Both Marlowe and I glance at her in surprise. When I nod, she extends her hands to either side of her body, and a holo of my screen appears between manicured fingers. She drops her hands and shows us a wide selection of shades.
“I think this avatar would look good with auburn hair.” Kit smiles, and then two French braids ripple into life along her scalp, the ends brushing her back.
Marlowe laughs and turns to me. “Did you purposely make your AI hot?”
I blink. “I... modelled her after my sister.”
She claps her hands over her mouth. “Oh, shit. I am so sorry.”
But a snort bursts from behind her fingers, and her shoulders are shaking as she spins away. I can’t help but laugh myself, eyeing Kit, who does indeed look like my younger sister, Kiran. No one has ever accused me of being imaginative, and in the absence of inspiration, I summoned a face I know as well as my own. Better, actually, because I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my reflection, but I spent my whole life protecting Kiran.
“Woah, who is this?”
Beau joins us on the bridge, slipping alongside us on soft feet. As muscled as their countenance, they’re assassin quiet when they move around the ship, as stealthy across metal as over carpet. I watch Beau make eyes at the AI and remind myself that no one can move like that and genuinely be so insipid. It’s an act—I just don’t know enough about them to guess why they bother.
“Hello, Beau.”
Beau gapes at the hologram and then at me. “Kit? Since when has she been able to do this?”
“It’s a not-so-recent upgrade courtesy of Gryphon Tech, although our last captain wasn’t interested in activating it,” Kit answers. “Would you like me to walk you through all the updates?”
“Beau, why don’t you take point on this and show the crew later how it all works?”
They grin, folding their arms and looking Kit up and down.
“You know they’re essentially checking your sister out, right?” Marlowe stage whispers.
“Don’t worry, love. You’ll always have my heart.” Beau winks at her.
I carefully arrange my expression. I didn’t know people winked in real life. I peer at Marlowe to see if I can gauge her reaction, but she simply snickers and pushes at Beau’s arm playfully. It took me five minutes after first meeting Beau to realise they would flirt with algae if it could talk back. They’d even tried it with me until I put them straight. It’s harmless, but I’m not a good flirt, and besides that, I don’t encourage work affairs.
“And if this is what your sister looks like, Cap, I’m going to need introductions. You may have turned me down—crazy decision, by the way—but I’m sure she’ll see the errors of your ways.”
I don’t understand how a moment of wanting to impress Marlowe has turned into this.
“We’re leaving. Please have Kit run you through the calibrations of her new interface and add any essential information to my log.”
Amusement, never far from Beau’s face, brackets their cheeks with laughter lines as they salute. I sigh and gesture for Marlowe to follow me out. It takes work to ignore the looks she keeps darting my way as we head through the ship towards the airlock. It sends little shocks of electricity over my skin; I’m not used to having so much attention paid to me.
Minutes later, Marlowe speaks.
“You’re not very good at flirting, are you?”
I miss a step and just about manage to stop myself from taking a dive. When I meet her eyes, it’s a relief to see that she isn’t laughing at me, as expected. She looks contemplative. I suppress a familiar sensation in my chest and turn my attention back to the ship as we walk the halls.
“No, I’m not.”
If I expected her to leave it there, I was kidding myself. If I’ve learned anything over the past four days, it’s that Marlowe is as inquisitive as her son.
“I’m surprised,” she says.
What am I supposed to say to that? I opt for the safe option and say nothing at all. Marlowe—not one to take silence for an answer—bulldozes on. Kit could teach her something about tact, I think.
“You just don’t strike me as the kind of person who would be... I don’t know, shy?”
I stop walking. Ridiculously, I have the urge to show Marlowe just how incorrect that is. Not for the first time, the memory of pressing her against the bulkhead flashes through my mind. She smelled like tart wine and felt like sin, and I’d never wanted anyone more. She hasn’t mentioned it since, so I haven’t either, for fear that she regrets it. After all, I’m the person delivering Vee to Gryphon and she has every right to distrust me. I was surprised she’d let me that close to her in the first place.
“What gives you the impression I’m shy?”
