He heard successive blasts from beyond Selina’s cell each one softer than before, but no other voice but Selina’s.
“Alex!”
He swallowed hard. The door opened suddenly and a large humpless Gleezhian grabbed him around the neck and hauled him out of the cell. He heard a short gasping sob in Selina’s tone. Another hairy guard lifted his legs and the two carried him three feet off the ground and hurried him away.
More than hurried. Despite the extreme reaction to the poisonous dust Alex could still time-pace and he did. When he suddenly found himself being lowered by the guards into a pit, his pacing abruptly ended. Someone below grabbed his legs and he collapsed in a heap on four men: his father, Coreg, and two others.
“Son, are you all right?”
He rolled to his side and coughed red globs of spit onto the ground. His father bent low, brows furrowed, and asked, “What did they do to you?”
“Nothing,” Alex managed to croak. “I did it.” He lifted one foot and pointed the sole at Coreg. “I tried to blow the door with my boot.”
Coreg clucked. “You’re covered in Gleezhian filth. Your uniform has failed to protect you. It is making you sick. Quick, stand up.”
Alex’s dad helped him to his feet and began to brush the red dust from Alex’s shoulders. A visible shiver shook Alex and he wiped an arm across his sweaty brow and looked up. The pit was similar to an elevator shaft and they were at the bottom.
“Your suit is useless,” Coreg said. He pulled Alex into a tight embrace and rolled himself against a very startled Alex.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s all right, son, let him. He’s wearing a fresh uniform. Right, Coreg?”
A grunt from Coreg was all they got as he roughly turned Alex and pressed himself against his arms and chest and legs in what Alex deemed dirty dancing.
“Enough.”
Coreg stepped back and everyone watched the dust blur into the biomaterials of Coreg’s pale green suit. “Stupid as a sunny,” Coreg mumbled. “Here, let me get your face.” He rubbed his forearm across Alex’s cheeks, nose and forehead in punishing strokes, wiped roughly under his chin and brushed his sleeve against Alex’s ears. “There. Feel better?”
For answer Alex coughed, sneezed and dry heaved.
“So,” Alex’s father said, “I guess we can assume that Gleezhian dust is harmful to non-Gleezhians. That was not in the manual.”
The two others in the dark pit with them, A.J. and Henry, came forward.
“It’s no accident we were captured or that we’re down here together. Our escape has been preplanned,” Henry said.
***
AT FIRST, WHEN the door burst open, I thought I was hallucinating. Marcum stood there wearing a bright white Klaqin Commander’s uniform. Then I thought there must be a defect in my vision, maybe a veil over my eyes. I had no depth perception and I saw him in fragments. Blue-black hair first, trembling earlobes second, five-fingered hands third. Gleezhian heads floated behind him like a bundle of hairy balloons.
I didn’t speak, but he did. “Hellew.”
Yup, hashtag hallucination.
But then he stepped forward and pulled me up and into his chest. I confess to a bit of time-bending, but I was not under any circumstances betraying Alex. In fact, Alex was my single thought while my head pressed against a very warm and very comforting chest.
“Well,” I said, “I’m here, not exactly as planned, but” I let my arms drop from around his ribcage—I didn’t remember hugging him—and finished my teary-eyed, wavering-voice sentence, “I am a-vai-la-ble. But please, can you get Alex out of the next cell?”
One of the Gleezhians behind him grunted and waved an arm that held a crimson banner depicting Stetl-glet’s face.
Marcum put his arm around my shoulder and ushered me out into the passageway and through the clot of guards as if he had some authority over them.
“Please?”
He shook his head and the thought flitted through my brain that he no longer understood English. His accent was back; maybe he’d regressed while on Gleezhe.
We went farther down the passageway and I upped the urgency of my plea with a few arm tugs, touching his elbow for extra emphasis. That got his attention, but he still did not speak.
“The others,” I said, “we all got put in cells and I think they may have knocked themselves out by kicking the doors with their Klaqin flight boots.”
We kept moving, but he looked at my feet so I knew he understood me. I swear a smile twitched at his lips.
