by Lydia Hope
The Sakka, on the other hand, sought out Gemma. He seemed to find Gemma more approachable than the other two helpers. He held on to his cup when Gemma came to retrieve it not relinquishing it to her right away and used the delay to convey his grievances in a fast, lisping whisper. His latrine leaked. There was a roach nest under his bed. The new linens she’d brought the other day had a funny smell.
She listened attentively, nodding from time to time. She could hardly help him with his requests but it didn’t seem to matter to the alien. She listened, and that was what he was after.
The Obu was another inmate vying for her attention, but she wasn’t going to hold his hand.
Gemma had to acknowledge that she was feeling jumpy, easily scared. Even before the Perali fight, she hadn’t been able to shake off a feeling of doom. She kept telling herself that it was work-related stress, but what she was saying wasn’t altogether true. Deep down, she was terrified that her time with Simon was running out. How, when - she didn’t know but a dark premonition had settled in her chest that they would soon be torn apart from each other.
When the yard time came about, Gemma could scarcely wait until the inmates went down the stairs before she unlocked Simon’s door. He was sitting on his cot, his back to the wall, knees drawn up. His torn shirt was carefully arranged to conceal his injuries.
“Hey,” she said in a low voice, afraid he’d fallen back into stasis.
He turned his head and her eyes collided with his black stare. Oh, but he was fully alert, coiled on that cot like a snake ready to strike.
She stepped in and approached his cot.
“Are you up for an outing?”
Without answering, Simon set his feet down and carefully rose to his full height. He must be six-six if not taller. She was of average height, yet she felt like a gnome standing next to him.
Moving around her imperiously as if he were the lord and she was his servant, he proceeded out of his cell and settled into the chair. He hadn’t uttered a word.
They got into the elevator.
The closeness of the cabin made it difficult not to scrutinize his appearance. He looked tired but overall much, much better than he used to. Still pale and thin but no longer gaunt.
The sun came out in full force that day but failed to penetrate winter chill. The weather was bitingly cold and the air was so clear it sang in the complete absence of wind. The patches of dirty gray snow on the ground were interspersed with ice, and the ice crystals sparkled in the sun adding some cheer to the dreary landscape of urban decay.
Reaching Simon’s favorite spot behind the charred ruins of the church, Gemma stopped. The darkened wall had absorbed some sunlight, enough to make a slight difference in temperature.
In the distance, at the docks, Gemma could see a light cargo shuttle sitting in position on the west-most launchpad. Thanks to the clear sunlight, today she could discern every little detail, up to and including the seam of the sealed door and decorative elements above the conical hull.
Simon hadn’t attempted to leave the chair, and Gemma wondered how badly the altercation with the Perali had set him back, health-wise. He was especially pensive today. She gave him space and remained silent standing still by the side of his chair with her eyes, and her mind, drifting in pleasant nothingness.
A sharp whine rent the air signaling an all-clear from the control tower and steam intermixed with exhaust fanned from underneath the shuttle in great rolling clouds.
“I think it’s going to take off,” Gemma remarked.
“Hmm,” Simon remained indifferent.
Minutes were leisurely ticking by, and they stayed as they were, watching the show, with him sitting in his wheelchair and her standing behind.
A muffled roar reached them from the launch pad and the ground beneath their feet reverberated.
“What’s happening? It is alright?” she asked.
“Yes. Auxiliary power units are on. Testing the boosters.” He sounded sure.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve launched off before,” he answered laconically, observing the shuttle with detachment.
“Oh. Of course.”
Gemma looked at him askance. She knew so little about Simon. She had so many questions to ask.
“Do you think of home, Simon?”
He was silent for so long that she didn’t think he’d reply.
“I do,” he finally said, and she thought, How informative.
“Do you miss it?”
“Miss it? You think like a human,” he scoffed.
“What else? And you must miss it. I can’t imagine you not to.”
