“I don’t know. It’s the truth! I don’t know. I don’t have numbers in my head. Ask me anything about this ship’s underbelly and I can tell you but that, that I don’t know!” Brent pressed his back into the stall wall and his feet slid farther apart.
He’s bracing now...Gunner could hear the flow of blood pumping through Brent’s system. It sounded like wheezing streams squeezed through spaces at a speed that it couldn’t accommodate.
“Calm down. I told you I’d let you walk out of here alive.” Gunner smiled, cruelly. The man didn’t calm.
“Alive has nothing to do with pain.”
“True, but you’re spilling without the pain, aren’t you? So, tell me, out of rabid curiosity where are those in the brig being transported? Where would I be transported if I happened to live through all those torture sessions you had planned for me?”
“The Elyrian auction houses.”
“Hmm...” Gunner looked around at the small space they occupied. It was barely big enough for two people to comfortably fit in and the trappings were all worn down by countless years of use and reuse.
There was rust in the corners and on the walls, markings on the metal, and stains over peeling plastic throughout. It wasn’t big, nor was it clean, but he knew a group of people who would kill to use it just as it was. Showerhead missing and all.
“Are we done?” Brent asked with a quiver in his voice, pulling him back to the conversation at hand.
Gunner turned his back to Brent and flipped on the sink, taking the towel next to him and soaking it. “Not quite,” he muttered, wiping off the days of dried blood and sweat from his face and hands. “I should tell you that no one let me out of the brig and no one helped me get to you.” He flicked his thumb where the new metal was still growing beneath his skin, enjoying the numbing effect his nanocells had. “How, you asked?” He dropped the dirty towel and fluttered his fingers under the spouting water. “I’m just that good.”
“Ballsy will have seen you!” Brent hissed, “There are cameras all over the ship.”
“I know.”
“Then you know that you’re fucked even if you kill me right now, even if you kill the first men that come after you. There’s no place to go on a ship and the escape pods are nowhere near here. And if you make it to them, they’re not fast enough to escape the range of our guns, that much I know.”
“Like I said before, I do well on my own.”
Always have, always will.
Gunner turned and the lavatory door slid open. Brent eyed him wearily, not believing he was going to make it through this alive. He watched as the pirate took a slow step out of the stall and when he didn’t get pushed back in, he stepped fully into the bathroom. Another slow, laborious step, timed and well-placed to skirt around him. The metal cord of the shower head dragged andthunkedin his wake.
When Brent was at the door, Gunner stopped him.
“I have one more question, about the dregs, since you’re so knowledgeable about your job.”
The man grabbed the side panel with his free hand and shuddered. “What about it?”
“The prisoner in the cell next to mine...” Gunner whistled out a breath between his lips when Ely’s brown eyes came to mind.
“What about ‘em?”
“Is it a woman?” he asked.
The man stopped and looked back at him, head cocked to the side, brows furrowing. He didn’t immediately answer.
“You don’t know now do you?”
Brent shook his head and stepped into the quarters. “It’s not possible.”
“Isn’t it?”
“He’s a frail, half-dead boy...”
“That’s the truth as I keep hearing it,” Gunner muttered, grabbing Brent by the scruff and pulling him back into the lavatory. He threw him into the shower, taking the cord from his hand.
“Wait, I told you the truth and you gave me your word! Said I would live if I told you what I know!”
“And I kept it. I let you walk out of here,” Gunner waved a hand at the bathroom, “alive.”
