Ashes and Metal (Cyborg Shifters Book 5)

by Naomi Lucas

  “Check every lock in here, make sure none of them have been tampered with. Double check it. The lights were only off in this section of the ship... What the fuck you think you’re looking at?” the lead guard yelled at a nearby prisoner.

  “There’s no way they could’ve gotten out. Why the extra effort?” another said. They moved through and started, simultaneously, going through each cell’s panel.

  “Look how scrawny this one is,” one of them said, motioning toward her. Elodie stiffened but held her stance. “Weeks with minimal food, they couldn’t get out, let alone go on a killing spree.” He moved past her cell and she sagged a little.

  One by one, the guards went through each unit. Twice over, two at each lock, verifying that nothing had been tampered with. She glanced back at where Royce had hung and wondered why it even mattered.

  He’s right. None of us could’ve done that. Her gaze moved to Gunner and a shiver traveled like death’s fingers down her spine.

  He was looking at the floor in front of him, head bowed down, his hair falling forward and obscuring his face, and his arms raised but only halfway above him. He appeared tired, and his pose suggested as much.

  But it was just that, a pose. He could do that.

  He could’ve done it.

  The second guard checked his lock and stepped away. Gunner tilted his head and caught her eyes. The milkiness of them gave nothing away.

  Shhhh. His lips moved for only her to see.

  “All’s clear,” one of the guards called out. “Let’s leave the cleanup for the androids.”

  The one with the gun passed by her cell, stopped, and turned her way. Elodie swallowed but he kept turning to face the rest of the hold.

  “You can all lower your arms,” he said and waited as they complied.

  Her arms dropped to her sides, prickling with renewed blood flow. She shifted slightly toward Gunner to keep him and the guard in her sight.

  “Don’t get comfortable. We’ll be back soon,” he bellowed. He holstered his gun and strode out the door, leaving them as suddenly as he’d come in. The other guards followed in his wake, looking as haunted as any brig prisoner and she wondered briefly if this Juke guy would really kill them.

  Elodie remained where she stood for some time, eyeing the robots that had begun to clean Royce’s cell. They released a cloudy chemical smelling gas over everything and then beamed lasers over it next.

  It wasn’t until her legs started to give out that she moved back to the wall, sliding down the center of it.

  She felt eyes on her.

  She felt the blazing heat of them melt the skin on her body and pierce through her layers.

  She knew Gunner was willing her to look his way, and she fought with a willpower far stronger than her own. His. He sat in his usual spot, right where she imagined him, in the dark, leaned up on the bars.

  She wouldn’t look but she knew.

  If she looked, she’d see his jacket, see it piled up by his hip and she couldn’t muster enough courage to do it. And her lack of courage at that moment was stronger than his willpower. Even if she wanted to ask him about it, she couldn’t do it in front of the androids.

  Only an idiot would talk among another’s tech. So she watched the androids instead, burning, spraying, lighting up the dirt until the space practically sparkled. The blood vanished in a haze.

  I asked for the jacket.

  Elodie couldn’t help but feel Royce’s death was her fault, but even as she mulled it over, she kept second-guessing herself. None of the other prisoners said anything when she glanced briefly around.

  Everyone appeared lost in their own thoughts or passed out because there was no better way to spend their time. No one paid her or Gunner any attention, and no one met her eyes. She was almost convinced that she had missed something and was positive that more happened in the dark than she had realized.

  So how did he get his jacket back?

  The androids stepped out of Royce’s cell and began to clean the area beyond. They split into two groups, each going down the pathway in opposite directions, and as they continued her excitement grew. The aerosol that shot out from their hands filled the spaces in and around the bars, the floor, the walls, and settled on the layers of dirt that clouded their surfaces. The brig was being cleaned for the first time since she arrived. Elodie didn’t even mind when one of the robots stood before her own cage and misted the chemicals all over her, making her cough, and didn’t mind when their scanners beamed in afterward and disintegrated the grime. The lasers made her eyes hurt.

  The robots moved on to Kallan’s cell and those beyond.

  She was still filthy after they were done but cleaner than she’d been in weeks. Her eyes followed the bony curves of her fingers as she rubbed the palms of her hands. They were no longer sweaty and sticky, but smooth to the touch and pale. She touched her hair next where it still hung in strands around her ears, still thickened with grease but now lighter and softer. Elodie took in a deep breath, loving that for a moment, she smelled nothing.

  “So your hair is blonde,” Gunner murmured.

  Elodie let her short hair fall over her face and pressed her cheeks into her bent knees, hoping to smudge up her face some more.

  “And here I thought you had light brown locks. Goes to show first impressions are rarely accurate.”

  She didn’t answer him, still uncertain whether it was in her best interest or not, but he kept slithering his voice into her ear.

  “So we’re back to silence?” His voice was lower than before. Her eyes darted to the working androids, unsure if they were far enough away to hear him.

  “You’re a smart one, Ely, but they can’t hear us, won’t record us.”

