So, she was probably on a ship. And, in theory, other people would be on the ship, too.

  Preferably ones not locked in metal containers, who could then be convinced to open said containers.

  Granted, there was one person she didn’t want to open the crate.

  Okay, maybe two. Even Shirano’s smilingly rapist face didn’t compare to how much she really did not want to see her father open that door.

  No. No, no, no, no, she told herself as the fear threatened. I actually do want them to open the door. Because if they open the door, I can royally fuck up their faces with my fists.

  Of course, that wouldn’t work out so well for her since neither man was stupid enough to open the door without a blaster pointed at her, and she’d likely be stunned by the difference in light and punching blind, but the flare of anger helped push the fear away.

  For a little while, anyway. She could still feel it trembling inside her bones. Fragile, but insistent.

  And growing.

  Historically, being locked in crates was not great for her mental health. And she was running out of tricks to keep her PTSD at bay.

  She swallowed hard.

  I have to get out of here.

  She rocked back on her heels, crossed her arms over her chest, and took stock of her situation.

  True to Shirano’s word, the nanos had both healed and detoxed her while she’d been knocked out—which meant she not only had a clear head, but every trace of the previous night’s activities was gone from her muscles. The only stiffness lingered in her arm, but she suspected that came from sleeping in the gentle arms of a hard metal crate more than anything else.

  The lack of soreness felt wonderful. It wouldn’t constantly be reminding her of the stunning life choices she’d exhibited last night.

  Not that she regretted them. She couldn’t. However her methods, she’d gotten the job done—the spiders were right in the heart of Shirano’s private ship, and he’d been good and distracted for at least six hours, plus the time it had taken to see her packaged off and onto this ship.

  Granted, some of that time had probably been spent raiding Huli Jing, but hopefully, the guest room’s anti-scan shielding had held and her crew were smart enough to figure something out.

  Would it have been better if she hadn’t slept with him?

  Who knew. In hindsight, he’d been pretty keen on her from the start. She’d thought that was just because she was hot and throwing out very clear ‘come get me’ signals, but perhaps there’d been more behind his attention.

  Maybe she hadn’t been the only one setting a Honey Trap.

  Well, both traps had worked. Each of them had achieved their goals: he’d abducted her, and she’d planted the spiders—and had kept him distracted.

  She sighed.

  I just want to punch him.

  Punching him would definitely make her feel better. Especially since she’d have to be out of this crate in order to do so.

  Obliterating his dick with a sledgehammer would make her feel even better.

  Suns, she was a violent person. Just a little licking and groping and she was going straight for dick destruction.

  No wonder she and Nomiki got along so well.

  But this wasn’t just about her. What he’d threatened—that was just a taste of what he was capable of. That he’d let her go without a prolonged assault just proved that he did have someone else to take out his kinks on, and she had a feeling that person wasn’t his wife.

  No, Shirano clearly had a special interest in procuring human victims. And both the resources and access to feed his particular brand of sadism.

  He needs to go down.

  She aimed a soft kick at the door of the container with her bare heel—Shirano hadn’t seen fit to return either her pants or her boots—then continued pacing the small space, counting the thump of her footsteps to avoid hitting the walls.

  One, two, three, four, turn.

  One, two, three, four, turn.

  One, two, three, four, find the crumpled blanket he’d left her for a bed, kick it, turn.

  Beyond being in a crate on a ship, she had no idea where she was. The engines sounded small, but that didn’t tell her anything. And she had no idea how much time had passed. Nanos could knock a person out for anywhere from two to sixteen hours, depending on damage and dosage. That she hadn’t been rescued yet meant it was either early into this abduction and none of her team had noticed her absence—she had sent that ‘I’m okay’ message to Zan just before the shit had gone down—or something had delayed them.

  Fuck. Maybe Shirano had gotten them.

  That would really suck.

  She grunted, kicked the wall again, then settled down to slump her back against it.

