by E. A. James
“Good morning, Nicole,” Amias responded cheerfully.
She didn’t look up at him still, but moved across the room to the bench he had been sitting on the day before and waited for him to join her. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that he was wearing clothes. This helped to ease her nerves slightly. As he took his seat and rolled up the baggy sleeve of his oversized T-shirt, she let her eyes slowly meet his. Again, he looked at her with the same piercing look as the day before.
“I’m going to start with the blood sample,” she said as she turned her face away from him quickly and began rummaging through her bag.
“You’re very nervous,” he said to her calmly.
“I’m still new,” she replied, trying to excuse her clumsy movements and awkward gestures.
“Is that really it?” he asked as she turned back to him and wiped the spot on the inside of his arm with an alcohol swab.
“What do you mean?” she asked him, trying not to let his constant stare fluster her.
Before she could reach back into her bag for the syringe, he grabbed her hand and held it tightly. The contact of his skin to hers once again filled her with a warm sensation, one that made her face turn red and her heart start to race. “You’re attracted to me, aren’t you?” he asked the question bluntly, almost as if he were saying it, not asking it.
“What?” she asked, suddenly very flustered. She stepped back quickly, and pulled her hand from his, rupturing their connection.
“Wait,” he said standing to his feet and walking closer to her. “I didn’t mean to be rude or straightforward,” he shifted his weight nervously as he looked down at her. “My question was out of line. You don’t have to answer it.”
He turned away and returned to his seat on the bench, holding out his arm and waiting for her to resume her work. “What made you ask?” she said as she moved towards him again and pulled the needle from her bag.
He smiled up at her. “I just had a feeling,” he said.
“Oh,” she nodded her head as she took his arm in her hand and lined up the needle with one of his veins. As she pushed the point into his skin she could see face twist in an expression of discomfort. She made the process as quick as possible, apologizing as she pulled the needle from his arm.
Her next sample, she knew, would be even more painful. She needed to collect a sample of his skin cells. As she scraped a fine layer off of his shoulder, his body twinged a little from the pain. “I’m really sorry,” she apologized again.
“It’s not this that you’ll be sorry for in a few weeks,” he said under his breath.
“What?” she asked feeling a sudden shiver of fear wash over her. She tried to keep focused, bagging her sample and starting her next test.
“We’ll all be sorry soon,” he continued speaking softly.
“What does that mean, Amias?” she asked him, stepping back and looking at him closely. The expression on his face was one of worry and concern.
“My people,” he said looking up at her and meeting her gaze with his. “They’re coming.”
“They’re coming,” she repeated the words slowly. “You mean they’re coming to Earth?”
“They’re coming here,” he said grabbing her hands suddenly and pulling her down so that she was kneeling in front of him. He let his eyes burn into hers. “You have to understand, Nicole,” he said his words deliberately. “I need to escape. I need to go to them.”
She furrowed her brow as she tried to understand his words. “What will happen when they get here?”
“At this point, I have no way of knowing for sure. But I know that if, when they arrive, they find that I’ve been taken captive, it won’t be good—for either side.”
“Sides?” she asked. The way he was speaking made it sound like he was talking about a war.
“My people,” he continued looking at her intensely, “they’re peaceful—we’re peaceful. We really are. But, you have to understand. Our planet was destroyed. Our lives were ruined. We have no home; we have nowhere to go. We’ve spent months searching for a place to settle. We came to Earth because the climate is similar to our own. We just want to live peacefully!”
“But you can’t…” she started.
“We can’t because your people have made it perfectly clear that we are not welcomed here, except to be subjected to tests and experiments.” His words sent a rush of guilt running through her. She looked quickly at her bag, holding in it the tools and charts she used to collect her samples. She shifted her eyes down to the gray, stone floor, feeling embarrassed. “Don’t,” he said to her lifting her chin and looking deep into her eyes. “I know you are only doing what they ask of you.”
Again, his ability to almost read her thoughts and react to her feelings took her by surprise. She wanted to question it, to ask if he had some secret ability they didn’t know about, but she needed to keep her focus on the conversation they were currently having. “So, when they get here, and they find that we have you in holding here…”
“They’ll be forced to take action. We are a very united people. We don’t like to use force, but if it comes to protecting ourselves or one of our own, we will do what it takes.”
His words seemed to hang in the air and fall down on her slowly, weighing on her. She wanted to help him—to let him go to his people. But she couldn’t. She had to do her job—she had to make her father happy. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly as she stood up and pulled her hands back from his. “I wish there was something I can do, but there isn’t.”
She began to collect her things and make her way for the door to leave. Amias pushed himself up quickly and ran to cut her off. “You can do something, Nicole,” he said. “You can help me escape.”
