Chapter 04 #3
“Someone was here first,” Lament supplies. “They covered their tracks before they left.”
“That doesn’t make sense. If someone else came to investigate, why bother hiding the evidence?”
“Not to investigate,” Lament says darkly. “To experiment.”
My brows fly up. “What?”
“I don’t have proof,” he hedges. “It’s just a hunch.”
“A hunch,” I repeat blankly. “You’re saying the mist might be some kind of weapon? That this”—I wave my hand over the bloodbath—“was a test?”
“It’s possible.”
We stand there for a minute contemplating the scene with new eyes. The air is cool, a little damp. It reminds me of Venthros. A lifetime ago, it might have reminded me of home.
I sense more than see Lament look at me. I’ll admit, it takes more than a little courage to look back.
He really is beautiful. I haven’t wanted to notice this, given that he’s supposed to be my new flight partner and seems to revile everything about me, but the thought is there anyway, plain and a little helpless: I’m attracted to him.
Lament’s eyes are more blue than green right now, shadowed in the low light.
Almond-shaped, with light blond eyelashes, brows poised on the edge of some new expression.
Somewhere in the distance, Vera’s Sky Runner gives a hum, whizzing to life.
That’s my cue to get moving, but I feel rooted to the spot, held in place by the gaze of a man who doesn’t even want me here.
Didn’t want me here? I’m having trouble remembering.
“Vera is waiting for you,” he says, and is it my imagination, or has his voice sort of … gentled? “You should get going.”
My throat is oddly scratchy. “Right. Yeah.”
I’ve almost managed to make my legs work when Vera’s spacecraft revs in earnest. There’s a flash of orange light, the chest-deep surge of a sonic boom. I whip around to see the Sky Runner vanishing into the atmosphere without me.
Lament and I scramble for our headsets in unison. I shove mine over my ears in time to hear Lament’s choked, “Vera.”
“You two can fly back together,” comes her voice through the earpiece.
“No. Vera, I can’t—”
“You’re going to have to share a spacecraft eventually. Besides, it’s not safe to fly alone right now, not until we understand what’s going on with these raptors and the mist.”
He’s crushing his headset between his fingers. “That’s not your choice to make.”
“Well, I’m making it anyway.” Her voice softens. “It’s time. I believe in you.” She disconnects the line.
Silence, like a settling of dust. For a long moment, there’s nothing but a ringing in my ears and the vast, echoing labyrinth of the caves at my back. “Well,” I start with a shaky laugh.
“You can ride in the cargo trunk.” An awkward pause. “I think you’ll fit.”
“What is it with you and stuffing people into trunks?”
Lament won’t quite meet my eye. “I meant it when I said I fly alone.”
“This might be a good time to make an exception, don’t you think?” When he doesn’t answer, my blood starts to rush. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“It’s not personal.”
“The hell it’s not.”
“I did warn you.”
“You warned me?” My mouth is sandpaper, my pulse rising in my neck. “Look. I get that you don’t like me, but I’m not riding in the trunk.”
“I just told you, it’ll fit—”
“I don’t care if it would fit a three-ring circus. You have a perfectly good cockpit with a perfectly good seat that, by the way, is made for a gunner.”
He’s closing up again, going rigid. “Out of the question.”
“But why?”
“This is just the way it has to be.”
I dog him all the way back to his skimmer, coaxing, threatening, stopping just short of pleading, but he ignores me, pulling himself up into the cockpit while simultaneously blocking me with his body in case I try to fight my way in after him.
“Lament.” My voice is swallowed by the zzhing of the charging engines, the whistle of the wind.
He pops the trunk, which is just a small square compartment with no windows, no harness.
My lungs catch. Fear constricts my throat.
It doesn’t even look pressurized. Will I be able to breathe in there?
Will my eyeballs vaporize as soon as we launch into space?
They will. Oh stars, I’m sure they will.
I’m going to die a painful death and no one will even know until they open the hatch on Skyhub to find my withered, ruptured body.
“Lament, come on.”
He starts to reach for the button that’ll close the cockpit and I do it again, grab his arm, wrap my fingers and hold tight. His nostrils flare, eyes flashing, but before he can shake me off the engines start to decelerate.
There’s this moment—sharp, overbright—when I think he’s changed his mind.
Like maybe he’s realized how unreasonable he’s being and no, of course he’d never relegate me to the luggage compartment, because he’s neither a psychopath nor a murderer and I’m at least worth something to him alive.
Yet this thought is quickly overridden by a moment’s observation.
I can see Lament’s hands. I can see his expression.
He hasn’t shut the spacecraft off so much as it’s died, the engines slowing, spinning to silence.
The cockpit’s monitors flicker to black.
“You lost power,” I say blankly.
His voice is at its most controlled. “So it seems.” He looks down at my fingers still wrapped around his forearm. Startled, I let go.
“This is a skimmer,” he says. “They don’t have a single point of failure. Losing power like this isn’t—” He breaks off without finishing the thought.
“Isn’t what?”
He just shakes his head, then climbs out and gets under the spacecraft to start looking at its systems. Meanwhile, I try the radio, but that’s dead too, which means I’m stranded on a desert planet without any way to call for help, with a man who is so repulsed by the idea of flying with me, he’d rather see me suffocated and/or burned to a crisp than endure a single short trip in my company.
It just keeps getting better.