Page 33 of Vicious
I started forward again. “Mase? Is thatyou?”
"Absidy," someonesobbed.
I froze. Why was someone getting weepy over me of allpeople?
"Why? Why did you and Ellison leaveme?"
My mouth opened in a silent cry. I squeezed my eyes shut at that familiar voice. "Pop?"
No. No way. I was imagining things. This wasn't real. Pop wasn't here, even though he sounded like he was just feet away. The sadness in the voice ambushed my ears and cracked my heart, but it wasn’t him. My mind played dirtytricks.
I dragged myself onward, my molars clamped together. My phone light blurred, and tears tracked down my cheeks. I’d only heard Pop cry once before, when Mom died. Now, though, because both his daughters abandoned him, I was sure he was torn up about it. A whimper pushed through my lips at how much we’d put him throughlately.
But he wasn’t here. The phone light cut through the darkness, and there was no onethere.
I sank to my knees in front of the cargo room and blinked the tears from my eyes. This wasn’t happening. Pop’s phantom voice played like a residual haunting, butPop wasn’t dead. He wasn’there, alive, either. I didn’t know what was happening, but it gutted myheart.
“Absidy,” the voice cried from all aroundme.
I shook my head frantically while I placed the phone between my knees and jimmied the nails into the door’s lock. Tears blurred my eyes. My handsshook.
“Don’t come back,” the voice sobbed. “You’ve disappointed meenough.”
My shoulders hitched at that awful dig. But he would never say something like that.Never.
The door popped open on silent hinges. Traces of teralingua fur and poop rolled out. I swept up my phone and hauled myself to myfeet.
Footsteps to my right. Drawing closer. Fast. A breath on my barearm.
I hurled myself into the room and slammed and locked the door on something hidden in shadows but who wasn’t myPop.
“Don’t come back!” itscreamed.
Something crashed in the hallway. Scurrying sounded up thewalls.
The phone’s glow lit a switch on the wall. I flipped it and whipped around. The shifting and slithering continued upward to the platform above and the air vent near theceiling.
I had maybe seconds before it burst inside, whatever it was. Wooden crates had been piled in the center of the room, the same crates on Orin that I’d seen being carried into the trucks. Captain Glenn had been talking to someone there. Was this hiscargo?
The thing beat the titanium walls closer to the vent, rolling thunder through the room. I sprinted to the center. With a glance over my shoulder at the platform, I kicked my boot into the nearest crate then squatted in front of the small hole I’d made to wrench out whatever wasinside.
An inhuman wail sounded from above, followed by metal crashing onmetal.
The jagged wooden pieces of the broken crate scraped my wrists as I shoved my hands inside. The bandage over my itchy wrist ripped away. My fingers touched cold glass in the shape of a cylinder. Lots of cylinders. I grasped one and yanked. The wordConsumectalonswas etched lengthwise across the glass. The name of the parasite running through myveins.
Why was it here instead of with the Ringers? Why was it locked away in a cargo room on a ship…destined for human planets? Because it could also be used a biological weapon intended for the rest of humanity, a trigger for the hybrids already on Mayvel and Wix to lose their ever-loving minds. There had been entire trucks full of the parasite, but this looked like only a fraction of it. So where was therest?
I jerked to my feet and dashed toward the door, the cylinder gripped tight in myfist.
“Absidy!”
A part of me wilted into the titanium floor at the sound of that familiar voice behind me. It was Pop, here but not here. But Pop wasn’t dead. He wasn’t a ghost haunting this ship. As if to prove it to myself, I pulled up short in front of the door, spun around, and shone the phone’s light onto theplatform.
A torso hung out of the vent, both arms braced against the walls outside to pull it the rest of the way out. The figure’s head snapped up to hiss into the light. A knit cap covered the bald spot Pop always tried to hide. Gray eyes so much like mine flashed. It was him. It was myPop.
A low moan heaved out of my mouth as I crashed out of there. It turned into a scream that tore at mythroat.
Iran.
