Page 36 of Elanie & the Empath
“What’s not good?” I asked, stepping closer, a little worried that he would blow up the pod. Not that I’d tell him that. Or maybe I should tell him that. Was this a situation where it made more sense to be honest or polite? If he could read me, he’d know how I felt anyway. Honest. Honesty was best.
I was mid-inhale, ready to tell him about my concerns, when he emerged again with a deep scowl and a warped circuit board pinched between his fingers.
“What’s that?”
“This,” he said, his scowl deepening, “is the comms link. Unfortunately for us, it’s fragged.” He sighed, tossed the board over his shoulder, and dove back in.
I usually avoided small talk like a spacecups outbreak. But there was something about being stuck in a tiny enclosed space with someone while waiting to find out if we’d live or die that made me curious. About him, specifically. “You wanted to be a mechanic?”
A black metal panelthunked onto the floor beside him, followed by a tangle of wires. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I was obsessed. I wanted to be the next Maximus Osbourne. Master Mechanic to the Aquilinian Royalty. But medicine is the family trade, and my father wouldn’t tolerate a mechanic for a son. Not that he tolerates me much these days anyway—holy shit.”
“Did you find something?” I asked, kneeling beside him.
He strained, grunted, and groaned, and then something under the control panel popped loose. When he crawled back out, his hair a mess, a crooked smile on his lips, the wordroguishappeared in my mind in sparkling blue letters.
“I did.” He produced a small black box, holding it between us, studying the frayed wires poking out of its side. “Thisis a backup comms. Long-range. I didn’t think I’d find one, since backups like this were only installed on older pods. But if I had to guess, I’d say this is a slap-dash LunaCorp remodel of a thirtieth century pod, and we just got very, very lucky.” He winked at me, and I felt it like an electrical storm, action potentials firing in a coordinated surge along my skin. “Never underestimate LunaCorp’s stinginess.”
“It doesn’t look functional,” I said, stating the obvious.
“True.” He eyed the device again. “The wiring is shot, but the comms itself isn’t too bad. If I can fix it and rewire it,then find an antenna, I might be able to send something back to Delphi, at least. Some primitive code. And if I could find a satellite array…” He trailed off and turned to me, his eyes boyishly round. “Elanie, how did you wind up in this pod?”
I rose to my feet and crossed my arms over my chest, disturbed that when I searched my memory for the event, there was nothing there. “Apparently, I walked down the hall to the airlocks and?—”
“No, I know that part.” He rubbed his throat. “I can still feel your hand crushing my windpipe.”
“What?” I gasped. “I tried to choke you?”
“Oh, only for a second,” he said, backpedaling with a breezy laugh. “Really, it was less of a choking and more of a gentle squeezing.” He raised his chin, exposing the column of his throat to me. “I bet you didn’t even leave a bruise.”
Fingermarks made faint tracks across his skin.Myfingermarks. “Stars above, Sem. I could have killed you. I didn’t know. I had no idea.”
“Hey, it’s okay.” He stood, coming closer. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. What if it happens again? What if I hurt you?”
“You won’t,” he said softly, gentling me like I was an oorthorse about to bolt. “I know you won’t.”
Terror flooded my veins. I knew that I’d been unconscious, but this was so much worse. I’d been out of control. I’d been dangerous. Evidently, I was going to worry about my mental stability right now, whether it was efficient or not.
While I spiraled, searching for any code I could rewrite to improve my neural network security, he slipped a finger under my chin.
“Elanie,” he said, lifting my gaze to his, to the small, dark freckle beneath his eye. “Listen to me. I trust you. I am not afraid of you. And we are going to get through this. We are going to survive. We just need to figure out how we got here and how to get back home.”
I wanted to believe him, but how could I? He might trust me, but that didn’t mean I trusted myself. I didn’t know who or what had taken control of me. I didn’t know if theystillcontrolled me.
“Have I ever lied to you?” he asked, clasping my trembling hands in his, holding them still.
“No,” I said. “But I haven’t known you very long.”
He chuckled while his thumbs caressed my skin in slow, soothing circles. “That may be about to change.”
While I mulled that possibility over, he let me go and asked, “How do you think it happened? Were you hacked? A virus, maybe? Or was it some sort of long-range signal? Could there be a satellite array out here somewhere broadcasting to bionics?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “My systems scans are all nominal. There’s no trace of a security breach or any viral activity. I have no memory of a signal breaking into my code.” I ran a hand through the air from my head to my toes. “Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happening here.”
His lips twitched, his gaze lingering a heartbeat longer than necessary on my bare feet, my knees, stomach, throat, before jerking up to meet my stare again. “Do you remember anything strange happening to you, aside from the obvious? Any warnings that something was off?”
“Warnings?”
