Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
QUIN
"Everyone okay?" Vala asked, but nobody was given the chance to answer.
Vennox was in front of me before I could blink, one arm thrown back to pin me behind him, his sword already cutting wide, vicious arcs through empty air.
"Stay away from her!" The words tore out of him like something feral.
"Jupiter's balls!" Tyrk's voice cracked across the chaos. "He must have breathed in the spores."
Vennox pivoted, tracking something only he could see, his breath coming in ragged bursts, every muscle in his body coiled like he was ready to tear the world apart.
"Vennox—" Vala had both hands out, moving slowly and deliberately, the way you move around a wild animal. "Stop! There's nothing there."
"Put the sword down!" Tyrk circled wide from the other side. Vennox gave no sign he heard either of them.
"I will die before I let you harm my spirit mate!
" he roared, and then Tyrk caught his sword arm from behind.
Vala hit him low, driving a shoulder into his ribs.
The three of them crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs and curses, and it still took every bit of leverage they both had just to keep him pinned.
Spirit mate. He'd said that before, but I still didn't know what it meant.
Vennox bucked against them, chest heaving, eyes wild and fixed on something he wanted to protect me from. I dropped to my knees beside him and took his face in my hands.
"Vennox." I shoved my face in front of his. "Vennox. Look at me."
The wildness receded, slowly at first, then all at once, the fight draining out of him like a tide pulling back from shore.
His scales shifted from that vivid, agitated blue back to their usual placid silver, and his breathing slowed.
His eyes found mine and held, and for a moment, there was nothing in the world but the two of us.
"Quin." He said my name like a prayer.
"Get away from him." Vala's voice cut in from above me, sharp and urgent. He hadn't let go of Vennox's arm. "He's dangerous right now. The spores have him seeing things that aren't there, and he's strong enough to kill you before he realizes what he's done."
I didn't move. My hands were still cupping Vennox's jaw, and I could feel the tension draining from him beneath my palms, his breathing slowing to match mine.
"She's the only one he isn't a danger to.
" Tyrk's voice came from the other side, steady and certain.
He shifted his weight off Vennox's legs and moved up beside him, keeping a firm grip on his arm.
"Look at him. The second she touched him, he stopped fighting.
That's not the spores talking. That's something else. "
Vala shared a startled look between Vennox and me.
"We need to get him on clean oxygen and sedate him," Tyrk said, already shifting into action, "until the effects of the spores are out of his system.
" He pushed himself off the floor in one fluid motion, and I noticed he took Vennox's sword with him, tucking it carefully against the wall out of reach.
He crossed to the pack he'd dropped near the hatch when he'd first crashed through it and folded back the top flap to pull out a medikit, a flat black case the size of a paperback, weathered and scarred from use. He popped it open one-handed and knelt back down beside us.
Claw-tipped fingers sorted through it and pulled out a small, curved device he called a rebreather, made of some pale metal, no bigger than a paperclip.
Tyrk leaned over Vennox and pressed the device gently against his nose.
There was a soft click as the curved arms locked around his septum, and a faint hiss as the device began to work.
Then he pressed a white cylindrical device, like a stubby cigarette, to Vennox’s shoulder.
"It's a mild sedative," he said, without looking at me. "It won't hurt him, only knock him out for a while."
Vennox's eyes searched mine before his lids grew heavy and closed. The last of the tension left his body all at once, his breathing evening out, slow and steady.
I stayed where I was, watching the rise and fall of his chest. The rebreather hissed softly like a tiny mechanical lullaby.
His face in sleep looked younger, stripped of the weight he carried when he was awake.
The scars around his neck and at his wrists caught the glow of the portable light Vala had set on the floor, pale and raised against the silver of his skin. A knot in my chest twisted.
"Quin." Vala's voice pulled me back. "Scan the ship with the bio-analyzer for anything alive that might be a threat. I don't want any surprises while we're in here."
