“I don’t like this...” I waved my hand between us, gesturing at him and me, “This silent treatment thing.”
“I am not enjoying it either.” He placed the tray on the table but didn’t leave immediately after, as he had done yesterday.
Instead, he took his usual wide stance, crossing his arms over his chest. The pose had a certain flare of arrogance, which suited him.
I stood in front of him, trying not to mimic his stance. “I would like to break this silence. Can we please talk again?”
“I would like that, too.” He inclined his head as if he were accepting the apology I had never given.
In fact, shouldn’t he be the one to apologize? After all, I was still the one destined to spend the rest of my life locked up.
I took a long breath in, reminding myself that getting into yet another argument would hinder my plans.
“So,” I tried just one more time, as calmly and friendly as I could manage. “Are you absolutely positive that there is definitely no way for me to ever leave this room? More often than once a week, please?”
He dropped his hands to his sides with an exasperated sigh. “Svetlana.”
There was something slightly indecent in the way he pronounced my name. It made me think of licking, for some reason.
He obviously wasn’t thinking of that, judging by his frustrated expression.
“It wasn’t a whim of mine, to keep you in here. Anywhere outside of this glass capsule is dangerous.” He raked his claws through his fur. “Fuck,” he groaned. “Even inside this room, I cannot guarantee your safety.”
He frowned, peering past the glass into the dancing lights of the Anomaly.
“They’d drive you mad,” he’d said to me once.
His wild expression made me wonder if he had already lost some of his sanity. After having spent who knew how much time in this place, I wouldn’t blame him if he had. He definitely seemed to exhibit some signs of paranoia.
“You know your crew,” I said, wishing to gauge the severity of the danger he had been talking about. How much of what he feared was a genuine threat?
“I do. I have studied every species here in detail. I’ve also learned what motivates each individual, by watching them for years.” A shadow drew over his features. “I killed ninety-seven of them the day I took over and declared myself their captain. Then I’ve shot another hundred and fifty-three, re-enforcing my rules and maintaining the order ever since.”
He met my eyes, as if waiting for a reaction.
I didn’t know what exactly he wanted me to say. That the killings he’d done must have been justified, considering the savage nature of his people? Or that I understood that it hurt him having to commit those murders?
“They are a wild, unrefined bunch of criminals,” he continued as I kept silent. “Murderers, rapists, and cannibals. Anyone who had a conscience, manners, or honor had been exterminated long before I took power. Nothing good survives here, Svetlana. Nothing beautiful, delicate or feminine, either.”
I shifted, taking a step closer.
“How did you survive?”
“By making myself smarter than them. I’ve read, I’ve studied, and I’ve watched. Then, I’ve figured out how to overpower them and prevent them from rebelling against me. Their minds and hands need to be occupied. I try to funnel their aggression into productive results, by keeping them busy. There is always work to be done around here. My authority is absolute. I ruthlessly eradicate any doubt about that. But it does not go undisputed.”
He paused again, gazing at me. It occurred to me that it might be the only time Vrateus had ever talked to anyone this openly about himself.
“You think all I need to do is to command and they will obey?” he continued. “Every order I give, I need to supervise to make sure it’s executed the right way. I have to be physically present, everywhere at once. Because if I’m not there to check and reinforce, they slack off. Every one of them is just waiting for me to slip up and make a mistake.”
He rubbed his face in the now familiar gesture. His exhaustion might be more noticeable by the end of the day but listening to him now I realized he was always tired, no matter how much rest he got.
“Svetlana, I don’t know what prior knowledge you have about the species of the Dark Anomaly. You seem to have come from a gentler, better place, where women feel safe on their own. But it’s different here.”
He looked closely at me.
“Do you think a release once a week would take care of my crew’s sexual frustration? It won’t. Dimos come several times a day. And that’s when they’re single. If they catch a scent of a female, they can spend days doing nothing but having sex. Continuously.”
He was no longer arguing or even trying to convince me in anything. He seemed to be stating facts, letting me do whatever I wanted with the information.
“Errocks have two cocks each, and they are only truly satisfied when they come from both. Simultaneously. Ognats chew the heads off their females during mating. Kreers have a birth rate of one male to ten females, because they mate in the water, often drowning the female during sex. Like ognats, they are cannibals. They eat everything they kill. Everything.”
He drew in a lengthy breath, as if talking had exhausted him even more.
“Nothing would stop the monsters I call my crew from satisfying their basic instincts if they got within leaping distance from you while you were walking anywhere alone.”
Faced with the horrific nature of the inhabitants of the Dark Anomaly, the argument died in me.
“Do you understand me?” he asked, peering at me intently.
“Yes.” My knees gave in, and I sank to the floor right where I stood.
Silently, he offered me the cup from the tray. Bejewelled and embossed, it appeared to have come straight from a storybook’s pirate treasure. Except that no one here had come from a storybook—from a nightmare, maybe.
“I understand what you’re saying.” I took the cup from him mechanically. “What escapes me is why they are like that?”