  Unless someone was stupid enough to open the door, there was nothing she could do to get out of this crate. All she could do was wait.

  Suns. Waiting sucked.

  At least I got to see a freakin’ colony ship. Wonder what he’s going to do with Galacia.

  Sell it, probably. The system was not short on people who would buy illegal shit. And Galacia was a highly valuable piece.

  A clank sounded from outside. She flinched as her father’s voice snapped into her ear, her PTSD making his breath a physical sensation on her shoulder.

  Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope.

  She got up and started pacing again, using the motion to shove her brain onto a different track.

  Dig into reality. Figure out the situation. Occupy her mind with real-world speculation and problem-solving. It had helped her before, and it’d help her now.

  Just what kind of ship was this? Smaller, definitely, by the sound of the engines. Older, too. A slight blip in the artificial grav cycle reminded her of a few ships she’d been on—Riku Oh’s old Cutter had a similar pattern, and they ran on a refurbed Ali-280. At system standard acceleration limitations, she could be anywhere from eight hundred thousand clicks out to halfway to the next planet, depending on time elapsed.

  ’Course, if they’d painted the ship dark, slapped a radar disruptor on it, and blacked out the engine burn, they didn’t need to obey system standard speeds or routes.

  And Huli Jing wouldn’t have noticed it leave.

  They would have noticed the change in her tracking location, though. And there was a chance the microphone in the barrette had transmitted the encounter.

  She lifted her hand to her head to check on it, but her fingers only found loose hair.

  Shit. It was gone.

  Had Shirano taken it? Had he noticed what it was?

  Sol. Good thing she’d gotten those spiders out of her pocket before he’d knocked her out.

  She made a frustrated sound in her throat, squinting blindly up at the metal walls she couldn’t see.

  Hells, it was dark. And—was there really nothing she could do? Except yell at the darkness and hope?

  Well, I haven’t invoked any gods yet. Swearing aside.

  She chuckled. She had a complicated relationship with religion—being raised in a brainwashing cult would do that to a person, then there’d been all that Eurynome Project shit she’d seen in the Shadow War⁠—

  Long story short, she actively avoided organized religion, but she had a soft spot in her heart for some deities. Like Guanyin, the folk-Buddhist goddess of mercy who had, in some interpretations, grown a thousand hands and arms so that she could help everyone. Songbird Sanctuary, who had taken her in after she’d escaped her family, used Guanyin as their patron deity.

  It was there, with that version of Guanyin, that she’d first learned how tocked her family cult really was—and how it spun and twisted the doctrines of actual pre-existing religions to fit their narrative.

  They had their own version of Guanyin—Gwaneum in Korean—but she had…differed somewhat from the historically accepted canon. Mostly in the way that the goddess served an actual alien overlord, but in other subtle, insidious ways, as well.

  Nowadays, Soo-jin rarely referred to the goddess by her Korean name. Similar could be said for her decision to name her ship Huli Jing instead of Gumiho. Chinese, not Korean.

  But the nine-tailed fox tattoo on her bicep was definitely a gumiho, not a huli jing. It felt more personal, somehow. As though the gumiho represented herself, but the Huli Jing of the ship represented more of a cousin-in-arms.

  It was…complicated. Her family’s beliefs had messed up many things.

  And now, if something didn’t change, she was heading right back into their tender, loving arms.

  Fuck.

  She started pacing again.

  Nope. She really didn’t want to go back. Time to exhaust all of her options. Deities included.

  “Guanyin, if you’re listening, I’d really appreciate a hand here. Just one, no biggie. A teeny tiny door you could open. I can handle the rest. And I’m sorry about my very violent thoughts earlier⁠—”

  Shit, no, she wasn’t. She wasn’t sorry at all. And if she had the chance, she would take a sledgehammer to Shirano’s dick right here.

  She sighed.

  Maybe she should find another god to appeal to. One who was less…peaceful.

