by Loki Renard
“Don’t worry, I was just teasing my commander. I’m going to take care of you.”
“Like you took care of the bad guys?”
Her eyes are open a sliver, two bright blue slits of intensity looking at me from the nest of chain remnants and what might be ragged cloth bandages stuck to her body.
“No,” I say. “Different. I’m going to get you better.”
“Worse. Better. It’s all the same. All the things are one thing. Nothing matters.”
Her speech is vague and slurred. They likely drugged her to keep her calm, when she rattled those chains too much and they didn’t want to deal with her struggles and screams anymore.
Settling her down on the observation table, I reach for the medical kit. I’ve actually never used this before. Scythkin don’t really get sick, and when we’re physically hurt or wounded, we just heal. Other species aren’t that lucky though. We have a human health kit, thanks to One being on board, so I should be able to find something to treat her with.
“Get a pin prick blood sample and run it through the analyzer.”
I’d almost forgotten Reaper was there.
“Of course I’ll do that. You can go. Deal with One.”
I can feel him wanting to take over, but he knows better than to try. This is my girl. Mine. He leaves, silently, but I know he won’t have gone far. He can’t go far, this ship is tiny.
“I need to get a sample from you,” I tell her. Some instinct tells me that it is important to let her know what I’m doing to her. She has been kept worse than an animal, but she’s not an animal. She’s a thinking, feeling, living little repository of rare humanity.
She doesn’t seem to notice as I draw a drop of blood from her finger with the little device that will scan it. My suspicion is that she feels the pain, she just doesn’t react to it anymore. That’s what happens with animals that learn to be helpless. Humans are no different than any other animal. Neither are scythkin really. It’s just much harder to put us into a state where we shut down. Our nervous systems welcome pain. At a certain point, we start to process it as pure enjoyment. Some humans have similar capacities, but not under the brutal circumstances she was kept in.
I don’t know what to say to her. I’ve never been much of a conversationalist. When Earth still existed, we used to talk about the weather, but there’s no weather out here, and I doubt she cares. I doubt any human ever cared, but it never stopped them talking about it almost constantly. I decide to try the conversational gambit.
“Do you like rain or sun?”
“Huh?” She looks over at me with a confused expression. “What’s rain or sun?”
A human who can’t make small talk about the weather is a human who is barely human at all.
“Do you like weather?”
“Does it matter whether I like weather? Wither might I see weather? Whether I want to or not?”
She’s barely coherent, poor thing. The marks of her captivity are damning and nasty, and the results of the scan are even worse. The computer begins to print out three categories of health concerns. Diseases. Deficiencies. Addictions. She has entries under each of them.
Subject is only borderline viable, the computer reports. Recommend immediate treatment, or humane euthanasia.
Euthanasia isn’t going to happen, but the computer doesn’t understand anything more than medical realities. She’s not just sick. She’s addicted to several substances, sedatives no doubt designed to keep her compliant.
The computer spits out a syringe of its own concoction, a cure-all designed specifically for the young woman still curled in my arms. Treatment one of sixty, it coos. Begin immediately for best results.
I inject the medicine into the soft tissue at the curve of her hip and watch her carefully. For the first couple of minutes, nothing happens. She just lays there, a dead weight that is far too light for my liking. I find myself holding my breath so I can watch hers more carefully.
She’s conscious, but it’s a kind of consciousness which isn’t really present. Her dull blue gaze is beautiful, but empty. It’s almost as though she’s nothing more than a suit like the ones we wear. She’s been turned into something that is only skin deep.
I am angry. Furious. I can imagine how beautiful she would have been if she were healthy and happy, how those blue eyes might sparkle with life and light. But they are glassy and glazed, and her breath is coming so short and so shallow I am afraid that the computer’s diagnosis might be right.
I might have been too late. I might have rescued her only to watch her die.
“Come on,” I say softly, rocking her in my arms. “Come on little human. Breathe for me.”
42
The large one has me, the male alien who is made of knives and brutal death rage. I am laying on my back, on the bed but cradled by his massive limbs. I feel so small. I have felt small ever since I awoke in captivity, but this is a different kind of small. What I used to feel was nothing more than irrelevance. I meant nothing. Now I feel small in comparison to the big beast who broke my chains as if they were twine, whose hands and appendages took life with a joyful alacrity which made watching him very entertaining.
I felt the sharp bite in my rear just now. Another injection. So many things have been injected into me. I tried to resist it at first, but I couldn’t. They were always too strong, just like this one is. I barely flinch as I feel what is likely to be another cocktail of drugs which will make me unable to control my own limbs infiltrating my body.
Is it even my body anymore? It doesn't feel like it. It feels like something meaty I wear, something that isn’t me. Something I’m saddled with in spite of myself.
I close my eyes and accept my fate. I stopped trying to control it when I realized that I would never really be in control. Even if I managed to escape my captors, I would be caught by others, or broken by fate. A deep sense of meaninglessness and misery suffuses my soul.
