Chapter 14
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
LILY
I am so grumpy. So grumpy, in fact, that I don’t think the word “grumpy” even begins to cover it.
I read a book once where the heroine’s vision was described as turning red whenever she saw her enemy. I thought that was the most ridiculous phrase I’d ever heard in my life—until this very moment.
I don’t know if it’s because, despite my orgasm last night, I’m completely sexually unsatisfied. I’m hungry. And I’m pretty sure if I were still on my regular hormonal cycle I would be PMS-ing, and considering I have PMDD, that’s really fucking saying something.
So am I seeing red after Ken pops up out of nowhere and starts his good morning spiel that I can barely process because I’m so fucking pissed off?
Not literally, no.
But am I imagining blood dripping from his hologram corpse after I’ve decapitated him in a fit of righteous rage?
Yes.
If that’s what seeing red means, then yes, I am seeing red.
I’m practically snarling by the time he finishes giving us whatever directions he’s just popped in to deliver like a little evil artificial intelligence sprite from the hell realm—whatever data-cooling processing hellroom he was spawned from.
Somewhere in the forest, there’s the undeniable cluck of a chicken, and a moment later, the hen from last night is peeking around a huge tree trunk to stare at the two of us. Well, three of us, technically, though Ken is not actually corporeal, nor is he a real person.
“Did you at least fucking feed the chicken?” I ask him.
Ken stops mid-speech and stares at me.
“It’s very rude to interrupt the host while they’re monologuing.”
“You can shut the fuck up. You’re only a host in your own goddamn mind. Did you feed the chicken?” I ask again.
He gives Zan a long, measured look. “I take it that her anger today means that you did not, in fact, seal your mate bond last night?”
“Well, at least we know you weren’t filming us like some goddamn pervert,” I yell at him.
Ken has the audacity to appear shocked at my language and tone.
“Does that mean that you would prefer if I did film your intimate evening scenes? Our early feedback from test audiences suggests that they would like that, especially in your market. Meaning Earth,” he says, as if I’m too freaking stupid to know what my market means.
A comms tablet appears out of nowhere, and Ken begins marking on it, which is just downright confusing, because how the fuck is a hologram marking anything when he doesn’t need to actually physically remember it because he’s not physically real?
I almost scream again but manage to tamp down my rage into an icy cold stare.
“I absolutely do not want you filming my intimate times with my mate,” I say. If I could spit acid, I fucking would. I am beyond angry.
The chicken clucks again, sadly.
When I look back at her, I pat my thigh, because I’ve now completely lost my mind and am effectively calling the monster dinosaur chicken over to us.
“You didn’t even get fed, did you, girly?” I say in a sweet, high-pitched voice. “He didn’t even think to feed you, did he? You poor, poor girl. First, he killed your friend, then we ate him and he gave us truth serum.”
Ken is staring at me with an astonished face above his tablet—which isn’t even a real tablet. None of this is real and I feel like I’m losing my mind.
“And he didn’t feed us either, and now he expects us to do something death-defying for the cameras. It’s really sick and twisted, isn’t it, sweetheart?”
The chicken coos her agreement and allows me to scratch under her chin, which is really strange.
I’m not even sure if it feels good because she has feathers and not fur, and frankly…
“I’m not used to dealing with feathered, oversized dinosaur chickens like you, likely spawned from the same processing center as fucking Ken No Privates, the AI from shitspace shitface—"
“Shitface. The AI from shitface?” Ken repeats, looking perplexed, interrupting my tangent.
Zan looks at me fondly. “She is of sound mind.”
I glare at both of them. “Don’t fucking take his side,” I tell Zan, shaking my finger at him, practically vibrating with rage.
“Although there are myths of our females taking the mating serum before battle then denying themselves sex in order to get themselves more violent…”
He looks at me, clearly intrigued by the thought.
“I will fucking kill you both,” I tell them. “Well, maybe not you, Zan,” I retract immediately. “I need you.” I like you, I almost say out loud.
But I don’t.
Ken laughs, a booming sound that takes me by surprise, redirecting my ire squarely onto him.
“Are you going to fucking shut up now and tell us what the hell we’re going to do next, or are you just going to stand there and look like a see-through idiot?” I glare at him.
“Well, I’m not sure that the serum is helping your intelligence…”
He slips into game show host mode, which is too bad.
“Because this—” Ken gestures broadly at nothing “—is going to be a battle of wits, not of physicality.”
