Immortality
an excerpt

I slid off the barrel and left him there, not knowing why he’d lied to me, and why he would have locked the doors.
My plan had been to avoid Dylan until I could think about everything that was going on, but he found me. I was about to turn into my cabin when he grabbed my shoulder. I pulled out a gun and shoved it in his gut before I realized who it was.
“Oh, Dylan.” I said, putting the gun away, “Didn’t realize it was you. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He said, “Can we go into your cabin and talk?”
“Of course.”
We went into my cabin and sat down. “What is it?” I asked him.
“What’s wrong? You’re awfully sharp.”
“Nothin’s wrong. I’ve just had a long chat with the crew. They know something’s up.”
“Ah.”
“And I’ve gotten two different stories about it.”
“About what?”
“The hold and the Quarters are locked up. The crew doesn’t know who did it, and the captain claims that you did it.”
Dylan looked shocked, and I knew that he wasn’t the one who did it, and the captain was a liar.
“So you didn’t do it?”
“Of course not. That was the captain. He dismissed me and supervised the loading of cargo himself.”
“Damn.” I said, reaching under my mattress and pulling out a ring of keys, “I’m going to go unlock it. He didn’t change the locks, did he?”
“No.” Dylan said, “None of us would let him do that.”
“But how do you have control over that, if he dismissed you?”
“I checked the security video.”
I let out a deep breath, “Good.”
“I don’t know if you should go and do that?”
“Unlock the door?”
“Yes.”
“Why not?”
He pulled a gun out of his pocket and pointed it at my head, “Because I don’t think you should do that.”
“Dylan, what are you doing?” I asked him quietly, my hand creeping to the small of my back, where the glock was.
“I’m doing what I was asked. Now hand me over the keys.”
“No.” I said quietly, pulling back the slide on my handgun, muffling the sound with the sheets on my bed. I knew that Dylan’s reflexes weren’t the fastest, but I didn’t know what he would do in this situation. “I’m not going to give up my keys. You know that as well as I do.”
“I’m the one with the gun, Amy, not you.”
I made my move then. I pulled the glock out and pointed it at him, “I think you’ll find that you have spoken falsely. I’ve got a gun as well, and have a larger caliber.”
“I shoot first, you’ll be dead before you can get a shot off.”
I shook my head, “Dylan, you’re one of the most naïve men that I know who handle guns. I could fire now and you’d die.”
“You’d never do that.”
I shook my head, moving the gun down from his head and firing into his right shoulder and fired. He fell back, not realizing what had happened. I went to him and kicked the gun from his hand and dragged him into the corridor. He was unconscious, but would live.
While I was dragging him into the hall, Murray came walking down.
“What’d you do? Need help chucking him over the side?” he said with a laugh.
“Nah, he’s not dead yet, and it’s a through and through.” I said, kicking him in the side.
“Why’d you shoot him?”
“He’s in league with the captain. I thought wrong of him from the beginning. He had a gun at my head and I moved. Didn’t want to kill him, but wanted to shoot him so that he’d leave me alone. Didn’t want me opening up the Quarters for all of you.”
“You two were involved?”
I nodded, “Hadn’t gone all the way, but were a couple.”
“Damn.” Murray said, leaning over to look at him, “Probably should get the doc to look at him.”
I shrugged, “’s all up to you. I don’t care what happens to him right now. I don’t know how I’m going to get the whole story out, but I’ll find a way.”
“How bout we take and torture him?”
“Not really my style. I’d rather just talk, but I don’t know if that will get anything out of him.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because if he’s been lying to me this whole time about his motives, about everything, I don’t know if he’ll tell me the truth this time. I don’t want to be lied to again.”
“But that doesn’t mean that you won’t get anything out of him.”
“I know. But I guess I don’t really know.”
Murray put his arm around me and steered me away from where Dylan lay in the hall, towards the rec room, “Come on, love, lets go in here and have a drink, and then we can talk about everything.”
I nodded and went with him meekly. We went to the rec room and he poured each of a us a glass of rum.
“Here.” He said to me, “Drink.”
I obediently did as he said, feeling the sweet burn go down my throat. This was common rum, not the good stuff that I’d taken from the captain earlier in the week.
“I can’t believe I shot him.” I said quietly, swirling the golden liquid in my glass, “I’ve not done that at close range before.”
“But you didn’t kill him.”
“I’ve done that.”
“But you didn’t. You said it yourself. He’s going to be okay. I had one of the boys come and take him to the infirmary. Doc’ll look at him, stitch him up, and while he’s there, you and I can go down and talk to him. I’ll be with you, and then we can make sure that he’s going to tell you the truth.”
“But what is the truth?”
“What do you mean?”
“This’s got me confused. I’ve dealt with lying people before, but I’ve not been crossed by a man in a long time. It was hard for me to take that shot to the right shoulder rather than the left side of his chest where it’d do some major damage.”
“Why do you say that?”
I looked him straight in the eye, “Do you know where I came from before this?”
Murray shrugged, “probably the same place as the rest of us, some hell-hole that you couldn’t wait to get out of.”
I laughed, “That’s not entirely accurate, but I guess you could say that. I was a spy. I got used to killing people.”
“Why’d you come to piracy?”
“I had to get out of the city and this provided me a way to do so and stay on the run a lot easier than being land bound.”
“So you’re still on the run?”
I shrugged, “Not really, but it sometimes feels that way. But in my old life, when someone has a gun on you, you shoot to kill. You don’t be merciful.”
“Then why didn’t you kill him if you had the chance?”
I didn’t know what to say. I swallowed and drank the last of my rum, sighing deeply as I finished. “I just don’t know.”
Murray poured me another rum, and topped his off, “I guess that people change.” He said, “I think that we should toast to that.”
I clinked my glass to his, “Thank you so much.”
He smiled, “You’re my friend. Don’t say anything of it.”