Page 8 of Consume
Chapter Three
“Poh! Crispin! Answerme.” Pop fiddled with the Mind-I on the gurney.
But no one answered.
I gasped at the wall where Poh’s image had just been, shallow pulls of air filled with needles scraping down my lungs. I sagged into a chair at the gurney. What the hell had just happened? It had been a trap just like we’d thought, and they’d caught Poh. But what had they done to her? What might theystillbe doing to her?
My gaze caught on the door to the hallway, and I instantly stiffened. “Pop?”
He stopped his tinkering, one part of the Mind-I in each hand, and looked at me. “What?” He turned his gaze to the door. “Did you hear or see something out there?”
I jerked my head in a nod.
“A ghost?”
I half shrugged. It hadn’t felt like one.
His mouth firmed. “Another doppelganger, then.”
But it hadn’t felt like that either. The doppelganger had preferred to hide and observe, at least for a while. This...whatever it was wandered around in the open, as if it wanted us to know it was here. Why? And why hadn’t it come into the dining room? We hadn’t exactly been secreting ourselves away in here.
Pop and I stayed put for about an hour while he tried to get word from Poh and Crispin and while I listened hard to any sound coming from the hallway, and while worry chowed down on my conscience. I settled my hand on my stomach, grateful I hadn’t gone with Poh, but also kicking myself that I hadn’t. I could’ve helped. Or possibly made it worse. Either way, I was a bundle and a half of taut nerves, ready to snap.
I knew I should’ve gone to investigate the Vicious room, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave Pop. Plus, I didn’t know if I was ready to deal with what I might find.
The ship gave a soft shudder.
I sucked in a breath as I snapped my gaze to Pop’s.
Pop rose to his feet and grabbed his gun from the gurney. “Stay here, Abs, and lock the door behind me.”
Shaking my head, I held up the ice pick from the chain around my neck.
He frowned at the slender piece of metal, capped on its sharpened end with plastic—a gift from Mase. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe we need to get you a gun.”
No, thanks. Little did he know my survival training had always been hand-to-hand. Even though I’d told him everything, I’d left out some of the more horrific parts for his own sake.
He turned to open the door like he intended to step out first, but I beat him to it because he was my one and only Pop.
“You’re as stubborn as your mother,” he muttered.
I cracked a smile, but it didn’t last. The glass jar was still empty in the middle of the hallway, the light still on in the Vicious room. On silent feet, we strode away down another hallway in the opposite direction toward the ship’s exit. A light hung at the end of the hallway, dim and orange like a teralingua’s eyes. Around the next corner was where they used to be stored. My ears burned for any sounds that shouldn’t be here, like more footsteps or an unknown entity slithering through the walls. With one hand on Pop’s shoulder, I peered behind us. We appeared to be alone.
At the corner, Pop gave the all clear, and we stepped into the hallway with the exit doors. I punched the button, wincing at the sound of metal sliding against metal. Poh, or Pop, had rigged the doors so they both opened at the same time, and we shot through them both out into Parker’s ship.
It immediately felt different, and not just the plush carpet under my feet or the fading new paint smell that singed my nose. It felt...almost pleasant, like it hadn’t seen its fair share of nightmares yet. Since it belonged to Parker, a drug baron, that was really saying a lot.
We made our way to where Parker kept his cruisers, a large hangar built inside his ship, and I flipped up the glass panel on the wall outside it and hit the green button. The door with a red stripe across it lifted with hardly a sigh.
Crispin was already barreling over the metal floor toward us as fast as he could, his arm slung around Poh. Her face was bloody with an ugly bruise swelling half of it. She couldn’t even stand, and her boots dragged over the floor.
