by Heather Karn
“Explain, please.”
“Mates are fertile. Companions are not. Level Eight is the highest level of fertility that we measure.”
So, they were staring because I was an extremely fertile female. That was great. Well, I had news for them: I wasn’t joining their freak show and becoming little more than a breeder for an alien race. If that was their plan, they had another thing coming.
“Captain-,” Seran began, but the other man cut him off.
“I will be moving into the common housing. She will be moved to my quarters.” He turned to face my appalled expression. “It is the most comfortable and private location on the ship, and there are no other females here. We can’t have you mingling with the men, especially since you are of a high level.”
“You’ll have to explain that.”
He lifted his shoulders in what appeared to be a shrug. “As I am the only Mate level eight on the ship, I am the only person who will likely speak to you. The others are level five or below, or Companions.” A chime sounded, almost cutting him off. When it ended, his eyes returned to me. “I’ll explain more of this later. For now, I’m needed elsewhere. Follow me and I’ll take you to my quarters. You’ll remain there until I come for you, but my second in command will remain outside the door should you need assistance. He’s a Companion, so he will not be intimidated by your level.”
Intimidated by my level? This kept growing weirder and weirder.
“Follow me,” the captain directed and turned to leave.
The expectant stares from the other two meant I’d receive no help from them. Again, with no choice but to do as directed, I scooted past the table I’d been laying on and followed the alien toward the room’s exit. However, this led us past the other human they’d abducted, a middle-aged man who I’d never seen in my life. My pace slowed, and I stared at him.
“What’s going to happen to him?” I asked the captain as he continued on his way.
“He is here for study.”
I stopped and arched an eyebrow at the captain’s back. “Excuse me? And you think I’m just going to leave him here like some sort of lab rat while I go hang out in your room?”
The captain whorled around, eyes blazing. Obviously I’d worn down his patience. The look reminded me way too much of another man when he was raging, so my jaw snapped shut and the timidity I loathed took its place as my eyes fell to the floor.
Boots stepped into my view as the captain moved closer, his voice far softer than I expected. “I am sorry. I did not mean to upset you. I’m not used to being questioned, but I need to make exception for you as you don’t know our ways. Yes, you will leave this man here. I promise you he will not be harmed.”
Nodding, I refused to look at the alien. There was no way to hide the emotion from my eyes. I’d learned that young, so averting my gaze from everyone allowed me some form of privacy, even if what I was feeling was evident by my downward stare.
“Please follow me,” the alien murmured, stepping through the doorway into the remainder of the ship.
I watched him go, lifting my gaze as he disappeared to the left, and took a deep breath and swallowed hard. Well, this was it. This was the next chapter in the horror story of my alien abduction.
With how bright and shiny the medical room was, I wasn’t expecting the dark, dull corridor that the captain led me into. It almost appeared more like a navy vessel than a spaceship, or what I’d seen from movies anyway since I’d never even stepped foot on a speedboat let alone anything bigger. The only lights to be seen were evenly spaced red orbs set into the floor. They gave off enough light to see the outline of objects, but details were difficult for me to make out. Yet, if these creatures had any animal traits at all, which they seemed to possess based on their features alone, they wouldn’t need much light to see where they were going.
I, on the other hand, kept tripping on abrupt changes in floor depth, otherwise known as stairs. They were randomly placed, and with the orbs spaced far enough apart and the dim lighting, I couldn’t make out the change in depth until I was falling forward or almost collapsing to the floor when it disappeared beneath my feet. Several of the odd-looking men we passed stopped and stared at me, but whenever I lost my balance, even more attention was drawn to me.
And like the kind, giving aliens that they were, not one of them offered a hand up when I fell.
“Are females of your kind always this...clumsy?” the captain asked after a minimum of a dozen falls. He’d turned to watch me pick myself up. Again, I hoped I wouldn’t be a bruised mess by the time we reached his quarters.
Clumsy? He hadn’t gone there...oh, but he had.
“If I could see where I was going, I wouldn’t be falling,” I growled. The lighting may have been dim, but I was close enough to watch his eyes widen.
“You cannot see?”
“Barely. I can see what’s ahead of us, but these grates we’re walking on and the angle of the light make seeing depth almost impossible. And you’re walking so fast ahead of me, I can’t keep up and not trip and fall on my face. I’m trying to watch where you step, but every time I take my eyes off the ground, I faceplant.” Okay, I was falling on my face even with staring at the ground.
“I see.” He studied his surroundings and lifted a wrist to his mouth and spoke into...something. Some techy bracelet? “Cordin, this is Kilani. Until further notice, I need you to brighten the corridor lighting three degrees. I’ll notify you when it should return to normal.”
Houston, we had a name.
Kilani. That was different.
As he lowered his wrist, the lights in the floor pulsed and the red glow grew brighter until I could see the stair I’d tripped over much clearer. It did nothing for my ability to see other colors, but that problem wasn’t about to break my leg or give me a concussion.
“Is this better?” Kilani asked, studying the brighter light with me.
