A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) (21 page)

“Elvie,” my mother says behind me. “Not now.”

Finally, after another tense few seconds, Cole relaxes and stands up straight, raising his hands in submission, retreating three steps back.

Marsden smirks wickedly, but he releases his grip on Dad’s throat. “Sorry about that, Harry,” Marsden says, slapping Dad’s shoulder good-naturedly as Dad exhales a relieved breath. “Race war and all that. You understand.”

“I suppose,” Dad says, massaging his throat. But when the doc lets go of his hand, he takes several steps away from Marsden.

“So, now what?” I ask. “You call your goon buddies down here and we all have a party?”

Marsden arches an eyebrow. Man, he does have handsome eyebrows.
Shake it off, Elvie.
“Buddies?” he asks.

“Quit the act,” I snap. “We heard the Devastators up on
the lido deck before we decided to ride the laundry chute. We know that at least some of them survived the crash with you.”

“The . . . ‘Devastators’?” Marsden asks, barely stifling a laugh.

“That’s what the Almiri call them,” I say. I’d laugh myself if our lives weren’t on the line. “So they’re not great with names. Whatever, the ugly big dudes that you called to the ship after the Almiri attacked.”

“Ah, yes, the ‘Devastators,’ ” Marsden replies. “Yes, they’re here. Some of them. But as I said before,
I’m
here on my own. And I’m not the one who called them, Elvie. I really assumed you would have deduced that much by now.”

Huh?

“This isn’t the place for conversation,” Marsden continues. “Their movements have been fairly restricted, but they’re starting to branch farther out as they require more parts. Come on, follow me.” And with that, the dude actually has the nerve to turn his back on us and head for the door, as if we were all good friends and not, you know, mortal enemies who’ve recently tried to kill each other. “Watch your step, it’s rough going through here.”

Cole and I exchange a look, which pretty much conveys our simultaneous thought.

W.

T.

F.

“Elvie?” Zee whispers. She’s remained mostly quiet this whole time, and I realize that she knows the least about the Jin’Kai and Dr. Marsden out of any of us. If
we’re
confused, she
must be completely dumbfounded. “Shall we go?” she asks.

“Now would be better than later, ma’am,” says Dr. Marsden.

“My name is Zada,” Zee says. “I’m Elvie’s—”

“Let’s just back this convoy up a bit,” I interrupt, turning from Mom to Dr. Marsden. “Just so we’re all on the same page here, let’s be clear on a few things. You are an evil alien bastard whose compatriots were planning on swapping out my baby with one of your own little lab creations. For whatever reason, you decided not to. Great. But I’m not, like, handing you the Humanitarian of the Year award or anything, because please let us not forget that you
blew up a ship
, killing at least a dozen Almiri who had come to rescue us. Not to mention that you beat the living shit out of Cole and threw him off a catwalk. And you tried to kill me. Like, a lot.”

Dr. Marsden just lets out a sigh, like I’m still not getting it, whatever “it” may be.

“Elvie,” he says, shaking his head in an
aw shucks
kinda way. “I hate to disagree, but I very much never tried to kill you. And I’d love to explain everything to you, I really would, but for right now you’re just going to have to trust me.”

“No, Elvie,” Cole says next to me. “Don’t.” Dr. Marsden shoots Cole a
look
but very quickly refocuses on me, holding out his hand expectantly. With a sharp jerk of his chin he motions for me to follow him.

“There is nothing you could possibly do to make me trust you,” I tell him coldly.

Marsden rolls his eyes, as if I’m being a great big pain in his alien butt. Then, as though making up his mind about something, he strides back into the room, heading directly
toward me. As Marsden gets closer, Cole takes a half step sideways to put himself partially between us. Dr. Marsden reaches behind his back, and I suck in a deep breath, half expecting him to blast me right then and there . . .

. . . And then he
hands me his gun
.

“This way,” he says. “Please.” And he turns and walks straight out of the room.

The four of us look at one another, baffled. I cradle the weird alien weapon in my hand, bobbing it up and down to get a feel for its weight. It’s heavier than an Alimiri weapon but still pretty light, made out of a brownish metal with a smell that’s thick and tangy.

“Well,” I say finally. And before I can think better of it, I head out the door after Dr. Marsden.

The others follow. Because, well, what the hell else are we going to do?

