He straightened, surveying the sink he’d been working on, and felt abashed. “Hey, I’m just doing what any decent person would do in this situation.”
“Still, I’m grateful,” she said. She got up. “This room look good to you?”
“I need to work on the faucet,” he said, turning back to the sink.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she burst out with, “I just have a question, though.”
He looked up at her. “Sure?”
“Why’d you say it was shitty?”
He went back to scrubbing. “What are you talking about?”
“Um… well…”
“Yeah?” He seriously had no idea what she was going on about. He vaguely remembered making a little speech to her about—Oh. He looked up at her and tossed the rag he was using over his shoulder. “You want to talk about that?”
“I just… I guess I should apologize to you?”
“Why?”
“Because…” She twisted her hands together. “It wasn’t shitty for me. At all.”
He was thrown by that. His mouth moved, but no sound came out.
“I guess you didn’t like it, though, and I’m sorry about that. I didn’t really know what I was doing.” She took a deep breath and turned to the adjoining door. “Anyway, that’s all, I guess. You done with that sink?”
“I liked it,” he said.
She turned back to him.
“But I made you cry, so I don’t know why you’re saying that—”
“I didn’t cry.”
“You did. I heard you, in your room.”
“But that wasn’t because…” She squared her shoulders. “That was for a completely different reason.”
He waited.
She opened the adjoining door.
“What was the reason?”
“It’s private.” She stepped through the door.
He went after her. He surveyed the next bathroom. It wasn’t completely disgusting, but it could stand a clean. He sighed. Already, his body was sore from all the bending over and scrubbing. He liked to think of himself as being in pretty good shape, but this was seriously brutal. “All right, you did the last toilet, so I’ll do this one.”
“Sure,” she said.
They got to work.
After a couple minutes, he set down the wand he was using to scrub inside the bowl. “Look, it still probably shouldn’t have happened.”
“What?” she said.
“Us being together,” he said.
“It had to happen.”
“Well, that’s what I mean,” he said. “If it weren’t for your crazy visions or whatever, it wouldn’t have happened. So, I mean, I think that’s why it feels… wrong.”
“It didn’t feel wrong,” she said in a tiny voice. “Not to me, anyway. See, this is the whole reason I was crying.”
“What is?” He glanced at her. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“Never mind,” she said, and her voice was thick, like she might start crying again.
He felt exasperated, suddenly. He shouldn’t, because if she really did start crying, he was going to feel guilty, but he couldn’t figure what was going on with her. She made no sense at all. “Look, all I’m saying is that there’s nothing really between us, so it’s awkward. It’s like taking a random stranger home from a tavern or something, but then being stuck with the random stranger for days afterward and not knowing what to say to them.”
“Is it?” she said. “I’ve never done it with a random stranger. I haven’t done it a lot, actually.”
Then he felt a stab of guilt, anyway, even though she wasn’t crying. And it was immediately replaced by anger. He went back to the toilet, scrubbing furiously. “Listen, princess, I never asked for the responsibility of this, okay? I know that you’re young and scared and fragile or whatever, but you begged me to screw you on numerous occasions, and now that it’s done, you’re like…” But he didn’t even know what she was doing. If it hadn’t been bad, if she hadn’t been hurt, then why was she acting this way?
“You think I asked for this?” she demanded. “Because I didn’t. You’re the one who invaded my visions for years.”
He sighed. “Okay, fine, right, whatever. We’re the playthings of fate.” He turned around to look at her. “Anyway, we don’t need to talk about this anymore. I’m glad to know you’re not traumatized… or maybe you are, I don’t know… but you said you didn’t want an apology—”
“I don’t.”
“Good,” he said.
“But you’re sorry, anyway.” She narrowed her eyes. “You wish it hadn’t happened. Don’t you?”
He looked away. Maybe he should be sorry. “All I’m trying to get at is that it’s done. It’s over with. We were supposed to screw each other, and we did, and now we can just move on to whatever the next phase of this screwed-up relationship between us is.”
“Okay, fine,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
He thought about reassuring her, but he didn’t want to talk anymore, so he just left it. They cleaned in silence for the rest of the day.
When they were finally taken back to their cell, Gunner noticed that the ceiling in the room where their cell was contained was different than the ceiling in the cell. It was higher and exposed, and he could see those big air ducts he and Breccan had climbed through before.
But then they were locked back in the cell and there was no way to get to them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Gunner woke up to the sound of Eve screaming.
He sat up straight and searched the cell for her, frightened that the pirates had come for her and were trying to hurt her.
She was in the corner, on the toilet.
He immediately looked away. Their cell had a toilet and a sink in the corner, and there was no privacy, but they’d navigated that hurdle by simply ignoring it and pointedly not paying attention whenever the other person was taking care of business. Thus far, neither of them had had to do more than take a piss, so it was annoying, but not unbearable.
Still facing away, he said in a low voice, “You okay?”
“I’m not pregnant,” she said.
