Page 42 of Veiled Vixen

“Like I said,” she hisses. “Six weeks was not in the plan. This war is real to them. Every one of those people out there have chosen a side. And seventy-five percent of them aren’t with Luck. They want to kill him.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Oh,” she mimics. “Yeah. So what we have here is a total breakdown of society. I feel like I’m living on some mythical badlands moon where everyone makes the rules up as they go. They hate him. But that’s not all. Our people down here? All those sticky-sweet princesses who used to be sex slaves in the Harem? Well, they hate Crux and Serpint just as much. All they do all day long is plot insane schemes to take them out. The entire situation is completely out of control. Veila doesn’t even live on the station. She stays on her ship. Who the hell in their right mind would want to be on Harem Station right now? I’ll tell you who. No one. They all want to leave. The Uppers stormed us Lowers four weeks ago, demanding access to their ships so they could get the hell out of here. So we started letting them through and that’s when we found out that the fucking gates are locked and no one can leave. They killed three hundred people down here, including seven young princesses. As you can imagine, that didn’t go over well with Captain Red out there.”

“Fuck,” I say. “I didn’t realize.”

“She led a raiding party up some secret set of back stairs and ended up killing another four dozen people before she came back.”

“Why didn’t you stop her?”

“Do I look like I’m in charge?”

“She told me—”

“She told you what? That she’s my guard captain?” Nyleena does air quotes around that last part. “She says that but she doesn’t mean it. She’s out for blood. Crux’s blood. Serpint’s blood. And Lyra’s blood too.”

“So fucking kill her,” I say. “Simple.”

“Kill her? Please. She has over two thousand supporters down here. I could kill her and all two thousand of those supporters—which includes all of the princesses, by the way—but then I’d be guilty of war crimes. And call me crazy, but raising twins on a Prime Prison planet isn’t what I’d call ‘living the dream.’”

I can see her point. “But you’re way more powerful than Red out there, right? You’re a true silver, Nyleena.”

“What do you want me to do, Valor? Blow the fucking place up? My twins, and me, and Luck along with them?”

“Right,” I sigh. “Yeah. OK. I get it.”

“Do you?” She sneers at me.

“Look, I haven’t had the best time either. I was…” But I stop. Because actually, before Veila caught up with us, I lived thousands of years that felt a whole lot like happily ever after inside a totally safe and protected virtual reality. Still, there was more to it than that. “I was tortured by Veila. Tray was… fuck. I have no idea what happened to Tray or where he is now. And there’s this girl—”

“A girl?” Nyleena guffaws. “Do not tell me about some girl, OK?”

“Listen, I need to talk to Luck. Things have gone off track out there too. And if this plan is falling apart, then we need a new one.”

“Don’t you think Delphi and I have been trying to scheme up a new fucking plan?” She taps an impatient boot toe on the floor and plants her hands on her hips. “Nothing has worked. Our only viable option at this point is to try to leave on Dicker and Lady before things get any worse.”

“OK.” I sigh. “So… we should do that.”

“We can’t do that!” she exclaims. “Veila has a Cygnian warship out there, the security beacons are all offline, and we can’t even get through the gates. So where the hell are we going to go? There are no planets around the sun. No moons. Hell, there’s not even a stray asteroid to hide behind.”

“So what the fuck do you want me to do? Huh? Because I have no clue. I don’t even know what’s going on. I have no idea where Tray is, or even if he’s alive at this point.”

“What did Veila tell you?”

“Veila?” I squint my eyes at Nyleena, kinda shaking my head. “She talked a lot about being pregnant and told me some stupid stories about comic books and Akeelian superheroes.”

Nyleena blinks at me. “What?”

“I don’t know,” I say, throwing up my hands. “I don’t know. We didn’t really talk. She told me she was pregnant. She told me it wasn’t mine. She told me about some Akeelian comic books back in Cygnian System, and then she told her cyborgs to bring me down to level ninety-six and leave me there. That was pretty much the extent of our conversation.”

I leave out the part about Earth and flowers and all that other shit. Because that’s not a conversation I’m going to have with Nyleena before I have it with Luck and Jimmy.

“Well, that’s stupid.”

“Tell me about it. And where’s Jimmy? I need to see my brothers. Right now.”

“He’s on Dicker with Luck and Delphi, hiding from our… supporters.” She does air quotes for that last word.

“Great. Can you take me there?”

Nyleena gets up from the booth and turns her back to me. Pauses. There’s several long seconds of silence before she turns around again. “Fine. But if you try anything—”

“What the hell am I going to try? They’re my brothers!”

“Well, Crux and Serpint are Luck’s brothers too. Didn’t stop them from trying to kill him.”

“What are you talking about?”

She shakes her head and clenches her jaw. “I’ll let Luck tell you that part. Because I might explode if I tell that story.” And then she says, “Let’s go,” and starts walking towards Lady’s airlock.

God, none of this makes any sense. I suddenly have this sick feeling that I’m still inside a virtual and reality is somewhere out there. Unreachable.

I push that thought away real quick. Because that… that will fuck with my head big time and I can’t afford any more distractions.