Lara was about to kill him, but I forced her to stop, holding out my hand. I unbuckled the pistol from the kid’s belts, taking the safety off. “Thank you,” he mumbled glancing up at me.
I nodded solemnly, and he closed his eyes, bracing for the shot. I fired, and then I dropped the pistol onto his lifeless body, folding his arms over it. I stood and stared down at him admiringly. He reminded me of myself when I was young. I let out a sigh; the strong emotion of guilt gripped me, making it hard to breathe, as I realized what I had done.
These soldiers might not share my beliefs, but they were still humans. I had sided with the enemy, and there was no way I was ever going to be able to redeem myself from my actions. I could feel Lara staring down at me to see if I was okay.
I nodded, pretending to be fine, and followed her over to a patch of grass where a fiend was lying down. Lara lay down beside the fiend, gesturing with her head for me to do the same. I rested my head against her furry stomach, absorbing the warmth of it, and closed my eyes as Lara and the other fiend talked to each other. I heard a few other fiends walk past. I opened my eyes to see them bowing their gigantic monster heads as they passed. I nodded my head toward them, and they said something to Lara, who replied to them and placed her paw lovingly across me. We got up after Lara had finished her conversation and walked to the main gate, where fiends in human form were handing out pillows and blankets. I grabbed some from them, and then we started walking down the messy hall that was filled with debris and dead soldiers. We tried not to rub up against the bloodstained walls. The hall was so cramped with fiends that I was afraid I was going to be crushed by one of their gigantic paws. I guess Lara sensed the danger as well, because she bit into the back of my shirt, lifting me off the ground as she walked down the hall. I hung helplessly in front of her.
When we entered our war-torn room, she set me down and transformed back to her human form. She put on her bra and underwear as I leaned against the wall with my hands in my pockets, watching her. She let out a playful cry, catching me by surprise as she launched herself at me playfully, sending the two of us tumbling to the floor. There was a brief struggle; I felt her fiend strength surge through her body, and she pinned me to the ground victoriously.
“Hey, you cheated!” I objected.
“Stop lying to yourself. I would have thought that a big, strong PLF sniper would be able to control a poor, little weak girl,” she ribbed me. Then she leaned forward to make out with me. “I’m so proud of what you did today, Lance.”
I took her hand in mine. “Let me have a look at that,” I told her, seeing purplish blood still seeping from the laceration across her palm. I pulled out a first-aid kit and wrapped the wound with gauze, even though I knew she could just heal it herself.
“Thanks,” she whispered softly, lifting her hand up to inspect the bandages. Still on top of me, she reached under the wrecked bed and pulled out a wooden box. She unlatched it and pulled out a bottle of wine that had somehow survived the battle. “Time to celebrate!” she said happily. Her eyes flashed yellow, and the cork went flying.
“Are rum and wine the only types of liquor a fiend drinks?” I asked her as she offered me a sip. I happily took a chug out of it.
“No, I just enjoy them. It’s healthy for females.”
“How?” I asked with a laugh.
“It calms down my stomach and stops me from eating annoying humans who ask too many questions,” she joked, messing up my hair.
I sipped the wine slowly, keeping my thoughts to myself.
“What are you thinking about, buddy?” she asked.
“My sisters,” I told her.
“What were their names again? I forgot.”
“Tina and Kate,” I replied. I smiled at the thought of seeing them again.
“What do they do in the resistance?” Lara asked.
“Kate is the oldest—she’s twenty now. She’s a doctor. And Tina is my twin—she’s a combat medic.”
“So you got to see them on a daily basis?” Lara asked.
I nodded.
“I’m sorry; you must miss them,” Lara said.
“Don’t be; it’s my fault. Tina begged me not to go out on so many missions, but I just ignored her. I wanted my revenge, and that’s how I ended up here.”
“Revenge?” she asked.
“Never mind.” I looked away, not wanting to talk about it.
“No, tell me, please, Lance!” she begged.
I shook my head. “I want to keep some things private.”
“But I want to know. I barely know anything about you,” she whined, staring at me innocently.
I was growing irritated by her persistence. “Why? So you can jot it down in your damn folder?” I snapped, losing my temper.
She stared at me as if I had just slapped her across the face, shocked by my sudden outburst. She growled in her non-human tone. “Where do you get off talking to me like that?” she snarled angrily.
“I’m sorry; it’s a touchy subject,” I replied, gently pushing her off my chest.
She began to relax, accepting that I didn’t want to tell her about it. After a couple tense minutes, she timidly lay her head against my chest and wiggled closer to me. I guess that was her way of apologizing. “Sometimes it’s better to let things go, Lance,” she whispered, kissing my cheek lovingly.
I sighed, knowing she was right. She began cuddling with me, sharing our one pillow. As we fell asleep, exhausted from the long, hard-fought battle, the ominous sounds of war still could be heard, far off in the distance.
Chapter 10
I woke up the next morning to rays of sunlight dancing through the broken window. The sounds of firefights from the night before had been replaced with the soft chirping of birds as morning revealed itself. If it hadn’t been for the hundreds of shell casings strewn across the destroyed room, we wouldn’t even have known that one of the biggest battles in the war had just taken place.