Right. The analyzer. I'd clipped it to my belt at some point during the chaos.
I pulled it free, my hands steady despite the adrenaline still humming through my veins.
The screen lit up under my fingers, and I ran the sweep: full spectrum, life signs, thermal, motion.
The readout scrolled in steady columns of data, and I watched it with the same practiced attention I'd given every scan I'd run on this godforsaken planet.
"Nothing," I said after a moment. "No life signs. No thermal signatures outside of the four of us. The ship's dead."
"Good." Vala's gaze shifted to Tyrk. "The engine room's going to be toward the stern. If the conduit assembly is intact, it's buried in the primary power-transfer housing."
"What about him?" Tyrk nodded toward Vennox, still unconscious on the floor between us.
Vala's gaze flicked to Vennox. "We can't leave him alone and unprotected."
"I'll stay with him." The words were out of my mouth before I'd fully decided to say them.
"Fine," Vala said finally, and the word carried the weight of every reservation he wasn't saying out loud. "But you don't stay out here in the open. We need a room. Something with a door we can secure."
"I'll find one." Tyrk was already on his feet, his massive frame disappearing down the wrecked corridor, the sound of his boots fading with each step until there was nothing but the hiss of Vennox's rebreather and the distant groan of the hull settling around us.
Before too long, boots in the corridor. Heavy, measured, getting closer. Tyrk rounded the corner, and even in the dim light, I could read the relief on his face.
"Crew quarters," he said. "Down the corridor, second hatch on the left. Door still seals. Room's intact.”
Vala nodded once. "Show us the way."
Tyrk crossed to Vennox and knelt beside him, flinging him over one broad shoulder like a sack of dog food as if he weighed nothing. I followed Tyrk down the corridor, my boots keeping time with his steady rhythm. Vala fell in behind me with that silent, predatory grace of his.
The only light came from the portable disc Vala carried, its pale circle moving with us through the dark, barely enough to pick out the buckled floor panels and the wiring that hung from the ceiling like dead vines.
The corridor smelled like ozone and something older, something that had been sealed inside this wreck for a long time.
Tyrk shouldered through the second hatch on the left, and I ducked in after him. The room was exactly what he'd promised: small, windowless, a bunk platform bolted to the far wall, a storage unit built into the bulkhead beside it. The air was stale, cold, and still.
The Nomadican crossed to the bunk in three strides and laid Vennox down with a gentleness that surprised me, given the way he'd carried him.
He settled him on his side, adjusted the rebreather with two careful fingers, and stepped back.
Vennox's chest rose and fell in that slow, even rhythm the sedative had given him.
Tyrk reached into his pack, pulled out one of the portable lights, and set it on the floor in the center of the room.
He pressed the center, and it came alive, casting a pale, steady glow across the room, the same quality of light I'd seen him hold up to the viewport back on Vala's ship.
Not much, but enough to see by. Enough to keep the dark from being absolute.
"Door mechanism is here." Tyrk moved to the hatch and pulled it shut, then pointed to a recessed panel set into the wall beside the frame.
"Slide this latch down, and the seal engages.” He demonstrated, sliding the latch into place with a dull clunk.
"To open it from the inside, you just slide it back up. Simple."
“Easy peasy." I nodded.
"One more thing," Vala said, leaning Vennox’s sword against the wall next to the doorway. "If you hear anything. If you see anything. If the bio-analyzer picks up a single reading that doesn't belong. You ping me. Not a hesitation. Not a second thought. You ping me, and I come back."
"I will," I promised.
He gave a single nod. Tyrk clapped me once on the shoulder, and then the two of them filed out. I followed them to the hatch, closed and locked it behind them. I stood there a moment, hand still on the frame, listening to their boots fade down the corridor until even that was swallowed by the ship.
The portable light Tyrk had left on the floor cast a pale, uneven circle across the floor, barely reaching the corners. Shadows pooled in the recesses of the room like dark water, and the walls seemed to press in closer.
