to challenge her. I’m like a thousand times bigger. If I could just get her under my boot, I could squish her flat.
Or not. Probably. But I’d like to try.
“Delphi. First,” she repeats.
“Well.” Baby sighs. “I don’t know what she’s saying, but she looks pretty pissed off. And Delphi does look pretty pathetic stuck in that spin node. Plus, once she comes out of it, she’ll be upset that she was left behind. Because Jimmy has gone to Earth with Luck and Nyleena.”
Oh. I glare at Flicka. “Way to bury the lede, dumb bot.”
“As if,” she squeaks. “As if that would’ve been the one thing that changes your mind. I tried to tell you there were extenuating circumstances. You just refused to hear me and went on your tirade about how done you were and how horrible your posh life has been fixing autocooks and water generators.”
I rub a hand down my face, almost wishing someone would put me back in the time freeze. “Fine. I’ll go check on Delphi. But I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to do much. I don’t control time. And you do control time and you obviously can’t get her out.”
“Just follow me,” Flicka says, flying towards the air vent and disappearing inside.
I throw up my hands and look at Baby. “She’s crazy.”
“That’s why we outlaw beebots here. You’re the one who said she could stay.”
Fuck it. “Where is this spin node again?”
“Museum level. Should I meet you there? Or would you like company?”
“Fuck you.”
He disappears and I’m alone.
And you know what? I kinda like alone. Maybe alone hasn’t been so bad?
But then I get out into the empty harem room and the eerie silence begins to sink in. Back in my office it was easy to forget that the whole station is frozen in time. But I would have to go back more than ten years to recollect another occasion when this room was empty.
And since that time hundreds of Cygnian princesses have come through here. Some of them left the moment their servitude was up, but not most of them. Most of them stayed on the station.
And all of them turned against me.
Maybe Luck and Nyleena did start the war, but those girls… they finished it.
They hate me.
I sigh as I get in the lift and take it down a few levels, then exit out onto the main concourse, which is also empty. Just random servo bots humming along cleaning the already gleaming black obsidian floors.
Just like that day when we arrived as kids. The seven of us, and Xyla, and ALCOR, and the bots. That’s it. For six years we were all we had.
And then everything changed and it was never the same since.
I can’t tell if this nostalgia I feel is longing or regret. But is there much difference between the two?
I get on the closest escalator and start heading down to level one twenty-two. It’s not a fast-track to that level, I have to get off and change routes a few times. But I don’t mind the time it takes to get there on foot, even though there are plenty of lift bots flying around.
Because I can think about my life, and my choices, and how I got here.
I wouldn’t be able to change the escape from Akeelian System. That seems very set in stone. Corla and I didn’t even know each other. Her mind was dead set on escaping. And what was I gonna do if I didn’t leave Wayward Station going the opposite direction? Stay there and be experimented on?
No. That one choice was probably out of my control. But once we arrived here, I didn’t have to take ALCOR’s deal. Did I?
I mean, for sure, it would’ve been difficult to get anywhere else. I couldn’t go back out the main gate. The entire Akeelian Army was on the other side. But there is a second gate to the Seven Sisters and that secret back door Baby was speaking of in the office. If I had known about it, it might’ve been an option.
What would I have done, if I had left? Maybe become a scavenger like Luck and Valor? But without the advantage of a sentient ship or the protection of ALCOR, my life would’ve been pretty hard. I don’t think I would’ve lived this long, that’s for sure.
I would not have been a princess-hunter like Serpint and Draden or a bot-liberator like Jimmy. Or a virtual-reality nerd like Tray. No reason to hunt down princesses