“Go back to sleep. I’ll make you breakfast in a bit,” Lara whispered groggily as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She rolled over, staring at me with her innocent, sparkling blue eyes. She smiled warmly.
“Good morning, sexy,” I greeted her, resting my hand across her hips and giving her a kiss.
“I see that someone is trying to get lucky,” she giggled, returning the kiss.
“Is it working?” I asked playfully.
“It might be.”
We finished an hour later.
She lay beside me, purring softly as we basked lazily in the morning sun. “Not that I want to right now,” she said, “but would it really be that crazy for us to have a baby, if we ever got settled down?”
“I suppose, when the time is right and we both feel ready, then it would be a good idea,” I answered, staring up at the ceiling.
“Really? You’re not just saying that to avoid a fight?” she asked, glancing over at me skeptically.
“Nah, for real. I feel that we could do it,” I assured her. After a pause, I added, “But … I mean … look around. Would you really want your child growing up in this kind of an environment?”
She sighed, going silent for a moment. “You’re so cute. Lance wants a little Lancey,” she teased, giving me a light punch on the shoulder.
I think she was trying to lighten the mood in an attempt not to scare me off the subject. I glanced over at her, returning her smile. “Say we were to go through with this. Wouldn’t the fiends try to take the baby away or something? I mean, it would probably be one of the firstborn hybrids, wouldn’t it?” I asked her.
“We will keep it our little secret,” Lara giggled, not taking my question seriously.
“That’s kind of impossible since Dasha knows that you have one of the first-ever manufactured pregnancy pills,” I debated. “Besides, people aren’t
stupid. They’d eventually notice that you were putting on weight.”
She just smirked, putting her finger on my lips so I would stop making excuses. “I wouldn’t worry about our guidance counselor spilling the beans,” she told me with a devilish grin.
“Why?”
“She was killed yesterday in the fighting. I saw her room get blasted to pieces by a tank while she was still inside.”
“Wouldn’t they keep paperwork of what they did with the pills, though?” I asked.
She cursed under her breath. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
We were interrupted by a knock at the door. Hastily, Lara threw on my T-shirt and boxers as someone kept banging on the door.
“Tana!” Lara yelled, bustling over to it and opening it.
Two men in military uniforms marched in without invitation. One glanced over at me, asking Lara something in Jural. She nodded, and they continued to talk. One guy handed her an envelope, saluted her, and then they both left as quickly as they’d come.
“What was that about?” I asked.
She opened the envelope, glancing over its contents. She looked up at me, smiling happily. “Because of what you did yesterday, the court has decided to lift all restrictions on you.” She continued to read to herself, and then said, “Oh, wow!”
“What?” I asked.
“Remember last month, when we filled out our paperwork for Monatello City?” I nodded, already knowing what was coming next. “Well, we have been approved. We can move there any time!” she told me excitedly, tucking the piece of paper back into the envelope and placing it in a drawer.
“That’s awesome,” I said half-heartedly. I stood up and leaned against the wall.
She was definitely way more excited about this than I was. She happily threw her hands up in the air and jumped into my arms. “You’re going to love it there. It’s a new city, especially built for humans and fiends to live together in peace. We can finally leave this silly war behind us.”
“Where is it?” I asked.
“Far, far away from this place. This is the beginning of our new life together, Lance!” she told me, leaning back in my arms to read my expression.
I smiled, making out with her as I placed her on the counter.
“Get dressed,” she ordered me playfully, slapping my butt as we finished. She took off my shirt and boxers and threw them over to me.
I found a pair of pants from one of the tipped-over drawers. “Where are we going?” I asked. Her random moods confused me.
“Operation file folder,” she said with a smile.
“What?” I asked.
“We have to go find those papers in the guidance counselor’s office to destroy them, silly.”
We stepped out into the hall, pausing at a janitor’s closet. I glanced around nervously keeping a lookout, while Lara picked the lock. “You almost done?” I whispered anxiously.
“Hold on,” she muttered, concentrating on the lock. “There!” she whispered victoriously to the dull click of the door unlocking. She opened it, and we both crammed inside. Lara then dug around in a drawer until she found two janitor suits. We put them on, and she grabbed a mop, while I filled a bucket with water and soap until the bubbles were threatening to spill over the side.
We then trudged up the stairs to the second floor and into Dasha’s waiting room. To our surprise, a secretary was guarding the rooms at the main desk. “Can I help you?” she asked politely as we entered.
“Yes, we were sent to clear out Mrs. Gorald’s room,” Lara said convincingly.
I kept my head down, avoiding eye contact with the secretary, praying that she wouldn’t catch a sniff of my human scent. The secretary nodded us through, and we quickly walked down the hallway to Dasha’s office. Inside, there was a tipped-over desk, which Lara instantly began to dig through until she found a key.
