Gravity (Dark Anomaly #1) - Marina Simcoe Page 0,39

stare with my skin.

With the considerable distance between us, he couldn’t possibly hear what we were talking about. Errocks’ hearing wasn’t as acute as their sense of smell. Despite that, Vrateus and I both spoke in lowered voices.

“I normally eat in my room,” Vrateus said. “After everyone else has had their dinner, including you. From now on, I want to feed you first. If you notice this smell in your food, I’ll order the entire pot dumped.”

“All right,” I agreed. “But what are the chances of anyone poisoning the food? What’s the point of killing everyone? No one could survive here on their own. People are needed to run and maintain things.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “It would be just another precaution.”

“Okay.” I conceded. “I’ll do it if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Thank you.”

After that, Malahki showed us a variety of edible plants the damirian had been cultivating, including some grains and greens.

“Are any of these used in meals,” I asked, trying one of the juicy strings from the cluster he had given me. It tasted a little like a banana but with the texture of a watermelon.

“Some.” Malahki pressed its mouth into a thin line, displaying obvious displeasure. “Other than grains, the crew prefers meat to plants. And now that they have a whole farm of vasai, they can have as much meat as their digestive systems can handle.”

The savage scene of butchering the giant centipede came unbidden to my mind.

“The vasai also lay clusters of eggs,” Vrateus commented. “Which are highly nutritious.”

In the meantime, we had circled the gardens, our tour coming to an end. Vrateus stepped aside, talking with Crux about something. I lingered by the last bed with ridged, dark-green spheres that reminded me of a cactus, though they had no needles or spikes.

Idly, I walked around the planter, admiring the round fruit. I wasn’t in a hurry to return to the room that felt more like a prison cell with each passing day.

“Watch your step,” Malahki warned me.

“Oh. What is this?” I skipped over a pile of dry branches on the ground behind the planter.

“Just some garden waste. I was going to send it to the garbage sorting room.” Malahki lifted an armload of the twigs then kicked aside a piece of loose paneling on the wall.

It revealed an opening, large enough for me to fit through. A wide, ribbed strip moved inside it, like a conveyor belt. The damirian shoved the branches inside. With rustling and thumping, they moved down, pushed by the belt.

“Is it like a garbage chute?” I asked. “Where does it lead to?”

“To the garbage sorting room, near the vasai farm. They use some of the garden waste for bedding for the centipedes.”

“Does all garbage end up being sent to the same location?” I asked.

“I believe so.”

That might mean there were more garbage tunnels accessible by openings in the walls.

“The system isn’t perfect,” Malahki complained. “You might have seen dead grass and leaves in the corridor not far from your room. There is a kink in the tunnel and debris is often blown out through the wall. I have to sweep the floor there, every time I get rid of garden waste.” It shook its head, dumping the rest of the dry branches into the chute.

“Are they steep then? The tunnels?”

“In some places they are. But they need to be even steeper, as some garbage, especially the garden waste, ends up getting stuck. I go down the tunnel now and then, to clean or to fix the conveyor belt when it gets stuck. But it’s still more convenient to have the tunnels than to carry every armload to the farm myself.”

Vrateus returned to us. He took hold of my arm again, signaling it was time to leave. The now-familiar sensation of his large hand firmly circling my upper arm spread with warmth through the rest of my body. I couldn’t resist drawing in a long breath, savoring his scent as it filled my lungs.

What was I doing?

I might have just discovered a way to finally escape the Dark Anomaly. Now, was definitely not the time to get distracted by its captain.

I no longer felt sad for Malahki possibly having to remain a gender neutral forever. Now, I was actually envious of the damirian’s morose serenity. Wouldn’t it be a blessing? Not to be affected by hormones at the most inconvenient of times?

As we walked down the corridor, I watched the floor under my feet carefully. A short distance before