Spaced Out

You Will Never Find A More Wretched Hive Of Scum & Villany

The retracting cell door roused Lily. Eyelids fluttered open. The entrance framed Key Woman.

"Up and at 'em starshine," the Verakian said.

"Wuh, what?" Blinking, Lily pushed herself sitting. Vertigo twirled her cell. She put a hand to a lolling, leaden head. She smacked her lips. A dry tongue clicked in her parched mouth. Nausea sloshed her stomach like she'd been trashed not long ago.

Events preceding Lily's blackout came to her in a fast-forwarded flash back. The Utori. Vlex. He toad-licked her and knocked her into a drugged-up coma. She glanced into his cell where he'd retreated to the shadowed corner. If she asked what he did to her she'd end up in doctor Puu's recility ward again, so she zipped her lip and wobbled to her feet.

"I can leave?" Lily asked.

"Captain wants you reclamated and fully treated then he wants you in the navigation chamber for questioning."

Before Lily acclimated to her Vlex hangover, the Verakian woman entered the cell, gripped her arm and toted her into the access hall. The woman's long stride covered a wide swath of ground. Lily huffed and puffed and fought to keep pace. When she closed some of their distance, tools dangling from the Verakian woman's utility belt banged her hip. She backed off, rubbing her side.

"So," Lily gasped out between breaths, "captain Vortrand is your brother?"

The Verakian woman said nothing. Lily thought she might be under a gag order until a terse answer proved her wrong.

"We are siblings."

"What's your name?"

Another, shorter pause.

"Reesa. Lieutenant-technician Reesa Vortrand."

"I didn't kill him, you know. Goshan, I mean," Lily said in a tiny voice.

In front of the flight of spiral stairs on the fourth tier, Reesa halted them. Dark eyes met Lily's. On the fledgling, Goshan's eyes, Verakian eyes, appeared black and pupil-less. Up close, in decent light, Lily saw different. Reesa's eyes were deep crimson like the skin of a black cherry. The shadow of a pupil ghosted the center of her irises.

"I don't think you did. But you're here and he's not and that's inconvenient."

Finality resonated in LT Reesa's statement, so Lily shushed.

The duo ascended to the second tier. Domed windows, smaller than the one in the archive room, studded the left wall. A rust red nebula misted the vast gloom beyond the manta's boil-like membranes. Sealed doors stamped with red HOptic locks lined the right wall. Reesa led her into one of these rooms, its entrance marked by a placard she couldn't read. They entered a small, sparsely furnished space.

Strange cubicles molded from organic walls. Besides the door at their back and the tile underfoot, this chamber resembled the inside of the fledgling. Gnarled, fleshy material surrounded them. Lily held herself. At least it was dry in here.