Here

by Zolendz, Christine

  “Come, Kate,” Rune says as he stands, chuckling. “I might be able to alleviate some of your claustrophobia.” He holds out a hand to me, which I am reluctant to take. He sighs, “After all we’ve been through so far, you truly believe I would shove you out of an airlock?”

  He might have saved me a few times, but he did want me to seduce Pious. That would have gotten me dead quick.

  “Jex? Would you excuse us for a moment?”

  Jex nods, yet he looks at the both of us as if we’ve sprouted a few new heads.

  I climb up to my feet, but I don’t accept his hand. Not right now, this is all too confusing. What’s the difference between him and Pious? To my world they’re both the bad guys.

  He slides another panel over to reveal a narrow walkway, one we haven’t been through yet. And once inside, I realize it’s a spiraling metal stairwell. Something at the top, just out of view, casts a soft gleam over each step. “Watch your step.”

  Rune leads me to the first step and helps me up, his fingers lingering on the bare skin of my arm longer than necessary. When we reach the top of the circular climb, I see the source of the glow and I stumble; his other hand grips at my waist and tightens. I feel it through the suit, hot and strong, but my mind is too preoccupied with what lay ahead of me to think much of the touch.

  It’s a long rectangular window.

  Stars are everywhere. Millions of them, twinkling white diamonds in the ink black sky. Streaks of color slash through the blackness—reds and yellows, greens and blues. Planets and galaxies wink at me. There’s not much room up here to stand, and instantly his hard chest is against my back. His breath fanning out warm on my neck.

  “Oh my God, Rune. It’s—It’s breathtaking,” I whisper.

  “Breathtaking,” he repeats, angling his body forward and staring down at me. “That saying—I’ve not heard it used before, but it is quite fitting right now.”

  I quickly glance up at him, but bring my eyes right back down to the window. It’s too hard to look away from the view.

  “Looking out into the cosmos was always calming to me, but I never felt the taking of my breath until I came to Earth.”

  “What? Really?” Well, I guess that is understandable, I mean did he ever see a tree or a flower before?

  “Not until my faceplate was off. Not until I saw you.”

  “Uh, um. Jesus, I need a drink.” Smooth, Earth girl. “What I mean is…okay, I don’t know what I mean. But what I do know is these suits are doing something to us physically, right? I mean, you said so yourself. Pious has us controlled and he’s programed everyone to what? Be attracted to one another? Maybe he’s forcing the repopulation of your kind?”

  He looks away from me, “Yes, that may be true, however—”

  I breathe out a loud sigh. “Okay, then. It’s settled,” I said, curtly. “I’m not breathtaking.”

  “Yes. Yes, I agree. That’s fine.”

  Again, I have the sudden urge to smack him.

  “Okay, so let’s get back to what’s happening.” I need to change the subject, being this close to him is making my head spin. Whatever is going on with the suit shouldn’t matter, if the alien finds me breathtaking is irrelevant, we need to figure out how to get me off this flying disk. “You somehow went back in time and tried to destroy my planet. But Pious took your spot.” And do I take your breath away? Nope, stop thinking about it. Focus on the situation.

  “Kate, that isn’t true. While yes, I did want to extract a few of the women from your planet. I didn’t plan for the rest of what’s happened to occur.” He reaches up and touches a hand to my chin. “You must believe me. I wanted no more than a hundred women. My people needed them to survive.”

  Still a kidnapper.

  “So if you stop Pious and take back your General…ness, would everything on my planet go back to being normal?” I realize how dumb the question is as soon as it’s out of my mouth. “I mean, what if you go back in time again and not come here or you land back on Earth and hold a contest or something. Believe me when I tell you a ton of women, although bat-shit crazy, would volunteer to be egg donors to a bunch of —" extremely attractive alien men.

  “You’re under the impression I believe in this time travel idea,” he says.

  “You don’t?”

  He goes still beside me, and looks to be thinking, or choosing his words carefully. “Bending time and traveling through it would alter everything. The first person to see one of our ships—just the thought of seeing one of our crafts—it would alter the future. The slightest incident could change the world. Some would never be born, some would never fall in love—have offspring—”

  “Like Back to the Future,” I whisper.

  “Like what?”

  “It’s a movie from the 1980s where someone goes to the past and changes the future, then he messes up and has to go back.”

  “Well, a mess-up would change everything, in some instances it could erase lives, cities, countries—it’s an enormous idea—but it’s true: one insignificant detail could be so significant it could wipe out an entire world.”

  “Okay, but…if something were to happen to someone in my time it would alter your people, not my people from the past, right?”

  “That’s not how time works, Kate. If you bend time, that straight timeline bends at both ends.”

  “Is that why people on Earth disappeared?” His callous actions changed everything. All of this was his fault. He is the enemy.

  “I have no way of knowing for certain, but it sounds plausible.”

  I study his features in the glow of the starlight. “So when you came here to steal a few women,” the words are bitter on my tongue and come out as such, “what went wrong?”

  “Pious challenged and changed the plan.” His voice is low and vicious and full of betrayal.

  “And Pious was a friend to you?”

  He shifts back and takes a long breath, “Pious is my brother.”