To say that it’s not easy going outside the laundry room is an understatement. It seems that these lower passageways took the brunt of the shock when the ship crashed. The walls have crumpled inward, and the ceilings have caved as well. Debris has been spewed all over the ground. We’re walking “downhill” now, along the tilted floor, and it’s not as icy here as it was up on the lido deck, but that’s a small comfort when we’re forced to crouch down to avoid eating wiring.

“So, you said you heard the others up on the lido deck?” Marsden says, leading the way. “I take it you came in through the opening up there?”

“Through the crater left by the explosion,” Cole replies, the chill in his voice matching our surroundings.

Marsden ignores his tone. “They must be looking to scavenge some finer components. Most likely they’ve exhausted the feasible parts on the lower levels.”

“Scavenging parts for what?” Zee asks, snaking over a large collapsed coolant compressor that’s fallen through the ceiling.

“As far as I’ve been able to piece together,” Marsden tells us, “they’ve been trying to build a skiff to get them out of here.” He pauses to maneuver around the next part of the fun house—the hallway ahead looks like somebody picked it up and squeezed it, then left it for dead. Marsden drops to his hands and knees to get through. “Watch your hands, there are some aluminum shards.”

“A skiff?” Dad prompts as he crawls behind Marsden. Dad’s huffing and puffing quite a bit, and I think his knee is probably bothering him more than he wants to let on. Chances are, he re-sprained it on the way down the chute, although he’s trying to keep up gamely.

Marsden’s voice echoes through the pinched hall. “After the crash,” he tells us, “it soon became clear that there was no power on the ship. The generators are completely pulverized. There’s no way to send any sort of signal, so they began to gather components to build a makeshift craft to get them out of here.”

“Why not just walk?” I ask. “They’re big baddies, right?” From what Ducky has told me and the way Cole describes them, these guys are about as nasty as they come.

“The Kynigos are not accustomed to the cold,” Marsden says. “They have very durable exoskeletons for high temperatures but no internal mechanisms to generate sufficient body
heat to survive the climate here. Too long exposed to the elements and they’d be dead.”

“The
keeny ghost
?” I ask.

“You can keep calling them Devastators if you wish,” comes Marsden’s dry reply. “And again, I’m not entirely certain about the skiff. I’ve only been able to glimpse bits and pieces of it. But based on their comings and goings since we crashed, I think it’s a fair assumption.”

“And you’ve been, what?” I ask. “Hanging out, catching up on your reading?”

“Let’s just say I’ve been keeping a low profile.”

Man, if the Rasputin of baby docs wants nothing to do with these guys, you
know
they’re bad news. “Do they have any idea you’re still alive?” I ask.

But Cole has other concerns. “What good is a toboggan made out of broken spare parts going to do them, if there’s no way to power it?”

“There’s no power
on this ship
,” Dad chimes in. “But with the right component parts from a vessel like this it wouldn’t be much trouble to jerry-rig a light fusion engine.”

“I can see where your daughter gets her ingenuity, Harry,” Marsden tells him.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Dad says, and I can tell he’s tickled pink.

“Please,” Marsden corrects him as we finally exit the squeeze box. There’s a general sigh of relief as, one by one, we all rise to our feet again. “Call me Ken. And the lovely lady”—he offers one of his warm smiles to Zee—“I take it this is your mother, Elvie?” I nod. He may be a murderous SOB, but he’s
a
perceptive
SOB. “Another crossbreed,” he says, inspecting my mother up and down in a way I’m not altogether comfortable with. “Amazing. But”—he turns back to me—“I thought you said your mother had died.”

“A lot can change in a week,” I tell him. “So you knew I was a hybrid all along.”

“Yes, and now so do you, it seems. The evolution of the species the Almiri were so desperate to extinguish. You have become of keen interest to us, Elvie.”

“Just what is it about the hybrids that makes them so interesting to the Jin’Kai?” Dad asks, the last of the group to rise to his full height. I give him a hand as he winces at the pain in his knee.

“I didn’t say the Jin’Kai,” Marsden says. “I said ‘us.’ ”

Once my dad is firmly on his feet, I look around and realize that we’ve come to the medical suites—or what’s left of them, anyway. The floor and walls are damp and frosty.

“Has this area flooded?” I ask nervously, wondering if Dr. Marsden isn’t just leading us to a watery grave.

