After Randolph and I cleaned up lunch, I tucked him away in his quarters next to the dining room. He promised not to move, but because his door locked from the inside, I didn’t know if he’d keep that promise. To be on the safe side, he agreed to be barricaded inside his room for a short time with a chair wedged underneath the door’s handle on the outside. I hated doing this to him, but I didn’t really have a choice until I figured out what was happening on the ship. Besides, I didn’t want him around when I told Captain Glenn about the pills in the food. The captain needed to know, and I would do my best to spin the blame off Randolph.

I searched for Ellison, but she wasn’t in the infirmary. Captain Glenn wasn’t anywhere either. They must’ve somehow known I was looking for them and had run in the other direction. Sighing, I made my way back to the second floor, past the empty infirmary once again, and down a dark hallway that led to where the teralinguas had once been kept as cargo. The same hallway I thought I’d seen someone vanish down after our disastrous trip to Orin.

I flipped the light switch on the wall even though I knew it didn’t work because I was a sucker for punishment. This time, though, I had my dinky phone. Its glow cast a meager light that cut into the darkness a couple feet.

There weren’t many doors in this hallway, but I tracked my progress anyway on the imaginary periodic table map in my head, more out of habit than to mark my location. I could now navigate this ship in the dark—if I liked the dark, which I didn’t, and if there wasn’t always the feeling of something or someone lurking around the next corner, haunted ship or not.

Fur and poop smells still traced the air outside the cargo room door. I tried the handle. Locked. As soon as I released it, the door popped open. I leaped back and stabbed my fingers into the iron in my pocket, the phone in my other hand shuddering in my grip.

A sliver of darkness grew into a black mass as the door opened wider. It spilled out into the hallway, looming over me, and yanked the door shut behind it.

“Absidy?”

I tipped my phone upward toward wide, dark eyes. “Captain?”

He shielded his face with his hand. “Do you mind?”

“Sorry.” I slanted the light downward a bit. “What are you doing in the dark?”

“Doing a bit of cleaning up. You?”

I glanced at his empty hands. What had he been cleaning with? “I was looking for you, actually. I need to tell you something.”

“Okay.”

A shiver rolled over my shoulders. I ticked my gaze to the door behind him, unease gathering at the base of my neck. The light hadn’t been on inside for him to see anything. I would’ve seen it under the crack in the door. He likely knew this ship’s every corner better than I did, but I doubted even he could “clean” in the dark.

“Uh…” I stared hard at the whites of his eyes, which seemed to float amid his dark skin, black clothes, and the midnight color choking the hallway. “Can we go to the dining room to talk?”

“Okay.”

When he didn’t move from his stance by the door, I gave a jerky nod. “Right.”

He didn’t want me in that room. I took hesitant steps away from him, my back crawling with doubt-tipped sensations. Something wasn’t right here.

A loud click echoed through the silence. I whirled around, my pulse humming. Had he locked the door? Heavy footsteps stalked toward me. Every thunk, thunk, plunk, plunk bit at my heels until I was nearly running. I turned the corner into the same hallway as the infirmary and risked a glance over my shoulder. The dim light at the other end of the hall shadowed his face, blurring the lines between his clothes and skin into the darkness around him. He was night incarnate bursting toward me.

I swept past the empty infirmary and skidded around the next corner into the dining room hallway. Rusted balls, no. I should’ve headed straight for the elevator. I had no idea what was happening, but I had zero desire to be alone with the captain right then.

Something pounded from the other side of Randolph’s closed door as soon as I passed. I yelped and leaped away from the noise, flattening myself against the opposite wall. Forcing a swallow, I gazed down the length of the hallway I’d just come. Empty except the swinging light at the end. No Captain Glenn. He’d just…vanished.

“Absidy!” Randolph shouted from his quarters. “Lemme out! I gotta pee!”

The swinging light marked the seconds until I could drag in a semi-normal breath. Then it stopped as if I’d imagined the whole thing. But the one good that came out of growing up a ghost magnet was that my reality was far more terrifying than anything my imagination could ever come up with.

