This was the hard part—knowing how much to say. The truth was off the table, but Eliot knew her time with the Invictus’s crew would be smoother if the conversation felt two-sided. “The black market is more crowded than Lux has led you to believe. I’ve been working the scene as a freelancer for a while, but that gets lonesome. Not to mention exhausting.”
“Yes.” Seven’s voice brought new meaning to the word scathing. “Hashing up other people’s lives must be very tiring.”
“Freelancer?” The Engineer frowned. “But—how do you jump through the Grid without a TM crew?”
A rabbit-hole question, best skipped. “With great difficulty. As I said, I’m looking to ease things up, so I thought I’d give the whole teamwork thing a try.”
“Teamwork?” Subject Seven spat. “You just sabotaged our mission!”
“No,” she corrected. “I gave you incentive to hire me. Consider this past hour my test run, a demonstration of my top-notch thieving skills.”
“I’m all the thief this ship needs!” Nothing had caught fire yet—a miracle considering how Seven’s stare burned. “I can handle heists just fine, when you’re not there tossing everything to shazm! What the Hades were you doing in my final exam Sim anyway?”
“Your—what?”
“My final exam Sim. You were dressed up as Marie Antoinette. You rigged the whole hashing thing! You winked at me!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Eliot did, of course. “If we work jobs together, we can maximize our thieving capacity. Twice the loot, twice the payout.”
“You were inside Versailles’s programming,” Subject Seven pressed. “I’m not crazy and I’m certainly not delusional enough to invite you to join my crew—”
“No invitation needed.” She shrugged. “I’m already here, and if you try to kick me off, you’ll never see the Rubaiyat again.”
The four exchanged glances—a web of silent conversations. Seven’s eyes linked most with the Medic. There was such a familiarity in the pair’s body language. Nod, shrug, eyebrow twitch; everything meant something. How long had it been since someone had looked at Eliot that way?
“This ship,” Seven began, “it’s built on trust. I trust Imogen knows where she’s sending me. I trust Priya to clean my cuts and keep the engines going. I trust Gram to guide us through the Grid….”
The Engineer fidgeted with the cube he held, brow furrowed. When his gaze landed back on his console screen, it wavered, as if stumbling through a foreign language without translation tech, all meaning lost.
Eliot took a deep breath, shook the shake from her pulse.
Seven went on, “I’ve got no idea what I’m going to get when I toss you into the mix.”
“You’ll just have to sit back and see.” Had there been a table in front of Eliot, she would’ve propped up the ridiculous button-up boots she was wearing, just like the men in old Western movies did when they had the upper hand. But the captain’s console was behind her, and the Invictus’s crew all had a grasp on her superior position without the body language.
“You’re in my seat,” Seven said.
“It’s all yours as soon as you show me to my bunk,” Eliot told him. “I’d like one close to the floor. Heights aren’t really my thing.”
The moment sat and sat. Seven was sizing her up, running through his options, and realizing it was a very short sprint. “So you produce the Rubaiyat when we reach Lux?”
“That’s right.” Eliot smirked.
He crossed his arms and stepped close, only a few centimeters short of crushing the hem of her dress. “What’s to stop us from throwing you out on your tail once we deliver the goods?”
“The same thing that will stop me from giving Lux a matinee datastream of our chase and lobbying for your job. Mutual trust.” Eliot’s smirk-smile remained steady. It was her default expression as of late, because she couldn’t sustain any other emotion. Not after what she’d seen. Not with everything that was at stake.
Subject Seven’s eyes narrowed. “We don’t even know your name.”
“Eliot.”
“That’s it? Just Eliot?”
“Only Eliot.” What use were surnames when there was no family attached to them? “A girl used to reciprocal introductions. I realize bursting in on you like this was rude, but let’s not make that our standard.”
The crew wasn’t quite sure what to do. The Medic moved to Subject Seven’s side—a closeness that melded her scrubs with his workman’s shirt. Nebula Girl blinked, while the Engineer looked up from his screen. His stare hadn’t changed, gentle dark mixed with doubt. It reminded Eliot of an overcast dawn. “You want to know our names?”
“I want—” Here she paused, struck by the word’s danger. The taste of it on her tongue—What? What do you want, Eliot? Can you even recall?—made her swallow. “A fresh start. Look, I’m not asking for friendship tattoos or a forever home, just a chance to try a new life on for size. If it doesn’t fit, no harm done. If it does, your palmdrives will get so loaded you won’t even be able to wave. Knowing your names would be a nice bonus.”
The Invictus was so quiet, with its stealth engines and haunted crew. Noises from the outside were leaking in, the calls of officers who started to uncover the lifeboats. Theirs were calm, routine voices, unaware that things were about to get much, much worse. Ignorance is bliss, it was said, and maybe it was better that they could stare into the star-strangled sky and breathe deep, before the dark crashed down in fathoms….
“I’m Imogen McCarthy.” Nebula Girl continued the introductions when no one else offered. “Gram’s our resident genius. Priya keeps busy keeping us alive. Farway—”
“That’s a family name,” Subject Seven interrupted. “Everyone else knows me as Far.”
“That’s it?” Eliot prodded. “Just Far?”
“Call me what you will, but don’t mistake this impasse as an excuse to get chummy.” Each word of his was a pulled tooth. Subject Seven should’ve been bleeding from the mouth. “Bunk on the bottom right corner is all yours, Eliot. I’d like my chair back now, if it’s all the same to you.”
“It’s never not the same.” With the help of Eliot’s boots, they were equal silhouettes when she stood. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ll be turning in. I’ve had a trying day and these shoes are as painful as they are pretty.”
Imogen gave an appreciative grunt. The rest of the Invictus’s crew watched, shell-shocked, as Eliot swept past their captain to her new quarters. She stole glances into the others’ bunks as she did. One was strung with twinkle lights, with a holo-paper issue of Style Yesteryear faceup on a brightly woven Kilim rug. Another had a pair of antique wireless BeatBix headphones on top of the pillow. The adjacent pod was cluttered with kettlebell weights and dirty socks, and had the distinct scent of boy. The bunk above was meticulous in comparison—its bed made up with hospital corners. A poster of the periodic table brought blocks of color to its far wall.