Page 7

ALICE

He's such an asshole !

Even for him, this latest stunt was a total dick move. We all knew we had landed on a planet. Why couldn't he just tell us if we had arrived at our destination? Was this Astrionis or not? If it was, I wanted to know. I was more than ready to pick up the pieces of my life and start over. Waiting on this ship was like being stuck in Limbo. I needed to know if I was going to Heaven or Hell. I hated this emotional back and forth, wondering if things would get better or worse. I was getting tired of being stuck on this ship with no idea what kind of life awaited me. And if that wasn't bad enough, he left without a word and locked us in like petulant children.

Clenching my jaw, I stalked toward the hatch. The controls sat there, mocking me, blinking in a dull rhythm that screamed, You are not authorized to leave .

Yeah? We'll see about that .

I crouched beside the panel and studied it. Unlike Earth tech, there were no obvious screws. The entire system was modular, almost organic in the way its components connected. Luckily for me, I’d been quietly collecting parts from the ship’s cleaning and repair drones. Xyrek might be a bastard, but his ship was a goldmine.

I pulled my makeshift tools from my pocket—a thin metallic rod bent into a wedge, a coil of flexible tubing with a sharp edge, and a flat disc that worked as a universal circuit trigger. My best approximation of a screwdriver was a thin, pronged clamp that slotted into the panel’s seams. I wedged the clamp into the edge and wiggled it side to side, trying to pry the cover loose.

"What the hell are you doing?" Tom hovered behind me, arms crossed like a disappointed father figure.

"Getting us out of here," I muttered.

"You think you can open the hatch?" His voice was laced with skepticism and a hint of hope.

"I know I can," I responded confidently.

"That’s a bad idea," Josie snapped, striding over like she had some kind of authority here.

I didn’t look up. "Oh, look, the alien’s biggest fan has entered the chat."

Josie ignored me. "You have no idea what that thing is wired to. You could short out the oxygen supply or depressurize the whole damn ship."

I rolled my eyes. "Wow, big words! Way to go, Josie," I replied sarcastically, but then added under my breath, "If it’s wired that badly, we have bigger problems."

"You’re just mad Xyrek didn’t let you sleep in his room," Ava said, stepping up beside Tom, one hand resting over her pregnant belly.

Josie’s eyes flashed. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me," Ava shot back. "You act like he’s your personal alien boyfriend, and you’re pissed he left without telling you his plans."

"This isn’t about me!" Josie snapped. "I trust Xyrek. Unlike her—" she jabbed a finger at me "—who’s about to fry the whole ship because she thinks she’s some engineering genius."

I clenched my jaw and yanked at the panel harder. "I am an engineering genius, thanks. And if you’re so in love with Captain Asshole, why don’t you call him and ask nicely to be let out?" I pretended to think about that, then snapped a finger, "Oh, right. My bad. You don't have his phone number."

"So mature, Tinker Bell," Josie spat.

"Then maybe don’t worship the guy who locked us in like cargo," I shot back, ignoring her well-placed barb. All my life, I had been compared to that stupid pixie, and I hated it. But with my looks and my fondness of… well… tinkering…

"Maybe he has a good reason!" she countered.

"A good reason to treat us like prisoners?" Tom interjected. His voice was laced with righteous indignation. "We don’t even know where we are!"

"I don't see you saving us!" Josie snapped.

Tom turned red. "Because I don’t have alien hacking skills! But if I did?—"

Ava groaned. "You two are exhausting."

I pried a corner of the panel loose and peeled it back, revealing the inner components—glowing filaments and suspended nodes instead of neatly contained circuits. I grabbed my coil tool and carefully nudged one of the nodes.

"Wait, wait, wait," Josie barked. "You don’t even know what you’re touching!"

"Would you shut up and let me work?" I hissed.

"This is his ship," she sneered. "You think Xyrek won’t notice?"

"Pretty sure he has bigger problems than me right now," I muttered. My mind automatically moved to the stupid tattoos, making me wonder if he was even giving them any thought at all.

"Or maybe he left for a reason," Josie countered. "Maybe he knows something we don’t."

That made me pause. I hated to admit it, but… he wasn’t stupid. If Xyrek locked us in, it wasn’t just because he didn’t feel like babysitting humans. Either he was protecting us… or he was protecting something else from us. The thought sent a chill down my spine. Before I could answer, a small spark jumped from the panel to my hand. I yanked back with a curse.

