He knew that face.
She was someone he was supposed to protect and he’d obviously failed her if she was standing there with a black eye.
He frowned.
He didn’t know this woman. He’d never seen her before in his life.
He leaned against the wall for support as he levered himself to a standing position.
“How do I know you?” he asked.
She shook her head, pointing to the side of her head. He saw a small, old-fashioned com, the black bud stuck in her ear.
She leaned closer to the window and raised a hand and tapped one fingernail against the glass. He followed the direction she was pointing and saw another com bud on the ground near his feet. It must have fallen when he stood up.
He bent to retrieve it and had to steady himself on the wall again when his vision went dark.
He jammed the bud in his ear.
“What the hell did you do to me?” he asked.
She made a tutting sound and shook her head. “I think you meant to say thank you for helping me into my ship and performing surgery on my knees.”
“You sprayed me with some kind of knock out gas.”
“And?” she raised an eyebrow.
“And what?”
“You’re not going to say thank you?”
He shook his head. She was out of her freaking mind.
She pursed her lips. “You do realize where you are, right?”
“The airlock of my ship.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as a peculiar and precarious place to be?”
He frowned. “The controls are on my side.”
“The controls were on your side.”
He staggered to the control board, waving a hand in front of the interface to activate the controls. The panel stayed dark and silent.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. What do you want?”
“I need your help.”
“You’ve got a funny way of asking for it.”
“I could have just stolen your ship and spaced you the second we left Diderot Station.”
“Then who would you have fly the ship?” he couldn’t help the smirk that spread across his face.
She rolled her eyes. She turned away, manipulating a control panel on her side of the airlock door. She looked back at him, raising an eyebrow. He shifted, not sure what she was expecting.
“Do me a favor, Ivan, and turn around,” she drawled.
He glanced over his shoulder. She’d opened the display windows on the other side of the airlock. He stared out into the vast emptiness of space... except it wasn’t quite empty. A moon hovered in the distance.
It could have been one of the moons near Diderot Station. Except that it was the wrong color.
He felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
So, this was what it felt like to face mortality.
He cleared his throat. “If you don’t need me to fly the ship, what do you need me for?”
“I...” She shook her head. “I don’t trust you.”
He hobbled closer to the airlock window, putting the view of the outside window behind him.
“Look, I’m not too fond of dying, so whatever you need me to do so you can trust me, just tell me.”
Her eyes shifted from side to side. Searching for an answer. He held his breath.
She twitched. Shook her head.
She turned away from him and started pacing the hallway that led to the airlock. She muttered to herself, low and indistinguishable, pausing as though listening to somebody answer.
He was going to die.
She jerked her head, looking back at him. Bit her lip.
Then she stormed over and hit something on the control panel.
He took a deep breath, bracing himself for the sensation of being sucked out of an airlock, his only regret that he’d never really lived.
He stumbled forward.
The doors in front of him were open.
He hurried inside, breath coming in short, sharp gasps. A sharp pain twinged beneath one of his ribs, near his heart. He put a hand to his chest, feeling his heart pounding. He could hear a rushing sound, the blood pumping past his ears in double time.
He reached a hand out to her, gripping her by the shoulders.
His hands were shaking.
He didn’t know if he wanted to kiss her for letting him back inside or strangle her for putting him in the airlock in the first place, so he left his hand there and just stood, staring into her face while he waited for his heart rate to return to normal.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Stephanie stood very still beneath his hand, ignoring the way the killer tensed her muscles, showing her how she could flip him to the floor and kill him in less than three seconds.
Kiss or kill? Kiss or kill? Which way was Ivan going to decide? She felt him oscillating between the two extremes.
She felt his awareness of his heartbeat, hers speeding up to match. She felt sick to her stomach at what she’d almost done. She broke the silence first, realizing he needed an explanation.
“I still don’t trust you.... but you knew someone once, someone who was important to you. She was important to me too, and she went missing.”
“Caroline?” he frowned.
“Yes.”
Stephanie swallowed, feeling her throat grow tight.
She’d already riffled through his mind while he was unconscious. He didn’t know anything more about where Sanctuary was than she did. Rumors, whispers, faith. Nothing she could follow.
But the rumors must have started from somewhere and if Caroline had been able to find where it was when she was on Ivan’s home planet, then maybe she could find it there too. Maybe then they’d all be safe.
“What’s your name?”
“Stephanie.”
