Page 9 of Consume
Pop and I rushed forward.
“What happened?” Pop demanded.
“They put a godsdamned Mind-I into her head,” Crispin shouted, the words losing themselves in an echo in the metal room before they slammed hard into me.
“What?” It sounded like a clicking hiss through my teeth.
Pop rushed to Poh’s other side and supported the other half of her weight. “Let’s get her to the infirmary.”
“Can you get it out?” Crispin asked as they passed by me.
“I can...” Pop started, an edge of doubt in his voice. “I can take a look.”
They hurried out of the hangar and swung left to Parker’s infirmary.
A Mind-I. Were people now being forced to get them against their will? My best friend, Moon Dragon, and her boyfriend, Franco, said many people were taking theirs out due to the weird stories floating around about “technological glitches.” Aka mind control. There had been a lot more of those weird stories lately too. People were getting worried for good reason, especially if they had to also worry about forced insertion.
That was wrong on so many levels that it nearly made me sick.
Movement from the open door of the cruiser caught my eye, and I connected gazes with Josh. Josh, as in deep space taxi man and the father of Ellison’s unborn child. His dark curly hair had grown since the last time I saw him, the colorful beads and charms wound into the strands dangling behind his ears. The sleeves of his long black coat half hid all the black bracelets circling his wrists. He stood there, staring at me, his shoulders heaving.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, but it came out all wrong, just a series of Saelis clicks.
“Saelis.” He swallowed as if the very sight of me made him want to puke.
“Where’s Ellison?” I demanded. “Why did you take her and Mase off theVicious? Did you rig the ship to blow up?” The questions hurled out of me so fast, some contained actual words, all of them wrapped in heated frustration.
He wasn’t answering my questions. He couldn’t understand me. An unholy fire raged inside me because I didn’t have the patience for this. My eyes burned with tears as I marched toward him, completely forgetting for the moment that I still held the ice pick. That I was covered head to toe in gray Saelis scales with eyes that glowed green.
In one fluid motion, he whipped out his gun from his holster and pointed it at my head. “That’s far enough.”
I stopped, angry tears trickling down my scaled cheeks. He didn’t trust me, but damn it, I didn’t trust him either. I looked completely different than when he’d seen me on the Black, but was there really no trace of my sister inside me that he recognized? I honestly didn’t know. I hadn’t had the guts to look in a mirror in weeks.
Behind Josh in the open door of the cruiser, a dark shape emerged. Large and familiar, with warm brown eyes, black skin and black clothes that made him little more than a shadow.
Captain Glenn.
Without a glance my way, he raised his arm and placed his hand on top of Josh’s gun to lower it. “That’s Absidy, part of my crew. You point that gun at her, you’re pointing it at me, too, and you really don’t want to do that.”
Josh’s gun hung by his side, his stare glued to me. “Ellison said it was just your arm.”
“Maybe she could’ve stopped it if you hadn’t taken her from me,” I snapped, most of my words lost in translation from my head to my Saelis tongue.
He must’ve understood my tone because he winced. Good.
The captain finally looked at me, his eyes full of guilt and understanding and something I only found in Pop’s eyes. A strange sob broke from my chest. He knew me, knew what I’d been through these last few months maybe better than anyone, and he loved Mase like a son.
He looked older since I’d last seen him, the pockets under his eyes sagging his face with deeper grooves, his shoulders slumped with the burden on his back. But there was also fierceness in his brown eyes, something that had always been there, but now seemed sharper, more defined now that the reasons he breathed were just a planet away, much closer than whole galaxies away. They were safe, at least for now, and his obvious relief snapped my doubts about him in two. This man never turned his back on family, whether it was the literal or figurative definition of the word.
My heart pinched. Unable to hide the crush of gratitude I felt toward the captain as I crossed toward him, I capped my ice pick necklace and hugged him. A wobbly smile lifted his mouth as his meaty arms engulfed me.
“I imagine you have a lot of questions,” he said, his tone choked with emotion.
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“Let’s all go where we can sit and get a drink.”
The three of us wound through theViciousship’s hallways, not Parker’s ship since this was where the captain and I felt at home, random footsteps in the hallway aside. I would tell the captain about that when I was sure I could speak in words again. We checked on Poh in the infirmary, which was much better stocked and organized than Parker’s thanks to Ellison, but I instantly felt like I was in the way while Pop worked on her and Crispin gnawed off his fingernails and looked on.
