by Elin Wyn
When she left, Zarik immediately turned to me, a serious expression on his face.
“I can sleep on the floor. You take the bed.”
“Nonsense,” I laughed. “We’ll both fit in there.”
One look at the bed and it was obvious that we wouldn’t. Still, Zarik didn’t protest. He settled onto the mattress, occupying the whole bed, and I joined him under the blankets, holding him tight so that I wouldn’t fall off during the night.
The faint outline of scales over his chest tempted me, so I ran my hand over him sleepily. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “That was probably rude.”
“Not at all.” Zarik’s voice sounded tight, tense, but our long walk had done me in.
With my head resting on his bare chest, the sound of his lazy heartbeat as my lullaby, I quickly found myself drifting off to sleep.
Tomorrow would be reckoning day.
But tonight...tonight was just ours.
“Just follow that direction and you’ll be there soon enough,” Arken said, pointing into the distance. Just a stone’s throw from the walls of the settlement, the vegetation rose again, green and wild and ready to claim what belonged to Mother Nature.
Or to the Puppet Master, really, if what I understood about that situation was correct.
“Thank you so much,” I said, my eyes jumping from Arken to his wife. The two had accompanied me and Zarik to the edge of their settlement, and had even given us some food for breakfast.
They had insisted for us to share breakfast with them, but both Zarik and I were too restless to accept their invitation.
We were close to finding some answers, and were aching to do so.
After promising Arken we’d come and visit one day in the future, Zarik and I finally started marching northwest. It didn’t take long before he noticed a trail.
“Right there, see it? A few branches are broken, and some of the damage goes as high as your shoulders. That means someone around your size has walked through here. Probably someone from Arken’s family, or maybe one of the guys we’re chasing after. Either way, I’m willing to bet this trail will lead straight toward the abandoned buildings Arken told us about. All we have to do is follow it.”
“Let’s do it, then.”
“Are you sure you want to come with me?” he asked me, looking at me with a hesitant expression. “You can wait for me in the settlement. I know Arken and his family would be happy to have you, and I can follow this trail by myself and—”
“No,” I stopped him. “I want to see where the trail leads. And I want to be there when you find the lab or whatever that place was. I want to see it with my own eyes. Maybe that way I’ll remember everything.”
More than anything, I needed to know who exactly was behind it all.
“Very well.” Grabbing his backpack, Zarik opened it and retrieved a small hatchet.
Suddenly I realized it only seemed small because he was holding it with those massive hands of his: the hatchet looked heavy enough for me to know I wouldn’t have been capable of wielding it.
Using it to cut a path for us, he set the pace as we marched forward. My mouth grew dry as I felt twigs breaking under my boots, thorny bushes ripping at my shirt as we went, and flashes of my escape from the lab danced behind my eyes. Still, I gritted my teeth and pressed on. I was tired of being weak. I needed to take back control and start facing the situation head on.
“Are you sure you know where we’re going?” I found myself asking Zarik after an hour or so. He seemed to know the exact direction we should follow each time he swung his hatchet. As for me, I still couldn’t see the supposed marks of the trail.
I knew Arken had told us to head northwest in a straight line, but it was hard to have any sense of direction this deep in the woods.
“I might not look like it,” he replied, throwing me a sly grin, “but I’m an expert tracker.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I chuckled, accepting his hand as helped me jump over a pair of broken trees.
Once more, the touch of his fingers felt just right: it was incredible to think that something as simple as that would be enough to have my heart skip a beat...but that was the truth.
Zarik’s touch was enough for me to want more.
To want him. Especially after last night. God, it had been both the most amazing and maddening thing in the world to sleep next to him. I still had no idea how I had managed to control myself. Despite my exhaustion, I’d just wanted to press myself against him, to kiss him again, breathe in his scent, and to—
Cool it, Miri, I chided myself. Remember what you’re here for.
Easier said than done, of course. Every time we touched, I felt a pleasant warmth spread across my body and that warmth was enough for me to forget about my problems. God, I was already missing his lips.
“Get down,” he whispered all out of a sudden, immediately going down on one knee. I followed him down, my heart hammering away as I tried to follow his gaze. The vegetation was still thick, but just a little way ahead…
“That’s...that’s it,” I muttered, not even blinking as I stared at the small clearing just a hundred feet away from us.
There were a few squat buildings there, but the one that grabbed my attention was the rusting one in the middle. It looked old, almost as if it had been abandoned years ago, but there were people walking in and out of it.
And there was no question at all in my mind.
“That’s the place.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I breathed out, panic swelling up in me. I fell back on my ass and, using the heels of my boots to push against the ground, I started backing away. I felt thorns and jagged rocks bite at the palms of my hands, but I didn’t even care.
All I knew was that I couldn’t be in this place. “They...they were holding me there. I escaped from that building right there, in the center.”
“Are you sure?”
I just looked at him and nodded.
Now what?
