Alien Romance Box Set: Alien Former: Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Books 1-5)

by Ashley L. Hunt

  All of them are human with pale skins and white eyes. The color of their irises has been washed away and now they have two white eyeballs devoid of life instead of eyes. In the middle of their forehead, there is a round, flashing button, something resembling an on/off switch. I wonder if that is the thing that powers them up.

  Jay and Dale stand in the front, both using their hands to push the dead corpses away. The empty bodies gurgle when getting pushed backward. I want to run, but I know that getting freaked out now, of all the times, won’t help the others get to safety faster. Even so, we’re moving at a quick pace, making a good time to the other side of the room.

  It’s only after we have moved a few feet into the zombie-infested hallway that I notice that something seems off. This whole operation is way too easy. It’s like the monsters allow us to push them out of our way. At the same time, Jay seems way too passionate about kicking the corpses out of the way.

  I have a bad feeling about this.

  I check around me to see if there is any kind of weapon, something we can use against him if he changes, but it’s hopeless. All I can see is dead humans walking around guttered bodies lying the floor.

  Oh, my god, this is a massacre.

  Dale has slowed down now, watching Jay rage over the dead men from a distance. He seems confused. We all are confused as we watch him and try to see signs of his dark self, emerging, but there’s nothing.

  Right then I realize that his overly violent behavior is all him, no parasites taking over, not the need to protect someone. Jay just needs something to kill.

  That man, the one not able to control himself, it’s not the same man I met. Jay has changed, and I’m not sure I like what he’s become.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Jay

  You have to remember everything. For our sake, a voice whispers in my head.

  Or maybe not? Do my deepest thoughts emerge and talk to me? Or maybe I’m just getting crazy?

  I see my hands moving, but I don’t control them. I see my feet walking, but I don’t move an inch. My fists are full of blood, but I’m not the one using them. I’m a slave to my own body, and I can’t do anything but keep on hitting the dead, emotionless corpses. Every punch is a liberation, a small victory.

  I feel like when the last time I inhaled Timedisol, only that blood and adrenaline got me drunk this time.

  And I want more.

  I push some of them to the floor and start kicking them, them never resisting or making a move.

  I’m ready to take all of them if needed be when I turn my head and suddenly see the dark brown in the doctor’s eyes. He looks straight into my eyes, but I can’t stop in time from hitting him. It’s only a moment later that I see him falling to the floor, almost passing out. He’s a delicate human being after all, and I’m a mighty Esuh.

  An Esuh of the Two Faces.

  When these words appear in my mind, I snap out of my confusion. In a fraction of a second, I realize that I could have stopped if I wanted. Only that at the time, I didn’t.

  “Dale!” I hear Eladia yell.

  The motionless corpses now seem dead, although still standing. I watch the man trying to get up, but the force of my punch must have been way too strong for him. He’s just another victim of my wrath.

  Eladia slowly squats over him and after checking that he’s alright, he rises again to her feet. She now watches me straight in the eyes and almost whispers:

  “Enough Jay. Just...enough. I won’t let you harm another person anymore.”

  Don’t listen to her! Kill her! Get on with your rampage, I hear my voice command me, but I choose not to listen this time.

  For some reason, while watching her deep-set eyes condemn me, everything makes sense. My memories might still haven’t returned, but my other self, the one that Eladia talked to me about, is starting to come to light.

  I move past her and head straight for the fallen doctor. I stretch my hand and wait for him to grab it. When he does, I pull him up on his feet and then walk away. Eladia was right all along. The only thing I did was push her away because she lied to me. Maybe it was better not knowing the truth after all.

  I’m dangerous when I turn to that monster, a monster I can’t control.

  I’m trying to find something to hold onto, some sort of sentiment that will sort out my thoughts, but it’s not easy when you’ve forgotten how to feel. I walk in, before the elevator doors close, and push the button next to them. I wait, but no one follows me.

  It figures; they’re afraid of me. The only one that dares come closer is the human doctor, his cheek swollen from my all-out punch.

  Hit him again, this time in the chest. It’ll shatter his heart in pieces, the voice inside me instructs me again, but this time, it’s hopeless.

  I turn and watch at him, only to see him smile in a twisted, crooked way. He’s in pain, I can tell, but he’s the one that tries to cheer me up.

  “Don’t worry over this. I’m a doctor. I can fix it as soon as we get on the shuttle.”

  Was it something in his voice or the sound of the elevator ascending from the lower floors? I’ll probably never know. But, as soon as he spoke, the corpses started moving again, this time, faster than before. They almost grab Zan and Eladia, but they manage to get away from them just in the nick of time.

  For a moment, seeing them almost getting captured by those monsters, I feel despair, even fear, filling my veins. I don’t want them to die because of my stupidity, that much is apparent. But Eladia...Eladia I want to see her smiling at me again, seeing me for what I truly am: a man deeply interested in her.

