“Hair can’t be sanitary. I bet it’s full of germs,” she added.
“Hair is not a carrier of disease. Besides, humans bathe and wash their hair regularly. I think it’s pretty, in a strange way. It looks soft to the touch,” I said.
Lestra shuddered. “It looks coarse to me. I can’t believe you find anything about that alien pretty.” Her sitting cube rocked as her body stiffened.
But it was pretty, like I said, even if it was in a strange sort of way, and I wondered if it was now conscious in its cell. Was it scared and confused, its thoughts shifting from one unanswered question to the next, its eyes flickering with pain and agony like the Riften Vole my father keeps in a glass case next to his throne?
Like Lestra said, it did look soft and squishy, but at the same time, it held its shape, meaning that its skin was firm and robust, not as delicate as it appeared. With lips as plump and red as a fresh quip and a nose of flesh that angled symmetrically from its face, I found it not only attractive, but it filled me with wonder, something I now knew I shouldn’t directly share with Lestra—especially with the weird way she’d been acting lately.
I skipped back to its file. “Its name is America Novoa, age twenty, meaning it has seen the turn of twenty Earth years, years which are a bit shorter than ours.” She was only a year or so younger than me.
I tapped the screen. There were no medical records, only the preliminary information that was gathered during and immediately after the abduction, which took place two days ago from Galaxy One, Sector One, coordinates 32.48 degrees north, 116.26 degrees west.
“An order’s been sent to have one of the operating rooms prepped for a pre-mortem analysis,” I said with a firm jaw. “That can only mean one thing— My father plans to subject the human to his experiments.”
Lestra stood and skimmed her puff up one arm and down the other, then ran it across her neck. “No kidding. He does that to all of his captives.”
“I was hoping he’d treat a human differently.” My face plates tightened, and I rose to face her. “His tests are cruel and unnecessary.”
“So? Why do you care?” Lestra tilted her head, crossed her powdered arms, and walked toward me, breaking my comfort zone.
It wasn’t that I was specifically concerned for that particular specimen. But it was a human, a race of beings I’d been studying for years and had grown a slight affection toward.
“You don’t actually have feelings for that thing, do you?” she continued, blinking twice and sticking out her chest until her breasts were directly under my nose—and my eyes.
“Of course not,” I stated, taking a step backward as a flash of glistening shell powder brought my eyes to the inch of cleavage showing above the collar of Lestra’s tunic. “I know nothing of this girl, but like I said, it’s an intelligent life form,” I stuttered. “I-it shouldn’t be treated like the inferior beings my father’s team abducts for research purposes.”
“But it is inferior,” snapped Lestra.
She was wrong, but frankly, I was almost powerless, and there was nothing I could do. The female creature would eventually suffer and die under the hands of my father and his team. Still, there was something indefinable about the human, and I had to see it.
Lestra grazed the tips of her fingers across my forearm, continuing to break the spatial barrier between friends. The golden flecks in her eyes danced.
I yanked away. “Lestra! What’s wrong with you? You shouldn’t be touching me like that, and you shouldn’t be standing this close to me. I’m a royal, and you are my servant.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, shuffling backward. “I never get to wear shell powder. I just wanted you to see it.” Lestra rubbed her arms against her leggings, trying to remove the golden dust that so many Enestian girls pathetically obsessed over.
“I already see plenty of shell powder. I don’t need to see it on you.” Lestra dropped her head. “Besides, you don’t need to wear shell powder to look good.”
“Really, so you think I look—good?”
“Yes, you’re fine the way you are.”
Her smile intensified. She took a step closer with her head lowered, smiling up at me, her eyes unblinking, and I quickly moved away to flick off the monitor.
“I’m, I’m ready to see the human,” I announced, changing the subject. “Come with me. I’m going to need your help.”
Chapter Five
America
“Is someone there?” I whispered.
The light behind the undulating door dimmed, and a blurred image of a figure appeared through the opaque curtain, a tall figure standing upright on long legs and with arms hanging at its sides. It appeared human-like, but its shoulders were extremely broad, its waist small, and its legs and arms thick like a football player in uniform.
“Human?” asked a muffled voice.
Human? Did it mean me? “Um, yes?” I answered softly, trying to keep my voice level low and pleasant, so maybe it would be sympathetic and help me. My words bounced back in my direction, making me flinch. Please, someone be here to help me and answer my questions. Please.
“Come closer to the wall but do not touch it,” the voice warned in a deep, distinctly male tone that was oddly soothing rather than threatening.
Though I was certain whoever it was also saw me in the same fuzzy fashion, I kept my private areas covered with my arms and hands, remained seated, and scooted forward as close as I could without hitting my body against the moving goo.
The strange silhouette lowered to sit on the ground, and while I sat sideways to shield as much of my nakedness as possible, the gray blur faced me and sat with bent knees. Squinting didn’t make the image any clearer, and after several seconds of staring at the flowing wave of wall, I blinked hard, releasing a tear.
I needed answers. The confusion and ache of not knowing what was going to happen to me bit at my soul, sending the gnawing pain of hunger residing in my gut throughout my entire body.