Zarik
I moved Miri away from the camp.
I told her it was for her own safety, but I found my own grip on my temper surprisingly weak.
They’d hurt her in there.
They should pay.
I walked us far beyond any human range of hearing and then farther still. We were a good half-mile from the camp before we stopped.
“Tell me everything you remember,” I told her.
“There isn’t much to say,” Miri said. “I was blindfolded when I came in, and when I was in the room, as well. There were definitely other people with me in the room, but they rarely spoke. I never saw the injections coming. They never said anything about what was in them.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” I pressed. I didn’t like to pressure her. I knew her memory wasn’t completely intact yet.
“They mentioned they were low on samples at some point,” she said after a thoughtful pause. “They talked about the ‘damn plant’.”
“That’s good,” I smiled. “That’s useful. If they’re out of samples, they might need to get more. That would put them in the way of the Puppet Master.”
“Maybe the Puppet Master can do your team’s job and handle the bad guys for us,” Miri joked. The fact that she was using humor to cope with her nervousness was a good sign. Every few moments, I could see her blink away tears.
I decided playing along was the best thing for her.
“If only,” I chuckled. “I may not be close with my teammates, but I don’t relish the idea of them in the line of fire when there’s a simpler solution.”
As much as I wanted to barrel into the camp, weapons out and ready to kill, I knew that wouldn’t help Miri.
The last thing I wanted was for her to be in the forest on her own. Even I wasn’t so arrogant as to think that I could take on an entire camp of humans without suffering injury. I especially didn’t want to put her through that.
“Either way, it’s time to end this.” I pulled out my comm unit and g
ave the strike teams the location.
It was understood that this was not an extermination. No humans were to be killed unless it was absolutely necessary.
Personally, after what these people had done to Miri, I wanted them dead.
But the colder part of me wanted their information more.
The strike teams confirmed the location. They were to come through a rift in a few minutes.
“That’s taken care of.” I tucked the comm unit away.
“Don’t you want to be out there with them?” Miri gave me a curious look.
“I do,” I said. “It’s funny, I’ve been waiting so long to get back on a squad and get a chance to be in active combat again.” My words trailed away.
“So why aren’t you doing just that?”
“Because there’s one thing that I want to do more.” I smiled down at her.
“What?”
“I want to do what’s best for you.”
Miri’s smile went soft as she rose up on her toes to kiss me lightly.
“I want to go back to the camp,” she declared.
“Really?” I was surprised.
“If you can’t be out there with your team, the least you can do is keep an eye on them and jump in when needed,” Miri reasoned. “You’ve been so selfless for me. Let me do what I can for you.”
“I don’t want to put you at risk,” I told her.
“I’m willing to bet that the camp members will be too distracted fighting your teammates to notice us lurking in the bushes. And we don’t need to be visible. I just want to be in hearing range,” Miri said.
“If you’re sure.” I resolved to pull her away from the camp the moment she showed signs of emotional distress.
We moved carefully through the undergrowth. I scanned the area for any alarm sensors or trip wires that might be hidden.
There were none.
Strange for a camp that had a habit of kidnapping people and messing with their memories against their will. Perhaps they assumed no one would ever come out this far.
Clearly, they’d never intended to let their test subjects go if their memory-loss serum didn’t work.
On a hunch, I checked my portable holomap. It displayed everything within a ten-mile radius, yet the camp didn’t appear on the grid.
“That’s strange,” I muttered.
“What’s strange?” Miri asked.
“This camp really should be considered a proper settlement. It’s certainly big enough. But it’s on the map as an abandoned settlement - one that was marked as destroyed by the Xathi,” I explained.
“That’s not surprising, really,” Miri replied. “If you were setting up a camp to perform illegal actions, you’d probably refurbish something rather than build it from scratch.”
“Well, yes,” I admitted. “But it would be hard to build something this size unnoticed.”
“I didn’t notice much when I was blindfolded and dragged in,” Miri commented.
“Perhaps humor isn’t the best coping mechanism for you.” I commented as I placed a guiding hand on her back.
“Until I figure out a better one, it will have to do,” she shrugged.
“You can always talk to me,” I reminded her.
“I know,” she smiled up at me. “But if I start talking, I’ll start crying. If I’m crying, I’ll probably give away our location.”
“You make a good point,” I conceded. “I’ll let it go, just this once.”
“Thank you.” Miri squeezed my hand. We fell into silence as we neared the camp. I let my thoughts wander back to the formation of this camp.
The question that plagued me still was their motive. Why would a bunch of humans come all the way out here to experiment with memory loss? They collected samples from the Puppet Master itself. They had to know there was a high chance of perishing.
And kidnapping people? They must’ve known someone would go looking for them.
It seemed like a high risk without a clear payout. I had to find out what was going on. Miri deserved to know why she was put through all of that.
The strike teams had the camp surrounded. No fighting had broken out yet. I believed Karzin was trying to reason with them, though I couldn’t be sure.
