After about an hour of the Captain furiously interrogating every person in the cargo hold, the Captain dragged an annoyed hand through his hair and stopped in the middle of the room, peering at everybody. Ira's Host was still standing by the wall and his expression had grown smugger and smugger as time went by. How the Captain hadn't figured out that it was him who was responsible for the missing USB drive, Ira didn't understand.
No matter. The Captain had been looking at every person in the room with increasingly suspicious eyes, and Ira didn't think it was going to be long now until the Captain had his eureka moment. There weren't that many potential suspects. Some had alibis. Others had been on duty. Ira's Host was one of the few people left who didn't have an excuse.
Well, Ira didn't have an excuse either, as he had been sleeping at the time. But it seemed like he was a pretty good actor because the Captain hadn't seemed very suspicious of him after all. Well, that was only a matter of course — Ira was very good at what he did. Which was tricking people and laughing at the ensuing chaos.
The Captain clapped his hands loudly. "Listen up!" he announced and glared around himself. "An object of great importance has been stolen. This object contains classified information that nobody on this ship, including myself, has the clearance level for. Stealing and accessing this information is a crime and it will get you court-martialed. If you have this object in your possession, whether you stole it or not, return it from where you found it and no legal action will be taken against you. I give you my word."
Ira rose an eyebrow. That was actually a good explanation for why nobody got to know what was stolen or knew that it had been on the ship, and that the Captain couldn't speak of it perfectly summed up the seriousness of the situation while still keeping it secret. Ira nodded. This man probably had a thing or two going for him.
For a minute, nobody spoke up. Ira looked around and saw that while the people looked hesitant and were glancing at each other suspiciously, nobody seemed like they had any idea about what the Captain was speaking of. Now that he thought about it, he guessed that it was possible that it had something to do with those people Silas had killed, the ones who had had guns with actual bullets. If there was a conspiracy as he suspected, it was probable that it had something to do with the USB drive. Unfortunately, the chance of that conspiracy coming to light before the mission was declared a failure and he was ejected from this world, was low.
The fact that there was a conspiracy going on and that it clearly came from high up and that there were people on the spaceship who had apparently been put here just for it, meant that Ira felt a little bit like he was in a movie. One of those survival movies where a crew crash-landed somewhere isolated and had to fight to survive but it turned out that there were traitors among them. So they ended up killed both by their own people and monsters at the same time.
He liked those movies.
A smile danced on his lips unconsciously as he thought about it. He really hoped that in the next world, he would have access to movies so that he could watch some of them. It had been a while since he rewatched his favorite ones.
The Captain frowned when nobody stepped forward to take responsibility. "The room the object was stolen from will be unguarded until tomorrow at noon. If at that point, the object has been returned, I give you my word that no action shall be taken against you."
Again, some of the people glanced around, but nobody really acted as if they had it in their possession. Well, aside from Ira's host.
Considering how well he had done in the last world, pretending to be in love with that weird Alpha, it appeared like his acting ability was deteriorating.
Seeing as nobody was stepping forward and admitting to their crime, the Captain could only dismiss the meeting and let the people leave. When they left in groups of three or four people, the Captain stared after them. His frowning face was clearly examining them and wondering if they were the thief.
Hearing footsteps approaching him, Ira glanced to the side and caught sight of Nylo coming over. "Hey," Ira said and smiled slightly.
"Hello," Nylo said and grinned brightly at him. Nylo stopped next to Ira and bumped into him with xyr shoulder. "I haven't seen you in a bit, what have you been up to? Kill any more of those monsters?"
"I met somebody," answered Ira. "We were sleeping together."
Nylo blinked at him. "Wait, what?"
"En. It was nice."
"Okay? Did you... have fun?"
Ira nodded. It had been more comfortable than he thought, but then again he had been sleeping with Silas for a very long time now and he was used to it. Having Silas next to him while he was sleeping was becoming a more and more familiar feeling, and he found that he didn't dislike this. No, he was rather enjoying it.
"Well, I'm glad that you're not alone," Nylo said and patted Ira gently on the shoulder. After a second hesitation, Ira decided to pat Nylo on xyr shoulder as well. Xe did it to him often, after all, which probably meant that it was an action xe enjoyed.
And Ira really liked Nylo. He wanted xem to have fun.
For a moment, Nylo didn't say anything. Then xe smiled even brighter and asked, "Want to play a game with me? I think in tense situations like this, it's important to remember to relax."
Ira nodded. He followed after Nylo out of the cargo hold and down the long hallway heading toward Nylo's room. Nylo whistled slightly as xe walked ahead of him, sometimes looking back to make sure that Ira was still keeping up. When xe saw that Ira was keeping pace, xe would smile at him and Ira would reflexively smile back.
