Page 12 of Dark Space
‘Further than you,’ I snapped, gesturing at his chain.
To my surprise, he gave a wide, charming grin that made my heart try to jump out of my chest. ‘You’re fun, An-na.’
Great. Stuck in a cell with a handsome, shit-stirring alien with glowing eyes.
I swayed on the bed.
‘An-na?’ he said, alarmed.
‘All good,’ I managed. ‘Just, you know, processing the wholecellthing.’
‘Don’t forget the wholeRoththing,’ he said. ‘They really are the worst species you could hope to be abducted by. They don’tthink very much of females, you see. Although the fact that you’re here – somewhere relatively safe, actually – and not in the breeding rooms at the mercy of the crew is probably good.’
‘Probably?’ I squeaked. ‘What arebreeding rooms?’
‘Exactly what they sound like,’ Vesper said with a careless wave of his hand. ‘There are very few Roth females left, so they have a habit of stealing females from other species and sharing them. And the females are most decidedlynotwilling. From the outside, one might observe this practice and consider the very low birth rate and conclude that the species’ fertility issues lie not with the females, who were blamed for producing only male younglings – and not very many of those – but with the males, who seem to father very few young, and only those of one sex.’ He shrugged. ‘But no one asksme.’
‘Will they take me to those rooms?’ I whispered.
I wasn’t being dramatic when I thought I’d rather die.
Vesper frowned. ‘That’s what I can’t work out. I am sorry, little An-na, but I have no idea what they’ll do with you.’
I sniffed. ‘Why are you here, then?’ I said. ‘Unless … Can they breed you, too?’
‘They’d better not try, if they value their breeding apparatus,’ he answered airily. ‘I may be chained, but I can still burn the hand – or any other appendage – that touches me. No, I’m here because I tried to liberate some of the Prince’s possessions, and he unfortunately caught me at it.’
I blinked. ‘Liberate? Do you mean you werestealingfrom him?’
‘Oh, little An-na. Your tone is rather too disappointed to be appropriate for such a short acquaintance. You sound like my sibling, and you don’t know me well enough to judge me like they do.’
‘Why were you stealing?’
He frowned. ‘What?’
‘Whywere you stealing? Were you hungry? Were you suffering? Did you need what you took? Were you taking it for someone else whodidneed it?’
He sniffed disdainfully. ‘My sibling says that there’s no issue with beauty for beauty’s sake. What’s wrong with crime for crime’s sake?’
I didn’t really have a sensible answer for that. I took a deep breath. I was feeling so many different things that it was all but impossible to tease out a single emotion to process; my entire body felt alight with it, as if every instinctual warning was simmering inside my blood and turning my skin to flame. ‘To sum up: my grandmother died today, I’ve been kidnapped and taken from Earth and from everything and everyone I know by an alien species bent on intergalactic expansion but with serious fertility issues, and I’m currently being held in a cell with a thief.’
‘Acharmingthief,’ he corrected.
‘I think that makes it worse,’ I said, and burst into tears.
I don’t know how long I cried. There was no way to tell time in the cell; the light didn’t change, and no one came to disturb us, but I kept sobbing until my eyes were aching, my temples were throbbing, my throat was dry, and my voice cracked. It was as if I’d broken open, letting all the grief and the shock pour out.Nothing wrong with having a good cry, my grandmother would have said, and I let myself sink into how much I already missed her, how much it hurt to think of her asgone, and I wrapped myself in the fact that my entire world had changed in a matter of hours, in a number of different ways. My face was a puffy, tight mess, and my chest hurt. Vesper had stayed quiet all thewhile, watching me curiously, but offering neither comfort nor censure.
‘That was quite a lot of liquid,’ he observed, once I stopped hiccupping.
‘Tears. They’re calledtears. Humans cry them when they’re sad.’ I paused. ‘Or angry. Or happy. Or overwhelmed. We cry for a lot of reasons, actually.’
‘Yes, I know whattearsare,’ he said impatiently. ‘I am familiar with the concept. We cry ultraviolet light. What I meant is that there are rather a lot of themoutsideyour body, when before they were keptinsideit. Do you not have to replace them?’
‘I am thirsty, yes.’
Vesper turned a sudden, fierce glare up at the corner over my bed. ‘Hear that, fleshbags? The human needs liquids. Have you managed to figure out what she absorbs yet?’
‘Drinks,’ I muttered. ‘Wedrinkliquid.’
