by Stella Sky
“I want to stop this war,” Tessoul offered quickly. “And if you or your scientist thinks there’s a way to make us work together, then I think that’s worth exploring.”
“I see,” Baxley nodded. “And you wouldn’t be leading your people back to our camp?”
Tessoul narrowed his eyes, and I laughed uncomfortably.
“Baxley,” I breathed. “Come on. Manners?”
The look Tessoul gave my commodore was discomforting, and neither replied to my comment. The camp was still and quiet.
I looked over Tessoul's distinct features and sensed a rubbery tension; the way he looked at Baxley let me know he was suspicious. He could feel the hostility; he just couldn’t place it yet.
I bit my lip and moved my tongue over my teeth, hoping not to be found out. Then suddenly a bulb of unease crossed through me, and I felt the sudden urge to stop the whole conversation.
“When you found her,” Baxley began, but Tessoul interrupted him with a raise of his hand.
“She found me, actually,” he said, and the words were so filled with love that I could burst.
Baxley didn’t take it the same way. His eyes flicked to mine, brown and enraged, and then back to Tessoul as he snapped, “I know she did because I told her where to find you.”
The next series of moments played out like a blur. Tessoul looked at me with betrayal in his eyes: a deep-cut pain that made me sick. I went to speak, but Baxley let off a barrage of gunfire: a stun gun that sent Tessoul careening backward with an electric shock.
Our crew piled around him, disarming him and using all their might to restrain him, and all I could hear was my own scream.
Chapter Ten
Tessoul
It was day two in the cage the humans had constructed perfectly enough for me to be out in the forsaken cold for the rest of my days. I looked down at Ed as he squirmed up to the bars and I knelt down, patting his head.
He let out a high-pitched “brr-brr” noise and squirmed underneath my touch, satisfied. Then he looked up at me with his wildly expressive eyes and made something of a forlorn expression.
"You and me both, buddy," I said, wondering if he was as bored of the camp as I was.
I felt a bond to Ed that I hadn't voiced to Sidney, in large part because I didn't know what the bond was. There was a connection I felt when he was around that was both unfamiliar and unsettling on some level. It was the same feeling in my gut that left me sick, lost, and purposeless these days. A pull.
It turned out that on top of Sidney setting me up for capture, she'd also stolen some of the guns Jareth had been working on. I saw one poke out of the side of her knapsack: the heat gun. I scowled at that, at my stupidity, and became restless being cooped up in my chamber.
Several of the women at the camp had scoffed and scowled at me as I passed, shouting incoherent curses. But others, many others, had brought me blankets and made a makeshift tent around my cage so that the snow wouldn’t fall on me. They told me how wrong it felt that Sidney did this to me and that they didn't know that portion of the plan.
"Why lock you up?" one of them said with a thick Southern accent. "It just doesn't make sense now that yer, well, you know, thinkin' an all." She swallowed hard and grabbed my hands through the bars, apologetic. "Not that you weren't thinkin' before but, you know..."
I waved her off with a laugh. "I get it."
Now and then, one of the females would bring me hot meals that they'd cooked and seemed to take great pleasure in how quickly I would eat it up. Today a woman named Cathy, bright-eyed Cathy, had slipped into my presence and lay down a plate with strange, unknown meat on it and two squares of bread. I swallowed it down quickly, and she commented on my appetite.
She left me to my own thoughts, and my body transfixed once more on the strange pull I'd been feeling: the pull that Jareth spoke of and the same sensation that drew me to the mountains over and over again. And all of the sudden I realized what it was.
A war was coming, yes, but not with the humans.
I swallowed hard and bit my lip, pacing my cage as my hands shook unwillingly before me.
My mouth went slack, dry, and filled with taste buds then. A panic set over me that couldn’t be quelled: anxiety ballooning in my stomach and throat as Sidney approached.