She opened a file cabinet and read through it, frowning at some files. I busied myself by mopping the purplish fiend blood from the floor and sweeping debris off the side of the building. I pushed it through the shattered window in an attempt to make it look as though we actually had been up here to clean. “I got it!” Lara called out excitedly. She pulled a piece of paper out of the drawer, locked the file cabinet, and threw the key back in the desk.
She snapped her finger and a flame emitted from it, burning the paper until there was nothing left. “Problem solved,” she told me happily, dusting off her hands.
“Isn’t there a computer around here that the file is stored on?” I asked, looking around the office.
“Nah, your species are masterminds when it comes to cyber warfare. We lost some very important documents once, so we decided to scrap our computers and resorted to more primitive techniques to secure valuable information.”
I nodded understandingly and followed her out of the office, down the hall, and then past the secretary, who didn’t appear to suspect a thing.
Once we were on the first floor, we ditched our janitor uniforms back in the closet. I headed back in the direction of our room, but Lara called after me, “Where are you going?”
“Our room?”
“No, no, silly, you obviously haven’t been in any battles. We have to go up to my officer’s room, where he will give us a speech about how great we did, blah, blah, blah. After that, there will be a dance, which usually takes place for everyone, in celebration of our victory,” Lara explained to me patiently.
“Cool. Do you need a date?”
“Nah, I’m going with someone else,” she teased, letting me hold her hand as we walked down the hall.
We went up for our debriefing and found Domelski sitting behind a desk. “Well, hello there, Lance,” he greeted me.
I remained silent, nervously staring at the floor. The memories of my torture sessions came flooding back to me.
“Keeping out of trouble lately?” he asked, motioning with his hand for Lara to take a step forward.
She obediently stepped up, and he presented her a silver medal in the shape of a star. He hung it around her neck and then motioned me over, hanging a silver medal around my neck. He informed me that it was a lower ranking of Lara’s medal, as if I cared about a fiend medal. I silently turned to leave, but Lara quickly grabbed my hand, preventing my escape.
“Why are you in such a rush to leave?” Domelski asked.
I remained silent, staring at the floor.
“I hope that you haven’t taken our previous encounters personally, Lance. That was strictly business.” He held out his hand, seeming friendly. I glanced away from it and immediately saw anger boiling up in his eyes. “You will not ignore me, human!” he growled threateningly.
“Hey, don’t talk to him that way,” Lara spoke up.
Domelski looked from me to Lara. “It appears that my experiment went wrong somewhere, huh? I guess it’s true—never send a woman to do a man’s job.” Lara looked away in embarrassment as he turned toward me. “I would like you to work for me, Lance. Not in a combat role, obviously, but we could use someone of your skills on our side to train our snipers.”
“I would never work for you,” I grunted.
Domelski raised his hand to me, but Lara interrupted. “Don’t you dare hit him!”
He stopped, glancing over at her. “I’m going to make both of your lives hell,” he promised us with a dull grin.
“You’re not in charge of me anymore, Domelski. Lance and I are moving to Monatello. Here is my release paper.” She tossed the paper on his desk.
He glanced down at the paper, shock spreading across his face. “Get out of my sight!” he growled angrily.
We departed quickly, not having to be asked twice, as the door slammed behind us.
“What a sexist piece of shit,” Lara grunted angrily, as we walked down the hall.
>
“That probably wasn’t the best time to tell him we were leaving.” I laughed.
“Whatever. He’s always like that.” She shrugged and gave me a handful of gold coins.
“What’s this?” I asked, curiously looking around as we emerged into what appeared to be a busy shopping district that the fiends had built inside of the base.
“Crome—this is our currency.”
“How much is this?” I asked, staring down at the pile of gold coins in my hand.
“Sixty crome. Go get yourself something nice for the dance.”
I found this odd—Lara usually picked out everything for me. “You’re not coming?” I asked.
“Nah, I trust you,” she said, leaning over and giving me a kiss.
I could see in her eyes that it was painful for her to let me go, but she pretended she was cool with it. She walked into a girls’ clothing store, giving me freedom for the first time since we’d met. I went into a men’s shop and bought a pair of pants and a hoodie, along with a hat, for forty crome. My freedom was short-lived; Lara was waiting for me patiently outside the shop. I handed her the twenty crome I had left, but she just shook her head, letting me keep it.
It was getting dark out, and I could hear the music playing as we walked through the hall toward our room. We entered, and I changed into my new clothes, as did Lara on the other side of the bunker.
“Don’t peek; it’s a surprise,” she called over to me affectionately.
Finally, after ten minutes, she emerged from behind the ruble. “Ta-da!” she called over to me, posing like a model in front of me. She was wearing a skin-tight skirt with a pretty blue tank top. Her hair and makeup were done up nicely. “Do you like it?” she asked.
I could tell that she genuinely cared about my opinion of her. “Of course I do. You look beautiful.” I smiled in approval.
She beamed happily, grabbing my hand to lead me down to the party. The dance floor was packed when we got there. A slow song came on, and she wrapped her arms around me, swaying back and forth slowly to the melody. We ignored the threatening stares from other fiends around the dance floor.
The Unexpected War Page 10