Hinges and Strings

Static in her head: voices hidden in the white noise, emerging slowly, gradually, like fossils beneath sand, bones poking through flesh, a corpse grinning from a grave. Madness.

She can feel herself breaking, feel sanity shearing away from her skull, gripping tight and then pulling free all at once, tearing like skin.

There is no place to hide, her crew staring down at her, taste of concern, curiosity. Fear? Coppery, like blood in her teeth.

She wants to touch Vector, the glossy obsidian of his eyes like the curve of a gleaming black thorax, wants to leave fingerprints on the sheen, a trail of touches like footprints in sand. I was here.

She wants to kiss Kaliyo's red-black mouth, kiss the delicate skin over her silver eyes, feel the bristle of thorns against her lips, run her tongue over her coils; an albino viper: pale, tiny, deadly.

She wants to throw Lokin out of the nearest airlock, rip out the bulging seams of his disguise, stitch by stitch, thread by thread, to tear the ill-fitting mask off the monster.

She does none of these things.

She can't. Her programming doesn't include them.

Her lips only form words of reassurance, a marionette's mouth, all hinges and strings.