by Renee Rose
“Do all humans reek of so much emotion?” the other man asks Cal.
“I believe so. The mating is worth it.”
I gasp in offense at his callous words, scowling up at Cal while the other man eyes me skeptically.
Cal steps forward, offering his hand. The other man grasps it like they’ll arm wrestle, but they bring in their forearms to thump their elbows together.
“Until death releases you,” the other man says.
“Until death,” Cal parrots.
Within seconds, we’re on the move again. The engine room we exit opens up to a cavernous shuttle bay.
I pull at Cal’s hand on my arm, trying to make him release me. “We have to go back. There are other women.” He doesn’t even twitch or glance in my direction as I fight his hold. “Cal—”
“The only female I am concerned about is you. We are leaving. Now.” His face is a cold mask, and his grip on me tightens.
Hearing crying and screaming, I turn. A huge, dark-haired, stone-faced Monrok, cradling a woman in his massive arms, comes in from the opposite direction. He looks to be South American, but with those crystal-blue eyes. She’s sobbing and clinging to him. I step forward to go to her, but Cal holds me back.
The couple is followed by another Monrok, carrying a woman screaming and biting at him.
It’s bizarre to see other human women here. To know they’ve likely been taken and used in the same manner as I have. They’re heading towards the shuttles.
One Monrok blinks in our direction. His menacing scowl reminds me of the other Monrok who said he’d fight Cal for me.
Monrok are not humans. This is not Earth. They are not encumbered or held to the same moral codes.
I step partially behind Cal, my pulse picking up a sick beat. I may not have chosen Cal and Kein, but I’m choosing them now. Seeing the other women, I realize I am fortunate.
Cal’s hold on me loosens as I am now the one clinging to him.
Three men trail in behind the frightening Monrok, including one very familiar to me. Relief from a worry I hadn’t allowed myself to consider, rushes through me. Kein.
As if he can sense us, he turns his gaze. Spotting us, his serious expression softens, and he trots in our direction. We meet him halfway. He touches my hair, my face, and I instantly feel safe and comforted.
Cal growls, but I ignore it.
“Are you ready to venture into the unknown, my little zepka?” Kein seems almost cheerful next to all the other stone-faced Monrok flowing into the shuttle bay.
We stand on a runway of sorts, at least a football field in length. I’m assuming the huge wall at the other ends opens to outer space. To our left and right are sleek spacecraft of varying sizes, the likes of which I’ve never seen in my life.
“I’m already in the unknown.”
He chuckles and pulls me towards the shuttles, but I pull back. “Kein.” I nod in the direction of the other females being loaded onto ships. “Are they the only other females? There was another Monrok who said there were still some being held.”
Kein scowls at Cal, obviously displeased I know this information.
“If there are more humans, we have to go back,” I tell him.
Something akin to sorrow registers on his face before his features smooth. He shakes his head. “That is not to be.”
The strange hum of shuttles starting up rings out around us as we walk down the side of the long runway. The shuttle we’re taking must be at the front of the bay. My feet are cold on the metallic surface, but I don’t complain. I just want to be off this vessel.
More serious-faced Monrok stream in, trotting to smaller shuttles, no bigger than the body of a helicopter. Their skin and hair colors represent every shade of humanity, but they all have the same eerie blue eye color, and wear the same black army-style cargo pants and boots of my guys.
My guys.
No sooner do I have the thought than pain lances through my temple. I fall to my knees, clutching my head. The men are yelling. I see Monrok, stiff necked, frozen in place.
Cal! Kein! I’m unsure if I cry out loud or in my mind. I can’t think. I can barely breath.
“Was I not benevolent?” The booming voice echoes in the cavernous space.
My heart freezes in my chest as Kaihan floats in, his silk robes billowing behind him. The number of Zapex with him is few. Some the black eyed, bare chested gearan. Others in full robes.
