Page 5 of Consume
My pulse spiked, making it harder to hear. I held my breath, listening hard, my gaze locked on the closed door that led out of the dining room. After close to two months on this ship, I knew every sound it was supposed to make when someone passed through it, even some sounds it wasn’t supposed to make. I had no doubts. Someone was definitely out there.
The only other person on this ship was Pop, but he was in the engine room, either theVicious’s or Parker’s ship, neither of which were in the air. Yep, that’s right, we were still on the ground, parked on the edge of a forest and a farm whose owner Poh had bribed or threatened to put a muffle on any complaints. It wasn’t unusual to see ships parked in random places on Mayvel, but not ones that weren’t supposed to exist, like theVicious. Its history had been erased because of its brutal past, so we’d hidden it inside Parker’s much larger ship. A ship within a ship. It had been no easy feat, so the fact that someone was skulking around the inner one was doubly concerning.
Someone should probably go check that out. Not Pop since he was too far away to come running fast enough, especially if whoever lurked out there had murder on their mind. So that left me. Feozva damn it all to hell.
I jerked the ice pick from the chain around my neck. Sweeping my gaze over the hospital room on the screen in front of me one more time, I strode around the gurney, my steps as light as I could make them. With my breaths shallowed, I pressed my ear against the door, the cold titanium instantly numbing it.
Still there. Step. Step. Moving farther down the hallway toward the light at the end.
Crispin gasped in my earpiece. “She moved.”
I stopped and turned. Everything seemed as it had been. On screen, the two people’s chests rose and fell, controlled by the tubes plugging their noses and mouths.
“B-b-breathing,” I hissed.
“Humans don’t breathe in their legs,” he hissed back.
True story. But I had bigger issues right then than breathing legs, or the lack thereof.
As quietly as I could, I turned the lever on the dining room door and opened it, then poked my head out into the hallway. Nothing but cold air to the left. To the right, the hanging light at the end of the hallway swung just slightly, which didn’t really mean anything on this drafty ship. There was no sign of what had made the footsteps.
A low fog curled up out of my brain, making everything hazy as though I were in a dream. My movements felt like I’d bathed in heavy sludge. I wished I knew what was happening, wished I could call out with words I could understand. I gripped my ice pick tighter.
Static buzzed in my ear, and what sounded like a question from Crispin.
There were all sorts of nooks and crannies to hide on this ship, doors that didn’t latch all the way even with Poh and Pop’s careful attention, and some air vents that still lacked their screws.
I waited, listening, and soon my mind fog sifted away. Everything remained quiet. When nothing burst out of a hiding place, I stepped back in the dining room and shut and locked the door. I knew what I’d heard, and there was no way I would put Pop in danger if someone, or something, happened to be headed toward him.
With my hand already lifting to touch the telecom mounted next to the door, I froze as soon as my gaze flitted toward the screen. A bright light slanted into the hospital room from the corner, a light that hadn’t been there before.
“Crispin?” I tried to say, but only a few clicks fell out.
His voice moved toward my ears slowly, as if from down a long tunnel. “...you been?”
A growl that came from deep within bared my fangs. “...l-light?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you,” he said, now much too loud. “The light just flicked on, and they moved again. Where did you go just now? Why didn’t you try to say anything?”
I hit the telecom button. “G-g-g-gun.”
“Absidy, what the fuck is going on?” Crispin shouted.
“What?” Pop’s voice came through the telecom. “I’ll be right there. Just hang on.”
But would he bring a gun, though, in case he ran into the intruder? I bit my tongue and cursed myself for my lack of speech.
“I’m doing a bioscan of the ship right now,” Crispin said. “Did you see or hear something? Because there’s no one else there with you except your dad. Two heartbeats. Two.”
Then it was a ghost I’d heard, another one, one who had no interest in the ghost magnet with no iron in her mouth to repel them. Not Randolph, since I could hear him rattling pans in the kitchen. Another one, then. I attracted the most malicious ghosts, but because I wasn’t currently being torn apart by one, why had that ghost just walked on by? Unless it somehow knew I didn’t have a vacancy. I was filled to the brim, so much so that I was slowly becoming another species.
On screen, movement flashed from one of the patients on the bed, a twitch of his leg underneath the sheet.
“Did you see that?” Crispin whispered.
Yes, I had. I stared for the longest time at the screen, completely silent except for my thundering heartbeat, and waited. Everything stood still.
Everything except out in the ship’s hallway again. Step. Step. The same beat, the same speed, not hurried like Pop’s should be.
