Chapter 13 Elanie #2
For some reason, my heart started beating too fast, too hard, thumping inside my chest. The heel of my palm went instinctively to my sternum.
“Are you having chest pains?” His silver brows creased in a doctorly concern as he placed two fingers against my neck, just to the side of my throat. “Excessive acceleration forces can cause cardiac abnormalities.”
“I’m fine,” I said even though my heart rate continued to surge, one extra beat for each second his fingers lingered over my pulse. “My cardiovascular system is designed to withstand much greater forces than a jumping pod.”
Satisfied with either my heart rate or my answer, he sighed and pulled his fingers away. Instead of dropping his hand, however, he reached up to tuck a stray strand of my hair behind my ear.
Our eyes locked, his fingertips brushing ghostlike over my skin. Just when an internal alarm reminded me to take a breath, he stood and cleared his throat gruffly. I stored the way his pupils had dilated in my memory, where a file marked Sem now existed.
Maximizing the navigation display again, he studied it closely, our destination glowing over his forehead while he rubbed his stubble again, this time on his chin. An image I also added to his file.
“If that rock is where we’re headed,” he said, “at this velocity, we should arrive in a few hours. Maybe… I wonder…” He pivoted toward the control panel, then slapped his forehead. “Saints! Why didn’t I think of that before?” Ducking underneath the panel, he started yanking out wires.
I shot to my feet. “What are you doing? Isn’t ripping out random wires in a space-faring vessel, I don’t know, ill advised?”
Popping his head out from under the panel, holding a red and white striped wire between his teeth, he slurred, “Don’t worry.
” Then he spit it out. “I won’t blow up the pod.
I know what I’m doing. Before I became a physician, I studied to be a ship’s mechanic.
I was pretty good at it too.” Crawling back under the panel, he said, “It should be right around here. Shoot. Well, that’s not good. ”
“What’s not good?” I asked, stepping closer, a little worried that he would blow up the pod. Not that I’d tell him that. Or maybe I should tell him that. Was this a situation where it made more sense to be honest or polite? If he could read me, he’d know how I felt anyway. Honest. Honesty was best.
I was mid-inhale, ready to tell him about my concerns, when he emerged again with a deep scowl and a warped circuit board pinched between his fingers.
“What’s that?”
“This,” he said, his scowl deepening, “is the comms link. Unfortunately for us, it’s fragged.” He sighed, tossed the board over his shoulder, and dove back in.
I usually avoided small talk like a spacecups outbreak. But there was something about being stuck in a tiny enclosed space with someone while waiting to find out if we’d live or die that made me curious. About him, specifically. “You wanted to be a mechanic?”
A black metal panel thunked onto the floor beside him, followed by a tangle of wires.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I was obsessed. I wanted to be the next Maximus Osbourne. Master Mechanic to the Aquilinian Royalty. But medicine is the family trade, and my father wouldn’t tolerate a mechanic for a son.
Not that he tolerates me much these days anyway—holy shit. ”
“Did you find something?” I asked, kneeling beside him.
He strained, grunted, and groaned, and then something under the control panel popped loose. When he crawled back out, his hair a mess, a crooked smile on his lips, the word roguish appeared in my mind in sparkling blue letters.
“I did.” He produced a small black box, holding it between us, studying the frayed wires poking out of its side.
“This is a backup comms. Long-range. I didn’t think I’d find one, since backups like this were only installed on older pods.
But if I had to guess, I’d say this is a slap-dash LunaCorp remodel of a thirtieth century pod, and we just got very, very lucky.
” He winked at me, and I felt it like an electrical storm, action potentials firing in a coordinated surge along my skin.
“Never underestimate LunaCorp’s stinginess. ”
“It doesn’t look functional,” I said, stating the obvious.
“True.” He eyed the device again. “The wiring is shot, but the comms itself isn’t too bad.
If I can fix it and rewire it, then find an antenna, I might be able to send something back to Delphi, at least. Some primitive code.
And if I could find a satellite array…” He trailed off and turned to me, his eyes boyishly round.
“Elanie, how did you wind up in this pod?”
I rose to my feet and crossed my arms over my chest, disturbed that when I searched my memory for the event, there was nothing there. “Apparently, I walked down the hall to the airlocks and—”
“No, I know that part.” He rubbed his throat. “I can still feel your hand crushing my windpipe.”
“What?” I gasped. “I tried to choke you?”
“Oh, only for a second,” he said, backpedaling with a breezy laugh. “Really, it was less of a choking and more of a gentle squeezing.” He raised his chin, exposing the column of his throat to me. “I bet you didn’t even leave a bruise.”
Fingermarks made faint tracks across his skin. My fingermarks. “Stars above, Sem. I could have killed you. I didn’t know. I had no idea.”
“Hey, it’s okay.” He stood, coming closer. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. What if it happens again? What if I hurt you?”
