I picked a bar at random, opened it, and wrinkled my nose at the strong, musky smell. “This isn’t spoiled, is it? Is it safe for human consumption?” It didn’t smell appetizing, and it almost made my stomach turn. The Gracka snout leaned in closer, sniffed loudly, and then went up and down in what was unmistakably a nod of confirmation. A clearer example of how much Val understood didn’t really exist, did it?
I brought the bar to my mouth, coughed at the strong smell, and took a tiny nibble. It stung my tongue, and I quickly spat it out, dry heaving in horror at the awful taste. Val was a liquid flash, sliding through the air in a strange, organic shape and covering my mouth, my face. For a moment, I felt like I was drowning, and then it faded away, the same way Val slipped away again. Gone from stinging tongue and throat, gone from watering, burning eyes. Just like that.
Silver pooled in my lap, covering the bar I’d opened and the bunch still in the package, then withdrew as Val settled back into her Gracka shape. Only one bar remained on top of the blankets; the rest were piled at Val’s large paws on the floor. This one had a yellow label. “You think I should try this one?” I asked, my stomach turning at the thought of another burning, too-spicy encounter. It rumbled next, reminding me that I was desperately in need of some food—my last meal had been on theLancing Light, over seven hundred years ago.
A wave of sadness broke and crashed, threatening to swallow me, until suddenly, it didn’t. I’d shared that last meal with the whole crew: a goodbye, a celebration of leaving Earth’s solar system successfully. I’d sat next to Kadri, with her bright scarf and brighter smile, and laughed at the antics of the Talacan foursome—their males jostling as they made a spectacle out of wanting to feed her, to the amusement of us all.
Val’s soft whine made me lift tear-filled eyes to hers, and with a nod, I picked up the bar and tore it open. This one smelled much, much better—like strawberries and banana—though I doubted that’s what it was made of. “Better,” I agreed, though I didn’t feel any better. I ate by rote, barely tasting whatever semi-sweetnesswas in it. It filled me. It didn’t make my tongue burn or my eyes sting. That was good enough.
With food in my belly and blankets wrapped around me to keep me warm, I did not want to do much else. Maybe that made me the coward this time around, but all I wanted was to close my eyes and sleep. I’d slept a long time, and still I was exhausted, but that was just the effect of the stasis, wasn’t it? A few sips of water, and I gave in, surrendering to rest. Even if Sin and I were two ill-fitting pieces of a puzzle, I did trust him to keep me safe.
When, much later, I sleepily blinked open my eyes to utter darkness, I didn’t expect to be alone. I thought, at the very least, that Val would be with me or that Sin had sat down in the pilot seat and was staring at me with a somewhat creepy, unreadable look. I shifted upright, and light blinked on inside the shuttle in response to my motion. The shuttle was empty. It was just me, the blankets and crates full of supplies.
My breath fogged lightly in the air when I exhaled, a testament to the dropping temperatures. How much time had passed? Irrationally, fear sank into my bones at the thought. Had I slept too long again? I wasn’t in stasis this time, but I still found myself checking nearby surfaces for dust and grime. What if I’d been out for years, and there was no Sin, and no Val? What if I was all alone again?
Then my eyes caught a glint of silver around my wrist. I touched it with my other hand, and it felt warm, alive. Val. She was still touching me, a piece of her living body split off to stay with me. I wasn’t alone. My breathing eased, and the panic began to fade away. It allowed me to see everything with much clearer eyes. The ship was closed, some supplies were gone, and on the chairacross from me was a whole pile of yellow-labeled ration bars. There was bottled water too, and if I wasn’t mistaken, next to the food supplies, a pistol glinted silver.
I picked it up and stroked my fingers along the handle. So, he’d left me armed and fed, but where had he gone? There was no message, and I didn’t expect one. Sin was not the demonstrative type; he acted like he barely tolerated me at all, except when he was kissing me. My body tingled at the memory, and I tamped it down, furious. “No more of that. He doesn’t want it, so I’m not going to make a fool of myself any further.” Easier said than done.
At least I didn’t feel so tired now, lighter after I’d slept, as if it had put time and distance between me and the disastrous crash of the ship. How had it happened? I hadn’t had enough of a chance to look at the ship’s logs or retrieve my personal effects when we fled. Davidson had been out of his pod, though, and the others disabled. Had he done something?
Instantly, my mind flashed with the image of that thing that had attacked us: dark shadows, pink and blue tentacles, and a face that was much too human—far too much like the man I’d once known. It had been him, but I struggled to believe much of his mind remained. He’d flirted with me again before I’d climbed into my pod for the stint in stasis. I recalled the uncomfortable feeling that had filled me as he made the flirty remark. I’d shut him down once, and I hated having to do it again.
My eyes went to the shuttle hatch, certain I’d heard something and hoping it was just Sin. But what if it wasn’t? He’d left a gun for a reason; he wouldn’t do that if he thought I was safe. There had been shadows in the water, something attacking our pod.I’d seen it get swallowed by far-too-enthusiastic waves when Sin somehow flew us to the island.
A noise made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I clutched the gun more tightly in my grip, fingering the controls and wondering if I’d even know how to work it. The design was unfamiliar to me; did it even have a safety feature, or was it just point and shoot? I had trained with a laser gun, just not one like this.
“Sin?” I called out, half-whispering because something told me this wasn’t Sin and I shouldn’t draw attention to myself. I was in a shuttle capable of space flight; it wasn’t easy to break into one of those. I had a feeling that whoever was on the other side could. Sin probably could, with the help of Val.