“Much. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Now, follow me. I’m already late.”
“And we wouldn’t want you to be any later on my account,” I grumbled.
It hadn’t taken but one turn for me to become lost. Even before my inability to see where I was going, I had no sense of direction. That, combined with the distance we traveled, it would be a miracle for me to find my way back to the medical room. If I was lucky, I’d be allowed to explore the ship. It wasn’t like I’d be touching anything important or trying to sabotage the ship. I just couldn’t imagine being stuck in one room for an undisclosed length of time.
Now that I could see, I stayed much closer to Kilani so that I didn’t lose him as we passed more aliens and the turns grew sharper. When he abruptly halted in front of me, I skidded to a stop with only a few inches between myself and his back. Not liking the close proximity, I took a step back and leaned around him to see what had caused the abrupt halt.
“You’ll stay here with her, but remain out in the hallway. Understood?” Kilani asked the alien standing before us. As appearances went, the new man’s were the same alien traits as those I’d already seen, furry ears and whiskers included, though he appeared more like Yulaki than the captain.
The new alien nodded. “Yes, Captain. If there is anything else she requires, I will notify you.”
“Thank you, Maltak.” The next second, I had Kilani’s full attention. “This is Maltak, my second in command. He’ll be keeping an eye on you to make sure you stay out of trouble and assist you if you require anything. This is my quarters. I will return when I can to check on you.”
After motioning to a handless door beside us, Kilani strode away down the hall, leaving me alone with Maltak. The new alien stared at me like he expected me to walk into the captain’s room like I owned the place. When I didn’t move, but just kept staring at him, Maltak cocked his head to the side and studied me.
“Are you not going to do as the captain directed?” he inquired.
Shrugging, I pointed toward the door. “How exactly do you open it? Ther
e’s no handle.”
“Handle? On a door?”
The odd way his eyebrows drew low and he stared like I was crazy reminded me again that these people were far different, and obviously more advanced, than we mere humans were with technology. There was so much to take in that little details like no doorknobs had escaped me during the journey here. My headache from earlier had dissipated, but I could feel a new one growing in my temples.
“Yes, where I come from, doors have handles. Now, can you please show me how to open this handless door? Or do I have to figure it out on my own?” It wasn’t my goal to be sarcastic and catty, but this had already been the longest day of my life, and that was before I’d been abducted by furry aliens.
Maltak straightened and nodded. “Why yes, of course. Like this.” He stepped in front of the door and waved his hand across the right side of the frame. A large square of the metallic glinting frame that was the same as the rest of the hall glowed a brighter shade of red and the door slid up, disappearing into the ship to reveal a room beyond. Stepping aside, Maltak motioned me to enter.
My jaw dropped the second I stepped inside Kilani’s quarters. “How is this possible?” I asked, staring around at the jungle growing inside the room. The humidity levels were enough to leave a sheen of moisture along my skin as I stepped closer to a tree that seemed to rise forever into the sky. Even the dark brown dirt was moist and clung to my shoes. What had to be a lake glistened in the distance between trees. However, my scanning ceased when my eyes landed on a round bed of fur blankets and pillows encased in a material I’d never seen. This had to be Kilani’s bed, and that thought made this whole situation much too personal, even without him here.
Maltak tipped his head at me. “You mean the...what you’d call the virtual reality?”
“You mean this is fake? How’d you do it?”
Rubbing his furry hands together, Maltak took a deep breath and let it out. “This is not fake. This place is real. It’s on our home planet, and I believe it’s Kilani’s favorite place, which is why he chose it for his surroundings. You can change the location if you choose.”
“Wait, I can?” I stared at him and a million places raced through my head. “How?”
He stepped inside and the door closed behind him. Pointing at a black rectangular panel the size of my hand beside the door, which was the only portion of the room which appeared like part of the ship, he motioned me over.
“Press your palm against this scanner. The room will determine which location you wish to travel to the most and will change.”
My feet stopped and planted themselves to the dirt as my gaze whipped to Maltak. “Will the captain be okay with me changing his room’s settings?”
Maltak shrugged. “He wishes you to be comfortable. If you wish to change the location, he would never decline your wish.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and the eerie reminder of the events in the medical room returned to my memory, dampening the adventure of finding this interesting technology. Things were not as they appeared, and I’d been thrown into a new culture who expected me to understand everything, even though I had no idea what they even were. They certainly knew nothing about humans, or rather anything beyond our technology. If they did, they wouldn’t be experimenting on the man they’d taken.
“What did I say?” Maltak’s gaze shifted from neutral curiosity to near panic as he watched me. “Did I upset you? Please tell me how so I will not do it in the future.”
Shaking my head slowly side to side, I pressed my hands against my face, praying to wake up from this nightmare. It didn’t work. This was very much real.
“I’m so lost. He just expects me to understand your culture and customs with so little information.”
“Perhaps if you changed the room to a place more familiar to you, you’ll feel better?” Maltak prodded, motioning toward the black rectangle again.