  She frowned. I’m being too easy to read. How does he know? Her frown deepened. How does he seem to know everything? Why isn’t anyone else noticing him? Something was just out of grasp and the more she reached for it, the more unsure she really wanted to understand.

  Elodie focused on her grey space as the image of milky eyes, bleeding over in red, fought to consume her thoughts. She pressed her palm into her forehead where Gunner had breathed on her hours prior.

  I still feel it. Him. The spot burned.

  The androids walked past her cell and headed for the doors, meeting up with the others who had finished at the same time in perfect synchronization. They left in unison, stepping out the door before it fully opened, and when it closed behind them, quiet conversations picked back up throughout the brig. The ventilation system turned on, sucking the remaining haze away.

  “Well that was fun,” Kallan chuckled. “Can’t say I’ve seen that happen yet.”

  “How long you’ve been in here anyway?” Gunner called out to him.

  “Hard to say, a month maybe? Longer than the rest.”

  “What about you, Ely?” Gunner asked her next.

  Kallan answered for her. “Ely got here, what now? Two, three weeks ago? It’s hard to keep track of time when most cycles blend into the next. Came in here with the rest of these fuckers who didn’t fight back.”

  Two and a half weeks ago.

  “They’re part of a mining crew coming back from Andromeda with a full load of ore to Gliese,” he continued. “They were attacked and boarded right outside commercial space.”

  “We couldn’t warp without a wormhole with our capacity at overload,” another chimed in. “We couldn’t flee for the same reason and were outnumbered.”

  “Did you send out a distress call?” Gunner asked.

  “Fuck yeah, we did, and you’d think being right on the outskirts we’d have gotten the attention of one of the patrol ships, but no one answered. None of the other mining ships were nearby either. They barraged us with fire, taking out our thrusters. Our drives came next. It shot our life support systems into effect and we shelled up, trying to wait them out, to wait for help. But we weren’t prepared and our stores were already on the low end at that point. Our shit-brained captain bargained our l
ives if we gave up, little good that did him. He and the bridge crew were all killed on site. Glad they were.”

  She remembered when it all went down; she was with her dad repairing the giant excavators and haulers. They had been so deep in the machines at that point—she and a few others who sat in cells of their own in the brig—that they had no idea what was happening in the upper decks. When going on repair for machines massive enough to harvest continents, they sometimes didn’t emerge for days at a time.

  They would pack enough food and supplies to go on a prospector investigation, bringing with them the bare minimum of necessities, because whatever was brought had to be maneuvered through a labyrinth of gears and metal. The behemoths she often worked on were their own little graveyards on a mining ship. She and her dad had come upon more than one corpse lost within the metal.

  Their small team had emerged to strangers pointing guns at them, and guns that continued to be held on them until they were walked off their ship and into where she sat now.

  We didn’t fight them. There was blood on the walls. It was easy to know what course of action was likely to keep you alive when you’re confronted with bloody walls.

  “What about you, Kallan? How’d you get here?” Gunner asked, pulling her out of her memories.

  “Same as them but less climactic. Was caught out in the open and taken. They took me and my ship, even seeing through my cloaking device, and apprehended all I had. But my hide will bounce back, I know what’s ahead for us,” he grumbled. “Royce though, didn’t expect something as desperate as suicide to get out of here.”

  Her ears perked up. Someone else would’ve noticed. She didn’t need to look to know Gunner wasn’t hiding it.

  “If I’d’ve known I would’ve stopped him,” Gunner’s voice tickled her ear. Elodie felt her pulse jump. “He gave me back the jacket last night in the dark, was surprised myself when he pushed it through the bars. Didn’t get a chance to ask him what he was doing before the sirens went off.”

  Liar.

  “Odd,” Kallan mused.

  “Agreed. Looks like we’re not the only ones dealing with death today though.”

  He’s changing to subject...

  Elodie chanced a look at Gunner through her hair but quickly glanced away when their eyes met.

  “Sounds like someone went on a killing spree above,” one of the other prisoners interjected. “Better them than us.”

  “Hmph. Until they’re back here for recruitment,” Kallan said.

  “They fucking warned us this time. I wonder how many spots are needing to be filled this time. Because at this rate, there’s not many of us left to fill ‘em, not if they’re planning on turning a profit off our flesh as it seems.”

  “Better chances of surviving if they’re not allowed to kill us...”

  Elodie tuned them out as the conversation wore on. Gunner had gone quiet as well and as time passed without further incident, the silence reclaimed the space around her. Her ever-begging stomach gnawed her from the inside out and the grey space grew easier enter. Missing the morning meal took its toll and she closed her eyes, slipping into sleep without realizing it.

  When she woke up sometime later, the lights were dimming, and the brig door was opening. An android walked through, alone, and without a guard to distribute food. There were a lot of firsts happening for her in the last half week, and the energy to be surprised had all but left her. The robot left them to their barely sated hunger.

  After she was done scarfing her ration and popping one of the water gels in her mouth, she moved toward the bars closest to Gunner. The dark, though not like the night before, gave her back enough courage to talk to him.

  He lifted his dead eyes to follow her movements, and she became lost in their frosted appearance. His lips twitched at one side for a second before vanishing.