"Shit," Ava muttered. "That’s not good, right?"

The filaments inside the panel pulsed, and the hatch light flickered once before returning to its usual dull glow.

I gritted my teeth. "No. I think he's returning.”

Josie smirked. "Oh, great. Can’t wait for him to see what you did and throw you in a cage."

"Yeah, well," I muttered, shaking the sting from my fingers, "if he does, at least I’ll know how to break out of that too."

A heavy thunk echoed through the ship as the hatch unlocked, followed by the unmistakable hiss of the ramp lowering. I barely had time to scramble to my feet before the ship shuddered under the weight of multiple people stomping aboard.

Xyrek, in all his silver-skinned, infuriating glory, marched up the gangway with a crowd of refugees in tow, made up of a mix of humans and other aliens I had never seen before. They looked terrible—bedraggled, dirty, beaten, starved. They were in an even more pitiful state than we had been. Still, I tried to count; there were nearly two hundred of them, adding to our nearly three hundred number. The ship, already overcrowded, was about to feel a whole lot smaller.

What the hell had he done?

His uniform was dirty, and he was bleeding from his side. He looked like he had been in a fight. Did he free these people like he had us? For a second—just one stupid, fleeting second—I almost liked him for it. Because despite his asshole tendencies, despite locking us in like children, he hadn’t just abandoned us to whatever fate awaited outside. Instead, he went out to save more people. Thankfully, the feeling didn't last long.

Because right then, I was sidetracked by the erupting pandemonium inside the cargo hold. My fellow passengers had noticed the new arrivals trickling in.

"What the hell is this?" Tom shouted, his arms thrown wide in outrage.

"You’ve got to be kidding me!" Josie screeched, her eyes nearly bugging out of her skull.

Ava looked stunned and placed a protective hand over her belly as if trying to shield her unborn child from the sheer stupidity unfolding around her. My fellow passengers weren't taking the new additions in very well.

"We barely have enough space as it is!"

"Where are these people supposed to sleep?"

"This is complete bullshit!"

The voices blended together into a wave of complaints, all directed at Xyrek, who took a step forward.

"Enough!" He bellowed, and the entire ship fell silent. It wasn’t just the deep rumble of his voice but the energy he carried. That deadly, predatory stillness that warned everyone in the room that he was one bad moment away from snapping.

A ripple of unease moved through the humans. Even Tom, huffing like an angry bull, hesitated to open his mouth. The silence didn't last long, though. "You just shoved more people onto an already packed ship!" He complained.

"Last I checked, this was still my ship to do with as I please," Xyrek responded. A vein ticked by the side of his neck, proof that he wasn't as cool and collected as he appeared to be.

A smart man would have realized it wasn't a good idea to challenge the alien right now. Tom wasn’t a smart man. "We don’t even know where we are! How is this supposed to work?"

Xyrek’s black eyes narrowed. "You don’t need to know where we are. You only need to know that you’re still breathing because I allow it."

Josie sighed dreamily, as if his being a complete tyrant was attractive instead of a major red flag.

Tom, however, was not buying it. "That’s not an answer," he growled.

"No, but it’s the only one you’re getting," Xyrek shot back.

Tom opened his mouth to argue, but Xyrek cut him off with a snarl. "Let's get one thing straight here: you're aboard my ship. You're my guests for as long as I so wish. You have no rights , no say, and you shouldn't harbor any illusions that you do."

He moved a step closer to Tom, " You don't like it? Feel free to step outside. See how long you last out there."

Tom visibly shrank into himself.

Xyrek added a curt, "Deal with it."

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. Until Josie huffed dramatically, flipping her hair over one shoulder. "Fine, whatever. Just make sure these new people understand the pecking order around here."

Her eyes flicked to me, and I had the strongest urge to punch her. Before I had a chance to act on that brilliant impulse, Xyrek turned his attention to me. "Alice."

My name, spoken in that deep, commanding tone, sent an unwanted shiver down my spine. I folded my arms and glared up at him. "What?"

"We need to talk."

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

He jerked his chin toward the hallway. "Come with me."

Oh, hell no . "I’m kind of busy," I said, gesturing vaguely at the hatch panel. "Maybe later."

