Mechanical Hearts (Skeleton Key) Read Online Free

they’d forgotten about me, they’d certainly remember once they heard that sound. It had probably woken the whole ... ship, it was so loud. It still echoed in my head, that was for sure.
    With one hand clutched at my temple and the other feeling along the wall, I inched my way down the hallway, hoping to recognize something, anything, along the way. Maybe I could find a phone or a computer to send a message for help.
    But it was empty save for those weird lanterns along the walls. Curls of steam licked at the ceiling and hovered above my head. Sweat clung to my brow and upper lip. My already-damp clothes grew even more by the time I reached a ladder.
    A shaft of light shone down the opening and made me wince in pain. After a few minutes, my eyes adjusted a little to the bright artificial light and the knots in my stomach began to unclench.
    My growing panic was masked by annoyance. At myself. At my aunt. I was going to find the idiots who locked me up and tear them all a new one for abandoning me in some dungeon. Rescuers or no.
    I was halfway up the ladder when I heard—and felt—the whole ship shudder. The ladder shook so badly, my foot slipped off the rungs, and I nearly fell the ten feet back down to the bottom.
    My heart kicked back into gear and what little fog remained in my brain cleared as the shuddering stopped a few seconds later.
    Were they messing around with something up there with me down in this hole? They were going to kill me.
    No. I am going to kill them , I decided as I crested the top of the ladder.
    The main deck was a flurry of activity. Men in similar odd-looking uniforms hurried back and forth to huge engines spewing steam. There were too many for me to make my way, or try to make my way to the captain’s room unseen, so I climbed the rest of the way out of the ladder and started down the first hall I came to like I had every right in the world to be there.
    It didn’t seem to matter who or what I was or what I was doing there because more men ran by me without so much as looking in my direction.
    I had no idea where I was going, so I chose twists and turns at random as I went in the opposite direction from what I began to call the engine room. Sweat still clung to my skin from the heat of the furnaces and steam dripped from the walls in the hallways closest to it. The room I was in must have been directly below it because it was extremely hot. My fingers twitched remembering the burning hot wall. The farther away from the room I got, the more the air cooled, and the easier it was to breathe.
    The walls and piping above were all the burnished gold of the exterior, but it wasn’t bright, it was a deep color, just a few shades lighter than a deep-honey-brown.
    If I weren’t so worried about Phoebe and getting back home, I would have given in to my natural curiosity. There were rooms on either side of the main hallway I seemed to be on. They looked like bunkrooms, offices, a kitchen with attached mess hall, and more, though I didn’t give myself much time to look at them.
    When I heard the low baritone of the captain, I pushed through the door in front of me to the only room on the vessel I actually recognized, except the view outside the window was completely different.
    At my gasp, the captain and the robot both turned to me, but I was too distracted by the sight out the front window to care about their attention.
    We were deeper in the ocean than I ever could have imagined. So deep, that what little light made it down to those depths was an eerie green. If it weren’t so terrifying, it would have been beautiful.
    Blood rushed in my ears, and I gripped the door frame to steady myself. “You’re going to tell me exactly where we are,” I said, my earlier nervousness forgotten and replaced by a fight or flight response. My vision narrowed to the man leaning casually against the back of his chair.
    Apparently, I’d already decided on fight.
    I wasn’t awestruck by him that time; I was