Terror flooded my body. I kicked out, my body bucking and banging in the confines of the air vent, my head smashing against the metal wall hard enough to see stars skate by. I flung my arms out to grab at the wall, the air vent ledge, anything to stop myself from sliding backward, but only managed to fling away my phone. It landed on the Vicious room’s floor with a splintered crack, choking my world in complete darkness. The overhead light must’ve died.

I lashed out with my feet until the thing released me, then I plummeted head first into the wooden chair that sat below. It buckled when I crashed into it. A piece stabbed into my chin. The metal floor smashed against the entire right side of my body. Pain erupted and flashed a darker shade of black across my vision. I blinked through it and slowly dragged in all the air that had whooshed from my lungs.

When I had enough breath, I said, “Come in.”

But there were seven lifeforms on this ship. Life, as in the opposite of dead. If whatever had grabbed me wasn’t a ghost, then I had no clue how to get rid of it. A pair of glowing green eyes didn’t float in the darkness either, which meant whatever it was didn’t thirst for my parasite-filled blood.

I gripped my ice pick tight in my fist as I searched the grooved floor for my phone. My fingers came up empty, and my phone had sounded like it’d broken anyway. I hauled myself through the darkness in the direction I thought the door would be. It must’ve swung closed, blocking out the light on the other side.

My body throbbed. Blood leaking from one of my many pains slicked the floor underneath my forearms. Other than my pained grunts and hammering heartbeat, silence ambushed my ears. Nothing slinked after me, but in the dark, it was impossible to tell for sure.

When I hit a wall, I pushed to my feet and slid my hands along the cold metal for the lever. Once I found it, I threw myself into the hallway and charged toward the dining room.

Ellison shot to her feet as soon as I entered, her gray eyes stricken with worry. “Absidy! What happened? Get me some towels, Randolph. Hurry!” She led me to a chair at the table, her touch soft and warm like her smock in the Vicious room.

A full-body tremble shook through Randolph as he took in the state I was in before he hurried into the kitchen. Alone.

“Poh, help him,” I said between pants.

“On it,” she said and followed after him.

I hated not trusting Randolph. I hated not trusting my own sister who sat me down and dunked a napkin into a water glass to clean the blood off the side of my face.

“Tell me what happened,” she demanded. “What was the Ring Guild talking about when they said we had seven people on board? Did you see something? What did this to you?”

“I didn’t see anything.”

“Then what did this to you? A ghost?”

“I’m not sure.” I gazed up at her and winced under her touch. “Have you been in the room at the end of this hallway lately?”

Captain Glenn barged in out of breath. “Did you all hear? I needed to make sure you heard what I did because I couldn’t—”

“Absidy.” Mase shoved past him through the door to my side. “What the hell happened? Are you all right?”

I reached out for him automatically, and he folded my hands into his. “I’ve been better. Captain, we heard. Seven people.”

“Seven lifeforms,” Poh corrected as she re-entered from the kitchen.

Behind her, Randolph came through with an armful of towels and unloaded them on top of the table in front of Ellison. She knelt by my side to clean and patch me up for the thousandth time in my life while Poh guarded the hallway door and Captain Glenn and Randolph took their usual seats.

Randolph tipped two drops out of the wine bottle into his glass then ran a hand over his bloodshot, watery eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked, his chin wobbling.

His concern speared into my chest. “I’ll be fine. Really. This is why, if you believe in that sort of thing, fate gave me a doctor for a sister.”

Mase sank into the chair next to me, his elbow on the table, his worried gaze pinned to me. “What happened? Were you attacked?”

I nodded. “I was in the air vents.”

Ellison paused to gaze at me, her gray eyes so much like mine, appearing tired but normal, like my sister really was in there and in full control.

“Why?” she asked as she pressed a towel to the side of my face.

“The grating was gone over the one in the Vicious room, the room at the end of the hallway, and there was a chair with your smock on it. Did you leave it there?”

“No.” She frowned. “It’s in the infirmary.”

“What made you climb in the air vent?” Mase asked.

“I was trying to find the source of Ellison’s scream, and I heard a noise.” I twitched my mouth at Randolph across the table. “I smelled river beans when I was inside.”

Randolph swirled the tiny bit of wine in his glass and ducked his head. “I got to the top of the elevator from the air vent in my room. With the amount of terror I experienced on my first night on this ship, I learned pretty quick that I can squeeze into anything, probably even a bikini.” He held up a hand. “I apologize for that image."

"We’ll need to take a look at it," Captain Glenn said.

Randolph tossed the wine drops into his mouth. "My bikini?"