She walked up to the cage with crossed arms; her body bundled in a thick green coat. She looked up at my makeshift shelter that the girls had made for me and rolled her eyes, jealous somehow.
I wanted to yell, to tell her she put me here and how dare she have something to say about it, but the anxiety had taken over me then.
My arms bristled with thick goosebumps, and I turned away from her.
“Hi,” she said in a small voice as she reached the bars.
I shook my head and looked away from her, wandering to the other edge of the cage.
“Look I’m sorry, okay?” she said, impatient. “Look at me, please. Talk to me.”
I bit my lip, my thoughts elsewhere, and knelt down once more, watching as Ed made his body go slack and slipped through the bars, rolling over to me.
Sidney leaned down then, following my movements as I knelt to reach Ed. “Please talk to me,” she pleaded once more. “I can’t sleep, I can’t think, I feel like my chest is caving in.”
“You set me up,” I said tersely.
She shrugged awkwardly, offering me a sheepish grin that likely got her out of trouble in the past. “Sort of,” she said with a finger to her lips.
“No,” I said slowly. “It’s one or the other. What’s the truth here, Sidney? Because I can’t tell anymore.”
She reached for me through the bars and tried to pull me toward her. I followed her touch, and she kissed me, hard.
When I pulled away, she said, “It was a mistake. Yes, I wanted to come back here. Yes, I was scared to stay with the Vithohn, but…”
I seethed and tried not to let her kiss throw me off balance. “Did you know I’d be put into captivity? To be—”
Then I froze.
“What?” she asked.
I felt a cold shock through me, and I grabbed my forehead, squeezing it between my thumb and forefinger.
“I know what it is,” I said quietly, mostly to myself.
“What it is?” she repeated, and my silence greeted her in reply. “Tessoul, please, I’m trying to talk to you. I love you, please. I’m going to do everything in my power to get you out of here.”
Just when I thought I had been emptied of love, my eyes shot to hers and I swallowed down a thick helping of air.
“You love me?” I repeated nervously.
She blushed, a pink hue overcoming her freckled skin. “Of course I do. What did you think?” She giggled then and reached back through the bars. “I’ve never felt more hope than I do when we’re together, and that’s saying a lot.”
I looked at her with a renewed hope then, only to feel the weight of my pull against my chest once more. I looked down at the creature in my hands and felt a burning sensation, an evil strength, and without thinking, I tossed him to the ground, crying out in agony.
“Hey!” Sidney cried out with fury. The shock that covered her face was painful to see as she raced to pick him up.
“Sidney,” I warned sternly. “Don’t.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” She scolded.
“Do you remember what I told you about the Kilari?” I asked, and she looked at me with a focused rage. “That… force I’ve been feeling for weeks now,” I said through gritted teeth, feeling weaker by the second. Drawn to the creature and trying to pull back from it. “It’s Ed.”
I wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it, but her face was stone stoic.
“That’s them,” I said, pointing to him once more.
“That’s impossible,” she said, plucking him up from the ground and holding him close to her body, cradling him like a child. “They’re extinct. You said so yourself.”
“I feel it,” I pressured. �
��Sidney, you have to trust me.”
“They’ve been extinct for years!” she shouted back. “You killed them, remember? And they don’t look like him, and he hasn’t even shown any sign of evolution or growth!”
“Where did you find him?” I demanded, and she became immediately standoffish, unwilling to share.
Finally, she relented, “Outside of your base.”
“Sidney, what reason do I have to lie about this? You have to trust me. I feel this pull at all times and even more so when he’s near.” I began to hyperventilate then: shaken. “I need to get out of here.”
Chapter Eleven
Sidney
Tessoul raged in his cell, his makeshift cage made of the bones of an old trailer, rigged up with an electroshock field and thick bars. Our militia had done everything possible to trap him, and while I knew it was once the plan to get a Vithohn in captivity and find out what he knew, it no longer felt like that was necessary.
Now Baxley expected me to get the information out of him, and all I knew was that there was a war coming.
