Page 42 of Hijack!
“Hurry. Before it fades again.”
Poking through his pocket, he winced as he stabbed himself with his claws, which had instinctively extended at the threat. When he handed her the button, it was shining gold.
Her gaze snapped up to him, the flyaway strands of her hair shimmering like spangled sunlight in the brilliant glow. “Ellix…”
He did not want to explain his feelings, reflected in the button. “You said to hurry.”
In her palm, the gold shifted, oscillating through the device’s simplified wavelengths, as if trying to focus. She stuck the button to the inner wall of the torus, and every time the distortion shadow passed over, the button dulled to gray with streaks of muted yellow and faded blue.
“Itisalive, with emotions too,” she said, her voice softening with the wonder felt only by a closed worlder fresh to the universe. “And it’s lost. Like us.”
“Weweren’tlost,” he objected. “Not until it stole us.”
“I think it’s stuck, just like a ghost.” She straightened, one hand bracketing the button. Around her fingers, the distortion paused, like a looming shadow around her. “We have to reach it, make it understand we’re here and want to help it.”
“We want tostopit,” he corrected.
According to the calculations Suvan had put on his datpad, the capacitorus would be at full burn in moments. Then the distortion would be nullified.
“Captain.” She faced him, chin high. “The IDA isaboutconnection. It’s why we’re out here.”
“This cruise isn’t even supposed to be here.”
“Not here-here. But it’s why we don’t just stay home and wait for our chance to find us.” Her blue gaze was steady on him. “It’s why you answered a cry for help even though it might’ve been a trap.”
He wanted to yell at her. Because ithadbeen a trap. He had the scars from it. Herfeelingscouldn’t counteract the reality of the risks.
Except… The way she stood square, the shadow behind her, wasn’t the stance of a delicate, oblivious closed worlder. He’d seen how she held her datpad like a shield, how she gulped forbreath sometimes as if desperate to find some molecule of calm in the air. She wasn’t unaware of the problems, even the dangers.
She just faced them. With an Earther smile.
But he’d waited too long, and he hadn’t believed her. His datpad beeped, and the capacitorus went nova-white.
Chapter 13
The distortion screamed. Or maybe it was the ship screaming.
Felicity was ninety percent sure it wasn’t her. But only because she didn’t have the breath.
The plasma seething through the capacitorus was blindingly bright, but more than that, it seemed to charge the air, as if she were standing in thick pudding—and gulping futilely.
Ellix’s voice was in her head, and it took her a frantic moment to realize it was the comm fitted to the bone behind her ear. “It’s too late. Felicity, you have to get out.”
As if the plasmic pudding meant nothing to him, he strode to her, clamping his hands on her hips. Was he going to kiss her again? Seemed like an odd time, but that hadn’t stopped them yet…
Instead, he slung her around toward the scaffolding where they’d climbed into the center of the torus. “The capacitorus is pulling more power to counteract the distortion, but we’re still accelerating. If the engines blow from the strain, we’ll lose the ship.”
Clinging to the makeshift ladder, she glanced over her shoulder. In the white light, the feelings button she’d stuck to the inner wall was a tiny black hole crackling with acid yellow—like the fear and panic she’d struggled with all her life had been given shape and color.
But it was the anomaly suffering. Sheknewwhat that felt like. “This was a mistake. We’re making things worse.” Standing on the raised frame, she was at eyelevel with Ellix. Maybe that gave her more confidence that she deserved. “We have to do something else. But we know the wavelengths now, so maybe we can talk to it, make it understand it’s hijacked us.” She stretchedout her hand to him. “I know you shot your way out of a pirate trap—”
“Technically, they shot themselves,” he muttered.
“But this is different.”
She wanted to argue more, but the shriek of the engines—or the distortion or the ship itself—drowned out any further chance of discussion. Ellix’s eye was brilliant gold, like his feelings button had been. What that meant…
He plucked her off the scaffold, swinging her around once, kissing her all the while, before settling her back on her boots. He touched the datpad on his wrist, mouthing the word nay to whoever was on the other end; it seemed the device Suvan had given him for remote control had failed.
