Alien Bride (Love, Drugs, and Biopunk)

by McGill, Brie

  Orion crossed his arms. “Upgrade?”

  Wolfram stood up from the table. “We will leave soon. But first, there is something I must show you. . .”

  Beatrice & the Story of N

  XXI.

  “Hello?”

  Ninkasi felt a warm hand on her shoulder shake her vigorously.

  “Are you awake?”

  Female voices.

  “Let her rest.”

  “There will be punishment if we interfere.”

  A second hand grabbed her other shoulder.

  “It has been a long time since an addition of only one.”

  “Maybe she is from another chamber.”

  A third hand, a gentle hand, pressed against her cheek, against her forehead.

  Ninkasi’s eyes fluttered open: she awoke to the sight of six young women kneeling around her.

  Some were her age, some were younger, and all were stripped of clothes.

  Ninkasi squinted, and pushed herself up: her head ached. She instinctively clasped a hand to her chest—and realized she sat ass-naked like the rest of them.

  Her mouth dropped open in shock. It was like being trapped in a locker room. In hell.

  “It’s okay.” A blonde girl speaking with a Daityan accent squeezed her shoulder. “We won’t hurt you.”

  “Where am I?” Her eyes darted nervously from side to side. “What is this?”

  She sat on the cool, earthen floor of a cavern, some unknown place—once again—inside the earth. “Why does this keep happening?” She collapsed on her back, roaring with frustration, staring absently into the ceiling.

  “All the girls in the room,” a black-haired girl with a Rutian accent spoke, “have been kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped by who?” Ninkasi slapped a hand against her face. “For what?”

  “We are. . . unsure.” Another woman with curly red hair appeared beside her. “None of the girls taken from this room ever return. Some of us have been here much longer than others.”

  Another girl hung her head.

  The blonde leaned over Ninkasi, studying her critically. “All we know is that most of us have been brought here in groups, after experiencing a major cataclysm.”

  “A tsunami destroyed my hometown, and I woke up here.” The Rutian rubbed the back of her head.

  “My family perished in an earthquake.” The redhead closed her eyes. “At first, I thought I was saved, but. . .”

  “I was travelling cross-country on a tour bus.” A girl with dreadlocks sat beside her. “The bus crashed—was run off the road, I’m certain—and I and several other passengers awoke here.”

  “Only the young women.” The blonde reiterated. “No one else.”

  Ninkasi narrowed her eyes, glancing around. “Do you have any idea where this place is?” Her stomach twisted: all of these girls, they were missing people, likely with faces printed on cartons.

  It chilled her to think that’s what she had become. How much longer until her parents pronounced her dead? Would they do that to her?

  Had they already?

  Unlike within the confinement of the chateau, Ninkasi knew there was absolutely zero chance for anyone to discover her down here, in this crazy, imaginary world that didn’t exist in the civilized minds of man. This was something too insane to comprehend.

  “It could be anywhere.” The black-haired girl shrugged. “We have determined that we are gathered from all continents of the earth.”

  “We’ve never seen anyone arrive alone.” The redhead tilted her head.

  “Do you know anything about this place?” The girl with dreadlocks looked at her with hopeful eyes.

  “No. Have any you tried to escape?” Ninkasi turned her head, looking from girl to girl. “You don’t sit here waiting to be taken away, do you? There are plenty of girls here—”

  “There is but one door.” The blonde sighed. “The door is heavily guarded.”

  “The guards possess these strange rods that—” The redhead lifted her arm for Ninkasi to see, exposing a hideous bruised wound. “It’s like an explosion of hot light. I’m not sure what it does.”

  “It’s painful.” The girl with black hair stood up and turned her back. “Better to avoid it.”

  “How long have you been down here?” Ninkasi lifted a hand to the back of her head.

  The girl with dreadlocks frowned. “It is impossible to tell day from night.”

  “What about mealtime?” Ninkasi leaned forward. “How do they feed you? What do you eat?”

  The blonde grimaced.