  Not that it would work. Those doors just weren’t going to open.

  She was stuck here.

  This time, she smacked the side of the crate with her hand. “Clio!”

  The wall reverberated with the hit. She stared dully into the pressing darkness, suddenly wishing she’d exchanged an arm for cyborg tech.

  Her strength augments were substantial, but they weren’t ‘tear through bare metal’ substantial.

  Sol.

  She sighed again and turned, rubbing the dull ache in her hand.

  Nothing was going to change. She was stuck here. In the dark. Alone and gods-knew how far from the rest of her team. She⁠—

  A draft stirred against her neck, touching the skin.

  She halted. Frowned.

  Normally, space-faring crates were airtight.

  Maybe this one wasn’t. She did need to breathe, after all. Maybe Shirano had some holes poked into it, same as you did for transporting spiders. Or snakes.

  Gods. What if the ship outside suddenly depressurized? And all her air got sucked out?

  She’d be screwed.

  Granted, if the ship outside depressurized, she’d probably have bigger things to worry about. Not many bigger things—air was kind of important—but still.

  Although, Shirano’s crates clearly had a sealing mechanism. Those dead people in the pictures hadn’t died of asphyxiation.

  No, they’d starved.

  Suns.

  The draft came again, stronger this time. Something shifted, like a clunk under the floor.

  Then, every atom of air around her went dead still.

  She froze, eyes wide.

  What the f⁠—

  Tingling sensations burst all over her body, so sudden that she jumped. The darkness erupted around her, shifting, pulsing, moving⁠—

  She leapt forward with a yelp, smacked into the wall, and fell to the floor. “Gods fuck it, what the living hells—Bob?”

  Sure enough, the Shadow that had just manifested on top of her—inside her—was Bob.

  “Hello, Captain.”

  She gaped up at him. Somehow, despite the pitch blackness of the crate, the Shadow was still easily visible—and darker than his surroundings.

  “Bob, I could kiss you. But I won’t. Instead, I’ll buy you every piece of chocolate you could ever want. Do you know where I am?”

  The Shadow paused.

  “You are one point seven million kilometers away from Huli Jing.”

  Her jaw went slack.

  Okay. She’d missed an order of magnitude in her estimations.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here. I—hey, how come you didn’t show up earlier? Is there a level of despair that has to meet your quota? How did you even get here, anyway?”

  He tilted his head. “You did not call me.”

  She frowned. “What?”

  “You did not call me. Remember what I said? Attach my name to a sentence and I should come? You did not do that. I simply grew tired of waiting.”

  She stared.

  Shit. He had said that. She remembered that now.

  “So I’ve been pacing and rambling and uselessly kicking walls due to sheer stupidity on my part? Great. In my defense, I should be hungover right now.” She shook her head. “How did you get here, anyway? If we’re so balls-defyingly far away?”

  “I followed you.”

  Right. Of course he had.

  She stared at him. “And how are you somehow darker than the rest of the pitch blackness? That shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Am I?” He gave the impression of glancing down. “I suppose that has to do with your human perception of me. You realize that what you see me as isn’t actually how I look, don’t you?”

  “Right. Well.” She cleared her throat. Now was not the time to be getting into weird, sideways esoteric discussions of metaphysical representation with a transdimensional being. “Now that we’re here and together and talking—what say you transport me over to the Shadow version of this place, open the door, and we fuck up their shit?”

  “I’ve already opened that door.”

  Of course he had. He’d had to get in here on the other side, after all.

  But she didn’t say anything. He was reaching for her, his hand and arm a river of void in the darkness. Adrenaline sparked through her at the sight, but she didn’t have time to do more than suck in a breath.

  The second he touched her, tingling erupted throughout her body, and the world twisted into a rush of light and dark and shifting gravity.

  SIXTEEN

  The Shadow World was a near mirror of her usual reality, but way creepier.