“Some of it is in their blood. It’s the characteristic of their species.”
“Not exactly.” I shook my head. “All of them initially came from the same world I did. And I’ve never heard of any race being inherently brutal or violent like that. Errocks are an intelligent, civilized nation, for example. And that head-eating thing that you said ognats do...” I flinched, bringing it up. “It would not be tolerated anywhere in the modern world.”
“Then it must be a better world out there now.”
“What was it like when they got here?” I asked. “How long have you all been on the Dark Anomaly?”
“It depends. Malahki was the last sentient being to arrive here before you. That was about five years ago. I’ve been here for over two decades now. That’s about six thousand universal years.”
“What?” I stared at him, flabbergasted. “Six thousand years? That would be before the beginning of recorded human history!”
“Yours must be a very young race then. Many of the others have been here for much longer than that, twice or even three times as long as I have.”
“That would be like traveling through time.”
“Except that no one actually travels anywhere.” He huffed a bitter laugh. “All of us are staying put.”
I took a drink of tea, suddenly no longer feeling like talking.
All of what Vrateus had said was excruciatingly depressing.
He crouched in front of me.
“I have re-arranged my schedule for tomorrow. Right after breakfast, I will have one hour to show you around. Crux, Wyck, and Nocc will come with us.”
I snapped my gaze to his, shocked by his offer after the speech he had just given me.
“You will take me for a walk, after all?”
“With an adequate escort,” he said with an emphasis. “You’re never to step a foot outside of this room alone. Do you understand?”
I nodded, afraid to believe
he was giving in.
“There are benefits to familiarizing yourself with the Dark Anomaly. You need to know your surroundings in case of an emergency.”
“Thank you,” I exhaled with relief and genuine gratitude.
He hovered his hand over my knee for a moment, before tentatively placing it on it. “You’re welcome.”
I covered his hand with mine, my fingers sinking into the soft fur on the back of his hand.
He blinked, slightly discomfited for once.
“Just, um... Make sure you stay close and do exactly as I say, Svetlana. Please, make it easier for me to keep you safe.”
Chapter 9
IT WAS ONLY A WALK through the rumpled corridors of the junkyard of spaceships compacted together by the unexplained force field in space. Yet from the moment I woke up, I felt excited as if I were six again and my grandma was about to take me to the fair.
Being forced to stay in one room had made me eager to see anything outside of it.
“Morning,” I greeted Vrateus the moment he walked in with breakfast. “I’ll be quick.” I grabbed the tray from him.
“Take your time. You have fifteen minutes for breakfast, then an entire hour for the walk.”
His days seemed to comprise a string of time intervals, each with a specific task assigned to it.
For the next hour and fifteen minutes the task was me.
“Where are you taking me today?” I stuffed a spoonful of the watery stew into my mouth. The food on the Anomaly lacked not just taste but also variety. I’d had a slight variation of the same thing for every meal.
“We’ll take a walk in the opposite direction from the mess hall.”
“Oh, good.” I wasn’t too eager to see the mess hall again, anyway. “What’s there?”
“The library and the gardens.”
I was hoping for an airlock, the exit to the surface. However, seeing more of the layout of the habitable sector of the Dark Anomaly would still be beneficial. Besides, I might find some information I needed in the library.
“Sounds good.”
“Today, we’ll go to the library. The gardens will be next week. I also have a visit to the kitchen scheduled, two days from now.”
“Really?” I perked up, surprised but even more excited now. It appeared I was about to see a lot of this place.
“This won’t happen often.” He toned down my enthusiasm. “I’ll try to find time for more walks in the future, but I can’t promise anything definite yet.”
“I’d love be able to walk as much as possible, please,” I asked nicely. “Everybody needs regular exercise, right? How do you stay physically active?”
He sat down on the floor next to me, and I admired the thick muscles of his thighs, bulging against the dark-brown material of his pants.
“Physical labor.” He blinked, following my gaze. “There is always a lot to be done around here.”
I finished my stew in record time, drank the bitter, black tea just as fast, and got up.
“I’m ready.”
The relaxed expression he had on his face while watching me eat disappeared at my words. Focus sharpened his features as he walked me to the door and placed his hand on the control panel.
The three members of his personal guard stood just outside the door. Wyck had the end of Lesh’s chain wrapped around his wrist. The bizarre creature lowered all three of its heads, hissing at the doors as they slid open.
Neither of the errocks offered me a greeting, and I kept quiet, too, deciding it was best not to attract any extra attention.
Wrapping his hand around my upper arm, Vrateus gestured for Crux to lead. Wyck and Nocc flanked us, each about a step behind Vrateus and me.
I couldn’t shake off the feeling of unease while walking down the corridors. This was not a relaxing stroll. The sensation of the errocks ogling me prickled my skin. The moist breathing of Wyck’s pet heated my ankles.
