by Loki Renard
I find a small smile rising to my lips as I work. This is quite naughty behavior. I can tell that she will be trouble once she finds her footing and comes to trust us a little more. There’s no way for her to know that she is safe right now, but I hope she learns that quickly.
Once she is safely secured, I stand back and just look at her. Her naked form is very pleasing to my gaze. When she was cleaned we discovered that she was not in such bad state. She was filthy, but she is not seriously wounded, there are no abscesses, just a few scrapes and scratches which are understandable given that she has clearly been hunting and gathering on her own for quite some time.
“You need me for this?”
Tarkan isn’t interested in medical examinations. He wants to solve the mystery, find out what is going on down on the planet. We have been scanning Earth since retrieving her and have not found any others yet. A few human settlements were discovered, but they were all deserted, or contained unburied remains in various states of decomposition. It is quite obvious that whatever happened to the planet is continuing to happen. Wherever humans try to survive, they are hunted down and destroyed by something which isn’t interested in consuming them, but which only wants them to die. We are scanning for the responsible predators, but so far they are elusive.
“No, I don’t need you for this, but don’t go and do anything stupid.”
He gives me a nod, which isn’t a promise. At least he’s not a liar and won’t make a promise he doesn’t intend to keep. I’m not thrilled about him going down alone, but the planet is in such a state already I don’t see how one aggressive Scythkin is going to make things any worse. Perhaps he will find some more humans. They are almost impossible to detect from orbit. A ground search is the only real way to seek them out, but it would take more than our entire lifetimes to cover the planet entirely on our own.
“I’m heading down,” he says. “I want another female.”
“Be careful.”
He flashes his fangs at me. “Tell that to whatever is down there, not me.”
Chapter Four - Oh No
Tarkan
Earth is fucked.
I’m standing where hundreds of thousands of people used to live, but instead of their funny little box houses there is a hole in the ground. There’s carbonation all around the rim as if it was on fire for a long time. When I step closer, my feet sink into ashy ground. I can smell sulphur. Was it a volcano? A meteor? Just a really big fire? Reaper would probably analyze the hole and find out exactly what occurred but I’m more interested in finding as many humans as possible - or not finding them and returning to the ship where Reaper has One all to himself.
I tell myself that Reaper is what humans would call a gentleman. He gave me a long lecture about consent before we even got down to the planet, so I’m sure he’s treating her with professional detachment and just giving her a much needed medical exam. Humans are prone to literally thousands of illnesses. Even if this planet didn’t kill her, her own body might turn on her at any time. It’s because their biology is so soft, squishy, and primitive. Even though they were the first to gain true consciousness, they never fully evolved the way we Scythkin did.
Instead of worrying about what Reaper is doing, I focus on exploring the area I’ve landed at, several hundred miles from where we found One. I decided a scatter approach to hunting humans would be best. They often cluster together, but at the same time, they like their clusters to be at certain distances from other clusters. As solitary animals, they act individually, but when you see them as a group, their actions are more elemental than they care to admit. A woman once tipped something called a martini on the head of my human suit for pointing out that humans behave more like drops of water than intelligent animals. They really don’t like when it’s pointed out to them.
Maybe they should have listened. Maybe their planet wouldn’t be…
The ground starts to rumble beneath my feet. Earthquake?
I turn around and see a herd of massive beasts thundering toward me across the dusty plains, massive hard skinned four legged animals with two horns on their powerful heads, and comically tiny ears flapping in the breeze.
I am going to be trampled if I don’t move - or join the stampede. The decision is not a difficult one. As the herd sweeps around me I become one with it, my legs moving at a much faster speed than any real human could manage, the skin suit I put on to appease Reaper degenerating within seconds and ripping clean off my body within, well, I don’t know. We are cramped in the ship, so it is a joy to run on the surface of an empty planet, moving with a massive herd of beasts which are migrating from one rancid grass plain to another. I have sprinted for many miles before I remember that this is not what I came to Earth for.
I farewell the creatures, who seem to have accepted me as one of their own, and start looking around for some humans. In my current alien state, I will scare them unconscious, but that helps to capture them, I suppose.
“HUMANS!” I scream in their old tongue. “HUMANS! COME OUT!”
Only the mournful wind answers me.
Chapter Five - Hiding In Plain Sight
Reaper
The attempted deception is still in progress. My little captive lies on the bed doing her best not to push obviously against her bonds, but my silent observation reveals that she is absolutely conscious. She gives herself away with every involuntary movement she makes, the little twitches of her muscles, the fluttering of her lashes, the pulse in her throat, the way she swallows harder when I am close. She cannot help but react to me. It would seem that her human instincts are being activated by my mere proximity. Humans have never been known to control themselves very well. They are the most reactive species I know.
“One,” I say the name we have given her gently. She doesn’t respond, though I see her fight to keep her eyes closed. She wants to look dead so very badly. I think she might even be peeking through the lashes of her left eye.