Xyrek tilted his head as if amused by the idea that I thought I had a choice.

"Now," he ordered.

Before I could tell him to go fuck himself, Josie’s high-pitched screech cut through the moment like nails on a chalkboard.

"You’ve got to be kidding me!" she shrieked, stepping between us like some kind of alien guard dog. Xyrek barely glanced at her, which she didn't take well. "You ignore me for days, but the moment she—" Josie spat the word like venom "—messes with your ship, she gets a private meeting?"

"It’s none of your concern," Xyrek retorted flatly.

"None of my concern?" Josie gasped. "I trusted you! I defended you!" She turned to the rest of the group, gesturing wildly. "You all saw it! She’s been messing with things she doesn’t understand, and now he’s rewarding her for it!"

Nobody looked at her. Even Tom turned his head as if this had nothing to do with him. But Xyrek finally noticed that I had been working on the panel. Before he could comment on it, I vented my exasperation at her. "Josie, I swear to whatever alien gods are listening?—"

"This is bullshit," she cut me off. "You don’t even like him!"

I snapped my fingers. "Exactly! I don’t like him! Finally, something we agree on!"

Xyrek let out a low growl as if deeply offended by that statement and turned his attention to the exposed panel beside the hatch. His already foul mood curdled into something darker. A slow, dangerous silence stretched between us.

Then, in an eerily calm voice, he asked, "What. The. Frygg. Is. This?"

Oh, shit.

I resisted the urge to take a step back. "Uh?—"

His jaw clenched, his hands balling into fists at his sides. "You tampered with my ship?"

"Tampered is a strong word," I hedged.

His head snapped toward me, and his black eyes blazed like actual flames. "And yet, the panel is open, the casing is missing, and I see tools that look suspiciously human-made wedged into my controls."

He bent slightly; his large frame towered over me as he plucked one of my makeshift tools from the wiring with two fingers. He examined it, then flicked his eyes back to me. "Explain. Now."

The entire room held its breath. This was the perfect time for them to find out how Xyrek would punish disobedience. Not one part of me rejoiced at the prospect of being the guinea pig.

Josie crossed her arms, fully pleased with herself. "See? I told you she was messing with things she doesn’t understand."

Xyrek’s broad shoulders rose and fell with a slow, measured breath, his posture radiating barely contained fury.

I held up my hands. "Okay, first of all, I completely know what I was doing. Second, you locked us in. What did you expect me to do? Sit around and wait for you to come back with zero information?"

His upper lip curled. "Yes. That's exactly what I expected. Because this is my ship—not some human scrap heap you can tinker with like a junker."

That pissed me off. I pressed my fists into my hips and matched his glare. "Well, maybe if you actually told us what the hell was going on, I wouldn’t have needed to do some problem-solving of my own."

His nostrils flared. "Problem-solving?" He turned the tool over in his fingers, then, with a sharp snap of his wrist, crushed it like it was nothing but cheap plastic. I was proud that I managed to hold back a flinch.

"That’s not how things work here," he said, his voice deadly quiet. "Let me make this clear, human. You do not touch my ship. Ever."

The way he said human like it was an insult made my fingers curl into fists. But self-preservation made me bite out, "Noted."

For a long moment, we just stared at each other. I would not be the first to look away, no matter how intimidating he was.

Finally, he exhaled sharply, tossing the crushed remains of my tool to the floor. "We’re done here."

Then, without another word, he turned and marched toward the hallway. Right before stepping out, he jerked his head toward me. "Let's go."

"You're not actually going with him, are you?" Ava whispered in concern.

"I don't think I have a choice," I whispered back, passing Josie on the way.

"I hope he locks you away and throws away the key," She snarled. She looked jealous, as if I’d been chosen for some sacred alien ritual instead of being dragged into another round of Xyrek being an ass.

Xyrek let out an exasperated sigh. "Are you done?"

I threw my hands up. "Not my circus, not my monkeys. Let’s get this over with."

I followed him out, ignoring Josie’s seething glare boring into the back of my head. Xyrek walked ahead, his posture stiff, his entire presence radiating barely contained irritation. I probably should have worked harder to control myself, but I couldn’t stop. "So," I muttered, "is this the part where you murder me?"

Xyrek didn’t stop walking or acknowledge my words at all, but I swore I saw the corner of his mouth twitch.