Page 27 of Theta

The big dude with the bushy beard who met us here has a chipped white ceramic plate in either hand, on which is a messy slop of pasta and red sauce; he sets the plates on the floor, then comes back with a glass bottle of mineral water. "Eat. Drink." His accent is distinctly Italian. "Mangia. Mangia."

Story sits up, peering at him blearily, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms. "Oh look, real food."

"I make it.”

"Better than the slop those other fucknuts were giving us," I mutter, eying the plate as I wait for the guard to back away. "Thank you. Grazie."

"I am no mama, but you no hungry here, hey?"

Story eyes me as she swings her legs around to sit at the edge of the bed. "Is he being…nice?"

I shrug. "Maybe it's poisoned?"

"Killy, Jesus. What would be the point of all this, only to poison us now?"

The bearded guard is listening intently, frowning. "No, no poison. Mangia tutto. Is good.”

I glance past him—I can see a bit of the living room, and it appears the other three have left. He doesn't miss this, though, and reaches behind his back and hauls out the .45 he'd greeted us with. "They return soon. But I have a friend, hey?" He wiggles the pistol in my direction. "No funny actions, or you are shooted, sì?”

“Yeah, yeah, I understand." I slip off the bed as he backs up out the doorway. "Hey, wait. Can we get a fork?"

"I do not know this; what is a fork.”

I mime eating. "A fork." I point at the sauce. "Can't eat that with our bare hands."

"Oh, sì, sì. I forget." He returns a moment later with two forks, which he tosses to us from the doorway.

He's no fool, clearly. The forks are plastic, not metal, for one thing. I might be able to fashion a prison-style shiv out of it, but I wouldn't want to rely on that. He's a big boy, and the way he handles that pistol tells me he knows what he's doing. Plus, I don't really want to hurt him. He seems like a decent guy, so far. For someone involved in a kidnapping plot, at least.

He closes the door, and I hear the snick of a lock, and Story and I are alone once more. She grabs the plate and water, and we sit cross-legged, facing each other knees-to-knees, my back to the headboard, hers to the foot end.

After a hesitant, tentative test bite, we discover that the food is, in fact, fucking delicious. Not in comparison to the vile slop they gave us on the ship, just fucking delicious, full stop.

It's gone in a matter of minutes.

"Pasta for breakfast might be my new thing," I mutter, swiping my finger through the sauce left on the plate.

Story laughs. "I think that's hunger talking." She glances at the window. “And I’m not sure this is breakfast, anyway. More like a late lunch. Looks like we slept quite a while."

"Breakfast is whatever meal you eat after a long break. I don't buy the whole ‘you can only eat certain foods at certain times’ bullshit. If I want to eat a bowl of spaghetti for breakfast, I'm fuckin' gonna."

Story's eyes laugh as she sips from the bottle. "Oh, I'm not picky about what I eat when. You can’t be, in my line of work. You eat what you can when you can. The majority of my meals during a shift come out of a vending machine."

I frown at this. "No meal comes out of a vending machine," I tell her. "A snack at best."

She shrugs. "It's all I’ve got time for, usually. More often than not, it takes me an hour to eat a protein bar or a bag of chips because I keep getting interrupted by patients who, y'know, need to have their lives saved."

"Ah, right. Those pesky patients and their silly little booboos keep getting in the way of your Doritos."

She wrinkles her nose. "Doritos? Ew. No. Sun Chips all the way."

I stick a finger in my mouth and fake a gag. "Sun Chips? Fuck no! It's like eating pottery."

"Okay, but Doritos? The poison dust all over your fingers?"

"Pardon me, madam, but the poison dust is the best part."

She rolls her eyes. "We'll have to agree to disagree on the chip front, I suppose."