by Lula Monk
“It won’t do any good.”
“How can you say that?” asked the Earth woman, as though Dredge had just mortally wounded her. Her words were strangled and high-pitched. “You said so yourself, the tech here is better than anything they have on Earth. The healers will have to help you. They have the means, and you’ve paid more than your fair share of money. Plus, we are helping Slep and the rest with this new product initiative–”
“I’ve already tried,” Dredge said softly. He stared down into Samantha’s face, seeing the disgust at calling her own species product warring with the news he had just delivered to her.
“You’ve . . . You’ve already tried? And they can’t do anything at all?” Thick tears began to snake down her cheeks. “Well, we have to do something! There must be some book or some information on those digipads everyone here uses. There has to be some little of bit of information, some clue–”
Dredge silenced her with a kiss. It was a bold move, and he knew it.
Samantha had been hesitant to agree to breed with him, had seemed unenthused by the prospect right until the very moment of the initiation of the act. And though she had been giving him signs all along that she might have enhanced feelings for him, he had never dreamed to hope it was true.
Wanted it desperately to be true, yes. But never hoped.
Samantha’s mouth parted, her soft lips giving in under his own. She returned the kiss eagerly, her tongue gently peeking through the seam of his lips to explore his oral cavity. Dredge felt another cough coming on – this damned disease was intent on taking everything from him, even the sweet moments he had remaining – and he gently pushed Samantha away.
The coughing lasted for only a brief while, thankfully.
Samantha wrapped her arms round his neck. She was sitting close to him, her hips pressed into his. He stared down at the little flickering light in her abdomen. He wanted to push her away again, out of fear that her current bodily position might be constricting their offspring. But he did not, because a large part of him wanted nothing more than to have as much of Samantha’s body touching his as was physically possible.
No. That was a lie.
What he really wanted was for Samantha to be a Glim, so he could request to join his light to hers, to spend eternity in the light of her embrace. But that could never be, for she was a human and he was a Glim. While their species could successfully breed, they could never hope to share the primal connection two Glims might share.
Samantha was weeping softly against his chest. He lifted from the hard wall, shifting his body until he was cradling her in his arms. Her eyes fluttered open; they already red-rimmed with misery.
“You can’t leave me Dredge,” she said softly. “I know it’s selfish. I know you don’t want to die. But I don’t want you to do either. I can’t bear the thought of you leaving me. Not now.”
Dredge’s heart, the apparent seat of human emotions, began to thunder in his chest. She had just expressed her interest in him, had just confirmed her feelings of love. He felt compelled to do the same.
“Samantha,” he began, his voice weak and hoarse. “I am a broken creature, a Glim whose shine is running out. I am losing my light faster than I can accept. But what is harder to accept,” he took a deep, labored breath, “what would kill me even if this disease did not, is the knowledge that my expiration means losing you as well. My life is no longer my own, Samantha. It belongs to you. And I am sorry it is a gift that will not last.”
He sagged back against the wall. Even speaking was becoming burdensome, a difficulty almost insurmountable.
The Earth woman stirred against him. Though his eyes were closed, Dredge knew she was crying. Her body violently shook against his own, her own breath escaping in soft, agonized sighs.
Dredge lifted his hand to her hair, stroking its softness. He could die right here, right now, his light dimming and dulling for the final time, and he supposed it would not be a bad way to expire. He had the creature he loved most in all the universe at his side, and his offspring grew in her belly.
He had done his duty to Brillar and to his people. He could die with a clean conscious.
“Are you just going to give up?” asked Samantha. Her voice had an edge to it now. Hearing it made Dredge flinch.
“It is not giving up, Samantha. It is accepting the inevitable. All creatures must die.”
Her eyes blazed. “And all creatures must fight to live, too! You can’t stop fighting this, Dredge. You have to try to save yourself.”
A deep, heavy sigh escaped Dredge’s lips. “There are times when fighting is futile. This is one of those times.”
Samantha sat up, her body rising into a deep crouch beside him. She placed her arms around his waist and began pulling, heaving him upwards.
“What are you doing?” he asked with a panic-stricken voice. She should not be lifting this much. She might hurt their Glimling.
“Please, Samantha,” he implored, pressing his hands into her chest, trying to push her away. “Let me expire in peace. Return to my side so that I might enjoy your presence a bit longer.”
“No.”
She heaved, pulling and straining to lift Dredge to his feet. The light in her belly began to flicker wildly. Seeing it, Dredge caved in and struggled to rise. He was not going to be the reason she injured their offspring.
Stubborn Earth woman.
When he was standing, Samantha thrust her finger into his face. “You will not die.”
“I will.”
“You will not die,” she said again, this time jabbing her finger into his chest. Her jaw was set, her eyes determined. “I refuse to allow it.”
Dredge laughed, sending sharp pain knifing through his head and chest. “My body disagrees with you, Earth woman.”