“Marcum. You should know … your parents are here too.”
I felt the lurch in his step, but that didn’t stop him from steering me into a different hallway, one littered with seed pods and brightened by globed torches that gave off a bitter stink and made my eyes water. We were walking faster and going deeper into the middle of this labyrinthine crater.
“Marcum, talk to me.” Sheesh, who was the one with an avoidant personality now?
He did speak, finally, as we entered a luxurious room of carved stone objects and metal furniture. Nothing wooden.
I recognized Stetl-glet, the half-Klaqin, half-Gleezhian prince whose face was on the crimson banner. In Klaqin Marcum said to the imposing leader, “This is the time-bender. You must call her Selina.”
Well good for him, he had a voice and he remembered my name. Cue the brow-wiping emoji.
“Hello,” I said, emphasizing the last syllable.
Stetl-glet responded with a Klaqin greeting and launched into a series of commands, telling me what I was expected to do. The whole treaty thing. Oh, and some reproduction obligations … no biggie.
Why I didn’t faint away or go into a time-bending episode or a vision or something was a mystery. I think I got some strength from Marcum who was tightly clasping my left elbow and keeping me upright, for sure, and mumbling “sorry, so sorry” not quite under his breath.
Stetl-glet carried on with a few more Klaqin commands which he must have repeated in Gleezhian for the guards. They nodded and bowed and made several gestures which I interpreted as subservient praise. The prince made a few more unintelligible Gleezhian statements, the guards bound Marcum and me together with the banner and then pulled on one end to make us twirl to be released. Such a weird ceremony.
Then the prince poured a thimble full of something into tiny cups and everyone in the room, me included, swallowed when he did. Tasted like water.
Emoji: wide eyes.
Emoji: bride with veil.
Cue the guests throwing rice. I think I just got married to Marcum.
CHAPTER 16
#BigProblems
“SO,” I DREW out that syllable an impossibly long time, “are we married?”
We were alone together in a pretty cool chamber with copper walls and ceiling and a spongy carpet of red mushroom tops. No bed, thank goodness.
My frank question drifted in the air between us. Marcum sighed, an honest to goodness human sigh, filled with emotion. The trouble was I couldn’t quite interpret the emotion. I shivered as shards of imaginary ice crackled down my spine.
“Talk to me … please.”
“We are promised, yes.”
Hooray, the groom speaks. I flashed on a moment we had at my locker, oh around a million light years ago, when he quoted Shakespeare to me and I would have swooned at the thought of kissing this hunky exchange student, let alone tying the knot. Then I flashed a second time on multiple visions I’d had. I fought the eerie feeling that we’d been “promised” from the first moment we set eyes on each other.
I felt groggy and hollow so I stretched out the time in a deliberate calculation to fill the air with awkward silence. I was incapable of accepting this reality; the complexity of it was overwhelming. What would Alex think? Was he alive? I should only be thinking about Alex and my family and not some stupid, irrelevant Gleezhian marriage promise.
I snapped things back.
“What’s going t
o happen to Alex? Can you get him out of the cell? And the others too?” I held a smidgen of pride in my ability to ignore this bizarre circumstance.
Marcum shook his head and stepped onto a metal platform. Something rose from the floor and fitted against his backside, moving up and forward until he sat comfortably on its horizontal base like an old man in an easy chair. I glanced around for another platform, anything to support me since I had no faith in my legs continuing to do so. Marcum waved me over a few feet and I stepped onto a red-gold disk. A moment later I too was in a horizontal position, ready for a movie, the dentist, or a good long snooze.
“We have a unit or two to rest. I’m sure you need it. You look … discolored. We will be expected to perform for Tratl, I mean Stetl-glet. I am glad my parents are here to watch. They will benefit from being included.” His eyes scrunched into a look I’d never seen on that handsome face before: fear.
I wiggled my thumb ring over my knuckle and up to my nail and pushed it back again several times as a new wave of chills danced along multiple nerve endings. What did Stetl-glet expect us to “perform” and what was that about his parents watching? Was he talking time manipulation or, uh, something more … marital?
