Page 23 of Vicious
He didn’t want me in that room. I took hesitant steps away from him, my back crawling with doubt-tipped sensations. Something wasn’t righthere.
A loud click echoed through the silence. I whirled around, my pulse humming. Had he locked the door? Heavy footsteps stalked toward me. Everythunk, thunk, plunk, plunkbit at my heels until I was nearly running. I turned the corner into the same hallway as the infirmary and risked a glance over my shoulder. The dim light at the other end of the hall shadowed his face, blurring the lines between his clothes and skin into the darkness around him. He was night incarnate bursting towardme.
I swept past the empty infirmary and skidded around the next corner into the dining room hallway. Rusted balls,no. I should’ve headed straight for the elevator. I had no idea what was happening, but I had zero desire to be alone with the captain rightthen.
Something pounded from the other side of Randolph’s closed door as soon as I passed. I yelped and leaped away from the noise, flattening myself against the opposite wall. Forcing a swallow, I gazed down the length of the hallway I’d just come. Empty except the swinging light at the end. No Captain Glenn. He’d just…vanished.
“Absidy!” Randolph shouted from his quarters. “Lemme out! I gottapee!”
The swinging light marked the seconds until I could drag in a semi-normal breath. Then it stopped as if I’d imagined the whole thing. But the one good that came out of growing up a ghost magnet was that my reality was far more terrifying than anything my imagination could ever come upwith.
* * *
Awkward silence filledthe dining room at dinner. I ticked my gaze around the new table to Ellison, her pallor about as gray as the pools of gravy sliding down the mashed potatoes she pushed around her plate. To Mase, who hid his left arm in his lap where he thought I couldn’t see the remnants of She sparking underneath his dark green thermal. To Randolph, who drank more than he ate. To Poh standing in the open hallway door, who occasionally looked over her shoulders as if she felt a presence creeping up behind her. To Captain Glenn, who ate each bite with a worried crease in his forehead. The titanium behind his back outlined him as a man instead of midnight charging down thehallway.
He made no mention of our earlier meet-up. I didn’t either. I didn’t trust what was happening on this ship, and until I knew more, I feared a Mind-I, now switched off, would turn on once I flapped my tongue. If that was what we were dealingwith…
We all had our individual demons occupying our thoughts, but I kept mine bottled up tight since I didn’t have a name for it yet. Not ghosts, but something entirely unfamiliar. And for the first time in my life, iron didn’t hold theanswer.
* * *
That nightas I lay in Mase’s arms, the plan that had taken root inside my head before we’d landed on Orin blossomed. I needed to get word to Pop, Moon Dragon, and the rest of the humans about the Saelis’s plan to wipe out the rest of us, but to do that, I needed a Mind-I. Since I didn’t have one, we needed to go back through the rings to Mayvel. Once we were through the rings, I could just call them on my dinkyphone.
But this meant we needed to get back through the rings that had sent us to deep space. The Ringers could refuse us—even if we said please—especially since Mase had turned his back on humanity from inside this ship, the same one they’d tried to erase from existence by renaming it theVicious. Maybe they would let us through no problem to spill all their scandalous secrets, though given everything they did to cover up their slaughter of half an alien race to power their rings, I doubtedit.
But if I blackmailed them… I was a fugitive after all, so I might as well go all in with the moral corruption. But blackmail them how? I had no solid proof of what they’d done, just a headful of images the ghosts who had passed through me had leftbehind.
Then there was the whole problem with Parker following us. Maybe I could frame him somehow so the Ringers wouldn’t allow his ship through. But once again,how?
Well, I didn’t say it was a good plan. It was more like a sprout of a plan whose leaves dangled with flimsy-plan-eating zombieants.
I needed help, though, in carrying this out. The problem was I only wanted specific ears listening to me, ears that hopefully didn’t belong to someone capable of sabotage. But I worried that the walls themselves would swivel around when I passed so that every thought I had would leach into thetitanium.
I hated doubting these people, most of whom I loved in varying degrees, most of whom had laid down their lives for mine many times over without question. Of course, if they were being controlled through a Mind-I or whatever, it wasn’t like they could stop it. Which made me want to rip off all their heads—in a completely figurative way since I was a wanted murderer not a wanted monster—and hand them to someone who could betrusted.
Someone like Poh. If she’d poisoned the food, I would’ve seen her come into the kitchen. Unless she’d bugged the rest of the crew with Mind-Is, I doubted she had anything to do with the recent what-the-fuckery. Hopefully she would gladly accept everyone’s heads when I handed them to her. Figuratively. Of course. Maybe she could tinker around in their skulls and find something useful. Maybe she could also find Nesbit’s Mind-I forme.
I slid myself out from Mase’s spooning and sat up, careful not to bump the wound in his shoulder where he’d been shot. When I gazed down at his sleeping face, his usually peaceful expression had hardened into a grimace. Sweat gleamed on his forehead, and a white crackle of light zipped just underneath one of his closedeyelids.
My hand flew to my mouth to silence my gasp. She was eating away at him, crunching his urge to resist He to dust. My heart clenched at seeing him like this. With tears pricking my eyes, I leaned down to press my lips to his, wishing I could kiss away all of his addictions from memory, except me. I wanted to be all he dreamed about. I wanted to flood his veins with need instead of She. This scarred, beautiful man was mine, and I his. He’d staked his claim the moment he’d gifted me iron. No way would I give him up to She, He, or Parker without a two-handed ice pickfight.
He groaned and quaked underneath the blankets. I tucked them up to his chin, then found my clothes under the glow of millions of stars outside the wind screen and slipped out of thecockpit.
On quiet feet, I crept through the empty third-floor storage area to the engine room while scratching my wrist. The cut underneath my bandage where I’d sliced myself open itched. I should probably have Ellison see if it was healing properly. I’d put that on my to-dolist.
Outside the engine room door, I paused and tapped my fingers against the iron in my pockets. The last time I’d been in there, I was sure I hadn’t been alone. Except my cubes weren’t there. Not in my other pocket either. They must’ve fallen out in the cockpit. I would have to remember to checklater.
I knocked and entered at the same time, though I doubted Poh could hear me over the rattle and clank of the engine. She stood behind a newly constructed metal safety beam that circled the engine. The beam had been painted neon orange and gave the once dreary room a cheerful pop of color. All of Nesbit’s scattered tools had been picked up off the floor and stored neatly in a large metal box where his mattress used to be. I didn’t see the glasses he’d used for—good Feozva, I’d rather not think about what he’d used themfor.
Poh had taken off her duster, gun holster, and most of her knives, and without the added bulk, she appeared too skinny. Her yellow gaze flicked toward me while she tightened a screw inside a small panel built into theengine.
I lifted my arm in an awkward wave. It had been fairly easy to develop a friendship with Moon Dragon since she’d had Jezebel to help us bond. Growing up, I’d been the weird recluse kid aboard theNebulouswho hid inside Ellison’s cupboards in the infirmary as much to hide from ghosts as other people. They never seemed to know what to make of me, which was okay, I guessed, since I didn’t really know what to make of meeither.
“I like the orange color,” I shouted and pointed at the metalbeam.
Her thin white eyebrows drew together as if she hadn’t heard me. She mopped the sweat from a patch of pale skin next to her scaled stripes with her sleeve and went back to what she wasdoing.
Fuck it. I didn’t need to bond over a color choice with her to try to make friends. I just needed to make her listen, since I was obviously useless without a furry slothcat around to makenice.
