Chapter 38

CHAPTER 38

ALINA

A fter Threxin had left, Alina sat slumped at the canteen with her nutrigel packet, which they'd now been switched to due to rationing. She sucked at it absently, trying to ignore the bland taste and somewhat disgusting smooth texture. She was still technically off, but her leg and hand had healed so well that she felt fine enough to get back to work, at least doing Kaia's meal runs. Instead, she found herself taking advantage of her mandated time off.

Any other time Alina would have been raring to go make herself useful for Kaia. But lately she's found herself caring less about her duties to Kaia and more about her role in her people's cohabitation with the uhyre. And about Threxin, if she had to be brutally honest.

Sleeping next to Threxin felt right, even if it did take time to get used to sharing such a small bed with such a huge creature. Alina got uncomfortable sometimes, feeling the need to make space in the middle of the night. But when she'd try, Threxin always grabbed her with a sort of uncaring possessiveness and hugged her into him so tight that she couldn't move an inch. She should feel claustrophobic, but something about his breathing and his heart against her ribs settled her down and lulled her to sleep .

Alina felt for the comms bracelet he'd given her in her jacket pocket and smiled. It made sense, logistically, that he'd open a line of communication between them that involved more than them sneaking to each other's cabins. It was safer that way. But even though she knew perfectly well his decision to give her a comms line came from a place of logic and reason, it still felt like a gift. It felt personal.

"What are you so happy about?"

Alina came out of her daydream to find Julia Robinson pulling out the chair across from her, nutriwrap in hand. They both glanced at the uhyre guard in the doorway, who scanned them but didn't move. The canteen was one of the few places people could still talk, a little, even just for a few minutes.

"Oh, I… Just happy my leg is feeling better," Alina said, shoving the bracelet deeper into her pocket and going back to her wrap.

"Good, then you can get back to work at the dock."

Alina raised an eyebrow. "Umm… I'm not sure I can move quite enough to… They said I still needed to rest for a while…"

Alina may not have felt an urge to be useful to Kaia anymore, but she liked her job de-oiling Ariels at the dock, and she knew they were very short-staffed. Besides… sticking close to the dock might get her more information on what was going on with the communication Isabelle had sent out after the jump.

The thought of Hydra Company descending upon them at any minute quickly killed her good mood.

"I know, but I'm sure we can find some way for you to be useful," Julia said, shoving the rest of her wrap into her mouth. "Come on."

This was objectively out of character for Julia, whom Alina always liked but always knew exclusively in the context of their joint shifts at the dock. She'd never seemed inclined to care about roping Alina into more work. And she had a bit of a weird look in her eye, though she was obviously trying to act casual in front of the uhyre guard.

"All right," Alina said warily, trying to force a not at all suspicious smile on her face. "Let's see what I can do."

Uhyre guards did not stop them as they followed a normal shift change toward the rear dock. Only instead of Alina's familiar path, Julia turned into an even darker side passage that she'd never seen before.

"Julia? What's going on?" Alina whispered as the sounds of the shift change faded behind them. She peered into the darkness of the passage, expecting to see the eerie glow of apertures up ahead at any moment.

"I'm delivering some meds to my nona," she whispered. "And I need another pair of hands."

Alina's heart jumped. "Down in the CRD?" she hissed, to which Julia gave a small nod.

Shit, we could get in so much trouble.

"Julia, I don't know if I can?—"

"I'm bringing meds down and bringing samples back up for some of the elderly there," Julia whispered. "Nobody guards this passage. They think it's a dead end."

If she got caught, Alina would be in so much trouble… But hell, she was probably in the best position to do something like this. If Threxin was going to go easy on anyone, maybe it'd be her… Or maybe she was delusional.

The passage did look like a dead end, and even when they reached the end Alina didn't see that it was anything but until Julia shoved her shoulder into the corner, dislodging a panel just enough to dig in her fingertips.

"Security corridor," she muttered quietly over her shoulder. "Used to be authed. Not anymore."

The corridor was entirely unlit and so narrow that they had to walk in a single-file line, and soon enough the floor descended into a seemingly endless set of stairs. All Alina had to go by was Julia's breathing up ahead, and that had almost been drowned out by her own increasingly ragged panting. The dreadful urge to tell Julia that this was a bad idea, to turn back and not do anything that could ruin her standing with Threxin, grew increasingly acute.

What if they got caught? What if they got killed before Threxin even heard what was going on? What if they kept them alive and brought them to him, and he'd think she betrayed him? But delivering medicine and bringing up samples was not a betrayal—how could it be? It wasn't hurting Threxin or the uhyre, only helping her own people, which had always been the point.

Her ruminations were cut short when a sliver of light appeared in front of her. Julia had shouldered open another maintenance door, her silhouette slinking through to the other side.

