her thoughts before she became wound up again. She was calmer, and hopefully that would carry into her sleep.

Vox listened above his head for both physical and mental signs that the little bird had returned to the vents. She was such a nervous thing, that Ava. He felt protective of her, already unconsciously soothing her when she was nearby. Why was that?

“She is back,”Erox reported, feeling her energy above as strongly as he did.

Vox breathed deep, soothing away some of her worries. Such a scared thing. It was not right for a female of any species to always be so on edge.

He wondered what she looked like under her disguise. In her mind she never referenced any thoughts of herself physically, so he had no idea himself. Human. He had never heard that term before.

“Should we talk with her? Let her know everything will be alright?”Lirell asked. He seemed almost as intrigued as Vox was with the delicate creature up above.

“Will it though?”Erox answered.“Her discomfort is not our concern.”

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