Here she was thinking that anything that happened on the station was a secret. She would have been picked up the moment the Alethia entered the station’s influence.
At their approach, the chair facing away swivelled around.
And in it sat a man who Tina recognised immediately. His skin was dark rusty-red and, rather than warty, it was smooth and looked wet, like a frog’s skin.
Hundreds of tentacles hung from the line of his jaw, constantly getting longer or shorter and slowly swaying from side to side. The top of his head was bald, save for a couple of thicker tentacles that branched into thinner ones. Those moved all the time, too. The jacket he wore over a loose singlet showed that his chest was equally smooth and red-skinned. An amulet crafted from what looked like hair dangled from his pirate belt, as well as a knife.
His hands, if you could still call them that, rested on the armrests of the chair. Tentacles also covered the backs of his hands, making them look like unruly mops. He wore loose trousers. His feet were bare, with long curved nails like those of a dog.
She imagined that in times past, when people had imagined the devil, he would have looked surprisingly like the creature she saw before her.
This was the pirate leader Artan.
He laughed. “You already know me. Why don’t you bow?”
“I don’t bow for criminals.”
One of the tentacles on his hands shot out. By the time it wrapped around Tina’s arm, it had stretched to a thin cord, but the strength in it made her gasp. It pulled at her, but she resisted.
The men who had brought her forced her to kneel onto the ground. Tina fell unceremoniously. A pain shot through her knee even though the floor was quite bouncy. Sitting on her knees had never been a strong point of hers.
Artan casually flicked his fingers. The tentacle that surrounded her flicked loose and flew back to him. It became part of his hand.
“So you thought you were smart,” he said.
It was impossible to see his mouth where the sound was coming from. Just about everything on his face moved constantly, and she had the impression that those tentacles were sizing her up. Those ones on the top of his head ended in little bulbs with a black spot inside, like snail eyes.
“Bow further,” one of the guards said.
When Tina refused, he whacked her head from behind.
The contact with his fleshy tentacles made her shudder.
Artan said, “Leave her. She is worth more to me undamaged than damaged. Take her possessions and wait at a distance.”
One man took off Tina’s belt. When the weight fell off her hips, panic overcame her. She’d known this was going to happen. It would make contacting Thor so much harder.
Tina rose to her feet. “Excuse me, but I have bad knees. Kneeling doesn’t agree with me.”
He laughed. “Always defiant.” In amongst all the tentacles, she wasn’t even sure where his mouth was.
There was something eerily familiar about him, but she was sure she had never met the man Jackson Hirsh, delegate to the Federacy Assembly.
“Tina Freeman. I didn’t think I ever had the honour of meeting you.”
How did he know who she was?
He laughed. “You thought I wouldn’t notice your visit? You know those alias identities of the Federacy Force officers are stored in the Assembly database. That database is small enough to fit inside this tentacle.”
He lifted one of the tentacles from his hands. It looked like a worm.
“I know about all those names: Louise Metvier, David Metz, huh? Very interesting person. Rasa Vichenko? Seriously, where do you collect those people?”
Tina’s heart was hammering. She would have expected him to know Finn’s family, but Rasa?
“Then of course you meet up with the Olafsens. They’ve been on our watch list for a long time. A lot of rabble you’ve collected around you, even Arkady Dimitrov!” He laughed. “All the bleeding hearts and do-gooders.”
“What is it you actually want?”
He laughed again. “In this room, I ask the questions.”
Well then, why wasn’t he asking them?
“I am amused, though, why you bleeding hearts can’t seem to grasp the concept of progress.”
“By progress, you mean occupying innocent people’s homes and turning them into warty toads?”
“Tina, Tina.” He shook his head. “I thought you, of all people, would understand the potential of this mutation. We can turn ourselves into anything we want, defy any disease and heal any injury.”
And why then had he chosen to look like a disgusting slimy toad? She said, “I know about the potential but also know the danger. Not everyone survives contact with the rift material.”
“No, sadly, they don’t, especially women. We need women, right? Wrong!” He laughed again. It was becoming pretty annoying.
“I have no idea what you’re getting at.” The infection was said to mess with people’s minds. No wonder he didn’t make any sense.
From the corner of her eye, she spotted that one of the two men wanted to come closer, probably for punishing her for her transgression or rudeness to their leader. But he waved them away.
“Do relax. This woman amuses me.”
Well, Tina found it anything but amusing.
He leaned back in his seat. “Let’s get down to business.”
“I have no business here. Lock me up if you want to.” In fact, the sooner he did that, the sooner she could try to contact Thor.
“You might listen to me before you dismiss me. Unless you know of the Federacy’s plans for Project Charon?”
Plans?
“Ha, you don’t know. Then listen and be amazed.”
He let a silence lapse as if for effect. He was certainly a capable actor. And Tina was determined not to fall into the trap of looking interested. This was a carefully rehearsed act by a cunning man and she should not let his strange
