“Fun, fun. It was too much fun,” Zan said in his broken speech.
I got ready to speak as well when Eladia got closer to me and slapped me. Her petite hand didn’t seem strong at first, but the scorching mark ached more than I believed.
“You’re such an asshole. Why did you go and implied that I’m your girlfriend?”
“You’re delusional. I just acted that way so the guard could feel sorry for you and let us in faster. What’s gotten into you?” I said to her, rubbing my hot cheek.
“I had it under control. You don’t get to decide when to bud in or when it’s the right moment to do anything. This man is an esteemed worker that knows my father. What would he say if he found out that I barged in with a strange, drunk person telling everyone that he was my boyfriend?”
I wanted to reply to her, but the hair on the back of my neck started to prickle. I had felt like this before, back on Earth, before those strange creatures attacked us.
“Zan? Zan what’s wrong?” Silver suddenly muttered.
The young man got in front of the silver android and started snarling at the world. He must have picked up on the danger as well. Only Eladia seemed totally disconnected from the rest of the company.
“Don’t change the subject. I want you to--”
“Shush! Get behind me,” I said to her, but I was out of time.
Two trained fighters, in full, battle gear appeared out of nowhere from into the shadows. I suddenly forgot that I was with Eladia and the rest of the bunch and my blood pumped.
My hands were itchy, and I felt my heart ready to burst from anticipation. They took out their weapons, two buzzing swords each, and started swinging them fast. Their first attack aimed at Eladia whose back was turned to them.
Shit! She always gets in trouble and I have to save her.
When I leaped and got between her and the buzzing sword, dropping her on the ground so that both of us could dodge the attack, a smile covered my face.
“At last, some fun!!! Bring it on!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Eladia
I didn’t know who Jay was anymore. His Dark, parasitic self, the bloodlust filled monster than never missed a chance to fight, had saved me twice now in less than a day. I was certain he didn’t do it for me, but I couldn’t deny the fact that he had first plunged at me and then at the warriors.
The three of them moved too fast for me to keep up with their moves. I didn’t know who was winning or losing, and I certainly couldn’t find a good way to help Dark Jay.
But, at the end of the day, I didn’t know if he needed any help. He seemed to be going par-to-par with the two warriors, if not get the best out of them. From what I picked up, Jay used the back of his hands to minimize the damage, and his feet to attack.
So good a job he did that his two enemies were starting to back away. They talked to each other to a strange language, something from the North Quarter of the Known Galaxy. I couldn’t pick up a word, but I stood up and ran towards Silver.
“What did they say?”
Only a moment later, my assistant translated everything to me: “They have a mission. They want to stop us from getting to the top, even if they have to die in the process.”
Shit. They’re ready to go down to stop him.
At that moment, I felt like I couldn’t pick sides in this battle. Dark Jay had saved me twice now, but his monstrous strength intimidated and frightened me. But the other two men tried to kill me, so it was not easy to feel compassionate about them.
“Zan, no! Stop!” I heard Silver suddenly shouting.
I turned and saw the young Zan running to take part in the battle. He blended in quite well, using his young and supple physique to help Dark Jay. Only that something was wrong with him.
“He’s losing speed. He’s turning back to the other Jay,” I finally noticed.
I felt somehow relieved that Dark Jay returned to his slumber, but right now I thought that there was no way he could handle the two men in front of him.
Zan must have realized that before us because he got there just in time to save him. The young boy wasn’t so physically adept as Jay, but he seemed like he had a plan.
“Jay, attack!” the boy said, shouting.
Jay used his hands to punch in front of him. One of his two adversaries tried to stop him only for Zan to kick the man’s arm. Jay’s punch connected, breaking his target’s neck, while the other guy fell on the ground with a broken arm, unable to move.
The battle ended with Jay stomping the other man to the head, making him lose his senses. At that moment, he turned and looked at me.
“Where am I? What’s going on Eladia?”
And that was when it dawned on me. Every time in the past, when he turned to Dark Jay, we could somehow explain the transition. Now, many hours later and after changing our location, he must have been really confused on what had happened.
“Jay, I’ll explain things to you later. Now we have to hurry to the top floor.”
He didn’t move. He stood there, looking at his hands, searching for a clue of what had happened but he was unable to find any.
Shit, I fucked everything up.
“Jay, please trust me on this. We have to go. Now!” I said to him one last time.
This time, he heard me and managed to snap from his deep thoughts. I felt bad for not telling the truth, but something was wrong here, and it was closely connected to the cube reacting to something in this building.
