by Elin Wyn
I was the one who regained the ability of speech first.
“I had a surprise planned for you today, you know?” I murmured into her ear.
“A bigger surprise than this?” She looked down at our naked bodies and winked.
“Not quite,” I chuckled. “This makes my surprise rather underwhelming.”
“Tell me anyway!” She giggled.
“Have you ever been to the scrapyard?” I ask.
“No, but I know of it. I’ve heard it’s gotten quite full this year.”
“It has. General Rouhr and everyone under his command has clearance to enter the scrapyard. That includes you now.”
Alessa’s eyes lit up.
“Do you want to poke around and see if you can find some nothings to make a functional something?” I asked.
“Absolutely!” She beamed. “However, I think I need to take another shower.”
“Mind if I join you?” I winked.
“Only if you promise to do things to me that would make General Rouhr regret giving me this room,” she grinned.
I nearly choked as the meaning of her words settled.
“You should not think more often,” I said as I helped her to her feet.
“Fear is what kept me from realizing my feelings sooner,” she said as we walked into the bathroom. “It took me way too long to realize how stupid that was.”
She turned on the water and stepped in. I followed her.
“I mean, seriously! I spent twenty-four hours certain I would die. What’s more terrifying than that? Accepting my feelings for you shouldn’t have been as scary as it was,” she said.
“The mind works in strange ways,” I said. “That’s something we all have in common, regardless of species.”
“Such wisdom,” she smirked at me.
“I’m looking forward to sprinkling you with my gems of wisdom from here on out,” I grinned back.
“I’m looking forward to getting to know you outside of a life-threatening situation.” She looped her arms around my waist and held her body against mine as I stiffened again.
“That’s sound great.” I lifted her up so that I could kiss her sweet lips, and she wrapped her legs around my waist.
“Remember, we live on Ankou,” she said. “So, the non-life-threatening situations will end before the week is over.”
“I suspect chaos is in the forecast.”
“When is it not?”
“But before it get here,” I growled darkly, slowly lowering her slick folds onto my swollen cock, taking a dark delight as the pleasure took her over, “There’s something else in your future.”
I drove into her, again and again, as the orgasm washed over her, sweeping me along with her.
No matter what the future held, she would be mine.
My mate.
Alessa
Navat and I spent most of the following week in bed. He had an apartment in Nyhiem but often stayed with me since I had the room at my disposal.
We got strange, but approving looks, everywhere we went within the compound.
“I didn’t realize so many people were invested in our relationship,” I whispered to him as we walked hand in hand in the direction of the cafeteria.
“You have no idea,” he murmured back. “Everyone’s been waiting for us to stop dancing around it. Especially Tyehn, Maki, and Axtin.”
“It’s not my fault I had to work through some emotional damage,” I joked.
“I hope you don’t blame yourself for anything,” Navat said, his tone soft but serious.
“I sort of do,” I shrugged. “I was the one so adamantly in denial about everything. I tried to write off my feelings for you as a product of adrenaline.”
“To be fair, we’d both had a high hit of adrenaline last week,” Navat shrugged.
“Don’t defend me.” I playfully nudged him. “I take full responsibility as the asshole in this situation.”
“You’re clearly forgetting what an asshole I was to you.”
“Okay, fine,” she sucked in her cheeks. “You and I are both two assholes who prefer life-threatening situations over dealing with our scary feelings. Fair?”
“That’s fair. I’m happy to be an asshole with you any day.”
“If Tyehn, Maki, and Axtin were expecting a gooey, romantic fairytale we should probably apologize to them upfront,” I joked.
“That’s a good idea,” Navat agreed. “They’re meeting us for breakfast. I’m excited to take in their reaction.”
“Me too,” I grinned.
Together, we walked into the cafeteria. Maki, Tyehn, Axtin, and Leena were already seated. All of them looked delighted to see us holding hands.
“What do we have here?” Axtin teased. “Did I have too much to drink last night or am I really seeing what I’m seeing.”
“Your eyes are correct.” Navat pulled out a chair for me.
“When did this happen?” Maki asked me. She and Leena stared at me, their eyes glittering with interest.
“About a week ago,” I replied.
I winked at Navat as he walked to the serving line to get food for both of us.
“And you didn’t say anything?” Maki gasped.
“I wanted to wait until the right moment,” I shrugged. “Besides, Navat and I have had a busy week.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Leena winked.
“No, seriously,” I laughed. “We’ve been designing features for a new community center on the other side of town.”
“Is that so?” Maki asked. “How exciting. You’ll have to show us!”
“I will once I iron out some of the kinks,” I assured her.
“I’m sure you’re talking about kinks other than the ones in your plans,” Leena said under her breath.
“Damn right I am,” I grinned.
Maki and Leena slapped their hands over their mouths to stifle their giggles.
“What are you three laughing at?” Tyehn demanded.
“Don’t worry about it,” I waved him off.
Navat returned with two trays of food. As soon as he took his seat, all three alien men received alerts on their comm units.
