Chapter 3
Irena
I pressed my back against the wall just outside the brig and fanned my face with one hand.
Was it hot in here or what? Maybe that was just the warm meal filling my stomach to bursting, but I was pretty sure it had more to do with that guy in there.
The alien who looked shockingly human and talked to me like I was a hot chick he was hitting on in a bar.
Little one, sweetheart, beautiful. Who said things like that? Who said that stuff to me?
Confused, scared, and a little turned on, I was a hot mess thanks to him.
He was nothing like I’d expected after Dimon’s hour-long lecture on the monstrous things this guy had done.
He’d warned that the guy was silver-tongued, and he was definitely right about that.
But… some part of me also couldn’t help but wonder if any of it was true.
Dimon was a liar and a cheat, scum. This guy?
Quite possibly he was the first person to ever be kind to me since I’d woken up in this nightmare.
I retraced my steps through the ship slowly, lost in thought but not nearly as tired as I’d been before.
It was well past midnight, the crew asleep or passed-out drunk somewhere.
That time of night when everything seemed to slow down, grow silent, contemplative.
I used to love it; I was a total night owl, which had served me well when pulling all-nighters studying in college.
Now all I could do was sleep most of the time because I was so damn hungry and weak and scared.
College, I hadn’t even thought about that time in what felt like forever.
It was another life, so far removed from the one I lived now that it might as well not exist. I wasn’t sure how long ago I’d been woken from a stasis pod, abducted by aliens, and sold as chattel.
A couple months, perhaps half a year, but it felt like eternity already.
As if this was the only life I’d ever known.
The chef had passed out in the mess hall, his big body making a mountainous pile in the middle of the room.
Vaka and Sil were sprawled at a table in a corner, a forgotten game of Keflo still lying between them.
At least one of the three was snoring very loudly.
I tiptoed around them, put away the tray, and rinsed the plate quickly.
Then I contemplated the kitchen supplies and wondered if I should risk stealing more food.
My eyes darted to the camera glaring at me from one corner, and I decided against it.
If Trixom checked those feeds, he might not be a great cook, but he was very fastidious about his galley.
It was the only place on the ship that looked in somewhat decent shape.
Clean, polished to a shine, with everything neatly in its place.
I retreated through the grate in the floor, down the very narrow tunnel, and deep into the bowels of the ship.
I’d explored it all and found the ultimate hiding place—possibly the only spot on the ship where I knew nobody could get to me.
The space was too narrow for anyone to reach except me.
Over the months, I’d stashed things there; things that wouldn’t be missed.
It was almost cozy, that little hideyhole. Almost.
A few blankets and a ratty but clean pillow made up a nest all the way at the back.
Broken lanterns I’d managed to fix could be lit to create a bit of light, and I had a handful of trinkets and knickknacks stashed away too that I hoped might be worth something.
Things nobody had missed so far, and probably wouldn’t realize were gone for a long time still.
I curled into my blankets, easing slowly onto my side because my hip had begun to ache.
When I lifted my dress, I could see a big bruise blooming on the skin there, courtesy of Dimon’s vicious kick.
It was hard to be upset about it when it was just another incident in a long list of shittiness.
Not when my belly was full and warm for once, thanks to a real meal.
He’d asked me when I’d last truly eaten, like that mattered to him.
I told myself that was just a trick, a way to convince me that he was the good guy so he could use me.
That’s what Dimon’s stories had implied, that this stranger wouldn’t hesitate to use me in anyway he saw fit.
The problem was, he looked so damn sexy, part of my brain saw absolutely zero objections to that. What was he? Who was he?
I fell into a restless sort of sleep, wondering all of that.
Friend or foe? Genuine or manipulative? I had no answers, but that hope was back, blooming in my chest. When I woke that morning, I tried to ignore it, told myself not to trust it, but that was hard.
A person needed hope, something to cling to, and for the first time in months, it didn’t feel so hopeless.
