Free Atrophy by Jess Anastasi Page B

had no idea flowed from her. It sparked an entropic reaction within him, heating him up in places he’d long not thought about. But she wasn’t for him; they existed in entirely different worlds. Any thoughts leading in that direction would only make an already messy situation that much worse.
    “When I’m telling you to never , even under threat of torture, ever eat the repli-chicken, you might want to be taking notes or something.”
    “No repli-chicken. Got it.”
    She stepped around him and slid into one of the seats pushed up against the table. “We bought some supplies for the next few days at least, so I guess it doesn’t really matter until we run out of fresh food…” She trailed off. Did she sense he wasn’t in the mood for chit-chat? His whole existence had been tossed up in the air. Food was about the last thing on his mind.
    The viewport dimmed as the ship left Erebus’s atmosphere and made orbit. The swirling green of the prison planet looked almost enchanting from up here.
    He inhaled a deep breath, feeling his ribs expanding as though they’d been locked tight around his chest for the past twelve years. When he exhaled long and low, a tremor skittered through his body, a furor of apprehension and gratification. He’d actually done it. Left the planet. Left the prison. Left behind everything he’d known for over a decade.
    He glanced down at Zahli, seated at the table watching him, her blue gaze perceptive, as though she knew this moment was too much for anything so simple as words. Though he knew nothing about her—except she could handle herself with a knife and had an unhinged ex-war hero for a brother—he felt connected to her, sure as if there was a tether hooked into his chest and crossing the distance to wrap around her.
    She’d said that she’d help him in return for what he’d done yesterday, but he didn’t feel like they were even. Far, far from it. Yeah, he’d helped her cover up a crime that might have seen serious ramifications, but by standing up against her brother to keep him aboard she’d given him back his life, reminded him what it was to actually live, not just exist. Even if that life didn’t last out the week, at least he’d found some measure of freedom.
    “I don’t know how to thank you for this. You didn’t have to help me, despite what happened yesterday.”
    Her expression took on a hint of indignation. “Yeah, I did.”
    He closed his hands on the back of the chair in front of him, tension clamping into his shoulders. “No, because the last thing you need is to draw attention to yourself, and I’m pretty sure there’s a hell of a chance that helping me escape will gain you a whole lot of scrutiny if I’m caught. If they find out what you—what we did—”
    “They won’t find out. About any of it.” Her adamant tone matched the sharp glint of steel in her eyes, similar to the way she’d looked up at him with the knife in her hand yesterday, prepared to fight.
    No doubt about it, the woman had a core of liquid iron—ready to harden when she went into battle. There was something breathtaking about her candid personality, her artless, uninhibited beauty clashing into the tough, resilient strength of her. She was gorgeous in a way he’d never encountered, and he almost didn’t know what to make of her. One thing was certain, she’d possessed him too easily, captivated him like witnessing the beautiful destruction of two stars colliding.
    The comms pinged. “Attention irritating miscreants, be advised of splice into void-space in five seconds and counting.” Rian’s voice echoed through the ship.
    Zahli tugged on his shirt. “You might want to sit down. Splicing takes a few trips to get used to.”
    He dropped into the seat across from her and a moment later, everything seemed to take a weird kind of leap, his body and mind feeling like they separated into two different places for a split second. He shook his head, waiting for the slight