Page 215 of Red Scale Daddy
He looks up, offended. “I am fueled by terror and spite. I can make anything.”
Roma’s mouth twitches.
It is tiny. Barely there.
But it’s something.
Then the lights go out.
Total black swallows us so completely my body forgets where the walls are. The sound changes immediately. Without sight, everything grows teeth—the hiss of leaking steam, the distant groan of the ship, Pally’s harsh breathing, Roma’s inhale somewhere to my left.
My hand finds her arm before thought catches up.
She doesn’t pull away.
“Emergency strips should reboot,” she says, voice controlled but closer than I expect. “Three seconds.”
They don’t.
Five seconds.
Still black.
Pally whispers, “Anybody else not enjoying this?”
A sound answers him from the corridor behind us.
Wet metal. Dragging weight. A click-click-click like knives tapping bone.
Roma’s fingers close around my wrist.
Not for comfort. Not exactly.
But she holds on.
“Dux,” she breathes.
“I know.”
“Thermal?”
“On it.”
I blink my implant overlay awake, fighting the static crawling across my vision. The display stutters, then resolves into a grainy heat map. Pally glows ahead of me in anxious orange. Roma beside me, bright at the core, edges flickering with interference.
Behind us, three shapes move low along the corridor walls.
Fast.
“Three,” I say. “Coming in ugly.”
Pally makes a strangled noise. “Define ugly.”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered.”
Roma releases my wrist and lifts her weapon. “Pally, move forward ten paces and get low.”
“Why?”
