Page 66 of Vicious
“What?” So many questions clogged my throat. If they weren’t here, then where were they? Did Parker have another ship? Or were they all—? I refused to finish thatthought.
“Do we stay here or leave?” Pohdemanded.
I didn’t know the answer, not when I had so many questions. Would we even make it a safe distance away in time if weleft?
I growled in frustration and rushed into the hallway, closing the door behind me. The light at the end buzzed and crackled until it faded to a pinprick. The darkness swallowed the air from my lungs. I knew what was coming, but I had no time. No light to find out what had happened to my ship family. And no patience. I pulled the consumectalon cylinder from the pocket of Crispin’s pants I’d borrowed. From now on, the magnet would be on the ghost itself. Notme.
Something blasted into the inside of the dining room door. I jerked back with a yelp, then peeled back my lips in a scowl, refusing to budge. The door creaked open, and more darkness poured out even though I was sure I’d left the lighton.
I thumbed the cap on the cylinder the tiniest amount. The cracks along the glass bit into my palm. I hoped it could contain at least one more ghost and keep fromshattering.
“Go in,” I said to thegloom.
The door banged shut and opened again, as did every door up and down the hallway. Over and over, the noise drilled into my eardrums. It drowned out the robot voice’s repeated warnings and the bright red anger crashing through myveins.
I moved down the midnight hallway, pouring on speed. I dodged the doors clanging open and shut. Other than my clothes, an almost perfect replica of me stood at the end, strobing into existence under the humming pinprick of light. Teeth bared in a glower, exactly how I pictured my own. Chains and hair fanned over her bare shoulders with a metal-studded corset hugging her torso. Empty black eyes dared me to comecloser.
So I damn welldid.
She solidified into something real as I drew near, something that could tear me into pieces like the hundreds of times in mypast.
“Goi—”
She caught the hand that held the cylinder and threw me back down the hallway. Corners of swinging doors clipped my side as I flew past. Then I dropped. Hard. Hitting the titanium ass first, then shoulders and skull. I lay there, stunned, blinking into two darknesses, real and subconscious, both of which threatened to pull meunder.
“Warning. Four minutes to self-destruct.”
I must’ve blacked out because the doors were quiet now. A taste of tobacco dragged my eyes open. Red, always here with me to remind me why I didn’t smoke. I hauled myself into a sitting position, and with great effort, I pushed myself to my feet with the help of the wall. My knees wobbled under my weight, my head spun, but I headed back down thehallway.
“You failed,” I said. “The Ring Guild didn’t stop us. Neither did the Saelis. The truth will come out, and the Black War will end. You hearme?”
Silence except the buzzing light. Every door was open in the hallway except the Vicious room. I opened it and stumbledinside.
“Just go in.” I held the cylinder out, gazing around the room while its bleached copper smell sharpened my awareness. “I’ll be dead in four minutes anyway, so you might aswell.”
I dragged my hand along the wall for the light switch behind me out of habit, but paused since it appeared I didn’t really need it. The room held a soft red glow that seemed to come from the scratch marks on the walls and floor. It reminded me of my blood sheeting my skin after I drank the consumectalons from the cylinder. Curious that the room hadn’t glowed beforenow.
Something dragged and thumped from inside the air vent. Behind me, the Vicious room door slammed shut. At the same time, the grating on the vent zipped free and rocketed across the room toward me. I sidestepped andwaited.
“Warning. Three minutes to self-destruct.”
A segmented leg snaked out, followed by another, and another, until finally a horned head with empty black eyes pushed through. The doppelganger’s true shape in ghostly form landed across the room without a sound, and straightened to almost twice my height. Its body turned corporeal as it lunged. Its sharp horns speared toward me, followed closely by its jaggedteeth.
I flipped the cap off the cylinder, just slightly, and jabbed the broken glass up into its mouth. Its teeth scraped along my scales, but it didn’thurt.
“Go. In,” Iordered.
A terrible howl erupted out of it, and its features twisted into black smoke. It spiraled into the cylinder while patches of it turned corporeal again as if it were fighting with itself. Or maybe the cylinder was just packed full. It cracked in my hand as I thumbed the cap back on again, a long, black line down the center, but it held tight. Fornow.
I’d done it. But it didn’t matter because I only had three minutes to get off a self-destructingship.
I took one step toward the door, but my entire body gave out underneath me. I toppled to the floor, my limbs shackled with exhaustion and my head a living hammer. The scratch marks on the glowing walls and floor waved something just beyond my understanding, and I stared down the length of my arm at them, beyond the cylinder gripped tight in myfist.
Two feet appeared underneath the doorway, framed in a swinging rectangle of light behind them. The door opened silently, washing the room with cold, and the light inside the Vicious room snapped on byitself.
I blinked into it, willing my brain to stop knocking against my skull so I could concentrate. “Poh?”
The two feet stepped into theroom.
