The Aandrisks moved even closer, green and blue scales brushing against the kit’s skin. They put their hands on it, and their touches became a dance all of their own, every bit as much as their swinging heads and tails. There were hands running down arms, and claws in the kit’s hair.
An image appeared, brighter than any she’d experienced before. Light. Warm, life-giving light. Water lapping over her toes. Sand cradling her body, holding her steady and safe. Sidra was at full attention. The image lingered, even though there was no food in her mouth, no jar of mek beneath her nose. It lingered as the Aandrisk woman pressed her hips against the kit’s. It grew as the man ran the flat of his palm down the kit’s back. Sidra had never experienced a sensory image in this way before, but somehow, she knew exactly what it meant.
Oh, no, she thought. And then: Oh, wow.
The image was almost overpoweringly good, and yet she had this hungry, impossible-to-ignore sense she hadn’t seen all of it. She knew there were other images waiting behind it, every bit as good. The Aandrisks nuzzled the kit, and she nuzzled back, wanting. She—
A system alert went off, drowning out everything else within her. A proximity alert, the kind that warned of the sudden appearance of a nearby ship, or an object that posed a collision risk. An all-powerful screaming alert, triggered by someone behind her, someone she could not see, whose unknown hands were sliding over the kit’s shoulders.
Sidra shut the alert off as quickly as she could, but her pathways were sure her housing was in danger, and the kit had taken its cue. It was no longer dancing. It was throwing the hands off its shoulders. It was spinning around to see what the danger was. Another Aandrisk, a man, likely associated with the other two, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter. Her system knew only danger.
‘Whoa,’ the third Aandrisk said. ‘Whoa, I am so sorry.’
‘Are you okay?’ the Aandrisk woman said.
Sidra had to answer, but she couldn’t get the words out. The kit was breathing too fast. She shook the kit’s head.
Tak was there – but from where, she couldn’t tell. She couldn’t tell anything. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t make sense, she just had that one narrow cone, and no no no, don’t do this, don’t do this now, stop it, don’t ruin it, stop it stop it stop—
‘It’s okay,’ he said, putting an arm around the kit’s shoulders. Sidra looked up at him just in time to see him flash an apology toward his dejected dance partner.
See, you’ve ruined it, you’ve ruined it for him, I need to go home, I need to go away, I need to stop, please—
‘Hey. Sidra. Sidra, come on. We’ll . . . get somewhere quiet, yeah? I’m here, it’s . . . okay.’ He led the kit through the crowd. She kept her gaze on the floor, trying to ignore the concerned stares. She wanted to disappear.
‘Is she okay?’ It was the third Aandrisk, pushing his way alongside them.
‘She’s fine,’ Tak said.
Sidra looked at the Aandrisk man, and tried to push words through the panicked breaths. ‘It’s not – it’s not your—’ The air got in the way. Dammit, she didn’t need to breathe!
‘It’s not . . . your fault,’ Tak said. ‘She’ll be . . . fine. Thank you.’
They cleared the pit, leaving the Aandrisk behind. Tak barrelled them through the crowd toward the table they’d occupied earlier. A group of Laru sat there now. Tak swore, and headed for the exit.
‘Not outside,’ Sidra gasped. ‘Not outside.’
Tak changed course and entered the smoking room. A group of modders looked up from around a tall communal pipe.
‘Hey, man,’ a Human woman said, a smoking mouthpiece hanging in her mechanical hand. ‘Sorry, we just—’ She looked at Sidra. ‘Dude, is she okay?’
Tak visibly willed the concern away from his face and looked back at them with an easy smile. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Never . . . buying smash from . . . that vendor again, though. Synth shit, y’know?’
‘Oh, rough,’ the woman said. ‘She got the shakes?’
Sidra forced the kit to nod at her. It was true, technically. Just not in the way the modder meant.
‘Well, you’re welcome to ride it out in here,’ the woman said. She flicked her eyes over to Tak and gestured at the pipe. ‘Sorry about the redreed.’
‘It’s fine,’ Tak said. Sidra could see that his eyes were already starting to itch. As if this couldn’t get any worse.
Tak led the kit to a quiet corner, away from the smokers. Sidra sat the kit down. The fast breathing had stopped. All that was left was the overwhelming sense of embarrassment. She preferred hyperventilating.
‘I’m so, so sorry,’ she whispered.
‘It’s not . . . your fault,’ Tak said, his talkbox turning itself down. ‘I pushed. I’m sorry. You told me . . . how you’re comfortable, and I . . . should have . . . respected that.’
‘It’s okay,’ Sidra said, taking his hand with the kit’s. ‘It was fun, at first. I liked it. I just—’ The kit put its face in its hands. ‘Stars, I am so tired of always making a mess of things for you.’
Tak scoffed. ‘Now, that’s . . . just not true. We’ve . . . been to . . . how many parties—’