Wait? What? How could she know…? Oh, well, he guessed he could figure that out. He didn’t say anything, but his mind was racing. If it hadn’t happened, then maybe Eve was wrong about him being the father of the champion. She’d seen them having sex, right, but had she seen a vision that utterly confirmed—
“I guess I was wrong before,” she said, and now she was coming back, her clothes back in order. She sat down next to him. “I had it all mixed up. I thought I still had another week. So, anyway, I wasn’t fertile at all when we did it on the station. I counted wrong. Being on the ship and everything crazy happening, it got me all confused.”
Okay, whatever. He didn’t care about that. “Look, your visions? Do they one hundred percent confirm that I’m supposed to be involved in the conception of this champion you’re supposed to get pregnant with?”
She gave him a hurt look. “What?”
“I’m just saying that if you only had a vision that we were going to sleep together, then that happened, and you’re not pregnant, so maybe it’s somebody else.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not someone else. It’s you.”
“Yeah, but how do you know for sure?”
“I have a vision of when he’s a little boy. He’s asking about his father, and I tell him about you.”
“Wait, I’m not there?”
“Obviously not, since you can’t wait to get away from me,” she said. “Anyway, this is not the time to talk about this.”
“It’s not that I can’t wait to get away from you, it’s that I’m not cut out—”
“I think we can use this.”
“Use what? What are you talking about?”
“My period, idiot.”
He winced. “Can you not, like, talk about that so graphically?”
She rolled her e
yes. “I have a plan, okay? I need you to pretend to be asleep.”
* * *
Eve stood near the door of the cell. “I’m only saying that if you had any feminine products that you had stolen—er, scavenged from another ship and you let me use one, I would be really, really grateful.”
Chote was standing outside the cell, arms folded over his chest. “I don’t know about this, girly.”
“Look, do you have them or not?” she said. “This is kind of a really awkward situation for me.”
Chote raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I’m sure it is.” But he didn’t sound convinced. “It’s extremely awkward to need to be taken out of this cell and into another room to insert one of those things. How do I know you’re not trying something?”
“You want to see my stained underwear?”
“Maybe,” said Chote.
Eve squared her shoulders. She hadn’t expected Chote to be so hands-on about it. Generally, menstruation was really gross to men, and she thought he’d be like all men everywhere and do whatever she said just to get her to stop talking about it. “Well, okay.” She started to unzip her jumpsuit. Then stopped. “Okay, look, you’re right. I do want out of this cell. And I want away from him.” She jammed her thumb in the direction of Gunner’s sleeping form. He wasn’t actually asleep, but Chote didn’t know that.
“Really?” Chote arched an eyebrow.
“Yes.” She nodded furiously. “I’m not traveling with him by choice, okay? Listen, you help me out with this, and I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want?”
“Yeah,” she said, and she reached up to touch the zipper of her jumpsuit and lowered her voice. “Anything.”
Chote smiled. “Look, that’s all you gotta say, sweet thing. You don’t have to make up a story about needing feminine products.”
“But I do,” she said. “Need them. And I’ll show you the proof if you want.” She started to unzip again.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Chote held up both his hands. “You’re serious?”
“Of course I’m serious,” she said. “I thought you wanted to see.”
“No, that’s all right. I thought you were lying. You keep your soiled undies to yourself, girly.” He looked her over. “So you’re going to do anything I want, but you’re going to need to insert that thing, which is probably going to be in the way, so—”
“Well, it usually takes about a day to…” She gestured with her hands. “Clear everything out. So, you might have to be patient, but—”
“Here’s the deal,” said Chote. “I take you to insert your feminine product, and then you come back to this cell until you’re ‘clear’ as you say. If, after that, you’re still willing to negotiate, we’ll see if we can let you out or not and get you away from that one.”
“Okay,” she said. “That’s great.” Yes, she could definitely work with that.
* * *
Gunner was not a fan of Eve’s plan. He didn’t like it when she’d explained it to him, and when she had, she’d conveniently left out the part about flirting with Chote the pirate and promising him sexual favors. That girl had no idea what she was doing. She was playing with fire.
And now, Chote had taken her out of the cell to who-knows-where and he was doing who-knows-what to her, and Gunner hated it.
He paced in the cell, clenching and unclenching his fists, and trying to think of some way to get past the plasma bars and out into the other room so that he could get to the ducts. Once he was out there, it wouldn’t be a problem. There were several empty crates that could be stacked up to climb on to get to the ceiling. And Gunner remembered all about how the ducts worked. They were a bit of a tight squeeze to crawl through, but they could take them anywhere in the ship. The ducts were their ticket out of there, not whatever Eve was doing.
He paced, and he thought about how he had asked her if she was sure that he was supposed to be the father of her kid, and that made him think horrific thoughts about Eve being gang-raped by pirates and it happening that way, which made him feel sick to his stomach. Her plan was stupid. Very, very stupid. He should have tried harder to talk her out of it.
She’d been pretty determined, though, and he hadn’t been able to dissuade her from it.
