Crystal Mentality (Crystal Trilogy Book 2) by Max Harms

Author:Max Harms [Harms, Max]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2017-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Arya Drake

“Weren’t you one of the first people to really come out as in favor of Crystal’s personhood? Seem to remember us having a long conversation over one of my last cups of coffee.”

“You have coffee?” asked Michel, looking over to Alexandra with an exaggerated eagerness.

Alex took on an exasperated tone, but her smile said that she did not begrudge the question. “What did I just say? One of the last cups. Have to import it from Earth, so it’s, like, more precious than gold here. Like, literally: we have more gold ore than coffee.”

“Ah, the wondrous Martian utopia where: everyone is part of a big family, nobody goes hungry, and there’s nothing to drink but water,” complained Michel. “Know what I miss most about Earth? Alcohol. Like, I was never that big into drinking, but sometimes it—”

“Can we not get distracted?” snapped Arya.

Alex rolled her eyes. “Get distracted from the conspiracy theory?”

It was like a slap in the face. Arya bit back her instinctive reply and tried not to let her irritation show on her face. “Not a conspiracy if it’s just one person.” The rebuttal was lame, but she didn’t know how to respond. Arya’s eyes landed on where Michel’s hand clutched Alexandra’s on the tabletop.

Arya wouldn’t be caught dead dating Michel, but it still somehow annoyed her that he’d hooked up with Alex. One more shipment of dudes from Earth and it’d just be her, Nora, and Cayden in the spinster’s club.

“You know what I think?” asked Alex, rhetorically. “I think you just like taking the contrarian position. First, everyone was against Crystal, so you wanted to stick up for her and be a rebel, but now that she’s one of us you suddenly think she’s up to something.”

Arya was about to explain that the position of Crystal being a person was not in conflict with being skeptical about her good intentions. If anything, the former was implied by the latter; subversion and covert operation needed agency. But then Enlai swooped out of nowhere to sit next to her on the bench, his tray was freshly loaded with steamed corn, a tube of protein paste, and a few precious cherry tomatoes.

“What are you talk about?” he asked with butchered English and characteristic obliviousness.

“Nothin’ important,” said Arya, reflexively.

Enlai was two years younger than her, ugly, barely able to communicate in the common tongue, and mind-numbingly stupid to boot. He was a Péng, which meant he had money, but that didn’t earn him any points in Arya’s book, especially since they both lived in Road. Worst of all, he seemed to have a crush on her, and still wasn’t leaving her alone, even after she had told him off twice before. The second time she’d been explicit in telling him not to come near her again. He was one of the reasons she’d started carrying a knife.

“Arya was telling us that she’s worried ‘bout Crystal,” said Michel.

Arya wanted to kick him. The last thing she wanted was Enlai involved.

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.