“Please, please, tell me. Where am I?” I begged, catching my trembling bottom lip with my teeth and swallowing a rising lump in my throat. Stay calm, I warned myself. Don’t make it mad.
“Enestia.”
“What’s En…Enestia?”
“A planet three galaxies away from Earth.”
The lump returned to my throat, and I shuddered and inched away from the liquid curtain. The woods, the ominous triangle in the sky, the perimeter of tiny lights— Those images were clear. But now others came as I closed my eyes, distorted and indistinct, flashes of lost memories twisting in my mind—a beam of light, a bright room, a metal table, and foreign voices shouting above me.
“So you’re an—?” I stopped myself before saying any more. I didn’t want to offend it.
Don’t be true. Don’t be true, I repeated over and over again in my head as my heartbeat became palpable. But when I opened my eyes, I was still in the dank, gray cell, and the strange being was there. The cold reality of my situation sent my body into an uncontrollable quiver.
“I am an Enestian, a male Enestian,” it said.
So it was true. It was an alien, and I was on its planet.
My shoulders bounced in rhythm as I shook and began to sob, muffled cries against my knees that echoed through my cell, pinging from wall to wall. The being leaned closer to the undulating curtain and tilted its head.
So far away from home. No one knew where I was, and there was no technology on Earth that could save me even if someone did. I grew sick, as if every atom in my body swirled with the same fear and uncertainty that wracked my brain.
“America Novoa,” he said. “Please do not be afraid of me.”
Shouting like a banshee and running around my cell while banging on the walls wouldn’t help my situation. If I was going to win my freedom, I needed this person on my side. I swallowed my tears and took a deep breath.
Strangely, I wasn’t afraid of him. Somehow I knew he wasn’t there to hurt me. Maybe it was the soft, controlled tone of his
voice. Maybe it was his twinge of an accent I couldn’t identify, an intonation that was soothing instead of jarring. Or maybe it was the way he dropped his head and shoulders when he knew I was crying. I wasn’t fearful of him. I was afraid of my predicament.
“How do you know my name?” I asked, tightening my arms around my legs.
“It was in your intake file.” My driver’s license was in my back pocket, along with my cell phone.
Intake file? That sounded ominous. “Let me go. Please, take me home,” I pleaded, wiping the tears from my cheeks and pushing myself so close to the liquid wall I almost touched it with my elbow. The beat of my heart grew stronger, its pulse forcing my throat to tighten.
“I’m sorry, but that decision is not for me to make.”
The urge to scream and demand he release me and send me home boiled in my soul, but the being’s genuinely sympathetic tone and calm demeanor muted my rage. And if I started screeching, maybe he would leave, and I’d never have an ally.
I swallowed a wail and asked as calmly as I could, “Then whose decision is it?”
“The king of this planet.”
“Then I need to see him right now,” I pleaded, my voice cracking as I tried to hold back a set of new tears.
“I’m sorry, but that is not possible.”
“Then why are you here if it’s not to let me go?”
“I wanted to see you, talk to you.” He lifted his arm and set it across his knees.
“Why?”
“I understand things about humans that others don’t. There are only two Enestians besides me who speak your native tongue. The second is my language professor and the third is my sister. I’m in my fourth year of what’s equivalent to attending a university in the United States, and during that time, I’ve also studied your culture and your literature,” he said with sincerity, speaking English so elegantly without a flub.
“Please tell the king to let me go and send me home.”
“I’m sorry, but the king does not know that I’m here. I’m not supposed to know about you. If I’m caught, I will be reprimanded.” His head shook from side to side, and I yearned to see him, to look deep into his eyes for the hint of sympathy that matched his words.
“Then at least tell me why I’m here. What’s going to happen to me?” I begged.
“The king has an…” He paused like he was trying to find the right word. “…an unusual desire to study the unknown, and the unknown includes alien life forms. You are currently under quarantine and observation, and then you will be studied.” His voice cracked, and he turned away.
“So I’m being watched?”
“Yes, the guard of this cellblock is required to periodically view all alien captives directly from his station or come to your cell as I have.”
I knew they were watching me like I was some sort of caged animal. I could feel it, sense it. My control shattered. “But I’m not the alien. You are, and I can tell you right now that if an alien was on my planet, we wouldn’t be treating it like this!” I shouted, pointing my finger toward the shadow of what I guessed was the alien’s chest.
“Are you so sure about that?” The being tilted his head in the other direction, and the rumors of Area 51, the mystery and the myth, lurched in my mind as I imagined a flying saucer crashing on Earth and its dead alien occupants being examined and autopsied by the federal government.
With this eerie, eye-opening thought, coupled with the calm manner of the being sitting on the other side of the wall, my voice dropped to a high whisper. “But humans don’t go to other planets and steal their citizens against their will,” I said, trying to sound as composed and confident as I could.
“That’s because Earth is an underdeveloped planet. You lack the technology. If your inferior ships could voyage beyond your tiny galaxy, your people would do the same as us.”
The alien’s arrogant tone was enough to stoke my anger.