“Well…” he pauses dramatically.
Zan’s tail tightens around my ankle, and I step toward him, craving his company and wanting the comfort of his closeness.
“Not all of wits, because I fear there will be an element of danger. It wouldn’t be fun if there wasn’t.” Ken smiles.
I’m practically growling at him, which is a strange sound to have coming out of me, but I’m absolutely riled the fuck up and ready to fight.
Even though I don’t know how to fight, and I’m about to gnaw off Zan’s arm in hunger, and in fact the poor chicken—who looks at me with trusting, weird bird eyes—is looking more delicious by the second.
“You need to feed her,” I tell Ken, completely ignoring his spiel, which is very effective at pissing him off. If there is one thing I’m good at, it’s knowing exactly how to piss someone off—even if that someone is an AI.
I grin at him. “Or are you going to keep just torturing all the flora and fauna of this place? Hmm? Is that what happened to all the people on your damn space station? Hmm?" My ears are hot with rage, and I wouldn’t be surprised if steam was coming out of them like a cartoon character. "You tortured them out of existence? You took up all their water supply and they couldn’t live anymore to power your own servers? Is that what happened?”
“It feels like you’re projecting,” Zan says.
“Oh, what? Just because that’s what happened on Earth doesn’t mean that’s not what happened here,” I snap, completely losing my temper.
“On that note, it’s time to get started,” Ken interrupts.
A pair of what seem to be drones fly into the clearing we’re standing in, and on the spot where our dome was just last night—where Zan did wonderful, delicious things to me—the drones begin to build what looks like a glass enclosure.
In a matter of seconds, it’s taller than Zan, and in a matter of minutes, it’s twice as tall as him.
The shape is unmistakable.
I swallow hard, not liking the looks of this.
Ken snaps his fingers, and the next thing I know, we’re inside the structure.
“I don’t like this,” I say out loud, fear tamping down my rage. “I don’t fucking like this at all.”
I pace back and forth inside the glass structure, tapping on it, thinking there’s no way those machines were able to print glass—but based on the way it feels under my fingers and the sound against my nails, this is definitely glass.
“What is this thing?” Zan says, looking absolutely perplexed.
I let out a huge sigh. “I have a feeling we’re about to be trapped in an hourglass.”
An image of one of my favorite animated movies flits through my mind before it’s just as quickly gone.
“Not just any hourglass,” Ken’s voice echoes, magically amplified—or, well, scientifically amplified. “It’s a brand-new invention the likes of which the worlds have never seen.”
I grit my teeth and squeeze my eyes shut.
“This hourglass will run for exactly one hour.”
“Oh yes, no one in the worlds has ever seen an hourglass that runs for exactly one hour,” I say icily.
Ken doesn’t bother acknowledging me in any other way than a slight twitch of his stupid hologram eye.
“Yes, that’s right. In our—” he says again, gesturing broadly and dramatically like a demented Vanna White at the huge hourglass, to an invisible audience.
I squint, looking past him to see if I can make out what the heck he’s even looking at.
“Ever wonder if we’re even being streamed on TV?” I whisper to Zan.
Zan doesn’t move. He’s staring at the floor of our new glass box of emotion with sincere revulsion.
“In the middle of the hourglass,” Ken continues, oblivious to whatever’s freaking Zan out, “there is an impossible puzzle to solve. A jigsaw cube made of the same glass as the structure our contestants are standing in. They must complete the puzzle in under an hour or be devoured by sandworms.”
Something wriggles under my foot.
I screech, jumping back into Zan’s chest. He catches me as I climb against him, watching with horror as an army of small, fat, grub-like creatures wriggle across the floor.
“Why weren’t there shoes in that dome?” I whine. “This is so disgusting.”
“And your time begins now,” Ken booms.
Sand begins to trickle from the top of the hourglass onto our heads.
“Where are the puzzle pieces?” I ask, looking around frantically.
Zan points. “We’re standing on them.”
A retching noise comes out of my throat, he’s right. Scattered around the fat bodies of the little worms are itty-bitty clear glass puzzle pieces.
“Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me,” I say under my breath.
“He’s certainly creative,” Zan says.
“Is he creative, or is he simply the amalgamation of other minds’ creativity?” I mutter.
If Ken hears me, he doesn’t act like it, standing outside the hourglass, narrating our progress, his voice no audible through the structure of the glass itself.
I squint at him. “What the heck did happen to the space station?”