“Well, tell your body I said to calm the hell down with this . . . this dulling business. I’m not going to let the father of my baby just duck out now and leave me with a little Glimling I don’t know the first thing about.” She said the words all in a rush, as though she could not contain them in her mind any longer.
Dredge felt deflated. So that is why she did not want him to dull and fragment. She was worried she would not be able to care for their Glimling alone. “I can get you the reading materials you need to better acquaint yourself with my species. Knowledge is power. I can give that to you, to make you prepared to care for our offspring.”
Samantha’s eye twitched. “To be such an advanced lifeform,” here she gestured with her hands, “you sure are an idiot.”
Dredge leaned against the wall, his body weak. He did not have the energy to point out that she was wrong, that he was not an idiot.
“Do you hear me?” she asked, thrusting her face into his. Her hands rested on the side of his head, firm yet gentle.
She was being monstrously aggressive. This is not what Dredge wanted. He wanted the kind, nurturing Earth woman. Not this enraged warrior.
“Please, Samantha. Let me go.”
“No!” She screamed. She crashed her lips into his, causing him to stumble. They slid down the wall together.
Dredge wrapped his arms around Samantha, pinning her to his chest. If he kept her enthralled in this, their last kiss, maybe he could expire with the taste of her on his lips instead of hearing her rage filling his ears.
But she pulled away from him, her hands frantically stroking his neck and face and head, her fingers gentle along the cracks through which his light poured.
“Don’t you understand, you big stupid Glim?” she asked, her voice thick. She kissed him again, this time softer, sadder. “I love you, okay? I love you, and I don’t want you to die.”
Dredge smiled. His body had begun to vibrate, and he felt a tightening in his skull. Pressure. The crack along his forehead split wider, and Dredge marveled in the way his light danced across Samantha’s tear-streaked face.
“I love you too,” he whispered.
Samantha said something in return, her eyes wide and frig
htened. But the vibrations of his body were enough to drown out the Earth woman’s words. Dredge smiled at her and placed his hand on the pulsating glow in her belly.
He flinched.
The vibrations strengthened. The pressure in his head intensified.
He saw Samantha’s face clearly one last time, illuminated by the final, shining outpouring of his light.
And then all was darkness.
Chapter 27
Samantha
She screamed.
The alien’s light grew to a blinding brightness, the fissures in his skull growing and stretching until his entire head was a dense network of bright, sparkling lines of light. His body was vibrating against the floor, so rapidly that Samantha was having trouble seeing him clearly.
And then, the Glim exploded, his body shattering into countless portions.
Pieces of Dredge floated down around her like ashes, chunks of his fragmented flesh crumbling as they struck a surface.
The floor, the bed, the table.
Her face.
She kept screaming, holding her knees tightly to her chest. Dredge had been such a large, tall creature, and at seemed as if his remains would rain down forever.
Eventually, though, the pieces of the Glim’s body stopped falling.
Samantha looked around her. The entire room was coated in the powdery residue of her alien.
Of Dredge.
She cradled her head in her hands and wept.
She had not even realized she would say the words until they were already out of her mouth. I love you, she had screamed at him. I love you, and I don’t want you to die.
And every single word had been true.
She needed Dredge for her plan to work. He was one of the biggest keys to bringing destroying Galactic Continuity. Without him here was no plan. There was no hope.
But Samantha knew her sorrow was about more than the now-ruined plan.
She had loved Dredge.
She did not know when it had happened, or the exact moment it had started. But none of that mattered. She had loved the Glim, and now he was gone.
She sat on the floor weeping against her knees for a long while, her mind replaying every moment she had experienced with Dredge. Even when she begged it to stop.
The first time she had ever seen his face, across the crowd of hideous alien creatures when she was high above them on the auction block. The way he had first stroked her hair. Every smile, every reprimand, every sharp correction of her reference to their Glimling as a baby. All of it swirled around her mind, competing for attention, begging to be the thing upon which she chose to focus and channel her grief.
In the end, the thing that settled to the forefront of her mind was the time they had made love. She had always forced herself to view that event as an evil necessity, the thing she needed to solidify Dredge’s devotion to her. But she had just been lying to herself.
She had reveled in the passion the Glim had given her, had enjoyed the physical and intimate closeness. She had felt perverse for enjoying mating with an alien, but time and experience had shown her that Dredge was not just an alien. He was the one creature in all the universe to whom she had ever given her heart and soul.
And now he was dead.
Sobs racked Samantha’s body. Her knees were soaked with tears and coated with snot. She was an ugly crier, and she sure as hell would not wipe away the evidence that she had mourned her Glim anytime soon.
It felt as if she sat on the floor crying forever, but eventually, the sun came up.
The sun?
Impossible.
The idea filtered into her grief-stricken mind slowly. It was not possible for the sun to rise over the Hub, for there was no solar star anywhere near the space station. But sure enough, Samantha could see a blinding light shining around her, pushing its way through the cracks between the arms over her head, shining up under her legs.
