The doctor set the rock down on the tray and stepped closer, took her hand and manipulated the ring around until the underside faced up. He had to guide the tip into a small hole, which Selina feared impossible because of her trembling. The doctor’s attempts were clumsy. Ultimately the tip connected, the doctor gave a surprising thrust and the needle’s shaft disappeared, every inch of it, into the thumb ring.
She was dumbfounded. The handle protruded from the ring like a toothpick or a miniature sword. She pulled her hand away with a gasp.
“What in the world?”
Then the pain spiked. The ring tightened around her thumb and made it throb. A sharp burning pain lanced up her arm and she slapped at her shoulder.
“Make it stop!”
She tugged at the ring to pull it off, but it didn’t budge. She couldn’t even twirl it around.
“This—”
She collapsed onto the chair which the doctor then adjusted into a prone position. He grasped her jaw in his stubby fingers and squeezed as he recited hostile syllables.
♫ ♫ ♫
THE MONSTROUS SPACESHIP loomed before me. I guess I was a little reluctant to enter, but my dark escorts took care of that and physically lifted me up and through the opening. They hustled me to the rear of the ship and strapped me into a wall chair. I took my eyes off the first Gleezhian to study the one who stood behind him at the controls. He had a face that looked Neanderthal, short-nosed and pale, with thin, tight lips mid all the facial hair, and ears that stood out from his smallish head like serrated wings. His ugly face grew paler still as he looked over and spotted me then took an involuntary step backward out of the piloting divots. He didn’t look hungry, nevertheless I fully expected him or the other guy to start licking their lips.
I suspected we were all in for a quick trip somewhere because no one else buckled up. The ship trembled with a low note—like the lowest on a clarinet—and the Gleezhian pilot flew us up and forward in one smooth lift. No one lost their footing, but they did sway a bit on the first turn.
There was an exchange of some sort as the first Gleezhian—he looked like a cross between a golden lab and an ugly nurse—spoke in odd syllables and a staccato cadence. Each of my escorts responded in turn, but in Klaqin. I understood enough to get nervous.
The Klaqin dude who had seemed like the one in charge before waved his arms at me and repeated the Klaqin word for pace, which of course I understood. I shook my head no.
“You’ll have to tell me where we’re going first and if you know where Selina is.” Well, I probably said it more like we go where and Selina? After all, Coreg had said I’d need two days in a language cab and I’d barely had one.
Surprisingly, he understood me. His answer was a little too technical, but when he repeated the last part with an emphasis on Selina’s name I felt sure they were taking me to her.
I paced.
It didn’t affect their balance at all. We didn’t go weightless, and I was positive we never left the stratosphere.
The Gleezhian who was flying the ship pointed at me and I automatically stopped pacing. He landed the ship and the door opened to a world of silver-white snow and air so frigid it made our clothing puff up so we looked like Michelin men.
I pulled at my safety strap, but couldn’t figure out a way to release it. The big Gleezhian himself used all twelve of his fingers to free me. I got a whiff of his body odor and it wasn’t pleasant. His large hands jerked me upward and I paced involuntarily—couldn’t help it—it was a bit like wetting my pants.
We were a long way from the ship when I stopped pacing. I looked back and couldn’t distinguish it from the banks of snow in the twilight. The super brown faces of the four Klaqins were frosted over but the Gleezhians looked no different. Their beards started below their bottom eyelids and protected their faces. Despite my pacing, we’d been in this arctic freeze for too long. The skin on my hands boasted a cherry red color and my face felt frozen. It was miraculous that Marcum’s tight uniform had morphed into a goose down snowsuit around me, but it wasn’t going to save me from frostbitten hands, ears, or nose. I could barely move my lips to complain; it was numbingly cold. And if I had spoken the air might have shattered.
