by Amber Bardan
“Isn’t that what you want from me?” I rolled my shoulders. “To be a leader? For the humans and for your Crestonians sake.”
A crackle sounded before the answer. “Yes, I require your leadership.”
“Then start treating me like one.” My voice echoed through the cave. “Give me all the information. You swore to be forthcoming.” I slammed my hand on the table, the sting radiating through my palm. “So freaking forthcome.”
“ Very well.” Macca’s sound seemed to grow dimmer. “I will tell you all the repercussions to your precious Baratican.”
I sat down.
“Thank you,” I whispered as though this information would ease my mind.
Not fuck it entirely.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“It is time.” The voice croaked through my consciousness like a toad in the night. “ He approaches the drop off point.”
I stared at the same spot on the wall I’d been looking at for hours.
“Come to the pool.”
I rose and did as instructed, collecting the knife and nutrition pallets, then removed my outer clothes with numb fingers.
A splash drew my attention.
Something popped out of the spring where water flowed out and plonked into the pool.
I reached down and collected the package. My mind swarmed. This was really happening…
“Put the pallets into the waterproof satchel.”
I unwound the satchel, tipped out the item inside, then shoved the leather sack with the pallets into it.
“What’s this?” I picked up the bronze beak-like object that had been in the satchel.
“A breathing apparatus for underwater.”
I stared at it. The thing looked like some kind of medieval costume mask, the nose part hooked and evil looking.
“Put it on.”
I brought the mask to my mouth and nose. Cool metal touched my skin. Clamping pressure slammed over my face. My scream dissipated into the funnel.
I yanked at the beak.
“It is only suction.”
My head spun. I wedged a finger between the mask and my cheek, and broke the seal.
I gasped and threw the thing to the ground.
“Pick it up and put it back on . Time is short.”
I stared at the horrible thing on the floor. “I’m not wearing that.”
“Of course, you will.”
I backed up, the walls swimming around me. “No. Nope, I can’t.”
“You are not so precious as to be deterred by minor apprehension. What are you doing, human?”
I rubbed my face on both sides. No, I’d never been precious. There’d never been such luxury for me. I’d threaded worms through hooks and gutted fish by the age of seven. I’d completed basic military training and could’ve seen active duty if that’d been my desired path.
I was strong.
I was capable.
And an ugly face mask wouldn’t stop me from doing what needed to be done.
I covered my eyes. This had nothing to do with the stupid device. “I can’t do it. I can’t go with you.”
I’d tried . I’d tried so hard to block out what I didn’t want to know. To focus on what I had to do.
To hold on to perspective .
But all my perspectives just kept on rolling back to him.
“You can.” Macca’s volume amplified. “ You will.”
My belly seized.
“No. I can’t live with—” My fist clamped to my middle. “—the repercussions.”
Thor .
My chest heaved. What Macca told me festered in my mind, spreading to infect every inch of me. Bonding meant he’d begun genetically pairing to me from the moment he sampled my DNA.
There’d be no one else for him now. He’d never mate. He’d age slowly and unnaturally. Waiting to die alone.
To leave him would be a cruel, cruel curse.
“Repercussions?” The computer hummed. “There are a hundred woman who will starve without the pallets. Even with the energy cell there are not enough rations for all to survive the journey to Crestonia.”
I shook my head. “But with the cell you’ll leave earlier before they run out.”
“Escape pods are not intended to travel enormous distances, even at full charge. There will be many stops, it will take a great deal of time, and without currency there is only one thing we have to trade…”
No. Bitterness flooded my mouth. The women.
Macca would sell the women for the sake of the Crestonian child.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get the pallets to you.” I strode back to the edge of the pond. “I saw how the tunnel suck things down like a drain. I’ll just feed the satchel down and the drone can get it.”
“No. Fool emotional human.” Macca grew louder. “The current will suck the satchel into the bowels of this planet. You must deliver them to the drone yourself. You are needed here, Leila. Your place is with your humans.”
I glanced over my shoulder to the archway. But Thor… My insides bruised at the thought of him.
His big sweet face swelled in my mind.
“I can’t.” I squeezed my eyes closed. “I made a deal with him.”
A deal he honored, and so would I.
My head boomed. “You made a deal with me!”
I jerked at the ferocity. “I can’t do this to him when he’s been nothing but kind.”
“So kind that he keeps you captive?”
I gulped. My own knowledge battered around my mind. Didn’t I treat people who’d been held prisoner by enemies? Prisoners who started to relate to their captors. Even bond with them.
“So kind he seeks to force you to marry?”
It was survival instinct, I’d explained to them. Adapt and survive. My insides twisted. But this was different…
I shook my head. “No, he cares about me.” Pain slammed a fist into my esophagus. “He really, really cares about me.”
My blood flooded with a warm bittersweet feeling.
“He protects me.” I glanced up at the ceiling, and it was like my head opened and I knew so much more.
You could’ve asked for the stars strung on a thread.”
