He was stiff, on edge, and at the pinnacle of his own destruction when the security feed flashed. Her presence moved toward the elevator. He let go of the frayed rope and watched.
Finally.
***
Kat felt cold as she twisted her new wristlet around, keeping her hand busy while she surfed the network and passed her time. She would’ve continued to drum her fingers except that they felt bruised and tender from so much typing.
She read up on anything and everything that presented itself. There was always some ‘new’ breakthrough, a new planet that was habitable, a new cure, new technology, and sometimes there was a tragic death of someone important, murders, a smuggling ring being brought down.
Nothing kept her attention anymore.
What she didn’t find was any news about the aliens, what they were doing, what was happening on the other side of the galaxy. Sure, there were the broad strokes, dignitaries shaking hands, and reform for the half-breeds but she found next to nothing about the Space Lords, and nothing about rebel sects and internal fighting.
Kat tensed. Her back stiffened and she knew she was being watched. She tried not to look around and find him, she didn’t want to see him.
I don’t want to see him.Her palms settled on her stomach and smoothed out her shirt. She kept her hands busy because if she didn’t they would be rubbing her belly, looking for something that wasn’t there yet. She hadn’t begun to show yet and as long as she continued taking the pills Dommik gave her, her aches stayed away.
Dommik.Kat wanted to see him but hated herself for admitting it. He hadn’t approached her since they left Xan’Mara and she made no effort to find him.
She was just cold. Numb.
Or had been, until Earth was on the horizon and the thought of the open air filling her lungs made her excited. She caressed her stomach and sat back, blinking the screen from her eyes.
Will you be an Earth baby?She cooed to it in her mind. Her love for it growing by the second, already attached to her unborn child. It wasn’t the parasite she was terrified of anymore. She had something in her now that she would die for, something beautiful and new, that she would go to the ends of the universe and back for.
She hated Dommik almost as much as she loved him. He had given her everything she wanted, needed, an adventure, a chance to grieve, and even a way to get over her paranoia. Kat glanced at the roach room. His methods were flawed but they werehisand he washers.
It was enough. It felt like everything. And it burned as the cold thawed.
Kat found herself walking to the elevator, hoping her wristlet would work. It did.
It was hard to breathe as she rode to the upper decks in silence, butterflies–no–Molucs filled her belly. The doors opened and she walked through the familiar passage past the alcove and its beautiful stars, past the medbay where the reader still sat on the table, further yet until the passageway opened up. She leaned to each new closed door to see if her wristlet would open them and wondered and wandered as nothing was barred off to her.
A maze of shadows and empty rooms lay around her and the cage she built around herself opened up a little bit more with each step forward.
Kat came across a lank of rope lying on the floor. It ended somewhere deep within the darkness beyond her sight. Her stomach flipped as she picked it up and tugged, finding no give in the cord.
She peered into the gloom as she pulled it again. Nothing.
“Dommik?” she called out.
Her face scrunched as she followed the rope’s source, rolling it up over her arm as she went. It was smooth in her hands, well-used, with only the occasional knot she didn’t stop to untie. The remaining doors forgotten.
The next light illuminated a lowered ceiling.
Not a lowered ceiling,she frowned, looking up at the crisscrossing pattern.More rope.
Kat reached up and pulled but it remained stiff above her and retained its shape.The same rope that’s around my arm.
“Dommik!?” she yelled.
She thought about turning back although she knew she wouldn’t. Her need for answers bloomed within her and blurred out the rest. Safety wasn’t an issue on the ship. Only her misgivings were.
The pattern above her began to bleed out onto the walls on either side until it was so thick the walls were hidden. The dimness of the passageway petered close to black, the low-lights buried beneath. She gripped the ropes to find them, only to find her failure.
Kat jumped as a tendril fell and hit her shoulder. Her heart beat to the roar of a drum in her chest, filling her body with an uncontrollable need to shake it off, to shake everything off.
What the Hell. What. The. Fuck?She resumed her pace with an adrenaline-fueled skip and continued forward. She wasn’t afraid of the dark nor was she afraid of tight spaces but as the thick threading enclosed around her, a rush of horror took the place of her curiosity. She found herself ducking and weaving through the ropes on all sides and as she went the smoothness of their length disappeared and was replaced by tears and frays.