“I don’t belong here. On Enzomora, life is custom made for my kind. We’ve made it uniquely ours, generation by generation. I can survive on any habitable planet, but Enzomora is where Rix belong. Does it answer your question?”
She thought about it. “I guess.”
“Guessing is what gets you in trouble, Gemma,” he was chiding her and it made her a little angry.
“You leave me no choice! It’s impossible to have a conversation with you. I ask you all those things and you never give straight answers. I want to know more about you, yet you only share crumbs of your life with me. Why?”
As usual, he was in no rush to answer, and suddenly she knew.
“You don’t trust me.” She shouldn't have felt hurt, but she did.
“Don’t assume,” he warned.
“You don’t,” she stubbornly repeated.
“I don’t trust you,” he agreed before adding, “but not in the way you think.”
“Is there any other way?”
“You over-analyze things. Your mind is this long winding road and I never know where it leads. You come to conclusions that blow my mind. Feeding you information is… counterproductive.”
“What? You don't want me to think?”
“There you go again. It isn’t what I said,” he sounded mildly frustrated. “Trust yourself, Gemma. Things are what they are.”
There was a meaning behind his words that eluded her. He was hinting at something raw and real, and his rolling purr was almost tender, almost… intimate.
Upset and filled with yearning for things that were never meant to be, Gemma switched the topic to a more pressing subject, “I saw Dr. Delano yesterday. He still treats Uncle Drexel.”
“Let’s hope his treatment methods have improved since I last experienced them,” Simon said, coolly sarcastic.
“He tried to interrogate me about aliens in our prison. He inspected Perali’s bodies at the morgue and he knows they weren’t killed by a human.”
“Unfortunate,” was all Simon said.
“Simon, I have to ask… When does your sentence run out?”
Slowly turning his head, he fixed her with his otherworldly eyes. “I wasn’t aware that I had a sentence, Gemma.”
“Why are you in prison?”
“Why is every prisoner? To keep us miscreants contained.”
“For what… crime?”
“For being an alien.”
Gemma’s huffed a breath. “You aren’t being serious. There are plenty of aliens on Earth, roaming free.”
“I’m a bad alien. I point and shoot at humans.”
Dr. Delano’s tale about a standoff between Rix and the City militants came immediately to mind.
“Did you… kill someone?”
“I didn’t check them for a pulse but when I shot, they fell. And bled a lot.”
“Simon!”
“What?”
“It isn’t funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
Frustrated, she almost gave up asking. Almost.
“How come you ended up with Dr. Delano?”
Simon gave one of his weighty pauses as if calibrating the wisdom of telling her more.
“When humans got to me, I was gravely injured and not fit for prison. Delano took me into his lab to treat, or so he said. He managed to keep me there for years, claiming I was st
ill sick.”
“But something happened to bring you here?” Gemma prompted, indicating the prison.
“I had recovered from my injuries but years of Dr. Delano’s ‘treatments’ sent me into decline. My memories of my last year at the lab are hazy. I was losing awareness fast. I think I assaulted another doctor and he died. Delano couldn't keep his death quiet as he’d done with the others.”
Gemma swallowed. “There were… others?”
“His orderlies are expendable.” His voice was even.
Gemma swallowed again, not certain she was glad he elaborated.
Yet Simon didn’t sound angry or bitter over his ordeal. Not once had he bemoaned his fate. He was taking his circumstances in stride, without fear and regrets.
His outlook on danger didn’t make his situation any less risky.
“Simon, what happened with the Perali made Dr. Delano suspicious. Even if he thinks you’re dead, he’s wondering if another Rix is around. He wants a Rix, right?”
“A male Rix. From the defender class. He’s after power.”
Gemma couldn't help but look him over from head to toe. Yes, definitely power. Still too thin, easily tired, a prisoner with no rights sitting in a wheelchair, he exuded the physical competency of a crouching tiger. She knew exactly what Dr. Delano saw when he looked at Simon - a living god.
“You have to leave,” she told him bluntly.
