by King, Sara
Tatiana stubbornly scooted away from the game and waited.
“Fine.” Glaring, Milar dumped the board and began replacing pieces into the padded interior.
“How can I use that to my advantage?” Tatiana asked, desperate now. “What happened? Do they know I’m alive?”
Milar said nothing as he finished restoring the set and then closed and latched the board. He shoved it inside a cargo net and then sat down on the stairs to the cockpit and began picking his fingernails with the big knife.
“Colonist jerk,” Tatiana muttered.
“Coaler squid.”
“Neanderthal.”
“Cyborg.”
Tatiana glanced at the hatch to the outside. If they weren’t too far off the ground…
Seeing the direction of her gaze, Milar scowled, then got up and wandered over to the other side of the ship and leaned against the wall beside the hatch. Then he went back to cleaning his nails.
“Crawler,” Tatiana muttered.
“Dwarf.”
Seeing she was going to get nothing more out of him, she grumbled, “Fine. We can play your damn game.”
“It’s called chess,” Milar said, but he moved away from the hatch.
“You expect me to remember it after one friggin’ game?”
“It was six.”
“Yeah, whatever. You only told me what it was called once.”
“Twice.”
“Whatever,” she cried. “Chess. So what?”
“So you’re pretty good,” Milar said, “For a beginner.” He grabbed the game off the rack again and dropped down to a crouch in front of her. “Go again?”
Upon seeing the bi-colored squares once more, Tatiana grimaced. “On second thought, this game makes my head hurt.”
“Probably the concussion.” Milar opened the box and started unloading pieces.
“I’d rather just go to sleep,” Tatiana said.
“Not a good idea until we have a doc take a look at your head. White or black?”
“You mean you won’t even let me take a nap?” Tatiana cried.
“Nope. You get white.”
“But I like black.”
“Too bad. I’m bigger than you.” Milar began setting the pieces on the board, his dragon tattoos flexing as the muscles of his forearms moved underneath the skin. Now that she knew what to look for, she saw the pink line running up the bottom of his arm, from elbow to wrist, and the cut sideways, down his palm.
“How’d they get your skin back on?” she asked.
Milar paused and looked at her. For a moment, it looked like he might speak, but then he finished laying out the board and leaned back. After a moment’s thought, he moved a one of the little ones in the front.
Tatiana moved a little one. “Gee, weather’s really nice today.”
Milar made a sound that almost sounded like laughter, but didn’t reply. They played in silence for several more minutes.
“Your horse is dead,” Tatiana said, moving a pointy one. “Gimme.”
“It’s a knight,” Milar said, handing it to her. He put her pointy one in its place.
“Whatever. Looks like a horse.” She tucked it beside her knee.
Milar took her pointy one with his squat little tower.
“Damn! I forgot the tower moves sideways like that. Got it mixed up with the fat one.”
“It’s a rook,” Milar said, “And I have no idea what the hell a fat one is.”
She pointed.
He lifted a brow. “That’s your king.” He said it like she were the stupidest person on the planet.
“I knew that,” she muttered under her breath.
“Sure you did, squid.” He moved another pointy one. Frowning, Tatiana countered with a small one. Then they were both concentrating, every ounce of their attention pulled into the odd little pieces and their intriguing dance on their queer little bicolor wooden board. The spell ended only when Milar got his fat one trapped by one of her towers.
“There,” Tatiana said, breathless. “Beat that, crawler.”
“It’s checkmate,” he muttered.
“Well, checkmate on ya, then. Crawler.”
“Two out of seven. Not bad.”
“Two out of six,” Tatiana reminded him. “We never finished that last game.”
“You tipped your king. That means you surrendered.”
“And you tipped it back up. That means you didn’t accept my surrender.”
Milar leaned back. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
In the glaring contest that ensued, Tatiana accidentally broke it with a yawn. She was so sleepy… “How much longer ‘til I can take a nap?” she asked.
Milar grunted. “Need to know basis,” he said.