“General Rouhr’s calling a meeting,” Axtin sighed.
“Just for the strike teams?” Leena asked.
“It looks like he wants everyone from the expedition to go in,” Navat said.
A knot tightened in my stomach. That still happened whenever I thought about our time in the tunnel. I’d almost convinced myself that I wouldn’t have to think about that time again. Navat must’ve sensed my nerves. He reached under the table and squeezed my leg.
“It must be important,” Maki said as she wiped her mouth and pushed up from the table. “Let’s go.”
“If you want to sit this one out, General Rouhr will understand,” Navat whispered to me.
“No,” I shook my head sharply. “It’s okay. I can handle this.”
There was hesitation in Navat’s eyes.
“I’ll be okay, I swear.”
“All right,” Navat nodded. He extended his hand to me and we followed Maki and Tyehn out of the cafeteria with Axtin trailing behind us.
We entered the same meeting room we were in the week before. The Urai, Fen, stood beside General Rouhr and spoke to him in hushed, robotic tones from her speech pad. A beautiful blonde woman next to a scarred Skotan tapped her fingers on a datapad, looking worried.
Navat and I sat side by side, fingers laced together.
“Are you okay?” Navat asked.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I just think it’s weird that I’m still here. I’m not contributing any new information.”
“You’re part of the team now,” Navat smirked. “That means you get to sit through all the boring meetings.”
“Goodie,” I giggled.
“Are we ready to begin?” General Rouhr asked.
“Yes, sir,” Navat said.
“Great. Fen, I give you the floor.”
The Urai recalibrated her sp
eed pad to a higher volume before she started speaking.
“I’ve been able to successfully translate the writing on the walls within the burial chambers.”
My heart quickened.
“What does it say?” I blurted.
“It is centered around a specific phrase,” Fen said.
“The light of sound?” Maki asked.
“Precisely.” Fen’s galaxy colored eyes reflected surprise.
“That was the only symbol we knew the meaning of,” she said.
“Right,” Fen nodded. “The symbols around that one lead me to believe ‘sound’ is the most prominent word in that phrase, rather than ‘light’.”
“But what does it mean?”
“This symbol here,” Fen pulled up a zoomed in image of one of the glyphs. “It means birth or first. It changes the meaning of the word ‘light’. In this case, light metaphorically means beginning in the same way sunrise means the birth of the day.”
“The beginning of sound?” Navat asked.
“The first sound, more accurately,” Fen said.
“Thijn said the key to defeating the Gorgoxians was in that phrase,” Maki said, brow furrowed. “What is the first sound?”
“That required more complex research,” Fen explained. “A literal translation wasn’t good enough. I had to look into the lore of the Aeryx to fully understand the potential meaning of the words.”
“How accurate is your interpretation?” Tyehn asked.
“Since I cannot check it against an original source, meaning an Aeryx, I have to assume there’s some error,” Fen said. “However, it’s all we have.”
“Go on,” I urged her. I was on the edge of my seat now. If that wall really did contain the secret to defeating the Gorgo’s, I wanted to know.
“These symbols here,” Fen pulled up more close-ups. “Reference a gate. Looking through their lore, I believe those symbols mean a metaphysical gate. A gate to the mind. It’s a gate that can be opened and shut. Putting the first sound within the mind gate will push the Gorgo out.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Axtin shook his head.
“Maybe we misunderstood Thijn,” Maki said. “Maybe Thijn was confused.”
“Maybe it wasn’t Thijn at all,” Navat suggests. “It could’ve easily been a clever Gorgo trying to trick us.”
“But then why would they give up a key piece of the puzzle?” Tyehn wondered.
“Unless the symbols don’t mean anything at all,’ Maki sighed. “They were found in a burial chamber. What if they’re nothing more than a prayer or something similar? What if the meaning is purely sentimental?”
“I think we’ve hit another dead end,” Navat sighed.
“Wait,” I said. “Let me think for a moment.”
“What is it, Alessa?” Navat asked but I waved him off. I grasped a trail of thought in my mind, trying to follow it to a logical conclusion. It was on the tip of my tongue. I had all the pieces I needed. I simply needed to make sense of them.
“If I were to write a public message about how to kill someone, do you think I would write plainly?” I asked. “Do you think I’d write ‘I’m going to kill Maki’ on a monitor and leave it for everyone to see?”
“Hey!” Maki grumbled.
“No, I don’t suppose so,” Navat said.
“So why would the Aeryx do the same? If the Gorgos knew instructions to kill them were written somewhere, wouldn’t they have destroyed them?”
“That’s what I would do,” Axtin said.
“What if the mind gate means memories?” I asked. “Remembering something is like opening a gate inside your mind, right?”
“Go on,” General Rouhr encouraged.
I swallowed hard, realizing how many eyes were on me.
“What if the beginning of sound is something that triggers a memory?” I proposed. “Think about it. The Gorgo’s infect minds. They take away the identity of the host. Sure, an identity is in facial features and mannerisms but true identity is in life-shaping memories. If Gorgo’s can somehow block that, they could eradicate and identify from the inside out.”
