Broken Episode One (15 page)

She put up a hand tersely. “Cool your jets. Fine,
I’ll tell you. When we came across it, I got Klutzo to scan it.”
She started to play with her arms, brushing her hand over her
wrist. She wanted to tell Josh about the feeling she got off that
thin piece of metal sticking up out of the desert sands, but she
couldn’t. Because, seriously, she had known the guy long enough now
to realize he would pay absolutely zero attention to her feelings.
“Anyhow, he said while he can get a visual on it, that’s it. He
can’t get any other readings.”

Josh snorted. “It just means it’s being shielded
from sensors.”

She offered him a sarcastic smile. “No, that’s not
what he said. He said there are no readings available, because it
doesn’t appear as if it has a mass, charge, or any other physical
property.”

He leveled his gaze at her, waited for her to meet
it, then he snorted. Loudly. Grotesquely. “You’re an idiot. That
makes no sense.”

“Fine, why don’t you ask Klutzo yourself?”

“You think I’m going to trust the ramblings of a
recording ball that has been wiped so many times it can’t fly
straight?”

“You know, Josh, you’ve got a serious problem.”

“Is it you? It’s you, isn’t it?” He answered
sarcastically as he shifted past her and tried to touch the
spike.

She grabbed his hand again. Once more it brought her
within close proximity of his face.

He arched an eyebrow. “My patience is running
out.”

“Just, just don’t touch it! Seriously, can’t you
feel it? It’s so … creepy.”

He arched his other eyebrow. “Creepy? It’s a
freaking black spike sticking out of the sand.”

“No. It’s more. Klutzo had the same reaction as I
did. It’s … I don’t think we should disturb it.”

He gave another of his rattling, world-ending
snorts. It was a surprise he didn’t suck the whole desert up his
nostrils. “You accuse me of being the idiot? I wouldn’t have
thought you would be superstitious. Then again, you never cease to
surprise me,” his voice bottomed out and his lip kinked to the
side.

“Just
don’t
—”

He tried to reach past her to touch the spike. She
got in his way, but in doing so, he bumped her towards it.

Her side pressed up against that thin piece of
metal.

Immediately, Josh grabbed her back. “Be careful,” he
snarled.

“Careful? You’re the one who should be careful. We
have no idea what that thing can do,” she said, trying to ignore
the lingering touch of his hands around her middle.

He looked at her pointedly. “You just bumped into
that thing, Princess. If anything were to happen, it would have
happened by now.”

She opened her mouth.

Something began to shift underneath her. A rumbling
travelled up through the sand, sending it scattering about her.

“What the hell?” She had time to say.

Then the ground below her gave way.

In the blink of an eye metal plates opened
underneath them, and both her and Josh tumbled into the
darkness.

It happened too quickly. He went from teasing her,
to feeling the ground below give way. He tried to reach her, tried
to grab her, but in the tumble of sand and metal, she fell from his
grasp.

He felt his body fall, felt the sand wash around
him, like dry water, striking his body, covering his face,
cascading down his back.

There was a crash, the sound of metal buckling, and
finally the thump as his body struck something.

Instinctively, he rolled, absorbing the force of the
fall. The sand helped to soften the blow, too.

He rolled to his feet. “Mimi? Mimi?” He called into
the darkness. Bringing a hand up and covering his mouth, he coughed
through the sand, batting a hand at it as he waited for it to
disburse.

His heart was in his throat, pounding, thrumming,
threatening to shake through his jaw and shatter his teeth.

Realizing he couldn’t wait for the great clouds of
sand to disburse, he got down on his knees and proceeded to
methodically feel around with his fingers.

Soon enough he struck a leg.

It had to be her.

She wasn’t moving.

“Mimi,” he screamed her name, his voice echoing off
some distant wall.

He had no idea where he was, but as his mind caught
up to the situation, he realized it was likely some kind of downed
spaceship. One that had lain undisturbed in this great desert for
countless years.

It would be a scavenger’s dream. The old Josh would
have been over the moon.

The new Josh didn’t care. The new Josh quickly found
Mimi’s face and pressed a hand over her mouth to check her
breathing. “Mimi,” he shouted once more.