  “Well, forget it.” Ninkasi stood up, brushing herself off, longing for her clothes. “I’m not staying down here forever.” She crossed her arms. “How many of us are stuck in here? A hundred? If we all banded together, I’m sure we could break out.”

  The girls eyed her distrustfully.

  “I will not wait around to either rot here and die or find out what some psychopath has in store for me!” Ninkasi flung out her arms in desperation. “Don’t you want to go home?!”

  “My home has been destroyed.” The Rutian girl sat in the dirt, keeping her eyes downcast.

  “Mine as well.” The blonde nodded.

  “Listen!” Ninkasi waved her arms. “Are you all so depressed that you’d rather sit here and die instead of leaving and finding a new home?!”

  The girls looked at her in awe.

  “There are plenty of us! We can get out of here. We can do this!” Ninkasi raised her voice, trying to rally the other girls in the room, some sleeping, some indifferent to her arrival. “What do you know about the people keeping us here? Some of you must have seen someone, you have to know something.”

  “They speak a language unlike anything I’ve ever heard.” The girl with dreadlocks glanced at the door.

  “I studied world languages in school.” The blonde girl tucked her arms into her chest. “The syntax, the vocabulary, it’s alien. I know of nothing remotely similar occurring at any point in recorded history.”

  Ninkasi raised an eyebrow. “These people keeping you. . . Do they have six fingers?”

  The redhead shivered. “How did you know?”

  Ninkasi tapped a finger on her cheek. “I think I know where we are.”

  “You do?!” The black-haired girl lurched forward.

  The others were equally intrigued.

  Ninkasi covered her face and laughed. “I think we’re underground. Really, really far underground.”

  The blonde girl narrowed her eyes. “How is that possible?”

  “And whoever they are, those people holding us—” Ninkasi pointed at the door. “I think they collect humans to keep them as slaves. It sounds crazy, but it’s the only explanation that makes any sense—”

  The redhead shook her head. “Crumbling under the stress of confinement, I hallucinated when I was first taken here.”

  Ninkasi shrilled. “I’m not hallucinating!”

  “It is terrible, being held captive like this.” The girl with dreadlocks agreed. “I imagined every scenario in my head that—”

  “This isn’t in my head!” Ninkasi stood up, shocked no one took her seriously. “Some friends and I broke into a facility that goes underground—deep underground, further than anyone imagined—” She bit her lip, annoyed by the skeptical eyes watching her. “The building exited into a series of tunnels that led to a city—”

  “Poor girl.” The redhead turned and walked away, shaking her head.

  “This city is populated with those six-fingered beings!” She threw her hands in the air. “They hate humans! They’ll use you like animals, all of you! If we want to escape, we need to work together!”

  The girl with dreadlocks made her exit. “The last one who went this stark raving mad took her own life. . .”

  The dark-haired girl gave Ninkasi a sad smile, and left them.

  The blonde twirled her hair, scrutinizing Ninkasi. “Escaping this place is not so easy. They possess a technological advantage that—”


  Someone dragged open the heavy metal door to the cave. A robust man outfitted in a grey official uniform appeared, clutching a narrow iron baton, with a hilt alight with circuitry, and a curving, pointed edge.

  Ninkasi refused to sit in this stupid cave and slowly lose her strength, her will: she had to take matters into her own hands.

  Taking a deep breath, she sprinted toward the door, and leapt at the guardian, intending to tackle him to the floor.

  He stumbled backward, grunting with surprise. He lifted the baton above his head, grinding switches on the hilt, and a golden energy surged through the blade, sparking at the tip.

  Ninkasi smashed an elbow into his face, grabbing him by the collar, and booted her foot into his groin.

  The guard whipped the baton at Ninkasi.

  She dodged, jumping to the side, and pushed the guard backward, kneeing him in the groin with greater force.

  He rammed the baton forward, the hooked tip punching into the flesh of Ninkasi’s thigh, electrocuting her with a searing energy.

  She screamed, collapsing, body stinging from head to toe, paralyzed in agony.