“Close your eyes, Selina.”
Obedient I am. Maybe the liquid in the tiny cup I drank from wasn’t water; maybe it was a sleeping potion, because once my eyes were closed the dreams—or hallucinations—or visions—pounded my brain.
First I was in my high school counselor’s office, but instead of pressing my lips into perpetual silence I was spewing tales: crazy things like a girl in a coma entering other bodies, another girl bouncing through time—my specialty—but in a time machine, and a third girl, quite innocent, being abducted and repeatedly trapped by someone who claimed to love her.
As that dream faded a memory emerged: me tripping as I got off the school bus. I went down on both knees and caught myself with one hand. Cold, wet slush oozed between my fingers. That realistic dream—memory—didn’t fade, it simply stopped and a third dream began. It was more like a series of feelings: happiness … floating … security … a hand on mine … comfort … a brush of warm air near my face … a soul hovering near mine.
And then I woke to the pressure of velvety lips on mine. I kept my eyes closed and promised myself I was not being unfaithful to Alex. In fact, my body was convinced this was Alex. It had to be! As long as I remained still—except for the kissing back part—everything would be fine. Maybe I wasn’t awake at all. Sometimes dreams could feel this real. That had to be it. I was dreaming.
But my sense of smell told me otherwise. So did my sense of touch. The hand on mine was not Alex’s. These lips, warm and full and pressing with meaningful force, had to be Marcum’s. I recognized them as the first lips—long ago and on a planet far, far away—that made my body practically burst with excitement.
I had to stop this. I opened my eyes and moved. My quick rising made us clink teeth and Marcum stumbled back a couple steps, dislodging a few of the red mushrooms underfoot. I raised my hands with my fingers spread to hold him back with some invisible feminine superpower. I bet my face wasn’t “discolored” anymore.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I am so happy.” He smiled. Gorgeous smile. Heart fluttering smile.
Crap.
“Marcum, listen. We’ve got big problems.” His face fell; there it was, that look of fear again.
“No we don’t. Everything will work out. I’ve had plenty of time to work it all out.”
“What do you mean? Work what out?” I kept my hands up and the platform readjusted itself into a chair. I sat straight.
“There will be a ceremony. Stetl-glet will show off all that has been built during the time stoppage I gave them. The Gleezhians have healed. Did you notice their humps are gone?”
I shook my head no, but I remembered the weapon-strapped guards from earlier and how straight they stood. “Did you heal them of their hunger too?”
His expression changed. “No.” He dropped his gaze. “It is the great problem of their planet. With very little water left they will not survive here another generation. They have stores of dried meat and plants, but no means to replace them once they are consumed. I had to do a series of stoppages, nothing planet-wide, so as not to result in getting stuck. With the time I gave them they have built enough ships to relocate to Klaqin or somewhere else.”
“Send them to Azoss. They can have that cold planet all to themselves.” Oops, that slipped out before I thought it through. “Scratch that. Too close to Earth. What’s in the other direction?”
Marcum’s eyes riveted back on mine, the fear gone, replaced with a look of concern and sympathy. “I told you … I have a plan. My plans have been … unsuccessful in the past, but I am certain there is no way this can fail if you help.”
A wisp of suspicion spiraled around me like cigarette smoke. I didn’t answer.
“Will you trust me?”
Hmm, I might have a choice. Perhaps I could say yes and think no. There was a lot of that double-crossing stuff going on already.
“I guess I have to,” I said. Yeah, that wasn’t a lie.
“Good.” He held out his hand to help me off the chair. Okay, that was a little chivalrous and uh, I liked it. Our hands touched and, crap, I was bending time like a rookie.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, holding in the hiccup and peering as intently and seriously as I could into those strikingly clear eyes. I tried to imagine golden angels with halos reflecting from his pupils.
“The ceremony. All humans will be gathered on the red plains beyond the royal crater. Stetl-glet will release the Klaqins who came here in the first treaty and citizen exchange.”
“And their descendants?”