The smell made her neck hairs stand on end before she even left the passage. Alina placed a hand to her nose instinctively as if that would help. It did not. It was a sour stench assaulting her nostrils. It was carnal and disgusting, and it made her want to run . Instead, she held her breath and nudged through the small opening and onto the Common Residence Deck.

She stepped out into a small alcove, where Julia was talking in hushed voices with a man. Alina moved to the edge of it, where the expanse of the Common Residence Deck was unveiled.

It was dim like the command deck, but bright enough to see all she needed. Alina hadn't quite been able to picture what an extra three hundred and sixty souls would look like down here before. It looked like flimsy tents pitched up through the floor, some tucked in shadowy corners and others in the middle of the deck. It looked like vandalized cabin doors lining the walls, each of them firmly shut in contrast to how she was used to seeing them. It was a sense of claustrophobic crowding and fear, even though there weren't that many actual people visible out in the open—maybe a few hundred at most. And it was hot—so hot. Most wore almost no clothes at all, their bony limbs on full display. They moved slowly, some limping, some not bothering to cover chesty coughs.

Alina thought they had it tough up on the command deck, living under the constant guard of the uhyre. She realized they'd had it easy in comparison. They weren't all skin and bones, and they didn't smell like they hadn't had a shower in days. How much water were these people getting, anyway?

How could Threxin do something like this?

He thinks we're pests, that's how.

Alina felt sick to her stomach as the extent of the special treatment she'd been getting sank in. This is what people had to live through under Threxin's command while he slept in her bed. He'd shown her what he was many times, and she chose to overlook it all, thinking he was not that cruel, not that indifferent. He hurt people, killed them, and was now tormenting them down here.

If any of this—saving him, getting close to him, all of it—will have been worth it, Alina had to stop wasting time and make him do something about this.

A quiet clatter behind her turned her back to Julia. The man she'd been talking to had placed two metal toolboxes on the floor.

"Get this to her right away, okay?" Julia muttered quietly, shifting her gaze to the CRD. Her hand briefly met the man's, a pillbox handed over quickly. There were no uhyre on this deck that she could see, which led Alina to believe it was other people that she was hiding the meds from. God, they already had one riot the night Threxin was attacked… What would people do for medication if they noticed ?

The man nodded, stashing the box in his pocket with a tattooed hand. He glanced over at her, shadowed eyes scrutinizing.

"She's good," Julia said before he could ask. "We can trust her."

He didn't look so sure, but nodded. "All right. Get these to Manda quick. Some of them need to be chilled."

"Let's go," Julia motioned Alina over. "Grab one of these."

The boxes were maintenance toolboxes, exactly the kind they used at the docks. It made sense—two dockworkers carrying toolboxes wouldn't look strange.

Alina was somewhere else as they took the passage stairs back to the command deck. She kept tripping in the darkness as her leg grew fatigued, and they had to stop several times for her to catch her breath and rub her knee.

"We're almost there," Julia had said, helping Alina rub her knee. "I'm sorry I made you do this. Usually a nurse from the medbay comes with me, but she couldn't today."

Probably Manda. That's who the guy mentioned.

"It's okay," Alina insisted. "I… I needed to see that."

"We're close to the medbay at the exit point, so all we need to do is hand these over," Julia said.

Alina nodded and shoved her bangs out of her face. For what, she didn't know—not like she could see anything. She felt for the toolbox at her side and picked it up, finding the wall with her other hand. "Let's keep moving."

Julia took her to the medbay through quieter passages, and they'd managed to avoid most of the uhyre patrol checkpoints on the way. Alina was pretty sure they were spotted a couple of times, but two dockworkers' presence with some toolboxes didn't seem to raise any particular alarm, especially considering the medbay was on the way to the rear dock .

The handover of the samples went smoothly. They were waved into an exam room, where the nurse Manda quickly transferred the vials and tubes from the boxes to a chillbox.

"You should really take it easy with that leg still, Alina," Manda commented as she led them toward the exit doors of the medbay. "Rest up for the rest of the day."

Her knee was aching by that point, and Alina couldn't wait to get to her cabin and rest it under a warm five-minute shower.

"I'm fine, really," she said. Both Manda and Julia had more important things to worry about. Turns out they'd been putting themselves in danger this whole time while she'd been sleeping with the enemy.

As the words left her mouth, Kaia's voice reached her ears. Alina looked over Manda's shoulder to the end of the long medbay hall and saw Kaia exiting an exam room. She was followed by Orion, who hovered behind her protectively. And Orion was followed by Threxin, who was wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand… which came away black.

Something clenched at her insides. Why was Threxin wiping away exorin?

That's mine.

Alina crammed the intrusive thought deep into the recesses of her stupid brain.

