“You got it. I knew someone on this ship had to be intelligent,” Gunner taunted. The guard tensed, his hand falling on the rod hanging from his side. “That’s right. Beat the crap out of me, don’t give me my rations, and when I speak to your captain again and come back without a wound, I’ll tell him all about this. Tell him all about his peon overstepping himself.”
He was lying. She’dseenhow greatly wounded he’d been the day before. She glanced around at the other prisoners but they all looked on with morbid curiosity.Did no one else notice his bruises yesterday?
Her attention returned to Gunner. She didn’t want to see him beaten, didn’t want any violence to take place. And she realized something else that infuriated her...
She cared.
The guard backed up a step but his smile stayed in place until he began to laugh. He gripped the handle of his prod and bellowed. The hoarse glee was forced and strained and sinister and it went on and on. The more he laughed, the more it pained to her eardrums. Each hiccup and grunt became a punch to the gut and it felt like an eternity had passed before it finally stopped and the insanity he created died back into silence.
Elodie lifted her palms from her ears without realizing she’d placed them there to begin with.
“You’re funny. You’re real fucking funny,” the guard wheezed through chuckles. His horrible laughter picked up again and she truly thought she’d dropped down into wonderland.
“Please make it stop,” she whispered.
And suddenly, it did. Gunner’s voice boomed through the sound, “You never know.” He shrugged, his lips twisted into a smile. “But you really should think about your own skin a little more. You might not be wearing it tomorrow.”
Without tossing Gunner his ration, the guardhumphedand moved on to her cell with a smirk on his face. Her food was dropped, and then Kallan’s, and then everyone else’s down her row until he had finished his circuit and returned to Gunner’s cell. He leisurely ate the rest of the rations in front of him—in front of all of them—and made a show of it.
With one last horrible laugh, he left.
Elodie looked down at her portion not feeling hungry for the first time in weeks.
Chapter Seven
***
THE REST OF THE DAYwent by without incident and when he eventually told Ely to eat her food, she sighed and did so. It was the only reaction he’d gotten out of her since that morning.
He was getting used to the day-to-day life of a prisoner, finding it somewhat charming.
Simplistic and terrorizing.
When the door reopened later that day he was ready for it, watching through the feeds outside his body as a different guard and android with provisions headed their way. As the food was handed out, he kept his mouth shut and his head down, knowing that it was almost time.
He counted down the seconds until the overhead lights dimmed, and he kept them going until they went out altogether. Until there were no more lights. Until an impenetrable darkness filled the space and covered his tracks from all prying eyes. He stifled all power to the brig.
