Samira

“You seriously couldn’t steal any instructions with this stupid thing?” I asked for probably the 18th time in the last 8 hours. I was in the med-lab with Sora, and we were trying to put together one of the manufacturing pods they had stolen from the doll factory.

The whole thing was crazy complicated, and while I could understand most of the mechanical parts easily enough, the bioware pieces were another story entirely. It was as if somebody had combined a molecular fabricator with an automated food processor, and not in a good way.

“I think Thea may have melted the instructions back on the station,” Sora said.

I climbed out from underneath the pod to look up at Sora. They were back to being useless while reading one of their dumb romance novels.“Why would she do that?”

“She said something about the written word being heresy,” Sora shrugged. “Who knows why Thea does anything? She’s weird. I don’t even think she can read.”

I squinted at Sora. That had clearly been bullshit. They probably didn’t even bother to look for the instructions. “Just hand me the sonic driver, please.”

They stared uselessly into my toolbox. “Which one is that? Your tools all look exactly the same.”

“It’s the needlessly complicated one,” I said, but Sora just continued to stare. “It looks like a cross between a sex toy and a torture device.”

“Found it!”

“Of course you did,” I sighed as Sora handed me the driver, and I got to work taking readings on all the connectors. Everything looked okay, but there was no way for me to know without turning the damn thing on and that would risk blowing up the med-lab. I really needed some sort of instructions, or at the very least, a set of specifications, to let me know if the readings I was getting were correct. But the pod was still covered by a dozen different corporate patents, the kind they didn’t need to expose to the public. Besides, I was pretty sure that this one was an off-the-book experimental version. So, even if I had access to the patents there was no way to know how accurate they were.

“Speaking of sex toys and torture devices,” Sora said. “What do you think of the whole Esme situation?”

“What kind of segue was that?” I asked.

“A surprisingly common one when talking about dead succubi.”

I snorted. “That’s dark.”

“I’m serious, though. What do you think about the plan to resurrect Esme?” Sora asked.

I let the question linger while I thought about it. The succubus could be dangerous. Hells we already knew she was dangerous. She went pretty far out of her way to try to kill the captain, for fuck’s sake.

But that had supposedly been a misunderstanding, one that we could hopefully clear up pretty quickly. There was always the chance that Esme wouldn’t believe that we weren’t coercing Thea or that she was being controlled by somebody. If that’s the case, then this whole thing could turn really bad really fast.

“I think if we even want to try it, then I’ll need to get this stupid pod working,” I complained. There was no point in putting a voice to what was already on all of our minds. Besides, it wasn’t like my opinion mattered on the subject.

“You’d tell me if you had a problem with this plan, right?” Sora asked. “You’re not just going to do whatever other people say, like some sort of sick puppy, right?”

Sora was definitely looking for a fight. Which made me think they were just bored or something. At this point, they weren’t even reading their book…

“Hey Sora, what book is that?” I asked.

“Oh, this?” They held up the tablet with a shit-eating grin. “It’s nothing, just something we picked up from the station. None of the pictures are in color, and I’m not even sure it’s written in network basic.” They started backing away towards the door. “I can’t even understand anything in it.”

“8 hours… I spent 8 hours assembling this stupid thing, and you just sat there the whole time holding the gods damned instructions?!” I asked.

Sora was laughing as they held up their hands to placate me. “Now Sami, I know you’re mad.”

“Mad? Oh, I’m not mad.” I picked up the large wrench that had been resting on the pod and stomped towards Sora. “At this point, I’m not even disappointed. I think that maybe it’s time we found ourselves a new navigator.”

Sora’s eyes went wide as they ducked to dodge the wrench I swung at them. They shifted to their fox form and darted out of the room.

“I’m going to shove this wrench so far up your ass that I’ll have to use your mouth to tighten bolts!” I shouted after them.

Thea’s head slowly peaked from around the corner. “Everything okay?”

“Yes,” I spat through clenched teeth. “It’s just that Sora is an ass, and I was just about to put them out of my misery.”

“Want help?” She asked. “Or is this something that you have to do on your own?”

Thea was a powerful devil and could probably make pretty quick work of Sora. But I probably didn’t actually want them dead, so I sighed. “I should do it on my own. Thanks for the offer, though.”

Thea nodded. “Yeah, you're their sister. It could get awkward if anybody else killed them.”

“Was there something you needed, Thea?” I asked.

“Oh, right!” She said. “Bryce found something about our mystery research guy, but it’s complicated, so she wanted us to all meet in the living room area. Emphasis on living, so could you wait to kill Sora? After the meeting, they’re free game.”

“Fine. But I’m taking my wrench.” I conceded.

“Makes sense.” Thea agreed, before turning to leave.

“Thea, wait,” I called after her, and she stopped in the doorway.

“What’s up?”

“You can read, right?” Thea stared at me like I was an idiot, and I continued talking. Like an idiot. “It’s a stupid question, I know, but Sora got in my head and now I don’t know what to believe.”

“Well, first, don’t believe anything Sora says, ever, but you already knew that,” Thea smirked. “Second, I’m a fallen celestial, which means I can read and speak every mortal language, and about 2 dozen non-mortal ones. Probably a few more, but those are just the ones I’ve tried.”

That was a lot more than I was expecting. “How does that work, exactly?”

“Usually pretty well,” Thea said. “Are you doing alright, Sami?”

That was a bit of a loaded question, and it didn’t seem like the time to talk about it, so I did something stupid.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied to Thea. “Isn’t Bryce waiting for us? We should get to that meeting.” I tried to move past the lie, as if she wouldn’t notice it, but she stepped in front of the exit to block me from leaving.