Reaching Nylo's room, Ira closed the door behind himself and settled down across from Nylo on the bed. Nylo got a pack of cards from the bedside table and opened it, pouring out its contents on the bed. Ira automatically counted the cards; the deck was full.
They got started with a simple game of go fish, and Ira was hit with a feeling of deja vu. This made sense, he thought, as he could remember playing games with Amanda before. Playing with xem was fun, and he was a little upset that he hadn't had a chance to do so in the last world. Fumiko had always been busy with work and hadn't had time to entertain him. Ira hadn't wanted to cause xem any trouble by interrupting it.
They played games for nearly three hours before Ira's alarm went off to notify him that Silas was returning to the ship. He was the only alien who was coming back, and when Ira half-heartedly counted how many humans were still alive, he found that the number had gone down again. Most likely, the aliens had been hunting some humans who were outside the ship, exploring.
Wasn't that how horror movies usually went? The humans split up, and somebody went exploring, and then they died?
Turning his attention back to Nylo, Ira cleared his throat and said, "Silas is returning."
"Silas?" Nylo tilted xyr head to the side and said, "I don't think there's anybody in the crew named that."
"There isn't," said Ira.
Nylo frowned. "So then, where did he come from?"
"You don't want to know," Ira answered and shrugged. "Plausible deniability, you know."
Nylo narrowed xyr eyes at him but didn't say anything more. Ira could see suspicion glinting in xyr eyes, but xe didn't broach the subject. Ira was being truthful; he didn't want to cause trouble for Nylo. So it was best that xe didn't know anything for certain so that xe would have plausible deniability working in xyr favor.
Nylo eventually nodded and their playing had come to a close. With Silas returning to the ship, Ira decided that it was time for him to return to his room so that he could be there and frown heavily at Silas when the man came back. For some reason, he was still a little cross that Silas hadn't notified him when he left.
This was a weird feeling and not something he was used to. But, oddly enough, he wasn't against it. Silas was weird and he made weird faces and said weird things, but he made Ira feel pleasant inside.
And it had been a long time since he felt that way.
So long that he could no longer even name the feeling.
He shook his head and forced himself to focus on what was going on around him. He wasn't going to get trapped in Memory Lane and he wasn't going to think of things that had been long since over and done with. Thinking about it accomplished nothing — it would change nothing.
Ira returned to his room before Silas. He pulled off his utility belt and decided that he was going to take a shower while he waited. He kept the door to the bathroom open as he wanted to hear when Silas came back.
The water was warm and did wonders for his bad mood. And as he had expected, with the door open he could clearly hear it when Silas returned. Actually, if he'd just turned his hearing up he would have heard him regardless, but there was nothing to do about that now. Knowing that Silas was back, Ira rushed through the last of his shower and stepped out. He had stolen a clean towel from one of the unoccupied quarters; it had probably belonged to some crew member who was dead now.
When he stepped out of the shower, he was immediately faced with Silas standing right outside the bathroom door. Ira tilted his head to the side and asked, "What are you doing?"
Silas said something in response, but as was expected, Ira didn't understand it.
Attempting to walk around Silas so that he could get to the towel that he had forgotten in his proper room, Ira shoved a little at Silas' shoulder. Silas didn't move, in fact, he only seemed to take up more of the space of the doorway. Ira narrowed his eyes at the man and crossed his arms over his chest, staring at him as he waited to see what he would do. After a while, Silas finally moved once Ira was starting to shiver from the cold.
Silas quickly crossed the space over the room and picked up the towel, returning just as quickly to hand the towel to Ira. Then he stood in front of the doorway again and refused to let him pass.
Ah, thought Ira. it was probably like that time when Silas had shoved cloth over him. It was because Ira didn't have clothes on again. And the door to his room was still stuck in that half-opened state.
Ira dried himself off with the towel as best as he could in such a tiny bathroom and then threw the towel over Silas's shoulder. Silas twitched at that and turned around to face Ira. His face was frowning and his large yellow eyes stared straight at Ira. Ira stared back, waiting for him to move so that he could retrieve his clothing.
He really didn't understand why it was such a big deal that he wore clothes. Or maybe Silas was just worried that he would freeze to death? That was the only explanation that made sense. After all, Silas didn't know that Ira could adjust how much of the temperature he would feel. But then, it was only how much he would feel it, it would still affect him. So he could still freeze to death. And for mortals, switching bodies after death wasn't very common. Right, he decided. That made sense.