by Elin Wyn
I wanted to say that a lot of human behavior didn’t make much sense, but I held my tongue.
At that point, the door opened once more and Adam strolled back into the room.
His eyes narrowed for a split second when he saw her holding my hand, but his smile replaced the sneer so quickly I don’t think Dottie even noticed his initial reaction.
“All finished.” He slipped his comm unit into an overall pocket and lifted his eyebrows when he turned to Dottie. “Are you ready, sister?”
“Yes, we should let Jalok rest.”
I wanted to argue, but at that point I could barely keep my eyelids open.
As I leaned gratefully back into my bed, Dottie suddenly leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.
“Thank you for giving me back my brother, Jalok.”
I couldn’t stop the goofy grin from crossing my face as she left the room, stopping for a final wave at the door.
Sighing, I settled into my comfortable prison and descended back into slumber.
When I dreamt, it was of Dottie and her warm, soft kisses.
Dottie
I left Jalok’s bedside feeling better than I had in weeks. Everything felt like it was coming together.
Jalok’s recovery was going smoothly. My brother was alive and back in my life.
The only thing missing was a breakthrough in my research on the Puppet Master.
“Are you Dottie Bellin?” A woman with short dark hair and more than her fair share of scars approached me as I left the medical suite.
“Yes,” I answered slowly.
“My name’s Tella.” She stuck out her hand and gave mine a firm shake. My shoulder popped. “Sorry. Rokul tells me I’m too used to interacting with aliens.”
“You’re friends with Rokul?”
“We’re together, actually.” Tella’s face softened into a happy smile.
Adam frowned slightly at that. Strange.
“The grip makes a lot more sense now,” I laughed uneasily.
Tella released my hand. It hurt to curl my fingers in. “I should take up arm-wrestling with Jalok. It might toughen me up a bit.”
“Are you and him a thing?” Tella asked with genuine interest.
“No, uh,” I hesitated. I didn’t know what Jalok and I were.
“I understand,” Tella said with a knowing smile. “It’s hard enough to explain when you’re starting something with another human. It’s a whole new beast when you’re entering into something with an alien.”
“We haven’t entered into anything.” My voice sounded robotic, and I carefully didn’t look over at Adam.
“Right.” Tella winked. “I didn’t come up to you to hassle you about your interpersonal, intergalactic relationships. I’m a botanist. General Rouhr’s botanist, actually.”
“Oh,” I brightened. A botanist. That sure explained all those scars. “Of course. I’ve read some of your notes on the Puppet Master.”
“I’m sorry they weren’t more helpful. I didn’t actually know what I was dealing with.”
“It was a good jumping off point before I began interacting with the Puppet Master directly. Once I started talking to him regularly previous notes weren’t necessary.”
“You talk to him?” Tella looked amazed.
“A few times a week if I can manage,” I smiled. “It’s been hectic lately but we keep in touch.”
“You’re talking about him like he’s a friend.”
“I consider the Puppet Master a friend at this point,” I admitted.
“That’s incredible. I’d love to talk to him,” Tella gushed. “I haven’t gotten the chance. Stabilizing the flora population has been my main goal lately.”
“He’s very friendly,” I assured her. “I think he’s lonely but he didn’t realize it until he had other lifeforms to talk to.”
“That’s strangely sad,” Tella frowned.
“I think so too.”
“How come you haven’t been working out of this lab?” Tella asked suddenly.
“I’m comfortable in my lab in Kaster,” I answered but Tella narrowed her eyes.
“There’s more to it than that.”
Damn, she was good at reading people.
“The riots here lately have given me cause for concern,” I admitted. “Of course, a riot broke out in Kaster not long ago so the point seems moot.”
“So, you haven’t seen the lab we’ve got here?” A glimmer of excitement sparked in her eyes.
“Nope.” A tingle of excitement spread through me.
I may not have wanted to work in Nyhiem, but I’d only heard amazing things about the lab.
“Want to see it?”
“Do you even have to ask?”
Adam held up his hands. “I’m going to bow out of this field trip.” He turned to me, giving me a fierce hug. “I’ll catch you in a bit, alright?”
As he walked away, I had a flicker of worry, but then Tella tugged my arm.
“Come on!”
Tella and I sped off down the corridor. I wanted to giggle with excitement but I didn’t want to look unprofessional.
The lab was better than anything I could’ve imagined. Pristine white walls, white floors, and white countertops lit up with blue consoles. Rows and rows of equipment, some of which I didn’t even recognize.
“What’s that?” I pointed excitedly at a dark metal machine that stuck out like a sore thumb.
“That’s a chemical reconstructor,” Tella explained. “It’s really amazing. You can put in a decomposed organic material and it’ll reconstruct a chemical profile with ninety-eight percent accuracy.”
“That’s incredible!” I gasped.
“The only thing it wasn’t able to reconstruct was a chemical profile of the Puppet Master. We had to jigsaw that together ourselves.”
