Chapter 1 #3
“Just trying to help. If you don’t want me here…” He’s been even crankier the last few weeks. I know it’s because Kimba’s pregnant, but I’m not supposed to know.
Just like I’m not supposed to know that Breaker is about to join the list of brothers with weeuns on the way, too.
I’m not even sure he knows; I hate when the knowledge doesn’t come to me with disclaimers.
I glance back over my shoulder and wonder…
But that’s not a future Shock has shared with me.
“So,” I say, “Ship goes boom. Everybody’s dead… what else do we need to know?”
“Why they were flying this low over the caldera for a start?” Breaker looks up at the sky like he’ll see the answer written in the smoke.
They were delivering Chrys to someone.
But why fly over the caldera… it didn’t make any sense.
“Where is Arc?” Drift finally looks at me.
“He discovered a mechanical issue and went back to the outpost. I came along instead.”
Eyes narrowed, I wonder if Drift is looking for the lie. He can’t see when I’m lying, but he can see the little ticks and tells. So I don’t lie to him anymore.
I just don’t always tell the truth.
“Do you see any signs of possible survivors?” I ask, even though one look was enough to tell me it was impossible. “Or a computer core to get us some kind of a clue about where they came from and where they were going?”
Drift looks irritated. Because the answer is no and yes.
I can’t see it, but there is a big enough chunk of a console in the middle of the wreckage that gives him some hope.
“Getting to it is going to be a pain in the ass.” Breaker sighs, picking up a handful of snow that melts as his hand sparks.
“Just get Kilo out here with his drone. Pull it out from above and you’re fine.”
Drift’s expression sours, and Breaker tries not to laugh.
“That’s not a bad idea.” Drift grimaces. He doesn’t want to agree with me.
“No, it’s not.” Kilo steps between Drift and I, and all three of us flinch.
Sometimes, I hate the power his mutation has given him over all of us—except Arc, not that Kilo knows that.
“If you don’t need me…” There’s no reason for me to be here.
Drift nods, his focus fixed on Kilo now that he knows the other brother is here. Breaker waves a deadly hand at me, and then, I’m forgotten… or maybe just ignored.
Either way, I can’t find it in me to be upset about it. I want to get to the escape pod, and then, I want to get home.
The first is easy enough. My bike eats the distance, and even without being told, I know exactly where it is.
I know that I’m completely alone when I kill the engine and hop down into the snow, and I also know… that she didn’t pull the release mechanism herself when she ejected from the crashing ship.
Someone got Chrys out before the rest of them died.
I just wish I knew who.
No markings on the outside, not even a ship name.
The identifying panels and information screens have been ripped out. No clues there.
No clues anywhere… except the material of the innermost compartment.
The exterior was standard ship material. Metal made to withstand both vacuum and atmospheric reentry. The inside is all soft cushion and survival support.
But between them… the tube that would have wrapped around Chrys while she fell to Isia is made of Lasap.
The metal has numerous applications. But this escape pod was made for smuggling. And as soon as I touch the metal that Drift can’t see through and even Breaker can’t manipulate, I know.
The Company is involved in this somehow.
It makes my skin crawl, and a chill seeps through me, too.
I don’t want to be here anymore.
There’s a bag tucked away, right where Shock said it would be. It’s probably a good thing I’m the one who came for this… I don’t know if either of them would have known it was a bag. It looks more like a stuffed toy. Some creature I can’t even begin to classify, with a zip in its back.
The only other thing inside the compartment is a pair of shoes. I pluck them out, unsurprised when they’re just as bright as everything else. They’re purple with a green and blue checkered pattern, and I can only imagine what they would look like with the pattern of her current clothing.
I tuck them away and realize… I might get to find out.
Grabbing Arc’s helmet and kicking the bike back to life, I go home, hoping that the answers to the things I don’t know reveal themselves soon.
CHRYS
I feel like movies always show people screaming back to life after a traumatic experience has knocked them unconscious.
I don’t wake up on a sharp inhale, jerking upright, like they so often do.
No, I claw my way back to consciousness.
There’s something heavy in my veins that keeps trying to drag me down.
It succeeds… more times than I can count.
Each time I fight it longer. I don’t manage to open my eyes, but I hear what’s going on around me…
First, there’s a burble of a computer, and what I imagine skin tingling would sound like.
Later, I hear voices, but I can’t understand them.