The memory came back to me and nothing Macca had ever told me felt truer. “He tries to make me happy.”
“He tries to mate you.” Macca’s words were a sharp bite, but I blocked them from tearing into me the way my vulnerabilities allowed.
“He could’ve mated me already, but instead he’s doing this my way.” I backed up. He got me. Every conversation we’d ever had ran through me. He understood me even though he was from another world. “I care about him, and I won’t hurt him, just as he wouldn’t hurt me.”
“You believe he truly likes you?”
I shifted. “I know he likes me.”
“You think he understands you, desires you, as no human ever did?”
My chest squeezed at the truth of it, but something about Macca’s words made the hairs rise up off my body. “He does.”
“You believe that what he feels for you is affection?” The voice in my head turned sweetly compelling. “That he can be counted on?”
The words vibrated through me, stirring up my insides. Made me churn. “Yes.”
“That he loves you the way no one else knew how to love you?”
My blood seemed to go still. “No, Macca, don’t…”
“That he wants you the way your father never wanted you.”
My heart felt as though it hit my stomach.
“Shut up.” I slapped my palms on my cheeks.
“That he will take care of you the way your mother never could?”
“I know what you’re doing,” I breathed. “I know what you’re doing, Macca.”
But it didn’t matter, the barbs hit just the same.
“That he is committed you the way Jonathan never wanted to be.”
Poisonous doubt, toxic pain, struck with flawless precision.
“That he can be relied on the way Un
cle Syd could not be relied upon?”
I dropped to a crouch and covered my ears. Hurt pulsed through me, spreading from my heals to my clamping fingers. “Stop it.”
“You are correct, Human. He does want you. He will take care of you. He is committed. He can be counted on.” But those assurances were poison too. “But what he wants from you is to be bred.”
“No.” I shook. My chest convulsed. Tears squeezed out of me. “It’s so much more than that.”
“He is committed to keeping you captive.”
I rocked. “Get out of my head.”
But the voice couldn’t be shut out. “ What you can count on is spending your fertile years being split open by Baratican sons.”
I dropped down on my side. “You’re wrong…”
“Norepinephrin. Serotonin. Dopamine. Oxytocin.”
Each word dropped like an anvil.
Those were my words coming back at me. My beliefs coming back to sting.
I closed my eyes.
“Those are chemicals humans are susceptible to. I do not say this to be cruel. You wanted transparency so know that the chemicals Baratican’s are driven by are far stronger, and more compelling than yours.” Macca’s tone mellowed, but the hurt did not. “Think, Leila. Why would he care so for a stranger? Why would he want you? Remember with your own mind. Have you not noticed him grow fairer to your human preference?”
My eyelids flew open.
“He alters himself to lure you.”
My heart thumped. I sat up. Images flickered through my head. The moment he took off that mask, he’d been manly, attractive yes, but strange.
And now…
“Your desire for him is a biological trick.”
A strange taste filled my mouth as though I’d bitten my tongue. A metallic tang.
“Have you experienced his breath against you?”
My hand went to my throat. I felt his breath now. Felt it fanning my lips as he lay across from me.
“Baratican’s only require sporadic breath. Weeks apart.”
“I don’t understand.” But dawning was right there—touching distance.
“Does his heart beat for you?”
I glanced down at my hands. Palms I’d held against his chest. Skin that had absorbed the steady throb of his pulse.
“Baratican’s Cardiovasular system is non-comparable to humans. Leila, he has no heart.”
My fists snapped shut. I couldn’t get in a breath.
“He pretends…”
My own frantic pulse beat against my ribs.
No. No. No.
“He emulates you. Mimicking your breaths, fabricating a heartbeat, altering his looks, synthesizing human pheromones. He is one big manipulation.”
My ears roared with the sound of the springs and my own internal raging. Tears shook me from the inside out, wet and salty and real.
“This is not your human love. If you do not leave here, this cave will become the very breeding farm you fought to escape.”
I couldn’t keep up with the horrors in my head. Meat babies. Captivity. Thor…
“ You were right Leila, there is no such thing as love. It’s all chemicals. He would desire you if you were green, swollen, bloated, and covered in pustules.”
My chin curled in to my chest and I cried.
“So long as you could be bred.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Things went from roaring loud to eerily silent.
As though my eardrums were pierced, and everything funneled out of me. I stared at the stalactites my vision blurring blue.
“It’s time to leave, Leila.”
Macca’s voice seemed so far away.
“I have learned you, and I know that you will not be defeated by this blow.”
I blinked, and my breath returned. No . I wouldn’t be. Perspective, Leila . There’d been worse I’d gotten through than being deceived.
Heart-break was survivable.
Been there. Done that. Dealt with it.
“Get up it’s time to look after yourself.”
I sat up. Yeah, that I could do. Taking care of myself had always been my own job. I swiped at my face, then gathered up my feelings—took Thor, folded and squeezed him into the box that housed Johnathan, my father, my mother, and all those who’d let me down.