Crossing the small craft, I went to the pilot seat and peered at the screens that lined the console. All of this technology looked sleek and unfamiliar. A design I’d never seen before and couldn’t link to any species I knew. It certainly wasn’t Talacan. But, as luck would have it, the texts displayed on the screens were in Talacan—probably set to his native language by Sin himself. And that, I could read.
Sensors indicated the rocky outline of the small island we were on, tidal charts of the ocean that surrounded it, and some kind of status about the night cycle. We were approaching dawn in our location, which hopefully meant that it would soon be light outside. There did not appear to be anything outside. Not so much as a blip on the proximity alert, and no trees to tap against the hull either. Though I had seen some dark foliage on the way to the shuttle, none of it had grown close by.
The scratching noise came again, and I found my hand tightening on the gun. The warm strands of Val heated against my throat, as if they were responding to my fear. Somethingwasoutside, and whatever it was—or whoever it was—I doubted they meant well. Where was Sin? My eyes scanned the sensor readings again, fingers touching the screen to scroll sideways over the small island.
There was a building there, but it also displayed no life signs. Who would want to live in this place anyway? If anyone had, they probably would have found me long ago. No, this world was empty—abandoned—except for the shadows beneath the waves. I was filled with horror as I vividly remembered, and then let my imagination run away with the recollection. The shadow in the waves, spreading like an ink stain as it gobbled up the escape pod. Had it gobbled up theLancing Lightin the same way? Was that why everyone was dead? Again, why not me?
The hatch didn’t just seem to echo with a soft scraping noise this time, it actually groaned, as if deep pressure were being exerted on it. That wasnotgood. That was really bad, in fact. My heart was pounding as I twisted around the seats and pushed some crates into place as a makeshift barrier in front of the hatch. If that was Davidson again—or something like him—I wouldn’t survive this with the flimsy protection of a gun and some crates. But I sure as hell was going to try.
The resolve shocked me into further action, and I gratefully welcomed it after the odd despondence from before my nap. I had somehow survived over seven hundred years in stasis, traveled through time, if you will. There might not be a way back, but I was going to make damn sure there was a way forward.Whoever was coming through the hatch was going to regret doing so.
That didn’t mean I was prepared for the sudden, violent ripping away of the hatch. It was like the shuttle was in the grip of a giant, and he’d pried the lid open with thick, clumsy fingers. Cold rushed in through the hole, and for a moment, I was faced with nothing but utter blackness. That could be the night on this morbid planet, but just as easily, it could be one of those freaky shadows from beneath the water.
I didn’t blink, I didn’t wait. I pressed the trigger of the pistol with single-minded focus and was relieved when laser fire lit up the darkness outside. It blasted through the open hatch with a sizzle but did not appear to strike anything. There was no recoil on the pistol, but my hands ached from how tightly I’d gripped it. Fear, thick like oil, clung to everything as I waited. Did something move? Was it a tentacle or a shadow, was it foe or friend?
My eyes flicked to the console with the sensor readings, certain I’d see some sign of life on it by now. Still nothing. But when my gaze shot back to the open hatch… On the ground, just inside the door, a small pile of things lay, dripping wet and smelling of something sweet but foul, like decay. I kept staring, blinking twice but otherwise unwilling to miss so much as a microsecond. Was it alive? That little smelly pile, or was it a strange gift, or perhaps a lure?
I did not move; I was not about to set foot outside this shuttle if I could help it. Nothing could convince me to be that brave, certainly not a smelly pile of weirdness. It might have been my imagination, but I was almost certain it was moving, sliding closer to me. And then I saw it: the edge of a tentacle, half-hidden behind the pile, pushing it closer toward me. I pressed the trigger, screaming with fear and fury as I aimed for that black appendage. “Get away from me!”
I definitely must have blinked then. One moment I was squeezing hard on the trigger and laser fire was erupting from my weapon; the next… Sin was just suddenly there. He had his hand around mine, freeing the pistol from my grip. The handle blinked red, probably indicating it had no charge left. It felt hot, and things smelled of smoke and singed metal.
Everything inside the shuttle was bright, and the hatch was a sheet of gleaming silver. Blood coated Sin’s armor—silver, like Val’s—in lurid red splatters. “Sit down,” he said, a firm command he expected me to obey. My legs gave out in an instant, and I found myself sitting on the shuttle floor, still struggling to process the abrupt change in circumstances. “Not there!” he growled, but I could not even fix my mistake. He swept in, picked me up off the floor, and then casually dropped me into the navigator’s seat.
“We’re taking off,” he warned, silver flicking away from his arm in strange, smoothly organic tendrils. They pulled the flight harness around me and closed the buckles while he powered the shuttle with precise hands and angled us toward a dawn-streaked sky.
“Wait, the hatch…” I started to say, just as the force of our takeoff pressed me hard into the seat. For a long moment, I could not twist my head enough to glance at it and see if it was closed. When we began to level off just a little, I tried, and stared in confusion at the silver that covered the hole. Was thatVal? Was she enough to block out the heat of leaving a planet’s atmosphere, and then the icy vacuum of space? Was hecrazy?
Horrified, I flicked my gaze back to my Talacan companion. His grin was sharp, almost feral, and possibly the scariest thing I’d ever laid eyes on. That said a lot, all things considered. The manwascrazy, utterly bonkers. He was flying us casually into space with a gaping hole in the side of the shuttle, like it didn’t matter one bit.