“No, we wouldn’t,” I said, holding my rage. “I don’t believe that. But even if we could and did, we would treat the aliens humanely and with respect, and we would eventually return them to their planets unharmed!”
The being moved closer and spoke coolly with an assertive flare, his shadow slightly elongating. “I don’t agree with what the king is doing to you. Like I said, I have a deep respect for humans.”
“He’s going to send me home, right? When, when he’s done”—I licked my dry lips and swallowed hard—“done observing and studying me.”
The alien shook his head. “That is information I do not have.”
The reality of my abduction and captivity sank deep into my soul. My pulse raced in my ears and the room spun, its walls a slur of gray as ambiguous as the alien blur on the other side of the wall.
My mom— Would I ever see her again? And what about…?
“Are there others here like me? I was with three other people when I was taken.”
“No, you are the only human here. You were the only one taken.” Attie, Logan, and Kevin were safe on Earth, which was good, but they would be held responsible for my disappearance. No one would believe them… Would they go to prison? How could I stop that from happening?
“But nobody knows where I am—my friends, my family. They might think I’m dead. Can I at least contact someone? Let them know I’m alive?”
The creature shook his head and dropped his chin to rest on his knee. My head spun again, and as I waited for the room to steady itself, I leaned forward against my bent legs to ease my lightheadedness.
“Are you okay?” the alien asked.
“No, I’m not okay. I want to go home,” I cried, my face buried against my knees. “Please, let me go. Open my cell before you leave, and I’ll sneak away on my own. No one will know you helped me.”
But where would I go, naked and alone on another planet? I didn’t know. But anywhere was better than here, and if and when I actually came face-to-face with my captors, I’d ask to see the king and demand he send me back to Earth.
“That is something I cannot do. It requires a code and a shell scan.”
Shell scan? What the heck was he talking about? He must have meant some kind of card or I.D. What were these aliens, these things that steal people from their planets?
I was so out of place, so far away from my world, my mind teetered as did my body, and I swayed, lost and disorientated.
Everything became hot—my face, my feet, my hands. The room tilted and swirled once again, and as I focused on the wall across from me, my head rocked forward, my body slumped, and I collapsed against the icy floor.
Chapter Six
Garran
“America. Can you hear me?”
Her frail body remained limp, a blurry lump of soft, human flesh. One leg finally moved and then the other. With her palms pressed against the cell floor, she pushed herself back into a sitting position, her head lolling to one side.
“Are you okay?” I asked, wishing I had the eyes of a Roccen fowl, so my vision could penetrate the flowing layers of the isolation wall. There was something about her distress that moved me, and I wished there was some way I could ease her pain.
“Yeah, I’m just overwhelmed. All of this is just so hard to believe. I don’t know what to think, what to do, I… Do you know how long I’ve been here?” Her hand went to her forehead, and a shadowy wave of hair fell across her shoulders.
“I believe it’s been two days.”
The girl brought her arms above her head in a stretch. As a shadowy, smooth figure, she could almost be mistaken for an Enestian female, but I knew it was an illusion. Her elbows and knees were pointy and crooked with protruding bones and joints, and the oval shape and soft curve of her face was produced by skin stretched to conform to the hard skull and mandible underneath.
Despite these flaws, her movements were controlled and graceful, and when she flipped her hair off her shoulder and inhaled, I leaned closer, hoping to catch a glitch in the isolation wall, so I could see her face.
Less than two feet away, a real human sat before me. The two dimensional figures I viewed in their recorded images did not satisfy my curiosity. I had to see it. Maybe even touch it.
What were my father’s plans for this human? Pain tolerance tests? Disembowelment? Limb amputation? A live dissection? Those were just a few of the king’s favorite pastimes.
As I spoke to this girl and eyed her soft silhouette, my gut started to wrench at the thought of anything bad happening to the innocent human female before I had a chance to study it face-to-face.
She let out a tiny exhale, a sweet sound like the soft sigh of a songflower unfurling its petals, and my sympathy for her predicament doubled.
“I am sorry. You shouldn’t be here. You should be on Earth with your family, your husband and children,” I said, though I was selfishly enthusiastic about her arrival.
“Husband?” She laughed. “I’m not married, and I don’t have any kids, and I don’t plan to for a long time. My mom— She’s the only family I have now that my grandparents have passed on. I mean, I have cousins and aunts scattered across the U.S., but I rarely see them.”
“What about your father?” I asked, knowing the human family structure is almost identical to that of Enestians, and wanted that fact verified.
“He died two years after my parents divorced.” America drew her knees toward her chest in a hug, her soft body conforming to the shape of her thighs. “I was a baby when they separated, so I never really knew him. I’ve seen pictures of him, though.”
“And twenty Earth years have turned since your birth?”
“Yeah, I’m twenty, and I want to see twenty-one and many, many more after that. Please. Help me get back to Earth.” Her voice dropped to a soft sob, and I imagined tears running over soft human skin, something I’d seen in many Earth movies.
“The king should not be doing this to you. It is wrong that he’s keeping you here.” I wrapped my arms around my bent legs and squeezed so hard that I was surprised I didn’t crack shell.
Gamma Rift Page 3