“This area was underwater after the initial impact,” Marsden says. “The cruiser broke through the ice, and we were completely submerged for, oh, fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. The prow caught the worst of it, flooding the bridge all the way through the hangar and into the engine/repulsor stores. This area was one of the last places the water reached before the ship crested and came back up.”

“And the ice just froze up around it,” Dad says matter-of-factly. “Extraordinary.”

“Nothing does the trick of reviving you after getting shot like waking up submerged in freezing water,” Marsden says
wryly. “We’re holding steady for now, but I have no faith that the ship will stay above sea level much longer. That’s why your arrival is so fortuitous. Now, Harry,” he goes on, taking Dad by the arm and leading him into his old examination room, “let’s see if there isn’t something we can do about that knee of yours. There must be some bandages still in their wrapping.”

Zee follows Marsden and Dad into the exam room, leaving me and Cole behind, both of us still experiencing massive character-shift vertigo.

“What’s he up to?” Cole whispers to me. “Wasn’t too long ago he wanted both of us dead.”

“All I know,” I answer, “is that he could have vaporized us all in a heartbeat back there and he didn’t. Whatever he’s up to, we’ll have to get it out of him, fast.”

I turn to join my parents, but Cole touches my arm to stop me. “Elvie, we can’t trust him,” he says.

“Yeah, dur,” I reply. “But we need to find out what he’s doing, and we can’t exactly do that in the hallway.”

“Okay,” Cole says, thinking it over. “But, like, we should be clever about it. Sneaky.”

I open my mouth to tell Cole that cleverness has not exactly proven to be one of his strengths, but I shut my yap instead. I’ve been snarky enough for three lifetimes, and poor, sweet Cole doesn’t deserve any of it. “Good plan,” I agree. “Now, c’mon, let’s not leave the grown-ups alone too long.”

“ ’Kay, only . . .” Cole’s hand still lingers on my arm. “What did you mean before, when you said I wasn’t your boyfriend?”

I kiss him on the cheek. “I was trying to throw Marsden off
balance,” I say with what I can only hope is an encouraging smile. “Y’know, sneaky?”

He moves his hand from my arm and touches his cheek where I’ve just kissed him. “Yeah,” he says, smiling back. “Yeah, sure.”

I enter the exam room, Cole right behind me. Dad is up on the exam table, which is, of course, tilted at such a teeter-totter angle that he’s forced to grip the edges to keep from sliding down. Meanwhile, Marsden is wrapping a thick tan bandage around my father’s pant leg, chatting and
laughing
with my parents like he’s the family MD.

“Normally this would go against the skin,” Mardsen says. “But I figured it was a bit chilly in here to have you strip down to your skivvies.”

“Quite,” Dad agrees with a laugh.

Uh, hello? When my Dad found out that Randy Bird had thrown a basketball at my head in sixth grade PE, he practically led a campaign to have him expelled from the school, and now he’s sitting around
chortling
with my attempted murderer? “I want to know what the hell your game is, Doc,” I say, hands tight around the ray gun.

I hope that was sneaky enough for you, Cole.

“Elvie!” my parents say in unison. As if I’m a disobedient child.

“Dad, Zee, you don’t know what this guy is capable of,” I tell them. “And I’m not buying the ‘Good Doctor’ act one bit. So tell me what you’re up to, Doc, or I’ll fry your ass with this goofy ray gun of yours, and this time I won’t stop till I know you’re good and dead.”

Marsden smiles and continues wrapping Dad’s knee. “Don’t be too hard on her, folks, she’s not wrong,” he says. “It’s no use arguing that we are anything beyond allies of convenience.” He looks up at me. “Yet allies we are.”

“Not yet,” I answer. “Not till you tell us everything that’s going on. Why you’re hiding from the Keeny . . . Kyni-goats . . .” Damn, it’s difficult to be threatening when you can’t even pronounce half the words you’re saying.
“Devastators,”
I say at last. “And why you’re so interested in hybrids. Everything.”

“Well,” Marsden replies lightly. As though angry girls with ray guns shout at him every day. Maybe they do—I don’t know, I haven’t been reading the dude’s diary. “I imagine we’re both interested in the crossbreed situation, Elvie. That is why you’re here, isn’t it? Looking for any files you might have missed detailing my tests?”

Like I said before: perceptive.

Dr. Marsden finishes fastening the bandage on Dad’s knee and rises up, sauntering over to the nearby counter and lackadaisically browsing through the cabinets, looking for who-knows-what.