Page 46 of Vicious
“I am, huh?” A glint of excitement sharpened her yellow eyes. “Why would I dothat?”
“Because on top of what my sister is paying you to keep me alive, you can collect the bounty on my head.” I sent up a quick prayer to Feozva that Plan B for blackmail would work and Plan C would never actually happen. Plan C was shaping up to be much too dangerous for everyone on this ship. Especially for Mase. And especially for me. “If Plan B doesn’t work, you’re going to turn mein.”
13
The next morning,I slipped soundlessly into the midnight hallway. The rest of the crew waited behind the door of the dining room, weapons clutched tight, ready to spring into action at the sound of a struggle. Not only was this Plan B, it was also a doppelganger trap, and I was thebait.
Mase and Ellison had immediately tried to argue me out of it, but once I explained the entirety of Plan B, they agreed, though reluctantly. I left Plan C out of the wholeconversation.
The crew hadn’t left the sanctuary of the dining room, so the light at the end of the hallway hadn’t been fixed. Its metal clanked against metal, harder, louder, the closer Idrew.
I shined the map of theViciouswith the red dots—me and the doppelganger the only solo ones—along the walls where the ship’s outline warped into the metal doors. The doppelganger hovered near the engine room,unmoving.
As always, the Vicious room door was closed, and once I opened it, a color darker than pitch black choked the air. The door swung inward with my soft kick at the bottom. I shined the ship’s map in front of me so I could find the light switch on the wall, and it clicked on in a flickering orangeglow.
It had to be the Vicious room where I did this. The Saelis marks all over the walls, the open air vent where the doppelganger could come barreling through at any second, the dreaded feel of the room itself would help give credibility to the video I was about to film. Written, directed, and starring me, it was sure to be a shit show. But it would help prove everything I knew, along with the cylinder of consumectalons and the recorded video clip of Doctor Daryl’s last few moments according to his Mind-I serialnumber.
Poh had found it relatively easily. As she’d forwarded through the last parts of his life, the rest of the crew had quickly joined me in the kitchen for a glass of boiled breakfast water, their faces sickly pale at the sounds and threats that poured out of Doctor Daryl when he’d caught a whiff of the consumectalons in myblood.
“It’s in you, James,” he’d shouted and then heaved a maniacal laugh. “I smelled it. Iwantit. I’ll cut you open and slurp it from yourinsides.”
It raked a shiver across my back evennow.
Inside the Vicious room, I set Nesbit’s Mind-I by one wall, set it to video, backed the broken chair away from the open air vent, then sat precariously with the vent to my right so I could see what was coming. I took a breath, mentally organizing everything I wanted to say, andbegan.
“My name is Absidy Jones.” My voice squeaked like I’d just swallowed a gooselp, feathers and all, so I cleared my throat. This was the reason I preferred solitude for most of my life—so I wouldn’t have to speak and pretend I was any good atit.
“I'm a fugitive with a bounty on my head, accused of two murders I didn't commit. I should probably try to clear my name, but I've been preoccupied learning as much as I can about the Black War. This isn't a history lesson I'm about to give you, though. This war didn't end two hundred years ago with the destruction of Earth. This war is still happening. On Earth, people saw the Saelis coming, and some were fast enough to fly away to Wix or Mayvel in their ships. But this time, it will be different. You won’t see them coming because they’re alreadythere.”
The slightest scrambling noise shifted my gaze to the right. I curled my sweaty fingers against my hips and swallowed. If it came, it came. It had killed one of us already, had tried to kill all of us, but I refused to let anyone else die. I had two ice picks and a whole crew waiting for my scream. So really, I had nothing to worry about. And by nothing, I meanteverything.
“The Saelis have been creating Saelis-human hybrids that look and sound just like us, each with individual personalities. They’re already on Wix and Mayvel, and the Saelis can control them with a flip of a switch. They have Mind-Is, as I’m sure some of you do, which likely meansyoucan be controlled too. They also have a bioweapon called consumectalons”—I held up the glass cylinder—“which is a parasite that lived in their females. It drives the hybrids mad. Likethis.”
I paused there so Poh would know where to splice the video of Doctor Daryl attacking me, then later hunting me through the ship. I glanced right. Darkness had swallowed the inside of the air vent, but I knew the doppelganger wascoming.
“I know what you're thinking. Why should you believe the word of a fugitive accused of murder? Because I have proof. Right now, I'm on a two-hundred-year-old spaceship called theVicious. For those of you who aren’t able to math that up, it’s as old as the Black War. The marks on the walls behind me are from Saelis females who were killed on this ship for the parasites in their blood. These same parasites are what power the Ringers’ rings. The Ringers’ lust for space travel, for conquest, was what started the BlackWar.”
More thudding movement in the walls, louder, closer. I opened my mouth to speakfaster.
“The Ringers changed history to blame the Saelis. According to the Ringers’ ship database, this ship doesn’t exist. Neither does theVicio, which is the name of the ship on Captain Glenn’s ownership papers. Go ahead and look it up. Now, the Ringers won’t let us back through their rings because they don’t want anyone to know they started the Black War. But that’s about to change. Youwilllet us through, or I’ll blast this video toevery—”
A heavy force slammed into my right side. The chair tipped. I spilled to the floor hip first, head and limbs second. My teeth gnashed down on my tongue, and blood gushed inside mymouth.
My world dimmed, but out of the darkness stepped myself, everything the same from the hair and chains draped over the leather, metal-studded corset, right down to the black boots. It—me—stalked across the floor toward me with lips peeled back in a lividgrimace.
I flashed my foot out, pumping all my fury at this rusted alien doppelganger into my boot. The kick connected. It fell into the chair with an enormous crash. I crawled to my feet and armed myself with two icepicks.
“Who do you work for?” Idemanded.
Footsteps pounded down the hallway, punctuated with shouts of my name. I didn’t have much time before they burst in and my questions went unanswered before the alien slaughter wentdown.
“Who?”
It sprang upright again and turned its eyes so much like mine toward the Mind-I by the wall. “I made a video of you for the Ring Guild,” it said with myvoice.
I blinked. “TheRingers?”
The door burst open. Wide eyes swept the room over drawn weapons, aimed at me to the doppelganger to me again. They couldn’t tell the difference between me and…me.