“Bryce can wait. She’s sweet like that.” Thea crossed her arms and looked up at me. “This can’t just be about Sora being a dick. Seriously, Sami, what’s going on?”

I didn’t think Thea was going to let this go, and she could be impossible to deal with when like this. So, I resigned myself and settled in for a longer conversation.

“No, it’s not just about Sora being a dick, but they were being a dick, and I’m absolutely going to get them back for that,” I said.

“Then what’s going on?”

“Esme is a demon, like an actual proper demon.” Thea raised an eyebrow, but let me continue talking. “She almost killed the captain, and I saw what she did to those other two through the feed… I know she’s your sister, but Thea, what if you can’t convince her we’re not holding you against your will?”

Thea sighed. “Sami, I honestly don’t know, and I know that wasn’t the answer you were hoping for, but it’s the only one I got.”

“What are we going to do if she just outright attacks us?” I asked.

“I’m stronger than she was, and my sword did a lot of damage to her soul. Which means she’ll probably be even weaker now, and if it comes down to it, then I can restrain her,” Thea said. “Besides, Bryce is actually pretty good with this magic shit. She’ll want to create a binding circle that Esme won’t be able to break.”

“Okay, but what if we can’t convince her?” I asked. “It’s not like we can just leave her in a binding circle, and if we let her go, then she’s just going to figure out another way to attack the captain.”

“You’re right,” Thea conceded. “It’s a risk and if for some reason we can’t convince her then, well I don’t know what we’ll do. But I know Esme, and if I can talk to her, then she’ll realize that nobody is forcing me to be here.”

“What if you’re wrong?” I asked. “What if Esme won’t believe you, or if this demon asshole, Mulvicht or whatever, did something to change her?”

Thea was chewing on her lower lip in thought. At least she was taking this seriously, and not just dismissing me. We’d been searching for a few weeks, and I’d been reluctant to bring my concerns up with anybody.

Esme was Thea’s sister, so she was obviously biased, and the captain was so love struck with Thea that she’d been obsessed with finding Esme a new body, and Sora was, well, Sora. Whenever they got an instinct, they followed it blindly, which was annoying.

It was annoying because I didn’t have those instincts, at least not the same way Sora did. I knew if I brought it up with them, then they would at least talk about it. But I don’t know, I guess that I just felt shitty questioning Sora about their instincts, especially since the one time I actually managed to convince them to go against them it cost us over a year of our lives and I nearly got… Well, I nearly got hurt.

“Sami, what do you know about souls?” Thea asked.

“Souls? What about them?” I was a little distracted by my own thoughts and hadn’t been expecting the question. It felt like another one of Thea’s tangents.

“Like, have you ever touched one? I mean a different one, your own doesn’t count.”

“No, why…” I started to answer, but then realized that actually, I had. “Yeah, Sora’s nav core has a fragment of their soul in it, and I usually hang onto it anytime it’s not in a ship.”

Thea nodded. “That’s probably close enough. When you’re holding it, do you feel anything?”

“What? Like power over Sora?” I definitely didn’t feel anything like that. Nobody ever had power over Sora, not even if you held a literal fragment of their soul in your hands. They were basically uncontrollable.

“No,” Thea laughed. “Like a taste or a feeling or something. Souls have a flavor to them when they interact with each other.”

“What sort of flavor?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, for example, every time that Bryce and I form a pact, a bit of her soul wraps around mine. For me, it tastes like apple cider and feels like a warm blanket on a snowy night. It’s pretty great and one of the reasons I trust her so much.”

“So what? You have sex with the captain because her soul tastes fruity?” I didn’t understand what Thea was saying, or how it related at all to Esme.

“Not exactly,” Thea smiled warmly. She was obviously thinking about things that I definitely didn’t want to know about. “That ‘taste’ doesn’t come from the soul itself, rather it’s from our souls interacting with each other. It represents a soul’s compatibility.”

“Anytime I hold Sora’s core, it just tickles me a bunch,” I said, but Thea just gave me a knowing look. “You’re saying that Sora’s soul ‘flavor’ is the sensation of being tickled?”

Thea nodded. “For you it is, and honestly, if you gave me a hundred guesses as to what their soul would taste like for you, then I would have guessed that at least 99 times.”

“What about the one other time? Actually, never mind, don’t answer that, instead explain why you’re telling me all this.”

“This is why.” Thea pulled out an amethyst that barely fit in the palm of her hand. It glowed with a dim pink light.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“It’s Esme’s soul stone,” Thea proffered the demon’s soul towards me. “Here, hold it, but please be careful. Oh, and don’t tell Bryce, she’s really sensitive about it for whatever reason.”

“Probably because it’s literally your sister’s soul?” I carefully took the stone and immediately understood what Thea had been talking about. Esme’s soul felt warm and soft, like a furry blanket, but hard and protective at the same time. There was also a relaxing floral scent that reminded me of the time Thea had forced me to take a bath in the captain’s quarters.

Everything was way more intense and varied than with Sora’s core, probably because that only contained a small fragment of their soul, but it was still similar.

“Pretty neat, right?” Thea asked. “Does that help you understand the type of person Esme is? And also how I know Malvoch didn’t do anything to her soul?”

“Yeah, it’s actually pretty neat.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the dimly lit stone. “And weirdly reassuring.”

“I know that it’s not going to change everything, or completely remove any doubt,” Thea said. “But, hopefully it’ll help you trust-”

There was a blinding gold light that filled the room and forced me to flinch away from where Thea had been standing. I slowly opened my eyes after it disappeared, only to see that Thea was gone.

“C-captain!”