“I wish I could’ve been here for that,” I sighed.
“What were you doing before you were picked up by General Rouhr?”
“Monitoring Kaster’s fish population, actually. The Xathi did a number on our planet. Most people think just the forests were affected but big disturbances affect the ocean too.”
“And how’s the fish population doing without you?”
“Thriving,” I laughed dryly. “All they needed was an aqua-scrubber to get traces of the Xathi ship out of the area.”
“Sounds riveting.” Tella looked at me from the corner of her eye.
“I’m glad to be working with the Puppet Master, I’ll tell you that much,” I snorted.
I paused, feeling bad for joking about my job. I only had it because my mentor fell to the Xathi.
“Who’s been running experiments on the Puppet Master’s blood?” I asked.
“Is that what you call it?” Tella wrinkled her nose and laughed.
“Got anything better?”
“We’ve been calling it gloop.”
“Oh, that sounds so much more professional,” I chuckled.
“Times are tough. We have fun when we can,” Tella shrugged. “Leena DeWitt and I have been working with your samples. We’ve found some incredible stuff in the gloop.”
“Blood.”
“Gloop.”
“Neither are scientifically accurate,” I laughed.
“But gloop is more fun to say.”
“How have we not met sooner? I feel like we’d make good coworkers.”
“Or friends,” Tella grinned.
“Yes, or friends.” I nodded.
“Come look at the lab results.”
Tella lead me over to her console and pulled up several charts and spreadsheets.
“What do you see?” She asked.
“It’s highly conductive,” I observed. “How unusual.”
“Yeah, Leena and I couldn’t figure out why the Puppet Master would have something like this in his body. Thoughts?”
“Actually yes,” I grinned. “Not long before I met Jalok, the Puppet Master explained to me that his lifeforce flowed like a river through the p
lanet. What if this is part of the river?”
“I’m not sure I follow,” Tella frowned.
“The Puppet Master told me every living thing on the planet drinks from his lifeforce river.”
“Creepy.”
“He phrased it better,” I said dismissively. “We should test plants with signs of accelerated growth for traces of the blood-gloop. The Puppet Master could literally be secreting lifeforce, pushing more to areas that need more help regrowing.” I snorted. “Although lifeforce might be an overly philosophical term for nutrients. He’ll get a kick out of it.”
“The Puppet Master likes philosophy?”
“That’s kind of my fault,” I winced. “I introduced him to the subject. He loves the mental stimulation.”
“This just gets weirder and weirder.”
“My best friend is a plant-god as old as the planet itself. Don’t talk to me about weird,” I laughed.
“Good point.” Tella nodded. “Theoretically, the blood gloop is designed to help carry lifeforce throughout the planet. The lifeforce could be some kind of highly advanced plant food.”
“Correct. Though I’d speculated the lifeforce is also something that helps him establish mental links to other creatures. Even creatures that don’t have any mental capabilities.”
“What are the odds of getting more lifeforce to run tests on?” Tella asked.
“I can always ask the Puppet Master,” I reasoned. “It might not be something I can extract easily like I was able to extract the blood gloop.”
“Let’s say that lifeforce plus blood gloop equals controllable accelerated growth,” Tella mused. “If we can crack that code, all we need is a Puppet Master-esque apparatus to spread the growth where we need it.”
“That all sounds theoretically correct.”
“Now we just need to make it realistically correct.”
“You make it sound so easy,” I laughed.
“I try.” Tella paused and looked me over. “Want to go grab something to eat? I’m starving.”
“Oh!” I lifted my brows in surprise. “That sounds nice but I’m actually going to meet up with my brother in a bit.”
“Just a quick bite?” Tella sounded far too enthusiastic for someone I only met half an hour ago.
“Is there something I should know?” I asked.
Tella sighed and dropped her shoulders.
“Rokul should’ve never trusted me to do this,” she tutted. “I’m not an actress.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I honestly did want to talk to you about the Puppet Master and all that,” she prefaced, “but the real reason I came up to you is because I’m supposed to keep an eye on you for the day.”
“You could’ve just said that,” I laughed. “It’s fun having big alien bodyguards follow me everywhere but I’m glad to have some human companionship. Is Rokul off today or something?”
“Or something.” Tella’s smile looked unnatural.
“You really aren’t an actress,” I sighed. “What’s happening? Is it something to do with Jalok?”
“No,” Tella said quickly. “No, his recovery is going great from what I’ve heard. Rokul actually wanted to meet with your brother today.”
“Adam didn’t mention anything,” I frowned.
“They’re trying to keep it under wraps,” Tella explained. “Rokul wants to get an idea of what’s going on where Adam’s been. Adam should know what’s been happening outside of Duvest since that city is still rather isolated.”
“Right,” I said slowly, still trying to process the information I’d been given. “He still could’ve told me, though.”
“Rokul probably told him not to,” Tella said quickly. “Rokul tends to err on the side of over-caution. I think he loves the drama.”