  His admission doesn’t surprise me. But for some reason it hurts, this omission of facts, it hurts personally. He’s just part of one big dysfunctional abduction-loving family. One he forgot to mention to me.

  He advances down a step, his eyes still locked on mine.

  “Well, there’s probably a hundred women on this ship right now, aren’t there? Pious showed them to me, I saw them with my own eyes. So, you’ve got what you came for, right?”

  He stills. “I do,” he admits.

  “That’s not right, you get that, right? It’s not right taking someone against their will.”

  His jaw clenches. “We need them, Kate.”

  Asshole-alien-twatwaffle-women-napping-mother-fu—. “I’m going to fight for them, Rune.”

  His face shows no emotion.

  “I’m going to fight until every single woman on this piece of shit ship is free or here by their own choice.”

  “You would fight even me?” His question is loaded, yet it’s said with a small slip of a smile.

  “Yes.”

  “You females are very fierce,” he whispers.

  “Trust me, Rune. You haven’t seen fierce yet.”

  34

  Kate

  I watch him leave, then stomp down the spiral steps behind him. Images of the end of my world flash like a bad horror movie in my head. I try to push them back, but they’re playing a loop of double features, the repetition is sickening.

  That jerk gets me so pissed off. If he had just snuck down to Earth and asked any group of women to leave their life there to go on some extraterrestrial adventure, he would have a shipload of alien-fetish fan girls up here, all willing and ready to make little alien babies. I mean, come on—he’s from a race of perfect alpha males—all muscle and easy on the eyes. It would have been so easy to pick up a bunch of interested girls, all in one night. Jesus, he could have just burglarized a freaking fertility clinic and no one would have been physically hurt.

  When I reach the bottom of the steps and walk through th
e small secret opening, Rune is talking quickly in hushed tones with Jex. Both of them ignore me.

  “How did Pious challenge your ideas?” I bark.

  Their heads lean together closer, neither one answering me.

  I lunge forward, shoving my body between them. “I know you hear me talking to you. How did Pious challenge your ideas? What’s the difference between what he’s doing and what you wanted to do?”

  He swears under his breath, then reaches out to cup his hand around my arm, pulling me tight against him. “I didn’t mean for this to happen!”

  “And what was it that actually happened?” I demand.

  His expression darkens, but his explanation does not come.

  “Are you that much of a coward, you can’t even explain to me what it is?”

  Jex’s words, like ice and fire, break through Rune’s silence. “We believe that Pious and the rest of the council are hunting all the ancestors of the Caelum’s maiden voyage. He’s destroying everyone who opposes him before they were ever created.”

  Rune puts a hand up to stop me from speaking. I slap it down.

  “Kate—”

  “Don’t you Kate me. There were eight million people living on the island of Manhattan alone, Rune. He just made them all go away? They were all related to the people on board your stupid ships? So you did come to destroy my world? You piece of shit!”

  Between us, Jex looks utterly astonished, glancing back and forth between us. “Sir?” he asks.

  “Enough!” Rune commands. His voice is loud and imposing. “With all due respect,” he says moving closer and looming over me. “Your gender is infuriating. Think whatever you want, female. But I must wonder if my people made your gender extinct on purpose.”

  “I hate you,” I growl.

  “Of course you do,” he shouts back, turning away from me.

  I draw myself back and stare after him, wanting more of a fight. He thinks I’m the one that’s infuriating?

  “Kate,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. He glares at me with a tight jaw before he continues. “Did it ever occur to you that you might be the one that’s wrong?”

  “You came to Earth to steal women and destroy my planet,” I say quietly.

  “You’re wrong.” A trace of grief flickers in his eyes. “My forefathers left Earth four generations ago because that’s when humans were dying out. We monitor the planet every season, trying to find even the smallest sign of life—but there hasn’t been any. That’s probably why Pious traveled back in time.” He rakes his hand through his hair, in frustration. “I should have realized when there where healthy people here…I should have realized what he had done.”

  Oh.

  “How did humans just die out?” I can barely believe his words. I bet it was some disastrous nuclear war.

  His eyes are cold when he replies, “Think about how my people have had to live, Kate. We do not touch. We show no flesh. Our oxygen is filtered and regulated.”

  I shake my head trying to understand.

  “Everything we need to survive is built into our armor. It feeds us the exact nourishment we need to sustain optimal health and it protects us.”

  “It protects you from what destroyed everything?” I try to keep my voice even.

  “It protects us from what your people have eventually done to mine.” His eyes are dark with anger. “So, Kate, when I speak of finding females to help repopulate our species, I am literally speaking about the future of YOUR species. We did not do this to you. You did this to us. Your generation did it to mine.” Without another word, he jerks away and sets himself up in the small alcove that he could plug his armor into and closes his eyes.

  His words repeat in my head, and my anger and all-out hatred seem to fizzle into a small lump that’s lodged itself in the back of my throat. Before I realize what’s happening, tears are streaming down my cheeks. His words stung me.

  I glance quickly toward Jex, expecting him to laugh at my emotional state, but he doesn’t. He just offers me a seat on the floor next to him and sighs when I ignore the gesture. “General Rune did not just come for female eggs. He came hoping to find a mate.”

