Page 44 of Vicious
I twitched my hand over his, grateful for his comfort but too numb to do muchelse.
“We’re going to head back to Orin,” Captain Glenn said. “We’re only about five days out. We need to get off thisship.”
“Will we make it that long?” Pohasked.
Her question hung in the air. No one seemed brave enough to answer that honestly or to voice the next question—what about Parker? If we landed on Orin, he would feed Mase He. And the next question—how would I protect Moon and Pop from the Saelis if I was on Orin? Sure, I could try to send them a warning, but it wasn’t just them who needed a heads-up. It was all ofhumanity.
Eventually, Ellison nodded off at the gurney, and Mase and I sagged to the floor with his head in my lap. The captain sat against the opposite wall and blinked at the holographic pictures of his family. One of his beautiful wife, the other of his adorable, gap-toothed daughter switched back and forth in the display that rose from the black cuff at his wrist. Poh stood vigil against the door with her eyes closed, somehow seeming even more alert than when they wereopen.
“Poh,” Iwhispered.
Her yellow eyes snappedopen.
“Can I see the Mind-I?”
The map of the ship over the captain’s head blinked out as she tossed the Mind-I tome.
I snatched it out of the air and gazed down at the piece of plastic in my palm with no idea what to do next. “How do I useit?”
“I rigged it so there’s a switch on the side. Just hit that and point it at awall.”
I did as she said. Our seventh—oursixth—passenger blinked its red dot near the engine room. The rest of the dots clustered in here. Along the bottom of the projection was a thin black line with a variety of icons, one of which was an envelope. Underneath the black line in flashing letters pulsed the word ALERT again andagain.
“What’s this alert?” Iasked.
“I don’t know anything about an alert,” Poh said and closed her eyes again. “Point at what you want and hit the switch. I designed it to do that since it’s not thought-controlled.”
“Was that before or after Ellison magically found it?” Ihissed.
Her mouth pinched into a thin line, though that discussion was far from over. But I had something more important to do right then, something that wouldn’t likely raise my voice to a sleep-wreckingvolume.
I did what she said. The envelope took over the screen, and a keyboard popped up from thebottom.
TheTo:field blinked empty, but theFrom:field read Nesbit. I guessed the SAIL nursery where he was made didn’t need to give him a last name. I pointed and clicked at the keyboard on the bottom half of the screen until Moon Dragon’s name appeared in theTo:field, then Franco Beatrix, her latest sexual conquest, since he knew my predicament, as well. Most of it. Fingers crossed they were still together since I’d always likedFranco.
In the message space, I stopped. I had so many things I wanted to tell Moon, but most of it didn’t need to be sent over Mind-I in case it was intercepted by the police or the Ringers or the Saelis or Parker or… That might’ve been everyone who would be interested. Still, that was quite a list. Plus, Moon wouldn’t know who Nesbit was, so I had to somehow let her know it was me without really telling her anything. I ran my fingers through Mase’s silky hair absently, thinking. Nothing about Jezebel. Nothing about Smixton College. I glanced at the kitchen doors, my chest clenching at what laybeyond.
Heatherberries. That one word said so much and yet nothing at all. It was perfect. I’d asked Moon for a heatherberry shortcake recipe almost as soon as I’d boarded this ship. It was also what had killed Randolph. I would eventually need to go in that direction with her, and heatherberries would pave the way one word at atime.
I typed it, sent it, and totally expected an instant reply back from one of them. When that didn’t happen, I clicked on the flashing ALERT at the bottom of the screen. It lit up in advertisements for penis enlargements and rows of clickbait article titles with the word share next to them. I blinked at this new digitized world, feeling more lost than I’d ever felt in mylife.
But buried near the center under a popup window featuring aDownload Now!link for bunny dust was a picture of my face on my wanted poster. At the top, it listed the bounty on my head, a number with an unholy amount of zeroes behind it. I clicked on the picture, curious about what I’d been up to. The article’s headline read “Wanted Fugitive Look-Alike Goes Missing After Wild Party on Space Station.” I sure hadn’t been to any wild parties lately. Or ever. The article stated that the victim was thought to be nineteen-year-old Absidy Jones, wanted fugitive from Mayvel, but close friends stated otherwise. Daphne Otecea was her name, a waitress from Wix who ran away into deep space years ago to flee her controlling parents. A quick scan of the rest of the article revealed evidence of foul play had been found, the police said, and this was the third Absidy Jones look-alike to have gone missing in the lastweek.
Thethirdlook-alike. I never found out how many Captain Glenn had hired, but one by one, they were being picked off. Because they’d been hired to look like me, chains and corset and all. Picked off by who though? How did anyone else know what I knew? Oh my Feozva, that question didn’t even make sense inside myownhead.
I knew just enough about both the Saelis and the Ringers to be considered dangerous. So, I needed to use that to my advantage. I’d wanted to blackmail the Ringers into letting us back through their rings, but because of my lack of evidence, I didn’t think it would work. Now, though, I had a cargo room full of consumectalons and a slice of Randolph’s genius I would carry with me always. He’d said to look closer at the ghosts’ memories they’d flashed as they’d passed through me, and I might have seen a doozy of all memories, especially if I could showeveryonethat memory. It could beenough.
“Poh.” When she didn’t answer, I whispered, “I know you can hear me.” Even if she chose not to because I’d made it clear I didn’t trust her. Which I didn’t. But right now, I needed help. We alldid.
“I’m sleeping,” she said with her eyesclosed.
I cradled Mase’s head and squirmed out from underneath him. “You can sleep in the kitchen while I talk to you aboutsomething.”
She opened her eyes slowly and narrowed them at me. “Aboutwhat?”
I grazed my fingertips over Mase’s scar as I laid his head back down on the floor. He looked even more perfect in sleep, scars and all, and for once, peaceful. I wanted to keep him that way. “In thekitchen.”
She shoved off the door and followed me through the doubledoors.
