“Just do as I say, Helen. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“Right.” I might agree verbally but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to do what he asks. There’s no way I’m leaving my boyfriend behind, no matter what happens. “When we’re done, can we kiss some more?”
“When we’re done, I promise I will spend the rest of the night kissing you,” he tells me with a hot look.
My toes curl. I like that idea. Hopefully we’re done quickly, then.
I give Mathiras another excited glance when the door hisses, indicating that the climate controls are adjusting to the interior of the food processing station. The door opens and the ramp descends, and Mathiras steps out. “Follow behind me, love.”
“Right on your tail, just like always,” I promise him.
We head inside and I stare at my surroundings. This place looks…gross. They process food here? The thought makes my nose wrinkle in horror. The hall we’re in is small—with Mathiras’s horns close to scraping the ceiling. It must be made for smaller aliens, because it’s also narrow enough that I can’t walk at his side. The walls are old and dark like the mining station, and there are puddles everywhere. The pipes above us in the ceiling drip with condensation, splashing on my head as we walk down a long hall. It’s musty, too, and there’s dirt gathered in the edges of the walkway, and mud, to boot. It looks like it’s never been cleaned. The lights overhead flicker, and a few of them are out, which means the hall is full of shadows.
We move forward a few more steps and something scurries across my delicate boot. I let out a squeal, reaching for my blaster. “We’re being attacked!”
“Helen,” Mathiras yelps, and his hands cover mine. “Stop. Wait. It’s a rodent. Okay? This is a grain station. It’s probably infested with rodents.”
My mouth quivers at the thought. Now that he mentions it, I can smell something vaguely poop-like in the air, and not all of the mustiness is from dust. Some of it smells like animals, like Risda did. “My stomach doesn’t feel so good now.”
“Breathe through your mouth,” he reminds me.
“But what if I breathe in their particles? I don’t want to taste them.” Just the thought makes me want to hold my breath permanently.
Mathiras pauses. “When we get back, I’ll kiss you until you can’t taste anything else, all right? Just focus right now. I need you to focus. There are going to be rodents,” he tells me, voice firm. “There are going to be terrible smells. There could be dead people here. But I need you to concentrate on me and only me, or this could go badly. Understand?”
I swallow hard and nod. “Being a bodyguard is tough.”
“You can handle it,” he tells me confidently, and flashes a grin in my direction before turning and heading back down the hall again.
Just hearing his confidence makes me feel better. I can handle it. I’m genetically modified to be amazing. They won’t know what hit them if I attack. So I straighten my shoulders, mentally tell myself not to notice rodents even if they run over my shoe again, and follow Mathiras into the shadowy belly of the grain station. Our feet clank on the metal floors, and I keep my focus on Mathiras and his swishing tail.
There’s a door at the end of the hall. Closed. Mathiras glances over at me and doesn’t touch it. He grins, as if pleased at the sight. “If you’re going to be accompanying me on these sorts of runs, Helen, I need to teach you how to work with me. All right?” When I nod, he gestures at the panel. “They made a mistake right here.”
“They did?”
He nods and pulls out a little stick I’ve seen before, the one he uses to hack into computers. “If they were smart, they would have left the doors open to welcome us. Now we get to turn the tables.”
I lean in close to watch, fascinated. I can’t read the language that scrolls across the tiny screen, but Mathiras is in his element, his fingers moving across the tiny sensor pad. After he finishes typing, I watch as he lifts one of the corners of the pad and pries it up, then inserts something new underneath and types once more. “What are you doing?” I whisper. “Can you tell me?”
“I’m taking control of all the doors on this station,” he says, a look of concentration on his face. “They wanted to meet here, so they could have control, and I’m taking that control away from them. Keeping control is the key to negotiations, love. We might never even have to fire a single shot.”
I’m…glad? I guess. I was kinda hoping I could beat the bad guys for him, though.