When it was over, the man dropped the rod at his feet and sank to his knees, crumpling up and crying next to his friend. No one in the brig spoke, no one dared, and she knew it was just another horror to catalog in a file already filled with nightmares.
Elodie grieved for the strangers, heartbroken for the two men and the choices they made, for the outcome that could’ve been so vastly different if no less brutal.
Her body shook, and she was immensely tired. Instantly hateful.
With the man’s cries in her ears, she turned back around to face Gunner, her own eyes wet.
“Prove it to me,” she said. “Kill that guard tonight.”
Chapter Ten
***
THE REST OF THE CYCLEwent by in silence.
Gunner waited and prepared, knowing he needed to be extra careful this time. He no longer had the element of surprise on his hands—the crew was watching for a killer—and what had been a simple mission of finding out where his ship had been taken had turned into something more.
He seeded into the ship’s systems and clocked the remaining men on board, testing and jackknifing his way through the new stopgaps and fail-safes that Ballsy had implemented. They were stronger, harder to break down than the ones he penetrated before and they all came from a new source.
The handheld hologram Ballsy used on the cell door’s panel.
Gunner skirted around it like he did before, acknowledging the pricking sensation it gave off whenever he came too close.
He slipped through the currents, weightless and observant, checking each feed that gave him an extra pair of eyes into the world, keeping half his consciousness grounded in his body and in reality while the other half...creeped. Lurked. Stalked. It was an unsettling experience, splitting his consciousness to roam the digital realm, the electric currents and waves connected like a finely thinned, interlocking web all around him. It was at once chaotic and intuitive. It took a hell of a lot of time to get used to, and he was more comfortable than most.
Gunner prowled the edges of Ballsy’s cybernetics, itching to blast through them and break down the man’s digital walls. He barely restrained himself from doing so because if he did, he’d leave a direct trail right back.
He wasn’t ready to give himself away yet. Notquiteyet. He still had no idea where the pirates had taken his ship and he still didn’t have override access to the bridge.
Or captain Juke’s correspondence to those outside the metal walls of this mobile prison.
His feelers chipped away at a rate that wouldn’t give him or them away until it was too late.
He was a corruptor, albeit a slow one, but a corruptor nonetheless.
Gunner stretched out his fingers before clenching them, doing so again in an effort to find patience. He yearned to bare his teeth and sink them into flesh—meat. He wanted this whole ordeal to be behind him and his enemies dead.
