Coming Undone

Chapter 30

She'd thought the docks would be calmer.

She was wrong.

Quixxa tried to measure her breath as Runt helped her along behind Jonah and his team. Their human mercenaries were in a spearpoint formation, weapons drawn and shouldered, screaming down the mob that was protesting the presence of Obsidian on New Medina. The smell of sweat and body odor filled her nose and made her even more nauseous as their jeers and promises of unspeakable deaths chipped away at her sanity.

Quix grit her teeth and tried to ignore the flecks of spit spattering her cheeks as they made their way to the sealed blast doors.

Runt leaned over to her, and nudged her shoulder.

"Good thing you've got some mercenary friends. This mob would kill us if we were alone."

Runt's computer-filtered voice betrayed none of the concern and anxiety she knew he had. And it didn't' even begin to cover the stress she was under, knowing just who'd she'd angered.

And even more so, who she would now have to please. The MLA was easy to please. Just obey.

Pathmos, though? They wanted free, thoughtful, respectable citizens. And she wasn't sure she had it in her to learn a whole new set of tricks.

Jonah and the team turned inside out as they reached the blast door, moving from a spearhead to a protective line between Runt and her and the mob.

Runt, meanwhile, was contacting the people inside over the communications in his suit.

But Quix...

Quix was worrying.

Being tied to Runt was one thing. Counting on him to protect her future was one thing. Being thrown into a lion's den was another. Behind those doors, she wasn't in her element anymore. An Obsidian headquarters wasn't the street, a break room wasn't a back alley, and an office wasn't a warehouse. The shadowed safety she'd clung to in obscurity and deception disappeared in the lights of an office.

Because she wasn't a normal citizen. Someone was bound to ask what she did, where she was from, or how she knew Runt. The only answers she could give were lies. Any truth would brand her with the well-deserved label of a criminal, an extremist, someone that deserved to stay on this side of the blast door, not the other.

She was headed into a place where no one was her friend. New Medina had been neutral, for the most part. New Medina only cared for itself.

But this bunker... it was a tiny slice of Pathmos, her new home. The first place where she had to try and step past her old self, and into the new. She had to leave her crime, her anger, her lies, and her ties behind on this side of the door.

It was her first step, and she was certain to stumble.

Quixxa swallowed, her chest tight and her guts sore. She stared straight ahead numbly, her fingers tingling as she made fists out of instinct. Even her tail was curling around her discreetly, betraying the fear that made her skin crawl.

The sudden blare of a klaxon and the flash of safety strobes snapped Quix out of her headspace, making her heart jump. Her chest ached, giving her an instant headache and forcing her breath to shorten. Another shot of fear slipped into her bloodstream as the realization struck her that she was taking her first step, yes, but she was taking it as vulnerably as she could have been, before the eyes of those she had to please.

The blast doors slipped open by about three feet and halted, leaving a gap for them to slip through.

The crowd immediately started to push against the no-man's land created by the mercenaries' weapons. The shouting only intensified as Runt slipped through first, bringing Quixxa with him.