Captain Glenn heaved a sigh, his breath clouding in front of him, and closed his eyes. "The air vent."

“Of course.” Randolph’s hand trembled when he set his glass back down.

“What else, Absidy?” Captain Glenn asked, his voice soft but commanding at the same time. “Did you see anything? Anything at all that would explain why we have an unaccounted lifeform on our ship?”

“And why it sounds like me, if that’s what we heard.” Ellison pressed a towel into a particularly deep cut behind my ear where my chains must’ve gouged my scalp during my head’s meeting with the chair.

I winced. “Something grabbed me in the air vent, but I got away by jumping down and cracking my head in the process. I didn’t see a thing. But I was bleeding and nothing attacked like a rabid animal with glowing green eyes. So I don’t think it’s a Saelis hybrid.”

Mase rubbed at his stubbled jaw. “Maybe we picked up a stowaway on Orin.”

"It's not a ghost," I said, the words fogging the air as if to prove me wrong. "With the cold, yes, it feels like it, but it's not. I invited whatever grabbed me in, and nothing happened. Of course, I had that same problem on Orin, and that definitely was a ghost.”

Captain Glenn’s dark gaze snapped to mine. “What problem on Orin? What ghost?”

I shrugged. “I’m broken? I don’t know. For some reason, the ghost on Orin in the bar didn’t, or couldn’t, pass through me. But a ghost on this ship doesn't explain why we heard Ellison's voice. She's right here, very much alive."

“It also doesn’t explain why we have seven lifeforms.” The captain stared at the ceiling and rubbed his hands up and down the sides of his face vigorously, his dark eyes shining bright.

Randolph stared down into his empty wine glass and gripped the edge of the table until white tipped his knuckles. Mase sat back in his chair, my hand still crushed in his, and hissed out a breath. Ellison cleaned my head methodically. So, it looked they were taking all this news rather well.

“Randolph, you’re sure you locked the ship up when you left?" Captain Glenn asked.

“Of course I’m sure.” Randolph pointed vaguely around the room. "Maybe our Saelis engineer here brought some helping hands with her."

"For the last time, Tits," Poh growled from her stance by the hallway door. "I'm no Saelis."

Captain Glenn pinned Randolph with a warning look. “Randolph…”

"Well, maybe you’re not a Saelis, but maybe you have friends who are," Randolph said, ignoring everything but his empty wine glass.

"Randolph," I hissed, then pointed a finger between us. "Monkey descendants. You and I. Just because she shares certain characteristics with them, doesn’t mean she is one. Or do you have a problem with monkeys too?"

He stared down his ruddy, bulbous nose at me. "When they fling shit, yes I do. I saw her go back there..." He turned in his seat to jab at the double doors to the kitchen. "To the stasis pantry, and she was in there for most of the time you were gone crawling through the air vents. Maybe she was communicating with her friend on this ship."

"I have no friends," Poh said and met my gaze, "and I was hungry."

I had no reason to doubt her. For all she knew, we were the bad guys. Actually we were the bad guys, at least according to the law. Yet here she was, putting up with Randolph’s accusations and helping us deal with whatever haunted this ship.

"No, you weren’t there to see her on Orin," Mase said. "She saved our sweet asses from Parker."

Randolph lifted an eyebrow. "Of course she did. To gain your trust."

"Randolph," I said, my voice low and deadly. "You're not helping."

He slid a hurt look toward me. “Fine. I’m not helping.”

I sighed and shook my head. No matter what anyone said, it would only fuel our distrust of each other, which wouldn’t solve any of our problems.

“What we need is some way to track this seventh passenger down.” Captain Glenn leaned forward over the table. “Capture it. See what it wants.”

“I could maybe rig a Mind-I to do that for us.” Poh glanced at me. “If I had one.”

“Nesbit had one that wasn’t planted in his head,” Mase said. “Anyone know where it is?”

“I’ve already been looking for it to get word about the Saelis to my dad and my roommate back home,” I said.

“We need to find it if you think you can rig it like that, Poh. That’s priority number one. Priority number two is keeping close together. Safety in numbers, since we have no idea what this thing wants. We sleep in here tonight.” Captain Glenn gave Mase and me a meaningful stare. “For some of us, we’re quite used to that.”

A sinking feeling weighted my shoulders. I’d repelled the ghosts with iron when the crew had slept in the dining room before. But this wasn’t a ghost, and I feared we wouldn’t be safe at all.

“Captain, if I don’t find a Mind-I, does this ship have working outside communication so we can ask for help?” Poh asked.

The captain closed his eyes as if to unsee everything wrong with our situation. “Outside communication, yes. Working outside communication, no.”

