Assassin by Jane Killick

Author:Jane Killick [Killick, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908340306
Publisher: Elly Books

Chapter Eighteen

The man woke up when we carried him into the crew lounge and began ranting incoherently about someone being dead. He seemed confused to the point of madness. He begged us to kill him and then pleaded with us to spare him, all within the space of one breath. He struggled to get free at first, then all of a sudden burst into tears and was inconsolable.

We laid him down on one of the couches and he slipped off it and sat on the floor with his back leaning against it and his head buried in his knees. He seemed to prefer it like that so we left him.

I made an attempt to communicate with the shuttle, but there was too much interference and I sent Stephen off to fetch Keya and Terri while I watched the old man from a distance. When they arrived back, it was all I could do to stop Terri rushing up to him.

“Hey hey, not so fast,” I said as I stepped in her way. “He’s really scared of people. He might have been living here alone for a long time. You need to be gentle.”

While I was dealing with Terri, Keya walked straight past us. I was about to call her back when I saw the man lift his head at the sound of her approaching footsteps. Out of all of us, she was the one who appeared the least threatening in her smart clothes, neat make-up and her relatively petite stature. She was sympathetic at heart and it made sense for her to be the one to try to talk to him.

The man covered his chest with his arms and, for the first time, seemed shy of his semi-nakedness. He was also shivering. The environment we had brought him from was intensely hot, whereas the crew lounge was ambient temperature for humans.

“Cassy,” she whispered just loud enough for me to hear. “Can you find a blanket or something?”

I went back to the woman’s room that I had encountered on our initial exploration of the ship and pulled one of the covers off the bed. When I returned, Keya was sitting next to the man on the floor and talking to him in subdued tones. She took the cover and wrapped it around his shoulders. He grasped hold of either end and pulled the cover tightly around his body.

“Thank you,” he said. It was the first coherent thing I had heard him say.

I withdrew to the other end of the lounge where Stephen had persuaded Terri to sit down at one of the tables.

It was another half an hour before Keya finished talking to the man and joined us.

“You were right, Cassy,” she said. “He’s been living on this ship on his own for up to twenty years. He’s finding communication with people difficult after all this time.”

“Who is he?” Terri butted in. “What happened to everyone else?”

“His name is Malcon and he’s a descendant from the original crew as you thought,” said Keya.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.