His hand is raised, extended, with a blue light glowing from his fingers. “Did I not allow you to take this female for your own?” His voice is low now. Casual. Chilling. It penetrates the fog of pain that has me in its grip. “Yet you dare defy me?” All is still as he comes to stand over me, surveying his surroundings. I inch back, trying to crawl away, unnoticed.
“Terminate them. All of them save the females.”
Terminate? Tears stream down my face from the pain spiking through my skull. My thoughts are disjointed. Where are Cal and Kein? I glance to see them standing at my back, just as stiffly frozen in place as the other Monrok. They can’t be terminated.
The Zapex are fanning out and leading the helpless Monrok who struggle fiercely against invisible bonds, back into the ship.
A scream rips from my throat as Kaihan grasps my hair and yanks me back against his legs.
“This one,” he says, staring at Cal and Kein in sadistic satisfaction. “Though wasteful, I will enjoy destroying her myself.”
“No!” I scratch at his fist at the top of my head, struggling in earnest. Through my tears, I look up to see two Zapex flank Cal and Kein. I expect to see my men’s anger. Their frustration.
But what I see on their faces makes me still. For a moment, even the pain recedes, their reactions are so bafflingly out of place.
Smug smiles pull at their lips.
Chapter Six
KEIN
Cal and I hold still, biding our time. The second Kaihan places his hands on our female, I want to rip his throat out, but we need all Zapex on board to be at hand for our plan to work. We hoped it would never come to this, but I am thankful we are prepared.
What we are about to do is tantamount to declaring war. We will not only be hunted, we will be slaughtered if caught.
Every Monrok has a collaring chip. Kaihan holds the central control aimed at us, like a beacon. I want to rip off his finger housing the device and shove it down his throat. With it activated, all the Monrok on this ship are immobile. Controllable.
All except a few of us, including my brother and I. We removed each other’s chips after working on a moon planet where the Zapex in charge liked to toy with the Monrok by keeping us frozen in place for cycles at a time, letting wildlife feed off us. We have all taken great pains to keep our collarless state undiscovered.
A satisfaction like I have never known spreads through my chest the moment Kaihan realizes his mistake. The triumph shining in our eyes has given us away. His eyes narrow before widening confusion playing over his features. So stunned, he even releases a trace scent of fear before closing his emotional responses down.
“You know your rebellion is trivial” he says, his face impassive. His body relaxed. “Whether Monrok or human, we still own you.” His fist is still tight in our female’s hair.
I want to dismember him for harming her.
“The Monrok are no longer under Zapex rule,” Cal informs him. “Death will release you this day.”
The message has been transmitted. Even now, Monrok on every planet are taking control of their ports. Fighting back.
Kaihan has to know this. His eminent reign as ruler of the Monrok is coming to a close. Something shifts in his eyes, and a chill goes down my spine.
Cal must see the same thing as I, for we reach for our female at the same time. Kaihan is quicker. He has an injector compressed at her arm before I can snatch her away.
He shoves her at us. “May fortune be with your female.”
His mocking words ring in my ears as I snatch her off the groun
d.
Run, Cal calls through our mind link.
I cradle her to my chest, my feet already eating up the ground to our shuttle. Cal’s angry bellow echoes behind us along with the sound of breaking bones, a gurgling scream, but I do not look back. I know the second the main controller is destroyed. Chaos ensues, but I am blind to it all.
Already, loaded shuttles gather at the bay doors as I climb into our vessel. I speed directly to the wall I know holds a medical scanner. I have to determine what Kaihan has injected her with. I activate the hover pad. The second I lay her out, the pad’s bindings are on her automatically, holding her in place at her wrists, torso, and legs.
I rip the scanner from the panel and run it over her. The first two readouts are inconclusive. Frustration eats at me. I nearly throw the device at the wall. My cybernetics work at calming my heart rate.
Manihot esculenta, cassava poisoning. It will shut down her organs one by one until she dies.