When I’m finally able to open my eyes, it’s barely enough to see by. My vision is so blurry…
There are two men in the room. But I can’t make them out. Not really. Just that they’re big and… they smell so good.
The weight pulls me back down, one more time. But I’m snuggled into warm blankets, and that smell… It wraps around me, holding me more tightly, more warmly than the soft cocoon I’ve been swaddled in.
The next time I wake, I blink… and blink, not trusting my eyes to stay open this time either.
There are three men now.
Three very large, very not-human men.
I don’t have to ask where I am. Because they’re Sian. And the only place to find Sian men—that I know of, anyway—is on Isia.
How did I get here?
That should probably scare me. But I’m warm and… safe.
Eyes still heavy, I look at each of them in turn. The new one is yellow. It’s a soft color, but his face is painted with a scowl as he speaks quietly with the orange one.
And when my gaze slides to the third… Arc. I know exactly where I am.
Neither of my sisters are exactly fans of the “cold boys,” but when Arc meets my eyes, I can’t help but smile. I think I’m going to like them.
In fact. I’m determined to like them. Assuming this is real and not a ridiculous hallucination.
My legs probably wouldn’t hurt if it was a hallucination, and I don’t think I’d need to pee. Also, am I hungry? Or do I just need water?
Arc watches me with a soft smile, like he’s waiting… maybe to see if I fall back into my darkness again.
A million and three questions swirl through my head. But the one that I ask isn’t the one I mean to.
“What time is it?”
All discussion ends, the other two rush to my side, but Arc hasn’t moved. He watches me from where he leans against the wall.
I want him to come to me, too. As if he was simply waiting for me to think it, he pushes away from the wall, coming to kneel at my bedside.
“You’re awake,” Yellow says… his name is on the tip of my tongue.
“Risk will tend to state the obvious,” Arc says, giving me his name so I don’t have to keep thinking of them in colors.
“And he’s Shock.” He nods toward the orange man, and I look down—up?—at them.
“It’s nice to meet you… What am I doing here?”
“We’d like to know that too,” Shock says, glancing at Risk like he might be the one with the answer.
“That doesn’t sound good.” I shift and then shiver, clutching the blankets more tightly to me. “Right. Cold boys.”
Arc winces. “What do you remember?”
I’d just gotten done teaching a round of classes and was going home for a little bit before… “I left the studio… said goodbye to Trinity, and then, honestly? I don’t even remember getting to my car.”
When Risk tucks the blankets more tightly around me, I say the only other thing I know. “And then I wanted ice cream.”
Arc looks down, and I vaguely remember… It wasn't ice cream. It was him.
I should probably apologize for licking him, but I don’t.
“Then buzzing and beeping and… waking up.”
“You were abducted by someone,” Shock says. “We don’t know who yet, or why they did it. But the ship bringing you to Isia crashed.”
“Arc found you in the snow,” Risk adds.
“I guess I’m lucky I didn’t get eaten before you got to me.” I look down at the way he’s kneeling. Very lucky.
Jesus Christ Chrys. Get it the fuck together.
“You were drugged,” Arc says.
“That explains a few things.” Like why I’m not crawling out of my skin to be moving. Why I haven’t gotten sidetracked twenty times already…
Risk looks at me like he’s trying to read something on my face. “I would expect you to be freaking out right now.”
The way he says ‘freaking out’ makes it sound like a term he’s only heard before and doesn’t fully understand.
“If I wasn’t who I am and you three weren’t who you are, I might be.” I look at Arc and want to slip my hand out from under the blankets to touch his face.
… did he just move forward?
“I read minds.” He blurts it out, and the other two flinch.
“Oh… well then you are in for a treat when I am back to my fully malfunctioning faculties.”
He glances at the other two, but I’m left out of that conversation. “Very few people know that, but if you are going to be here, you need to. And you need to know that I will try not to invade your privacy if I can help it.”
I try to stretch, and the movement makes my already heavy limbs heavier still. “Honestly, if you can make sense of what I’m thinking half the time, more power to you.”
My next thought makes me laugh while Arc winces, and I voice it so the other two aren’t left out. “My sisters are going to implode when they find out I’m here.”
“Jess, especially,” Arc says, looking down toward his hands.
But they don’t offer to send me to her or Laurel.
And honestly… I don’t want to go.
“I take it there’s no heat in this outpost… are there bathrooms?” I really do need to pee.
