Ely shivered under his perusal and hacked out a dry cough but his eyes remained closed tight.
He’d returned to the middle of his cell to rest and Gunner couldn’t blame him. It was the safest course of action even if he proved to truly have a cock between his legs.The guy is small. Easy to overpower.Smaller than most, and tall, Gunner gathered from the short instances he’d seen Ely standing up, but wiry, willowy ifheactually was ashe.
There was a hint of muscle definition outlined by Ely’s fraying, dirty clothes. At least, there had been muscle before being locked up in a cell for weeks without regular food and water.
There was also scarring on his hands and arms where flesh was exposed. Those scars signified hard, possibly dangerous work; maybe a welder, a builder, possibly even a cook. Whatever he did, there was a chance of damage.
Strike male?
Ely was on his side, curled in on himself to shield away the cold and encapsulate as much heat as possible. It was the same position Gunner had seen him in when he was brought back from interrogation, Many of the men around him rested the same way.
When there was no hope, no one really gave a damn what they looked like.
Gunner quietly clasped his hands together. He appreciated the internal heat from his mainframe that always kept him comfortable. He pressed his hands over his nose and breathed in his own scent, sighing from the familiarity and comfort it brought.
With his hands still poised over his face, he returned to the task at hand and moved to the center of his cell.
Where oh where can my little dog be?He weeded out long tendrils of electricity, powered from deep inside his hardware, looking for the closest connection—one that was within reach—to his cell. The electrical panel drew him but he ignored it, knowing he needed something closer... Something inside his space that he could touch at will and without pretending to break his arm to get at the lock.
The stream of lights overhead came next, and the mechanism that released the restraints soon after. His eyes shifted upward to the ceiling that was still several feet outside his reach. The old chrome sheen met his gaze.
Still too far.
Gunner crouched on the vents that ran across and under his feet, but felt nothing close at hand. The hole in the middle was no bigger than several inches in diameter, and under that, there was a grate system he spied with suction vents along the walls of it.
So it catches the crap and then sucks it into the walls.
With the continuous sounds of bad sleep filling his ears, Gunner stepped away and meticulously ran his hands over the walls, floors, and bars of his enclosure, finding little zaps of energy beneath the metal. When all was said and done, his attention returned to the crap chute.
Why the fuck was I made to be a goddamned jackal?
He crouched before the vent again and regarded it with disgust. Flexing his fingers, his claws elongated into razor sharp points. He ran the pad of his thumb over one of them until the skin sliced open and pulled away, dripping partial synthetic blood.
Gunner cut deeper, exposing the tip of his thumb bone and the sheen of uncorroded metal that made up his frame.
A movement to his left stopped him. He retracted his nails and closed his fingers over the cut that had already begun to heal. Ely appeared at his side and stared at his hand.
Gunner opened his fist and showed it healed anew. “Nothing to see here,” he whispered, but his focus was undeterred and once again zeroed in on Ely’s eyes, the way his hair fell, and the shape of his lips. Although the lights were low and hazy, he could see Ely’s face more clearly than he had any time before.
He had a straight nose, almond eyes, strong, high cheekbones, and a tapered jaw. All covered in layers of dirt, but there were also slithers of ghostly pale skin beneath the grime. The kind of pale that meant years of taking Vitamin D pills because it never saw sunlight.
His hair is blonde, or light brown.He couldn’t tell. It fell in thick strands over his ears and the sides of his face, pushed to the side, obscuring some of his features.
A pretty boy...or a beautiful girl.
“How long have you been in here?” Gunner asked, low enough for only the two of them to hear. He didn’t want to wake anyone up. Especially Kallan.
If Kallan wakes up, I’m going to kill him.
Ely had been just about to say something to him earlier before Kallan interrupted. Gunner had seen his lips part.
If it happened again, there was going to be even more death then he’d planned. Quietly, Ely moved back to his place at the wall and dropped his head on his knee, facing his direction.
Gunner turned back to the vent, sliced down the center of his thumb and snipped off the metal, wires, and tech that made it work, dropping it in to land on the grate within. A moment passed before it was sucked into the deeper systems of the ship.
He sensed it move through the ship’s systems.
Gunner shielded his impromptu surgery but still felt eyes on his back. He gritted his teeth against the pain of his hand starting the long, arduous process of rebuilding his thumb, and the uncomfortable sensation of excess energy being used to repair the damage.