I touch her arm gently. “Wake up. I know you're not sleeping, or unconscious.”
She becomes incredibly still, and I wonder if she has understood me, or if my touch was enough to paralyze her with fear. She’s trying to convince me that she is unable to hear me, or perhaps that she is unconscious, or even dead. This is the tactic of a small prey animal. It is not the behavior of a human woman.
I do wonder if Tarkan was right. Has her ordeal broken her in some way? Is she going to be psychologically human at all?
I stroke my human hand up and down her arm. It is frustrating to touch her through this suit of skin, but I do not want to terrify her completely. She has shown signs of significant stress over the last few hours. Her cortisol levels are very high - though there is the possibility that her stress hormones have been elevated for years as a result of her desperate fight for survival.
I know she might have seen us in our true forms in the cave, but I think it will be easier to handle her in human form now. I have to do more than merely medically examine her. Once that is done she will be hungry. She will be thirsty. She will be craving human contact, because they are creatures of touch. I want to be the one she goes to for that.
I already care about this little human greatly. I find her spectacularly beautiful in so many ways. But I know she will consider me a monster. The typical human reaction to seeing a Scythkin is screaming, fainting, and occasionally vomiting.
As I think of Scythkin who don’t wear suits, my thoughts drift to Tarkan. My suit is already making me cramp uncomfortably. I would wager that he has already taken his off and is running around the place terrifying any life form he encounters. I don’t have time to follow him around and force him to follow protocol. The role of the older broodkin is a tedious one at the best of times, and as of this moment I am more interested in this little female.
“One,” I say her given name yet again, hoping she will respond. “I know you can hear me.”
No reaction. If she knows how to speak at all, she certainly doesn’t understand
what I am saying. Human language evolves so quickly we usually spend a few minutes updating and calibrating our translation software when we reach the planet’s surface. We can’t do that this time. It requires at least two humans to be engaged in a conversation which can be fed into the computer, and that’s clearly not going to happen.
With One lying quietly, I repeat the basic medical tests. Respiration, heart beat, blood pressure, viral load, bacterial balance. In spite of the dangerous, limited life she has led, she is in very good health. She shows no signs of any common diseases, not even the viral ones which used to infect the entire population. It makes sense that she would be free of them, if she has had essentially no human contact for many years. She has effectively been living in a massive isolation bubble. If we do find other humans, we will have to quarantine them from one another. Many human diseases are highly contagious and highly dangerous to those without immunity.
It has been half an hour or more since I began the exam, and still she has not stirred. She is still committing fully to her attempted facade, which I respect, but I want to see her eyes. I want to see her face animated with expression. I want to talk to her, to hear her story. But right now I can do nothing. I can’t even threaten her with consequences for refusing to respond to me, because she can’t understand me.
“One,” I say her name again, hoping that repetition is effective in some way. I continue rubbing her arm and her legs, moving my hands in massaging motions which I believe she will find relaxing. If she has not been touched in years, this will be filling her brain with endorphins. Her body will be producing bonding hormones. I may be able to get through to her with simple touch rather than more forceful measures which suggest themselves to my impatient mind.
One
His touch is gentle, but insistent. I know in my gut that I have not deceived this alien who is dressed as a man. I know that the handsome male running his fingers up and down my arm is really a massive beast full of claws and fangs. He may look massive and monstrous, but he is clearly intelligent and advanced. What started as an attempt to get him to throw me back is now just shameful self preservation. I am afraid to look at him, to acknowledge that what is happening to me is actually real.
I am coming to know him in darkness and in silence, feeling the way he handles me. There is care in his touch. Something as powerful as he is could easily hurt me, but he seems determined not to, even though he obviously wants me to ‘wake up’.
I don’t know if this is a reality I can awaken to. I don't know if I can handle it.
But I know I cannot stay sleeping. There was a time years ago when I tried to curl up on myself and go away, just as everybody else had. My body would not allow it. My stomach growled, my bladder filled, my heart continued to beat - and I went on.
Tarkan
I cling to the remnants of a great steel girder tower, looking out over what used to be a city where sex was baked into the brickwork. There’s no sex left. There’s no brickwork either. I leap from the top of the bent tip and land heavily on powdered concrete dust. There was so much of what humans called culture here, and it is all gone.
Reaper insisted on touring this city many years ago. He said it was one of the treasures of the universe, that what humans had managed to create was a nexus of intense creativity and beauty. I spent the entire time looking at women who seemed to be competing in a world’s shortest skirt competition.
Now I walk through the remnants of palaces and public spaces where those women used to gather, taking endless images of the world around them. That was something I always found curious about humans. They loved to capture images, but they also seemed to think that taking a picture of something themselves made it more their own. They were funny little creatures of perspective and possession.