  Again I feel the walls of the small enclosure press in around me. My body wants to pace, but there’s not enough room. I end up turning back and forth driving myself mad. “A mate? He wanted a girlfriend? A wife? What?”

  “A female to run the ship alongside him. One who would bear his children.”

  “Well, that has nothing to do with me,” I snap. Heat flashes across my chest. “My sister was taken and his…” I wave my hands wildly in Rune’s directions. “His actions ruined my world.”

  Rune’s eyes are closed and his chest slowly moves up and down. He looks like he’s sleeping peacefully. I wonder if he’s dreaming. The metal soles of my shoes pulsate and hum, I wonder if this alien waste receptacle is moving again.

  I wonder if I could get away with kicking him. He needs a mate?

  I can’t stay on this mobile space home any longer.

  I sure as hell can’t mate with anyone.

  I don’t want to have a child right now.

  I don’t even know where Claire is or if she’s okay or scared.

  Who’s going to take care of her?

  I look back at Jex. “I don’t know where my sister or my father are. And it’s not a big deal to you, but I’m up on a spaceship.” I cross my arms over the metal plates covering my torso. “That’s terrifying. And it’s all because of this idiot. He should have just downloaded AlienTinder.”

  “The General wanted—”

  “Tough,” I snap again. My anger is unraveling faster and faster. “You don’t just get things because you want them.” I rub my hands over my face and break down for the first time. Because that’s when it hits me—it really hits me—there’s no going back. This is what the world is now, and I’m trapped in it. “Does he have any clue what he’s done? Even if this end of the world crap was going to happen in my future. In what? What did you say, the year 2056?” I sniffle and choke out a gasp. “Him coming here made it happen sooner.”

  Rune is out of the uploading dock instantly, breathing heavily in front of me. “I never meant for anything bad to happen. What do you want me to do? What do you want!?”

  “I want my life back.”

  His hands reach me quickly, cupping the back of my neck. Each thumb softly grazing both sides of my cheeks. I want to scream, kick out, and fall to my knees, but he holds me steady and presses his forehead against mine. “I wish I could,” he whispers. “But I can’t. I need you too much.”

  “I can’t help you. I can’t.” Tears fill my eyes. “I’m sorry, I just want to go home, Rune.”

  35

  Kate

  Rune leans his head back and looks down at me. I’m not sure what he sees on my face, but his hands immediately fly off me, and he steps away.

  We stare at each other in silence.

  “Is that truly what you want?” His face pales as he asks the question.

  “You can’t keep me a prisoner here, Rune. You can’t keep any of us.”

  His jaw tightens. “You don’t understand what you’re asking me.”

  “But I do.”

  “The human race will become extinct, Kate. My generation will be the last.”

  I clear my throat and wipe away my tears. “I think you’ll be just fine. Just ask around on Earth. Ask some females if they would be willing to come back with you.”

  “You’re not willing to stay here. With me?” His expression turns grave. “Think of what your life will be like back on Earth, Kate.”

  “As opposed to being here with you? Okay,” I sniffle. “If I go back home, I find my sister and father and I keep them safe. It’ll be hard, but I’ll do everything I can to survive the next thirty years until whatever happens in your past happens in my future.” I step forward and hold my chin up, “If I stay here, I get what? Inseminated? Then I get to be a mother? Then you’re done with me? And I liv
e in a sardine can for the rest of my life wondering what happened to my family?”

  “Kate, I—”

  “And let’s be serious, here. You aren’t the general any longer, your crazy alien brother is. Everybody here thinks I’m the one who killed you. So I’m not going to be really popular.”

  “I admit nothing here will be perfect until I reinstate the correct structure of the ship, but I can assure you of your safety, Kate. I haven’t let anything happen to you, have I?”

  A quick glance down shows me Jex, mouth gaping open, gaze ping-ponging back and forth between us.

  “So your promise is to keep my reproductive organs safe up in space, but my brain and heart, they can go to hell?”

  “I’m not understanding your question.”

  I growl out a frustrated moan and rub my hands over my face. I’m too worried about my sister and my father to be standing here talking about this. “I need to get back home. End of discussion.”

  “I need you here.” For a moment, he looks earnest and desperate.

  But then I remember my sister as she crawled back to me on the sidewalk just before the tin men took her. “No, no you don’t!” My tone is harsh and loud. “You can use any other woman that is willing to donate her eggs to you. I refuse.”

  “This is the future of mankind,” he whispers. “This is my species. I need to save them.”

  I think about everything he’s told me about his mankind and then everything I know he probably hasn’t said. “Your women went extinct and you did nothing to save them. Your mothers and grandmothers, sisters and cousins? You allowed them to die out. Maybe your men don’t deserve to be saved now.”

  He draws back, stunned.

  “Jex?” His voice is low and shaky.

  “Yes, sir,” Jex says climbing to stand next to our showdown.

  “Take Kate through the passages, back to the lower hangar, the west one not the same one as before. Take her home.” He pauses and searches my face one last time. “Safe travels, female. I give you my word the other females here who do not want to stay will be brought safely back to Earth under my orders.”