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She found her tools and got to work. Years of being in the profession were the only thing that allowed her limbs and fingers to function. Her brain was fully out of commission.
* * *
The task at hand was stressful without lighting. She attached a little spotlight to her head and thought of cave explorers or people navigating robots into the depths of the murky ocean. Her vision was narrow. Every suspect shadow made her jump. And Caligher had full run of the ship.
She tested for breakages for the sake of having a purpose.
He steadily broke down every barrier she’d erected. Before long it would be a clear line from him to her. The psychological game kept her on fucking edge.
It took her a ludicrously long time to discover where he’d planted his trap—the one place she wanted nothing to do with.
That was in the airlock.
For a long time, she stared blankly at the door to the offending room with a mind that was unwilling to grasp that he’d done this.
She could let him find her in the hallway. The game would have the same conclusion, regardless. Short of telling him to stop, he would catch up with her.
Her mind twisted, unable to reason.
The door opened at the touch of her palm on the button. Something strange and wicked hummed in her blood as she floated into the next room. Trepidation, and the brink of something big. Like climbing into Death’s maw.
The only other times she’d felt so alive were when those strangers tried to throw her into space, and when Caligher did violent things to the ones responsible before claiming her on the floor like a prize…
This airlock was a portal to that fiery existence. It was almost too much—she was too mortal for this place—but she felt elemental. She felt at the crux of transcendence into a world she’d coveted for longer than she could explain.
She found the break in the system and got started. Her hands remained surprisingly steady. She was so close that she could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
A self-satisfied grin formed on her lips. It slipped off the instant she heard that inner door flying open.
Phantasmal starlight washed over her and she knew there was no getting out. Storing her tools away calmly, she turned to find him there, consuming the entirety of the open door. He watched her with blazing, victorious eyes.
He had her trapped.
She saw what so many others saw right before the end—and it fucked with her. One wrong move and she could die.
Have to get out.
Lucca inched tentatively to the right, eyeballing that slim space around him. Without so much as breathing, she could sense his presence expanding to fill that gap.
She checked the left side. The foreboding intensity of his stare sealed it up, brick by invisible brick. He intimidated her into total stillness.
She sucked in an unsteady breath, calculating her odds—zero—and shot for escape.
It was over in a blink—his fist flew for her hair, sending pinpricks of lightning across her scalp. He directed her toward the outer door—that door.
“No!” she screamed.
She fought but he was as solid as a wall, crushing her against it. He pressed her overheated face to the icy window. Biting back a whimper, her eyes clenched shut. A completely rational, visceral fear squeezed her limbs.
And then his body lined up against her back, forcing her to feel how solid he was—how warm and hard and male he was.
“Open your eyes.”
Nuances had been lost through the translator. Without it, his demand was a thousand times more frightening.
With a silent, beleaguered breath, she obeyed and stared outside.
Her heart skipped, like the sensation of the floor falling for a blip of a second. A smear of twinkling light and color arced across the dark expanse—and somewhere in the distance, too far away, was the pale Ternetzi star.