We ran all the way to the elevators, and we all rode one. In a moment, we were on the top floor, the only lit up place of the whole building. I could hear the clanking of metal on metal, the distinctive sound of a fight.
“It comes from the main room. We have to hurry,” Silver said.
As we ran to the main area of the floor, I could see three men fighting. I recognized the tattoos on the sleeveless arms of the two of them, signs of the Originators.
I stopped and urged the rest of them to do the same. “Stop. We’ll only get on their way. They are Originators, the most elite soldiers of the known galaxy. We’ll only make things worse if we rush in there now.”
I had seen Originators fight in the past, but this was nothing alike. The duo moved in perfect unison, backing each other up, using their bodies as support, making the impossible possible. Exactly like Dark Jay had done before.
I looked at Jay, but he seemed way too lost in his thoughts. I didn’t know what to do to make him come back, but it was like our time together was not enough for him to get more intimate with me.
I was ready to say something when I heard a loud shout coming from inside the room, where the battle raged.
“Antony!” a woman bellowed.
Their adversary, a man with a dark red demon mask in the style of the ancient Japanese ones, ornate with black lines and two, small horns, managed to kill one of the two Originators.
I capped my mouth with my hand, and I tried to understand what was going on. Then, with one broad swing, the red demon decapitated the other Originator.
All of us stood still, frozen in the sight of two of the most elite soldiers getting killed by a total stranger. I wanted to run and help them, but I was too late. The other man picked something up from their bodies and headed for the window leading outside.
Before he jumped, he looked straight to our way and waved. I didn’t know if that was meant as some kind of taunt or something, but I felt anger boiling inside my chest.
“What has happened?” Silver was the first one to talk.
I rushed into the room, Jay and Zan behind me. “Silver, scan their bodies for traces of the Nusae energy. We have to know what was that this man took,” I said, trying to hold back my tears.
I wanted to promise I would avenge them, but I didn’t know if I could. So, my best hope was to make sure I solved this Great Mystery so that their deaths weren’t in vain.
“Eladia, we have a problem. There is a bomb on the ground floor, a bomb ready to burst. We have
to hurry, now!”
“Shit. No signs about any Nusae artifacts?”
“No! Please, let’s go! We don’t have enough time!”
I swore behind my teeth once again, and I decided it was too late now to search their bodies. Only that Jay thought otherwise.
“Jay! Jay, we have to go! Come on!”
But there was something shining in his hand. While holding the cube, he revealed the faces of the two fallen Originators. I charged next to him only to see two very familiar faces on the floor.
“Jessie? Antony?”
I heard someone calling that name before but I thought what were the chances it was that Antony?
“Do you know them?” Jay asked me.
“Yes. Well, I thought I knew them. I’ll make sure to explain everything to you Jay, but we have to go. Now!”
He nodded and we quickly used the elevator to get downstairs. It was not the safer choice, not by far, but we were fifty floors up in the sky and using the stairs would make it impossible to make it in time.
We ran towards the entrance only to see Ron, the guard, waiting for us on the ground floor.
“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you for over ten minutes.”
“Run Ron. Run if you want to live!” I said out loud, but it was too late.
The bomb exploded only a second after we took a step out of the building. I saw Ron get buried under the falling rumbles. There was nothing I can do but cry.
We were alive but so many people died today because of this Nusae artifact. I didn’t know that for sure, but something in my mind told me that this tiny thing was the reason behind everything that had happened here today.
I turned around me to look at Jay, only to see him walk away. I rushed to his side and stopped him before taking another step forward.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Leave me alone. You lied to me. You were lying to me from the start. There is something inside me, right? Something that takes over my body and kills in my place?”
He knows.
“I can explain. Please…”
“Just leave it human. Esuh means lonely, and now I understand why.”
I wanted to follow him but at that moment, amidst the dirt of the destroyed embassy, I saw someone moving straight into a back alley.
Another demon, this one with a blue mask, ran away from the crime scene. It was either that or my imagination was playing tricks on me.
Either way, once again, I ran after Jay, the man with the two faces, the alien I had started to fall in love with.
The only thing I could do now was to chase him and talk to him but in my mind, I cherished the moments we spent together on that chilly roof.
I wished that that moment had never ended.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Eladia
Mosa was believed to be impenetrable. Mosa, humanity’s greatest city, the jewel of Yaerus. When I see the rumbles of the Great Embassy lying all around me, I can’t help but feel fear grow inside me about my planet, my race, about myself. And yet, the only thing in my mind, even among this chaos, is what does Jay feel about me?
Can I earn his trust again?
