Dark Jay was mad. He couldn’t control his strength, and at this moment I didn’t know if he actually wanted to. The pleasure he got from killing the pack of wolves before, and the disinterest of removing a life now. That man was dangerous.
Silver morphed back to her humanoid form. She continued shedding light to the tunnels, which were a much-welcomed difference. I checked myself for any wounds, but I found none. I was lucky. Zan not so much. He had a deep biting mark on his thigh.
“What happened Silver? Is Zan okay?”
She looked at me with concern. “He will be fine, but we need to take him to a clinic immediately. If his wound gets infected, then things can get dreadful, fast.”
“Okay. I’ll go and get Jay.”
Silver stood up and stopped me in my tracks. “Are you okay? What happened to you?”
“To be honest, I don’t know. I passed out after that thing dragged me in here. The last thing I remember was its disgusting breath next to my ear. Seriously, what was that?”
“If I had to guess, seeing how Zan evolved on the surface, this man must have belonged to another evolution path of the human species, one that got accustomed to living underground. From what I managed to gather, he was blind and probably relied to hearing to navigate his surroundings.”
I looked at him lying on the floor, a lifeless husk.
Damn, something is wrong. How can humans evolve so differently in such a short distance from each other? And so fast, between other things.
Significant changes to human genome took millenniums to develop, and they just changed so much from one century to the other.
Zan interrupted us with his pained grunts. “Eladia, do you really have to go and get him? He’s dangerous. You saw what he did to...it.”
Silver was right. I should have known better. But the thing was that I had promised that I’d help him. So that, I would do. “I’m sorry, Silver. I have a promise to keep. No matter how violent he is, he saved us all more than once already. We can’t leave him behind.”
She lowered her head and tended to Zan’s wounds. “Do what you have to. Just be careful.”
I followed the flashing light down the tunnel. The trails were big chunks of metal lying on the ground, useless after years lacking maintenance. Nowadays, on Yaerus, everyone used magnet buses and hover trains. Trails were a thing of the past, as oil was. Even so, it was interesting seeing how early humans used to move around.
The longer I walked, the more I wanted to return back to Silver. Dark Jay or Jay’s mad counterpart wad an airhead, someone who could kill with the same ease he would use to spread butter on a slice of bread.
I mean, he didn’t even flinch. But, he also saved me. He searched for me, and he remembered my name, unlike Regular Jay. He only calls me human female.
What are you going on about Eladia? What does this have to do with the Nusae relic or your situation?
I felt like I needed a good, long week of vacations. Maybe I should ask the Professor to give me some time off.
The light was getting stronger by the minute. I wondered how much longer it would be until I got to the end of the tunnel. My question was immediately answered after I finally reached at the end of a long turn. In the middle, Dark Jay was standing in front of the light source.
“Hey! Hey, you. Jay. We’re leaving. Are you coming with us?” He didn’t reply, even though I heard him mumble.
I’m sure he’s saying something offensive about not wanting the help of puny humans and all those nonsense he sputters since he woke up. “Last chance big one. I’m going.”
Again, He didn’t reply.
What is wrong with him? Who does he think he is?
I got closer to him, only to hear him talking nonstop in an intelligible language. Silver was back in the tunnel, so I couldn’t translate what he was saying, but as I was standing on his side, I saw the flashing instrument ahead of him.
“Jay? Jay, what’s going on? What happened?” I used my hands to shake him a bit, but he didn’t seem to snap out of it. He was in some kind of trance and a pretty thick one as well. “Jay, please. Tell me. What is going on?”
The light source suddenly exploded, tossing us both down on the ground. I opened my eyes to see a large cube floating above Jay’s head. It was a pitch black thing, symmetrical and perfect in every aspect. I got a sudden urge to stand up and touch it, but the thing started pulsating randomly, getting big and then small, and then big again. It was like it couldn’t decide on its shape.
“Jay! Wake up! We have to go. This thing...it’s gonna explode!” But he didn’t hear anything. Instead, he just kept rumbling in different languages. I could recognize some words here and there, but nothing that actually made sense. He repeated the words Esuh and Nusae a lot.
The cube descended down on his chest slowly, and while the ash gray-skinned man was now lying on the floor, he quickly stretched his hands to reach it. The moment he touched it, the cube suddenly became tiny, a thing fitting in the palm of his hand, and the flashing disappeared.
Silver and Zan appeared from the tunnel. She saw us lying on the ground, so she placed Zan carefully down against a wall, and ran to my side. “Eladia! What’s wrong? What happened?”
I didn’t know how to explain it to her.
Damn, I don’t know how to explain it to myself. “I think...we found the relic. Or rather, Jay found it.”
We both turned our heads and looked at him. He was awake, and luckily, not ash gray anymore. The platinum-skinned man had returned to his regular form. I urged Silver to help me so that we could get closer to him and examine the cube.