* * *

Awkward silence filled the dining room at dinner. I ticked my gaze around the new table to Ellison, her pallor about as gray as the pools of gravy sliding down the mashed potatoes she pushed around her plate. To Mase, who hid his left arm in his lap where he thought I couldn’t see the remnants of She sparking underneath his dark green thermal. To Randolph, who drank more than he ate. To Poh standing in the open hallway door, who occasionally looked over her shoulders as if she felt a presence creeping up behind her. To Captain Glenn, who ate each bite with a worried crease in his forehead. The titanium behind his back outlined him as a man instead of midnight charging down the hallway.

He made no mention of our earlier meet-up. I didn’t either. I didn’t trust what was happening on this ship, and until I knew more, I feared a Mind-I, now switched off, would turn on once I flapped my tongue. If that was what we were dealing with…

We all had our individual demons occupying our thoughts, but I kept mine bottled up tight since I didn’t have a name for it yet. Not ghosts, but something entirely unfamiliar. And for the first time in my life, iron didn’t hold the answer.

* * *

That night as I lay in Mase’s arms, the plan that had taken root inside my head before we’d landed on Orin blossomed. I needed to get word to Pop, Moon Dragon, and the rest of the humans about the Saelis’s plan to wipe out the rest of us, but to do that, I needed a Mind-I. Since I didn’t have one, we needed to go back through the rings to Mayvel. Once we were through the rings, I could just call them on my dinky phone.

But this meant we needed to get back through the rings that had sent us to deep space. The Ringers could refuse us—even if we said please—especially since Mase had turned his back on humanity from inside this ship, the same one they’d tried to erase from existence by renaming it the Vicious. Maybe they would let us through no problem to spill all their scandalous secrets, though given everything they did to cover up their slaughter of half an alien race to power their rings, I doubted it.

But if I blackmailed them… I was a fugitive after all, so I might as well go all in with the moral corruption. But blackmail them how? I had no solid proof of what they’d done, just a headful of images the ghosts who had passed through me had left behind.

Then there was the whole problem with Parker following us. Maybe I could frame him somehow so the Ringers wouldn’t allow his ship through. But once again, how?

Well, I didn’t say it was a good plan. It was more like a sprout of a plan whose leaves dangled with flimsy-plan-eating zombie ants.

I needed help, though, in carrying this out. The problem was I only wanted specific ears listening to me, ears that hopefully didn’t belong to someone capable of sabotage. But I worried that the walls themselves would swivel around when I passed so that every thought I had would leach into the titanium.

I hated doubting these people, most of whom I loved in varying degrees, most of whom had laid down their lives for mine many times over without question. Of course, if they were being controlled through a Mind-I or whatever, it wasn’t like they could stop it. Which made me want to rip off all their heads—in a completely figurative way since I was a wanted murderer not a wanted monster—and hand them to someone who could be trusted.

Someone like Poh. If she’d poisoned the food, I would’ve seen her come into the kitchen. Unless she’d bugged the rest of the crew with Mind-Is, I doubted she had anything to do with the recent what-the-fuckery. Hopefully she would gladly accept everyone’s heads when I handed them to her. Figuratively. Of course. Maybe she could tinker around in their skulls and find something useful. Maybe she could also find Nesbit’s Mind-I for me.

I slid myself out from Mase’s spooning and sat up, careful not to bump the wound in his shoulder where he’d been shot. When I gazed down at his sleeping face, his usually peaceful expression had hardened into a grimace. Sweat gleamed on his forehead, and a white crackle of light zipped just underneath one of his closed eyelids.

My hand flew to my mouth to silence my gasp. She was eating away at him, crunching his urge to resist He to dust. My heart clenched at seeing him like this. With tears pricking my eyes, I leaned down to press my lips to his, wishing I could kiss away all of his addictions from memory, except me. I wanted to be all he dreamed about. I wanted to flood his veins with need instead of She. This scarred, beautiful man was mine, and I his. He’d staked his claim the moment he’d gifted me iron. No way would I give him up to She, He, or Parker without a two-handed ice pick fight.

He groaned and quaked underneath the blankets. I tucked them up to his chin, then found my clothes under the glow of millions of stars outside the wind screen and slipped out of the cockpit.

On quiet feet, I crept through the empty third-floor storage area to the engine room while scratching my wrist. The cut underneath my bandage where I’d sliced myself open itched. I should probably have Ellison see if it was healing properly. I’d put that on my to-do list.