Usually I nod off after an injection, but this time something different happens. I start to feel more alert. I feel strength rushing back into my body, my muscles starting to twitch and move again. I’m coming back to myself. The fog is lifting. I am becoming something different. Something aware. Something animal.
Tarkan
She turns her head slowly and looks at me. Right in the eye. How can one little female be so frightening? I have battled hordes of vicious enemies, creatures of unspeakable brutality, species so dangerous that even scythkin shy away from battle. There are leviathan creatures on some unconquered worlds which are capable of taking twenty or more of us in their mouths and crushing us, aliens which have massive burning voids for eyes which inspire terror so deep and so existential that warriors have collapsed simply from looking into them. This is just a little human, but the way she looks at me in that first moment of consciousness gives me chills. I didn’t know I had the physiology for chills. I’ve never had them before.
Looking into her eyes is like seeing a thousand horrors of the very worst kind. It is like seeing the destruction of worlds - though that may merely be projection. I helped destroy many worlds when Reaper and I fought for the scythkin invasion forces. I thought I liked the destruction of worlds. I was quite proud of most of them. But now, seeing myself through her gaze, I realize it’s not that I’m afraid of her. It’s that she is instantly instinctually terrified of me, and I feel that horror reflected in my own gaze.
A sudden scream heralds her return to the world of full consciousness. She was drifting in a haze before, but now she becomes immediately, swiftly, dangerously alert. She stiffens and then bolts right out of my arms, turning into a devil of feral activity. Biting, kicking, hitting, it is as if every aggressive impulse in her body has been triggered at once and she can’t contain it. It’s not that she is attacking me, as she is attacking everything. The world itself. All creation is under fire - and I’m the closest thing.
I do not do anything to stop her. Scythkin cannot be harmed by humans. They have soft nails and blu
nt teeth and their skeletal system is exceptionally fragile, not to mention covered by nothing more than meat. It is a ridiculous design, one Reaper and I have mocked many times over the years.
What do I say? What do I do? I search my memories of comforting human phrases for one that might fit the situation.
“Whoa, whoa, you’re okay.”
Nope. That doesn’t work.
She just keeps flailing, screaming incoherently, crying out so loudly I consider sedating her, but given I just brought her out of her stupor, that doesn’t seem like the best idea either.
“Calm down?”
Again, the words do nothing. I am at a loss for what to do.
“If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands?”
She lets out a wail and tries to smash her head into the wall. That’s definitely not how the song goes.
I’m sure Reaper is watching on the monitors. The sounds coming out of this girl are feral and they would be terrifying if I had not spent my entire existence hearing the wails of the dying. These are the sounds of someone coming back to life, someone who is fighting for her soul.
She allowed me to carry her out of captivity, but she was weak then. She’s still weak now, but the medication has given her enough energy to fight me, and I can see by the fire in those pale eyes that she is going to fight with every bit of that energy, and more besides.
I might expect her to be grateful for her rescue, but that is naive. Anything truly hurt takes a long time to trust. That might mean she bites and curses and screams more than she cuddles and kisses and does all the sweet things Reaper gets to enjoy. I don’t care. I’ll wait as long as it takes for her to learn that I am not going to hurt her. Not ever. I owe all of humanity a debt I know I will never be able to repay - but I’m going to start here, with this girl.
She hasn’t said another coherent word in among all the screams, but I sense she wants to say something. Instead of speaking, she keeps chewing on the reinforced ridge of my arm, as if the biting is making her feel better. It is possible that it is. A lot of humans eat during times of stress, and keeping the mouth active is a good way to tap into the same calming circuits. I decide to let her gnaw on me, retracting all the sharp edges so she doesn’t impale herself dangerously.
It takes some time, but eventually she starts to calm down. Her attacks have not made any difference, and I have not retaliated. I let her cling to me with her aggressive hold and gnaw until she more than likely starts to hurt her own jaw in the effort to attack me.
“Easy, kiddo,” I say, trying another Earth-grown expression.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Kitten?”
“Don’t call me that either.”
“Baby?”
“No!”
“Snookums?”
“That’s not even a word!”
“Yes it is. I heard it many times on Earth.”
Her expression clouds over. “Earth?”
It means nothing to her. She doesn’t know what planet her species originated on.
As she releases her grip on me, I sit down, lowering my height. That seems to calm her somewhat. Her eyes still dart warily from side to side, but she looks less like she’s about to faint where she stands. A moment or two later, she sits down as well. She’s exhausted. I can see how hard it is for her to stay this alert. The energy from the medicine is not enough to make up for all she has lost over her time in captivity where I don’t think she ever got to move.
All out of new options, she begins to do what she did when she was locked in those chains.
She shuts down.
She curls up on herself in the corner, pulling her legs up against her chest, wrapping her arms around them, lowering her head so she is not a woman anymore, just a little ball of human.
42
I can feel him coming closer. He is a monstrous looking beast, more dangerous than any of the ones who enslaved me before. But there is something gentle in him, and when he touches me though I still flinch as I have learned to, I do not recoil.