Mase tightened into a metal rod next to me and vibrated like he’d been struck with an angry hammer. “That fucking bastard Parker is jamming our outside telecom to anything beyond a small radius so he can egg me on.”

Captain Glenn shook his head. “Basically if we can’t see a ship, then we can’t talk to it. And I doubt the Ring Guild would come running to help us knowing that we have a traitor here.”

I forced a shaky exhale. So we were floating through deep space with a severely limited way to call for help, no way to send word to Pop and Moon about the looming threat to humanity, while my trust in the ship’s crew diminished and a seventh lifeform lurked in the shadows.

No, I definitely didn’t think we’d be safe at all.

* * *

I doubted anyone slept well that night since the dining room felt like an ice box. Normally iron repelled the cold energy surrounding a ghost, but because the seventh lifeform wasn’t a spirit, the cold seeped up through the metal floor and shook our bones viciously. Mase and the captain had even ventured out to turn up the heat, but it hadn’t made a difference.

Mase and I leaned against the titanium wall below Esmerelda the Space Vixen while soft snores drifted around us. He leaned his head on my shoulder as She-filled spasms racked his body. My heart clenched for him, and I squeezed his hand tighter in mine.

Underneath the table, I spied Poh’s legs. She’d been guarding the hallway door, awake unless she could sleep standing up. Randolph slumped back in his chair, and the captain and Ellison both rested their heads on the table. It was peaceful, except for my quiet distrust for almost all of them.

I forced myself to stay awake, ready to spring to my feet in case anyone wandered into the kitchen or acted twitchy at all. My eyes burned and watered, but I refused to close them. I wished I knew what else was going on. Mind-I control? Or something to do with the seventh lifeform on this ship? Enquiring minds had all the questions and zero answers.

Randolph blinked himself awake first, so I carefully unwound Mase from my side and nodded toward the kitchen so Randolph would follow me.

Once the door swung shut behind him, he whispered, “You sure you want me in here?”

I pointed to the small table in the middle. “Just sit and talk to me while I make breakfast.”

He sighed, sat on a stool, and pulled out his silver flask from inside his coat. “Hot sauce?”

“I thought you had alcohol in it,” I said.

“I have two flasks.” He shrugged. “This one’s for you. And me. Want some?”

I tipped my tongue with the word no, but thought better of it. I could use something to liven my sleepless senses, so I took the flask and drank deep. It fired down my throat and swam with the uneasiness in my gut.

Randolph took the flask back and cupped his hands around it. “I’ve tried to quit drinking dozens of times, but my family seemed to hate me more when I tried. They said I was even worse without it, and I would inevitably fall back into the bottle. Not that I’m blaming them. I just… It fills something inside of me. Kind of like being a chef.”

I rested my hand on the table across from him as a show of solidarity. Iron filled something inside of me, too, almost as if it made up my entire inner structure. Without it, I probably wouldn’t be standing here today. Unlike alcohol, iron had saved my life. So I didn’t know exactly where he was coming from, but I did know what it was like to be stripped of what mattered most, of what made me me.

“When I’m not cooking, I remind myself of who I am without a drink, and….” Randolph gazed at me, his dark eyes haunted. “I miss being a chef. I even dreamed about it last night.”

“I’m sorry.” I bowed my head, the weight of his sorrow almost too much.

“It’s… I understand why you won’t let me near the food again. But isn’t it funny how I dreamed about cooking instead of the nightmares on this ship?”

I crossed to the cupboards for a mixing bowl and a pan. “Your opinions about what’s funny are different than mine, I think.”

He tipped his head back and chuckled, then gazed down at his feet, his laugh petering out. “Great boogly bags, will you look at what I did?”

I glanced down, and what I was seeing had to roll through tired brain sludge before I comprehended. He wore two left shoes, one beige and one black tip pointing in the same direction.

“Eh.” I waved my hand dismissively. “At least you matched the first letter of the colors. That’s close enough.”

With his large shoulders shaking with amusement once again, he stood and crossed to the double doors, then glanced behind him with a small smile. “I think my life would’ve been a lot happier if you had been in it sooner.” Then he pushed through, and the doors flapped closed behind him.

I blinked as the full meaning of his words hit me. That might’ve been the single nicest thing anyone had ever said to me, especially since I’d refused to let him work his literal dream job. In that moment, I hated what this ship had made me become—a secretive, distrustful bitch. Yet maybe that was part of the reason we were all still alive. Or maybe I was giving myself way too much credit.

After I’d scrambled up a quick breakfast of waffles and red sornish eggs, we all sat around the table bleary-eyed while the captain offered options of what to do next.