Except, this box never felt so tightly packed. Or harder to force closed.
“Hurry, Leila he’s left the energy cell and returns for you.”
I scrambled for the beak mask, pressing it over my face. This time the suction didn’t jolt me.
“Get in the water now.”
I grabbed the satchel, and climbed into the water, striding over to where the water funneled down. This mask had better work. I took a breath and dived in, swimming for the tunnel.
Current sucked me forward, and in one kick I propelled through the hole. Space closed around me.
I shot into darkness.
My arms pinned ahead of me, leaving only my legs to kick with. Panic struck a lightning bolt through me.
My legs flailed.
“Relax. The current will take you.”
My lungs burned with pressure.
“Leila, breathe normally through the apparatus.”
Pressure pushed against my chest. The water moved me forward.
I gasped.
Bubbles swarmed around the tip of the beak, and air, actual air, filled me.
The twitching in my limbs eased.
I kicked my legs, taking another breath even though it was the most unnatural feeling.
The tug of the current grew more aggressive, sucking me faster.
“Prepare yourself, you are about to be deposited into a conflux. You must swim in the direction instructed.”
The current rushed faster. My scream disappeared into the mask.
Water pushed around me, creaking my ribs.
Then—weightlessness.
I floated, tumbling in a dark blue expanse.
“Up, swim up.”
I kicked and moved my arms, propelling myself upwards.
“Not that up. Turn around before you meet the next current.”
I flipped around and kicked again, pressure baring down on my chest.
“That’s it.”
I kicked harder, taking even breaths through the mask. Light grew ahead. I rotated my arms, satchel still gripped in my hand.
I broke the surface, scanning a wide cave filled with swirling light.
“The drone waits on the other side.”
I turned around. The elegant, helicopter looking drone, sat on ground on the far side of the underground river.
Light bounced off its silver surface. A moat of rock formation separated the water from the drone.
I swam for shore, my movements slowing under the weight of exhaustion.
My hand met stone—finally.
I threw the satchel up then dragged myself out of the water, and flopped down in a gap of dirt, prying off the mask.
I panted.
Achievement unlocked.
Survived an underground waterway escape on an alien planet. I let out a gasp of relief. That whole experience had felt ridiculously deadly.
“Drone, Leila. Rest once inside.”
I rolled onto my knees in between boulders, grabbed the satchel and scrambled in the direction of the drone waiting beyond the mass of rocks. I paused and glanced behind me. The mask lay on a small boulder. I strode over and collected it.
My gaze darted across the river one last time.
I swallowed, feeling for an instant underwater again.
It was all over. Everything . Even with the mask there was no chance I’d make it back through the tunnel while swimming against the current.
I ran my wrist over my dripping face.
Pain radiated through me. Thor . But I put that hurt to bed.
A trick. It’d all been a trick…
A distant rumble froze me in place.
“Leila, don’t move.”
Oh, fuck.
He’d found me.
I stumbled. There’d been no explaining this.
Our deal was done.
I turned slowly, dropping the mask, palms up. “Thor, I’m sorry.”
My gaze landed on a monster a few yards behind the drone. He wore the horrible Jababeast helmet…I’d never get used to it.
His growl intensified. My pulse rushed. And he was not happy.
“I’m still here, see.” I wiggled my fingers, swallowing. “No harm done, just dropping off the pallets for the kid on the ship.”
He slunk closer, head down low.
I shrunk back. Nope . I wouldn’t buy that shitty excuse either. “Can we just talk about this?”
He dropped onto all fours, head up, sniffing the air.
Realization smacked into me.
My heart plummeted.
Motherfucker .
Different goddamn Baratican.
I reached behind me and snatched the knife from my belt.
“No, Leila.” Macca screeched. “You will not strike a single blow before he overcomes you. Then your first mating will be savage.”
“Won’t need to.” I moved while I had courage, and brought the knife swiftly across the surface of my forearm.
My skin parted like butter.
I staggered. Blood dribbled down my forearm. That knife was freaking sharp. Lucky I’d kept the cut shallow. The Baratican paused, sniffing harder.
I put the tip of the knife to my throat. “Do I have your full cognitive attention now, Baratican?”
He rose to his feet. A bellowing growl filled the cave.
I shuddered, and grasped my wrist with my free hand, keeping the knife steady.
That sounded like a yes .
“I know you’re fast.” I inched back. “Very fast. But all it would take is a flinch and there goes my carotid artery…”
His bellow vibrated off the walls.
He darted closer.
I pressed, carefully as I could, blade so sharp, only the dribble let me know I’d broke skin. “Stop.”
He dropped down to all fours again, snarling.
“A dead mate makes fuck-all baby warriors.” I kept my eyes glued to him. “One move closer and not even a Baratican will be able to heal me.”
“Knife down, Crestonian.” His voice was garbled and raw.
Again, with the Crestonian assumption.