“He definitely has a flair for it,” I chuckled.
“So, how about lunch?” Tella offered again.
“Sounds good.” I mustered a smile and followed her out of the lab of my dreams.
I couldn’t help but be disappointed that I wasn’t getting to spend the afternoon with Adam.
But would be good for me to hang out with another human woman, particularly one who was in a relationship with a Skotan.
Maybe she could help me sort through my feelings.
Maybe.
Jalok
“Mr. Jalok, please, will you get back to your bed?”
I couldn’t blame the nurse on call for being upset.
After all, I was standing in front of her station, wearing a gown which opened up in back and revealed my rump to the world.
And I was surly as hell.
Not to mention the constant drip of fluid from the end of the intravenous line still partially attached to my arm.
This probably wasn’t in her plan for the evening.
“Don’t Mr. Jalok me, woman. I’ve had it with this place. You’ve done your job and healed me, now let me go and do mine.”
The nurse pursed her lips, and took in my massive form. She was probably calculating how many orderlies it would take to drag me back to my room by force.
In the end, she must have reached the only correct conclusion, which was there weren’t enough orderlies in the entire hospital, and quite possibly the entire planet.
“Mr. Jalok, I don’t have the authority to grant you a release. You have to speak to your attending physician first.”
I cocked my head to the side.
“Okay, so who’s my attending physician?”
“Just a moment, let me check.” She started typing on her console, then frowned at my dripping tube. “Could you—could you pinch that off or something?”
“Sure.” I ripped the tube right out of my arm, splashing a little blood on the floor. Those nurses are tough.
She didn’t pass out at the sight, but at least she had the good grace to look disgusted. “There, fixed.”
The nurse spoke on the comms for a moment while I waited impatiently. A few gawkers walked past me in the hall.
I made sure to smile toothily at them, and may even have flexed my scales to the surface a couple of times.
Just to entertain myself during the wait, of course.
“I’m sorry.”
My gaze snapped back to the nurse.
“Sorry for what?”
“Your attending physician isn’t on call today. He won’t return until tomorrow, so you’ll have to wait for your release until then.”
“What? That’s bullshit.”
The nurse winced, and several patients and medical professionals gaped at my high volume.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be that loud.” I cleared my throat and spoke at a much lower volume. “That’s bullshit. I’m ready to leave now.”
“Be that as it may, sir, I can’t authorize your release without his signature.”
“So call him in.”
“But it’s his day off.”
“He has a job to do.”
“So do I. Please, return to your bed.”
My hands clenched into fists, knuckles popping dramatically. I leaned over the desk and fixed her with a baleful gaze.
“Look, ma’am, let me ask you a question.”
“Go on.”
“Do you really want an angry, loud Skotan soldier here causing a disturbance for all of your other patients?”
She didn’t have to consider that for long.
“No.”
“Then how about we find a solution to our little problem?”
In short order, the nurse found a spare uniform that almost fit, and a physician on call who was willing to sign my release.
He gave me a long spiel about things I wasn’t supposed to do, like eat large meals or go swimming.
Pretty standard stuff, and I tuned it all out. All I cared about was getting that stupid release so I could return to duty.
The truth was, I knew I was fine.
No pain, no tiredness, and the only issue I had was the itching on my arm.
The doctor gave me a cream for the itch and signed my release, and away I went.
I was eager to get out of the damn hospital and back to duty, where I could be near Dottie again.
I hadn’t been kept in the loop about her guard rotation. What if they weren’t being vigilant enough?
A memory flashed through me, the feel of her naked, wet body.
What if they were trying to get to close?
I tried not to dwell on that particular thought.
Looking back, I could have called for an official transport, but that would have meant waiting longer.
At the hospital.
So I decided to walk instead back to base.
There was a lot of the city that’s still being rebuilt after the invasion, and like most dilapidated slums on any world you care to name there were undesirable elements who moved into such areas.
That wasn’t much of a deterrence to me, however.
If I wanted to walk around the ‘bad’ part of the city, I would have to add two extra hours to my journey.
Not a thought I relished.
So I turned down the beaten up, cracked street and ignored the looming eyes which watched my progress intently.
Surely none of them would be dumb enough to pick a fight with an obvious soldier, especially not one of my size.
Of course, I wound up being wrong about that, too.
I realized I was being tailed after the first two blocks. Without being too obvious about it, I found a way to glance back the way I’d come and counted three humans in shabby clothing. They looked like they meant business, but I didn’t feel any cause for alarm.
Then I strolled past a street corner where half a dozen more humans loitered. They stopped their conversation when I walked past, eyeing me intently.
I beamed them my widest smile and even waved.
If they were going to cause problems, maybe my nonchalance would throw them off and make them choose a different course of action.
After another block, however, it became obvious the new group had joined my previous tail. They kept back behind me half a block away, but I was certain I was being stalked. To put my theory to the test, I took a left, then another left, and then a right at random. Sure enough, they continued to follow me without fail.