“What we’re looking at is a ring behind us that we can’t cross through, Parker’s ship on our right, which is steadily pushing us toward the magnestar on our left. The magnestar is a star that creates an extremely powerful magnetic field. We definitely don’t want to go too far to the left or the force of the magnestar will tear this ship apart.”

Poh settled her fingers on her gun, her brown duster swinging around her ankles with the movement. “Why is this guy Parker pushing this ship toward the magnestar?”

“He thinks it will force us to let him board so he can slip me He,” Mase said with a sigh.

“So we push back,” Poh said.

Mase shook his head while crackles of She lit up his needled veins, so bright they shined from under his dark green sleeves. “His ship is too big, too fast.”

“Then what do we do?” Poh asked, her expression hard as chromium. “He’s jamming our communications. He’s pushing us into this magnestar. Do we roll over and play dead before the seventh lifeform on this ship slits our throats while we sleep?”

“Absolutely not,” Captain Glenn snapped. “But I’m open to suggestions.”

“We go back,” I offered. “The Ringers will let us through once we have solid proof they slaughtered half an alien race to power their rings.”

Captain Glenn gazed at me sharply. “What proof?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m still working on that.”

“Your ghosts.” Randolph downed the rest of his mimosa, pinky up. “The ones you passed through you to the other side. Ask them.”

“I don’t really know…how to do that…” But they had imprinted some of their memories as they’d passed through me. Maybe if I scrutinized those as I played and rewound them through my mind, I might find something I’d missed. “I’ll see what I can do. Thanks, Randolph.”

His ruddy cheeks glowed, and a brilliant smile stretched his mouth. “I save my best ideas for you.”

For the second time that morning, his words clamped around my heart and squeezed. I smiled back at him.

“Just keep those ideas of yours rated PG,” Mase muttered.

I reached under the table to pat his leg. “Captain, did you have another idea that didn’t involve trying to get through the rings?”

“No. That was it.” He wiped his mouth on his napkin and stood, avoiding my gaze. “Mase and I will block off some of the vents today to try to keep our seventh passenger contained, so wear your coats. We’ll also scour the ship to look for it. Ellison, you stay with Poh and help her look for that Mind-I. Randolph, you stay with Absidy. If one of you has to piss, you both piss. We’re about to get to know each other really well.”

The crew stood and parted ways to carry out their duties in pairs, seemingly grateful to get their blood pumping with movement.

Mase grabbed me for a quick kiss and a stern, “Be careful.” Then he pulled me closer to nuzzle my ear. “I fastened a gun underneath the table at my spot while we were eating. Use it if you need to.”

I blinked after him as he strode out the door, hoping against hope he hadn’t given up his only weapon.

I took Ellison’s hand before she left and squeezed. “Aren’t you glad I found you on The Black and brought you onto this ship?”

Her complexion appeared grayer this morning, and her usually silky dark hair fuzzed up around her ears and down the length of her braid. She squeezed back, her hand like ice. “Yes.”

“This isn’t a ghost, so there’s no haunting hour. Watch your backs and scream loudly if you need to,” Captain Glenn said as a final, motivational warning.

Forgoing the breakfast dishes for now, I tucked Randolph away into his quarters. Before I left him alone, we plugged the air vent up with a broken chair and some leftover bedding.

“Use the telecom if you need me,” I instructed. “The one inside this ship still works.”

He nodded. “Just come back unharmed for once.”

That would be nice.

Once he shut the door and bolted it behind him, I wedged a chair under the lever just in case and looked down the hallway toward the hanging light. Silence closed in, as did the keen awareness that with a seventh lifeform slinking around the ship, I may not have been truly alone for quite some time. Who knew how long it had been on this ship? Especially since the Ringers only seemed to care about who passed in through their rings rather than who passed out to deep space. Plus, before I’d cleared the ship of ghosts, we’d been a tad preoccupied. Maybe the seventh lifeform had been here all along.

I wanted to draw our unknown passenger out, see what they wanted, hear if they really sounded like Ellison, and learn if they were responsible for flipping the weird switch on some of the crew. But my focus right now lay behind the door Captain Glenn had locked behind him several days ago, the cargo room where the teralinguas had once been stored. I’d relieved our new dining room table of some of its nails, and luckily they were long and skinny enough to jimmy a lock, unlike my ice picks that were slightly ridged and bumpy.

I headed down the hallway. As soon as I touched my foot in the light’s glow, the cords overhead swung the fixture in an invisible wind. My breath fogged out in front of me and I stopped, glancing at the Vicious room door. Closed, but not completely.

