The voice commands me to run deeper into the woods, away from the people I care about. I don’t want to do it, but it doesn’t seem like I have a choice.
Before I turn and leave, my eyes fall on Eladia. Something tells me that it’s going to be some time before I see her again. So, even though I’m not sure my actions are my own anymore, I move to her side. She’s talking to her friends about something, mostly technical and science stuff. I smile at her enthusiasm and her loose hair. For the first time, she doesn’t use her hands to tighten her ponytail even more.
I lay closer to her and whisper something in her ear. The weird thing is even I don’t hear what I say. There’s only a warm feeling coming from the tips of my fingers and toes as I turn and run away.
“Jay stop!” I hear her say but I can’t.
I want to…
but there’s something I have to do.
Chapter Forty- One
Eladia
Everything’s a mess. Running amidst that forest must be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. One part exhaustion and one part running behind a strange alien I’ve met over six months ago makes me feel bad about myself. Oh, who am I kidding? I would have chased him even if he didn’t ask me to.
Zan is running in front of me, barely visible while standing on all his fours, using his hands as legs. My mind drifts back to the moment Jay ran away.
I was having a conversation with Silver about the electromagnetic events of this planet, and she tried helping me understand the principles behind these events as best as she could while disconnected from the Grid. The intergalactic network called the Grid was used by androids and every species everywhere in the galaxy to collect info about targets and possible locations of Nusae Artifacts and every kind of information.
Well, some only use it for online dating, but that’s another story.
On this planet, the Grid is off limits and Silver was malfunctioning, unable to use her scanning services to help us with our mission. No matter how we try to see it, we’re trapped on an empty planet. But, nothing could have prepared me for what happened.
Jay walked in behind me and leaned next to my ear. In that short moment, his breath was caressing the back of my ear making me a bit ticklish. I turned and smiled at him and he smiled back. He’s close now, closer than before, and I was ready to lean towards him and kiss him. Only that he stopped and headed straight for my ear.
Right then he whispered to me: Follow me.
Before being able to realize what’s going on, he’s gone. In agony, I called for him to stop, only that he didn’t.
Those first crucial minutes I started chasing him with Silver, Zan and Doctor Dale behind me I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to go since this forest is full of tall bushes and thick branches with wide leaves. Five minutes later, though, I stopped out of breath.
“It’s impossible. I don’t know where he’s gone. Silver, can you do something?” I asked her, desperate for a solution.
“No. I can’t track him or the Nusae energy signal. But…”
“But?” I quickly got my hopes up. Silver had an idea.
“Zan might be able to follow him. These two seem to have a special connection of some sort. Zan was the one who led me to you two back on Primordial Earth, and Zan will do the same here as well.”
I hadn’t thought about that before. Zan had to adapt to a really harsh environment, very familiar with the environment of this planet. He might be able to track his movements as long as we’re not too late.
“Zan?”
I’m sure he’s able to notice the agony in my voice because the boy moved towards me and stretched his hand to touch my chest.
“I will follow Jasih, Eladia. But don’t let him break your heart again,” he said with the look of an old, wise man.
I nodded; the boy left me speechless once again. I’m not sure there was anything else I can do either way. Silver and Zan immediately started in front of me, and I followed them close behind.
To this moment, almost nothing changed to our formation. Not before Dale runs to my side and adjusts his pace to keep up with me, not wanting to leave me behind. It seems like there is something he wants to ask me.
“So, that was Jay’s other form, the one you call Dark Jay?”
I almost fall from the surprise.
“How do you know about Dark Jay? I’ve never talked to you about him,” I complain while never slowing down.
It’s difficult keeping up with the elusive Zan and the robotic Silver, but I have to if I want to find out more about what Jay meant when he asked me to follow him. However, now there is something else bugging me; how does Dale know about Jay?
“You told me before, Eladia, that night we carried him to his room. We talked for over an hour in there. You told me everything about your adventures up until now. Don’t you remember?”
Suddenly, he’s right. I remember talking about Jay changing his form, about Jay being impossible to live together at the same place for over a month and about Dark Jay being the bad counterpart of this symbiotic relationship.
I remember everything like it happened a moment ago, but that doesn’t make it easier to shed any feeling of suspicion over the strange doctor. Thus, I decide to play along.
“Yes, of course, I remember. We talked about everything, but I must have been tired. I drowned off.”
“He doesn’t seem as intimidating as you described him,” he quickly continues.
We’re now crossing a small bridge of unearthed roots passing over a black, viscid liquid that reeks of sugar. Zan warns us not to fall inside, although I’m not sure why he says that. After arriving at the other bank of the river, I resume my talk with the doctor.