We walked a little farther before my dark brown friends and the hairy Gleezhians stopped and huddled around me. The ground gave way and we descended into a cavern. I could see steel beams and cables working to make a previously hidden elevator lower us. It was ingenious. We stepped off and I watched it ascend. Snow spun off the edges and I got a last look at the pinkish sky. I knew that if we hadn’t left the planet—and I was pretty certain we hadn’t—that we must have traveled to some part near the edge where the sun’s rays gave the horizon a perpetual sunset and the dark side of the planet loomed near. No wonder it was so cold.
My suit flattened almost to normal. It wasn’t freezing underground, just chilly. I could stand it. The room we were in was large and oddly shaped with stone pews of various heights, some with furs draped over them, and pillars—stalagmites, maybe—of light that maintained a steady glow.
My escorts and the two Gleezhians quickly stood at attention as someone approached. I’d seen him before. Huh, I recognized the chipmunk cheeks, but today he had a scowl to match a malevolent attitude. It was First Commander Cotay, the Commander who had spoken after the parade. I think I was supposed to have a meeting with him in twenty double-moons’ time. I guess he moved me up on his calendar.
♫ ♫ ♫
SELINA WOKE FROM the wildest dream and took a full minute to get her bearings. The pain was gone and she was alone in the room. Her legs were strapped down to the chair and her arms were pulled up, held aloft by furry straps hung from the ceiling. She rolled her head and lifted it as much as she could. She couldn’t see her feet, but she could see her hands. Her thumb was purple and there were red lines across the back of her hand. And a horrible ache in her abdomen, like food poisoning.
“Hello,” she yelled. “Hey, somebody …”
She realized she could bend her elbows and lift herself to a sitting position. That took the pressure off the cuffs around her wrists and created several inches of slack. She mumbled a few choice words about Klaqin medical procedures and toad doctors while managing to work the straps off her wrists. She tackled the leg restraints and freed herself.
“Oh, Alex, wherever you are, please be reading my mind,” she whispered. “Come get me.”
She slid off the chair and moved toward the door. She reached a hand out to steady herself as everything went out of focus.
♫ ♫ ♫
HAGAB STUMBLED AS he led Payat and Coreg through a maze of broken equipment to reach the back entrance of the Pletori. He caught himself, gave a clucking laugh, and tried to cover his clumsiness by cursing out his brother and his faulty instructions to stay above ground.
“My brother insists there’s no better way in. He said to meet him here. We’ll link thumb rings and be inside without going through the protocol. This will work.”
Coreg hissed twice through his teeth, the equivalent of an eye roll, and sidestepped the defective machine part that had tripped up Hagab. It was lunacy to sneak here above ground in the ever present light of unending day, but he had no option but to trust Hagab.
They reached the surface door of the Pletori, a deep, subterranean warehouse of equipment, computers, archives, and weaponry. Hagab worked the comm on his thumb ring and spoke a quick password to his brother. The door spread wide like wings and the three slipped inside immediately as the opening vanished behind them. It took a moment for all of them to adjust to the sudden darkness and notice the tall Commander waiting for them.
“This way,” Hagab’s brother instructed. He led them down twelve flights of wide stone steps. “You have six time units and you’d better be fast.”
“That’s plenty of time for me,” Coreg boasted.
“Oh, right, you’re a time-pacer. That’s not going to help you down here. Six time units is six time
units, no matter what.”
He linked rings with Hagab, gave them a twist before severing the connection, and then, with a finger as rosy pink as his brother’s, he pointed the three younger commanders toward an aisle in a brighter section. The older brother’s bushy red eyebrows rose and his lips pursed in thoughtfulness as he looked them over.
“Six,” he said, “and no longer. Get what you need and get out.” He clucked his tongue and then he was gone, a clear door snapped back into place behind him. The cold silence was broken by two familiar sounds: the swish of the air grates in the floor and the distant murmur of mechanical bio-metals replicating themselves.
The three spread out and searched. Coreg had explained what they were looking for: the codes for the prison system. Payat knew a little about the set-up from his father, and he’d been able to learn a little more in the short time since Coreg had explained the plan.
He described to Coreg and Hagab which kind of vault would most likely contain the necessary information.
