Page 38 of 80% Beef 20%
A trickle of hope started to thread its way through my despair. If Geo had convinced JayJay and he was willing…what could it hurt?
My life had never been one filled with indecision. Whenever I wanted something, I’d throw every part of me into it until I succeeded. That was how I’d carved out my path to date. If I failed, only one person was to blame, and I did not fail. But this, this fucking sickness… It literally killed my red blood cells, and it showed no sign of stopping. Goddamn it. I drove my fists into my thighs. I couldn’t fix it on my own.
Depending on JayJay went against everything ingrained in me. I’d already relied on him too many times.
“Five minutes, Ginger.” Geo’s authoritative voice rang out over the shower’s blast.
“Goddamn interfering men!” I muttered while turning off the water, even though without him I’d still be stuck wallowing in indecision. After toweling off, I shrugged on my warmest sweater over a plain T-shirt and a pair of boring beige corduroys. Geo had flagged the email, and “Response Required” flashed green on the wristport lying on the beautiful worktable he’d made me. I stared down at the message as if it held the answers to all my hopes and dreams.
I strode into the kitchen, strapping the band around my wrist. “Okay. I’ll do it. Whatever it takes.”
Makir stood there with a smile on his lips. His blue tail bounced up and down. “Geo told me about the competition. I’m so excited for you.” Two giant bags hung from his hands. Dark leafy greens sprouted from the tops of both.
Internally, I gagged at the thought of choking down more chalky green smoothies, but I smiled at his thoughtfulness all the same.
Makir flipped through my sketchbook. “I’m here to run through design ideas with you. You should showcase your linobee creations. It’ll give you that off-planet edge.”
A hundred ideas came to my mind as I moved toward Makir and pointed at a drawing. “What do you think of—”
Geo stood behind me with my winter coat, distracting me and nudging me toward my boots. He plucked my toque from the hook on the wall and stuffed it on my head. “We’ve worked it out with Sisip. JayJay has his own room at the temporary battle station, and you’ll be staying with him while he’s off duty for the next few days.”
That was weird. I wondered why he was off duty. “Shit.” I fumbled with the zipper as a bout of nerves sent my stomach haywire. “You told Sisip!”
“Um…well…” Geo floundered. “There was no getting around it really. But she just knows you have to be near him for health reasons.”
Geo and Makir’s forced smiles put me further on edge while they pulled their boots and coats on.
“So, I’m heading into the middle of a war zone filled with monsters to have forced sex?” I didn’t think I could’ve sounded crazier if I tried.
Geo grabbed my suitcase and opened the front door. “If it’s any consolation, Ginge, the volcano has been totally transformed. It’s a fortress now, and I built the door to JayJay’s room myself. The hellsna can’t get in.”
Makir’s wristport pinged. “Geo, we have to leave now. Sisip says a disturbance has distracted the hellsna, and the entrance is clear.” His blue tail twitched erratically against the floor.
Geo passed me a helmet. “You heard my husband.”
In a flash, my suitcase and their many bags joined a trailer full of hoverbike parts and building materials. Two dog harnesses secured Charz and Pika to the trailer, and we were off.
All too soon, we arrived at the base of the Starry Volcano. I hunched beneath my oversized helmet as fear replaced the threads of hope I’d felt while flying. Enforcers darted back and forth, many sporting bandages. Makir’s trailer was unloaded in minutes, and Sisip put him to work repairing damaged hoverbikes in the temporary bay at the volcano’s base. Even to my untrained eye, the number of dings and dents on the fleet of once-sleek silver machines seemed concerning.
Loaded with groceries, Geo rushed me toward the entrance. A sliver of volcano too narrow for the hellsna to penetratehad been carved away, and a type of elevator shuttled people and supplies up and down, thrusters whirring underneath it. An enforcer with his arm in a sling joined Geo and me in the elevator.
OMG, how has all this happened while I stewed in the guest room for a week, sewing?
The elevator stopped in the cave entry, and my arms trembled under the weight of the grocery bags. Damn, I’m weak. A picture of a future where I needed help to brush my teeth flashed in my mind. Nope. I pushed the thought away. The treatment would work. I’d get to compete with the best designers in the world.
Sisip shouted commands to her team leaders in a lilting Tig accent. She stood over a giant map projected into a natural bowl on the volcano’s floor. Her gaze never wavered from it. Green dots zoomed over the wastelands, blue hovered in the trees, and white darted through the crevices of the rocky outcrop to the east. A three-dimensional landscape jutted up from the bowl, displaying Tern’s valleys and peaks from a bird’s-eye view.
“Ginge?” Geo placed his hand on my elbow to focus my attention. “Efred will take you to JayJay’s room, okay?” He tipped his head toward the young male Drack with his arm in a sling. He’d already scooped one of the grocery bags into the crook of his uninjured arm, highlighting my uselessness. Sensing my nerves, Geo looked me in the eye. “It will be okay. It’s JayJay. You can trust him.”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded, then shook my swollen arm to minimize the pressure in my throbbing fingertips.
The next second, Geo turned all business once more. “Efred will show you where everything is, and I’ll return to check on you tonight.”
Efred’s purple scales shone in the low light as we descended the same tunnel JayJay and I had walked just over a week ago.
“So, you’re staying with Protector JayJay?” He said JayJay’s name with reverence. “Are you his mate?” The squeak in his voice betrayed his youth.
Oh God, how would I explain my presence in JayJay’s room to a teenage boy? “No, I’m not his mate. I’m his…friend?”
