Gin & Cologne in the Wearable Tech Apocalypse by RT Swindoll

Author:RT Swindoll
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RT Swindoll
Published: 2024-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Wandering the maintenance deck where her security clearance left her unharassed, Allison sought a lonely window to stare out while she waited for Genasia’s reply. Her thoughts kept replaying Genasia’s frightful cry. How well she knew that spluttering state of mind, that confidence lockout in the face of a wrathful and unpredictable bully. Genasia had Ronal. Dad had Mom, the quick-witted terror who’d driven Dad to truncate his speech like a damn idiot—which was what Mom had called him most days, especially during the job recession.

The lunatic woman had a gambling problem, too. Impulsive to the end.

Lost in thought, Allison stubbed her foot against a trash bag that someone had left in the footpath, and a spray of the garbage kicked out of the loose plastic liner. She felt like screaming, “What kind of dumbass leaves a trash bag like that?” But she kept it under an airtight lid, the emotional strategy that had long served her professionally. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d let the lid slip and spoke her mind exactly as she felt it. The rush was incredible, but the result?

Collateral damage.

Lidless behavior, she liked to call it. Letting rage fling her down Mom’s neural pathways. When the lid came off, mistakes were inevitable. Her most grievous episode of lidless behavior had been in the Nautilus, drinking with Ronny. Allison released a pitiful groan.

She touched the scar beneath her turtleneck. It always happened so fast. Like when Mom raised that shoe, and Allison jumped for the stairs, tripped, and shattered her collarbone. Collateral trauma. Trauma all the same.

She checked her phone. Genasia had written nothing back.

Allison—

You OK?

Bending down, she gathered up the garbage, tied the trash bag tight, and set it against the bulkhead. Whoever had dumped the bag here had done so recently, even since her earlier visit to the robotics lab. That meant there were people in these offices, working. How the hell could anyone work on a day like this?

She took the arching corridor to a dead end and, to her dismay, found not one single window looking out into space. No wonder the technicians hated their jobs and trashed the place! They were more or less being digested by the spaceliner any time they came down into these intestinal halls.

An apt metaphor—she started to gag. The sulfuric odor that infected the ship seemed to gather here at the terminus of the hall, outside the ship’s oxygen supply generators. She tapped a reminder into her handheld to follow up with a technician about the smell, then went back to watching the chat window for activity.

No ellipsis. No read receipt. So odd for Genasia.

Not odd—sinister.

All was not right in the Cologne suite; she could feel it.

She should have stayed behind on Deck A and mustered the courage to confront Ronal about his behavior; she should have spoken up about the hostage situation with Culebra. There were unsupervised children about! She thought of Levi, tender with those girls. How many other

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