My attention is drawn to them so much that I forget for a moment that I’m on a mission to win back Jay’s trust. When I turn my head to check on him, I quickly notice that he has stopped walking. He’s standing perfectly still. My heart skirts wildly; the first thing that comes to my mind is that he must have changed his mind, that he wants to talk to me after all.
“Jay...,” I start, but he doesn’t react to my voice.
He’s just standing there, his statuesque build towering before me. I can still feel his hot breath on my neck when he hugged me before, on that roof. This time, even though we’re just a breath away from each other, I know I have to keep my hands to myself.
I open my mouth to say something, but the words never come. Even though I’m not ready to give up on him yet, I don’t know what to say. So, I grab my ponytail and pull it down to a tighter knot.
I start putting random words in a line, forming sentences; it sounds like talking, but I’m not sure it’s me that it does it.
“The first time I saw you, you were just a tall man with a really pale skin sleeping inside a cryo-pod. The only thing I thought back then was that these pods have the power to last for years and that I have to set you free from your eternal sleep. However, that day, when we got attacked by a pack of wild animals that tried to kill us, you fought them with all your strength, but you couldn’t win.
“And that’s when your dark self, woke up and protected us all. With ash gray skin and bloodlust filling his eyes, the man inside you took over and almost killed us. I was afraid, thinking that the next time you turn, the same thing will happen again.
“So, we all agreed that it would be better if we never said anything to you. And that worked for the first six months, while we were traveling from planet to planet. You didn’t change, not even once and even we had started to forget our own lies. Around that time, Silver came up with a theory that you only change when you’re in a pinch, like when you hit your head, or you’re in danger. How could I’ve known that you could also change when making love to me?”
Throughout my monolog, Jay doesn’t talk, not even once. If he’s giving me the cold shoulder, then he’s way too good and way too stubborn. It’s not like him to not say anything, even when he knows he’s right. He always wants to have the last word.
So, I walk around him and get in front of him. His body is stiff and full of dark red stains. I was sure that there were countless wounds under his clothes, but I never expected to see him collapse. Jay falls to the ground, first hitting his back and then his head.
The pain must have been immense. He came back for a second, shouting in pain before his eyes rolled back and he passed out again.
Fear hits me like a cold wave of water. I start shaking seeing him lie on the ground motionless, lifeless. I want to do something, but I feel like my will has abandoned my body. Fortunately, Silver and Zan appear out of nowhere and take over.
Jay was the only thing giving me the strength I needed to stay conscious. Now that he collapsed, my legs start trembling, and my stomach is trying to push more bile out of my body.
I manage to hold back a new round of throwing up, but I’m way too tired to keep my eyes open. So, without saying anything to my friends, I make the two steps needed towards the nearby pavement and sit on the concrete. Before I know it, I’m lying there, sleeping the sadness off.
It has been a long day.
Chapter Thirty
Jay
I’m standing on the roof of a building. It feels familiar, but I can’t get my mind to focus enough to recognize it. The sky is dark, and there is nothing to do up here but watch the city fade under my feet.
I take a step towards the edge of the roof, and I get the feeling that I’ve lived in this exact moment before. It’s that feeling when you know what’s going to happen, and everything feels familiar to you even though you know you’ve never been to that place before.
I take a good look around me, but I can’t understand where I am. For now, I’m on the roof of a city in the middle of nowhere.
Suddenly, a girl appears before me, a girl with long, blond hair and shining, blue eyes. That girl is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen, so beautiful that I can’t think myself doing anything illicit to her. She’s a creature made of pure light, her whole body shining like a star.
It takes me a minute to figure that the young woman is standing on the ledge of the roof, one foot hanging over the edge.
“Hello?”
My word echoes around me like I’m in an empty room, making the whole place seem even more empty than it already is. The girl never replies to me; she only stands up there, leaning at the end of the roof.
Right then I realize that something is wrong with her. The light doesn’t come from her but from behind her. Soon, the glow gets more intense, strong enough to swallow the city whole in its brightness.
“Run! Don’t just stand there!!! Jump!” I start saying to her.
Jump!
This word echoes deep inside me like it’s a command I have to follow. I’m vaguely aware that I just said that to myself, but it doesn’t make it easier to disobey it.
Soon, the light is strong enough that I can’t do anything but close my eyes. There is no sound anymore, anything except a murmur coming from the distant dark.
“Jay...Jay...”
That name again. Who is calling me in that name?
Her voice is like a beacon of hope in this blinding light. Out of nowhere, a name pops in my mind:
Eladia.
“Jay, are you alright? Oh my god, Jay, you’re finally awake!”
