Cifer’s eyebrows were pinched, and he frowned at her words. His eyes flashed a vibrant green before returning to the browner color they’d been. “Nothing is wrong with me. And nothing is wrong with you, either.”
He saw too much. “You don’t know anything about me. I was sent to check on you. You appear fine.”
“As do you.” His sultry tone teased between her legs.
Blaize snorted and stomped out of the holding area toward her engines. The nerve of Cifer. Her hair was none of his business. That story about the screw was probably total bullshit. There wasn’t a screw, nut, or bolt on this ship that she hadn’t personally inspected over the past few galactic months.
Before the ER crossing…
Anything could have rattled free like the light fixture.
Was she arguing in his favor once again?
Damn her weak constitution. If she’d voted correctly in the first place, he’d already be gone, and she wouldn’t be questioning her judgment. Except…he’d saved her life. And aside from sneaking on board and being good at hiding, he’d given her no reason not to trust him.
Her attraction to him was the red flag. Could she trust herself?
Chapter 7
Cifer relaxed on his bunk. She would come soon. After several cycles, he’d figured out that she was trying to be random in her appearances, possibly to catch him doing something he shouldn’t. But her random visits weren’t so random. Sometime after Veda brought his first meal of the cycle, Blaize would try to quickly traipse through the cargo hold. He would always call out to her, make her pause. The longest he’d had to wait after Veda fed him had been an hour. He was an expert at waiting.
A glimpse of her red hair, so stark against her pale skin and her lush figure, was enough to make the long bouts of boredom tolerable, the echo of her warm voice enough to keep him satisfied until their next meeting.
The sector door slid open, and Cifer hurled himself to the cell door. “Hello, Beauty.” He leaned against the bars casually, as if his heart wasn’t pounding from being in her presence. He worried the small metal pieces in his pocket, the one sign of his agitation if she knew to look for it. No matter how much he tried, he’d never been able to stop fiddling with the parts he found.
Sadly, she didn’t reply, didn’t even turn her head in his direction, but he caught the quick glimpse she spared him with her almost white eyes. If they’d had black striations, they would have been identical to his mother’s. Or to the memory of his mother’s eyes. Beautiful and clear, catching every detail with a quick glance. Blaize’s speed increased until she’d passed through the far door. She would be working on the mechanical parts of the ship, adjusting here, polishing there. From what Cifer could tell, the ship was in top shape, but he wasn’t an engineer. Maybe the older ship required as many hours as Blaize spent on it.
As soon as she disappeared, he quickly morphed, elongating his body to impossible proportions for anyone who was not his species, and slipped though the opening in the ventilation grate. He camouflaged himself into the metal gray of the ship and slithered, bonelessly, through the duct until he found Blaize. His tail end remained in his room. He could morph his body, but he couldn’t shrink it. His mass stayed the same.
Slowly, he thickened, filling the space almost completely. Transitions required massive energy. The closer he was to his true shape, the easier it was for him to maintain.
Blaize held some kind of tool with a probe. She touched a spot on the bundle of cables and then peered at the readout, again and again. He hadn’t seen her perform this task yet. By the frown on her face, she wasn’t satisfied with the results. “What is wrong? This should be routine,” she muttered.
She was quiet compared to other times he’d watched her. Was she sick?
“Dammit. You piece of shit.”
Cifer craned his neck to get a better view through the cover. Blaize cursed the probe that had separated into two pieces. Bent over, she searched the floor nearby, spinning in a complete circle.
“Shit.” She stood and went to a workbench set up along the far wall. Her back was to Cifer, so her expression was a mystery, but her hands flew through the cabinets and containers. A couple of times, she stopped and pulled a small item from one of the containers, held it against the probe, and then returned it to the container. After several repetitions, she dropped the probe on the table and went toward the door.
Cifer quickly stretched and pulled himself back through the shaft. He completed his return to normal shape right before she hit the cargo hold.
“What were you doing?” She darted up to the cell door, the closest she’d come to him since the first meeting.
“What?”
“I saw you… I saw something. What were you doing?”
“Uh, just fiddling with these parts.” He hoped that would be explanation enough.
“Let me see.”
He held up the few screws, gears, nuts, and other bits that he was slowly fashioning into what he thought might turn out to be a bird.
Blaize pressed her face closer, and he moved the half-built sculpture toward her. She jumped back. “Where did you get that stuff?”
Cifer shrugged. “Just lying around, here and there.”
