Page 35 of Vicious
I gripped Randolph’s chair and swung it at her head. She stumbled to the edge of the table, blood spraying from her mouth. I took that second of unbalance and used it to my advantage by grabbing the thing’s legs and yanking. It crashed to the table and split it into two equal halves down themiddle.
Poh pushed my sister behind her and brought out her gun in one fluid arc. She leaped over the broken table to the thing’s side. But it only had eyes for me. It lunged, knife still in its hand, and chucked the blade through the air. The tip burned across my upper arm as I jumped out of theway.
Poh fired her gun. The thing howled. A hole had opened up near its shoulder, inches away from its heart, if it even had a heart, and dribbled a steady stream of blood to thefloor.
It still came at me. I yanked at a chain on my neck, gripping the ice pick tight, and plunged it deep into its chest. Blood spurted. Its legs and arms twitched, yet it surged toward me onceagain.
I leaped out of the way at the last second so it smashed into Esmerelda’s poster. The thing heaved an angry wail and whirled around, arms flailing. Ellison lunged forward and introduced the thing’s face to a metal platter that had held some of ourbreakfast.
It stumbled back into the wall and crumpled to the floor on all fours, its limbs bent at odd angles that turned my stomach inside out. Then it dashed toward Poh. She fired her gun. It bent unnaturally to the side, dodging the bullet, and plucked the gun from Poh’s hands. Head down, it scrabbled up the wall to the air vent, flung the grating over the air shaft away so it crashed into Poh, and disappeared into the blackvoid.
I stared after it, desperate to understand what had justhappened.
A broken sob sounded from beside me. I turned to Ellison, therealEllison, and threw myself over the table rubble to get to her. As soon as I gathered her into my arms, she gasped as if she’d just won a race with her own shadow. My sister, always so logical and stoic, almost always wore her emotions internally. An ache speared hot and sharp through my chest that she had gone throughthis.
She pulled away and blinked around the room with wide eyes, her face paler than I’d ever seen it, and gripped me hard around the forearm. "I-I couldn't find you and... I had no idea where I was. I woke up somewhere I’d never been, and I didn’t know how to get back to you and…" She hugged me hard again, her whole bodyquaking.
All the years we'd grown up, she'd never seen the ghosts who maliciously attacked me. She’d seen me thrown into walls and what was left of my hair dangling from a piece of bloodied scalp, but never a corporeal threat. The only reason she was on this ship was because of me, and because of its dark past, theVicioushad always made what lurked inside its dark hallways, ghost or otherwise, known to everyone. I traced the messy braid at the back of her head, its curves and twists as complicated as our currentsituation.
“I’ll keep you safe.” I repeated it again and again as if to undo everything that had happened toher.
A doppelganger. One that wasn’t human and thought we knew too much. It had attacked right after I thought I saw Pop, right after I found the consumectalon cylinders. It had wanted me dead. All of us dead. A shudder dragged down my spine. Had that been it and not Randolph who had poisoned our food? Had that been it and not the captain who had ushered me away from the cargoroom?
Poh stared hard at my arm wrapped around the back of Ellison, then flicked her gaze up to me and swallowed hard. I glanced over Ellison’s shoulder to see. Gray scales marked my wrist, darker than before, and this time, they didn’tvanish.
Dread slinked through my insides, threatening to pull me down with it. I sealed my mouth together and shook my head at Poh. Not now. I couldn’t deal with this rightnow.
She gave a short nod. “I’m calling the captain about Ellison.” She stepped over what remained of our second dining room table in as many months and pushed the button on the telecom on the wall. “Captain, it’s Poh. I foundEllison.”
A staticky burst came through, and then the captain’s voice. “I didn’t know she wasmissing.”
“I didn’t know she was missing, either,” Poh said. “I reckon you should come to the diningroom.”
With my scaled arm behind my back, I guided Ellison to a chair that somehow wasn’t broken. “Let me get something to clean youup.”
“Wait.” She grabbed my hip before I could head into the kitchen. “Just…don’t belong.”
“I won’t.” I squeezed her shoulder on my way past and swept through the kitchendoors.
As soon as I was alone, I crushed my hands to my mouth so no one would hear my soul cracking apart. Seconds after I thought I’d lost Pop, I thought I’d lost Ellison when she’d charged me with a knife. That was too many losses at once, whether real or imaginary. We hadn’t had any more reasons to be afraid on this ship, or so I’d thought, but obviously I was wrong. My mistake had nearly cost all of us our lives. I should’ve been more vigilant, especially with Ellison, instead of pointing an accusatory finger at her for taunting me with ironcubes.
She’d saved my life countless times. The least I could do was return the favor again andagain.
After wiping my eyes, I wrapped a rag around my wrist, the scales pricking at my fingers as I worked. I would figure this out later, but my priority right now was Ellison. I grabbed a glass of water and a blanket from the stasis pantry then strode back into the dining room. Once I’d wrapped Ellison in the blanket to warm her up, I placed the water carefully in her trembling hand. As soon as she took her first sip, the captain burstin.
“What is this all…about?” He took in the state of the dining room with wide eyes. He blinked, and his shoulders drooped with the weight I wished none of us had to carry. “Ellison?”
“I found her in the air vent around the engine room,” Poh said. “I kept hearingnoises.”
At the captain’s questioning gaze, Ellison said, “Something put me in there. Maybe they drugged me, I don’t know, but that was where I wokeup.”
“How long?” hedemanded.
Tears swam in Ellison’s eyes. “I don’t know. A day or two, judging from how hungry and thirsty Iam.”
I sank to my knees next to her stool and wrapped my arms around her. “I’m sosorry.”
“So that cry we heard shouting Absidy’s name was you. The person we’ve been interacting with these last few days was…” Captain Glenn scrubbed at his eyes. “The seventh lifeform aboard this godforsakenship.”