Outside the engine room door, I paused and tapped my fingers against the iron in my pockets. The last time I’d been in there, I was sure I hadn’t been alone. Except my cubes weren’t there. Not in my other pocket either. They must’ve fallen out in the cockpit. I would have to remember to check later.

I knocked and entered at the same time, though I doubted Poh could hear me over the rattle and clank of the engine. She stood behind a newly constructed metal safety beam that circled the engine. The beam had been painted neon orange and gave the once dreary room a cheerful pop of color. All of Nesbit’s scattered tools had been picked up off the floor and stored neatly in a large metal box where his mattress used to be. I didn’t see the glasses he’d used for—good Feozva, I’d rather not think about what he’d used them for.

Poh had taken off her duster, gun holster, and most of her knives, and without the added bulk, she appeared too skinny. Her yellow gaze flicked toward me while she tightened a screw inside a small panel built into the engine.

I lifted my arm in an awkward wave. It had been fairly easy to develop a friendship with Moon Dragon since she’d had Jezebel to help us bond. Growing up, I’d been the weird recluse kid aboard the Nebulous who hid inside Ellison’s cupboards in the infirmary as much to hide from ghosts as other people. They never seemed to know what to make of me, which was okay, I guessed, since I didn’t really know what to make of me either.

“I like the orange color,” I shouted and pointed at the metal beam.

Her thin white eyebrows drew together as if she hadn’t heard me. She mopped the sweat from a patch of pale skin next to her scaled stripes with her sleeve and went back to what she was doing.

Fuck it. I didn’t need to bond over a color choice with her to try to make friends. I just needed to make her listen, since I was obviously useless without a furry slothcat around to make nice.

I jerked my head toward the door and turned to leave, hoping she’d follow. A moment later she did, and then closed the door behind her to dull the noise.

“Are you okay.” She said it as a statement, not a question, as if she didn't really care but was asking to have something to say. Still, it was a bit strange that my okayness was the direction she’d chosen.

“Fine. Uh…” How to bring this up? By grabbing it by the rusted balls, I guessed. “I’m going to blackmail the Ringers if they don’t let us through to Mayvel, and I need your help.”

She leaned against the door as the scowl she always wore morphed into a winged up eyebrow and a twitch on her mouth, if only for a second. “My help?”

Curious how the whole blackmail thing didn’t seem to concern her.

“I need a Mind-I. There might be one in the engine room somewhere, but I need you not to tell anyone until I know for sure who I can’t trust.”

She stayed silent for a long moment. “What makes you think you can trust me?”

“Well, you haven’t tried to kill me yet, so you have that going for you.” I shrugged. “You seemed to have been on Mase’s side during your bar brawl on Orin. What was that all about anyway?”

“I didn’t like the way everyone kept staring at my scales, so I decided to put them right in the bar patrons’ faces. And my fists. And the lasers in my stun gun. And some of the bar’s furniture.”

“I see.” A warm feeling settled over me then, a mix of empathy for her at being ostracized for something she couldn’t control and pride for Mase at not letting that kind of thing slide. Good for him. Good for both of them.

She shook her head, the ends of her white-blonde ponytail swishing around her waist, and sighed. “Your friend Tits isn’t the only one who has a problem with scales.”

“His name is Randolph.” I crossed my arms over my two necklaced ice picks, mirroring her stance, both of the tips punching holes through my empathy. “Not Tits.”

Her gaze narrowed. “I’ll try to remember that next time he’s judging me for my scales. I’m no Saelis.”

“Noted. So what are you?” I asked, repeating the question she’d asked me on our first meeting.

“I’m a Chameleos. My ancestors are the chameleon. We blend in to our surroundings. That’s how I helped you and your boyfriend hide on Orin.”

“Oh. I’ve read about chameleons.”

She stared at me a long while, then, “My ancestors are also the Saelis.”

Yeah, I’d already guessed that. I gave a slow nod. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t trust you.”

“Some of my relations blew up your home planet and decimated a large chunk of your population. Do you trust them?”

I opened my mouth, but realized the answer was more complex than a simple yes or no. They were our enemies, sure, but I couldn’t really blame them after what humans did to them first. The female ghosts I’d crossed through me had been terrified when the parasites in their bloodstreams dried up and they were no longer considered useful. They’d also helped me on more than one occasion aboard this ship. The Saelis’ course had always been direct—destroy all humans. It was the humans who had warped history with lies. So did I trust the Saelis?