Tatiana scowled, then laid back and closed her eyes.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Milar warned. “We need a doc to look at your head first.”
Tatiana ignored him.
“I still owe you for that stunt you pulled this morning,” he reminded her.
Tatiana blushed and quickly sat up. “So what? You’re going to take me to a doctor and then…what? Hold me here until I decide I don’t want to be a Coalition fighter anymore?”
“Yep,” Milar said, replacing the pieces on the board.
“Well, what a genius plan that is, bonehead.”
“White or black?” Milar asked.
“Black,” Tatiana fumed.
“You get white.” Milar shoved the white pieces at her, smirking.
Because she had nothing better to do, Tatiana played another game with him. And lost.
Milar looked in better spirits when he leaned back and said, “My brother’s ex-girlfriend’s little sister helped Pat stitch me back up. They were in a hurry, though, so they had to go back and reconnect a lot of the minor nerves and blood-vessels later, after they got me back home.”
“Huh?”
Milar sighed. “Play again?”
“Are you telling me a colonist stitched you back up?”
“No,” Milar said, his posture stiffening immediately.
“Yes you are,” she said, triumphantly. “What kind of colonist has that kind of training? Fortune’s filled with eggers, miners, and starlope skinners. Not exactly neuro-science.”
“Never mind,” Milar said, his eyes turning hard. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Or is Patrick making out with one of the camp directors?” Tatiana pressed. “Maybe you’ve got someone on the inside—”
Milar flipped the board over and shoved the pieces into the interior without regard to color or placement. He snapped the set shut and latched it, then got up and stuffed it viciously into the cargo net. In two more strides, he was back to the step, prying at his thumbnail with his big knife.
Once again, Tatiana glanced at the hatch.
“Go for it,” Milar said. “Make my life a hell of a lot easier.”
Tatiana actually got to her feet, then reconsidered and slumped back down to the floor. She already had a broken shoulder. She didn’t need a broken leg, too. Milar, who had lifted his head to watch, went back to his trimming. A sudden wave of sleepiness overwhelming her, Tatiana lay back and closed her eyes, and this time Milar didn’t say a word.
Tatiana was unconscious by the time the ship landed. Milar got up and rudely nudged her in the thigh with his boot. “Get up. Time to check out that head of yours.”
“It’s fine,” she mumbled, but couldn’t find the strength to lift her head.
“What’s wrong with her?” she heard one of the twins say.
“Goddamn concussion, is what. Here. Hold my knife.” Then big arms were scooping her off the floor and hefting her into the air.
Tatiana didn’t remember much after that.
She woke sometime later, staring at a ceiling that definitely did not belong to the dust-free, sanitized cubicles of a Coalition medic. She groaned and tried to sit up. One arm wouldn’t move. She pushed a quilted blanket off of her and glanced
down. Her upper body was in a partial cast, and her right arm hung limply in a sling.
And, aside from the cross-bandage over her injured node, she was naked. Someone had taken her jumpsuit, leaving all her skin and nodes utterly exposed. The cold tingle of goosebumps teased her forearms and back as she considered who it had been.
Tatiana grimaced when she noticed a curly reddish hair on the blanket. Plucking it off in disgust, she then felt a stab of horror when she realized who it had to belong to.
“Enjoy your nap, squid?” Milar asked, sitting up from where he’d been lying on a couch opposite her, reading. “Doc said that’s twice you should’ve died today. Looks like Wideman’s onto something.”
Tatiana jerked the cover up to her chest. “Twice?” she managed, through a throat constricted with revulsion. Milar’s bed. I’m lying in Milar’s bed. Immediately, she felt dirty all over, and was pretty sure she could feel the lice crawling into her nodes already.
Milar held up two big fingers. “Once when you bashed your head open on my console,” he dropped a finger, “And twice when I went there to kill you.”