I clear my mind in order to sync my internal cybernetics to the shuttle, bringing it to life. Our female groans, fighting her bindings as I search the inventory for an antidote.
She is our hope. She cannot die.
We must go now! I call out to Cal through our link as I compress the injector at our female’s slender neck.
Take her to where we discussed,” he says. I will follow.
Leave without you? I ask in horror. You seek your death, brother? I shake my head in denial even though he cannot see it. We all leave now. Together.
Our shuttle’s door slides closed, and I know it is the work of Cal. He thinks to ensure our protection by staying behind.
Do not do this, I yell through our mind link even as our craft moves forward to line up with the other shuttles.
The loud clang of the main ship’s sub-doors sealing behind us ring out as the bay opens up in front of us.
Good-bye, little mate. Cal’s voice is a soft ring in my head.
Puzzled, I gaze down as our female gasps, “Cal? Where are you?” Her voice is jagged, as if she struggles for air, her hazy bloodshot eyes searching our surrounding, but she will not find him.
Until death releases you.
His words fill me with a hollow ache even as I return them. Until death.
Cal and I are the only Monrok who were raised as a pair. Fascinated by us, the first and only of our kind in the Jun’pn galaxy, the Zapex kept us together all our existence. We were allowed to bond and fed off our duality. As intrinsically connected as we are, we experience a care for one another other Monrok do not have. We all live within the comradeship of being Monrok, but Cal and I are each halves to a whole.
Brothers.
In the fifty years we have been under the Zapex rule, we have never been separated for long. Never when it could mean death. I want to shout my rage and frustration. Staying back was tantamount to suicide. A foolish sacrifice. How could he have done this?
Our female peers around, confused. I sense her panic as we speed towards the open bay. “Where’s Cal?”
I grit my jaw with suppressed anger. “He has elected to stay behind.”
“Wait, no.” She pulls at bindings, weakly trying to sit up. “We can’t leave without him.” She is perspiring from fever, her skin clammy and pallid. Her sorrow and panic echo my own.
I push her back down on the medical pad and smooth my hand over her hair.
The pressure around us changes as we shoot out into space. I feel like a limb has been severed from my body.
“We can’t leave Cal,” she mutters, her eyes closed.
“It is done.” My voice is a hoarse whisper.
I move to the panel to set our coordinates even as my internal cybernetics search out all tracking components. I must focus on the task at hand. Keeping us alive and out of reach of the Zapex. There are three locators onboard. Two of them are easily disabled and pitched out into space through the chute. The third will not be so easy obtained.
Shuttles all around us start disappearing one by one. At my command, we pop out of space, and pop back into a new solar system. My limbs tingle like they do whenever making a jump.
If all went as planned, the Zapex cruiser has made its own jump in the opposite direction.
Our female groans restlessly. The poison and antidote war in her system. I release her bindings, pick up her trembling form, and set her in my lap, taking comfort and trying to lend strength. I press my lips to her temple, stroking my hand over her silky hair.
How quickly I have become attached to this human. She is the reason for our sacrifice. She is our reason for everything. And, now, I may lose her, too.
“Kein.” Her voice is weak and labored.
“I am here.”
“What’s happening to me?”
I swallow. “Kaihan injected you with a poison. I have administered the antidote, but the poison is resilient. You must stay strong.”
“Did we escape?” Her teeth are chattering, and she is delirious. The blood vessels in her eyes have broken, making them a haunting red. Her skin and nails show yellow jaundice.
Studying her, my thoughts are grim. “We did.”
“Did the other females escape?”
“Every single one,” I assure her. This is not true, but I see no reason to upset her.
“Is Cal here? I can no longer hear him in my mind. I keep calling for him, but he is not there.”
It is a moment before I can breathe. Cal and I have never questioned our mind link. There is no time I can remember not being able to communicate with him through my mind, but we have never shared this connection with others.