When I open my eyes, the first thing I notice is that I’m not in pain anymore. In fact, it feels like I’m better than the last time I found myself waking up from a mystery slumber.
I take a deep breath and look around me only to see a line of familiar faces. Eladia is standing above me, her black hair caught in that hideous tail as always, but her brown eyes big and beautiful as I remember them.
Silver, the Android with the holographic human parts is sitting two feet behind her, close enough for me to see her but too far to talk to me. On her side, the wild boy from Primordial Earth, Zan, seems worried in his own, stoic way, sitting next to her.
I wonder, do I look like him when I’m worried?
Maybe.
For a moment, everything inside me feels normal in a twisted, confusing way. I know I must have been sleeping for a long time, but I don’t know how much. That means that I must ask her.
I turn my head and gaze straight into Eladia’s big brown eyes and then, everything comes to me at once. Our adventure back on Primordial Earth, that time we got intimate on that roof, and then when I woke up not knowing where I was, the time I found out she had been lying about my true identity the whole time.
At once, the room starts feeling too crowded for me. I command my hand to get her out of the way, but, for a reason unknown, my hand doesn’t follow my order. Instead, it stays frozen on my side, a dead chunk of meat.
“Where am I? What did you do to me? I can’t move,” I start saying, intending for my voice to be loud and clear but the only thing coming out is a silent mumble.
“Jay...Jay, you have to relax,” the female human, the one that betrayed me, says.
I don’t want to listen to her, but it doesn’t seem like I have a choice.
The human turns and nods at her faithful companions and they both rush out of the room, into the busy hallway. They leave me alone with this woman.
“Jay...Jay, please let me explain to you. You were seriously injured, and--”
“I don’t want to hear anything from you! Get out!”
The last part is closer to a roar. I can’t control my temper around her, now more than ever.
“Hey! This is not a bar, fella. This is a hospital. You don’t get to shout at anyone in here, do you understand?”
Another human walks inside the room, this one a male. Tall, blond, with dark brown eyes and a fit body. Hi
s face’s calm and soothing, especially for a male human.
“Who are you?” I say.
Eladia seems to recognize him.
“I’m the person that treats you while you’re here. You were pretty roughed up when your friends brought you here. You’ve been up and down for two weeks now. It wasn’t easy getting you up to shape again, buddy,” the man says.
He touches my chest with a metal object with a small screen on the top. He waits patiently for a second and then nods to himself. He does the same thing a couple more time to different parts of my body, nodding every time like he’s having a conversation with himself.
“You’re better today. One more week in the bed and you will be as good as new.”
His voice is hoarse and deep but reassuring in some way. It feels like, for a change, I can trust him.
“I can’t move my hands and legs,” I say, trying to push a yawn down into my chest.
“Don’t worry, it’s common in your case. You’re packed with some pretty strong meds, big fella. Now, don’t be rude to your friends. Ms. Matthews, can I see you for a moment outside?”
Eladia looks at the doctor and me, one after the other before nodding and leaving my side. For some reason, I want him to stay, but I can’t hold my eyes open for too long. My eyelids are suddenly heavy, and before I know it, I’m drifting back to sleep.
The last thing that crosses my mind is the man’s eyes.
I like that man.
Chapter Thirty-One
Eladia
“Ms. Matthews, you have to understand that Jay has not fully recovered yet. It’s a miracle that he managed to survive with injuries as severe as his, but for some reason, every time he wakes up it seems like he has a difficult time seeing you in the same room with him. Would you care to explain to me what’s going on between you two?”
Doctor Cross is without a doubt the best doctor in this hospital. Not only he’s young and handsome, but for some reason, he had no difficulty believing everything we said to him, even though we never quite shared the whole story with him.
I can’t go on now and tell him that we’re possible targeted by a man wearing a red, demon mask since we’re the only witnesses to the murders he committed. Nor I can tell him that Zan is a new human species that comes from Primordial Earth. Or that the small cube that can’t be moved too far away from Jay’s body is a Nusae artifact that could mean the solution of the Great Mystery.
Either way, Dale Cross, the doctor, had no problem trusting us in the first place since he only knows half the truth hiding behind our wounds. Still, he has been kind and protective, certainly a man worth protecting from our dangerous truth.
“Let’s just say we had a fight before he got hurt and he doesn’t seem able to handle it well yet. Isn’t that a good enough reason for him to be angry?”
His left brow arches above his eye into a cute scowl; this man is hot even when he’s angry. He kinda reminds me of Jay on that end.
“Eladia,” he says, lowering his voice, “you know you can trust me. I won’t hurt you. When people go through a traumatic experience like what you went through, it changes them enough to forget their petty arguments. Also, you saved his life. You were the ones that brought him to the hospital when he was almost dead. I’m sure he can find it in his heart to forgive you.”
