Page 17 of Seven Oars (Rix Universe #3)

It was Gro who found Rosamma in the Engine Room. Gro, who pulled her out and practically carried her back to the Cargo Hold.

“When did it become my job to search and rescue people?”

she grumbled, and her voice was thin, tight with worry.

“First Daphne, now you. What happened to you?”

All Rosamma could do was put one foot in front of the other, propped up by Gro.

“I had a slight energy mishap in the Engine Room,”

she whispered bleakly.

It had happened. She’d given it all to him. There was no undoing it.

She’d answered his questions, endured his nearness, not an easy feat. It took an effort on her part. Just being near him.

There had been a subtle connection. Just him and her…

But he was the wrong man. So wrong. Why couldn’t it have been Phex?

Her thoughts tangled.

The Striker made her senses curdle and her emotions churn. She hated this helpless unease, her fear of him, and that new, inexplicable pull to be near.

He’s always been near, her mind whispered. Since the capture.

“What were you even doing in the Engine Room?”

Gro asked.

“Hacking the thermo system together, trying to bang it into shape like that dopehead mechanic, what’s-his-face?”

Rosamma had a baffling urge to laugh.

“In a way, Gro, yes. Can you feel it? It’s not as hot anymore.”

Gro only shook her head as she pulled Rosamma across the threshold to the Cargo Hold.

She barely made it to her mat before crashing down. Her eyelids felt heavy, as if hyper-gravity still clung to them. Her arms, when she tried to lift them, felt even heavier.

The end was near, she could feel it.

Fawn and Eze hovered close, but Rosamma was already slipping under, the world fading before she could say a word to them…

At some point, she woke up, surprised at herself for doing so.

The usual hum of the oar and the irritating flickering of the dim light greeted her. Grimy, padded walls and food containers on the rickety shelf. The Cargo Hold, home sweet home.

“Gro?”

she called.

“Here.”

Gro lowered to her knees next to Rosamma’s pad. Tattooed arms, sleeves rolled up, stretched out as she brought a water pouch to Rosamma’s lips.

Rosamma turned her head away, the blanket crinkling.

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Drink anyway.”

She didn’t want to drink. Nor eat. A pleasant numbness had claimed her body. There was no pain. There was no fear. No worries.

Nothing.

“Rosamma.”

Gro’s voice broke.

“Please. Take a sip.”

Rosamma frowned. She didn’t mean to make Gro cry.

When the pouch touched her lips again, she obediently sucked in a little water.

She felt lethargic. But she wanted to stay awake and talk to Gro. She didn’t have much time left.

“You’re such a good person, Gro.”

Gro sniffed.

“You know me. An old jailbird.”

“You’ve been a dear friend to me. The dearest.”

Gro shook her head.

“Stop. Don’t talk. Eat, drink, cry, but don’t talk. Not like this.”

“Okay, I’ll stop.”

Rosamma noticed movement, and then Eze came into view. “Eze!”

“You need to get up already, moonlight girl. Enough of that lazy body lying around stuff.”

The gruff teasing brought joy to Rosamma’s heart. She was surrounded by friends. In this hellhole, she wasn’t alone.

“I’m so tired, Eze. Silly me.”

“What happened to you?”

Eze’s sharp eyes assessed Rosamma’s face, looking for damage.

“Was it Phex? Did you give him your energy?”

It wasn’t Phex.

It was for a good reason—she’d like to think that. For self-preservation. Without Fincros, their lawless world would descend into complete chaos. He held this place together, and so he would live on.

Even when she wouldn’t.

“I’ve always known how it would end,”

Rosamma said to Eze.

Tears glistened in Gro’s eyes, but Rosamma remained calm. She wasn’t ready, but neither was she frightened.

What would happen to Ren after she was gone? And what was happening to him now? Those nagging thoughts wouldn’t leave her alone.

Her eyelids fluttered.

Someone loomed over her, his frame large, rigid, and imposing—and familiar.

“Phex,”

she whispered.

“They let you go!”

“I let myself go free,”

he said stiffly. His face was rough with bruises.

A small smile tugged at her lips. He was still the First One.

“Then I found Thilza and showed him what he could do with his chains,”

he continued.

“He’s going to need a new pipe now.”

“Oh no.”

She tried to sit up, but he gently pushed her back down on her thin mattress.

His brows lowered into a hard line.

“It’s only fair. I’m done being their whipping boy.”

“You never were.”

It seemed wrong. Starting a fight was something Nud would’ve done, or Xorris. Phex shouldn’t waste his energy on getting back at a pirate. His focus should be on making escape plans.

But she was so fuzzy in the head. It was hard to think about what he should do and why.

“I told you not to go to the Service Block,”

he chided her.

“Now look at you.”

“It’s just… time,”

she whispered.

“I’ve never had a lot of it.”

She sensed his doubts.

“Is there anything we can do?”

With a burst of self-pity, Rosamma noticed how he said “we,” not “I.”

She’d never become his responsibility any more than the other women. He’d never made her his problem, and he didn’t intend to fuss over her now. He never really saw her, after all.

“I’m not sure anything can be done,”

Rosamma admitted, her gaze dropping from his alien, beautiful face.

In the background, Gro started crying, the sound constricting Rosamma’s fluttering heart with aching sadness.

Tutti’s intrusive whirring broke the moment. The blinking belly light seemed duller than usual. Everything was dim.

“This thing now follows me around,”

Phex said in a low voice, and then louder to Tutti, “Get gone.”

Tutti, of course, didn’t go. It rolled around in a small circle, rotating her uneven eyes and scanning the room. It hummed and beeped in the most obnoxious way.

“I want to trash this thing so badly,”

Phex muttered.

“One day, you will,”

Rosamma said softly.

