The hours pass by, and I can’t stop talking. I tell him about the insectoids, the feline that almost attacked us, about the other, underground human. At that moment, I had to explain to him Zan’s origins to fully understand what we went through. He seems more confused.
He goes through an outburst, telling me that it’s not possible for humans to evolve so fast, but as soon as I explain to him that there was a Nusae Artifact in the area, he kinda nods and lets me go on. I continue by telling him about our latest adventure, this one on Mosa. I leave out all the embarrassing parts, including mine and Jay’s intimate night together. When that scene pops in my head, I shudder. He quickly asks me if I’m cold. I shake my head and continue.
At some time, I reach to the part that we arrive at the hospital, and he’s shocked that the man in front of him was still alive. I decide on the spot to keep the part of the two Originators that got assassinated a secret; and that a man wearing a red mask is the murderer; or that another man with a blue demon mask saved us.
And so, when I finally get to the end of the story, I realize that all this time we’re in Dale’s room, drinking a second glass of scotch. I feel a bit dizzy, but sitting on his bed, his hand touching mine, I kinda feel safe. It’s not something erotic, but it’s more than enough for me. I just want someone to tell me that everything is going to be okay
“And so...you and him? What’s going on between you two?”
He’s perceptive as well. I see. There is no point in hiding it then, I think at first, but as I watch deep into his eyes, his anxious stare that kinda reminds me how I was when I was watching Jay that night, I stop.
“I think I should go,” I suddenly say to him.
I thought he would try to stop me, but he’s a gentleman, as always, and even escorts me to my room. However, feeling like I was dreaming, I don’t remember him leaving my room that night. He just left me there and by the moment I blinked once, he had vanished.
Where am I? What am I doing outside? And where is Dale? All those questions suddenly appear at the top of my head. I know we were together just now, but I can’t remember what we were talking about.
It’s weird, I’m not all that drunk. I should be able to remember at least a part of our conversation, but something is wrong with me. Or Dale’s hiding something behind those big, blue eyes. My feet hurt, my back hurts, my head hurts. Everything on me has that numbing sensation of hours sitting on a bed.
I open the door to my room and walk inside. I change to something more casual, something more suitable for sleeping. Before lying on my bed, I walk all the way to the only window in my room. I look outside and see the stars standing still, fixed points of gas and fire. The stars have been kind with me since I’ve started researching the Great Mystery, but now, I’m not sure that it was luck that made me get this far.
Dale is hiding something, Jay is two people in one body, and seeing his dark counterpart coming to the surface again, woke something inside me, a desire I didn’t know existed. My hand travels down on my skin, all the way between my legs. I moan and stop. There’s no way I’ll masturbate for him, but I can’t take my hand away. His white hair, his ash-gray skin that doesn’t reek of death, and that jovial, half-maddening attitude are more than Jay will be able to give me his whole life.
After all, he’s the same person, just not the same personality. I...I can work with that.
I shake my head snappily and stop. I pull my hand up and change side on the bed. I try to push his image out of my head, but I can’t.
This man has driven me crazy.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jay
I open my eyes and breathe in heavily. The cold air burns my lungs, and I choke on the sudden entry of oxygen in my blood. My eyes fill with countless black spots and my head spins from the feeling of saturation that comes with the first breath.
It takes me some time to understand what’s going on but soon, I have a good understanding of the situation. Everything shakes around me, the lights tremble, and a crashing sound comes from the lower floors. If I have to guess, then we’re in the middle of a battle.
I laugh at no one in particular, waiting for an answer to come from down the hall, but nothing. The human female, the one I fucked on that roof, is nowhere to be found. I don’t know, but that makes me feel sad, tired. Always running behind her, trying to get her to understand my way of thinking, but she never keeps up with me.
“I’m hungry,” I mumble to myself, trying to fall back to sleep, but the shake gets worse.
I can barely stand still even while lying on my bed, let alone walk. Either way, I somehow manage and get on my feet and head for the hallway.
I stroll a bit around, trying to find someone to tell me what’s going on, but for a place this big, every room is empty. Back when I was commanding the Esuh, when a ship this big was empty, bad things followed.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” I yell, but no one answers to me.
Shit, where is everybody? A thought flashes in my mind; maybe they abandoned me in this spaceship and left. Or maybe they’re all dead.
So, why is someone attacking an empty vessel?
I turn to my left and find myself in an open space with a long, metal table in the middle. This place feels familiar in a haunting way. I know for a fact that I haven’t been up here before, but my mind and body recognize it. I incidentally stretch my hand and push a button located on the edge of the wall. I don’t know why I do that, or what was the purpose of that move, but suddenly I hear her voice, Eladia’s voice, talking through the speakers.
“Jay, are you awake?”
Her voice sounds raspy as if she has been shouting for hours.
“I think this is pretty apparent. I don’t sleep walk after all,” I reply to her, letting myself indulge in a tint of sarcasm. I kinda need it right now.
“We’re under attack, Jay. If you can hear me, head for the bridge. We’re gonna need as many hands as possible.”