This area of the Pletori housed a vast number of box-like containers each marked with Klaqin symbols and pictures. It took nearly five of the six allotted time units for one of them to find the correct vault. Naturally it was Coreg.
“Here, quick, Hagab, give me your thumb ring.” Coreg couldn’t help adding idiot under his breath as Hagab took another misstep in his direction.
Hagab recovered, reached Coreg, who had lifted down the desired vault, and handed his thumb ring over.
A quick press into the proper channel and the vault sprang open. He lifted out a small copper plaque and swapped it for a similar blank one he had brought along. He closed the vault and replaced it. A container at his feet drew his attention because of the warning on the side: chelurium samples/do not mix with purlass. He’d heard a blotchy-faced recruit named Tratl, a friend of Marcum’s, speak of the rare Gleezhian element called chelurium.
Payat held his hand out. “I’ll take it from here.”
Coreg gave a quick Klaqin agreement and shoved the plaque into Payat’s chest, ignoring the huge temptaion to also steal the chelurium samples. “Let’s get out of here.”
CHAPTER 10
♫ … a light inside our universe … ♫
DESPITE THE GROWING nausea and the blurry vision Selina managed to work the door open enough to escape the confines of the coppery room. She took a few steps in the one direction she could go: forward, down the long hallway. Tunnel, she thought. Up, she needed to go up. She used the wall for support and shuffled her way along the corridor, listening with all her might for voices and trying to focus on where she was going. There was an elevator somewhere nearby, she was sure.
The nausea didn’t pass and the fuzzy vision worsened. She kept one hand against the rough wall for balance. Voices floated in eerie syllables around her. She stopped and listened. Klaqin words. Strange consonants. Clucks. A low whistle.
Then English.
Alex’s voice.
She pushed herself off the wall and took a single step forward before collapsing in a heap.
With her head tilted sideways and her legs doubled beneath her, she lay virtually senseless on the cold stone floor. The hand with the thumb ring trembled and knocked against the rough floor. If she could pull that stupid ring off, maybe, she thought, everything would return to normal and she’d be able to see straight, walk straight, find Alex.
“Cue the knight in shining armor,” she whispered, slurring all the syllables. She tried for a stronger, better declaration. “Cue the knight.”
She lifted her head, scarcely enough strength returning, and tugged at the ring. “The knight!” Her exclamation came out loud enough, she hoped, to reach her boyfriend’s ears.
And loud enough to bring that toady green doctor around the corner swinging a light too bright for her eyes.
♫ ♫ ♫
I’D NEVER MOVED so fast. Pacing helped. I shoved a green dude out of my way and fell to my knees at Selina’s crumpled form. I put my arms around her and unfolded her. Her whole body trembled and her head bobbed around. She collapsed onto me and stared upward.
“Focus. Focus on me, Selina.” She waved her hand between her face and mine so I took hold of it and pressed it to my cheek. I didn’t care a bit what the little crowd around me thought about that awkwardly romantic move. I sensed they were in awe of how fast things had happened. Especially the green dude I’d knocked down. He kept sputtering some Klaqin nonsense I wasn’t about to figure out. He rose to his feet, picked up a circular light and bowed his head at the First Commander.
I lifted Selina and carried her back to the big room where I’d spotted a bench to lay her on. I was undoubtedly breaking the rules and disrespecting the First Commander, but when I heard her voice … well, I just reacted.
“Better?” I asked. Again I knelt beside her. She resumed her hand waving and this time I realized she was trying to draw my attention to her thumb ring. “What the—!” I turned to the Commander and asked, “What have you done to her? Why is her hand turning purple?”
He stared at me. Right, he didn’t know any English. I skipped trying to translate and held her hand up in front of his face and widened my eyes at him. I clucked for emphasis.
Commander Cotay bent down, put his own ring against hers and twisted it while Selina kept repeating, “Cue … cue …” She squinted her eyes and moved her head in circles, like she was trying to find me. My dark escorts moved back a ways and spoke to each other in what I perceived to be reverent tones. The green dude with the light paced back and forth, mumbling.