Well, if I was going to get in trouble with the captain, it might as well be sooner than later. Stepping the last few feet toward the wall, I took a deep breath and pressed my hand against the rectangle. A small shock passed into my body and the room changed, first to a place that resembled a room I’d expected to find on this ship, but it was gone in the next second before I could actually make out details. Then, my room on Earth took its place, complete with clothes all over the floor and attached bathroom.
Maltak studied the area with a scrunched nose as if he couldn’t figure out where I’d taken him. It certainly wasn’t a place he’d expected. After the lush forest we’d walked into, my dimly lit, tiny room wasn’t much to look at.
“What is this place?” Maltak stepped forward and ran his hand across the top of my dresser as if feeling the wood to investigate what it was.
“It’s my room,” I murmured, stepping further into the room and staring around. “How real is this?”
“Quite real, actually.”
“So if I grab a change of clothes and put them on, would they disappear if the room changed?”
Maltak’s cheeks around his whiskers pinkened. “No, they wouldn’t disappear. There are limitations to what can be done with this technology, but it is as real as your true room. Obviously it isn’t. No one who enters your true room will show up here, and you cannot leave that way either.”
I hadn’t figured I’d catch my mom walking into my room and have her stumble across me on a spaceship. That would’ve been asking too much. However, it did mean that I was free to grab a clean pair of dry clothes and change so I wasn’t stuck in a damp and chilled hoodie and jeans.
A long-sleeved printed shirt with a dragon on the front caught my eye in the “clean” pile of clothes on my floor. Grabbing it and the first pair of leggings I could find, I entered the bathroom and shut the door between myself and Maltak, who was still in the main room. Staring at the toilet, I contemplated the idea of trying it out to see if it worked. In the end, that idea won out as the cold damp had done a number on my bladder. And to my great astonishment, it worked. As did the water in the sink. Since Maltak hadn’t come pounding on the door, he either wasn’t aware of what was happening, or he wasn’t concerned.
Once I’d changed, I stepped out of the bathroom to find Maltak studying a painting my mom had given me for my seventeenth birthday. It was a fantasy scene, complete with unicorns, fairies, and nymphs. The way his head cocked to the side again, he was having trouble understanding the picture.
“Those aren’t real creatures,” I spoke, walking up beside him to study the painting as well. “They’re mythical, passed down through legends for centuries. Someone just painted what they thought the creatures would look like.”
“Perhaps they aren’t real on your planet, but they could be on another,” Maltak murmured, then shrugged. “Either way, it is not important.” Noticing my change of clothes, Maltak’s cheeks again reddened as he looked away. “Do all females on your planet wear such things?”
“Such things?” I asked, staring down at my outfit. It wasn’t like I was wearing a body suit or anything.
“Never mind. Kilani will not be happy if I make you upset. Forgive my rudeness. If you-.”
“Please explain to me why his opinion of me matters so much? Why should it make him angry if I’m upset?” My interruption didn’t faze the alien, who took a deep breath.
“I will try to explain so that you understand. I’m aware that you didn’t know about the classifications.”
“No idea.”
He nodded. “I’m a Companion, which means I’m infertile. I cannot produce a child. Companions cannot bind themselves to a Mate, just as Mates cannot do the same with Companions.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not done. If it were, our race would die out. Mates must remain together to ensure our race has a chance. Most Matings result in one or more children who will be Mates. In some cases, all children are Mates, though it is rare.”
Folding my arms, I studied him. “How come there’s so many infertile peo
ple? I assume there is if you worry about your race dying out.”
“There are many Companions,” Maltak agreed, but shook his head. “I do not believe it is for me to explain that portion of our history to you. It would be best if Kilani did it.”
“Which brings us back to why he’d be so upset if you made me sad or angry?”
“You are a level eight Mate. That is his level.”
“He said that, but I don’t clearly understand what that means.” Or I was hoping I understood completely wrong.
Wringing his hands together, Maltak took to pacing the room...where he could in an area that wasn’t covered in clothes or random objects. “Female levels are based on your level of fertility, which means you’re extremely fertile. Males are not. Their levels are of importance in our society. Captain Kilani is the head of this ship, and as such is a level eight. All captains of similar vessels are level eight.”
“So, holding the right position, a high position, gives you a higher level as a man, not fertility?”
Maltak nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s how it is.”
“And he doesn’t want me upset because if I am, he might lose his chance at me choosing him? Like he wants to make a good impression?”
“Perhaps. Mostly, our females, especially Mates, are greatly respected and treated with the utmost care. He would not want it to appear that you’ve been neglected or disrespected while under his stewardship. It would look bad on him and the entire crew.”
“So he’s trying to save face?”
Maltak cocked his head again. “I don’t know what that means.”
Waving him off, my eyes landed on the bed...which was not mine even though I was in my room. It was still the one from the forest. And it was still a bit too intimate of an idea to sleep in it, but the soft warmth was calling to me.
“I’ll explain it later,” I mumbled. “Is there any way to make that bed mine?”
“No. The bed remains the same in each of the quarters. Is this a problem?”
