“Just like that?”
He turned and walked away.
She slammed her hands against the barrier, earning herself two harsh shocks to her palms. “Atlas! Please! Don’t leave me!”
But he did.
Chapter Twelve
“You were victimized.”
Jerri had been ordered to attend regular therapy with Commander Esense as part of her treatment, and probably punishment for having slept with Atlas. The way the others looked at her with a mixture of pity and disgust, she couldn’t have been more humiliated if the captain had branded her with a scarlet letter. It wasn’t just that she’d slept with a commanding officer. Half the people on the ship had done that. She’d slept with a Kitari. She was a lizard fucker, according to the whispers in the halls and the notes left in the bathroom stalls. As advanced as society might become, toilets were still a location for shaming those who stepped outside boundaries of acceptable sexual decency.
But Esense’s attempts to make her frame what had happened in a way that made her out to be some hapless fuck-thing were more offensive than anything the Dinavri had said or anything Atlas had ever done. Every time she was compelled to go to his office she thought about just walking right off the ship. The only reason she didn’t was the fact they were in open space and walking off the ship would have resulted in instant death.
“No. I wasn’t. Or not by him anyway.”
“You’re angry,” Esense said. “But in time, you’ll realize that you were used.”
“In time, you’ll realize Atlas was the best commander to ever serve on this ship, and getting rid of him was the biggest mistake any of you have ever made.”
It was a threat, though Esense didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy trying to tend to feelings she didn’t have, pushing her into a therapeutic mold of hapless victim. He was preening, assuming he was saving her from herself, when in reality the only alien who had ever saved her from herself was now gone—and thought she was a loose woman as well, thanks to Taylor.
“Let’s stop the session for now. I think you need to process these events a little more.”
What utter wanking bullshit. She would have shared those thoughts, but she could half imagine Atlas standing over her, scowling in that inimitable way of his, his burning gaze silently telling her to respect the counselor and behave herself. She missed him terribly.
“Are you okay?” Lara appeared through the wall as Jerri left the session and returned to her room.
“No, Lara, I am not okay. I miss him. I miss him so fucking much. And he just left me here. I can’t believe he just left.”
“He didn’t have any choice,” Lara said.
“There’s always a choice.” She said it, knowing nobody else actually believed that. They were all so passive, these little Authority pawns, allowing themselves to be moved on a board by powers they didn’t know, and who certainly didn’t care about them. But nobody saw outside the boundaries. Nobody saw the potential of what they could do if they just did it.
Atlas had always been a slave to the rules. It was what first brought them together, his insistence on them, her refusal to follow them. Now that same dynamic had ripped them apart. Irony, she guessed.
“It’s going to be okay,” Lara said, gleaming with her effervescent good will.
It was going to be okay. But not in the way Lara thought. Not in the way anyone thought.
Jerri was eating alone in the mess hall. Nobody liked to sit with her anymore. She’d always been a loner, but now she was a pariah, and that hit different. People whispered about her whenever she entered a room, and their conversations always got louder when she left, usually followed by laughter. Lara would have kept her company, but Lara didn’t need to eat, and even Lara didn’t really approve of what she and Atlas had been up to.
Avoiding the mess hall wasn’t an option either. She’d been ordered to take meals with the crew. The idea was to make her socialize, in spite of the fact nobody wanted to be social with her.
She was almost finished with her food when a chair was pulled out beside her.
“Here. Tessil. For you.”
Taylor handed her something about a foot long with rough edges. It was crudely synthesized, and she had no idea what the hell it was supposed to be.
“What’s this?” She held it between thumb and forefinger, assuming it was something gross.
“It’s a lizard dildo.”
“What?”
“Once a lizard fucker, always a lizard fucker,” Taylor sneered cruelly. “You’ll be too stretched for any man to enjoy now, won’t you. So you’ll need something like this to fill that sloppy hole.”
He’d always been an asshole, but now the gloves were off. He didn’t even bother pretending to be professional. Whenever he caught her alone he’d taunt her relentlessly, and sometimes even in front of others. There were a few smattered laughs from those close enough to hear what was happening. Taylor had come out of all of this as the golden boy. There was even talk of him getting his own ship in the next year or two.