“He usually is. The Jay you met at the hospital, the one that wouldn’t stop beating the mechanical corpses, is usually calmer and more collected and this one, the Dark Jay, is the uncontrolled monster that kills everything in its way.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I immediately regretted what I said. Dark Jay has just offered me the most romantic moment in my whole life, and I still call him a monster. Yeah, that’s how good I am.
“It seems that their roles inverted for some reason. Has this happened before?”
We’re climbing up a small hill full of swinging plants that thrive in high places. However, some of them are blue and other pink; those that are pink are poisonous and snap easily, while the blue ones are sturdy and safe. Did I mention that the pink ones are always over the blue ones, making it really difficult to climb?
When we’re at the top of the hill, I stop and call for Silver and Zan to wait. I have to take a breath before moving on. Silver comes back to brief me up, while what Dale said before still troubles me.
“We’re almost there. Zan says that Jasih finally stopped moving.” She stops talking. She looks around, seemingly searching for something, and then turns to face me again. “Wasn’t doctor Dale with you?”
To be honest, the last time I remember talking to him is before we started climbing this hill. After that, I was too involved not to plunge to my death that I lost him.
“Yes. Yes, he was. But I don’t know where he is now. Oh no.”
Zan immediately approaches us, ready to protect us from every enemy with his pointy staff. “What? What happened?”
“The doctor. The doctor’s gone,” I say with a concerned tone.
Zan sweeps the area with his pointy stick and tries to find any sign of the doctor, but he returns empty-handed. He’s nowhere to be found. Still, though, it looks like the answer is right in front of us, and we can’t see it.
For a moment, Zan doesn’t say a thing. He’s looking towards where Jay is supposed to be and seems like he’s waiting for something to happen. So, when a pillar of light tears the dark sky apart, he’s the only one not fretted over what happened. I, on the other hand, get on my feet and run towards the light. I’m certain that Jay is standing on the base of that thing, waiting for me.
Behind me, Zan and Si
lver try to keep up with me, which is something of a feat itself. Usually, I’m the one trying to keep up with them. This time, though, I have a reason to want to hurry, and that reason is keeping Jay safe.
After two minutes of continuous sprinting towards the location of the beam of light, we finally arrive at an open glade. In the middle of it, a golden pyramid-shaped construct is erected in the middle, radiating of strong light and a deafening sound.
I cover my ears so that I don’t pass out from the loud noise, trying to find Jay in this mess. Only after the beam of light vanishes as suddenly as it appeared I realize that he has been standing before the pyramid all this time. A dark figure, stoic and powerful, he’s standing tall before this new ordeal.
I get closer to him only to see that he’s back to his platinum-skinned self. Frankly, I don’t know if I’m excited or disappointed. At least he’s safe. Yes, at least he isn’t hurt.
When I rush to his side, he finally notices me. He seems changed.
Jay is smiling at me like he’s really glad I’m standing on his side.
Chapter Forty-Two
Jay
I’m standing before a glowing pyramid, the core of the beam of light that illuminates the sky. I don’t feel discomfort from looking at it; it’s more like warm, golden sunlight falling on my eyes. Just before the beam vanishes as abruptly as it appeared, I thought I heard someone hum in the darkness.
It was a smooth, low tune, the one mothers sing to their children to help them fall asleep. I’m not sure I understand since I can’t even remember even the name of my mother. However, I’m not sure that this has anything to do with my memory loss or with the fact that I’m Esuh. I’m still lost but not confused like most of the time.
I finally understand why they kept my identity hidden from me. This time, when my dark part took over, I could influence some of his decisions. It happened suddenly like I was watching my life through a keyhole. I could talk to him, use my body, but not freely.
Even now, back in my platinum skin, I can feel him inside me sleeping soundly like there’s not a care in the world. It’s a weird feeling, one that deprives me of every sense of privacy. But, it surprisingly feels like I’ve found a missing piece of myself. I’m calm now, even though I have no idea where am I.
“Jay,” Eladia says behind me, panting. “You finally...stopped.”
I turn and smile at her. I’m happy I see her with my own eyes. She’s the reason I could control my actions after I changed. However, I’m not sure she’s glad to see me.
“I assume I caused you trouble again. I’m sorry. It’s not easy being...that thing.”
She looks at me like she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. Honestly, humans can be such a pain sometimes.
“I know I’ve changed back to my dark self, the one you call Dark Jay. It’s not easy to explain it, but I could see bits and pieces of what happened. That’s why I know we’re in some kind of trouble, but I’m not sure where we are.”
My explanations seem to calm some nerves, particularly Eladia’s. She’s been so tense since she saw me, the platinum-skinned Jasih, that I’m starting to believe that something else must have happened while I was away. Either way, there’s no time for explanations.