Dale is right. I can’t keep lying to him as I did with Jay. That attitude didn’t get me very far with him. He’s so mad at me now that he can’t put his anger beside and just forgive me. But, would I do the same if I were in his place?
“You know doctor, you’re right. But,” I stop, adding a dramatic pause to my saying, “I can’t tell you what’s really going on right now. You have to trust us...me...on this.”
His face softens up, and he sighs. Dale seems like the considerate kind of guy, the type of human that cares what happens to you. He’s certainly not like those extremists that want to rush the human race to the top rank.
“Okay. I understand. However, the next time you’re in the middle of an adventure, remember what we had to go through to save him in the first place. Okay?” I nod. “Perfect. I really have to go and make my rounds now. I’ll be back later tonight to check up on him. He’s gonna need quite a lot of rest to fully recover, but I’m confident he’ll be fine. That serum I came up certainly seems to help him a lot.”
Doctor Cross casts me one last smile and stretches his hand to pat my shoulder before turning away to leave. I want to ask him to stay with us just to make sure there’s nothing wrong with Jay. But, after two weeks of always being on our side, I kinda trust this man with our life.
I walk back into the room. The television is on and kinda loud. We have the room for ourselves, but it's way too loud even for a company of four, like us. There's a breaking news report. I focus on that for a moment.
“We are now live from Mosa, Yaerus where a second hit of the infamous Tech-Infection was just discovered. A middle-aged lady was found earlier this evening in her apartment standing in the middle of a large number of guttered animals.
“The police has been called and managed to decompress the situation in mere minutes, and although we still have no info about the so-called disease, this is the second hit this week and the fiftieth on Yaerus. The only thing common to that disease is--”
I decide to shut the television off. It seems like the world keeps dealing with their problems even without us running around making new ones.
Now that there's no sound coming from the TV, I notice that there is some kind of commotion on the hallway behind me. For a hospital, it's nothing out of the ordinary, but it still makes me get on my feet and check if everything is alright. It's nothing like the day we first arrived in the hospital but still, there are countless people running up and down the hallway, searching for something.
Silver has returned to her lessons with Zan, who has improved his handle of the language quite a bit through the last two weeks. Maybe hearing other people talk around him, and with the help of the miraculous and lovable Dale Cross, the boy had blossomed into a true man. He still has to overcome his share of difficulties before having complete control of the language, but he’s getting there.
Well, with nothing else to do all day but study for the last couple weeks, the young man could only get better. Still, after I turn my head and watch Jay sleep, my mind returns to my previous concerns.
Dale is right. It was a miracle that Jay didn’t die when we first got him here. He was bleeding badly, and he had lost so much blood already that his usually platinum skin was now plain white. I couldn’t stand watching him suffer before I passed out. The sight of him, looking like a dead man, frightened me.
When I finally I came up to the hospital, the doctors reassured me that he was still alive, although just barely.
I turn my head and see Silver walk towards me. “Eladia, is everything okay? Did doctor Dale need something?”
Silver has a small “user-crush” with Dale, like everyone else in this room. Those two would stay up for hours discussing medicine and philosophy and anything that I never had the time to speak about with her. It was like Dale was the piece missing from our already peculiar bunch of people, and even though Jay was the only one among us in dire need of medical attention, all of us ended up under Doctor Cross’ reassuring care.
“No, no. He was just asking about my relationship with Jay.”
“And? Did you say anything to him?”
“Of course not. I told him that it’s complicated and that I owe him an explanation sometime in the future. Kinda like what I say to all the men around me lately.”
I sigh and melt back into my armchair. My eyes quickly fall on Jay’s motionless body. Another memory of the last couple weeks surfaces. Those two fateful days when I was sure he would die on me, the days that we found out that Jay is a hydro-recovery organism. Well, at least that’s how Dale put it.
One night, after another one of his lengthy operations, the doctor came out of the operating room looking
as skeptical as a man with bad news can only be. He came to me and whispered something about Jay never getting through the night. I don’t quite remember what he said to me back then since I hadn’t been able to sleep for the last three days. All my memories from that time are a complete mess.
All of his vitals had taken a fall for the worst, and most of his internal organs were malfunctioning, ready to collapse at any moment. And as if that wasn’t enough to make me worry, Dale also told me that even after all the drugs they stuffed in him, dosages that would have killed a common man, didn’t work at all with him.
That’s when the doctor started asking questions to me, the likes of ‘where is he from?’ and ‘what’s his blood type?’ and ‘are you his close acquaintances?’. Stuff like that.
Alien Romance Box Set: Alien Former: Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Books 1-5) Page 55