His voice didn’t carry very well. There were some humans positioned closer to where Miri and I concealed ourselves. Their voices carried perfectly well and they had a lot to say.
“We won’t let you leave alive, alien scum!” a male voice snarled. The idiot couldn’t tell what he was up against.
“We’ll turn your skin into the rugs we wipe our feet on,” another spat.
I rolled my eyes. At least they were getting creative with their insults now.
Even if they were disturbingly optimistic.
“Oh, shut up,” one of the strike team members growled. It sounded like Axtin. Or maybe Rokul.
“You have no right to be here!” another voice called. This time it was a female. “This is our home and we want it to be alien-free.”
My mind ventured back to a human male that caused trouble a short while ago. Roddik, I think his name was. I didn’t deal with him directly, of course. I was still in my self-imposed exile in my workroom at that time. I heard about him through radio traffic and general workplace chatter.
He and a group of followers tried to start a human-only settlement. However, they were nothing more than a band of impulsive drunks with violent tendencies. Naturally, the settlement failed. I wondered if this camp had stemmed from Roddik’s vision.
I glanced through a gap in the leaves for a better look at the camp. I got the sense that it had been established for quite some time. Roddik and his followers had been under constant surveillance since they were brought back into Nyheim. If they got word to someone else with instructions to pass on their vision, we would’ve known about it.
Besides, this camp was much more organized. The residents were altogether smarter than Roddik and his followers, though I used the term smarter very loosely. They still believed General Rouhr and the rest of us were in league with the Xathi with the goal of wiping out humanity.
I looked at the band of aliens surrounding the camp.
It was only a matter of time before we got the answers we needed.
That Miri needed.
Miri
“They’re growing restless,” Zarik whispered, his eyes focused on the scene in front of us. The fighting had been brief and brutal.
Even though most of the humans had already surrendered, I could see some lurking beside the rusting building; they didn’t seem to have any weapons on them—at least none that I could see—but they looked like they wanted to put up a fight.
“Maybe you should go,” I said, doing my best not to let any anxiety show in my voice. I didn’t want to be left alone, but I didn’t want to be coddled, either.
I knew Zarik was aching to join the fray, and I didn’t want to be the one standing in his way. “I think some of those assholes are trying to sneak past the soldiers, Zarik.”
“You’re right,” he sighed, frowning as he noticed one of the men in the camp tucking a gun in his belt and covering it with his shirt. “I need to go. Are you sure you’ll be fine? I don’t want to leave you, but—”
“As long as you come back to me.”
“Count on it, then,” he smiled, already getting to his feet. He was about to start moving through the undergrowth and toward the settlement’s edge when I stopped him, laying one hand on his shoulder.
“I won’t let you go without saying goodbye,” I said as I stood up, my eyes locked on his. He looked at me, confusion washing over his face, but I didn’t even care. I just reached for him and, holding his face with both hands, went on tiptoes to kiss him.
I closed my eyes as I felt his lips on mine, my heart happily fluttering inside my chest. His hands went down the sides of my body and, grabbing me by the waist, he picked me up. My feet left the ground for a few seconds, and I opened my eyes to find them level with his.
Smiling, I wrapped my legs around his torso and kissed him again, pressing my whole body against his. With my breasts pressed against his chest, I felt the contour of his toned pectorals and ached for more...so much more.
The attraction between the two of us was undeniable, and I was aching to turn whatever spark there was between us into a raging inferno.
“Be careful,” I whispered, my forehead against his. “I don’t want you to get hurt. I want you to come back to me, okay? Do that and we’ll continue this,” I promised him, the hunger in his eyes telling me he would make me keep my promise.
Good—that was exactly what I wanted.
“I will come back,” he said in that soft but decisive manner of his.
Putting me down, he gave me one final nod and turned around, stalking through the undergrowth and toward the camp. He moved furtively, his attention now fully focused on what would soon become a battlefield, and I felt a nervous tingle in my chest.
There was nothing I could do but wait, though. Taking long, deep breaths, I looked around and spotted a tall tree just a few feet behind me. It had sturdy branches, and their disposition made me believe I could climb up and get a vantage point.
Hurrying, I went toward the tree and, groaning and sweating, somehow managed to climb my way up. Perched on a high, sturdy branch, I was sheltered and hidden while still having a good view of the camp.
The strike teams were trying to herd the humans in front of them into a group, but I could see some trying to slip out from the perimeter. To the side of the main building, four humans hid from sight, and they were clutching what looked like rifles.
They looked nervous, but I knew they were prepared to attack all the same. One of them poked his head out of the corner of the building, momentarily glancing at the alien soldiers, and then went down on one knee and took aim.
I felt my heart skip a few beats as I anticipated what would happen, but then I noticed something in the vegetation right behind the building. “STOP!” I heard Zarik bellow, and his hulking shape jumped out of the shadows and ran straight toward the human.