Levi started to push back his chair, but Asher’s hand was already there, wrapping around his upper arm and pulling him to his feet. To anyone watching, it would look supportive. Helpful. The pressure of Asher’s fingers, however, was just shy of painful.
“Come on,” Asher said warmly. “Let’s get you checked out.”
Levi’s legs felt unsteady as Asher guided him toward the door, his grip never loosening, even as they moved away from the sounds of the mess. The corridor was narrower here, the overhead conduit lower. A panel near a junction looked like ithad been replaced with a different alloy — shinier, newer, but not quite the right color. The kind of patch job that meant the original failed, and someone fixed it with what they had.
Levi started talking before they’d cleared the junction.
“I think I know what this scenario wants,” he said softly, trying to pull his arm back a bit, but Asher’s grip tightened. “Or close to it. There are containers with creatures, I think, the ones that we heard in the vents, if we can get to the cargo hold before the briefing—”
“Levi.” Asher didn’t look at him.
“—I can look at the containers from the outside, figure out what we’re actually dealing with before it becomes a crisis instead of after—”
“Levi.”
Levi saw a crew member coming from the far end of the corridor, his head down, something in hand, moving toward them at a purposeful pace.
He kept talking.
“Asher, please, just listen to me. You’re hurting my arm, I’m trying to help us both—”
Asher’s pace sped up, pulling him harder down the corridor, and he pressed his lips to Levi’s ear, “If you don’t stop, I’ll start with Jasper. And it won’t be quick.”
Levi stopped talking.
They came to a door that had a name plaque, Chief of Security, but the original name was scratched out and KANE was written in black marker underneath.
If I go in there, he might not let me back out.
“We need to go back,” Levi said, planting his feet. He tried to pry Asher’s fingers off his arm, but Asher didn’t budge.
“No.” Asher’s thumb hit the panel, and the door opened.
Levi’s hand shot to the doorframe, his fingers closing around the edge of it before his brain caught up. The painful grip shiftedfrom his arm to the back of his neck, and Levi had one second of understanding before being shoved through the door in one sharp motion. He stumbled forward into the dim room, and the door sealed behind him right as he hit a desk with his hip. Pain flared, bright and immediate as he grabbed the edge to stop himself from going over it.
The room was dim and sparse, with a bunk against the far wall and no blanket. The desk he was gripping was bolted to the floor, only adorned with a mug, and there was a locker with the door slightly ajar. Nothing was immediately frightening about it.
Except it smelled wrong.
The blanket from the bunk was on the floor to his left, near the base of the locker. The shape underneath it was wrong for laundry, wrong for equipment, and wrong for anything that didn’t have shoulders. Dark stains spread through the white fabric in uneven patches, still wet at the edges, and one corner of the blanket didn’t quite reach — beneath it, the toe of a boot pointed at the ceiling.
He didn’t look longer than he had to.
He looked at the desk. At the surface of it. At his own fingers wrapped around the edge, his knuckles pale.
Don’t. You already know.
He heard Asher move behind him.
Asher’s palm closed around the back of his neck, his thumb pressing to the base of his skull again, and then the cold of the metal of the wall on his face was the sharpest thing in the room. Asher’s body slammed against him so hard it punched the air out of Levi’s lungs and he felt lips brush the shell of his ear.
“Hi,” Asher whispered.
Levi’s fingers searched along the smooth wall for something, anything, to grab, and found nothing.
“Hi,” he wheezed back.
3