Her statement surprised him. “Where would I go?”
“Anywhere. Away. When Dr. Delano presumed you dead, the prison protected you. Now you’re a sitting duck. All he has to do is check, and there you are.”
“Are you telling me to escape?”
Was she? Maybe. She didn’t know herself anymore. “I’m scared, Simon.”
Her eyes latched to the tracker securely hugging his arm.
“I can escape any time I want to,” he murmured, his accent rolling and smooth. Deadly.
“But the tracker… ” Gemma pointed to his arm. She never felt so powerless in her entire life.
“The tracker is not what’s holding me here.”
Her heart thumped hard against her breastbone. She waited to hear if he’d say something else, but he didn’t.
Out in the distance, the launch countdown had begun. Tears pricked Gemma’s eyes from an irrational fear that the countdown was winding down her and Simon’s togetherness.
Another roar came from the shuttle, this one louder, and thin blue flames licked its underside.
“The main engine is on, full thrust,” Simon commented. “Watch. In three seconds, two, one… there it goes.”
The shuttle, looking like a toy from the distance, detached itself from the surface and rose out of the clouds of smoke and dust it had generated and gracefully lifted higher, and higher, curving north-east, getting smaller, becoming a dot, and winking out of view. Here, and gone. The smoke slowly dissipated.
She wasn’t sure how long they remained there. The cold started seeping from the ground through the thick soles of her boots. She shifted from one foot to the other and shivered.
Her movements roused Simon from his introspection. “Cold?”
“A little.”
He surprised her by grabbing the wheel and turning the chair to face her.
“Sit,” he said. “You shouldn’t be standing long.” He pointed at her right foot.
“The ground’s too cold to sit on. I’d rather stand.”
Instead of arguing, he took her gloved hand and gently tugged her towards him and kept pulling until she was forced to move closer to him, until she had no choice but to lower herself into his lap.
She perched on top of his knees, stiff as a board and embarrassed. “Simon, be careful. I’m too heavy for you.”
He gave her a quizzical look. “What does ‘heavy’ mean in your world?”
“You’re not yet back to your full strength. And if you overdo it…”
“So in your opinion,” he interrupted, and she heard the amusement in his voice, “someone who can fight off a pack of Perali isn’t strong enough to hold a child-sized woman in his lap?”
“I’m not child-sized!”
He didn’t smile but his mouth thinned as if he was fighting it. “Rest.”
He did. His eyes slowly lost focus and a charcoal film gradually desaturated them. Gemma felt him retreat into himself.
She was left sitting in his lap with her back taught as a bowstring, feeling the hard roundness of his knee joints under her buttocks. She wished she could close her eyes and rest as Simon suggested, but she couldn't.
Memories of Simon fighting the Perali surfaced again. He could have easily died. He should've died, outnumbered, in his weakened condition.
Delayed fear for him tore at Gemma’s heart.
Overcome by tenderness, she gazed at the sharp planes of his face, so close that she could see individual pores on his fine-grained skin and each little hair making up his delicate eyebrows. His nose still weirded her out with its marked difference from her own but it did stand out a less nowadays, with his face more filled out. By no means chubby-faced, his cheeks no longed dipped so deep that she could see his skull bones.
It suddenly registered with Gemma what a strong, well-defined jawline he had. His teeth must have come in sufficiently to restore support to facial muscles changing his expression subtly to one of stubbornness and confidence. The lips she remembered as wrinkled and sunken looked firm and more golden than white, the rims tinged with blue just enough to make them look otherworldly and different from hers.
Unable to stop herself, Gemma tugged her mittens off. She put her curled fingers to her mouth first and blew on them attempting to bring some feeling into the tips. She hesitated for a second, understanding that touching him this way would be highly inappropriate, but in the end couldn’t resist an impulse that had come out of nowhere and compelled her to make physical contact. She had to know what his lips felt like.
