He put her down on the bed, kissed the top of her head, and then moved back. “Livy, lock down the ship.”
“Lockdown command acknowledged and in progress,” the AI said.
Xaber moved to stand beside Mace, and the two of them looked at her with hard stares that made her want to hide under the pillows like she was seven years old and about to be grounded for a month.
“We need to talk,” Mace stated.
Xaber winced and shot his batch-brother a bemused look. “You really need to drop that phrase from your vocabulary. Though in this situation, it works.”
“What is going on? Are you two alright?” she asked.
Xaber turned his focus back on her. “We’re fine.”
“Totally fine,” Mace rumbled.
“Though it has come to our attention that we’ve never been properly introduced. Hello, Tishna Vay. It’s nice to meet you.”
Well,fraxx. Tish mustered up a smile despite the fact that her heart was slamming itself against her ribcage.
“Hi. I guess this means I don’t need to finish rehearsing the speech where I explain all this. Huh?”
Neither of them cracked a smile. Xaber shook his head, but Mace stayed impossibly still, the way only a cyborg could.
“We know some of what’s happening. The rest, we want to hear from you.”
“And no more lies,” Mace said.
“No more lies,” she agreed. A weight slid off her shoulders as she spoke the words.
It was time for the truth.
She sat on the bed, wrapped in her towel, her hair still dripping wet, and gestured for them to sit with her. She wanted to be able to touch them. To connect while she shared her story. She needed them to hear her and, hopefully, to understand.
Mace moved first. He sat to her left, and Xaber claimed a spot to her right. She wouldn’t be able to see them well, but she could touch them. That was better.
She placed a hand on each of their shoulders and closed her eyes. “What do you want to know first?”
“What happened the day you left your owner?” Xaber asked.
So they were doing the hardest part first. Okay. “His name is Hamish Kerr, and he is an asshole. I didn’t sign a contract with him. He inherited it from his aunt when she died unexpectedly. Until then, my life wasn’t too bad. She treated me like a regular employee for the most part. Hamish didn’t. He saw me as property. All the informal arrangements I’d made with Zendi went out the airlock the day he arrived to take ownership.”
“How long ago did she die?” Mace asked.
“About eight months ago. Hamish didn’t even come to the funeral. He sent instructions for ‘the staff’ to keep the place running until further notice. I don’t think he realized that I was his aunt’s only full-time employee. Amadox Station is not in a high-traffic system, and our shop had competition.”
“Your fathers?” Mace guessed.
“Yup.”
Xaber turned to look at her quizzically. “You sold your services to your family’s competitor? Why?”
“That’s a different story, but I can sum it up quickly. About thirteen years ago, a ship came into our shop for repairs. It turned out it had been somewhere it shouldn’t have been, for reasons that don’t matter to this story.
“Their ship was infested with a metal-eating lifeform they picked up during the trip into a quarantined area. We didn’t know about any of it. While the ship was docked, the infestation moved to the station and caused significant damage. Amadox, the corporation that runs the station, billed my fathers for it. My dads didn’t have the scrip.”
She shrugged. “Zendi did. So I signed a fifteen-year contract with her. She paid the bill, and I went to work for her.”
“Your parents let you do that?” Mace asked.
