HMS Valediction

Chapter 5.2

The new pain of this hits me like a nuke. I'm no one's hero right now.

I can't be around people anymore. Even though there are only a few of them in the sparse market, I'm blindsided by their loathing in waves. It undulates from the one who lumbers past to the one who is arranging her items on a shelf, to the one who is picking up trash from around her booth. They slap me in the face with it one at a time.

Love and Flatts, my two pranksters, are stationed at the Marketplace entrance. They don't grin and prod each other into imbecilic antics now. They're tracking my movements with laser-sharp focus. Love, tall, lanky, Love with his sandy-blond close-cut hair, nods. With his walnut-colored eyes, he asks if I'm okay. Flatts scans the room, her fiery hair returned to its slick bun behind her head.

My VIPERs are here. I don't need to worry. I need to go to bed. As I pass, I clutch Love's shoulder and squeeze for reassurance before bolting. Inside me, there's a burning need to tell them to ignore the hatred, but wouldn't that make me a hypocrite? Flatts blows quiet raspberries the instant I press my hand on her shoulder.

We both catch Love's attempt at stifling his grin at her fake flatulence.

My VIPERs are okay.

I need to be alone. Comfort won't come in the form of arms, legs, lungs, and blood. It won't come from people. Not these people, anyway. I choke on a sob as thoughts of Simon surface from where I toil to keep them buried. The way he offered food to comfort me in my sadness, or his string of terrible jokes to try and pull out a smile. I wish my dad was here.

I close my mind, shut it down. Too much thinking, too much stress whirling around my mind. I fall into a memory while my feet auto-pilot to my cabin in Commander's Country. The memory is one of peace when life was simple. When Dean and I were young and the Human Hope Project was a distant blip in our futures. It was something that didn't concern us. Partners, children, responsibility, contracts, none of that was on our radar. We had pseudo-sugar. We had oranges and long afternoons sitting under the reflection of the Topside sun while waiting for Warren to finish his day's work on the UV mirrors. We'd pull at blades of grass and pile them on each other's lips and try not to blow them away. We had no idea what we were doing then, but I want it back so badly now.

When I look up again, I nearly collide into a wall I've never seen before.

Peering over my shoulder, I recognize the passageway as the one just below my cabin. I need to tread farther down here to reach the hatch ladder to take me up one deck, but no. There's a wall.

I knock on it. Then I feel stupid for knocking on a wall.

To the left, lights along a new passageway flicker on. I must be lost. Which is insane, because I know this ship. But what is this long dark hallway with black-metal flooring and rust-red walls curved in some places, bulbous in others, and angular like triangles in the rest? As well as I can know this ship, I know it. So where the hell am I?

My nerves tingle to life again — the turmoil from dinner forgotten. Treading carefully, my hand hovering over the weapon on my thigh, I explore the passageway. Leery, listening for a single sound from the silence, I wait for some sign to help me locate my position in the ship.

Nothing. The grim hall stretches on and on. Part of me wants to turn around.

The other part grins and tells the first part to pipe the fuck down.

I keep walking, picking up sped. I unholster the weapon, grip it, point it at the floor before my toes, and proceed. Only a few meters down, the lights abruptly stop, and before me lies an expanse of blackened abyss. My gun in one hand, I activate the flashlight in my PAHLM and rest it against my forehead, the light shining at eye-level. Its beam creates tunnel vision — particles floating in the empty dark. Even my boots against the grates are muffled.