“Are you?” she asked as a tease, and gave me a small grin, which I returned immediately. “I cannot believe you did this, Nex. What were you thinking?”
“In the moment?” I asked back, and then stalled, thinking. I couldn’t crystallize my thought processes in hindsight. “I just knew I needed to follow you.”
Her eyebrows rose, along with the corners of her lips. “So what do you think about being human?”
I did a quick assessment of my progress. “It’s awful, honestly.”
That made her laugh again. “Really?”
“Yes.” I slowly sat up, running my hands up and down the button-down shirt atop my chest. “I—I hurt,” I said. “But I’m not sure where it is. Or how to fix it.”
She leaned forward at once. “Did you hurt yourself getting here? Where is it? Maybe I can help.”
“I do not think so,” I said. It felt like it was lodged right behind my solar plexus, and I pressed a palm there. “It is the part inside me where I am missing you.”
30 /SIRENA
“But no matter,”he continued, like he hadn’t just bared a piece of his soul. “Saving you is paramount. And, unlike this body’s predecessor, I’m still maintaining contact with the local electronics. I’m looping the pertinent camera feeds and monitoring the exterior hallway, so we won’t be surprised by Voss again.”
“You saw all that?”
Nex nodded—then reached up to feel his own head. “The movement comes so naturally. How odd. But—yes.”
“Is mimicking my powers even possible?”
Nex pondered this, and the longer he thought, the more worried I became.
“It does not matter,” he finally said. “Because it will not come to that.”
I winced. “You still seem like a shitty liar to me.”
He pushed himself back to sitting, braced on the glass door once more. “I have not come this far to save you only to let anything happen to you now. I will have full control of this body shortly. Then I will use it to investigate the ship and our options.”
Then he looked at me—and smiled.
It came so easily to him, and was so foreign to the man whose face he wore. I realized that if Marek had ever smiled at me like that, I’d have known immediately it wasn’t him.
“If you turn off the box...can I get to Voss?” I asked, thinking hard.
“No. He’s had a mask installed.”
“Fuck.” It was the tech opposite of my crown—some sort of neural-shield thing that scrambled incoming telepathic directives. Only diplomats and famous people had them installed though—and very, very rich assholes.
Nex kept looking at me and smiling, then raised a hand to trace the curved edges of his lips, as if he was mystified by them, which I supposed he was. “I’m glad I followed you here, Sirena.”
“Why?” I couldn’t imagine his reasoning.
“Because otherwise, I would’ve just kept feeling like this alone,” he said, looking at me as if I was the answer to everything. “I much prefer feeling this way with you.”
I was taken aback. “Uh, Nex...correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this the first time you’ve felt anything at all?”
“Technically, yes. But it doesn’t matter. I know what I know,” he said, then smiled at me again. When I didn’t return it, his gaze dropped to his hands.
The same ones I’d refused to touch.
I shifted on my knees, moving closer. “And you promise this isn’t a mindfuck?”
Nex took a second to consider this, then shook his head. “I mean, other than for Marek, no.”