I turned left at the intersection, the moving light behind me turning shadows into beckoning demons. As soon as I fished my phone from my pocket, a shifting noise at the other end of the hallway urged my fingers to search faster. I switched the phone on, listening with breath held, then followed its glow.

Once past the infirmary, the noise came again, as if the wall to my left had come alive with coiling snakes. But nothing was there, at least on the outside. Maybe it was Mase and the captain plugging the air vents.

I took a left into the next hallway. A sniffle and a heaved breath sounded from the darkness ahead.

“Hello?” I called.

There it was again, louder, heartbreaking. Not a female cry but deeper, like a man. Maybe it was Mase trying to fight off his She addiction. Maybe Captain Glenn missed his wife and daughter, and it was extra painful today. Either way, it hurt to hear it.

I started forward again. “Mase? Is that you?”

"Absidy," someone sobbed.

I froze. Why was someone getting weepy over me of all people?

"Why? Why did you and Ellison leave me?"

My mouth opened in a silent cry. I squeezed my eyes shut at that familiar voice. "Pop?"

No. No way. I was imagining things. This wasn't real. Pop wasn't here, even though he sounded like he was just feet away. The sadness in the voice ambushed my ears and cracked my heart, but it wasn’t him. My mind played dirty tricks.

I dragged myself onward, my molars clamped together. My phone light blurred, and tears tracked down my cheeks. I’d only heard Pop cry once before, when Mom died. Now, though, because both his daughters abandoned him, I was sure he was torn up about it. A whimper pushed through my lips at how much we’d put him through lately.

But he wasn’t here. The phone light cut through the darkness, and there was no one there.

I sank to my knees in front of the cargo room and blinked the tears from my eyes. This wasn’t happening. Pop’s phantom voice played like a residual haunting, but Pop wasn’t dead. He wasn’t here, alive, either. I didn’t know what was happening, but it gutted my heart.

“Absidy,” the voice cried from all around me.

I shook my head frantically while I placed the phone between my knees and jimmied the nails into the door’s lock. Tears blurred my eyes. My hands shook.

“Don’t come back,” the voice sobbed. “You’ve disappointed me enough.”

My shoulders hitched at that awful dig. But he would never say something like that. Never.

The door popped open on silent hinges. Traces of teralingua fur and poop rolled out. I swept up my phone and hauled myself to my feet.

Footsteps to my right. Drawing closer. Fast. A breath on my bare arm.

I hurled myself into the room and slammed and locked the door on something hidden in shadows but who wasn’t my Pop.

“Don’t come back!” it screamed.

Something crashed in the hallway. Scurrying sounded up the walls.

The phone’s glow lit a switch on the wall. I flipped it and whipped around. The shifting and slithering continued upward to the platform above and the air vent near the ceiling.

I had maybe seconds before it burst inside, whatever it was. Wooden crates had been piled in the center of the room, the same crates on Orin that I’d seen being carried into the trucks. Captain Glenn had been talking to someone there. Was this his cargo?

The thing beat the titanium walls closer to the vent, rolling thunder through the room. I sprinted to the center. With a glance over my shoulder at the platform, I kicked my boot into the nearest crate then squatted in front of the small hole I’d made to wrench out whatever was inside.

An inhuman wail sounded from above, followed by metal crashing on metal.

The jagged wooden pieces of the broken crate scraped my wrists as I shoved my hands inside. The bandage over my itchy wrist ripped away. My fingers touched cold glass in the shape of a cylinder. Lots of cylinders. I grasped one and yanked. The word Consumectalons was etched lengthwise across the glass. The name of the parasite running through my veins.

Why was it here instead of with the Ringers? Why was it locked away in a cargo room on a ship…destined for human planets? Because it could also be used a biological weapon intended for the rest of humanity, a trigger for the hybrids already on Mayvel and Wix to lose their ever-loving minds. There had been entire trucks full of the parasite, but this looked like only a fraction of it. So where was the rest?

I jerked to my feet and dashed toward the door, the cylinder gripped tight in my fist.

“Absidy!”

A part of me wilted into the titanium floor at the sound of that familiar voice behind me. It was Pop, here but not here. But Pop wasn’t dead. He wasn’t a ghost haunting this ship. As if to prove it to myself, I pulled up short in front of the door, spun around, and shone the phone’s light onto the platform.

A torso hung out of the vent, both arms braced against the walls outside to pull it the rest of the way out. The figure’s head snapped up to hiss into the light. A knit cap covered the bald spot Pop always tried to hide. Gray eyes so much like mine flashed. It was him. It was my Pop.

A low moan heaved out of my mouth as I crashed out of there. It turned into a scream that tore at my throat.

I ran.