Daytime meant I had to be twice as careful when traveling through the ship to do my tasks. I wasn’t sure if I was expected to feed the prisoner in the morning as well, so I headed for the galley first. I sneaked under the grate in the kitchen and listened in.
Trixom was up, moving around the space in a slow, lumbering fashion.
It looked like his leg was acting up, so he was slower than usual and occasionally slammed a fist against his thigh.
The mess hall was filled with the handful of crew already awake, most severely hungover as they stared blearily into cups of Chaff or a strong herbal blend.
The scent of Roka came foul and heavy from the corner where a Rummicaron male lay half sprawled in a daze.
I eyed the counters through the grate but saw no sign of a tray with a meal and an injector.
There were scraps spilling from the trash receptor in the corner that Trixom hadn’t cleaned yet.
I pulled a few edible pieces through the grate and quickly ate them: peels from various vegetables, the rind from a hard block of some kind of cheese that tasted bitter, and one semi-squashed piece of fruit that looked remarkably similar to a strawberry.
It tasted sweet, too, so I savored that bite.
With my belly partially satisfied, I scuttled away to find the spot where I could usually drink fresh water, filling my belly to bursting so I wouldn’t feel hungry for a while.
When I stood by the tap in the empty, broken crew bunkroom, I could hear people coming and going.
This place—it was forgotten—a room with busted pipes, mold, and rust. It was storage for a bunch of crates they might have completely forgotten existed.
It was, however, smack in the middle of the crew deck, and I could hear all kinds of interesting gossip if I hung around a while.
This morning, a pair of grunts here strictly for the fighting and the money stood in the hallway and discussed the prisoner.
“Dimon has him on the bridge,” one of them said.
“Can you believe it? We actually caught Flack? I thought he was more of a legend than this…” The Kertinal male sounded disappointed, his subharmonic voice rumbling deeply in his chest.
His companion laughed, the sound a much higher squeak coming from his small Ovt body. I wasn’t fooled into thinking the smaller guy was safe, though, because I knew firsthand that Ovters could spit acid from their weird, lizard-like mouths.
“You’re an idiot, La’kon. You weren’t here yet when Flack was second-in-command, but trust me, he’s every bit as legendary as the stories say he is.
” The Ovt made a smacking sound, and though I couldn’t see him, I knew he’d just licked one of his eyeballs with his long tongue.
An Ovt couldn’t blink, and as disgusting as it was to watch, that’s how they kept their eyes wet and clean.
“Oh, and you know him so well? I thought you haven’t been here much longer than me?
” the Kertinal responded, laughing derisively.
I tiptoed around some crates to peer curiously into the hallway and discovered the Kertinal male standing with his back to me not far away.
The Ovt stood in front of him, arms crossed over his scrawny chest, his long, salamander-like tail swaying back and forth behind him.
“Yes, La’kon, I know!” he said vehemently.
“Don’t you think there’s a reason the captain ordered all of us to stay away from the brig?
He doesn’t want Flack talking to any of us.
” Flack, his name really was Flack. He told me the truth…
That still didn’t mean I could trust him, but it sparked a hint of interest.
I had to get to work, but curiosity got the better of me.
If I wanted to know if I could eventually trust Flack to help me escape…
I had to know what was fact and what was fiction.
I had to figure out if he was as amoral as Dimon said he was—a cold-blooded killer—or if those were lies designed to scare me.
He didn’t trust his own crew to feed him, so what was going on?
I climbed back into the cable duct I’d used to get to this forgotten bunk room, then quickly oriented myself and headed for the bridge.
It wasn’t far from here, but I had to crawl through the ceiling above the officers’ quarters to get there.
That always made me deeply uncomfortable, because while I hated Dimon, I was absolutely terrified of Xathena.
The Xurtal woman wasn’t in her room, though, which meant she was probably on the bridge herself.
Through the ventilation panels, I could see inside each room.
I could see the disarray of Xathena’s sheets and the passed-out male lying on the floor at the foot of the bed, completely nude and marked with red welts from his shoulders all the way down to the backs of his thighs.