Tatiana caught his gaze, saw he was serious, swallowed, and quickly looked away. Her eyes caught on several pictures of herself that someone had sketched in colored pencil, stacked and shoved under the nightstand beside Milar’s couch.
Milar dropped his hand. “You hungry?”
“Not anymore.” When she glanced at the walls, she saw lighter spots there, where something had been recently taken down. Dozens of them. Her gaze flickered back to the pictures of her face. Some of the sheets were brown with age.
“Thirsty?”
“No.”
Milar got up and got her a glass of water and what looked like a mess of coagulated eggs. He shoved the glass into her hand and dropped the tin plate on her lap. “Get any on my sheets and you’ll be washing them.” He didn’t offer her an eating utensil.
“I want a fork.”
“You could stab me with a fork.”
Tatiana narrowed her eyes. “Get me a spoon, then.”
“You could stab me with that, too.”
“Stab you with a spoon?”
“Yup.” Milar slumped back down on the couch and picked his book up off the nightstand. When Milar didn’t have a sudden change of heart and offer her an eating utensil, she daintily picked up a clump of eggs with her left hand and put them in her mouth. Immediately, she spat it back out on her plate. “They’re cold,” she said.
“If you’d been awake two hours ago, it would’ve been hot.” Milar sounded thoroughly unconcerned as he flipped a page.
Tatiana shoved the plate away, though she did drink the water. “Why were you going to kill me?” she asked.
“Need to know,” Milar said.
Tatiana could have screamed in frustration. “Fine. I have to go to the bathroom.”
Milar jerked a thumb at a heavy wooden door behind him.
Then, realizing her state of undress, Tatiana’s face burned. “Where’s my jumpsuit?”
“I’ll give you three guesses,” Milar said.
“You burned it.”
“Bingo.”
Tatiana flushed. “Well, leave the room, then.”
“I don’t think so.” Milar glanced at her and his mouth twitched in a devilish smile. “Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
Glaring, she started wrapping herself in blankets.
“The sheets stay there, squid.”
Tatiana glanced at the distance from the bed to the door. She had to cross the room to get there, and it would give Milar plenty of time to see her in all her glory.
All hundred and fifty centimeters of it.
“If your face got any redder, I’d say you were having an aneurysm.”
“Choke on it, crawler.”
Milar cackled and went back to reading. Tatiana lay back down, deciding she didn’t need to use the bathroom that bad, after all.
Almost an hour of increasing pressure later, her agonized internal debates were interrupted. “I’m not going anywhere,” Milar said. “My brother is out with Jeanne shooting up bad guys and won’t be back for—” he paused to glance at his watch, “—two hours, at least.” His smile was downright malicious. “Think you can hold it?”
Already, she felt like she was going to explode. The thought of two more hours was enough to bring tears to her eyes. “You are so dead,” she said, lunging out of bed.
On the couch, Milar laughed.
Tatiana rushed to the bathroom, red-faced and humiliated. But, upon seeing the window inside, her heart gave a welcoming leap. If she could somehow climb out the sill with her cast—
“Leave the door open,” Milar replied, settling his head against the arm of the couch and turning another page in his book.
Tatiana’s plans came to a screeching halt. Trying to keep the fury from her voice, she said, “What, like I’m going to climb out the window with a cast?”
“I’m sure you’d try.”
Tatiana could have shredded plywood with her stare. Unfortunately, it was wasted on the back of his head. Tatiana stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door shut, then squatted to do her business, barely able to suppress a groan of relief.
On the other side, Milar laughed. She heard him lazily set his book aside and get off his couch. Like a big cat. The bastard.
Tatiana hastily finished up, then, before he could reach the door, grabbed the shelving rack from the wall and tossed it across the entrance, wedging the portal shut against the bathtub and the toilet. When Milar twisted the knob and pushed, he got only a centimeter. Tatiana was already scrambling for the window.
“Coaler!” Milar snapped through the crack in the door. “Don’t even think about it.”
Tatiana reached up and thrust the window open.