Behind Kaia and Orion, Threxin's eyes fell on her. Was Alina the only one who registered the surprised flash of his apertures? She averted her gaze and fixed her attention on Kaia, who had just spotted her.

"Are you good?" Kaia asked.

"What? Why?" When Kaia's eyes dropped to Alina's leg, she doubled back. "Oh yeah, I'm fine, thanks. I was just?—"

"We were checking her physio progress," Manda said.

It took effort not to glance back to Threxin, who had caught up and was rubbing a massive hand along his jaw.

"Are you okay?" Alina blurted out. Kaia looked like shit. If anything, she was losing weight, which was counterintuitive for a pregnancy. And the blue beneath her eyes somehow seemed even worse with that shaken look she had on her face. What the hell was going on?

"I'm fine." Alina frowned as Kaia kept walking. Orion Halen practically shoved past her, and Alina had to take a quick hop back to get out of his way, grabbing for the wall to balance without her bad knee. She wobbled and sucked in a gasp as Threxin's hand clamped on her upper arm, jerking her upright.

Their eyes met for the split-second it took for him to flinch away, and the bottomless intensity of his icy glare made Alina's heart pound up to her throat. It made her press her back flat against the wall, withering from its burn, and by the time she could breathe again Threxin had already moved on.

Alina got her balance and watched as Orion snaked an arm around Kaia's waist, pulling her against his side. She leaned into him, letting him take her weight.

Pregnancy was always hard, but… it wasn't meant to be like this , was it? Hell, was Kaia even pregnant? What if the problem was some incurable disease, like Orion's mother? There weren't many of those—Mare Halena's late-stage cancer diagnosis was almost unheard of. Alina breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Kaia shift her arms, placing her hands on her belly.

Protecting the baby.

She really had to stop catastrophizing. Alina wouldn't be surprised if carrying a part-uhyre child would make things even harder on the body. Maybe it was normal.

She watched them exit the medbay in silence and had so many questions. Alina got used to seeing Threxin, Kaia, and Orion together in the command center. Orion Halen was the one who promised to get Threxin to this New Earth he knew of, after all, and Threxin had tasked him with overseeing the human operators on shift. But why were they here , now? Did Threxin find out about the baby? Did he… do something? Why was there exorin on his lips when he came out of that room?

And how could he just let all those people on the CRD wither away like that?

He said he'd think about it. His concern, he said, was the possibility that Uploaded humans would find a way to tell the others about Colossal and ruin his mission. He had to sneak through human space unnoticed to get to their new planet. Alina bit her tongue and didn't mention the fact that there was already a possibility others knew about what happened—if Kaia, Isabelle, and Dockmaster Barton's ping reached anyone. That was a far greater risk than discovering that two-way communication between Heaven and the physical world had actually been somehow possible all along. A thing they'd always known was not the case.

Alina finished off her nutrigel and leaned back in her seat. It had been over a week since the jump, and she hadn't heard anything from Kaia, Isabelle, or Barton about the plan or whether they thought their message had reached anyone. The first few days she sat in her cabin and worried that alarms would blare and fighting would break out at any moment, but… nothing happened. And with her being categorically prohibited from picking up shifts while she recovered, Alina felt completely cut off from the rest of the ship. The only constant presence in her life lately was Manda. Well, the only constant human presence.

Alina scoured the ship with an escalating limp, searching for Kaia. She wasn't in her cabins, nor in the command center.

By the time Alina thought to check in the medbay, her recovering knee was hurting like crap from all the walking. This overexertion certainly wouldn't be helping her recovery. Alina remembered how her mother had to constantly be reminded not to try running around doing errands when she was recovering from her… injury. Back then, Alina had had to oversee both her physiotherapy and her compliance with the strict rest requirements. At the time she was so worried that her mom would damage herself more by not following strict orders. At one point Alina wondered if that wasn't what she wanted.

Yet here she was, swinging her way over to the command center with the crutch under her armpit—something she'd had to fall back on because she had expended all her energy without it. Embarrassing.

Of course, the medbay made sense. Maybe Kaia had an appointment to check on the baby.

The baby.

Was that going to turn into another human Alina would have to convince Threxin not to kill?

Alina could explain and reassure him. She would . She had to.

"What's wrong?" Manda scurried up to her as Alina entered the frosted doors of the medbay. "Reinjury?"

Alina shook her head. "Nothing like that. I was just looking for Kaia and thought she might be here for a checkup."

"Why would she need a checkup?" Manda blinked, then looked concerned. "Is she okay?"

Shit.

Alina had to have a little more discretion about Kaia's situation than that.

"Oh yeah, it's nothing." She glanced around under Manda's scrutinizing gaze and decided it best to extract herself from the situation. "Just work stuff. I've gotta go, looks like she's not here."