BooksBarbecue
Back Containment
Chapters (48)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. THIRTEEN
  16. FOURTEEN
  17. FIFTEEN
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. TWENTY-NINE
  32. THIRTY
  33. THIRTY-ONE
  34. THIRTY-TWO
  35. THIRTY-THREE
  36. THIRTY-FOUR
  37. THIRTY-FIVE
  38. THIRTY-SIX
  39. THIRTY-SEVEN
  40. THIRTY-EIGHT
  41. THIRTY-NINE
  42. FORTY
  43. FORTY-ONE
  44. FORTY-TWO
  45. FORTY-THREE
  46. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  47. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  48. Copyright

I examined his eyes, warm and dark and sparkling and yet with a layer over them that kept anyone from seeing his true self, even me. “Don’t you feel it?” I demanded, fighting the nervous tremble in my voice. “You’re always so . . . so calm. Don’t you feel fear? Remorse? Worry? Does any of it touch you?”

For a moment that veil dropped, and turmoil raced behind his eyes. “Kenzie, you have no idea.”

And I didn’t. Because he didn’t tell me. Didn’t trust me. The silence between us grew taut and cold, and at last I forced a smile. “Our course was going to take us near Mars today. I’m going to check in with Rune, make sure we’re outside the range of their sensors. I’ll see you later.”

“Kenzie, wait.”

“What?” I faced him, arching an eyebrow, affecting an annoyed demeanor even as I hoped he would have something to say, some way to make things better. To alleviate the guilt. The fear. The pain.

But he only sighed. “Right. See you later,” he said.

“Yeah.” And with bitterness gnawing at my heart, I stalked across the corridor and out of sight.

TWO

USUALLY ONLY RUNE HUNG OUT in the command center, fiddling with technology, trying to force a bond with the computer, but even she had taken a break from her usual perch. A nest in the corner marked where she slept, a smattering of dirty clothes, electronic parts she’d pilfered from God knew where, and nutrient bars. Just the sight of them made my stomach turn over. We’d survived on nothing else for about three weeks now. The sickly sweet smell permeated the entire ship.

A series of raised symbols filled the fluid comm board, and I ran my fingers over them. I’d grown increasingly familiar with the alien language over the last few weeks, but not familiar enough to sight-read it. Like everyone else, I had my own set of powers, a “gift” from the aliens who’d sought to harvest us as hosts for their own reproduction. Rune bonded with computer systems. Me? I understood languages. I could communicate easily with Rune and her brother Cage in Mandarin, or with our friend Alexei in Russian.

The alien language, though, that was something else, utterly nonverbal and completely intuitive. It took all my focus to make heads or tails of it. I let it wash over me now, struggling to decipher system updates. Otherwise, there simply wasn’t much of interest. The alien system didn’t match anything I’d ever encountered, full of technical specs and coordinates and not much else. I hadn’t found anything approximating a culture, a religion, or even a comic book. And man, did I miss comic books. Without my connection to Earth, I hadn’t even downloaded the latest issue of Robo Mecha Dream Girl 5. And I’d never finished the issue before that.