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This is perfect for me. All I need to do is hover around one of the accommodation corridors long enough for someone to leave with the intention of gambling, slip into their room before the door closes, and start putting myself a new outfit together.
This is a ship where Lady Luck rules supreme, and she has been smiling on me today. I hope she continues to favor me for just a little bit longer. All I really need is for this big vessel to depart and I can consider myself entirely escaped. Thorn might have people out looking for me, but it’s pretty clear that the ships departing his planet don’t consider his crisis their problem. Once we hit open skies, we will be entirely out of Thorn’s jurisdiction, and he’ll have no way of reclaiming me.
There’s something surprising about how easy this all is, even while I’m afraid. Or maybe I’m not afraid. Maybe I’ve been focusing on doing what I need to do so much that I haven’t had time to be afraid. There’s still no time for that.
I slip into one cabin after another. Obviously nobody has a suit for pirates with them, but they do have some pants I can wear, and putting pants on makes me feel instantly better. I also find some socks and some pretty sweet boots. The pants are a nice dark black color, and the boots are white and have a thick platform heel. There’s just something about a nice pair of boots that really makes one feel secure and sexy at the same time. There’s power in good footwear.
I find an undershirt which snugs me nice and tight, making me feel very controlled and contained. Then I grab the clothing that looks most generic and will help me blend in with the other passengers. Right now, brightly colored windbreakers with interstellar patterns are very much in, so I put one of them on. The back contains the letters HMS Mandalay in large pink and gold lettering. I also grab a visor with similar branding. Perfect. My face is covered and I look like any one of several hundred people on board.
Maybe I don’t need the chip anymore. Maybe I needed it back when I started, but my criminal self has developed a lot in the last few years, and I’ve learned a lot.
“All guests are to return to their cabins in preparation for departure.”
A thrill runs through me. I’m getting away with this! It’s actually happening! I’ve successfully escaped, and to tell the truth I was barely trying. This is what happens when you take opportunities, when you’re brave, and you don’t second guess yourself, implant or no implant. I have to remember this lesson. I have to remember not to forget myself again.
Then another voice comes through the speakers. It is not the human voice that sounded so relatively comforting and calming a moment ago. This is a rougher, darker, harsher tone, albeit a familiar one.
“Sullivan! I know you are here. Security footage showed you entering the port. Further footage shows you boarding this ship. I can pull footage from each and every one of the cameras on this ship and track you down like the little animal you are. If I do that, you will be punished publicly.”
I’m impressed. Deeply impressed. I had no idea that this was a surveillance state. The speed with which they must have tracked the cab I took, and then followed me through the port and to the Mandalay is impressive. It means I’ll have to up my game next time I make an escape.
I can’t actually take him at his word, though. It might be that they don’t have that level of surveillance at all. It might be that they asked around and tracked me manually and want to lure me out with false information. To really know his capabilities, I have to force him to carry out his threat.
There’s a thrill coursing through me now, another old yet new sensation. It feels like excitement, though I know logically it must be a variant of fear. Who knew it could be so delicious. Who knew that fear itself could actually encourage one to court even more danger. I bask in the sensation as I tuck myself safely away into a cleaning closet. I like places like this. See, cleaners are best kept out of the way of the paying public. That means their closets aren’t just places to keep mops and deliciously foamy cleaning supplies. They’re also backdoors to hidden networks that run between the major gathering places on the ship. Ballrooms. Kitchens. Bathrooms. They’re all networked together with these passages that echo when you walk if you’re not careful, and which do not open to the outside world except for the worker decks and those aforementioned workspaces. The interior of this hall bears the marks of many thousands of buckets of dirty water being accidentally sloshed into the lower walls. The floor beneath my feet has been eroded too, the footsteps of people fated to work this vessel wearing paths into aged linoleum-type material.
He’s not tracking me through here. Not for long.
I hear the door behind me open. The sound of it squeaking sends another bolt of pure excitement through me. Maybe they are on my tail. Maybe they really did see me make my escape. Heavy footsteps indicate that might very well be the case.
Fortunately for me, the passageway splits and splits again before splitting even more. I scoot down passages not quite randomly, choosing left and then middle and then right, mixing it up.
Unfortunately, I hear other doors opening.
It must have occurred to my saurian pursuers that it’s possible to use these tunnels to move about the ship unseen. They are smart. And now I’m kind of fucked. It’s only a matter before I am cornered, and before any chance of mercy disappears entirely.
“Alright,” I say, stepping out onto the main deck. “You got me.”
As luck, or whatever force passes for luck deserts me, I find myself standing just a few feet away from Thorn. He is looking directly at me, indicating that I didn’t have a chance of escaping him. Somehow, he knew exactly where I was the whole time, even when I was running about in those interior passages. I have to assume that he sent his minions in quite deliberately to flush me out here.
Thorn’s gaze is cold and hard. “Too little of a surrender, too late, Sullivan.”
He used my full name. He never uses my full name.
He also looks a lot larger suddenly. Maybe that is because this is the first time I’ve seen him anywhere that human scale is the order of the day. I feel small in his world, in his house, and in buildings made for saurians. But the door I just came through? He’d have a hard time fitting through it. It must have been a very claustrophobic sensation for the others to have to push themselves through those relatively narrow spaces.
“I warned you what would happen if I had to come and find you — and you made me come and find you.”
He reaches for me. I take a step back reflexively, even though I know there’s nowhere to run.
“You can’t blame a prisoner for trying to escape, jackass.”
The chip in my head might be gone, but righteous indignation goes a long way toward keeping fear at bay. As long as I remind myself that I’ve done nothing wrong, then anything he does to me is an injustice I just have to suffer through. It’s something that makes me stronger rather than weaker.
He gives me a look that does not bode well for me.
Thorn
To have seen her yesterday, curled up in absolute terror, practically promising never to do anything bad ever again, one would have thought she was cured of her criminal ways. I had allowed myself to think that the beast had been tamed, at least to the extent that she no longer had the confidence to embark on any great displays of disobedience.