The dust and sand started to settle, and finally he
saw her.

Her head was at an odd angle. Just before fear could
shoot through him, she started to rouse.

He fell back on his haunches, relief pumping through
him with every beat of his heart.

“What … happened?” She managed.

He resisted the urge to crumple over her and hug
her. For one, he hated her. For another, goddamn it, he hated her.
But the urge, nonetheless, had to be controlled.

“Josh?” She tried to turn towards him. Suddenly she
twitched in pain. That’s when he noticed a pool of blood trickling
out from behind her head. It was staining the sand as it marched
towards him.

“Hold still,” he said quickly, weighing a hand into
her shoulder. “We fell through the sand into some kind of ship,” he
explained in a soft voice, “you’ve hit your head.”

“I feel okay.”

“Mimi, don’t argue with me. Just hold still.” As
fear caught him, and his brow slicked with sweat, a memory surged
up to meet it.

The spray-on skin was still in his pocket. He’d
wisely kept it after changing his clothes. At the time, he mused it
could likely come in handy.

It was about to.

Still, whilst the spray-on skin would immediately
stop the bleeding and cancel out any pain, he needed a scanner to
ensure there was no brain damage. He also needed drugs to fight her
concussion, and to fight any damage, should it be there.

“I want you to keep talking to me,” he said as he
pushed to his knees.

“What, why?”

“Mimi, just talk to me.” He turned from her and
started to search through the sand. If he was lucky, one of the
sliders might have fallen down into the ship with them. The sliders
would be equipped with standard med packs.

“I don’t get it, you keep telling me to shut
up.”

“Now I’m changing my mind. I do that a lot.”

“I’ve kind of noticed that.”

His lips kinked into a smile as he searched through
the mounds of sand and broken metal. He soon reached the point
where they’d fallen, and he stared up.

He couldn’t believe his eyes. It felt like he’d
tumbled quite a distance, to be sure, but as he stared at the roof
high above, he realized they’d dropped a good 15 meters. How they’d
both survived, he didn’t know. Though it was likely a combination
of the sand offering them a cushion and the falling chunks of
ceiling forming a kind of ramp as they rolled down into the belly
of the ship.

The point was, he wouldn’t be able to make it back
up into the desert; there was nothing to climb.

He swore softly under his breath.

“What is it?” Mimi asked.

“Just keep talking,” he encouraged her. “Tell me
about … the interstellar baking championship.”

“I thought you said that was pathetic.”

“It is pathetic. Just tell me about it.”

“I … I’m kind of tired. I just want to …” she
trailed off.

He turned sharply on his foot. “Mimi,” he said in a
booming voice, “you are not going to sleep. Now talk to me about
the interstellar baking championship.”

“There’s no need to be so mean. Why are you so mean,
anyway? I mean, I’ve met people who’ve come from difficult
backgrounds before, and they’re not like you,” she began.

He smiled. Not because she was putting him down, but
because Mimi was about to have a rant. He’d heard enough of them to
know she was only getting started.

As she continued to berate him, he searched the
ship, hoping like hope to come across one of the sliders. Soon, he
realized there simply wasn’t one down here.

Just as desperation struck him, he looked up and saw
something small and dark zip into view. Putting his hand over his
eyes to cut out the sunshine streaming in from the massive hole in
the roof, he quickly realized it was Klutzo.

Klutzo.

The ball appeared to be … reticent. Scared, even.
Rather than zip into the ship and check on Mimi, it flew back and
forth like a worried dog.

“What are you doing?” Josh chided it. “Get down
here. You need to scan Mimi. No, wait, go to one of the sliders and
bring the med kit.”

“…
Dangerous.”

“What?” Josh spat.

“It’s dangerous down there.”

“Go and get me that med kit and get down here now,”
Josh shouted, using the exact tone he would on a recruit.

Klutzo zoomed away, and within less than a minute
was back. He dragged a med kit in a small holding beam behind him.
As he flew into the belly of the ship, however, the little
recording ball appeared to hesitate. It was honestly as if the damn
thing was scared. Maybe it had been wiped so many times that it had
forgotten it was a machine.