The bridge? What bridge? I don’t know where the hell I am, and she wants me to head to the bridge? However, just like before, my body seems to know the way.
I walk down another long hallway, this one full of round, thick windows. Intrigued, I look outside and see a pitch black juggernaut attacking our tiny ship. The assaulting ship is big enough to fit five of our ships in its belly, but we’re faster. If the pilot is worthy, he will try to outrun it. Instead, it seems like we’re moving closer and closer to another black, floating thing. I can discern dark shades of green below, but I have no idea what it is.
Before I realize it, I’m standing before an elevator. The automatic doors open to reveal an empty pod.
I walk in, and the doors close behind me. I’m trying to grasp the situation, but it now slips away from my hands like a pair of Renters. Fuck, those things were delicious. My hand stretches again to push a button on the right side of the pod. There are other metal buttons as well, all of them showing numbers. It goes all the way from zero to six, but I decide to push the button with the number five on it.
Right, when I feel the pump of the pod ascending to the upper floors, we get hit again, only, this time, it’s bad. The power goes out, and the elevator stops between the third and fourth floor. I’m on my knees, the sudden stop making me lose my balance.
“What the fuck? What’s going on out there?” I say to myself.
Everything is dark for a moment until the emergency systems kick in. A reddish light trembles for a while and then it stabilizes. The alarm finally kicks in and for the first time today, I see a pair of legs hurrying down the hallway.
“Hey! Hey you! What’s going on? Where am I?”
The human stops. Well, I’m not sure that the person running is a human, but from what I’ve seen these last days, it’s a pretty good guess. The human roams for half a minute in front of the stuck elevator and then leaves without saying a thing. The last thing I manage to see is this human wearing a green mask with a twisted expression on it.
“Wha
t the hell? You could have helped me, you asshole!” I shout at him, or her, and then hit the automated doors.
The rush of the first punch brings the need for more. I want to kick my way out of this cage, but no matter how strong I am the walls don’t even bulge. Well, not until one more round hits the hull. The place shakes and pieces of the ceiling fall on the floor. That last hit somehow helps the elevator to unstuck, and I’m finally on my way to the bridge.
Passing from the fourth floor, I see the damage the enemy spaceship has done to ours; the things are critical. Fire licks the metallic surfaces of the hallways and little explosions come from the monitors and cut wires hanging from the ceiling. It makes up for a devastated scenery.
Shit, we’re doomed.
I leave behind me the previous floor, and I ascend to the fifth. In front of me, I see a robot, a savage, and a beautiful woman fighting for their life. But it’s too late. The robot knows that and the savage boy knows that as well; only the human female seems to deny it.
So, I wait for the elevator to stop and the doors to open before I stride out. My body is almost moving by itself like I share my consciousness with somebody else. The one thing that makes sense, though, is that we both want to save her.
I see Silver transforming into a small capsule around Zan, leaving Eladia out. But I don’t have time to elaborate on that. I stomp my feet on the ground and plunge forward to grab her before the fires make it to her first. When I sense her cool skin on mine, I immediately feel reassured.
I’m not sure why; Esuh usually don’t have feelings. But, I’m starting to wonder, what is an Esuh? I haven’t met anyone like me before, so why I can’t be the version of myself that I like?
We are engulfed in flames, flying out of the spaceship window straight into the dark space. I take a deep breath and shut my eyes.
It’s over.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Eladia
We’re falling for a lot of time. It’s harsh and painful and frightening, but after a while, I got used to it. I’m not exactly sure what happened back there, but from what I remember, it must have been rough. One moment I’m on the bridge under heavy fire from an unknown class 5 black juggernaut. Silver and Zan were behind me, warning me that we have to evacuate the ship.
Something has gotten into me since the night I talked with Dale. I don’t remember a thing afterward, and I’m not myself anymore. I want to prove to everyone that I can keep us alive, that I can survive. I fight for life, with teeth and nails until I feel a strong force sweeping me away. The last thing I remember is seeing Dark Jay’s purple irises.
He covers my body with his as we fall into nothingness. Dark Jay was asleep for five days straight after the cube incident, five days that it took us to travel to the blank spot. The blank spot is a codename signifying an actual blank spot on the intergalactic maps.
When the last war between the prior five great species ended, the Phadh set off a Nova Bomb to cement their status as the first and most powerful species of the galaxy. A Nova Bomb draws the exothermic power of a dying sun, a supernova, to charge a beam of light particles. When those particles change from their particle form to their wave form, the concentrated energy of the supernova spreads to every neighbor planet like a cosmic pool.
It’s more complicated than that, but Professor Virgil used the same metaphor to explain it to me back in the days when I was still a student. Since then, every spaceship that tried to chart and investigate that spot of the intergalactic map ended up disappearing or returning without finding a thing.
The Phadh won’t reveal more information about the weapon in fear that other species will try to copy it, but I’m sure that they know more things that they let us believe. Even so, plunging into empty space, it’s a certain and utter death.
Only that this isn’t what exactly happens to us.