I focused on where we were going, taking in the dented metal of the ceiling and the bent panels of the wall. Now and then, I spotted a thick round line of melted metal, crudely welded. It circled the corridor—floor, walls, and ceiling. Those must be the places where newly crashed ships were integrated into the Dark Anomaly, adding to the usable space of the metal disk.
I wondered what they’d use my spaceship for. Maybe a storage room, one among many.
“Have you stripped my ship?” I asked Vrateus.
“Yes. Everything we could use has now been taken off and put into storage,” he replied, not taking his eyes off Crux’s back in front of us.
“How about the spacesuit? And the spare fuel cells I had?”
“All in storage. Along with the other suits we have.”
“You have more?”
I doubted any of the ones they had would rival the quality and power of mine. Considering the slower time on the Anomaly, everything Vrateus’s people had at their disposal was severely outdated.
“We have several more. We wear them to go outside, to do any necessary repairs on the surface.”
They did get out. There must be an airlock, then.
“What do you need to repair out there?” I asked.
Vrateus flicked his gaze to mine before returning it to the errock in front of us.
“Power generating panels. They convert the light of the Anomaly into useful energy.”
“How about any antennae? Have you tried to send or receive communication signals from the surface?”
“No antennae. All signals get lost here.”
“Yes. In here. But have you tried to send one from out there?” I insisted.
“Yes.”
His brief answers weren’t nearly enough. I wished to see some detailed data. Better yet, I wanted a chance to conduct some experiments myself. The mystery of the Anomaly was what drew me to sign up for the research mission in the first place. I was now inside it and still had so few answers.
Ironically, my main goal right now was to escape this place, not to study it.
“How often do you have to do the repairs?” I asked.
“As often as needed. With each new arrival, things often get banged up on the surface.”
Arrival.
He’d made it sound as if they were scheduled—normal things to happen, not the catastrophic events they really were.
I wondered about the number and locations of the exits to the surface. Logic told me that at least one of them should be somewhere close to the storage room with the spacesuits, but I decided against asking him outright, at that moment. I didn’t want to give him any more clues about my plans. The look he had given me was already suspicious.
At that moment, Vrateus stopped at the white single door on our left.
VRATEUS
He tapped the code into the door panel. Unlike the lock on his and Svetlana’s rooms that had been programed to open only with his palm print, the one at the library simply required a numeric code to enter. The number was not a secret. Anyone could access this place, though few of his crew ever bothered.
Unlike them, Vrateus had spent many hours here. However, this was the first time he had ever brought anyone along.
“Wow.” Svetlana’s eyes grew wider as she stepped inside, taking in the floor-to-ceiling shelf units arranged in parallel rows. The room was almost as large as the mess hall. The neatly placed slates of data glowed softly, illuminating the space with multi-colored light. “This is impressive.”
Her reaction warmed his chest with pride and an odd sense of pleasure. The library has been one of the biggest accomplishments of his leadership, in his opinion. Sadly, it was also the least appreciated one.
Crux immediately bee-lined for the red-glowing section with sex videos of various species. The other two errocks followed him. With his personal guards now occupied by shifting through the data slates, Vrateus followed Svetlana deeper into the room.
“Did all these come from the shipwrecks?” she asked, trailing a finger along the hard edges of the slates that wer
e glowing green. This section contained information on farming and agriculture.
“Yes. Most I’ve collected during my time as the captain, but some have survived from the prior years.”
“They’re all in the same format,” she noted.
“I’ve converted everything to one format. It makes it easier to use.” He gestured at a crate full of tablet frames. “You can have one if you want.”
“Really?” She shot him a guarded glance.
“Sure.” He selected a frame for her, in dark brown like her eyes. “What would you like to read or watch?”
“Well...” she rubbed her upper arm. “Since I’m to stay here for the rest of my life, it would be good to learn more about this place. What information do you have on the Dark Anomaly?”
It surprised him how relatively fast she seemed to have accepted the Anomaly as her future. It was good that she had, though, as it made things so much easier for both of them.
“The latest data on the energy field of the Dark Anomaly comes from your own ship.” He moved over to the section of slates glowing in faint gray.
“Those would be the results of our research from the outside,” she said. “I’d like to learn what I don’t know yet. The actual structure where we are. How you’ve made it habitable and all the ways you keep maintaining it. As well as the information on all the species occupying this place.”
“That might be too much for one visit, but I’ll get you some to start with.” He browsed the units with the gray shelves, selecting a few slates. “Nothing here is in any of the languages spoken on Earth, of course. Some newer articles can be read in the Universal language, though. Do you read Universal?”
She nodded.
“Good,” he continued. “Many have an audio version, too, which your implant will translate for you.” He then moved on to a much larger section that housed slates glowing in various shades of yellow—from the lightest, nearly white, to the darkest orange, almost brown. “These here contain information on the species, each is color-coded with its own shade.”
He pulled out a few, making sure to include a documentary about the life of themul on Nofoi. For some reason, he wanted her to know more about his own species, even though he could hardly be considered part of Nofoi culture himself, having left the planet at a very young age.
Gravity (Dark Anomaly Book 1) Page 7