She pushed past him without looking up. “I’m sorry, Amias. I can’t help you.”
CHAPTER SIX
“No, Nicole,” Allen said peering down at the samples she had collected. “These aren’t right,” he concluded standing upright and turning to face her.
“I tried,” she started. “I’m sorry, I really did try.”
“Obviously not hard enough,” she heard her dad mutter under his breath.
“I can redo them,” she offered. “Give me a chance, please! I’ll do them right this time.”
Allen looked past her to her dad, who was standing behind her, his overbearing presence looming over her. “What do you say, Juan?” he asked him.
Her father let out an exhausted sigh. He placed his hand on Nicole’s shoulder and spun her around forcefully so that she was facing him. He leaned in so that his face was just inches from hers. “One more chance,” he said to her between gritted teeth.
Even though it was late, and everyone else had gone home, Nicole stayed to once again make her rounds and collect her samples. The hours crept by, and the harder she tried to focus on what she was doing, the more tired she became. When she reached the room holding Specimen 91-33—the mountain lion—she stepped back quickly, her eyes fixed on the large animal in front of her. Allen was right, at night there is no doubt as to whether the animal was from Earth or not.
It was three times as large as normal, and its fangs had quadrupled in size. It paced around its room slowly. When it caught sight of Nicole through the glass window, it stopped and turned to face her. She reached quickly to the right of the glass and pressed a small red button. The button released a sleeping gas into the room, and within a matter of seconds, the creature lay down on the ground and its breathing became heavy and deep.
Nicole quickly collected her readings and ran her tests on Specimen 91-33; knowing that she only had 20 minutes before the gas would wear off and the animal would wake up. When she had recorded the last of the figures on her chart and collected her final sample, she quickly returned her belongings to her bag and hurried out of the room.
She continued to make her way from one room to the next, finding it harder to keep her eyes open with each one. She was just exiting one of the rooms about halfway down the hall when she he
ard a loud crash ring out from one of the rooms she had already been in.
Turning around slowly, she saw it—the mountain lion. It had escaped from its room! But how? She locked the door, right? She tried to remember. She thought she had locked the door, but she was so tired, maybe she hadn’t. The animal slinked out into the hall, looking lazily around. When it turned its face in her direction, she felt herself become frozen with fear. At first, the beast did nothing, just stood and stared at her.
Suddenly, in a rush of movement, it took off down the hall, running straight towards her. She tried to flee, but she had nowhere to go. The only exit was on the other side of the beast. She stepped back quickly, trying to put as much distance between herself and the animal as she could, but it was gaining on her at an alarming rate.
As a result of her panic and tiredness she felt her feet go out from under her, and she fell backward quickly. Upon impact, her head flew back and hit against the doorframe of one of the rooms.
Pain surged through her body. She tried to push herself up to continue fleeing the animal’s advance, but she couldn’t. The edges of her vision were going blurry, and just as the beast reached where she was lying, shaking, on the ground, she could only see momentary glimpses of what was happening.
Before everything went completely dark, she heard another loud crash come from the opposite end of the hall. She tried to turn to face it, but couldn’t. The last thing she remembered was the sensation of heat radiating around her, and the screams of the mountain lion as it tried to fend off its attacker.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When she regained consciousness, she felt a surge of pain run through her body again. Reaching her hand back, she felt blood on the back of her head. “Ugh,” she said softly, trying to push herself up.
“No,” she heard Amias’ voice urge her to stay still.
Opening her eyes, she saw him leaning over her. She hadn’t realized that her head was in his lap and that his strong arms were wrapped around her.
“What happened?” she asked breathless, but not because of the pain or the events that had just taken place, because being that close to him made her feel completely vulnerable and scared, but at the same time safe and comfortable.
“You were attacked,” Amias explained, reaching down to brush the hair out of her face. “Are you okay?” he asked, concern heavy in his deep green eyes.
“I think so,” she answered, still trying to catch her breath. “Did you save me?”
He smiled and chuckled a little. “I believe I did,” he said, nodding slightly to his right.
Nicole lifted herself up slightly to look in the direction he indicated. Laying against the wall halfway down the hall she saw a heap of fur, smoke rising from it slowly. “You did that?” she asked looking up at Amias.
“I had to protect you,” he said, wrapping his strong hand around the back of her neck. As he lifted her face to his, she felt her stomach begin to turn and her chest begin to tighten. When he pressed his lips gently to hers the room seemed to fill with an electric sort of heat, one that consumed her inside and out. A surge of passion filled her, and she reached up to run her fingers through his shaggy dark hair.