He blinked. “You’re her sister.”
A warm feeling stole over her and she moved away from him, checking to see if the emotion was hers. Caroline had told him about her. Just like she’d told Laurent about Caroline. Even though neither of them were supposed to have any siblings, according to their cover.
She nodded.
“I looked for her,” Ivan said. Even without touching him, she could see how much he was hurting.
“Me too.”
“The men who took her...”
“You were right, they weren’t police officers.”
He moved past her, to the living quarters of the ship. He lowered himself into a chair slowly, his legs sticking out at an angle.
Stephanie sat down at the table across from him, still wary. She put her elbows on the table and folded her hands together, fingers interlocking.
Ivan stared at her. His face was drained of color, making him look suddenly older than he was. Exhausted.
“I looked for you too, you know,” he said.
She jerked in surprise. She’d seen something in his memories - an orphanage and a private investigator - but she’d brushed past it, assuming he was just looking for Caroline.
“I wasn’t there.”
“I know. There were no signs of either of you. It was like you’d never existed. I thought...” he rubbed a hand over his face.
“You should get some rest,” Stephanie said. “You’ve been through a lot, recently.”
He nodded.
“I’ll sleep in the med bay,” she said.
“I would offer you my room... but considering you nearly threw me out an airlock, I think we’re a bit past polite courtesies.” He struggled to his feet.
“I wouldn’t have done it, you know? Killed you.”
He smiled.
It was a complicated smile. Not happy, but not sad either. She didn’t think she’d be able to understand what it meant without touching him.
“For Caroline.”
He nodded. “I believe you.”
Her eyes lingered on him, tracing his movements as he made his way to his room. Her stomach clenched. For some reason, she found herself wishin
g he did believe her, even though she wasn’t entirely sure herself.
* * *
You really should try and get some sleep, Maia said.
Stephanie nodded. The speed-sleep pills she’d taken from the killer’s stores were running low and she wasn’t sure they were working properly with her physiology. She felt jittery and on edge. Like she’d had six cups of coffee and a drop of that truth syrup she was allergic to. Not that she’d spilled everything to Ivan, but she’d said more than she’d planned to say.
I think it’s good that he knows who you are, Maia said. Maybe it will make him less likely to double cross you.
Stephanie snorted. Thanks for that, Maia.
The killer watched, not saying a word. He squatted at the back of her mind, like a toad. Cold. Waiting to strike.
She shivered.
It felt strange to be afraid of something in her own mind. Though, technically, she’d been afraid of it breaking for a long time.
She stood up, going to the medical bay to try and get some sleep.
She hesitated in the doorway, the bright light and coldly clean room reminded her of...
She blinked, trying to clear her vision.
Caroline was lying on the bed.
She was even thinner than she had been the last time she saw her. Her skin was gray, eyes hollow. She stared into space over Stephanie’s head.
Stephanie blinked again and the vision was gone.
Are you okay? Maia asked.
Maybe sleep will help...
Stephanie lingered in the doorway. She crossed her arms. She could sleep there. She studied the bed. The sheets were smooth. She’d changed them some time after she put Ivan in the airlock, knowing there was a possibility one of them would end up sleeping there.
She chewed on a fingernail.
Maybe she should have pushed for the bedroom.
Her foot started tapping. Tap, tap, tap. She tried to still the movement. She wasn’t an anxious person. Or at any rate, she was usually better at hiding it than this.
She straightened her shoulders, dropping her hands to her sides.
She could do this.
She took a step into the room.
“How are you handling all of this?” a voice asked from behind her.
Stephanie spun around.
Dr. Volkov was standing in the hallway, an expression of concern on his age-worn face.
Stephanie cleared her throat. “You’re not real.”
“What makes you say that?” he tilted his head to the side.
“We’re in the middle of space. We didn’t dock with any ships. Spencer Evans said I haven’t had a monitor since I was eighteen.”
“Six years seems like a long time to go between checkups.”
Stephanie shook her head. She should stop talking to him. He wasn’t there.
She turned her back on him, going into the med bay to get some sheets and a stretcher. There was no way she’d be able to sleep on the bed in there. Not after seeing Caroline. She gathered the sheets and pillow into a pile and dropped them on the hover-bed.
“You talk to Maia all the time, what makes talking to me any different?” Dr. Volkov asked.
“A lot of things,” Stephanie mumbled, pulling the stretcher through the med bay doors.