We keep falling for some time. My guts feel like scrambled eggs, and I’m sure I would have thrown up if Jay wasn’t there for me. His rocky build and stable demeanor make me feel safe. If anything, I would love to die in his muscled arms. Not that I do want to die in general, but it would be better than dying alone back in that bridge.
I wait for the absolute freeze of space to kick in but it never comes. Jay squeezes me between his arms and then I start feeling uncomfortable. He’s squeezing me a bit too hard and soon I can’t even breathe. I feel the same pressure coming from inside my chest, at the place my lungs are. Every time I try to breathe in, I feel dizzy.
“Jay...Jay, what’s going on?” I say, but since we're still falling, my words come out of my mouth muffled.
“I’m not sure. Everything is dark,” he shouts out, trying to be heard over the whooshing sound of our free fall.
Dark? And we’re still falling? That must mean...we’re not in space anymore.
And just like that, I’m starting to push Jay away. Of course, he doesn’t let me.
“What’s wrong with you? Do you have a death wish?” I hear him saying, but he doesn’t understand. I have to see.
“Jay! Let me go,” I tell him.
“Are you crazy? What’s going on?”
There’s a theory among the science circles back at the Institute. The Nova Bomb might have been able to mask the existence of these dark planets into an electromagnetic sphere. The rumors said about advanced space manipulation creating a time-space folding so tight that when a spaceship tried to get inside that sphere, it ended up on the other side.
It’s highly hypothetical, but no one could believe that the Phadh could manipulate light particles to that extent before setting off the Nova Bomb, and their adamant stance over the information is evidence enough that they’re trying hard to hide something important about their creation.
So, I’m only trying to see the results of that creation with my own eyes and try and find a space ledge. Another hypothesis in space folding theory talks about invincible places in midair, especially amidst highly folded patches of space, that gravity is significantly weaker. Luckily, before Jay finally sets me free, we stumble upon one of those ledges that were supposed to be impossibly rare, and land on solid land unharmed.
“Oh, I get it now,” Jay bellows while lying on my side, “that’s what you wanted to do. To lead us into one of those gravity bubbles?”
Damn. That’s a better name. Gravity bubbles! I should have thought that.
“Yes. Exactly. And just so you know, we’re very lucky that we stumbled upon one of them because we would have ended up dead otherwise.”
“Honey, I’m not sure it’s luck. This place is full of those things,” Jay says at me and points me towards the dark sky.
A piece of the hull of our spaceship is floating in mid-air, heading straight for us in slow motion.
“Do you think it would be a good idea to--?” he says.
But suddenly the floating debris breaks away from the gravity bubble and the actual gravity of the planet draws it towards us fast.
“Move, Jay! Now!” I scream, and we run as fast as we can away from the falling spaceship.
We’re in the middle of an overgrown forest. Unearthed roots arch over our heads, and I almost stumble on something that looks like a spider’s web, only it’s made from wood. The research worth of everything we pass by is immense, but if we don’t survive, we won’t be able to share this with the rest of the world.
The land shakes when the piece finally falls. By then, we’re far away, safe from the impact. A gust of wind picks up from the blast, a wind that almost pushes me to the ground. Thankfully, Dark Jay is there, catching me before I land on my butt.
I giggle as he pushes me to my side and I end up looking straight into his eyes, that perfect shade of purple and magenta. He stares back at me and smiles. Dark Jay has a more mature smile than Jay, a grin that speaks volume of his intentions.
“We have to stop ending up like this, don’t you think?” he says in a whimsical tone.
I snort and lower my eyes. Holding me in his muscled hands, ful
l of pumping veins, he makes me blush.
“I...I didn’t...I…”
Dark Jay leans in and kisses me. I kiss him back.
Now I can’t hold back my urges anymore. It’s like a scorching flame started burning inside and I want him, Dark Jay, to make love to me. Last time, everything with Jay was rushed, adventurous. This time, I want him to go slow. This time, I want him to have me in the middle of this dark, unknown forest.
I stretch my free hand behind his head and push him closer to me. His kiss now becomes deep, intimate. He’s breathing into me, savoring every moment that our mouths are united. I feel his nostrils opening up to release that warm wind that suddenly engulfs my whole body.
When he releases me, I see him smiling. “You’re hot, you know that?” he says to me.
I smile back to him, but I don’t talk. Words are not necessary anymore. Just actions. I fall on my knees and unbuckle his belt. He’s in his underwear now, and I’m topless. My hands fumble the inside of his boxer briefs, the thin fabric unable to hold back his throbbing bulge.
I hear him moan, but he stops me immediately.
“This isn’t right,” he says in the gravest expression I’ve seen him wear.
“What? What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing. It isn’t right for a lady to try so hard to please a man. Men are easy to please. A true man takes care of his woman first and then of himself,” he says and falls on his knees.
He helps me lie on a blanket of greenery. Then, he smoothly spreads my legs apart and leans in between them. When I sense his fiery tongue on my clitoris, I moan loudly. Without doing anything more than fulfilling my inner wishes, Dark Jay makes me lose control.
Jasih: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Àlien Mates Book 2) Page 17