Chapter 1 #2
There were pieces to the puzzle I didn’t have, conversations I’d overheard but didn’t understand.
I got the most from listening to the scientists whisper to each other about her when she wasn’t around.
They didn’t like the fact that she stayed here.
She spent the last couple of months after selling me to them hanging around here, like she was waiting for something.
It seems at first she convinced the scientists she was helping them, by pretending to be a human like me to ease me into my new role as a lab rat.
But once that fell through, she didn’t leave.
She held out an object, a small jar, glowing green.
"I follow orders, and your escape has nothing to do with them.
All I have to do is pour this on the cube," she said.
"That is it. My orders don't include stopping you from taking it to the docked ship, so you can use it to negotiate your passage to freedom. The way is clear now. If you hesitate too long, they’ll catch you. If you go now, you can be free."
She was handing me my own escape plan on a silver platter. If she were standing in the doorway to my cell, ready to release me, rather than blocking the door to the escape I had crafted for myself, it might have been easier to believe her.
But I couldn't just call bullshit.
Her strength was one of the first things that flagged her as inhuman.
When I first realized how strong she was, I had asked if she was a werewolf or something, and she didn't understand.
A few more pointed questions made me realize that Evangelia had no actual comprehension of human culture, as if she hadn't even been born on Earth.
I didn't have a chance at winning if I fought her.
If I wanted to get out of here, I needed to play along.
"Sure, I'll help you," I said as I took a deep breath, trying to keep my heart rate slow. Sometimes it seemed like she had extrasensory capabilities and would notice things about me. "I'll pour it on the way. Hand it over."
I held out my hand.
There was a slight moment of warning, that unspoken increase of tension in the air, palpable and unmeasurable by any sense but instinct.
Her eyes flicked to my outstretched hand.
"Your heart rate increased, and your palm exhibits a slight increase of moisture," she said as she lifted a small silver device in her other hand. "You're lying."
Fear spiked through me, and I flinched backward, my involuntary motion doing nothing to protect me as I recognized the device she held.
No amount of flinching would save me from when she pressed down on the button.
Pain screamed through my nervous system, and I let out a grunt, the air choked out of my lungs in a sharp gasp as my teeth clenched together, my neck muscles yanking my shoulders towards my ears, my fingers spasming around the cube, unable to let it go even if I wanted to.
The sharp, biting heat at my neck was an underlying signal to the roaring pain that caused my knees to buckle to the ground.
Then it was over, and my entire body was trembling, muscles shaking as my heartbeat screamed in my ears like I had been full-out sprinting, even though all I'd done was fall down.
There was the slight scent of burnt hair in the air from the strands at the back of my neck that had been caught under the collar when she activated it.
The sound of pressure hissing, the lid of a bottle opening, was my only warning before Evangelia drizzled the contents of the bottle onto the cube, then up and down my body, like she was adding dressing to an electrocuted salad.
The green goop inside splattered all over me in wet, palpable chunks like being splattered with overly wet jello glue that clung to me in sticky clumps.
It was vaguely reminiscent of the moment I woke up on this space station, coughing a chemical gel, only to find out I'd been decanted from a cryogenic storage chamber.
Whatever she appeared to be, she wasn't human, that was for sure.
Not just because she was a sociopath who performed emotions instead of feeling them.
"?Joder...! You didn't have to do that!" I gasped out as I caught my breath. "My heart rate increased because I'm scared of you, you psychotic bitch!"
"Doesn't matter anymore. I got it on the cube," she said, in a tone more suited to teaching an intern how to replace the cartridge in an ink printer. "Now, if you tell the ship that I did that, it won't let you on board. If you don't get on board, you will die. I will personally make sure of it."
Then she was gone, her words hanging behind her in the air, thick with hidden motives I couldn't decipher. For the first time since I laid out my escape plan, carefully pieced together from snippets of overheard conversations and illicit nighttime exploration, I hesitated.
She was the one who left the lighter out for me to steal. Her jokes with the scientists were what gave me the information about the supply room, and that destroying it would result in an emergency resupply ship.
She manipulated me into all of this.
It was clear she wanted me to get on that ship, which meant something was very wrong with the plan. Evangelia didn't care about my well-being in the slightest. No, this had the distinct bitter taste of an ambush, and I was marching straight into the hull of a galleon.
But it was my only chance of escape in months.
I couldn't give up now.
I had to go.