Xathena must not have been happy with his services last night.
Dimon’s room was much neater, and only an empty bottle and a stained tumbler indicated what he’d been up to last night—celebrating alone with more Peckana.
Then I reached the bridge, and I had to worm my way through a very tight squeeze to get into the wall and down to hide behind a panel with a large crack I could see through.
It always took me a moment to figure out what exactly I was watching when I crawled in here, disoriented by the tight twists and turns I had to make to squeeze myself into this space.
Breathing as shallowly as possible, I hoped nobody noticed I was there, but fear of discovery still pounded in my pulse.
There was a large view screen at the front of the room that displayed only small stars against velvet black.
We were traveling, but not going faster than light, and that meant it almost looked as if the stars weren’t moving at all.
There were several banks of consoles, and these were manned by some of the crew.
Weapons, shields, communications, and, of course, the helm.
In a seat raised slightly to oversee it all, Dimon sat, his hands on his knees and his body hunched forward.
The shark-fin rising from his back was sharp as a blade, edged with black, and, in this position, taller than his head.
Next to him, Xathena looked even more intimidating, wearing leather and at least a dozen weapons strapped to her body.
She was probably the sharpest, fastest shot on the entire ship, and she was more vicious than the men.
There was good reason she was the second in command, and I kept wondering how Dimon could trust her at his back.
She was the shark, not him, or at least, she was the bigger shark of the pair.
I had skipped over him because I wasn’t quite ready to deal with my reaction to him.
When I had nothing else left to check, my eyes naturally found him, though.
Flack. It was a strange name for an alien I knew absolutely nothing about and, at the same time, way too much.
So many stories about all the bad things he’d done, yet none of that matched how he’d treated me yesterday.
He was kneeling in front of Dimon and Xathena, his hands shackled behind his back.
The bloody bandage on his side looked much worse, but his chest was still impressive and his face was drop-dead gorgeous.
Long silver hair hung loosely around his shoulders, partially restrained in a bun.
His blue eyes were fierce and exotic, framed by the thick black lashes that surrounded them.
The silver marks that shimmered on his skin in various places looked both savage and oddly elegant.
Most appealing, though, was the way the white lines accentuated the aristocratic bone structure of his face.
There was something so disrespectful and calm about the way he sat there that his kneeling posture was far from submissive.
I was a little impressed with how he pulled that off.
He seemed fearless, calm as a cucumber, and like the one holding all the cards even though he was the one in chains.
It was very obvious this got under Dimon’s thick gray skin in ways I’d never seen before.
“It’s the only deal you’re getting,” the captain snarled, but Flack just smirked and said nothing.
Not responding, not budging, not saying anything except raising one silvery eyebrow.
He tilted his head, glanced once at Xathena, and the Xurtal woman actually shifted back on her feet.
Was she scared of him? I couldn’t imagine the tough woman being scared of anything, and the fact that she feared Flack seemed to indicate some of these stories were no exaggeration after all. My stomach twisted.
“You have no options!” Dimon said, but his tone said that he was the one who had no options.
It galled him, but I was impressed by how much Flack had conveyed without saying a single word.
He was absolutely fearless, even injured and restrained.
“Get him out of my sight!” Dimon ordered, slashing his hand through the air and then pointing at Xathena.
The Xurtal woman did not look pleased to be the one in charge of escorting the prisoner, but she was quick to bark orders at a pair of guys to haul him away.
It happened just as they marched out the door, Flack between them, walking proudly without so much as a hint that he was in pain.
The prisoner tilted his head in my direction, and his icy blue eyes locked onto the wall panel I was hiding behind.
Locked straight onto me. Impossible, he couldn’t know I was there, could he?
Nobody ever did… but the way he stared was uncanny.
The cold blue of his eyes heated into something warm and molten, intrigued, attracted.
No, I had to be reading that all wrong. He didn’t know. He couldn’t.