VAI

As we stepped out of the museum, my new classmate tried to squeeze his way between me and Warpaint, but Warpaint held out a mechanical arm and said, "Be careful, young man. Sir Vai is very fragile."

A low sigh escaped me at this but neither Warpaint nor my classmate seemed to notice.

"Oh, I know," the young man said as he stepped to my other side. I started walking towards the elevators with Warpaint on one side of me and my classmate on the other.

"You know? What do you mean you know?" We barely met and he already thought of me as fragile. I wasn't fragile. It hadn't been that long ago that I boxed frequently with a K'thaktra. I usually pretended my last encounter with Thrissko didn't happen. My father said he had contacted Thrissko's parents and they were taking care of it, but he wouldn't let me contact them or Thrissko or anyone on Mars. I hoped Thrissko had somehow got the zek out of his system like I did. No one could tell me how I got the pink cloud drug out of my system. Sometimes I wondered if my father knew because he would look a certain way when I brought it up, but he insisted he didn't know.

"Well," my classmate said, "the first time I saw you, you had an eyeball hanging out, you were all bloody and had several broken bones and you were screaming non stop. You didn't exactly leave an impression of strength and health. This friend on the other hand," he leaned in front of me to indicate Warpaint and I had to stop walking or I would have stepped on him. "He was amazing. He carried you like you were weightless. And you're a big guy, extremely tall and look at your thigh." He squeezed my thigh.

"Hey!" I shouted and stepped back. Warpaint was immediately in front of me and pushed me behind.

"Don't touch the elder," Warpaint said.

My classmate put his hands up in the arm to indicate he was harmless as he said, "I just meant his thigh is as big around as I am."

That was a bit of an exaggeration, but I did have a lot of muscle. Part of it was natural genetics and part of it was all the time I spent boxing.

"I'm Owen, by the way," he said as he stretched out a hand passed Warpaint's leg towards me.

I reached down and shook it. "Vai." I nudged Warpaint to the side as I stepped between them and continued down the corridor.

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"Look, friend," Owen said to me, "clearly this mechatronic is guarding you."

"Yes," Warpaint said, "he is very fragile. I keep reminding him of his age, but he ignores me."

Owen arched an eyebrow at this, but continued to speak with me. "What would you think of lending him out to me? I would pay you of course."

"What do you need a bodyguard for? There shouldn't be trouble on the Shadow."

"Then what do you need a bodyguard for?" Owen countered.

"My dad . . ."

Owen held up a small hand as he said, "Ah. Say no more. It's a parental thing. I understand. As to why I need a bodyguard...well, I have few side money making opportunities. I'm just waiting for the opportune moment. Having a bodyguard would be handy then, but the real reason...well, I just found out a classmate of mine from a previous ship got transferred to the Shadow as well and he and I did not get along."

"He's a bully," I said.

"Yes." There was a pause and then Owen said very quickly it was almost hard to understand him, "I'm not one to be bullied though. I wasn't bullied. There were just some misunderstandings."

"Sure," I said not believing him. He had said earlier he was a liar afterall. "But Warpaint's been programmed to guard me. That won't change no matter how much you pay me. Sorry."

We hadn't passed anyone in the halls. I wasn't sure if that was because of the time of day or if it was the level we were on. Maybe no one wanted to visit the museum.

Stars streaked passed in iridescent cadences out the windows from the right of us. Owen didn't seem to notice. Or maybe he was just used to it. I hadn't been on a starship before and it sounded like he had.

"Well," Owen said, "when the time comes, you could come along and your mechatronic bodyguard would just happen to come along with you. Problem solved."

"Maybe," I said.

"I'll take that as a yes," Owen said. "I knew the moment I saw you we were going to be great friends."

"You mean the moment you saw me and I was screaming on the shuttle with my eyeball hanging out and you thought I was dying?"

"Exactly right," Owen said. "Great friends."

"Be careful, sir," Warpaint said to me. "There is a stranger ahead."

He was right. At the elevators was a woman. We were still several steps behind her, but she must have heard Warpaint because she turned her head to look at us. She was young. Probably my age, maybe even a little younger. She looked at Owen. She looked at me. Her blank expression never wavered.

The elevator door opened and she stepped inside.

"Wait up," Owen said. "We're almost there. We'll get on too."

But she reached out and pushed the elevator door close button and the door slid shut in front of us.

"Rude," Owen said.

"It's okay," I said, "we can take this one."

I started to step towards the other elevator, but Owen said, "Hold up." He pointed at the number indicated above the elevator. "She stopped at a restricted area." Level 8 was indicated. It was made clear to everyone when they first bordered the Shadow that levels 7 - 9 were restricted and select personnel were given access codes in case of emergencies only. Conserving ship energy, oxygen, that sort of the thing were the reasons given.

Owen smiled a mischievous little crooked smile that I had a bad feeling I might be seeing a lot of in the future. "Let's follow her," he said.