Where Nothing Ill Can Dwell

Chapter 22 - Ferdinand

When I awoke, I was still worried about Miranda. She was risking everything—her freedom, her life, her relationship with her mother—to help me. I knew how lucky we were we hadn't been caught last night. But I saw the data on the control panel of her mother's ship, and I just had to find out if Miranda's claim about the crystals was true.

It was. Those little pink crystals packed a wallop. And if they could power an entire ship, they were probably capable of powering those cannons, too, which made me wonder how much damage they could really produce. Could they get past a deflector shield?

And more importantly, what was a marooned scientist planning to do with cannons?

I tried to recall anything I could about the former head of MILAN. The details were vague. Antonio had been in charge as far back as I could remember. I thought he was a slimy jerk, but my father tolerated him since MILAN was the source of the most elite computer and weapons systems in the Bard Nebula. To piss Antonio off would mean losing out on the equipment NAPLES needed to maintain our dominance.

But after witnessing what Miranda's mother was capable of creating—from the collar around my neck to her AI servant to the state-of-the-art ship in the hangar—I wondered if there was some truth to the rumblings I'd heard about the past.

As much as I wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery, though, it was more important that I find my father. If he was alive, we could use the ship to go home. If he was dead, then I needed to find a way back to NAPLES. My Uncle Sebastian was an idiot and a coward. Not the kind of man needed to command a spacestation.

I rubbed my chest where Miranda had punched me. It still hurt, but not so much from the trauma. I'd hurt her. I'd taken advantage of her generosity and done something that could've gotten us both killed. Her mother aside, what if I'd set off the cannons instead of the engine? What if the engine wasn't ready for testing and caused an explosion or a radiation leak or something else that could've harmed her? It was one thing for me to be reckless with my own life. But when it involved her...

I closed my eyes and wondered when I'd fallen head over heels for Miranda. This was beyond infatuation. This was so real it scared the shit out of me. I was almost tempted to use the word love, which frightened me even more. I was only eighteen. I shouldn't even be thinking about settling down with one person for the rest of my life. But I couldn't ignore the feelings I had for her, how she'd carved out a place in my heart so easily, it made me wonder about all those stupid romantic notions about love at first sight.

I'd called her angel when I first saw her. I never realized how true it was until now.

I needed to apologize.

But how?

I crawled out of my makeshift bed and thought about what I'd do back in NAPLES. Flowers. Sweets. Text messages. None of those things were readily available, but I remembered seeing some flowers in the woods. I just hoped they wouldn't cause me to hallucinate if I picked them.

I glared at the buckets and the small garden I'd been foolishly tending for the last few days. Thanks to Miranda, I didn't need to bother with that. But to keep up appearances, I grabbed one of the buckets and ventured out of the gate that led to the spring. It would give me an opportunity to venture beyond the walls and scout out the area, too, without raising her mother's suspicions.

The sun was high in the sky by the time I realized I had no idea where I was going. The trails in the dense forest wound in spirals and disappeared completely behind mounds of ferns or walls of tangled vines. How Miranda navigated the area without a GPS was beyond my comprehension. It was sheer luck that I stumbled upon the spring and found my way back to the compound, stopping along the way to fill the bucket with flowers.