I don’t know. Nonetheless, I keep running after him. Well, not run but certainly limp. Having just survived a fifty-floors plunge to our deaths, we are mostly fine except some minor injuries. Jay, however, is the only one that seems seriously hurt, lying on the ground, his face filled with blood.
It’s a miracle that we’re all still alive.
Before I can even begin to understand what’s going on, Jay is on his feet, trying to get away from me. I don’t know how he’s able to even stand or where he finds that inner strength to keep moving, but I’m not sure I want to find out soon. Probably, he’s trying to get away from me.
Behind me, Zan and Silver try to keep up with us. Zan is in shock while Silver remains the same emotionless android as always. To be honest, I don’t blame her. She’s not programmed to have feelings after all.
Everything is blurry. I...I don’t know what to think anymore. Today is the first day I saw someone die in front of me and the day a building collapsed on me while we were still inside. If I’m in shock, it certainly feels empty in here; empty and distant.
Yeah, that’s the word...distant.
“Eladia...you should back off. Give him some space. He doesn’t want to see you now,” Silver says to me although I hear nothing except my name.
Eladia.
My name is not mine if it doesn’t come from his lips.
God, I’m so selfish. The world just crumbled and fell on my head and the only thing I can think is our moments up on that roof. When he got me naked under that chilly sky and made love to me.
The distance between us shortens with every step. Soon, I’ll be able to catch up to him. But what am I going to say to him then? Am I ready to face him?
His dark expression is imprinted on my mind, his eyes sparkling flames of blame. I want to stop following him but I can’t. I can’t turn back now. We’re way too deep into this to stop.
“I told you before human, stop following me,” he suddenly says.
Jay stops. His voice is a mix of cold and blank feelings. There is nothing in there reminding me of the old Jay, my Jay.
“You know I can’t do that. We have to talk. I want to explain to you how I feel,” I say, but I know my words can’t reach him.
A cloud of dirt covers everything around us. It must have been over half an hour already since the time the bomb on the Great Embassy set off. Only a haunting silence remains now. Are there more victims? Was there something I could do to stop it?
“There is nothing...there is nothing you can do now. You were lying to me...you...you…” he keeps saying, muttering. For a moment it feels like he isn’t talking to me but to himself.
“I had to keep this secret from you, Jay. You don’t know what your other self can do.”
I can hear the despair in my voice; despair and misery. What troubles me the most, however, is that if I can hear it, then it’s sure that Jay must have picked up on that himself. I feel something running down my back. It’s itching and hot. There’s a voice inside me telling me that it’s blood. I choose to ignore it.
“You speak like you wanted to protect me, but you only wanted to protect yourself,” he says.
Jay starts walking away from me again.
My body feels heavy, and I want to sit down and rest for a while, but I know that we don’t have much time before the police arrive. Jay is an Esuh, part of an extinct alien species. If the police find out about him, they will keep him stranded in a research facility somewhere on Yaerus and experiment on him for many years before they let him go. I can’t let that happen.
I’m ready to take another step forward when Zan rushes to my side and stops me.
“You don’t have to do this. Jasih is afraid and alone. Jasih is like Zan before he met Silver.”
The young boy sounds anxious and sad. He’s wearing normal clothes now, and he doesn’t walk on his fours all the time, but he’s still hairier than common humans, even though Silver insists in grooming him every two weeks or so. His dark hair makes him look older than his real age, and his green eyes sparkle in the middle of the night.
Still, even he’s right.
My lips curl upwards in a tilted smile. I stretch my hand and touch his thick-with-hair head. I pat him; he seems confused for a moment.
“You can’t be more right, Zan. But like you’ve found Silver, Jay needs to find that one person he can communicate with. Only that he’s not so good at talking as you were when we first met you. That’s why I have to chase him and teach him how to talk,” I say.
I’m not sure he understands completely but still, he nods. Hell, I’m not sure I know what I’m saying myself. I’m just another Chronicler trying to follow the trail of clues the Nusae left behind before vanishing. The Great Mystery seems an easier task to tackle now, certainly easier than finding the right words t
o mend this situation.
And so, I keep following him.
Zan wants to come after me, but Silver stops him. He tries complaining, but the last thing I hear is Silver saying to him: “she has to do this alone.”
That’s a pretty wise comment from a robot that thinks in ones and zeroes. She must have picked this up from a film or something.
Five minutes later, we’re still walking. We have wandered off the area of the destroyed embassy. I’m not sure where we are, but we’re still walking. In time, I hear the first sirens of police vehicles echo in the dead silence of the night. The flying shuttles head to the area of the destroyed building, their blue and red lights flashing prominently.
Alien Romance Box Set: Alien Former: Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Books 1-5) Page 54