“You mind speak with Cal?” I was only gone for two shifts at most. What happened during my absence?
“I don’t know where he went.”
She is out of her mind with fever. I will not know for sure until the toxins are out of her system and she is coherent once again. Now I must set my mind to removing her tracker.
I shift her back onto the medical pad. The bindings latch over her as I smooth her hair away from her temple.
“I am going to have to remove your translator, my little zepka. It holds a tracking device that can lead the Zapex to us,” I explain as if she were cognizant of what is happening. We speak her native tongue along with 1,252 other languages. She will no longer need a translator, as she will always be with us. “This will be painful. You need to be still.”
“I’m not a zebra. I’m Allyson Eloise Henricks. No,” she turns her blurry gaze to me. “I’m Allyson of Cal and Kein.”
Warmth spreads through my chest as I stroke my fingers over her cheek. Allyson of Cal and Kein. My brother had indeed been busy in my absence.
I suppose I deserve whatever surprised may arise. I was not fully honest about my intentions when I left our quarters. Although, I may not have been so impetuous in encouraging the uprising had I known the outcome.
“Be brave for me, Allyson of Cal and Kein.” I take a deep breath before opening the laser at the end of my finger and making an incision at her temple, right over her translator. Though only a very small cut, the smell of burned flesh prickles my nostrils.
She moans, feebly, batting me away, and I wait until she calms before continuing. A small pair of tweezers allows me to reach into the tissue. When I removed my brother’s locator and collaring chip, it had been with cool efficiency. Now, my hand is steady but my cybernetics have to work to calm my pulse rate again and again.
Slowly, so as to not cause any damage, I pull out the translator. It has already connected to nerve endings, and I curse at her cry of pain. A sigh of relief escapes me as I pull it free. The thin string of tech squirms and writhes at the end of my tweezers, searching for its host.
Dropping to the floor, I crunch it under my boot before placing in a capsule. There is a hollow thumping sound as it is launched into space, and I know relief. The last of the locators is gone.
Holding the skin at Allyson’s temple together, I laser seal it. Tears drip from her closed eyes to rol
l down her hairline. Her emotions are scattered, but I know she is experiencing immense discomfort. I inject her with a pain inhibitor, unsure how much it will help. At least she will sleep.
Taking the medical scanner, I run it over her to check her vitals. Her internal temperature is high, and heart rate has slowed significantly. I hesitate to administer more antidote, instead hooking her up to a nutrient IV to flush out and rehydrate her. She still carries life inside her.
Our little human is resilient.
I place my hand over her abdomen, staring at every inch of her. Even jaundiced and half-broken, she is beautiful. She wears one of our shirts, and it covers her to mid-thigh. Her slender legs and arms are bare. Her delicate skin is marred with bruises. I run my hands over them as if I can take them away. She is so fragile; I do not know how we will keep her alive. How I will keep her alive.
I wonder how the other Monrok fare with their females.
Impulsively starting the rebellion may have jeopardized Cal’s life. It was arrogant to believe we would all escape unscathed. I may have lost my brother, but how could I have not offered our brethren the chance at what Cal and I planned to take for ourselves? We could have escaped on our own, but I still believe our chances of survival are better this way. Inside me, regret wars anger at my brother for staying behind. I should have known he would not pass up the opportunity to battle Kaihan.
Here before me, lies our female, carrying our offspring. In the Zapex’s hands, our future is bleak. The Zapex do not know of the human vids we Monrok have access to. They do not know how alluring many of us find their interactions. It is a world and existence we were robbed of.
With these females, we have hope. We have a future.
My only hope now is my brother survives to share in that future.
Chapter Seven
ALLYSON
Swimming in and out of consciousness, for a time I forget where I am and what’s been happening. It all comes back to me when I wake. The aliens. Kaihan. The ship. Cal and Kein. The escape. I’m swamped with lethargy. I can’t move. I try to call out, but my words get stuck in my dry throat.