Her grandma got the parasite. From Kat herself, no doubt, and it was still uncertain how it transferred to the woman. Her nana had been with them from the beginning, always on the other side of the glass barriers, a constant fixture in her young life although cold and distant and far.
It wasn’t until her grandmother had first wrapped her in a hug that warmth entered her childhood.
But Kat could never stay away from the cold, crisp, sanitized rooms of the medical facilities and when she got her GED online, locked in her paisley-splashed room, she went for her nursing certificate. She wanted to think it was in honor of her parents but deep down her reasons had been selfish. It was comforting to her in a nostalgic way. The way only childhood memories could be.
Maybe she was a little crazy, evidence with her being on a Cyborg’s ship alone, god-knows-where in space, surrounded by stark conditions that were only differentiated by darkness, and an unknown amount of androids.
A message popped up on her screen. Mia.
Kat sighed and without reading it first, began relaying her observations of the day. Complete with seeing the icy planet and the Molucs. She referred to them as Bonnie and Clyde for her own satisfaction.
The tips of her fingers swiped over the smooth keyboard, numb from the brief opening of the hatch. She slid her hands into the long arms of the jacket and brought them to her lips; eyes closed and her body tense. Her breath warmed up her cheeks.
Her body had just started to thaw when the flash of a new missive appeared on the screen, catching her eye. Without her interference, it opened up and the blur of a video-feed came on. Her eyes narrowed as a man’s face appeared through a haze of static and a struggling connection.
Kat noticed the tattoos first. Guns on both cheeks pointing toward his mouth, numbers below his eyes that looked like code and hair buzzed off in a military cut.
The man flashed his teeth. “You must be the EPED spy.”
Her first thought should have been ‘he can see me?’ but instead, she blurted, “I’m not a spy!” Kat’s hands fell from her face.
“So Dommik caught himself a girl. The word has gotten around that he had a human on his ship.”
Kat tried to exit out of the video-chat but her screen was frozen.
His laugh came through with fuzz that grated on her ears, gleeful and menacing. An android stepped into the doorway and stared blankly at the exchange. Kat looked at it, knowing it was reporting to Dommik, the lights over its face flashed. Kat looked back at the video-feed.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
The man smiled and sat back, his foot braced on his knee. “I wanted to see for myself if the rumors were true. Dommik likes to trap his victims.”
“I’m just doing the job I was hired for,” she said but now did feel trapped. “Who are you?”
The guns on his high cheekbones expanded as his smile grew wider. “Let’s just say I’m a co-worker. A fellow EPED employee. Tell me, how did you talk your way onto his ship?”
Kat pursed her lips. “You’re not working for Mia are you?” Mia had asked that same question and she kept asking it every time Kat made a mistake.
The man let out a shrill laugh. He leaned toward the camera until his tattooed face filled up the feed. His eyes were white-washed, almost as if he were blind with a moldy glare to them. “Mia has her way. She’s desperate, that one, but not desperate enough to talk to me.”
Curiosity killed the cat. ‘Or Kat in this instance.’ “Is it because of the guns on your face?”
The man flashed his teeth at her and for a moment they were sharp and canine. “I can put guns on your face, babydoll, or I can put them elsewhere.”
She couldn’t stop the disgust on her face. She tried again to unfreeze the console even though a large, sharp grin filled her screen, at the corner of her eye. Kat could see it clearly but refused to look at the man dead-on.
“You should ask him about the roaches. Ask him about the webs.”
Kat didn’t realize it, hadn’t heard the tell-tale footsteps or the hum of the hatch opening, but the next moment her chair skidded back and her hands flew to the armrests. Dommik, in his white suit once again blocked out the view she wanted and didn’t want to see.
“See you in Ghost City, friend.”
Chapter Six:
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Dommik turned around to see the girl swivel in the chair, her mouth parted in a gasp. Kat was still wrapped up in his jacket, hands disappeared into its sleeves, the hood still tied at her neck and framing her face.
If Gunner had seen her wild tendrils, he wasn’t sure if he could keep the other Cyborg from her. Gunner was created much like himself but with a different set of DNA and a different skeletal model under his skin. Dommik questioned who was more of freak: himself or Gunner, who had Jackal in his veins.