Arc stands in a strangely fluid motion and asks, “Do you think you can walk?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
My whole body seizes up when I shove the blankets off of me. “Holy fuck.” It’s so much colder than I thought it was. “It must be nice not to have to worry about this.”
I rub my arms and torso, trying to get some frictional heat.
“We’ve got a fire going. How warm do you normally need? We thought seventy…”
“I’m a southern California girlie and it was summer when I was last conscious, so…” But seventy should be fine. I shouldn’t feel this cold.
“It might be the drugs,” Arc offers as an explanation.
Whatever it is, I don’t like it.
Grabbing one of the blankets, I wrap it around myself as best I can… At least it will hide some of the goose prickles—and my nipples, too.
Arc looks down at my chest on the thought and I laugh with chattering teeth. Poor guy’s going to be subject to all my worst thoughts.
I’d been on my side, facing the door and a solid wall. Now that I’m up and out of my cocoon, the light source—the only light source—makes me flinch back.
A wall of glass, bright, even though it’s tinted… the inner caldera looks like an enormous shattered peak. Like the broken top of Mount Saint Helens.
This one makes my skin crawl with a different sensation.
Jess has told me all about the monsters they hunt. And even if she’s not worried about them… they absolutely terrify me.
“We won’t let anything hurt you.” Arc puts a supportive hand on my back before I realize I was leaning away from the window.
Exhaling, I push those thoughts right out of my mind and try to focus on the task at hand.
My muscles feel heavy. Not so bad that I couldn’t walk, but even with socks, looking down at the bare floor… knowing it’s going to be freezing cold…
Maybe being around someone who can hear your thoughts isn’t so bad. Arc doesn’t ask me if I want to try standing, he just scoops me up.
He’s not warm, but he’s not as cold as the floor would be.
“Thanks,” I say, even if he doesn’t actually need me to say it.
The others watch as he carries me—a second blanket dangling beneath me—to a dark doorway.
No windows here, but a light flicks on as soon as he crosses the threshold, and that other blanket drops to the floor before he gently lowers my feet onto it.
I wobble a little in his grip as I test out my disused muscles.
They work well enough, which means I haven’t been out of it for too long.
“You good?” he asks, hand still gripping mine tight.
“I’m not going to be running laps for a while, but I can manage in here.”
Nodding, he leaves me alone, and I take in a cold breath of air.
It’s a standard Isia bathroom, and I shimmy the blanket across the floor so I don’t have to lose that extra layer.
When I’m done, I’m grateful that the sink’s hot water stings at my hands.
There’s a bathtub in the corner, and Laurel has told me the water won’t ever get cold… I am definitely going to find out if she’s right.
Later.
Ignoring the mirror in front of me doesn’t do me any good, and when I finally glance at my reflection, I look… like I’ve been through it.
I’m translucent—because I’m cold—and it makes the shadow of a bruise on my left cheek stand out even more.
My hair is snarled, and there’s a pale green mesh near my hairline with the dark line of a cut beneath it.
I glance at the door, but they aren’t going to barge in on me… and when I let the blanket around my shoulders drop and peel my leotard down, there are more bruises beneath my patchwork of tattoos. Purple and blue and green beneath the black ink.
I do remember getting hit by something. I’d thought it was a car in the brief initial moment.
I certainly look like I was run over.
Gingerly putting myself together and wrapping myself up again, I shimmy back to the doorway.
I hold my arms up like a little kid asking for uppies, and Arc doesn’t disappoint. Until he puts me back in the bed and doesn’t keep holding on to me.
His lips twitch, and I wonder how much of that disappointment he got from my thoughts.
“Most of it. But you need to rest.” He looks at the others. “Shock can stay with you if you like.”
And then, Arc leaves.
When I look at Shock, his focus is on the empty doorway as a makeshift curtain falls back into place, scowling. Something is wrong, and I don’t think it’s the fact that they’ve had a random woman dropped in their laps.
“What now?” I ask, pulling both his and Risk’s attention back to me.
“I mean, obviously we need to do something and I probably need to tell someone I’m here…”
I should want to, but I don’t.
“Rest for now, we’ll get everything else sorted out when the drug is fully out of your system.”
“Okay… but what then?”
Risk looks at Shock, who says, “I don’t know.”
Shock wears the most terrified look I’ve ever seen on his face for half a second before he takes a deep breath and forces a smile.
“It’ll all work out,” I tell them. As if speaking it makes it so, I know I’m right.