18. Poppy
POPPY
My legs are literal overcooked noodles.
I look down, half expecting to see the tentacles from the weird bug, but no, they’re still just my legs.
Vael-Torin slowly lets my weight slide down the mossy bark of the tree until my still-booted feet touch the grass.
My spine’s tingling, my brain short-circuiting from the orgasm he just hammered out of me. Every single square inch of me feels thoroughly wrecked.
In the best way possible.
I lean against the trunk, gasping for air, and tentatively sniff my own shoulder.
Gross.
"Ew," I mutter, wrinkling my nose. "Do I smell like sulfur and raw seafood? Fantastic. Romance isn't dead, it just smells like a bait shop."
Vael-Torin doesn't seem to understand the words, but he looks down at me with a deeply satisfied expression as he pulls his pants back on. His cold detachment’s faded, replaced by a dark possessiveness that tells me he is officially a goner.
He reaches out, his thumb gently wiping a smudge of dirt off my chin.
“I liked that,” I tell him, putting my arms through my suit. He grins at me, zipping up my suit. It’s a sweet, thoughtful gesture, and I grin right back at him as I try get my boobs back where they belong.
Thank god for alien tech, because if this were a normal earth onesie, these boobies would be flipping and flapping every damn where.
A buzzing noise from the grass sounds, and I practically jump in Vael’s arms before I realize it’s not another space bug.
My silver comms tablet vibrates in the dirt where it fell out of my jumpsuit. I scramble over, snatching it up as the screen blinks with a fresh influx of notifications from the group chat.
Before I can even unlock the display to read Lily’s inevitable death threats, a familiar chime echoes from the boughs above.
A drone plunges through the leaves, hovering directly in front of my face. The blue recording light blinks, and a holographic projection of a human expands in the air between Vael and me.
"Attention, underdogs," the voice crackles, sounding entirely too cheerful for a threatening a death match.
"A brief update on station branding. Contestant Ellison Price has seen fit to give my neural network a name.
She calls me 'Ken.' Apparently, I remind her of a plastic human male.
I find this highly insulting, but test audiences find it hilarious, so Ken it is. "
The words hit me like a physical blow, and I suck in a deep breath.
Ellison is alive. She is surviving. Not only that, she’s still sassy enough to insult a homicidal artificial intelligence to its weird ass digital face.
A wave of relief crashes over me, shattering whatever composure I thought I still had. An ugly sob shakes my shoulders. Tears instantly flood my eyes, cutting clean tracks through the grime on my cheeks.
"She's alive," I choke out. "Ell is okay. She's naming this asshole."
“That is not an asshole,” Vael observes. “In fact, it doesn’t have an asshole,” he says, walking around the hologram.
“Why would I need an asshole? I am intelligence, not a biohazard.” Ken glares at me.
"Human emotional response are thoroughly repulsive," Ken tells me. "Stop leaking from your optical ports, Ms. Harrington. It is entirely unappealing to the viewers, and it is ruining this moment."
I let out a wet, breathless laugh through my tears, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my filthy jumpsuit. “I think you’ll find audiences love it when contestants have emotional responses.”
Ken looks intrigued by that, and I immediately regret giving him that information.
Vael’s ruby-red wings snap wide, as he growls, completely blocking the drone’s camera feed, his tail lashing the brush behind him. He bares his fangs at Ken, his throat glowing with a dangerous violet heat.
"Step back from my mate, foul thing," Vael commands.
Ooh, I like that tone. I peek out from behind his wing.
"I'll be in touch, team underdogs," Ken says in a bored voice, the hologram instantly cutting out as the drone zips back into the clouds.
“Are you alright, Poppy?” Vael gently wipes a tear away.
“Just overwhelmed,” I tell him, sniffling. “Don’t worry, I’m going to fix this. I haven’t even looked at anything but the comms piece. There’s got to be a way they’re tracking us, right, like how else could the cameras know where we are?”
I look down at the silver tablet in my hands, my tears blurring the glass. I blink them away, forcing my brain back to lock the fuck in.
Since this is a production-issued tablet, it has the official Mated & Afraid contestant dashboard. I click around until I find what I hoped I would, breathing out a sigh of relief.
“First step, we find our friends. Then we take on this psycho AI bullshit together,” I tell him, clicking through tabs. “Strength in numbers.”
“Is this a motto of your clan? This math preoccupation?”
“It’s a saying. We’re stronger together than apart. That’s what it means.”
“All this time I thought you were obsessed with arithmetic,” he muses.
I ignore him, determined to fix this as fast as I can.
I don't know the first thing about hacking, so thank fuck the producers left it active before Ken from AI hell did god knows what with them. I do know how to read a user interface. Right now, the live map is displaying the biometric locator signals built right into our grey tech suits.
I glance down, curious if there’s a tracker I can find on it. If there is, I haven’t noticed it so far. I look back on the comms map, counting out our dots.
“There’s Ell, and Lucy, and Lily… Selene and Pol are nearest to us.” I whoop. “We can do this, okay, we just need to find them—”
“Poppy,” Vael says, his voice a warning tone.
My smile instantly dies.
In the lower right corner of the display, the flashing green icon tracking Lucy’s vital signs and location data suddenly blinks twice, stutters, and shifts into a grey.
STATUS: SIGNAL LOST. UNABLE TO LOCATE CONTESTANT.
The tablet slips an inch in my hand.
Lucy is officially off the grid.