I pulled the bio-analyzer from my belt and ran another sweep out of habit, out of the need to do something with my hands. The readout came back the same as before.
I crossed to the bunk and dragged over a storage crate, turned it on its end, and sat down next to Vennox.
For once, he looked peaceful. Every moment I'd known Vennox, he'd carried himself like a male braced for impact, every muscle calibrated, every expression controlled.
But in sleep, the architecture of that control was gone, and what was underneath it was just a face.
Younger than I'd realized. Tired in a way that rest alone couldn't fix.
The rebreather hissed. The ship settled somewhere deep in its bones, a long metallic groan that moved through the walls and faded.
I was still watching his face when he moved.
Not a waking movement, smaller and more urgent than that. His brow pulled tight, the muscles along his jaw going hard, and his hands curled slowly against the bunk surface like he was reaching for something that kept moving away from him.
His head turned against the bunk, and the tension in his body ratcheted up all at once, his shoulders pulling inward, his breathing changing from that slow, sedated rhythm to faster and shallower.
I was off the crate before I'd made the decision to move.
"Hey." I put my hand on his forearm, just rested it there, palm against scales as smooth and soft as suede. "Vennox. You're alright."
He didn't wake. But some of the rigidity in his arm softened under my hand, and I took that as a good sign and kept talking.
"It's not real," I said quietly. "Whatever you're seeing, it's not there. You're having a nightmare. You're safe." I moved my thumb in a slow circle on his forearm, the scales cool and smooth beneath my touch. "I'm right here watching over you."
His breathing slowed. Not all the way back to the deep, even pull of before, but enough that the tight set of his jaw loosened, and his hands uncurled against the bunk surface.
"Uri," he hissed out a name.
"Uri isn't here," I told him. I didn't know who Uri was. Clearly, whoever it was had done something terrible to him. "There's nobody here but me."
He went still.
I stayed where I was, hand on his arm, listening to his breathing even out until the rebreather's rhythm and his own had found the same quiet tempo again.
The tension left his face last, slowly, like a tide going out.
When it was gone, he looked young again.
He looked like someone who deserved to sleep without the terror that name carried with it.
My wrist comm buzzed, and I lifted it without moving my other hand from Vennox's arm.
"Go ahead," I said, keeping my voice low.
"Status." Vala's voice came through clipped and clean.
"We're alright," I said. "He had a rough patch a few minutes ago. Restless. He's settled now."
A beat of silence. "And you?"
"Still upright. Bio-analyzer's clean. Nothing's moved except the two of you." I paused. "How goes the search?"
"We found the conduit assembly." He said it without inflection, which meant there was a complication attached to it.
"Intact. But the housing it's seated in took impact damage from the crash.
The mounting brackets are fused to the casing.
Removing it without destroying it is going to take longer than I anticipated. "
I looked at Vennox's face, slack and still in the pale light. "How much longer?"
"I don't know yet. Tyrk is working on it."
"Take all the time you need," I said. "We're not going anywhere."
Another beat. Shorter this time. "Ping me if anything changes."
"You'll be the first to know."
The comm clicked off, and I lowered my wrist. The silence settled around me again as I resumed my seat on the crate.
Vennox hadn't moved. His breathing was deep and slow and steady, the rebreather hissing its small, patient rhythm.
The portable light on the shelf held its pale circle against the floor, steady and quiet.
My eyes grew heavy as time ticked by. Vennox's soft, even breaths lulled me in a way nothing had since I'd landed on this planet.
Now that my adrenaline had faded from our misadventure through Spore Valley, there was nothing underneath it but exhaustion. The kind that had been accumulating since waking up in a cage on an alien spacecraft.
The bunk where Vennox lay was a wide platform, built for larger proportions, which meant even with him on his side, there was space along the edge big enough for me.
Boots ditched, I lay down on the edge with my back to Vennox, pillowing my head on my arm.