“You won’t,” he said softly, gentling me like I was an oorthorse about to bolt. “I know you won’t.”
Terror flooded my veins. I knew that I’d been unconscious, but this was so much worse. I’d been out of control. I’d been dangerous. Evidently, I was going to worry about my mental stability right now, whether it was efficient or not.
While I spiraled, searching for any code I could rewrite to improve my neural network security, he slipped a finger under my chin.
“Elanie,” he said, lifting my gaze to his, to the small, dark freckle beneath his eye. “Listen to me. I trust you. I am not afraid of you. And we are going to get through this. We are going to survive. We just need to figure out how we got here and how to get back home.”
I wanted to believe him, but how could I? He might trust me, but that didn’t mean I trusted myself. I didn’t know who or what had taken control of me. I didn’t know if they still controlled me.
“Have I ever lied to you?” he asked, clasping my trembling hands in his, holding them still.
“No,” I said. “But I haven’t known you very long.”
He chuckled while his thumbs caressed my skin in slow, soothing circles. “That may be about to change.”
While I mulled that possibility over, he let me go and asked, “How do you think it happened? Were you hacked? A virus, maybe? Or was it some sort of long-range signal? Could there be a satellite array out here somewhere broadcasting to bionics?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “My systems scans are all nominal. There’s no trace of a security breach or any viral activity. I have no memory of a signal breaking into my code.” I ran a hand through the air from my head to my toes. “Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happening here.”
His lips twitched, his gaze lingering a heartbeat longer than necessary on my bare feet, my knees, stomach, throat, before jerking up to meet my stare again. “Do you remember anything strange happening to you, aside from the obvious? Any warnings that something was off?”
“Warnings?”
“You know, like lost time or glitches? Waking up in strange places? Hearing voices?”
My wide eyes betrayed my guilt.
“Elanie?” he said, a brow slowly rising.
“What?” I snapped, defensive, childlike.
But I didn’t want to tell him that I’d been hearing voices.
I didn’t want to tell him that if I hadn’t stolen this escape pod, I’d probably be in a LunaCorp holding cell right about now.
I didn’t want any of this to be happening.
I just wanted to go home. I wanted to be in my bed with a fully functioning CPU and nothing exciting happening to me at all ever again.
“Elanie.” His tone was softer this time. “If there’s something going on, you can tell me. I know I’m not your doctor anymore, but the more we know about what’s happening to you, the more we’ll be able to prepare.”
“A voice,” I admitted, pushing the word out past every instinct warning me to keep my mouth shut. “I heard a voice. Someone calling my name, telling me to join them.”
He turned away, and I waited for it. For his anger and distrust. For that soft way he looked at me to harden when he demanded to know why I hadn’t told anyone this information. This very important information that might have kept us from our fates as deep-space ice statues.
But all he said was “Fascinating.” He didn’t sound mad. And when he faced me, he didn’t look mad either. Only riveted, his eyes sharp and calculating. He started pacing, only a few steps at a time in the small circle of the pod. “Do you remember anything else?”
“There was a word,” I said. “A name, maybe.”
He stopped, turned toward me, and placed his hands on his hips. “Let me guess. Golgunda?”
My breath caught. He knew. Maybe I wasn’t alone. Maybe I wasn’t going insane. “Did you hear it too?”
“No, but Darius did. The bionic who tried to walk off the ship the other day. Do you know what it means? Because he didn’t.”
I shook my head, then I maximized the nav display again. “Do you think that’s what that dwarf planet is called?” I asked, pointing at our destination.
Scratching his head, he shrugged. “It’s an unnamed rock, so I guess we can call it whatever we want. How do you think Golgunda is this time of year?” He peered down at his button-down shirt and lightweight pants, then at my pajamas. “Hopefully warm?”
“It’s a very small planet in the outer rim.
It’s probably a chunk of ice.” I squinted at him, at his upturned lips, the crinkled corners of his eyes.
“Dr. Semson, are you okay? We’re heading toward certain death, and you seem almost giddy.
” Maybe the repeated jumps—along with my choking attempt—had deprived his brain of too much oxygen and the effects were starting to hit.
His smile grew, his eye contact unwavering when he said, “I like it better when you call me Sem.”
And just as a shiver raced down my spine, a resounding bing filled the pod.
In preparation for landing, the onboard AI suggested in a soothing tone, please ensure all trays are in their upright and locked positions and your harness is securely fastened. Thank you, and we hope you’ll choose LunaCorp for all your future traveling needs.
“It might get bumpy again.” He tilted his head shyly toward the jump seat. “Do you mind?”
Holding Sem tightly in my lap, I breathed in the herbal scent of his hair and the salty tang of something else—sweat maybe, vital and alive and essential—and I realized that for the first time since I’d been commissioned, the first time in my living memory, I had absolutely no idea what would happen next.