“But how could they do that?” Maki asked.
“I don’t know,” I shook my head. “But what if the beginning of sound is something that triggers an identity solidifying memory?”
“I’m not sure I follow,” Navat looked at me with a furrowed brow. I took a deep breath.
“Years ago, my brother was severely injured in the woods. He screamed. That scream is burned in my brain. When he screamed, I learned several hard lessons about the world that shaped me into who I am now. If the memory that contained those lessons was gone, I’d be a different person.”
“So, you’re saying sounds can trigger memories blocked by the Gorgos?” The blonde woman said slowly.
“It sounds ridiculous, I know. But it’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense,” I said.
“I like that interpretation,” Fen said. “It fits the literal translations and works with the Aeryx lore.”
“I’m willing to dedicate resources to looking into that theory,” General Rouhr said. “Sibyl,” he glanced at the blonde woman next to the scarred Skotan. “Would you be willing to put your resources against this angle as well?”
She smiled, and for an instant I saw a horrible grief in her eyes. “Of course. It’s what I’m here for.”
“Brilliant, Alessa.” Navat squeezed my hand.
I looked at him. I couldn’t make myself smile. I was too worried.
“What if I’m wrong?” I asked.
“Then we go back to the drawing board until we’re right,” Navat said. “We’re going to figure this out. I promise.”
I thought about the sad looking woman. What had she seen? Who had she lost?
And the Skotan standing with her. Whatever happened, you could tell they’d face it together.
I gripped Navat’s fingers tighter.
Together.
Navat
I piloted out of the jungle in a one-person aerial unit. I’d been at the dig site for three days. A new excavation team had started work after the last meeting with General Rouhr.
They’d been assigned to comb through every inch of the tunnels and tombs to find something that supported or disproved Alessa’s interpretation of the symbols in the burial chamber.
They were also looking for the rest of the possessed humans.
The first day I arrived, the mission was to recover all of the bodies we had no choice but to leave behind. Unfortunately, nature had taken its toll on then.
There wasn’t much left for testing and we had to inform all of the families that an open-casket funeral wasn’t going to be an option.
That was the worst part.
Actually, that wasn’t true.
The worst part was how none of the families were surprised when they received the news. Did they grieve? Absolutely. But there was no shock in their voices when we informed them of their kin’s fate. People disappearing and turning up dead was becoming entirely too common here. Hope was slowly being squeezed out of the planet.
I was determined to stop that from happening.
Once the bodies were removed, the studies began. The new excavation team was hand-selected by Maki and Alessa, though neither of them had returned to the site. I didn’t blame them. I didn’t want to come back either, but I wasn’t given the choice. General Rouhr wanted the solders who were most familiar with the area to help break in the new ones.
After this, I hoped to never return unless it was an emergency.
The Puppet Master agreed to take an active role in the site’s security, which was deeply appreciated.
The few combat-trained Urai offered to help as well. I was glad to have their advanced weapons protecting the new excavation team.
The one-person aerial unit was convenient but frustratingly slow. It took me nearly four hours to reach Nyhiem and I had to stop and change out the fuel cells twice. I wasn’t going to travel this way
again, that was for damn sure.
All I wanted to do was get back home and see Alessa.
After our last meeting with General Rouhr, she was allowed to return to Sauma. She stayed for a few days but quickly came back. She was invested in the community center project as well as the community lab. When she wasn’t doing that, she was working on updating Leena’s lab equipment. Yesterday, she alluded to another secret project. I was excited to see what that was.
In such a short time, Alessa had become a whole new person. Rather, she was the person she always was. I had to frequently remind myself that I met her in a time of deep stress, that I was still getting to know the real Alessa. I adored everything I knew and I felt certain I’d adore everything I was to learn.
I also knew, without a doubt, that she felt the same way about me.
She was openly affectionate and sweeter than sugar made from flower nectar. I hated being away from her these past three days.
When I landed the aerial unit, I leaped from it before the engine finished powering down. I ran down three flights of stairs, taking the steps four or five at a time until I reached the lab floor.
I burst through the lab doors without warning. Leena nearly jumped out of her skin then looked like she wanted to murder me.
“You can’t just burst in here like that! What if I’d been holding something flammable? Or acidic?” She snapped.
“I’m sorry,” I raised my hands in surrender. “I’m looking for Alessa.”
“She’s in the workshop.”
Leena jerked her head toward a spacious closet that, up until recently, had been used for storage. Now, it was converted into a makeshift workshop for Alessa to tinker in. She was able to make as much noise as she needed without running the risk of disturbing any of the lab ladies.
I knocked on the workshop door.
“Oh, you’ll knock on that door but you can’t be bothered to knock on the main one?” Leena hissed.
“I’m sorry,” I said through laughter. “I promise to knock next time.”
“You better.” Leena returned to her work with a huff.
Alessa opened the workshop door. Her face was smudged with grease.
Her stormy eyes lit up when she saw me.