“I will call you whatever you want me to call you,” he rumbles gently. “I won’t hurt you. You can trust me.”
Nobody has ever said words like that to me before. Nobody has ever had the gall to suggest I would trust them. The way the other aliens spoke to me was harsh, demanding, and cruel - when they bothered to speak to me at all. Usually they would just hit me and push me and then hit me again.
I stay curled up in my protective pose, knowing that the pain will inevitably come. It always does. There is nothing in this world that doesn’t hurt. I brace myself, still my breathing. I try to make myself as small and non-existent as possible, but it doesn’t work. It never does. He’s still there, above me, touching me with that gentle caressing motion I don’t want to respond to, but can’t help.
I have needed care for such a long time. After a while, I began to taunt my captors and deliberately disobey them so that they would hit me just so I would feel some kind of contact outside my own body. It was sick and it was wrong and I knew it, but I did it anyway.
This alien is still touching me, making crooning sounds and obviously trying to soothe me. I don’t know how to react. It is almost more frightening than simply being beaten. When will he start to hurt me? What does he want from me? The aliens who came to see me in captivity had a hunger about them I did not like, but I don’t sense lechery in him.
He seems worried about me, concerned for me. He doesn’t even know me. I wonder what he wants from me, what profit he will make by having me. There’s always something in it, I’ve learned that much. I have heard the creatures bickering over me, deciding what to charge to look at me, to touch me, how I should be touched and how much the various parts of my body were worth. As long as I can remember, which is not very long at all, I have been a commodity for trade.
The memory makes me vicious, and my reaction to the alien’s touch is the same, a harsh, sudden snapping of my teeth as I pull back from his hand and defend myself against whatever evil lies in wait for me.
“Easy!” He says, jerking back, but not soon enough. My teeth have found his hand and sunk in as far as they can go, which is not very far. His flesh is hard, like armor and I cannot get any kind of purchase on it.
He realizes that himself after an initial moment of concern and relaxes, allowing me to chew at his thumb uselessly for a matter of seconds before I am too embarrassed to keep trying to hurt him and give up, licking my lips as I retreat back into the corner of the room.
“You don’t need to attack me, I have no interest in hurting you.”
“What interest do you have in me, then?”
“I wanted to save you from those chains and the people who were hurting you.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s wrong to keep someone captive against her will.”
I think about that for a second, and realize that doesn’t make sense. “All the exhibits were being kept against their will. You only took me. Why?”
“Because you’re human. And there are only two humans left.”
“Only two?”
“One, and you.”
“The other one is called One?”
Questions are taking the place of fear. The alien doesn’t seem to mind answering them. That is different too. When I asked my captors questions, their answers were always the same: shut up.
“The other one is called One,” he confirms.
“What’s your name?”
“Tarkan.”
“Tarkan?” I repeat it. Does that sound like a name? I don’t know. I’m used to numbers. Using words to describe individuals seems somehow inefficient.
“That’s my name in four dimensions,” he says. “It’s longer in others, but you can’t speak those, so it doesn’t matter.”
I stare at him, not knowing if that is supposed to be a joke or not. Every time I look at him, I see something new to be terrified by. I look at the fangs in his mouth and he retracts them quickly, bu
t they don’t go all the way back up and I can still see the little points peeking out beneath his upper lip. This should not be cute. But it is.
I find this massive towering creature somehow endearing.
Probably because I still have the strong memory of him literally tearing my captors apart. I used to wonder what their insides looked like. Now I know. Gooey, as expected.
It’s also possibly because even though I saw him commit those unspeakably violent acts, he is not violent toward me. If anything, he is ultra-careful. He moves slowly so as not to frighten me, and he seems slightly unsure of himself, which I think comes from not knowing what to do with me.
He’s trying, in other words, and nobody, human or alien has ever tried for me before.
Maybe I can give him a chance.
No.
I can’t.
The second he moves, I feel panic rising inside me, a horrible choking feeling which makes me hiss and withdraw. I am ruled by fear. Every moment of my existence for as long as I can remember has been painful, and I can’t shrug that off because a horned alien with eyes like fire says I’m safe.
Tarkan
She retreats to the far corner of the bay, looking at me with hunted eyes. They are the most beautiful shade of blue, deep and soulful. I could gaze into them forever and never be bored. She shakes her head, then the rest of her body, reminding me of a puppy somehow.
The medication the computer just synthesized for her won’t fix all her ills at once, but it has clearly made her feel much better almost immediately. That makes her dangerous. Not to me, but to herself.
She still hasn’t spoken. She’s just staring at me with those eyes that hold so much pain and fear. It makes whatever passes for a heart inside me just break.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell her again. Those aren’t words that often leave my mouth. I’m usually definitely going to hurt someone. But not her. Never her.
She crouches down, covers her head with her hands, and the sound which emerges from her is a low wail of confusion and pain and something I can’t understand. It’s a very human sound, one which summons the other human on board.