Chapter 10 Elanie
Sitting at the staff room table, waiting for morning meeting to start, I stared down at my hands. I’d never been tempted to bite my fingernails before. Never understood why non-bionics developed the habit. Until now.
“How was your night?” Sunny asked. She’d kept her voice low. I didn’t bother.
“I broke up with Blake.”
“You did?” Tig’s bulging eyes reminded me of the little stress doll Sunny had given me for Solstice. Something, at the moment, I wouldn’t mind having to squeeze.
“Oh, darling.” Sunny seemed genuinely upset. Which surprised me. I didn’t think she liked Blake. “Why?”
“Because she finally came to her senses,” Rax said with a smug grin. “Good riddance to that skinny little featherhead.”
When Morgath coughed “no chance” into his fist, Rax slugged his brother’s arm.
“Settle down,” Chan warned while Morgath cackled. “This is still a staff meeting.” Despite his scolding, he steered his hoverchair closer to me and asked, “But really, why did you break up with Blake?”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t working out. I didn’t feel anything with him. There was no—”
“Spark?” Sunny suggested, reaching for Freddie’s hand. When their fingers intertwined, my chest cinched tight.
“I think I need to be by myself for a while,” I said. “Relationships are so”—messy, hard, confusing—“inefficient.”
“Or maybe you just haven’t found the right partner yet,” Rax suggested. “Sometimes what you’re looking for is right across the table.”
Morgath’s snort earned him another dead arm.
Twisting the string of her hoodie between her fingers, Tig said, “Shoot, Elanie. I’m sorry. He was cute.”
When Rax grumbled, “Cute as a case of spacecups,” Morgath hissed a curse and Freddie covered his mouth with both hands.
Touching her shoulders with her fingertips in some Tranquisian sign of protection, Sunny said, “Don’t you dare even mention spacecups.”
“Sorry.” Rax winced “My bad.”
“I do actually have something important to talk about today.” Chan ran his hand over his closely cropped brown hair as the chatter in the room died down. “I’m sure by now you’ve all heard about the bionics disappearing from LunaCorp ships.”
I jerked upright, then pretended to scratch my back when everyone looked at me.
“I received a report this morning from the captains that one of our own bionics tried to leave the ship without approval earlier this week.”
“Be real, Chan,” Rax said. “He tried to eject himself into open space.”
“I guess that’s one way to ‘leave the ship’,” Morgath added with air quotes.
A chill swept through the room, icy fingers wrapping around my neck. Crossing my arms tightly over my chest, I asked, “Is he all right?”
“He’s fine,” Chan said. “Dr. Semson reached him in time.”
“Did the bionic say why he did it?” Tig asked as twin lines sank between her pink eyebrows.
“He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember any of it.
” Chan scratched his chin. “Dr. Semson thought he might have been sleepwalking. But considering the number of these incidences occurring throughout the KU, along with the growing concern that this is the beginning of some organized bionic rebellion, the captains are monitoring the situation closely.”
“Do they really think he was part of a rebellion?” Freddie asked. “A sleepwalking bionic?”
Chan shrugged.
“Did he mention hearing anything strange?” I asked, wondering if anyone else at the table noticed the slight warble in my voice, the way my hands trembled. “Like…a voice?”
While his brown eyes narrowed in on me, Chan repeated, “A voice?”
I shouldn’t have asked that question. I shouldn’t have said a word. If these disappearances continued, crews would start suspecting their bionics. It was inevitable. But I didn’t want my crew to suspect me, even though they had every right to.
“Maybe he thought he heard someone in the airlock who needed his help,” I explained. “Bionics don’t just vent themselves into space. It’s against our core programming.”
Just like hearing voices and waking up in the middle of empty hallways.
“Tell that to the three bionics who already have in the last few months.” The uncharacteristic tenderness in Rax’s voice made my eye twitch.
“Three?” Freddie asked.
“That we know about.” Chan sighed. “Along with dozens more who’ve stolen shuttles and escape pods from their ships and disappeared.”
“Don’t those shuttles and pods have trackers?” Tig asked.
“Disabled. Hacked.” Chan shrugged. “We don’t know. But we can’t track them. They just, poof, vanish. And as a result of this significant loss to LunaCorp’s workforce—”
“And bottom line,” Morgath mumbled while he cleaned under his fingernails with a switch laser.
—“all bionics aboard all LunaCorp ships are…” Chan paused, his eyes flitting toward me, “required to report to their brigs.”
Sunny’s jaw dropped. “The brig?”
“We are not sending Elanie to the fucking brig,” Rax growled as he angled his body, his broad shoulders forming a wall between Chan and me.
Chan raised his hands. “Calm down, everyone. It’s not, like, the brig, the brig. It’s just where LunaCorp is setting up their questioning and systems analysis rooms.”
“I have to be questioned?” My skin crawled, sensory neurofibers misfiring.
I’d heard a voice, saying my name, telling me to join him.
I could almost hear him now, the word Golgunda surrounding me like mist. I was not a good liar.
There was no way I’d be able to hide this from LunaCorp.
What would they do to me? Would they take me from the ship? Decommission me?
“It’s completely procedural,” Chan said. “Nothing to be worried about. I mean”—he laughed—“you’re not planning on stealing an escape pod, right?”
“Chan!” Sunny and Tig shouted in unison while Rax bared his teeth.
“It’s fine,” I said, even though it wasn’t. But a scene was perilously close to being made on my behalf, and at the moment, that felt even more dangerous than being questioned by corporate. “When are they expecting me?”
Sunny grasped my hand. “Are you sure, darling?”
Smiling tightly, I said, “I have nothing to hide.” A week ago, this would have been a true statement. Now I couldn’t help but wonder if this would be my last morning meeting, my last day working with my crew. My final moments of freedom.
“Thank you, Elanie.” Chan exhaled in relief while a grim acceptance settled over me. “Your appointment is tomorrow at 0900.”
Keeping my hands in my lap so nobody would see the way they trembled, I said, “I’ll be there.”