Her hands moved restlessly, making her bracelets chime.

Phex lingered by Rosamma’s side, but Tutti’s hovering presence ruined the moment.

“I’ll ditch it and come back,”

Phex promised and stood up.

Without a backward glance, he left, and Tutti followed him with her rotating light and swaying, uneven robo-breasts.

Rosamma knew she’d never see him again. She was just glad he’d come now.

She allowed her body to relax on the mattress. Her skin was burning hot, but on the inside, she was cold as ice. Pangs of pain as if from hunger wrecked her core. Her head hurt.

She lay, listening to the grinding of the oar and the sounds of revelry interspersed with the screeching “music”

from the Habitat. Fawn laughed in the distance, a fixture there now, and Tutti spoke in its computer-modulated voice. It smelled of the burned-rubber weed.

Someone else came.

She stirred.

“Phex, you’re back?”

But it wasn’t Phex.

He didn’t speak as he reached for her. The fabric of the protective defender shirt—Phex’s—was scratchy against her skin.

Something cold touched Rosamma’s neck, encircling it. She felt for the object with her fingers. It was metal, about an inch wide, and fit snugly against her skin, clicking as Fincros closed it.

Her eyes latched onto his face.

“Is this… a collar?”

“Yes.”

Her heart twisted. “Why?”

Without replying, he scooped her up along with her blanket.

She was in his arms. Those powerful, unyielding arms that could crush bones and fix space stations. Her body nestled against his wide chest. Her aching head rested on his hard shoulder.

He carried her out of the Cargo Hold.

She caught sight of Eze and Gro, faces pinched in fear, following them with their eyes. Neither made a sound.

As she traversed the space station in his arms, Rosamma kept touching the metal band around her neck. Its sinister presence caused her anxiety to mount.

“Where are you taking me?”

She would have struggled had she had an ounce more energy. A drop more.

“Not far.”

His evasiveness ramped up the fear already twisting her insides.

“The trash chute? I’m not dead yet.”

“Not the chute.”

He opened the airtight door, and a blast of cold air greeted them—the Meat Locker. The door sealed shut after them. The lights came on, insufficiently bright.

Less was more in this case. Rosamma didn’t want to see the contents of this place. But the subdued lighting did not make the Meat Locker any less dreadful a place.

“I don’t want to be here.”

Her fingers flew again to her throat, encircled by the metal collar.

“Why are we here?”

Again, he didn’t respond.

He took several steps inside the cramped interior and dumped her, blanket and all, in front of Father Zha-Ikkel’s carcass.

Galvanized by a potent rush of adrenaline, Rosamma scuttled away like a crab, coming to a stop when her spine hit the metal leg of the rusted sink.

Fincros moved around. A length of shiny metal cable materialized in his hand. He took a small, non-threatening step toward Rosamma, holding the cable, and her heart went wild.

“No,”

she uttered hoarsely and put up her narrow, bony hand, fingers splayed. Without knowing what he intended, she began to suffocate from dread.

“Please, no.”

He took another step forward.

She had nowhere to go.

And then he was on her, hooking the cable to the collar and dragging her closer to the Tana-Tana's corpse suspended from a rusty hook. Icy crystals covered the meat that had been frozen too long and too deeply.

Losing all reason, Rosamma fought him.

“Sadistic, evil alien! You’re sick! I hate you!”

She pushed at the unyielding body of the Rix manhandling her. She slapped his arms and shoulders and scratched his neck. Her legs kicked out, and she twisted and contorted her body, writhing and trying to slither away, because a mere thought of being shackled to a skinless, headless corpse filled her with fear so sour she could drink it like liquid.

“Kill me. Kill me now!”

She tried to crawl away.

“Take me to the chute. Anything but this, please, I beg you!”

She was choking on her sobs and weakening fast. Her body couldn't maintain the levels of adrenaline adequate to keep up the fight.

Fincros subdued her easily.

He affixed the other end of the cable to Father Zha-Ikkel by winding it around the middle and pushing the end into the abdomen that still retained a layer of yellow fat. Then he took out a small device and zapped it. The corpse.

The frozen muscles gave a slow, weak response, contracting.

Rosamma lurched backwards, dragging the cable taut.

The corpse swayed toward her.

A deep, keening wail tore from deep within her soul.

Fincros dropped to his knees and gathered her close, holding her loosely.

She lifted her eyes to look at his impassive face, all blurry from the tears that kept welling. She was shaking, and her nose was running, and her hands were cold and sweaty, and she felt like she was already dead inside from terror and anguish.

She slapped him across his scarred side, hoping he’d kill her on the spot.

He brushed a strand of her limp hair to the side.

She cried like a child while giving him feeble kicks within his lax hold, and he tolerated it.

But when she attempted to turn her head to fearfully check on that hair-raising carcass to which she was now tethered, Fincros wrapped his hand around the back of her head, fingers spanning it from ear to ear, and held firm.

His scarred face with his alien eyes filled her vision.

“I hate you,”

she whispered between sobs.

He leaned down and pressed his mouth to her forehead, trailing his lips down her eyebrows, her eyelids, her cheeks, all of it wet and sticky.

Tremors rocked Rosamma’s body. Her restless hands stopped hitting and were now moving over him. She felt the strong beating of his hearts. His body was big and solid and secure.

If only it were not an illusion.

“Finn.”

It was a plea to release her.

“Have no fear. Everything ends. This will end, too, and you’ll be free,”

he said against her temple, implacable.

“Make me free now.”

She could think of nothing else.

“Soon.”

She tasted him, her captor and torturer. She wasn’t sure why, how. She liked it, or she didn’t—nothing was certain. Nothing was real.

He was so alien.

But he didn’t feel alien at all.

Her consciousness flickered like a candle in the wind, and she passed out.