She shrugged her jacket back on and rejoined Lily on the couch.
The ship shook slightly and a sudden weightlessness overcame her. Janet squeezed Lily harder and closed her eyes, placing dry little kisses upon her sister’s head.We’re safe.
10
Later that cycle, Janet took Lily to Zeph’s laboratory and showed her the trophies on the back wall. She hoped Zeph would join them, but he didn’t, and she was too shaken to search him out. That night, when she and Lily got ready for bed, he had still not shown up to intrude upon them.
Zeph was taking care of them in his own way, and though she sometimes wanted to scream at the top of her lungs at him, he’d proven that he wasn’t out to hurt them.
That evening, after Lily had fallen asleep, Janet crept from her room to look for him.
Her socks slipped across the sleek floor as she walked through the quiet passageways. She hadn’t wandered the ship at night before, and the utter and complete silence made her skin crawl. After a few minutes of softly calling out Zeph’s name, she finally got an answer outside of the bridge.
“In here,” he said, his voice sounding low and eerie, unlike anything she’d heard from him before.
She stopped at the threshold, her mouth dropping. “What happened?”
The bridge was a mess. The grates on the floors were pulled up, the metal panels of the walls were scattered around the space in disarray, and even the lights on the ceiling hung at strange angles, revealing their wiring.
“What do you want?” he snapped without looking up at her.
“You destroyed the bridge…”
“I was looking for something.”
She stepped into the space slowly. “Looking for what, your sanity? This isn’t looking for something. This is destruction.” An image of her shredded shirt came to mind. She forced the thought out as she made her way through the detritus toward him.
He sat in the captain’s chair where he glared at a screen in his hand. She made out some of the words on it as she neared, and the edge of a picture that was mostly offscreen, but it was too far away to read clearly. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good, judging by the snarl on the Cyborg’s face.
His hair was amber again, thank God, but his uniform was wrinkled and dirty with the collar of his shirt hanging open. “Why are you like this?”
“Like what? Overseeing my ship and calculating the outcomes of this situation? I’m exactly as I’m supposed to be. Why are you here and not with Lily?”
“Lily’s asleep. She has no idea what occurred earlier. I’m sure I have you and your android to thank for that.”
“You’re welcome, now leave. I have a fucking bug to root out.”
“No.” Janet crossed her arms, refusing to allow him to rile her. “I’m worried about you.” The words left her mouth dry, but it was the fucking truth and she owned it. “Lily keeps asking for you. She’ll figure out something is wrong if you don’t come by and visit.”
“I’ll seek her out tomorrow.”
She crossed her arms.
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why you’re like this.”
Zeph slammed down the tablet, making her jump. His fingers strained over the top of it. “Fuck off, Janet. I’m finally calm and you’re ruining it.”
“Ruining it? You’re the reason why all this is happening to begin with. And I’d love to fuck off—fuck off right back to Kepler. Get over yourself.” She moved to stand in front of him.
He stared hard at the tablet in his hand. “Do you want to know the real reason why I stole you?”
She stilled.
“I’m haunted. Messed up. Every single word that comes out of my mouth is a lie. I’ve broken so many goddamned laws I can’t keep them straight anymore. Kepler was going to be my last task before I vanished, before I…” He snarled. “But then there was this pretty, ethereal distraction that drove all those thoughts away, and for the first time in twelve years, I found a little peace. A nice distraction. I wanted to fucking kill Netto and string you up every time you looked at him in front of me. I very nearly did.”
“You tried to kill him?” she asked in disbelief. She’d sought out both Cyborgs weeks ago to manipulate them, but Netto only had eyes for Rylie. Zeph was always the real target…Until he wasn’t.
She would’ve never done it knowing what she knew now. At the time, all she wanted to do was protect her family and her sister. From outsiders, from espionage, from men like Zeph.