With the barest of touches, she traced her index finger along the outline of his upper lip. It was firm and much warmer than her hand. Simon hadn’t reacted remaining deep inside his quiet place. Emboldened, Gemma traced his upper lip again, this time with two fingers, and let them slip down to skim over his lower lip. The feel of him under her fingers and the wonder of such an intimate touch brought a powerful rush of pleasure.
Compelled by an irresistible force, she leaned down to briefly put her lips against his and retreated. She studied his face for a reaction. If he knew what she was doing, if he felt it like he surely must, he gave no sign. She hesitated in indecision but the urge to get a feel of him again gnawed at her, and she brushed her lips against his again, and kept giving him small, butterfly kisses. She nibbled along the seam of his lips, and on the outside of his mouth, and in each corner.
Instead of having her curiosity satisfied, she was suddenly filled with roaring hunger for more. Her breathing became labored under a strange sensual haze blanketing her. She pressed her lips full-on against his and rubbed back and forth loving the roughness of their chapped mouths, the friction the rubbing created, the quiet scraping sound of skin on skin. She stuck out the tip of her tongue and licked the corner of his mouth knowing she was stealing it from him, positive he’d ask her to stop when he came around, and hating the embarrassment both of them would experience any moment now.
He tasted strange, a little citrusy, and his unusual taste intoxicated Gemma. The need to feast on him was almost choking her but a persistent, still functioning part of her brain ordered her to come to her senses. She pulled away in painful withdrawal.
She looked at him and his answering unblinking stare came as a blow to the solar plexus. His eyes were fully black, liquid in their intensity. Suffocating from equal measures of desire and mortification, she made a sharp move to get off his lap but his arms surrounded her like iron bands. There was no escape, no retreat into a safe zone from the fire that was burning within her. She could only leap forward, into the flames. And that was what she did.
Twining her arms around his neck, Gemma pressed her lips to his again and closed her eyes blocking out the sun, the brick wall, Simon’s gaunt face, and the reality. She tasted him again and this time he opened up for her. Gemma touched his tongue with hers, felt sharp points of his teeth, licked the velvety lining of his mouth. He allowed her time to explore, keeping still, granting her unrestricted access to the inside of his mouth.
An agonizing thought entered Gemma’s mind that she might be violating him. What if Rix didn’t practice kissing, and what she was doing horrified him?
As if sensing her inner turmoil, he slanted his head for better access and invaded her mouth. Just like that, in a sweeping, no-holds-barred assault, he was kissing her back. And he knew what he was doing.
She’d never experienced anything headier. It shocked her that she wanted him so.
Stunned by the intensity of the emotions she was experiencing, Gemma broke the kiss. Her body was resting flush against his chest, her arms locked around his shoulders.
As she stared at him from this close, she saw the slits of his three pupils on the clean shiny black surface of each eye. She should be repulsed but instead, she was delighted. His eyes were so cool.
She cleared her tight throat. “I’m sorry. It was a bad idea.”
Her mouth was wet from kissing and now the cold air bit at it without mercy as if punishing Gemma for taking the pleasure that was forbidden to her.
His fine brows twitched like he didn’t understand her. “What was a bad idea?”
“Well, this. The kissing part.”
“You didn't like it?”
“That’s not what I meant.” She tried to choose her words carefully. “I caught you at a moment when you were resting. I didn’t give you a choice. I shouldn't have touched you without your consent.”
His impenetrable expression was making her uneasy.
She slowly pushed herself away from his lap and stood up.
Simon also rose from the chair and went to stand with his back to her, looking in the direction of the derelict railroad wagons and spaceship carcasses sprinkled over by a thin layer of snow.
She admired his posture from behind noting for the first time how straight he held his back, firm yet not stiff. He seemed to have a habit of standing with feet apart at shoulder width and both hands crossed at the small of his back. Gemma guessed the posture was a result of some kind of extensive military training, which, combined with his ability to wield a plumbing pipe like a machete, was a fairly obvious conclusion.