Dr. Volkov stepped out of her way and she rolled her eyes.
“Maia was real, for one. She’s a ghost. A rogue memory rattling around in the back of my mind. The killer is the same. You? I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but you’re not a memory I collected. So, I’d really appreciate it if you just left me alone.”
“That’s fine.” Dr. Volkov made a note on his tablet.
“Thank you.” Stephanie breathed a sigh of relief.
She steadied the hover-bed beside the kitchen table and started making her bed.
“I’ll see you at our next session, Stephanie.”
She didn’t turn to watch him leave but she felt something about the room grow lighter once he was gone.
She lay down fully clothed and folded her hands over her stomach, beneath her breasts. She took a deep breath, feeling her diaphragm expand.
“Command: set lights to night cycle.” She said. The lights switched to an orange glow that slowly faded to black.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Stephanie jerked awake in the dark.
She struggled to push the covers off, feeling like they were strangling her. She tumbled out of bed, hitting her head on something on the way down. She groaned, pushing her hand out blindly as she tried to orient herself. She couldn’t remember where she was, the nightmare she’d woken up from lingered in her head and, for a moment, she thought she was inside a morgue.
Breathe, Maia reminded her. It’s okay. You’re on a space ship.
“Command: lights on,” she choked out.
The lights in the dining area came on slowly, like the dawn.
She rubbed a hand over her face.
“What time is it?” she wondered out loud.
“Internal chronology: hour three, fifteen minutes,” the ship’s system announced.
Stephanie flinched when she first heard the voice, then shook her head when she realized what it was. The voice response was outdated and had a mechanical edge to it that was nearly old enough to be cool again.
She pushed herself to a standing position and went to use the bathroom.
She used the facilities in the confined space, glad when the toilet tucked itself back into the wall so that she had a little more space to move. She ran her hands under the sanitizer then ran her hands through her hair. She hadn’t had a shower since she’d left Ana’s and, even then, it had been the same as the hand sanitizer Ivan had. She missed bathing in water.
She waved her hand around, looking for a shower sensor.
A portion of the ceiling slid out and one wall opened up.
She sagged in disappointment.
It was stupid of her to have hoped for a water shower.
She stripped off, leaving her clothes in the laundry hamper that popped open beside the shower.
She found the command console and chose the longest, deep cleaning setting she could find.
She stood in the center of the field, scrunched her eyes closed and rubbed her fingers through her hair, trying to separate the pieces so the scrubbers could break up the oils there.
A chime sounded, telling her the cycle was complete.
She opened her eyes, still not feeling clean. She pulled a chunk of hair around and sniffed it. It smelled like... nothing. She sighed. There was no point in running the shower cycle again.
She got dressed quickly, the killer’s suit having gone through the same wash cycle in the hamper.
She still felt gritty from the lack of sleep. The shower hadn’t helped at all.
She headed back to the dining area and stared at the bed she’d set up. She knew she should try and get some more sleep. She slipped the killer’s med box out, opening the compartment with the speed-sleep pills.
She only had three pills left.
She stared at them for a long time before closing the box and putting it away.
She lay back down, ordering the lights to their dimmest setting, but not off completely. She watched the ceiling shift from pure white to a mottled mixture of gray and darker gray.
If she slanted her eyelids halfway closed, she could almost imagine they were clouds.
* * *
She blinked her eyes open, watching the cloudy gray sky fade away.
The smell of coffee and something fried filtered through her senses and she rolled onto her side.
The hover-bed gave her a straight view into the kitchen where Ivan stood. He’d taken the inflatable braces off his legs and was wearing a pair of jeans with a white shirt. The muscles in his back stretched and clenched as he moved and Stephanie found herself wondering what workout routine he followed. She hadn’t found a gym on board when she’d explored the ship while he was passed out. But maybe it w
as set up in a similar way to the bathroom, so that the equipment receded into the wall when he wasn’t using it.
Stephanie climbed out of bed. She stretched, stifling a yawn as she tried to work some of the tension out of her muscles.
“Good morning,” Ivan said.
“You’re cooking?”
“Yeah, I can’t stand those ready-meals.”
“Hmm.”
“Coffee?” he nodded toward a pot.
“Ancestors, yes.” She rubbed a hand over her face, as she moved around the counter to where the coffee pot sat.
Ivan shot her a sideways glance, eyebrow raised.
She hesitated, pouring the coffee. Had she said something wrong?
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