  The guard held the weapon powered on, pressed into her, continuing to shock her while she was down. He smirked, twisting the sharp point further into her leg before yanking it out, and kicked her onto her side.

  She blacked out.

  Wolfram yanked the wheel-shaped handle on the vault, spinning it and spinning it, until the rusted door to the crypt creaked open. He reclaimed his electric candle, entrusted to Orion, and clicked it on, adjusting a setting on its base until the candle glowed a bright green. He motioned for Orion to follow, ensuring the door sealed behind them. “Renwick took a shine to Aleister.” Wolfram chuckled, leading the way down a rickety wooden stair that spiraled through a forgotten stone tower.

  Orion smirked, recalling the boy punch Aleister in the head and wrestle him. Despite his neurosis, Aleister was an excellent caretaker of others; he reminded Orion of a mother hen, complete with clucking and feathers.

  The stair exited into a dank stone hall. Orion plodded ahead, listening to the erratic drip of fluid in the distance, his toes sinking into the cool, earthen floor.

  The hall emptied into a small, circular room, with an enormous glass case in the center. Wolfram touched the nearest wall sconce, igniting a circle of sconces around the room with a fuchsia glow.

  Orion approached the rectangular glass case—a coffin.

  Inside rested a young woman with resplendent coils of strawberry blonde hair. Her white gown spoke to him of innocence, trimmed in gold embroidery. Her arms were folded across her chest, her face frozen in calm repose. A silver chain looped around her neck, decorated with a solitary, plus-shaped charm.

  Orion tilted his head, looking to Wolfram, and pointed at the glass.

  “My Beatrice.” Wolfram rested both hands on the glass, hanging his head. The pain of loss eroded his face, chiseling lines at the corners of his downcast eyes, sad creases at the corners of his mouth; his gauntness stemmed from a starvation of nourishment immaterial.

  Orion wondered for how long the tomb had been here, and how often Wolfram frequented it.

  “We have all watched the people of this planet for a long time.” Wolfram’s fingers tensed on the glass, and he stared longingly at the dead woman. “In our realm, there exists nothing like a woman. You would call us sexless.”

  It pained Orion to watch Wolfram speak, to see the frailty, the defeat, the agony in his eyes, emotions steeped in the richest humanity.

  “They are so delicate, so gentle, so intuitive.” He closed his eyes. “I believe it is the capacity to carry life inside the body that accounts for this difference in constitution. Women are fascinating, beautiful creatures.”

  Orion smirked: Wolfram was a hopeless romantic.

  “I and some others of my kind were too enchanted by the pure novelty of this world to consider that many of the others observed for what great pleasures of the flesh a woman could be used.” Wolfram jerked his head away. “In any case, we experimented with various methods of creating a body of flesh compatible with your world, and transferring our consciousness so that we might live in it. It was a one-way ticket.” He clenched a fist. “I naively expected paradise.

  “Most of the others chose to take by force that which they considered great, and cared not to share with anyone else, gold, food, any material luxury.” He traced his hand along the glass. “But that was not my intention, for I sought a life in which I could coexist with these beautiful creatures. I wanted to know them, to learn their ways, to experience this world as a native. That was how I found my Beatrice.

  “Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before many of my kind sought to overrun the land, and they were exposed for what they truly were: not of this world. The bodies we created were imperfect, and offspring with the women of this world produced monsters. We were easily identified and driven underground.”

  Wolfram shook his head, resting his hands on the glass. “Beatrice loved me enough to follow me underground, but she fell gravely ill. Some others informed me they had created a blood product to sustain the surface dwellers, for the purpose of keeping them as slaves; I was granted unrestricted access to the serum, until it was discovered I lived with a woman in harmony and equality.”

  For the first time during his story, Wolfram turned to face Orion. “They denied me the necessary technology to keep her alive.” His voice wavered. “I was decried, accused of abandoning my heritage to assume the surface dwellers’ ways. I was ostracized, forced to live on the outskirts of our settlement for centuries, shunned.” He swallowed. “I know there were others who suffered similar hardships, and they were all driven to the edges of our world, rarely to be seen or heard from again.”

