Neodymium Sacrifice: the Neodymium Chronicles, #3 by Jen Finelli MD

Author:Jen Finelli, MD
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Cinta

Someone screamed in the closet.

Cinta’s ears perked, and he lowered his fruit-paste to look around at the others in the room with him. No one else seemed to hear anything. Jei and Lark and the Ebon Shadow all sat eating and discussing leads in various stages of lounging and sitting, half-dress and overdress. Cinta understood why the humans wore clothing, with all their sensitive dangly bits ever kissed by air, but the Bont woman seemed unnecessarily covered given her tough scales and the manner in which reptiles distributed heat for homeostasis. Clothing seemed like it would harm a reptile. It wasn’t that cool in here, either: Jei had his black jumpsuit top off down to his undershirt for good reason.

Clothes and missions and oddities aside, Cinta’s ears swiveled like satellite dishes as he looked from face to face to see if perhaps he had picked up on one of their inner sufferings. No—he could see the movement of their mouths. These words did not belong to them.

Oh, Jaika.

Without a word, Cinta crawled from his bench-seat beside Jei down to the floor. His clawless paws made not a scratch or a tinkle on the flawless black floor as he walked through the polymerwall into the hallway, careful not to turn to an unauthorized right or left and trigger the wrath of the ship. He found his way down to the hold, where the enemy bounty hunter lay suspended in chemical sleep, floating in a forcefield inside an iron cage reinforced with electrocuting polymerwall. Cinta paused for a moment, facing away from the captive with an ear toward him, just to confirm whether or not he could hear the man’s dreams …

He could not. Jaika would remain disappointed in him.

Cinta prowled over to the supply closet in the corner of the large storage room, and rested on his haunches outside it, waiting, and listening, in case he should not interrupt. Perhaps she spoke right now to Njandejara, pouring out her soul, and did not need his intervention.

“You’re doomed. You’re doomed, you’re doomed.” The dark childish sing-song tingled across Cinta’s spine like the claws of a hundred arachnids. “You’re doomed, you’re doomed, you’re doomed. Heehee!”

Oh no, very much not Njandejara. And his sister was screaming back: “Shut up!”

No one could hear this, really?

“Jaika?” Cinta hit the closet’s doorframe with his forepaw.

Neither voice answered him. The sing-song continued, and Cinta’s throat began to dry.

“You’re doomed, you’re doomed, you’re doomed, haha!”

“Shut up! Don’t you have anything better to do? Shut up!”

He did not want to embarrass her, but oh goodness it just scratched the inside of his ears like a parasite devouring his eardrums and he feared it would eat his brain. He must make it stop—

“I see you, too, you know,” it said to him.

Eeep! With a terrified snarl Cinta dove through the polymerwall into the dark closet. He tumbled atop the human curled inside; the motion sensor turned on the light, but move, move, move—Cinta did not want to stay in here with that thing! He gripped Jaika’s wrist between his teeth with a sharp tug.

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