I looked down at Ed, sweet and sleeping in my arms, and wondered how he could possibly be a Kilari. I petted his squishy head and rocked him in my arms before letting him loose on my bed to snuggle into me.
He had to be harmless.
My eyes shut, heavy and damp, and I slept hard for the first time since Tessoul and I had been apart. I didn’t know what to say to him after I’d left his cage and he’d only begun spouting off nonsense and looking out-of-body somehow.
My eyes burst open just hours into the night when I heard a crash outside and the unmistakable pops of our turrets. Not more fighting, I thought. Not again.
I raced up from my bed and peeked out the slatted blinds of my trailer; I watched as five Vithohn rushed our camp and started grabbing our women. Apparently, they wanted a piece of whatever everyone else was having.
One of the women was being pinned down and assaulted by the Vithohn, and I could hear Tessoul screaming—a harsh, vindictive cry from his cage—telling them to leave.
I raced for my boots and my gun and made my way out the door, firing at will as the cold hit my face.
The Vithohn looked up, and I started running toward the women he was touching, shooting at him and watching his force field come up over his body like a laser shell.
I shot off a few more rounds and watched as the militia gathered, several more of them being taken by the Vithohn as they tried in vain to help me.
Then Ed appeared, rolled out from my trailer, and sent a surge of pain through the Vithohn.
I ran to him, scooped him into my arms, and held him out toward them. Their reaction was as if I were holding up sonar rays that only they could hear: loud, painful ones. They bellowed and recoiled in pain.
The group of them retreated, grabbing our people as they did so.
I followed after them into the woods. Old familiar, I thought. I ran until my legs ached, feeling nothing but sweat even despite the cold breeze.
Baxley grabbed my arm, pulling me back and pressing his finger against his lips, trying to get me to quiet down. Years of being together had taught us how to fight side-by-side like some kind of well-rehearsed dance. He knew my thoughts and moves before I did, and vice-versa. We knew each other so well.
I watched as the Vithohn maneuvered through our series of booby traps: our pink lava designed to crush and burn them.
I wondered what would happen to the five women they’d stolen if they did fall in. Were we waiting to watch our friends die?
My arm jerked out of Baxley’s grasp, and I spun on my heel, turning back to the trailer park in disgust as we let the Vithohn leave: let them win yet another battle.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I said sadly as Baxley caught up with me.
“There’s nothin’ we could’ve done,” he said with a reassuring hand to my back.
I shrugged. “I know.”
“We’re the same, you and me,” he offered, and I began to laugh.
“Oh no,” I smiled weakly. “Are we about to bust into an ‘old sport’ soliloquy? Because I don’t think I could take that right now.”
“Not fancy enough for a soliloquy,” he chuckled. “You okay, kid?”
I stared, twirling my gun in my hand, checking the rest of the camp for anyone who might be hurt. In truth, the rest of the militia had fled to their trailers to grab more guns or simply to hide. The Vithohn knew where we were now; they were after our females.
“The girls,” I shrugged.
“They’re getting aggressive,” he said and then clarified, “The aliens.”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all this but,” he brushed his arms, “Hell, you’re stronger than anyone else here. You can take it.”
He paused then, and we spent the next twenty minutes checking the camp, making sure everyone was alright. We lit a fire and reset the turrets; I looked at Tessoul with pleading eyes, and he wouldn’t even look at me. He was shaking.
He needed to leave, and I knew I had to find a way to convince Baxley, which would be especially difficult given what had just happened.
Baxley nodded toward Tessoul’s cage as we ended the far corner of the park and said, “You get any more information from him? He know they were comin’ for our people?”
“He’s not speaking to me, really,” I said coldly.
“Aww,” Baxley mocked, punching my arm lightly as if he were about to call me ‘slugger.’ “You in a fight?”
“Hey, why are the girls there?” I asked, watching as two women had walked up to Tessoul to speak with him. “Trying to extract information?”