Standing before a strange construct like that makes me think: what the hell are we doing here?
“Jay…” Eladia starts saying, but Zan stops her by getting in front of her and snarls towards the sky.
I feel it too. Something’s coming, a dark and ominous threat.
We first hear the drone of the low-altitude engines coming from far away, like a swarm of mosquitoes. The overgrown forest makes it difficult to understand the size of the ship approaching us until it’s already way too late.
“What in the…?” I catch myself saying.
That’s until a loud shrill penetrates my ears. I cover them with my hands and look around me trying to figure out what’s going on. I spot Eladia and Zan on their knees, trying to stop the deafening sound by cupping their ears with their hands, but nothing seems to change.
Amidst my baffled moves, I see a figure running inside the pyramid. That’s weird; it seems like the sound comes from his side. Struggling, I start following him.
Him? How do I know that this figure is a man? Something starts to form in my head.
Follow me.
As soon as those two words pop into my head, the shrill stops, and I’m standing inside the pyramid with Eladia and everyone else inside. I look around me and see a line of monitors flashing, a technology that’s considered ancient even by my standards.
Eladia seems to recognize some patterns on the walls. “Silver, can you please give me the translation of that sign? I’m sure I’ve seen it before.”
“You must have forgotten that I can’t use my scans, Eladia. I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” but the human female has already moved onto another topic.
She’s standing still, looking at something on the far side of the empty room. Everything is in black and white due to the dim light of the monitors. The man I saw running inside this construct is now standing before me. I get mixed signals from him; at times I feel like he wants to kill me, and at times I feel like he wants to help me.
Either way, my instincts don’t let me lower my guard. He wears a black mantle and pitch black clothes below. The only thing in color is the demon mask he wears in that deep green of the swamp.
“You’re finally here,” he says in a raspy, twisted voice. Even though I’m relatively new to the human species, I know that his voice can’t be real.
“Who are you? What’s going on?” Eladia suddenly erupts in a frantic tone.
“Maybe your alien friend can help you in that,” he says.
Is he talking about me? And why do I have the feeling that I know him? I haven’t met the man before. The only thing familiar about him is that warm sense he gives away, the promise of a man able to heal people and mend their bodies, the same feeling I got when I met that doctor.
And then it hits me.
“Are you the blonde doctor that fixed me back on Yaerus?”
He laughs even though his laugh sounds more like he’s choking. Then, he removes his mask and proves that I’m right. He’s that man from the hospital.
Eladia gasps in shock. “Dale? Doctor Dale? I thought...we thought…”
“There’s no time for explanations, Eladia. I’m sorry that I deceived you all in that way, but the whole galaxy is in danger, and there was no other way,” he says and moves a step closer to us.
He raises his hand with his open palm pointing behind us. The walls move soundly, and the floor shakes below our feet. He knew about this place.
“We don’t have enough time. Jay, come close. Everyone else, follow us.”
And just like that, before he even stops talking, another door opens before us.
Chapter Forty-Three
Eladia
My life has been a roller-coaster of reveals and discoveries these past six months. I found a frozen alien and freed him from his prison, then we discovered an ancient Nusae relic that connected to Jay’s genetic imprint, and after all that, we ended up in one of the empty planets.
And yet, life doesn’t seem capable of treating me kindly. The one man I was able to trust after so long ended up being part of the same group as the people that murdered my friends in the Great Embassy. Not only that, but he’s also impossibly handsome.
Walking before me, Dale and Jay rush to the end of the narrow hallway. I can smell the humidity of this place in the air, giving me the feel that there haven’t been a person inside this pyramid for years, maybe decades. The air is heavy, and the dust particles float even under the dim light. To be honest, I’m just a tiny bit excited to walk inside this ancient construct.
Just outside, the walls are filled with Nusae patterns, most of them random letters that won’t mean anything if we can’t read them as a whole. Nusae used to hide some of their greatest messages in big rooms by seemingly placin
g random letters on the walls. But, if an android assistant read the text in three dimensions and not in the usual two-dimensional context, then it actually made sense.
Certainly, all the ruins we’ve found up to now don’t help us realize why they suddenly vanished, or why we can’t find traces of their early civilizations except those rare relics, but they sure helped us understand their culture. However, that isn’t the thing with this place. When we finally arrive at the end of the long, serpentine hallway, we are greeted by another monitor-filled room, only this one has a big seat in the middle.
It’s like the king's court in a small palace or the bridge in a spaceship. Either way, Jay and Dale head straight to the middle and stop in front of the throne.
Alien Romance Box Set: Alien Former: Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Books 1-5) Page 60