Something is flapping from a large pile of debris. I walk over to it to find a torn piece of canvas very much weathered and faded, containing nothing but the lips of an enigmatic smile. A faint memory chimes, but I cannot recall it fully. I pull the piece of fabric from the ground, getting part of a painted woman’s head with it. Once, this scrap of material was housed inside one of the great buildings of the planet. It undoubtedly mattered to the humans, but nothing matters when humans are gone. The planet is consumed by the meaninglessness of loss. It’s depressing. We have been to planets which did not have any sentient life, but didn’t feel depressing. There is a tangible difference between that which never was, and that which has been lost. I can feel the absence of the humanity which came to define this planet, a ghostly sensation.
I shiver and move on. Paris has fallen.
Reaper
One opens her eyes, and I look down into the most perfect molten brown gaze I have ever beheld. All I can do is stare down at her, drinking in her vulnerable beauty. She stares back, not without fear, but with a curiosity which might begin to border on the trusting.
She opens her mouth and a stream of words I do not understand emerge. Some of them sound almost familiar, but the meaning of them escapes me entirely.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “You’re safe. I’m just trying to make sure that you’re healthy.”
I’m sure she can’t understand my words either, but the tone of my voice seems to calm her. She gestures to the bindings on her arms and legs and motions with her head for them to be removed. I am about to refuse, but then I think, what’s the harm in letting her go? I am more than capable of keeping her in place.
“You need to be a good girl,” I tell her. “Let me do the sensitive parts of the exam first, then I’ll let you wriggle and squirm as much as you like.”
The sensitive parts will be very sensitive indeed. I have my doubts that she has ever been mated, but I need to inspect her sexual and reproductive health. If she is one of the only human females left, her ability to reproduce may have a significant impact on the survival of the species. She’s so incredibly precious, in every way.
Tarkan
“HELLO!”
I am standing on the top of the Sphinx. The nose had crumbled away the last time I saw this big carving, but now the entire head is gone too, leaving me standing on the shoulders.
The pyramids have lost their tips, and one of them has crumbled completely. This place was cursed, or sacred, or maybe both. I can’t quite remember. All the sacred curses have escaped now and are being carried on the desert winds which whip viciously across the dead plains, sand storms ripping into everything that dares stand in their path.
The Nile has dried to a small trickle surrounded by crocodile bones packed into the river bed in a jumble of predatory puzzle pieces.
I am still yet to see any humans, but here are quite a number of domestic cats skulking around the ruins. They stare at me with their alien eyes, slow blinking at me from great distances, telling me nothing of what came before.
Typical.
Chapter Six - The Mating
One
Every time the monster touches me I feel my body ripple with excited response. I should feel nothing but fear and revulsion. He is an alien beast who ripped me from my home and is keeping me captive and has bound me to a bed. I just can’t stop staring at him. His face is human, but I know it isn’t really. I know that beneath the layer of the mask he wears is something so inexplicably dangerous and strange that I should be paralyzed with fear.
But I’m not. Because something that looks human is better than nothing, because I have been alone for such a very long time that my mind has made friends with all manner of inanimate objects. A spider hanging in the corner of my cave was my closest confidante - and now there is a big man-like thing who makes my biology fizz with possibility as his fingers drift down my leg and find the sensitive skin of my inner thigh.
Does he mean to arouse me? Does he know what effect he is having on me? Is that the point? I wish I could understand what those deep words he keeps rumbling mean.
Reaper
One. The name suits her so perfectly. One spark of hope in a world of darkness.
I could stare at her for days, but I can’t spend all my time just marveling at her. I have to actually examine her. If she is the last female, then I very much hope she has healthy reproductive organs.
The medical bed allows for a subject to be manipulated into different positions, so I spread her legs and bend her knees up to allow for a more comfortable examination of her nether regions. Her soft female slit is alluring, but it is not the focus of my interest at this moment. So much human health can be determined via the anus, so that is where I intend to begin my examination.
I lubricate my human fingers with gel and touch her gently between her spread cheeks. The moment I touch her anus, she makes a soft little moaning sound which peaks into panic. I wish I could speak to her, but all I can do is make gentle noises as I work my finger against that tight little aperture and try to convince her to relax it enough to allow my digit to penetrate her there. I know very well that the human anus is a delicate thing and cannot be forced open without damage. I have no interest in hurting her. If she is the last girl in the world, we will have to be extraordinarily careful with her.
I press a little harder, making the tip of my finger dip past the tight ring of muscle which resists my every movement. She will learn to know better than to resist soon enough. I will have her trained to complete sexual openness. She will lose inhibitions, become conditioned to respond with desire to a glance. It is possible to train a human to be incredibly sexually compliant, some of our brethren did so in the past but were forced to leave them behind on the planet. We never knew what became of those women who were so well trained they could orgasm on command. We like to imagine they gained great power when we were gone, but realistically they may very well have become the property of any sufficiently dominant male.