"What did you do?" I demand she answers, slamming my fist against the table and startling her into attention. I get real close. "What the fuck did you do?"
Cassie's fearful eyes flick from my seething face, my teeth bared, my breath puffing out in sharp gasps to Umpire's expressionless mask. She doesn't speak.
"I swear to the Lady and her whole fucking Heap, Winters. If I find out it was you who did it, you're going to be throat-deep in a tsunami of shit. Do you understand me?"
Her eyes widen. "What happened?"
"Like you don't know." I spit back.
"I was strapped in, I swear. I didn't do anything."
I turn to Flatts who brought her in. She nods, her flyaway red curls springing up around her forehead
Pulling the stool out from under the table, I plop down hard, the full force of the situation burning my insides.
"Commander Lorn? What happened?" Cassie's timid voice probes. "Is Martin okay?"
"That's classified information." No, it's not. I just don't know what else to say.
"Commander Lorn? Where's my brother?"
She needs to know. It won't be long before the whole ship burns with the heat of the news. I can imagine the wide-sweeping panic, the whispers, the scowls aimed right at my face. A tsunami of shit is spot-on.
As much as I would rather lock this up, lock her up, swallow the key and burn the passcodes to forget everything that happened here today — the sight of Martin as the Xani's disfigured puppet show with a live boy strung from its claws, the sight of Martin's black eyes dimming as life spilled out of his open chest cavity along with his stomach and lungs — I can't. I close my eyes to banish the image. I can't keep this locked away forever. They'll find out eventually. They always do.
Slowly, I type out a message. In silence, we wait for the response.
A short, resonant noise indicates I have my answer. I lift my PAHLM to show her.
"You can visit him tomorrow in the morgue."
**A/N**
Hey fam ❤️
As you can see here, I've posted both parts of chapter 4. I think from now until the end of PitchWars, I'll be doing 1 update a week on Mondays. That means one full chapter until the whole book is done.
Okay, maybe not one FULL chapter. Down the road, I have some fat ones coming in at 8K words. I'll probably break those up more.
Hope you enjoyed this sharp turn. Let me know your thoughts and don't forget to send me a star so I can see you come shining through. I love seeing all the familiar faces.
❤️L
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HMS Valediction
Science Fiction[Book 2 of the ARC10 Trilogy] Rampant addictions, psychotic breakdowns, and threats of mutiny keep Commander Janika Lorn up all night. Transporting two-thousand souls safely from a destroyed Earth to a new habitat aboard the refugee ship ARC10 has b...