  Wolfram cleared his throat. “In any case, before we leave, I wanted you to see my Beatrice.” He tilted his head toward the glass. “I wanted you to gaze upon her, to be reminded of the beauty of what she truly is. Perhaps I traveled to this world against my better judgment, but I am eternally inspired by her mercy, by her grace.” He smiled bitterly. “Her kindness serves as a constant challenge to my own character, forcing me to strive to find a greater compassion for all those around me. Her virtue transcends all things; it is godly.”

  Orion studied the woman inside the glass: her beauty was plain, simple. In her solitude, she reminded him of a saint, a virginal priestess.

  Wolfram’s voice dropped to a tremoring whisper. “I will not declare our union a waste.” He stared at the floor, sealing his lips. “It is a pity, the pandemic of ignorance—”

  “I don’t think any place on this planet is paradise.” Orion turned to Wolfram. “Or anywhere in this universe, for that matter.”

  Wolfram folded his arms on the glass case and rested his head. “Then you have no hope.”

  “I don’t think it exists. . . spatially.” Orion bit his lip—he felt like he was about to spew a bunch of Aleister’s nonsense.

  Wolfram tilted his head.

  Orion crossed his arms and turned around. “If there is a paradise, it’s temporal. It comes in fleeting moments, without notice.”

  Wolfram seized his arm, shaking it, staring him directly in the eyes. “I won’t allow them to steal her from you. I will not rest until we find her.” He released Orion, and briskly strode away. “If you’ll forgive me. I will wait for you in the sitting room.”

  Orion detected the surge of upset that swirled through Wolfram, observing his furious exit in wonder. He placed his hands on the glass, staring long and hard at the woman.

  Ninkasi was far more beautiful, more alluring, more animate.

  Although, he made an unfair comparison: this one was dead.

  Swept with compulsion, Orion dropped to his knees and ran his fingers along the sides of the case, searching for a latch.

  At the edges of the small panel behind the woman’s head, Orion’s fingers detected two switches. He pressed them, loosening the side of the coffin and pulling
it away.

  Heart pounding, he thrust his arm inside, savagely yanking the necklace with silver charm from the dead woman’s neck. Glancing over his shoulder, he listened for signs of Wolfram, and sensed nothing.

  Trembling, Orion replaced the panel and clicked the switches, resealing the woman away forever.

  He hoped he did nothing to disturb her awesome preservation.

  Leaning against the tank, he clutched the chain tightly, examining the modest silver cross against the magenta light.

  Wolfram was right: he couldn’t leave Ninkasi. She was all the things that Wolfram had said, and more. Maybe all this time, he wanted someone to guide him, someone to show him a way of life entirely separate from the fucked-up nightmare that was his past. He felt differently accountable to her, than to Aleister, as if his future, perhaps his soul depended on it.

  Orion clasped the necklace around his neck, tucking the silver charm into his shirt.

  He would find Ninkasi.

  He sensed a strange power in the privacy of the secluded crypt—it doubled as a womb, his place of rebirth. This dead woman, he was certain, would guide him.

  He marched through the tunnel and up the stair in search of Wolfram.

  The dull ache in Ninkasi’s head comforted her because it reminded her that she still had a body, that she was alive. She felt a digging pain in her knees, at her right side and her shoulder.

  She opened her eyes: a black grid of bars blocked a clear vision of a graphite cave, illuminated by the unnatural purple light below.

  Reaching for her head, Ninkasi’s hand smacked against cold metal bars. She blinked, shifting: she had fallen asleep standing up.

  Her eyes darted from side to side. She fell asleep, standing up. . . inside a cage.

  Locking her fingers around the bars, she hoisted herself up. It was too narrow inside the cage for her to sit, or to turn to her side; she stood sandwiched within the unforgiving iron lattice.

  Poking her nose between the bars, she observed the cage dangled two stories above the floor. The vast expanse of the cave below her appeared empty, save for smaller light posts like the ones she saw in the street, conducting a mysterious amethyst lightning.