Page 23 of Veiled Vixen

“Look, I wasn’t in charge, OK? Tray took me to some station and then he was all about working on a ship. He didn’t tell me shit until I forced him.”

“What did he tell you?”

“We were there to save someone else. Some girl called Brigit.”

“Brigit?”

“She was…” I sigh and massage my forehead with two fingers. “She’s an AI. Tray met her inside the Pleasure Prison years and years ago. And he’s been trying to get her out—”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“If you’d shut up you’d know,” I spit back. “She was an AI trapped in the Pleasure Prison by Veila,” I say, my voice going hard with the mention of her name. “And Tray thought she was real and—”

“No.”

“Yeah. And she was in… Look. It’s a long story and I only want to tell it once. So the short version is this. Tray and I went inside this virtual to get this girl, stayed there for four days”—Serpint’s eyes go wide at this—“and then when we got out Veila attacked us, took us prisoner, and then she tortured me, did something to Tray and Brigit, and…” I throw up my hands. “I woke up here. Six weeks later.”

“Where’s Tray now? And this Brigit girl?”

“I don’t know. Dead, maybe? Though Veila says they got away.”

“And ALCOR?”

“We never got that far.”

“So we’re fucked?”

“Booty’s still out there,” I say. “And Asshole. Can’t you guys send a message?”

“There’s no way through the gates,” Serpint snaps.

“We don’t need the gate. We have the…” I look up at the ceiling. But fuck it. The Baby already knows. “We have the spin node.”

“And no coordinates,” Serpint says. “Tray had those.”

I lean forward and prop my hands on my knees. “We all have coordinates. Remember?”

Serpint squints his eyes at me. “What are you talking about?”

“The day we arrived on ALCOR Station. We all had a message from Corla. They were all spin node coordinates. And these coordinates lead to… places. Outside this galaxy.”

“OK,” Serpint says, holding up a hand. “Assuming that’s true, who fucking cares? We need ALCOR.”

“I’m disappointed in your disappointment in me.” It’s the Baby’s voice coming from… wherever that voice comes from above us.

“Yeah,” Serpint says. “Well, we’re disappointed in you too. You’re the whole reason we’re in this position in the first place, you piece-of-shit halfwit mind. You betrayed us.”

“Hold up,” I say. “Explain that.”

“I would prefer not to talk about it,” Baby says.

“I don’t give one sun fuck what you prefer, Baby. What the hell happened here?”

“You have no idea how bad it is, Valor,” Serpint says.

“I know. Because no one will fucking tell me. So why don’t you start talking?”

Baby says, “The Succubus and I had a… fight.”