Only one android remained and she knew it was Bin-Three. The metal spider turned back into a man with a ticking and a creek. Gone was the fluid silence of his movement. His eyes didn’t open.
“Is he going to be okay?” she asked the bot.
“Master Dommik is restarting. He is okay.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-four minutes and three seconds until completion.”
“Thank you.” She massaged the back of her neck. A sheet was placed over Dommik’s nudity when his extra limbs fully vanished inside his shell.
“Here is your dinner.” Bin-Three handed her a nutrition bar. Kat took it with a smile.Routine feels good.She placed it on the table next to her knocking her knuckles into a reader.
Her reader.
The one that had beeped.
Kat grabbed it and turned it on. She closed her eyes to find her buried courage, fear strangled her heart and closed up her throat.I’m fine. I don’t have the parasite. I can’t have it. I’m vaccinated. I don’t have it.Her body broke out into a cold sweat.
“Katalina, dear, nothing in life comes easy. You’ll find that your demons come back over and over. What you do about those visits is entirely up to you. Exorcising a demon is as hard as forgetting a memory.”
She opened her eyes and read her results.
***
Dommik woke up alone. Not alone. His eyes landed on the Trentian standing at the foot of his bed. His skin was cold but his metal interior burned him up from the inside. He flexed his muscles, registering his extra limbs locked within.
The next instant he had his metal claw around the alien’s throat, drawing blood. “What happened?” he growled.
The Space Lord remained still. “You came back broken. Katalina, Talina, and your robots repaired you, Dommik.”
“Did you touch her?” Venom rose up into his mouth.
“I did not.”
“Where is she? If she has come to any harm, I’ll kill you slowly, painfully. And your entire crew and gift your corpses to the flowers.”
“Dommik, she is fine, shook up, but here. Katalina took your prize and is housing it in an enclosure as we speak.”
Dommik threaded through his androids and saw her through their eyes down below. He stole their recordings of the last day away and uploaded them into his drives. It took him all of several seconds to review the material.
Her screams, her cries as she tried to get him inside. Taking his weapon and calling for help, shooting at the remaining pilgrims, and of Markoss and his men slaughtering them. He saw Kat crouch over him with a knife, preparing to fight to the death.
For him.
The surgery, the cleanup, her conversation with the Space Lord, the flower, and he saw her find the reader.
Dommik kept his hold around Markoss’s neck and checked the stitches on his arms and chest, already fading away. His eyes landed on the reader across the room.
He let the Trentian go. “Get off my ship.”
Markoss canted his head, twisting his lips. “She loves you.”
Dommik pulled out clothes from the cybernetics cabinet and dressed. “Get. Off. My. Ship. I don’t like liars, Markoss.” Throwing his words back at him.
The creeping chill of the Space Lord’s laugh could have given lesser men night terrors. It wheezed low and heavy until it filled his ears, the breeze before the storm.
All he cared about was getting to Kat, talking to her, forcing her to accept him, and kissing her into compliance before he yelled at her for putting herself into harm’s way.
