Page 53 of Consume
My head exploded with wails, loud and panicked. I backed away from the door and glanced left.
A single Saelis turned a corner several feet away. Stopped. Stared. It might as well have been a whole horde.
I ran in the opposite direction.
Wails and clicks sounded from all around me, both inside and outside my head. The Saelis chased after me, likely signaling for others.
All I had to do was get back to the sewer part of the ship and be gone, but I had no idea how to get back without retracing my steps.
More claws scraped the metal floor behind me. I poured on more speed.
Another hallway branched up ahead. I started to swing to the left in the hopes of circling around to the sewer somehow, but the ghosts inside my head shifted their wails to the right. They knew this ship better than I did. I had to trust them. I sprinted right into an empty hallway. They heightened their voices into screams outside the second door on the left, which stood open. I flung myself inside. With pursed lips to quiet my heavy breaths, I quietly shut the door on the sound of scrabbling claws closing in.
The ghosts went quiet, dropping silence down so fast, my ears burned.
Stifling my breaths, I backed away, searching over my shoulder for any more threats. I appeared to be alone inside a giant room, this one empty of vines and ferns, but filled from floor to ceiling with short lines etched into the metal. Writing, so similar to the Vicious room that I stood there in wonder. From the corners of my eyes, letters formed like bursts of a word, but they were too fast, and they vanished when I looked at them straight on.
What was this place?
It even had a similar feel to it as the Vicious room, though not as dark and haunted with memories. It felt like this room had purpose, like it was so much more than a cube of marked-up metal, but there was nothing here except what looked like a podium in the middle of the floor. Carved from metal with a breathtakingly detailed leafy design, dust motes floated above it, caught in blue slants of light that came from the hundreds of hovering balls near the ceiling.
I started toward the podium, my breath held, my nerves shrinking against each other, though I wasn’t sure if these were my reactions or the ghosts inside me. They’d gone completely silent, as if in anticipation.
My gaze roved over the top of the podium as I neared. It held a book of sorts, though the cover and pages inside were just as silvery metallic as the podium itself. The same marks on the walls were etched on the front of the book, only forming bits of words out of the corners of my eyes. With a delicate touch, I opened it, and a jolt, both familiar and terrifying crashed into me. Normally I had to put iron on my tongue to get that kind of effect. The thin iron pages were cool and hard against my fingertips. And wet. Clear liquid seeped from the page and soaked into my scales. I’d only ever seen one thing do that before, and it was consumectalons, the parasite inside me that consumed metal. They were eating this book and infusing themselves into me too.
I turned more pages, my whole body trembling. This was pointless. I couldn’t read any of this. Which was why my eyes were immediately drawn to a picture. It lay in the middle of a page, a circle etched into iron. Possibly the Saelises’ home planet, and right below it—
Feozva. The only word I could read. The iron goddess I worshipped, the goddess I’dmade upto explain away my iron addiction,on the pages of a book inside a Saelis spaceship.
Questions spun through my head, chasing the influx of parasites, and I thought I might be sick. What was Feozva doing here?
The more my scaled fingertips drank of the consumectalons, the clearer the words on the rest of the pages became.The name of the Saelises’ planet... One of several of the universe’s ancient goddesses. Feozva merges earth with the hereafter.
Merging...like ghosts passing from this world through me into the next. Except they were stuck because I was so clueless, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
“Feozva.” I blinked hard, trying to make sense of all this.
Pop had always thought the picture I’d drawn of her above my shrine back at the dorm was a self-portrait. TheViciouscrew felt I had a higher purpose. What if, somehow, I was Feozva? Or Feozva was me? An ancient goddess of the universe.
Saelises worship Feozva, who is said to take on many forms. She is known for her strength and bravery.
They worshipped her, just like I did. A goddess I’d crafted from my imagination. How was this possible?
My lungs clenched, and I dragged in an unsteady breath. Then another. I— I couldn’t get enough air. I was drowning in panic, buckling with too many things inside my head. I had to get this helmet off of me...
No. That was a terrible idea, but...I couldn’t...breathe. I twisted the helmet off and sucked in a long breath. Still, my lungs burned, the air within me shrinking.
The book felt real. The panic felt real. The iron in my mouth felt real. But what if none of this was? I no longer trusted myself, but there was one way to know for sure if what I’d just read was true or a figment of the malicious ghosts inside of me.
Gasping, I spit my iron cube into my gloved hand.
“Get out of me!” I shouted immediately, but the words scraped out over my tongue and twisted, sounding nothing like me.
And the ghosts did. My whole body spasmed as they scrambled up my throat with a bitter, smoky taste. They hurled from my mouth in one long black cloud, their shrieks pounding inside and outside my skull.
As they left, they took parts of me with them. Parts of them, rather. All of the scales faded from my skin. My yellow claws shrank back into regular fingernails, but I only had seconds to register this.
The ghosts took shape instantly, as solid-looking as I was, shrinking the room with the sheer number of them. Hundreds of Saelis females, their gray scales gleaming in the room’s ethereal light. A dark-skinned woman with an unnaturally tilted head and a shock of red hair fought through them toward me. Beyond them, close to the door, stood three men. Red’s captain who had ordered her to hang the Saelis females. Doctor Daryl, who was already circling the perimeter of the room while tapping the walls, blood still matted to his slicked-back blond hair. And Nesbit, who flashed me his crooked tooth when he heaved a mad giggle.