  Mostly, she thought, the creep factor was due to the lack of people. Everything felt like she’d stumbled into an area around three a.m.—that liminal feeling, same as she’d gotten the other night when she’d woken from her nightmare and wandered into Huli Jing’s Mess. The quietness inlaid into the familiar subsonic hum of the engines and life support cycles.

  It also had this weird desaturated effect that caught at the brain, as if half the color in the world had drained out. And it all had just a weird vibe, as if something about the place was just slightly off, but in a way you just couldn’t put your finger on.

  It had really freaked her out the first time she’d come here.

  Then again, that had probably been the first time anyone had come here, and Shadows had still been the enemy at that point.

  Nowadays, she raided through the Shadow World like it was a video game level and she wanted every last item.

  “A blaster! Fucking sweet! Come to mama, you little bitch.” She extracted the weapon from a crew locker with a grunt and a grin, put it on the table behind her, and took another bite of the protein bar she’d found. “You know, Bob, we could make a killing on smuggling if you were into that.”

  “You aren’t wearing pants,” the Shadow observed from the doorway.

  No, she wasn’t. And she hadn’t found any in her searches—well, except for an oversized pair that suggested this ship had a sumo wrestler on board.

  “Thought I’d show off my tatts. Maybe even out my tan,” she said.

  “You can’t get sufficient UV damage from this lighting.”

  “Well, yes, but a girl can dream.”

  Bob didn’t say anything for a moment, but she felt his void eyes giving her bare legs a confused stare.

  “Where are your pants?” he asked, his tone incredulous.

  “Probably still in Reuben Shirano’s bed, unless he’s put them somewhere.” She grimaced. He definitely seemed the type to keep them as souvenirs. Fucking psychopath. She wondered if the same fate had befallen her barrette. “I plan to get them back. Unless he’s done something creepy and weird with them.”

  Bob didn’t speak for a long minute.

  Then, “In his bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you nail him?”

  She paused.

  Why yes. She had.

  “Yes. Now I want to nail him the other way.”

  Bob was quiet again. Then, “Where else could you⁠—”

  “The criminal way,” she clarified. “Sol’s burned child, Bob. How do you even—” She cut herself off. “You know what? Nevermind. Bob, you are a perv, but it’s hardly like you’re alone in that on this fucking floatboat when I’m around.” She lifted the blaster and stalked to the door. “Now, where the fuck is Engineering?”

  She’d been correct earlier. The ship was small, and running an Ali-130, a slightly older, less pretty cousin to Riku’s 280, though the latter was only because Riku’s had stuck dinosaur-themed neon stickers all over its hood and bumpers.

  In the Shadow World, the 130 churned with a sound almost like it had in the main reality, but the underlying silence of the ship presented every subtle moan and rattle with a clarity that proved alarming.

  After a quick browse, she stepped around the 130 and headed for the collision drive.

  “Okay,” she said, stepping on the ladder framework. “On three, transfer me over. And get ready to transfer back real quick if someone decides to shoot my ass.”

  Bob drifted close to the base of the ladder. Her ankle tingled as he reached out and grabbed it. “There is one person in here on the other side.”

  She grinned. “You are an incredibly useful entity to have around. Can you tell where?”

  “I can only tell the number of people, not identity or location. Not usually.”

  No, only if it were her or Baik or Zan or someone else he knew well, she supposed.

  Still, though. That ability to sense…it certainly highlighted the Shadows’ connection to humanity. The way they could detect people—like a predator attuned to sensing prey.

  She shoved that last thought down very thoroughly.

  Definitely not the time to be thinking of that.

  She swung her blaster up and aimed at the terminal. “Okay—one, two, three!”

  Bob pulled down, his hand sinking into her bones. Tingling erupted through her nerves, like a full body electric shock without the pain. The world churned around her, light and dark clashing together. Briefly, she lost hold of the ladder. Gravity flipped. She began to fall⁠—

 

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