Cotay said one word and huffed. He slipped her ring off and held it out for me to see. Then he pulled at what looked like a stem with a thorn until a long limp string extruded from the ring. When he completely removed it there were clucks and gasps from the group behind us. Probably because the string hardened into a shiny needle-thin piece of metal. The green dude stepped forward and carefully accepted the metal from Cotay.
But, best part, Selina focused on me.
“Alex.”
“Yup. At your service.” She smiled and all was right with the world, or rather, with the universe. That made me think of a song. The words froze on my lips—nope, not gonna sing in front of these guys. I’d already gone beyond my comfort zone. I could sing it to her later, if we ever got a chance to be alone: she was the light in my universe.
Selina looked at Cotay and I could see she recognized those chipmunk cheeks. I could also see the beginnings of panic. Cotay tried to slip the ring on her thumb, but she drew her hand back. He offered me the ring and said something that took me a minute to unravel. I gave him the equivalent of okay—hotah—and put the ring on my middle finger.
“You’re gonna be fine, Selina. Can you sit up?”
She whispered, “Alex, they kidnapped me. How did you get here? Are you kidnapped, too?”
“Uh, yeah, sort of. I think these are friendlies though.”
She rose up on her elbows and spotted the two Gleezhians who had remained farther back, watching.
“Alex? Are those … you know?”
“’Fraid so. But again, I think they’re friendlies.”
It wasn’t the right time to explain the theory I’d worked out so I didn’t say any more. I gave her our secret signal and she rubbed her nose in return. Good, she was definitely recovering. Commander Cotay puffed out some Klaqin command and the brown guys hustled away, followed by the dude with the light and the piece of metal. The Gleezhians trailed them and they all disappeared while I helped Selina to her feet. She rubbed her good hand against the fur on the bench, but held her purple fingers out in front of her. I could tell she was uneasy about the Commander standing so close. Those fat green cheeks were Grinch-like and his body odor reminded me of the penguin house at the zoo.
I put my arm around Selina. That was a new gesture for us. Our relationship had only gotten this personal since oh, half past Mars, and now here I was displaying awkwardness with a whole lot of uncertainty. To pace or
not to pace, that was the question.
Somebody I didn’t expect to see so soon answered that about two seconds later.
“Ehk.”
♫ ♫ ♫
PAYAT KEPT THE plaque tight against his chest until they ran clear of the Pletori. When they reached cover he spoke. “You two can wait for me in the Intimidator. I’ll go run this through my dad’s reader and get the location for the prison settlements they used for the banished ones.”
“No,” Coreg said, predictably overbearing. “We’ll come with you. It won’t take any longer for three than for one, and you might need us.”
Payat’s dull green complexion darkened before he relented with a sneer and a Klaqin curse.
The three young commanders made their way to Payat’s father’s office. The halls and rooms, usually bustling with activity, were vacant—strangely so—but Payat didn’t question their good fortune.
While Coreg and Hagab stood at the door—Hagab unconcerned, but Coreg watchful—Payat entered the empty room and inserted the plaque into the reader. After a few Klaqin time units he hissed at the others to enter.
“We have a problem.” He tapped the edge of the plaque against the reader, tilting its symbols toward Coreg while Hagab moved behind them and began to methodically stuff his pouches and sleeves with small items.
Coreg grabbed the plaque which glowed with bright lettering. “What’s the problem? This clearly gives the location we need. Come on, let’s go.”
Payat nodded toward the wall. On the screen a news alert played. A fleet of their planet’s best defender ships had been deployed, some to hover over government sites and others to position themselves above the stratosphere. All Fourth and Fifth Commanders not already on duty needed to follow instructions sent through their thumb rings. The news was several time units old and there were conflicting reports as to whether the planet was under a renewed Gleezhian attack or something worse.
The Time Pacer: An Alien Teen Fantasy Adventure (The Time Bender Book 2) Page 9