Onyx presses a bag of frozen peas to my head. “He’s a beast. I can’t wait until somebody hangs his ass from those hideous tusks.” She flutters around my bed, fussing with my covers. She wears a tight-fitting mini dress. Well-toned arms poke through the spaghetti straps. Her shoulders are wider than her hips, but her upper lip seems to show less of her usual five o’clock shadow. Her morphing efforts seem to be paying off. Nothing but mosquito bites in the boob department, though. She’s worse than me.
My head pounds with every one of her flustered words.
Lyra glares at me from her bed. “A little extreme, no? Taking a beating to get out of work.”
I would say something, but since it’d be a waste of time and it’d make my head pound harder, I keep my mouth shut.
“If it’s work she needs, why send her with Rooter?” Onyx asks. “She could help me in the kitchen with something.”
Rooter? I guess that’s Tusks’s name.
“Rooter root Rooter. Rooting for truffles. Oink, oink,” I say, even as my head pounds like a giant’s heart.
Onyx laughs and even Lyra can’t hide the crooked smile that comes to her lips.
“You have a death wish, Azrael. Do not think I’ll forget.” Lyra points at one of her eyes, then at me. When I give her a blank face, she stands and leaves the barracks, looking disgusted.
“What is her problem?” Onyx asks, without really expecting an answer. “Are you comfortable?” She accommodates my pillow for the third time.
“Yes, thank you.” It feels strange to be grateful to this Eklyptor, but I am. She must be an aberration. Maybe that’s how it works with them. They’re naturally evil, and when “something goes wrong” they turn decent.
She sits by the side of the bed with a sigh. “I don’t understand why everyone has to act like a savage. At the least, they should reserve the violence for the humans.”
My hand turns into a fist under the covers. There goes whatever gratefulness I was feeling toward her.
“I’m glad Elliot isn’t like that,” she adds, pulling an emery board from her back pocket and getting to work on her fingernails.
“What is he like? I mean, I’ve only seen him a few times.” I try to sound like it’s all the same to me if she tells me or not, but I’m very curious.
“Oh, he’s an English gentleman. I wish I’d gotten a host like that—a woman, mind you. A Hollywood star or a princess would have been wonderful. Think of that. Anyway, Elliot Whitehouse was a young aristocrat. His parents were extremely rich. He was attending Eton when he was infected. Talk about a powerful Eklyptor from the beginning. He kept the name. He was already somebody, so why mess with success.”
She holds her hand against the overhead light, checks her progress, then attacks her thumbnail with the file. “He went on to Cambridge from there, recruited a select few and started making friends in very high circles.”
Making friends? Nice euphemism for injecting parasites up people’s spines.
“He knew what he wanted from the beginning and accomplished it in a very classy way, don’t you think?” Onyx turns away from her nails and looks at me.
I feel like puking all over the sheets but, instead, I say, “Classy? Pfft. I’m all for handing my enemies their ass.”
She scoffs and stands. “Of course. That’s why you’re in bed with a bag of peas on your head. Well, gotta go. I’ll bring you something to eat later, just take it easy.” She smiles, winks, and then leaves. I wish I could lie here to nurse my pounding head, but there’s no time for that. Not with Lyra breathing down my neck. Not when getting even is all that matters.
I hobble to my small desk, angle the computer monitor toward the wall and get to work. I pick up where I left off, poking and prodding around that too-secure file server. Whoever set up the stupid thing knew a thing or two. They have actually configured security, for one—it’s ludicrous how many servers out there use stupid passwords like “password123” for their admin accounts—and the firewall is tight, rejecting everything I’ve thrown at it so far. My fingers itch as one attempt after another fails to crack the damn thing open.
Something desperate builds inside of me and I feel like a water balloon, filling and filling and filling until my outer walls are thin and ready to tear open. I have to find something. I have to make a difference and prove to IgNiTe that I’m still Marci. Because if I don’t … if I don’t …
I shudder just to think of the possibilities, of dying in this place—or worse, of living in it surrounded by monsters, questioning my own humanity day in and day out until it doesn’t seem worth it anymore and I decide that holding on is just denial, like a frog stuck in a snake’s throat, still dreaming of hopping out.
My hands move from the keyboard to my forehead, trying to squeeze out my headache. As another idea occurs to me, I type a few commands to try yet another technique. I bite my knuckles as my options run out. What if I can’t break in? What if I fail and lose what little is left?
I wait.
After several long minutes, my program comes back.
No luck.
My eyes sting. Failing hurts. I fight the urge to fling the monitor across the room, to trash the entire place.
Something flashes on my screen. I look up and my heart skips a beat.
Something warm spreads slowly from the center of my chest to the rest of my body, a feeling of familiarity, of home. I smile, even if this longing feels like a knife to my throat.
I choose banter over the need to ask for help, for acceptance.
I’m smiling, a wide grin that I wouldn’t have thought possible anymore. It’s weird how many things it used to take to make me feel content and how, now, all it takes is a little attention from someone who understands exactly what I’m going through.
He doesn’t ask me what I’ve tried, showing professional respect for the first time since we met. No taunts. No insults to my intelligence. I feel grateful for this implicit trust, especially since it has arrived when I need it most.
Throwing glances over my shoulder, I tap the edge of my keyboard and wait. I take a deep breath and wince as my ribs smart. I run my finger over a tender spot on my side, willing it to heal even faster than normal.
After a moment, Aydan begins to type again.
You stupid Marci. How did you forget about the schematics?
I thought that finding the physical location of the server would be a waste of time in such a large building, but with access to the damn schematics it’s a different story.
Shit! Not Elliot’s office.