And yet she couldn’t convince herself that was entirely true anymore.
Janet rubbed her fingertips over her lips.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked quietly, unnerved.
“There it is!” Lily suddenly shrieked. “There’s the monster!”
* * *
Janet’s eyes glazed over as she looked at him as if he were a monster. The wires in his head surged with irritation. Zeph narrowed his gaze as she broke eye contact with him, leaving him far angrier than before, and now envious of Lily’s place in her life. He watched as she ran to her sister’s side.
His jaw ticked.Who the hell am I?
Lily’s childlike mania filled his head as quick as Janet’s gasp. She turned to look at him, eyes wide in awe, as Mr. Heartface tried to keep up with the dozens of questions Lily threw at it.
“There’s something down there, Zeph!” Janet turned back to the window and plastered herself against it, her hands pressed to the glass.
Zeph rubbed his mouth and counted backward from ten, powering down and restarting his more troubled systems, and trying to get a rein on the electrical surges flowing through him. The crocodile was desperate to retake control, but every time it came to the surface, tearing holes into his back, so did the demon within. He couldn’t feel anything when his skin changed color, not since he and Hector were on their last mission together, which was a fucking problem because it was happening far more often then he’d like.
I’m losing it. I’m fucking gone.And he thought Janet could stop it from happening.
But shehadstopped it. The entire time he was in her company on Kepler, he’d been in control.
Hell, I gave Netto advice on control.
He opened his eyes. Janet and Lily were in the exact same position, long flaxen hair flowing messily down their backs, gazing at the purple mass below. His mechanical heart stirred and his lips twitched back into a lazy smile.
“You didn’t believe me,” he said, sauntering up to the two most important females in his life.I’ll protect them.
“Master Zeph, should I fly us closer?”I’ll even protect you, Mr. Heartface.The Bin had taken its new role as nanny with aplomb. Earlier that morning, it was apparent how attached Lily had become to the android. He couldn’t tear them apart now. The repurposed military model did relieve him of a great deal of stress when it came to the little girl’s protection. Part of Zeph was always inside it, dormant, monitoring everything in the background.
“No. This is close enough.”
“Please can we get a closer look?” Lily begged.
“I’d like to see you take that down and add it to your collection,” Janet said. Her tone was lighter and teasing, which calmed him further.
Zeph caressed her hair with his fingers. “Where would I put its head? Mine’s already too big for this ship.”
“I’m glad we agree on something.”
He smirked, looking out the window between his girls. Clouds swirled as a ginormous spiked back pierced them. “An Elyrian moon monster, or molos as the locals call them, are harmless as long as you stay away from their moon. And yes, there’s more than one. It’s because of them the atmosphere down there is so poisonous. It keeps beings like us far away.”
“Has anyone ever tried killing them?” Janet asked.
Zeph pulled the data stored about the molos from his hard drives. “Up close and personal, nuclear bombs from space, laser weapons, and chemical blasts. They sometimes fall but they always get back up. The surface is a wasteland of toxic oceans and earthquakes. There’s no point in killing them. They can’t harm us if we stick to Elyria and the other moons.”
I need my own poisonous spot in the universe to hide.He flicked out his wristcon and checked Elyria’s central metropolis time. Ten eighteen.Dimeswouldn’t be open for another thirty-six hours.
“Then why did we try to kill them to begin with?”
The molo’s head reared up from the haze of clouds and roared. The sound could just barely be heard through the ship. Janet and Lily shrieked and jumped back as huge, spaceship-sized teeth could be seen from space.
Zeph swooped Lily up into his arms and spun her around until her screams were replaced with giggles.
“To see if their corpses had valuable resources,” he said, spinning Lily high above him. “Mr. Heartface, take us to the Elyrian Oasis Port.”
“Yes, Master,” Bin-one replied.