She sat, her hand raised to the glaring light before her.
The light grew more brilliant, and she squinted, her field of vision reduced to a mere slit.
But then she saw the source of the light, and her screaming began anew.
Her mind rebelled.
This was more impossible than the sun rising in the starfield outside her room. She had seen him die, had felt pieces of his body thump against her as they fell from the explosion.
His fragmentation.
His death.
Sometimes, improbability does not matter. Hell, sometimes even impossibility does not matter.
For Samantha, in that moment, nothing really mattered except the source of the light that still shone against her face.
The form in front of her began to stretch and change, morphing into a shape she knew well.
She rose to her feet, her arms stretched out to embrace him.
She did not know how it had happened or what turn of fate had brought him back to her, but she did not care.
All she wanted was her Glim, the father of her offspring. Her lover.
All she wanted . . .
was Dredge.
Chapter 28
Dredge
Awareness dawned on Dredge slowly, the blackness in his mind receding until it was little more than a bad memory.
For a moment, he thought himself in the place where all souls went after expiration: the void. The last thing he had seen was Samantha’s face, and the nothingness engulfed him.
But just as quickly as it had come, the nothingness had gone.
He stood back in their room. His and Samantha’s room.
The small metal space was covered in a thin layer of some powdery substance, a fact Dredge only knew because an intense light illuminated the space, revealing every detail.
His light.
His powder.
He had expired. The realization struck him suddenly. Though he had distinct memories of his final moments of existence as well as harrowing recollections of the vast nothingness of the afterlife, the realization that he had in fact expired shook him to his core.
What was more difficult to grasp, though, was the obvious fact that he was no longer expired.
He was reborn.
Dredge’s mind struggled to comprehend this new information. There were stories on Brillar, legends really, that detailed all the myriad ways a Glim was supposed to be able to avoid expiration. Expiring during a noble act, living a chaste and peaceful life, having some great purpose yet to be fulfilled. The list went on and on.
Dredge had never believed a single word of the legend, though. Not until this moment. Not until he’d lived through a rebirth.
He wracked his mind, trying to figure out which parameter of the legend his own regeneration would fall under. If only it was quiet. Perhaps then he could think, if Samantha would stop screaming.
Samantha.
Dredge’s heart began beating wildly as though if he’d run a mile. A million miles. It thundered so quickly in his chest that he felt his core vibrating, and for one brief moment, he feared he was about to fragment and rupture again.
Samantha stood, her arms outstretched towards him.
Dredge took a tentative step in her direction, hesitant to test out the boundaries of his new form. His bare foot brushed against the surface of the floor, and he put his weight down slowly. When nothing terrible happened, he tried the other foot. Nothing.
In a rush, he dashed across the room and caught Samantha in his arms, spinning her around and around and around. He felt invigorated, energized, healthy.
He felt infinite.
It slowly dawned on him that Samantha was sobbing against his chest.
Dredge stopped spinning, squeezing the Earth woman close against him. Her sadness made him sad as well, but he could not share in her tears. Though seeing her weep brought him sadness, his joy was too enormous to be eclipsed by it.
He was alive.
He was healthy.
As soon as Samantha stopped weeping against him, he would go to the medical bay to confi
rm. It felt like an unnecessary step. He knew – within the very core of his being, he knew – that he was not diseased. He could not be. He was a new creature entirely, one free from illness and whole.
“How . . .?”
Samantha pushed the word out. Dredge could tell doing so took great effort on her part, both physically and emotionally. She looked spent, poor thing. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks sallow. Dark circles rest below her eyes, and her lower lip quivered. He stilled it with his finger.
“Shh,” he said against her ear, pressing his face close to hers. “Do not speak.”
“But how . . .?”
Dredge kissed her, the most passionate kiss he had ever given her. He kissed her for all he was worth. He kissed her as though his very existence depended on it, prying her lips open to plunder her mouth, their tongues sparring.
They both pulled away breathless, but Dredge made sure he was the first to speak.
“I don’t know why I am back. There were rumors of such a thing being possible back on Brillar, when the disease first appeared. But no Glim ever did as I have done. None ever came back,” he said, his hands tanging in her long hair. He wanted to hold her close to him, to keep her body near his. He wanted to merge with her, to unite.
He wanted to mate.
He pulled Samantha’s head back to his, his mouth crashing into hers. His hands searched down the length of her supple body until they cupped her buttocks. He lifted her, and the Earth woman wrapped her legs around his waist.
Dredge felt the feverish need of her kiss, felt the way she wanted his body as much as he wanted hers in the way her nails raked against the flesh of his back.
She was clinging to him, as if he were her life raft in the ocean of the uncertainty of the universe. And he was determined to be that for her, her salvation and her relief.
Her release.
He carried her to the bed and threw her against the pillows. There was no time for gentleness now. There was only mutual need. Dredge needed to feel himself seated deep within the Earth woman’s body, and the hungry look in her eyes told him she needed the same.