Behind her, Milar cursed and left the door. She heard thudding feet departing through the outer room.
Tatiana immediately backed away from the window and lifted the rack off the door—struggling just enough to get under it—then slipped through the crack and let the rack push the door shut again behind her. She hurried through the bedroom—Milar’s bedroom, she thought, disgusted—and into the hallway outside. Hearing panicked voices, she dove into the first closed room she saw and shut the door.
Then she heard motion behind her.
Flinching, Tatiana turned.
Wideman Joe was sitting on a stool in the middle of a pile of vegetable shavings, carving on a carrot. He was grinning at her stupidly, his eyes way too wide as he drooled.
All around him, tables full of dried and moldy vegetables stood in neat little rows and regiments. Some of them were so old they actually looked like shriveled, diseased human fingers.
Tatiana glanced around for a weapon, but other than the little knife Wideman had in his hand—which she was sure he would not give her—she had no defense this time.
Still, the little creep was excellent insurance. She searched the Spartan little room for some other instrument, something to give her an advantage. A curtain cord, maybe? No, not quick enough. They’d be able to stop me before I did any real damage.
Then her eyes fell to the shavings on the floor and immediately her stomach churned. The thought of her bare feet coming into contact with the multicolored clumps left her feeling physically ill. Though she hated to give up such a wonderful opportunity, she knew she was going to have to.
“Think you can keep quiet?” Tatiana asked, ducking into Wideman’s room, careful to avoid the abandoned shavings.
“Two days,” Wideman said.
Tatiana stopped to frown at him. He had said three days yesterday morning. Now it was two. Two days for what?
Then she heard voices in the hall directly outside Wideman’s door and Tatiana hurriedly crossed the room and ducked into a closet. It smelled like creepy old man, and Tatiana had to hold her breath not to gag. All around her, Wideman’s sweaty clothes were hanging in perfect color-coordinated tandem that Wideman had obvious
ly not done himself. Tatiana climbed into the very back of the tiny closet, hiding behind the shoes rack and the broom.
It’s good to be small, she thought. Then, grimacing, Sometimes.
Time passed. Commotions came and went, and it was obvious they were organizing a search. Then, out in the hall, she heard the brothers yelling at each other. Tatiana had to stifle a snicker. Step Six out of the POW Handbook: If escape is impossible, a Coalition POW should attempt to instill angst between his or her captors.
She smiled evilly, listening to them rant at each other. Angst. Check.
Then Wideman’s door was thrown open and heavy boots barreled inside.
“She come in here, Joe?” Milar demanded—at least she thought it was Milar. The only way she had been able to tell thus far was that Milar seemed to be angry all the time. But if Patrick was angry, too, she had no way of telling.
And whoever it was sounded pissed. Tatiana began to re-think the brilliance of hiding in a closet when Wideman’s keepers had made a very valiant attempt to give him big, arching windows and large screen doors—all the better to shrivel his creations with a daily dose of sunshine.
“C’mere, Wideman,” the voice said. “You’re staying with me for a few hours. Until Patrick spots your little coaler squid with our ship and drags her back here by her pretty little antennae, you’re gonna keep ol’ Milar company. Got it?”
Wideman shrieked suddenly and started pounding his feet against the floor.
“Fine,” Milar grumbled, his anger sounding a little deflated, “We’ll stay here.” Tatiana heard the sound of something heavy being pulled across the wooden floor, then the room returned to silence, except for the ragged sound of a knife scraping across a vegetable.
By this time, Tatiana was afraid to breathe, for fear it would give away her position.
He’s not a robot, she thought, frantic. He can’t hear me breathe.
Or could he? Just how many of the normal modifications had the Nephyrs done to him before they took off his skin? Tatiana’s heart began to thud like a busted engine core. He’s human, she kept reminding herself. Human, human…
Then, He said he was going to kill me yesterday, she thought, her terror upping another notch as the minutes dragged into hours with Milar neither moving nor speaking. Now he’s going to murder me.