It was enough to drive even the most placid soul to murder.
5
“So…,” Wren said, rubbing her palms together. “Anyone up for a game of charades?”
There were a few communities of Earthans scattered throughout Condor, but I’d never met any of them, so I had no clue if they were all this annoying, but somehow I didn’t think so. It was day two in the cell, and it was also the twentieth time I’d ignored Wren’s attempt at conversation. I’d spent the prior night shivering in a ball, listening to Elio’s fans whir and Anders shift around in his darkened corner. He still hadn’t spoken, but that didn’t mean I could let my guard down and sleep. Some primal part of me was convinced that if I closed my eyes, I’d find his fingers clenched around my throat.
“Charades?” Wren asked again, eyes bright. “Come on, it’s so boring in here! We have to keep ourselves entertained somehow. Okay, look. Guess who I am.” She slouched against the wall, baring her teeth and growling.
“A bear!” Elio shouted. “Wait, do they still have bears on Earth?”
Wren shook her head. “They’re extinct. Try again.” She scrunched her face up and growled louder. “I’ll give you a hint. I’m super mean and I hate everyone’s guts.”
“Are you my subconscious?” I muttered.
“No, but thank you for participating, Cora. No, guys, look! I’m obviously Anders!”
Across the cell, the real Anders leaned out of the shadows just enough for me to see his scaly face. And he looked like he wanted nothing more than to eat us all.
I hastily looked away from him, pulling my knees up to my chest. “This is absurd,” I said to Elio, slipping into lilting Condish. I didn’t know how many languages Wren and Anders knew, but I hoped they didn’t know mine. I needed some tiny shred of privacy in this place.
“It could be worse,” Elio replied.
“Oh, really? How?”
“Well, I mean, we could be dead.”
Okay, fair point. But dead or alive, I had a feeling my family wouldn’t care that we were gone. On second thought, they probably hadn’t even realized we were gone. And even if they had, they’d probably only feel relief.
I hung my head. We needed to get out of here.
Reluctantly, I switched back to common Isolat. “This is absurd,” I said again.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Wren. She pulled a long piece of metal out from under her blanket and measured it against the side of her forearm. “I have a feeling we’re all exactly where we’re meant to be.”
I bristled. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just…” She peered up at the dim lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, her eyes so focused that I wondered if she was trying to have a telepathic conversation with it. “It’s just that I think we should get to know each other a little better if we’re going to be living here together, you know? For example, I’m a snorer. Feel free to slap me awake if I’m really bothering you.”
“Are you sure you want to give me permission to hit you?”
Wren shrugged. “Whatever works.”
Elio raised his hand. “Can I share next? I think everyone should know that even though I was built to be a servant bot, I’m downright messy. But I bake excellent cookies, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s all that really matters.”
Wren pointed to him. “This one I like. Anders? Can you top Elio’s baking abilities?”
All three of us ducked as Anders lunged out of the shadows, grabbed a handful of Wren’s coveted scrap metal, and chucked it at our heads. I covered my face as tiny pieces rained down on the back of my neck. Anders reclined against the wall, looking smug.
“Huh.” Wren pulled herself up and started collecting her displaced scrap metal. “He must be more of a chip and dip kind of guy.”
Rolling my eyes, I marched over to the door. I brushed my fingers around the sides, the track running along the floor, the points where each of the four cell walls met, searching for weak spots. I found none. Any bit of hope I’d had in my heart since we entered Ironside began to wither and die.
How are we going to get out of here?
“Cora?” Wren called. “I think it’s your turn to share.”
How am I going to save Elio?
“Cora? C’mon, don’t be shy.”
How do we get home?
“Cora?”
I rounded on her. “Shut up! Can’t you tell I don’t want to talk to you? Can’t you tell I don’t want to be here? Just shut up!”
Panicked silver starbursts exploded through her aura, lighting up the cell. Elio let out two quick beeps, then hid his face behind Wren’s blanket. And Wren—well, she shouldn’t have put out the offer for me to slap her awake, because she was staring at me like I had done just that.
“I … um … I’m s-sorry,” she stammered, taking her blanket back from Elio. After fluffing it up with shaking hands, she lay down and watched me through frightened eyes. “What are you looking at?”
“I’m watching your aura…” I held out my hand, marveling at the glittering stars that floated through the air and gathered in clusters on my fingertips. “It’s very…” Somehow I thought telling her that her fear was pretty to look at was the wrong thing to say. “You know what? Never mind.” I slumped down and watched the stars dissolve into the shadows.
Wren glanced around the cell. “Oh, that’s right. You said you can see auras.” With a yawn, she settled into her blankets. “That must be very helpful. Thank you for sharing.”
“I’m not sharing, I’m—”
But what I was doing didn’t matter. In under a minute, Wren had fallen asleep. If only I could be so lucky. Instead I had to listen to her snores shake the walls all night long.
* * *
The Ironside prison yard was less of a yard and more of a slab of concrete with weeds poking through the cracks. An electric fence hummed around the square, four guard towers standing at attention in each corner, watching the inmates like birds of prey beneath a blood-red Andilly sky. Packed gray soil stretched out from the prison in every direction, broken up only by empty roads and a distant snow-capped mountain range. It was impossible to gauge how far away we were from civilization, but when Elio and I finally escaped this hellhole, it appeared we would have very few places to run.
“So … Condor?” Wren gestured to my silver hair. I’d managed to find a piece of twine to tie it up (the air outside was so humid that it felt like I was standing inside an armpit), but a few pieces had escaped and hung in my eyes. “I’ve never been. What’s it like?”
“Dark.”
“A truly verbose description.” Even after receiving the brunt of my fury last night, she was still determined to chat me up, and I was too exhausted to push her away. She led me through the crowd of inmates to a rusted table across the yard. I’d never seen so many different species in one place before. There were winged people from Avis exercising beside Ucarro women with flippers for feet and sharp green gills sprouting from their necks. A man walked past us in the opposite direction, holding a tray of food. His entire body was covered in so much curly brown fur that I couldn’t even make out his face.