Or just making sure he was alright?
“Yep, that’d be my guess,” Baxley said with a cold plume of smoke to the air as he puffed on a cigarette: his anxiety relief.
“I thought that was my job,” I argued.
Baxley laughed and began to walk away from Tessoul’s sight until he saw that I stayed put. He took large steps and dragged his feet in the mounting snow, walking back over to me. “You’ve done enough,” he said and then on a more serious note shared, “We were so, so worried about you, kid.”
“What’s he doing?” I ignored, pointing at Tessoul, who was shaking in an explosion of emotion. It was the pull; I knew it.
“I don’t know. He keeps raging; it’s insane. We need Karen. We gotta bring her back and study him, find out what’s setting him off. We keep having to zap him.”
“You what?” I spat out in disgust. “Karen was right about them, B. I saw it with my own eyes. They’re tame. He’s tame now.”
“Yeah, I talked to the thing, I get it,” he murmured.
“And I saw more at the base,” I reasoned. “If we can figure out what makes them settle down on a larger scale—”
“Without opening a brothel,” Baxley interrupted, taking another drag.
I snapped my fingers in agreement and continued, “Then we can really start something. I mean, he’s really calmed down. He feels a lot of guilt over everything that’s happened. He was even talking about gathering females to try and steady his crew before I ever brought it up. I didn’t even have to sell him on it.”
“I bet,” he scoffed.
“I don’t think he has any secrets, B.”
“That why you keep comin’ back with nothin’?” he needled.
“Well, you know what? You didn't even give me a chance to talk to him before you went ahead and shot him! Okay?”
Baxley laughed, hard. “What, you think he would have willingly got into the cage? Let us poke and prod at him?”
“I think none of this was necessary any longer, yeah,” I seethed.
“With that?” he pointed to the center of my legs. “That what you’re gonna convince him with?”
I set my jaw, balling my fists. “You need to back off.”
Baxley stared at me then, and his eyes fell away from the glaze that had just covered them when he said such
awful things to me. He’d never spoken to me disrespectfully, ever.
“I’m sorry,” he said stoically; ashamed. “You’re right. I’m off. I’m way off. You’ve just been gone so long, and everyone’s been… well, we’ve been a mess, kid. Now he comes back with you, and you’re all…” He gestured his hands to me and couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.
“Wasn’t that the point?” I argued.
“No. The point was to study him and find out what he knows. Not screw him in your trailer.”
I licked my lips then and felt them chap immediately against the air. I spun on my heel.
Baxley followed beside me, watching as I crossed my arms, and he said, “You don’t think I have the right to say that, soldier?”
“I think you went about this the wrong way and I think we need to let him go, right now,” I fumed.
“Are you kidding me?” he breathed, incredulous.
I continued to walk away from him, incensed, and he grabbed my arm and pulled me hard so that I spun around. “There somethin’ you’re not tellin’ me, kid? You love this guy?”
I set my jaw.
“Maybe I do,” I said, and I watched his eyes crumble. “They’re going to keep taking our people, B. So, unless you want to see this camp disappear, he needs to get the hell out of here. They sense him; it’s a thing, okay?”
Baxley looked at me then and ran a hand through his dark beard. “No,” he said, dire. “We fight.”
“Stop this! You’re being stubborn, and I get it, but we have five pockets left! Just five groups living around the world. And from what I heard, the Lotus Group was attacked yesterday, and we still haven’t heard back from them. Get it? This could be it for us.”
“So you want him gone?” he repeated.
“I think we would be safer if he left. He goes back to his camp, we grab Karen and be done with it. Whatever the hell we decide to do, we need her with us.”
Baxley chewed his lip then, searching my eyes. I knew what he wanted; he wanted Tessoul to leave. Now that I admitted my real feelings, all he could think of was how he could say yes, send him away, without it looking so pitifully transparent.