“Human? Are you...okay?” I had never seen him mumble before. I didn’t know if I wanted to see him do that again in the future.
“I’m fine. How about you?”
“Except my hand feeling like burning, and my knee that I think is broken, I’m fine. Esuh can handle a lot more than that.”
Sure you are. If you knew about your symbiotic parasite, then I’m sure you would brag even more.
Even so, I prompted him to open his palm. He heard me for a change, and he did open it.
“Silver, run it on the archives, although I think you won’t find anything like that in there. This is an intact Nusae relic Silver. We finally found it!”
The pitch black cube had turned into a red light-emitting mini cube, with five inscriptions in almost every side of it. Those runic symbols seemed very familiar, but we had to wait for Silver’s scan to complete to be sure.
In the meantime, I took a good look around me, seeing Zan, the feral human that shook down the evolution theory, my unique android assistant, and a silver-skinned alien that didn’t remember a thing about his past.
The mission was successful, but I couldn’t feel excitement anymore. Being a Chronicler was a dangerous job, that much I knew, but usually, it was your fame and integrity that got on the way, not the lives of your friends. I wanted to apologize to Jay, but as soon as I saw the look on his face, the one saying that I would have failed if he wasn’t here, I decide not to.
“Jay, can you carry Zan to the camp? I’ll show you the way,” I said, waiting for him to disagree. Instead, he followed my orders and grabbed the young boy from the hands, tossing him on his shoulders. They moved ahead of us, straight into the dark tunnel.
I looked at Silver, and I knew that this adventure was far from over. But most of them all, I was thinking about Jay.
Damn, why am I thinking about Jay?
Quickly, I opened my pace and followed them. It was already getting dark outside.
Chapter Fourteen
Eladia
You couldn’t consider yourself lucky until you had passed through the Ozleo Siblings star system without being assaulted by pirates. Part of the Uncharted Region, a place in the galaxy that the Five Ranked Species still hadn’t discovered, illegal aliens and lawless factions had made the three star systems their home.
We certainly knew the chances of getting attacked by the black
spaceships before we even decided to follow that route, but it was the quickest way to Yaerus, humanity's home planet since we abandoned Earth. Yaerus was also home to the great Institute.
I was sitting in my room, ready to have a shower at the end of a particularly long shift in the bridge. I removed my clothes and adjusted the temperature of the steam shower of my room. I looked myself in the mirror and tried to untangle my messed up hair after hours being caught in a ponytail. My hair curtained my shoulders, a black waterfall that I never got used to, I couldn’t help but think about Jay.
I shook my head, clearing my thoughts before I took my first step in the shower pod. Piloting the spaceship through this system was exhausting since the autopilot feature didn’t work in the Uncharted region. So, at least one member of the crew had to stay up at all times to adjust the course if needed.
I still asked myself why Silver couldn’t get all the shifts, but then, again she was an android with a particularly advanced artificial intelligence system. It was easier for me to treat her like another one of the crew than like a regular robot. At least that was what I said to myself many years ago when I decided on that. Now, the water running down my naked body, I wasn’t sure I had made the right choice.
But, with the hot water calming down my nerves, relaxing my muscles and dulling my senses, I realized that Silver was not the thing that had occupied my mind lately. For the last six months in space with Jay, the symbiotic alien I knew nothing of, many things had changed.
I was drying my body at the air pressure room when the alarm started ringing through every hallway of the ship. Using the first setting, a warm wind bustled through the air holes around the pod. I was back in my clothes in less than a minute, ready for action.
I ran out of my room and bumped straight into Jay. His beautiful, platinum silver body and big, purple eyes made me gawp for a second. I was afraid he might pick up on something, especially since the last two months, I ended up at the same room as him every single time. However, thick as ever, he proceeded to make one of his usual, irrelevant remarks.
“Is something wrong with my attire human? Your eyes run up and down my body for quite some time now,” he said.
I flushed and kept my mouth open for a second, still dreary from the sudden alert. He was wearing a dark blue, sleeveless uniform that kinda toned down his huge muscles. Out of nowhere, I remembered the last time he touched me, six months ago, back at Primordial Earth.
I sighed, and when the words finally came, I wished I had just nodded and ran.
“No, no...not at all. You look hot...I mean, not bad. Yeah, that’s it. Not bad.”
A hit straight at the Hull shook the whole ship. Fortunately, it was Silver’s shift. That meant that we had a high chance of getting away unharmed from this chase. Among the four of us — me, Jay, Silver, and Zan — she was the best pilot by far.
Well, she’s an Android, you can’t hope to rival an Android in piloting. Or in anything, in general.
There was nothing she wasn’t great at, except for cooking. That, she couldn’t do.
Still, the ship was shaking under out feet, both of us trying to stay up, gave our little scene a surrealistic tone. I knew I wanted to run, but the Pirates were not the reason.