“No,” I said. “But I don’t trust humans either.”

“It’s funny in a way…” Poh searched the space over my shoulder, her large, yellow eyes unfocused. “I resemble a Saelis. You resemble a human.”

“Resemble?” I leaned into my heels as if her words had knocked me back. “Well…I don’t hear that every day.”

“You don’t agree?”

I had never considered myself “other.” I’d always just been…me, with a metal diet that influenced my whole being and a terrifying gift I’d never asked for. So now that that thought had been planted in my head, that I wasn’t even a human, I could stew over what I really was, if what I was had an actual name. Good times. Thanks, Poh.

“All I know is the Black War started on this ship, and probably a hundred more ships like this one.” I took a breath and watched closely to see how well she handled this next bit. “Humans kidnapped the female Saelis to harvest the parasites that lived inside them, the same parasites used to power the Ringers’ rings.”

Her eyes widened, and she shoved away from the door to stare down at me. “Consumectalons. That’s what powers the rings?”

Consumectalons. Now I had a name for what was inside me. Ellison had never told me, and I’d never thought to ask.

“They eat iron, as you probably already know, and when they consume it, a lot of it, they create this energy that’s powerful enough to bend space,” I said.

“Humans kidnapped all of the female Saelis?”

I nodded. “Without females, a species obviously can’t reproduce, so the Saelis went biblical—an eye for an eye. You destroy us, we destroy you. Only the Saelis aren’t done yet.”

She gripped her jaw as if she feared it might drop at her feet while she paced the floor. “On Orin, you cut yourself in front of me, like a test. Why?”

“Because…” I scratched at my bandaged arm, pretending to scrape at my courage reserves to bare my soul. “I’m a ghost magnet. You asked me what I was, and there you have it. Ghosts flock to me to cross to the other side, usually without asking if it’s a convenient time or place, so to keep them away, I eat metal.”

She stopped her pacing and stared. “You have consumectalons.”

“Bingo. Iron keeps the ghosts away. I cut myself to see if you’re a Saelis human hybrid since consumectalons drive them mad. Mad enough to attack. Probably kill.”

“Hybrids…”

“They look just like humans and can be controlled by their Mind-Is. The Saelis created them to infiltrate us. We had two on our ship, and nobody knew.”

“This is…” She shook her head. “This is a lot to take in, is what it is.”

I sighed. “Yeah.”

She placed her hand on her chest, her long fingers tracing the delicate links on a chain necklace that dipped below her burnt-orange shirt, and took a step toward me. “You've been touched by a higher power."

I gaped at her. Then I barked out a laugh, half expecting her to join in at my expense. “You're…you’re serious.”

“You pass lost spirits through you to someone’s idea of heaven or hell.” She said it with deference, her head tilted slightly as if trying to see me in a better light.

Or trying to see me as something I wasn’t.

“I don't know where they go,” I snapped. “It's definitely not some kind of religious experience. It's pain. Pain and suffering, and I still feel it in my heart long after they’ve gone.”

She backed up a step, nodding even though it didn’t even make sense to me. “Why you?” she asked. “Have you ever thought about that?”

I gritted my teeth. “All the fucking time. Look, don’t put me on a pedestal I never wanted to be on in the first place."

“Maybe it’s time to use that pedestal to your advantage.”

“What does that even mean?” I demanded.

“I don’t know.” She heaved a sigh. “I guess it means I’ll get you a Mind-I.”

“How? Do you have one?”

“No.” She posted her fists on her narrow hips. “And I don’t quite know how I’ll get you one either.”

“Nesbit, the guy who used to be our engineer, had one, but I don’t know where he put it.” I pointed at the engine room door. “Maybe it’s in there and maybe it’s not.”

Despite our combined lack of knowledge about how to proceed, it was a start. Now, I felt like I should offer her something in return, take her to the stasis pantry, and make her point at what she wanted to eat. Seriously, how was she still alive if she hadn’t eaten anything since she’d arrived?

“What do you eat?” I blurted.

“Titanium.” She started toward the engine room door. “I’ve got an evolved version of consumectalons in my blood.”

Wow. We were growing more and more alike with every shared word. “You don’t plan on eating through the ship anytime soon, do you?”

A genuine smile played over her face, revealing her fangs and deepening the wrinkles at her temples. “I can’t make any promises.”