The moment was cut short all too quickly when a loud, high-pitched screaming siren began to sound. The hall filled with a combination of red and yellow lights. Pulling away from him quickly, she felt the rush of passion she had experience become replaced with a crushing panic. Amias seemed to sense her fear, because he wrapped his arms around her again, pulling her close. “They’re coming,” she whispered up to him. “Security—they’ll be here any minute.”
She was right. Less than a minute later, the door at the end of the hallway was thrown open, and in barged five men, all in uniform with guns raised. They didn’t hesitate to begin their quick advance in their direction, stepping around Specimen 91-33 and keeping their weapons trained on Amias.
“No!” Nicole yelled out as the largest of the men reached out and pulled him up off the floor. “Wait!”
The man didn’t pay her any mind. He pushed Amias back into his cell, the door to which had been destroyed and was now lying on the floor, a mass of bent metal. Nicole pushed herself to her feet and ran after them.
Once they had Amias in the room, they threw him back against the far wall and began to beat him violently with the butts of their guns. Taking turns, they let their blows fly at his face, chest, or stomach.
“Stop!” she cried out, tears burning her eyes. “You have to stop!” she demanded, throwing herself forward and grabbing the arm of the man that had pushed Amias into the room.
He shrugged her off effortlessly, pushing her back behind him. She could see the hurt expression on Amias’ face. She couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. Her vision became blurred as she watched one of the men throw his gun into Amias’ gut, causing him to lurch forward and let out a cry of pain.
The room started to fill with a thick, dense heat. With it came a cloud of smoke. She saw a look of anger appear suddenly in Amias’ eyes. “Get out,” he mouthed to her. His body began to shake, and the temperature in the room continued to rise.
“What the hell is going on here?” Nicole heard her father’s voice call out from the entrance to the room. Everyone turned to face him, and in an instant, the heat in the room began to recede.
“Dad!” she yelled out to him as she ran in his direction.
He put up his hand, stopping her just short of reaching him. “Excuse me, young lady. I’ll deal with you in a minute,” he said pushing past her and making his way to the men in uniform. “What do you think you’re doing? Commander?” he questioned the largest of the men.
“This thing,” he said the word with a hint of disdain as he motioned to Amias, “killed one of the specimens.”
Her father let out a loud, mocking laugh. “And you think it won’t do the same to you?” he asked stepping forward. He poked the Commander’s chest hard and looked at him angrily. “You really think that bringing it in here and beating it will help to resolve the situation any?”
“He was attacking your daughter, sir,” the Commander replied weakly.
“No, he wasn’t!” Nicole yelled out, walking towards them quickly. She put herself between the men, her father, and Amias. “He wasn’t attacking me! He saved me!”
Everyone turned to look at her. “What did you say?” her father asked.
“He saved me!” she continued. “The specimen broke out of its cage, or… I didn’t lock it up right, or something,” she could feel her face flushing red and her words continued to pour out quickly. “Either way, it attacked me. It was going to kill me, dad! But then Amias showed up. He saved me!”
“What did I tell you about calling me that?” he dad asked her under his breath.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she corrected herself. “But you have to believe me, sir! He saved me!”
“Don’t be foolish!” he laughed again. “That’s just what he wanted you to think he was doing.”
“That’s foolish!” she shot back at him. He looked at her, surprised by her suddenly bold attitude and unusually outspoken way of speaking. “If he had wanted to hurt me, he could have done it well before your men showed up!”
“You had better hold your tongue, Nicole,” her dad warned her.
She didn’t listen to him, though. She just kept talking, loudly and confidently. “He’s peaceful His people are peaceful, but they’re coming here—to Earth. We have to let him go, as a sign of good faith. If we don’t, they will be forced to attack us!”
“He’s been filling her head with nonsense,” the Commander said to his men, as they all joined in a quiet chorus of laughs.
Behind her, she heard Amias shift his weight around. He reached out and placed his hand on the small of her back. “It’s okay, Nicole. They won’t believe you no matter what you say,” he said to her quietly.
Her father stepped forward, an expression of anger on his face, one so intense that she had never seen it before.
He didn’t say anything, which made her even more nervous; he just reached out and grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her towards him. In a swift motion, he reached back and released his blow, smacking her square across the side of her face.
She stumbled back, raising her hand to her check where her father had just struck her. Amias reached out and pulled her back to him. She could feel that his body was becoming warm, and the temperature in the room began to rise again. “No,” she said to him quietly. “Not now.” She knew he was one the brink of changing again, and she couldn’t let him do that. If there was any hope that her father would believe that he was peaceful, he had to control his anger—now more than ever.
“I knew you didn’t have what it takes,” he father said to her harshly. “You’re too weak, Nicole. You’ll believe any sob story he tells you.”
“But it’s true,” she tried to defend Amias.