Pyrrha looked at all of them, nonplussed, then sighed, rolled her neck, and cracked each knuckle individually like a whip before continuing.
“We are traveling with the entire hope of the Dominicus system,” she said, flinging an arm back to indicate Gideon. “That one had the decency to tie Dominicus itself to her ginger soul. And I don’t know how it works with the rest of you, but I can’t imagine it’ll go well if we lose anybody she’s dragged along with her.”
Gideon was just here to have a good time, but she had awakened in the arms of her former archnemesis; had had to watch a lot of people have a lot of incredibly sticky feelings right in front of her salad; had been dunked in the River without her consent, and she was consequently feeling very attacked right now.
Before she could say so, a horrible noise split the tense air of the station, making them all clap their hands over their ears. It took Gideon a long, dizzy moment to realize it was coming from outside.
The sound was a harsh, shrill squeal, thin and echoic at the same time, like if metal was somehow also flesh. Hearing it made her want, impossibly, to die, or at least puncture her own eardrums: anything to stop hearing that hideous noise.
It ceased, and suddenly Gideon could exist without agony; then it started up again, and every second was torture. It was closer; she could tell that much through the thick haze of pain over her senses; and it sounded like it was…calling something. Possibly every iota of fear she had ever felt in her entire life, which prickled in a million needles over her skin.
A moment later, she was proved horribly, hideously right. Something swam right by the window, briefly blotting it out in a mass of greyish, greenish white, like the flesh of a drowned corpse. Gideon got the impression of lithe muscle under all that bulk, if the muscle was made of teeth and eyes. And then it was gone, flicking past them like it had never been: except for a playful tap of the tail, which set the whole station rocking like a cradle.
Gideon’s mouth was numb and tingling, and she kept having to swallow back spit and nausea, but she managed to make herself say:
“What in the fuck was that?”