He took a step back and dropped my hand. “They have none.”
“Oh. And the Gleezhian refugees? Will they be expected to be returned here?”
“Yes. Exactly. In fact, you came with the most important ones. The rest are coming. Stetl-glet has arranged it through the First Commanders on Klaqin: Gzeter, Cotay, Vokil and Taw.”
“Why the heck did they put us all in cells? Not very treaty-like if you ask me.”
“It was for—” he paused, obviously searching for the right English word. “Tleff,” he said in Klaqin.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know that word.”
“Tleff. To protect the plan.”
“Oh, like insurance.”
“Yes, insurance.” He gave a strangled chuckle. “My friend on Earth, Niket Patel, would use that word when we played a clubbing game.”
I caught his meaning; he meant chess club. The thought of Niket, Mingzhu, my teachers, my life so far away, flashed through my head with very little nostalgia. Everyone who was most important to me was out here in this half of the universe.
“So you’re saying Alex is safe?”
“He should be fine.”
“But I heard explosions. What about that?”
If he had an answer he didn’t get a chance to speak it. The soft fungus beneath our feet jiggled with a warning that someone or several someones were approaching.
“They are coming for us. They expect that we are finished now.”
“Finished with what? Telling me the plan? But you didn’t finish.”
Marcum cleared his throat. “Finished.” He moved toward the door, hesitant and acting fearful—so not like him.
“Wait. Can’t you do a time stopping thing and we go check on Alex and the others?”
His entire aspect changed as he opened the door to too many hairy dudes to count. I supposed the entire Gleezhian science department was here to examine me. I saw no advantage in resisting or in begging Marcum for help. He seemed to favor this intrusion. They lifted me off my feet and placed me back on my chair. It folded down into its bed shape again and I played Sleeping Beauty to the best of my ability. The science guys were all business like, with fluttering hands aiming gadgets at d
ifferent parts of my body. This wasn’t my first time for an alien probe, and just because I was compliant and silent didn’t mean I liked it.
CHAPTER 17
#TheHike
MARCUM WATCHED THE group of Gleezhian medical professionals move into place to examine Selina. When he had first arrived here with Stetl-glet and gone through the decontamination capsule—a harrowing ordeal because of the rare Gleezhian element, chelurium, that formed the capsule—he had escaped the confinement, looked back at the capsule and glared at the identical figure of himself still trapped within. He’d dismissed it then as a hologram, but slowly he’d come to the realization that he had left some part of himself behind. He’d emerged willing to agree to Stetl-glet’s terms, prompted by a sudden intense sympathy for the enemy and a growing sense of anxiety.
He did the supervised stoppages for their experiments, but once they’d come to their conclusions he promised Stetl-glet not to stop time again—for any reason—until the peace was firmly established. A promise made was a promise to keep as far as he was concerned. His honor demanded it, but this time, this one time with Selina, his compassion overruled it. Before the first Gleezhian scientist used his implement on the time-bender he brought time to a standstill.
It was getting more difficult, these time stoppages. He stepped between the frozen figures and relieved them one by one of their gauges, testing devices, and medical instruments. They’d used these same things on him when he’d arrived—soon after decontamination—again during his first controlled stoppage and after the final experiment. The small pink device held upright between the thumb and sixth finger of the Gleezhian at Selina’s left side would test her pain tolerance. He could not allow her to suffer so he removed the inner power core and pressed it down between the gaps in the soft flooring, a handy hiding place. He returned the device to the pliable hand of the Gleezhian doctor who might interpret the warm touch as coming from a functioning mechanism, once Marcum resumed time.
For the others he jammed the nerve stimulator, lowered the power of the visual assessment tool, and reversed the scales on the gadget that measured strength. He polished up the readout screens of the remaining, non-threatening equipment before replacing them in their immobile hands. Only one wore gloves, either to protect his hands from contamination or to hide his claws as those who were cursed with that particular deformity often did. While his limited time stoppage had reduced the humps and healed the effects of rampant malnutrition, claws and beards and extra fingers were not affected.
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