“You humans are so strange. We’re in the middle of a fight, and you seem more slow than usual. We should get going, Eladia,” he finally said.
Jay...well Jay was a big question mark. Jay wasn’t a human or part of any of the known species. It was like his whole existence was deleted from the Known Galaxy Archives way before I was born, or way before the human history was even created.
Six months ago, while at an excursion on Primordial Earth, Silver and I found his crashed ship and managed to wake him up from a one-hundred-year slumber, a slumber that caused him to forget everything about the Esuh of the Two Faces, his people.
Long story short? He was a moody, irritable alien with a big idea about himself that kinda winded up with us because our most prized Nusae relic didn’t go anywhere without him.
Yeah, stories like this are not just movie clichés.
Still, during the last six months visiting countless planets to amass more information about the cube, we passed from the generic ‘human’ stage, to him calling me by my first name, occasionally.
At least, from his side. He turned his back on me and I breathed in. I had to focus on the attack, and not the tall, black haired, alien male walking before me. Another hit on the hull shook the ship, that made me snap from my deep delirium. The same thing happened every time I bumped into him like that.
I ran down the end of the hallway and found the elevator door. The swishing sound somehow calmed my nerves. I passed by Zan’s room. I figured it would be best if I sent him to the bridge with Silver. He hadn’t been amid a space dogfight before and since he was a primordial human, he must have been really scared.
“Zan? Are you okay?” I knocked twice but he didn’t answer.
There was no time to lose so I decided to get inside. “Zan…?”
His room was empty.
Right then, I finally remembered. Silver and Zan always shared the shift. Zan, the cute teenage boy with the overgrown hair all over his body, was another hitchhiker from Primordial Earth. He was protecting Jay’s cryo-pod and kinda attacked me when I woke Jay up, only to get into a surprising budding relationship with Silver. They were best friends now, always talking and spending time together. I kinda felt lonely sometimes since she spent most of her time teaching him our language, but at the end of the day, it was okay. Zan was one of us now after all.
“Eladia? Where are you? Jasih is already down the armory, manning one of the cannons. You need to hurry down there and help him,” Silver said through the speakers, her electronic voice no less intimidated.
There were times I considered getting an upgraded assistant, but I always ended up turning down the possibility. Silver was a very special morpher and had been my assistant for as long as I was a Chronicler...which I must admit wasn’t that long.
When I finally got at the armory, I heard Jay swearing down the hall.
“Die you Setrin fucks! You’d wish you had never been brought to life from your hometown cubes!”
Jay had a very particular way of swearing. Most of the time I didn’t understand what he was talking about. But his loud voice was somehow comforting. I would have hated to come down here alone.
I got inside the right canon while Jay was already firing from the left. This was only the second time I had been here so I needed a moment to get comfortable with the equipment. I had to put on the optic helmet, that much I remembered, but I couldn’t remember if the red, flashing button in the left meant danger or was danger itself.
Come on, girl. You have to figure this out quickly.
I put on the helmet, and I quickly got into a virtual image of the outside of the ship. Everything was black with many dots at the horizon distinguishing the distant stars. At first, I felt dizzy and disoriented since my point of view had changed to that of the cannon. But as the first enemy fighter approached, my instincts took over.
By using my hands, I could shoot and ion beam -- a system in the mainframe tracked my movements and synchronized them with those of the cannon. It was high-tech alright, but it was certainly nothing compared to the huge, army dreadnaughts. Those beasts had the most advanced weapons in the galaxy.
Silver was doing her best to maneuver our way out of this situation, but Pirates were best known for one thing, being extremely persistent. However, shooting down one or two of their spaceships usually made them retreat. They had to keep their losses to a minimum since pirating was their only means to get more resources and they could only repair their ships by salvaging.
Most of their firepower was currently focused on Jay’s side. He managed to keep three fighters at bay, all by himself while I tried to work my way around a single target. A small, type 1 fighter, custom build and speed enhanced, tried to intimidate me by firing flares. But I
was not that clueless.
I turned my head, aligned the ship’s targeting system, charged the ion cannon, took a deep breath and focused on the right moment.
I took the shot.
I saw the ion beam tear the blackness of the empty space and waited to see the explosion signaling the end of the enemy ship. Only to miss, gloriously.
“Eladia, I can’t keep them very long all by myself. Can you take some load off me?” I heard Jay bellow behind me.
The swarm of fighters had grown bigger on his side. The three fighters had doubled to six, and I couldn’t even handle one. But, for him to ask for my help in that way, I had to try again, this time seriously. During the last six months, he hadn’t even asked me to cook for him or something. He did everything on his own.
Alien Romance Box Set: Romantic Suspense: Alien Destiny: Scifi Alien Romance Adventure Romantic Suspence Trilogy (Complete Series Box Set Books 1-3) Page 76