Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 56021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
“What happened?”
I ask the dark-eyed saurian, because he’s the one who should have put a stop to this.
“She drugged me,” Shan groans. “She drugged me and locked me in the brig and she left the baby with me, and… there’s something wrong with Lettie. She hasn’t been the same since the baby. I thought she was just coming into her own, you know? Finding her strength? But…”
“Postpartum,” Cadence says. “It happens sometimes when women have babies. People can go completely psychotic. That’s why they need doctors.”
“Probably happens more when they have to lay an egg in the forest first,” Casey says. “I feel like laying an egg in the forest would make me crazy.”
“Does postpartum depression lead to bombing a city?” Cadence asks. It seems like a rhetorical question, but Casey has no problem answering it anyway.
“It could. Why not? Women can do anything.”
Both of them chuckle at their dark little joke.
“She’s not as she was,” Shan says, ignoring their flippancy. “That’s certain.”
“Is that because she never drugged you, imprisoned you, and tried her very best to start a war by attacking a city full of people who didn’t see it coming?” I ask the questions of Shan. I am blaming him for this. I am blaming him almost as much as I am blaming Lettie herself. She’s the one who was captured. She was the one who underwent severe physical and biological challenges, and bore him the baby who is trying to bite him in this very moment. He should have done something before this moment. Why does every authority figure turn out to be such a raging fucking disappointment?
“If I let you out, you have to go and catch her, and you have to get her under control. She’s attacked the city. She’s killed people.”
Shan’s dark eyes widen. “She’s killed people?”
“That is what happens when you blow up parts of a city,” I say. “She deserves to be in the brig, not you.”
“Agreed. Let me out.”
He makes it sound so simple, but of course it isn’t.
“It’s not that simple. I’m not a universal lock picking device. She’ll have the key somewhere. Do you think she’s hidden it somewhere? Or do you think she keeps it on her person?”
“I don’t know,” he sighs. “She’s been so paranoid lately. I’m sorry about what happened to you…”
“She tried to kill me again today, so apologies for what she did to me feel a little premature, given she seems keen to keep hurting me. Catching her is only the first part. Keeping her under control after you get her, that’s going to be the hard part. This has to end.”
“I should have stepped in earlier, but the second I told her she couldn’t send you down to the planet without you at least being awake, she knocked me out. I didn’t know about the attacks.”
“We did,” the engineers chorus. “But we didn’t say anything.”
“Then who knocked me out? I assumed it was you. I was looking at her when the injection went into my neck. Who did that to me?”
There’s an uncomfortable silence, broken by the gurgle of Shan and Lettie’s baby, who doesn’t care that there is drama.
“I feel like that’s best kept as a secret,” Casey says.
“Secrets are the spice of life,” Cadence replies.
I don’t say anything to them. They’re not apologizing, and even if they did, I wouldn’t accept the apology. This is a ship of monsters, and there is no bigger monster than the mother at the controls right now. There is absolutely nothing Lettie will not do in her quest for revenge.
My pain is instructing me as to why she is so vicious. There is nothing that will be enough to make her feel better. She has attacked the city, thinking she wants Wrath dead, and thinking I am an appropriate sacrifice because of how I was used before.
I understand her more than she realizes, and that is why I have no sympathy for her. The universe does terrible things to people, but the answer is never to become the same kind of monster as those who hurt you.
Wrath
Lettie is pacing back and forth across the bridge, playing with the gun, twisting it around in her hands in a way that suggests she doesn’t quite comprehend what she is doing. Sometimes it is pointing at me, other times it is pointing at her, sometimes it’s pointed nowhere in particular.
“Are you feeling well? You seem slightly…”
“What?” She laughs. “Crazy!? Is that what Shan told you?”
She knows I haven’t been able to speak to Shan, so yes, this is another argument for a certain kind of mental instability.
“He keeps saying I’m different,” she says. “Well, of course I am. I am the mother to a baby I haven’t been able to name yet. Do you know what a responsibility that is? To have to name someone else? I don’t know what her name is? How could I possibly know?” Her voice rises, hitting a hysterical pitch.