  They stayed like that for some time, watching each other in the low light as the cycle lengthened. Coughs and rattling snores of those around them grew. It was as if they waited until the witching hour to be alone and Elodie almost missed the roaring privacy they had been granted the previous night. She missed the temporary closeness she had to another person. She missed the freedom.

  She’d come to expect his attention and that disturbed her to the core.

  Shadows obscured most of his features and she dropped her gaze to follow the grey and black shades of his gun tattoos, and along his broad jaw.

  Elodie noticed when his breath changed to expand his chest, bringing her attention to the outline of his shirt and the muscles beneath. It clung and bunched in all the right spots, and as she focused on the cloth’s subtle movements, his muscles bulged a little farther out. Her brow furrowed and her cheeks heated.

  A jerkish smile lifted the sides of his lips cooling off her sudden ardor. She shivered and quickly glanced away, screaming in her head the danger she was putting herself in.

  The sound of him moving brought her attention back to him. He picked up the jacket on his other side and placed it on the ground between them, and without a word, threaded and squeezed the material through. Elodie gripped the other end and tugged, and before long had the material in her hands.

  She shrugged it on and the smell of him consumed her. It was delicious and spicy, minty and strong. She tugged the collar closer to her nose and caught just a hint of menthol and hops, and lingering cannabis.

  The material sat heavy and thick over her shoulders but she didn’t mind as the chill she’d grown used to left her skin. The jacket covered her completely and left excess to hide behind. It was a shield, a cocoon, an added layer of protection. Safety. Gunner had given her safety... She wanted to cry out from bliss at the feel of worn flannel surrounding her hands.

  She zipped up the front and checked the pockets, knowing she’d find nothing. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said, his voice a barely-there whisper.

  “Do what?” she asked, hunching into the jacket and all its layered glory. Its heavy warmth.

  “Zip it up. It makes you look like a woman with how large it is on you. Keep it unzipped and the sleeves rolled past your wrists and don’t wear it during the day.”

  She mulled over the suggestion, having already decided to take it off during the day anyway. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  A few minutes went by as she struggled with the sleeves and redressed her new shield. Her eyes flared suddenly and her fumbling ceased.

  Shit! I just gave myself away!

  Elodie turned to stone, her mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish. His eyes burned into her.

  “I’m not a woman,” she mustered out in defense, trying to calmly convince him and wishing her heart would stop its pounding. “But I don’t want to give the others more fuel to that fire. Eventually, they might stop caring about what I really am and just focus on what I appear to be.”

  Gunner rolled his head to face her directly. “Not a comforting thought.”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “I’ve completed the end of my bargain. Now it’s your turn.”

  Elodie nodded. “Did you kill Royce?” She watched his face but it gave nothing away, only leaving her with more questions than before.

  “Does it matter?”

  “How did you do it?” she asked.

  Gunner dropped his head on the bars and flicked his fingers at Royce’s cell. “I powered down the lights to the brig, broke through the security on my cell door, left, and when I returned, remembered our agreement and entered his cell. The rest you already know.”

  Elodie couldn’t tell if he was taunting her or not but her stomach went queasy and she turned to look at the other prisoners around them, to see if anyone was listening in on their conversation.

  “They’re asleep.”

  “I don’t believe you.” She turned back toward him.

  “You don’t? You don’t even know me.”

  “Then why did you come back? If you can escape so easily, move th
rough an unknown ship without getting lost, why would you come back?”

  His lips lifted again. Elodie still couldn’t read him.

  “Maybe I came back for you.”

  His words left a mark and she shook off the shiver of fear that wanted to crawl through her. “Tell me the truth.”

  “I did. I’m truth incarnate.”

  “Prove it,” she hissed and his smile widened into a smirk.

  “Why should I?”

  “You can’t.” He can’t because it’s illogical and not possible. “So how did you really kill Royce?”

  Suddenly several ration bars and a couple water gels appeared in his hand. Gunner shoved them through the bars where no one else could see.

  “I told you.”

  Elodie stared at the food as if it answered all her questions. Proof. Or was it? He could’ve been saving them up... Her fingers drifted over them lightly to prove to herself that they were real.

  “Where did you get these?” she asked.

  Gunner smirked but didn’t answer her. Several minutes passed and her belly groaned.

  “That’s my proof,” he said, “Now eat something before you die.”

  Elodie wondered if it was a trap, waiting for him to reach through the barrier and seize her hand or her throat and hurt her, but as the seconds passed and Gunner did nothing more than watch her, she closed her hands over one of the rations and tugged up the extra length of her jacket. She twisted to face him dead on and ate the food out of the prying eyes of the others. Satisfaction wasn’t the only thing messing with her head, but shock.

  Why is he feeding me? She couldn’t meet his gaze.

  When she was done, and after hiding rest of the rations in her pockets, she asked, “What do you want from me?”

  He leaned back, and she realized he had been hiding her from view as well. Her chest squeezed and she suddenly wanted to move closer to him. It snapped her back to reality.