Page 40 of Consume
“Why?” I rasped.
“I already told you I need to show you something.”
“But why did you take the video of me?” My voice sounded lifeless, but I was too numb to care. My body was folding up, putting extra barriers between me and what she was about to show me. Already, I knew I wouldn’t like it.
The video projected from the Mind-I in her palm onto the wall, a still shot of me with only slightly fewer scales. So, not that long ago.
“I took the video of you because of what you told me.” She sighed. “Or what the Saelises inside of you said, rather.”
“I remember,” I said. “You said you could understand them, but you wouldn’t tell me what they were saying.”
“They were saying...” She firmed her mouth as she watched me closely. “Help her. That’s what they said, in different variations, over and over again. Help her.”
Help me how? And why couldn’t I help myself? I blinked at the reflection of me on the wall, another version of me, but not me. I wasn’t me anymore because of the hundreds of ghosts living inside of me, and they were changing me so much that even they knew I needed help.
The ship’s engines choked, whirred and choked, and then fell silent.
It should’ve been so simple. The ship flying. A young woman living alone inside her own body. Both of these things happened every single day.
“Show me,” I gritted out.
The video played and showed me walking slowly from the dining room to the Vicious room.
“I put cameras all over the ship when I found you wandering the halls in the middle of the night.”
“That’s not so rare.”
“It is when you don’t react to the sound of your own name.” Frowning, Poh followed my movement on the video. “This is from the day I went to the hospital to find Captain Glenn, and you and Crispy were my eyes and ears.”
I watched myself round into the Vicious room, the cold darkness radiating from within even on the recorded version. Poh sped up the video, the time stamp in the corner blurring white.
“For fifteen whole minutes, you stayed in there.”
“I heard footsteps outside the dining room. I only went out to the hallway to check.”
“Listen.” She turned up the volume on the Mind-I.
I wandered back down the hallway toward the real me, and the sight shriveled my nerves into a ball. My next few breaths evaporated from my lungs. In the video, my scaled face had gone empty, a soulless thing I didn’t recognize. My footsteps boomed down the hallway, infinitely louder than those I could ever make myself. Unless I had hundreds of others walking right along with me.
Poh’s gaze ticked to me, watching me watch myself. “Crispy said there were only two heartbeats on the ship at this time.”
“Pop and me. I was hearing—” I fought down a gag. “I was hearing me. I made the footsteps, but...what was I doing in there?”
When the sound of the choking engine died down, Mase’s voice came through the telecom. “Absidy wanted me to get us into the air pronto, and I reckon she’ll fill us in, but we’re not going anywhere. Someone cut the fuel lines in both ships.”
“What?” I blinked at Poh who stared at me long and hard. “No. I don’t know how—”
But Nesbit knew how to cut the fuel lines. Oh Feozva, what had I done?
“I don’t know what you did on Parker’s ship, but getting toVicious’s fuel lines is easy through the Vicious room,” Poh said. “All you need to do is go through—”
“The air vents,” I finished for her. I shouldn’t have known that, but I did. On Parker’s ship, there was a loose panel in the wall next to the door with the button smudged with blue paint, behind which were the fuel lines I shouldn’t have known that either.
“Sorry, girl,” Mase said over the telecom, “but until we make repairs and fuel up, we’re dead here.”
I squeezed my eyes shut at his choice of words. “You should’ve told me this, Poh.”
She heaved a breath. “I did. All of this... I’ve said thisallbefore. I’ve reminded you constantly that iron will help clear your head. When you insisted on rescuing Mase and Ellison, I explained everything to you yet again because it never seems to stick.”