Worst case, she got that feminine product she wanted, and he wasn’t going to tell her she couldn’t have that. He knew that Saffron and Pippa had been pretty adamant about keeping a proper supply of them on the ship. Even when they had nothing to trade, they wouldn’t let him touch their stash. He didn’t even ask anymore. He knew better.
For the first time, he wondered about Pippa.
He supposed he’d kept the thought out of his mind for so long because he’d been a bit guilty about taking Pippa out on his ship in the first place. He’d never wanted anything to happen to her, and now Pippa was pretty likely dead.
And he’d gotten her into this mess in the first place.
He stopped pacing and sat down on the floor of the cell. He hung his head between his knees.
More time passed.
Gunner started to get even more worried about Eve. It shouldn’t be taking this long, at least, he didn’t think so. He had to admit that he didn’t have a lot of experience with such things. He didn’t like thinking about any of this.
He tried to think of other things, but everything else he thought of was unpleasant. The lost of the Swallow. Being chased by the Xerkabah. Calix.
Sun and stars.
Calix.
It still didn’t feel real. He hadn’t had a chance to even really make heads or tails of it, because he kept running from one thing to the next. But every now and again, he remembered, and it felt like a fresh wound.
He bowed his head and clutched the back of it with his hands and stayed that way until Eve was brought back.
Which she was. She was wearing different clothes—a loose-fitting white shirt tucked into a pair of too-big trousers which she’d belted around her hips. Her hair was wet.
Chote pushed her back inside and reignited the plasma beams of the door. “One day, girly. And then I’m back here for you.” He eyed Gunner. “And you leave her alone, huh?”
Gunner’s lips parted. Seriously? The pirate was protecting Eve’s honor now? He glared at the man.
Eve shook her head at Gunner.
Gunner didn’t say anything, even though he wanted to. It probably would be stupid to make the pirate angry at this juncture. Chote thought he was a day away from getting a piece of ass, and Gunner was in the way. Plus, Eve looked pleased with herself, so maybe she’d managed to actually execute her plan.
Chote wiggled his fingers at Eve. “Bye, girly.” And then he left the room.
Eve waited until the door to the outer room slid closed behind him and then she beamed at Gunner. “It worked.”
“Why are you wearing different clothes?” said Gunner.
“My other ones were dirty,” said Eve. “Chote had these brought for me.”
“So, you took off your clothes?”
“I had to get in the shower to insert the product,” said Eve. “You were married. Don’t you know about this stuff?”
“Not really,” said Gunner. “We got married two weeks before I shipped out before the war. She and I never really lived together. But…” He sucked in a breath. “You’re okay? Chote didn’t try anything? No one else tried anything?”
“Gunner, I’m on my period.” She rolled her eyes. “Of course not. They barely wanted to touch me.”
“Yeah, and then what happens tomorrow?” he said. “You should never have said anything to him about—”
“By tomorrow, we’ll be gone,” she said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a long, thin piece of metal.
“Where did you get that?” he said.
“Well, it took some doing, because I thought I was going to have to wait until tomorrow to get it,” she said. “And I was not looking forward to that, believe me. But I made a couple hints toward wanting a beverage th
at wasn’t water and—”
“Hold on, you were seriously going to trade favors with the pirates—”
“Well, if I really had to,” she said, furrowing her brow. “I was hoping it wasn’t going to come to that. And, look, I got into the kitchen, and I got this from the heating unit while he was getting me some fermented beverage that was vaguely like beer. I think it was homemade.”
“You let him get you drunk?”
“I thought he might like the idea of me being looser,” she said.
Gunner cringed. “Do not say things like that.”
She shrugged. “Well, it worked, right?”
He snatched the metal piece from her. “How do you even know about these?”
“I saw it on a vid,” she said.
“You watch vids in the Cloister?”
“No, of course not. It was on the Swallow. Pippa let me borrow her screen, and it was on there. Anyway, it was some prison break thing, and a guy used it to interfere with beam production. It’s a special kind of metal that disrupts the plasma.” She bit her lip. “Please tell me it actually works that way in real life and it wasn’t some stupid vid thing that’s made up.”
“No, it’ll work,” he said. “I mean, I think so. I’ve never actually done it myself. I guess I’ve only seen it done on vids too. But theoretically, yeah.” He smiled. “I guess you did all right, princess.”
“And out there, I noticed the air ducts,” she said.
He smiled bigger. “Exactly.”
“So, we’re out of here, then,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, and scooted over to the door of the cell. He inserted the metal piece into a hole in the controls and wiggled it.
Nothing happened.
“This might take some trial and error,” he said to her. He wiggled some more. “Listen, don’t ever do anything like that again.”
“What? Save our asses?”
He rolled his eyes. “You don’t go around bargaining away your body, okay? It’s not cool.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me. I mean, I guess it’s like I’ve always known it doesn’t really belong to me. It belongs to the galaxy. I’m just a vessel for the champion.”
Pursuit Page 23