As Klutzo flew towards him, Josh snapped forward,
grabbed the med kit from the holding beam, before it was even
turned off, then turned and ran towards Mimi. He plunged down to
his knees, skidded slightly, and started to rip into the kit. He
grabbed up the medical scanner, set it to work with several
practiced moves, and only then took a breath.

….

Mimi Chester had a nasty concussion, a deep gash in
the back of her skull, but no brain damage. Or at least nothing the
contents of the medical kit wouldn’t fix.

Josh sighed. Maybe a little too loudly, as Mimi
crumpled her brow. Fortunately she didn’t say anything, and he
quickly set to work selecting the correct drugs.

“Okay, I just need you to sit up,” he said gently as
he helped her into a seated position.

Again she didn’t say anything. But she watched him.
And those two piercing blue eyes were quite the distraction.

He swallowed, then swallowed again. In fact, he
swallowed entirely too much as he went about the delicate and quite
tactile job of fixing her injuries.

Once he’d administered the drugs, he set about
seeing to the gash on the back of her head. Carefully he separated
her hair then sprayed on the skin.

Once he was done, he checked her again with the
medical scanner.

When it confirmed that no more medical intervention
was necessary, he let out another massive sigh of relief.

“Thank you,” she said softly. She could have taken
the time to point out that Josh was being a massive hypocrite once
again. He knew very well he spent most of his time putting her
down. So surely he had no right to pretend to care about her
safety.

The problem was, it wasn’t a pretense.

He did care. Kind of. Because he still hated her.
Kind of.

He shifted back and set about packing up the med
kit. Knowing Mimi, they would need it again. Probably pretty
soon.

She was still watching him. It didn’t take long for
her attention to become too uncomfortable to ignore. He set the med
kit down and looked up at her. “What?”

“I’m waiting.”

“For what?”

“For you to change again.”

His brow crumpled. “What exactly does that
mean?”

“I’ve noticed a pattern with you, Josh Cook.
Whenever you go into this protective mode, whenever you save me, it
doesn’t take too long for you to turn back into the other
Josh.”

He pressed his lips together and tried to control
the flare of anger that ignited at her words.

She narrowed her eyes. “Still waiting. It is about
to happen, isn’t it? Any minute now, you’re going to snap at me
again. You’re going to tell me I’m the most useless person in the
universe and that I killed Lilly Williams,” her voice broke with
tension.

“…
What? I wouldn’t say
that.”

“You did say that. Don’t you remember? That’s why I
walked away from you. I didn’t kill her….” She started to choke
up.

Josh blinked back his surprise.

He’d been ready to shout at her. Of course he had.
What an ungrateful brat. He’d busted a gut to save her, and the
second thing she’d said was she was waiting for him to turn back
into a monster again.

Now, he couldn’t do anything but stare as tears
tumbled down her cheeks.

“Look, Mimi, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice choking
for some reason.

She didn’t look at him. Instead, she stared at her
hands.

This was a Mimi he’d never met. Up until this point,
he’d convinced himself she had completely gotten over the death of
Lilly Williams. Up until this point, he’d assumed she was arrogant
enough to push away whatever responsibility she’d had in the
so-called accident.

Now he realized he was wrong.

Her tears attested to that.

“Do you have any idea what it feels like to try to
overcome something like that, but to constantly be reminded by
everyone you know that you are not allowed to move on? I tried to
come to terms with my role in Lilly’s death. I tried to get on with
the rest of my life. But people won’t let me. They keep reminding
me, over and over again. They won’t move on themselves. You know
what that feels like?”

“Yes,” the word was out before he could stop
himself. Rational Josh knew that at a time like this he should just
shut up. Problem was, Josh hardly ever listened to his rational
side.

She looked up at him from under her crinkled brow.
“What?”

“You asked me if I know how it feels to have people
constantly remind me of my past. To stop me from moving on. I know
exactly how that feels. You had a partial role in an accident,
Mimi, I was a pirate and a scavenger and a criminal for years. If
you think it’s hard to turn your back on your past and continue
with your life, it’s impossible for me. Somewhere along the line,
no matter how far you distance yourself from what you did, someone
will remind you.”