  We fight them for what it seems like half a minute when finally the elevator arrives. We all get inside at once, never looking back. Everything happens really fast from that moment on. The elevator gets us closer to our destination, but as the doctor correctly guessed, the morgue below us is crowded with zombies.

  Dale leads us to the stairway, and we quickly find our way to the parking lot. Passing just outside the cold room, I can hear the hollow cries of the undead. It’s a haunting melody, one that I will remember for the rest of my life. The dead keep howling as we make sure to stay silent and walk as fast as possible without making a sound.

  Our shuttle is located all the way to the other side of the lot, but we manage to get there fast, fast enough for the corpses not to be able to keep up. Outside of the building I can hear a recurrent sound, accompanied by a blue-and-red light. Deep in my memories it kinda feels like I’ve heard that sound before, only that I can’t quite place it somewhere.

  Either way, we all get aboard. Eladia and me first, and the doctor and Zan later. Silver is still in her low-function mode, but as soon as Eladia links her up to the system, her voice returns, merry as ever.

  “Finally! It took you long enough to get here. Is everyone aboard?” she asks.

  “Yes. Set a route for Space Station 1. Planet Yaerus is not safe anymore,” Eladia says.

  I agree with her, but I never say a thing. Even though I’ve forgiven Eladia for all the lying, I have no way of connecting with her anymore. That’s a bridge I burned myself.

  And something inside me tells me that she feels the same way about me.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Eladia

  The trip to Space Station 1 is awfully quiet. The only sound comes from the engines that thrust us upwards in a slow and nonchalant rhythm. A constant vibration comes from the engines that would usually lull me to sleep. Today though, the atmosphere’s way too tense inside this small, metal box to allow for a tranquil trip.

  “Shuttle 2214, can you please confirm your ID?” A feminine voice suddenly comes from the radio.

  Silver quickly takes over and sends our identification signal. A moment later, a green light flashes from the main console of the shuttle. We’ve gotten a pass.

  “Thank you C.A. 12K4. You can use gate four to enter Space Station 1. Also, I must ask you to be patient while entering the station since we just encount
ered elevated activity due to an ongoing crisis on Yaerus. I hope you have a good journey.”

  A buzzing sound signals the end of the comm. link. The lady couldn’t have known that we were in the middle of this crisis, and we’re running away from it as well. Either way, it’s too late now to say something.

  Having approximately half an hour to arrive at the gate, I turn and watch Dale and Jay. They are sitting two seats behind me, both of them looking skeptical in their own little way. Dale turns and smiles at me, but his grin never reaches his eyes. His cheek is still swollen from Jay’s punch.

  Jay, on the other hand, seems totally detached from reality, looking down and gloomy. I can’t help but feel a sudden pinch in my chest right below where my heart is. I turn my head away from him and look through the central window of the shuttle.

  The space station is slowly getting bigger, a sign that we’re getting closer. An enormous construct, one that can fit over 20.000 class 3 spaceships—which amounts to a lot of crew members—has all its main gates open. Countless vehicles surge out of there like wide rivers of metal. I spend a moment guessing what must be going on in Mosa, but I quickly dismiss those thoughts.

  There is nothing we can do to stop the crisis, except maybe continue our investigation. I’m not sure yet, but deep inside me, I feel that everything bad that happened these last weeks has something to do with the cube appearing on Mosa.

  I sigh and get on my feet. I need to walk it off, to leave all this stress behind me. I move to the vacant driver’s seat. Silver is still inside the charging hub, but that doesn’t stop her from meddling in.

  “Are you okay, Eladia? You seem a bit troubled,” she says.

  I know she means well, but sometimes I wish she could stop announcing my feelings up loud.

  “I’m fine. And also, you don’t have to talk so loud. Everyone can hear you nice and clear either way.”

  Silver doesn’t reply immediately since she’s in the process of recalibrating our route. The traffic is hell and the half an hour ETA can easily become an hour if we’re not careful. Thankfully, Silver is the best pilot.

  “I meant to ask you too, Eladia. Are you okay?” Dale’s the one that asks the question now.

  Frankly, even a total stranger seems more interested in my feelings than Jay. I’m starting to wish his dark self was here now; at least he always has something to say. I decide to mislead them by bringing up another subject.

  “Well, I’m a bit concerned. We don’t have a plan about what we’re going to do next, and the cube hadn't reacted to anything since that night two weeks ago.”

  “The cube? What cube? What are you talking about?”

  It’s one of those rare moments where I admit to myself that I’ve kinda screwed it up. I only had to keep one secret, and I kinda ended up spilling the beans. Honestly, this whole thing with Jay has messed up my brain.

  “The cube’s active,” Jay suddenly mutters.

  “What?” Silver and I say at the same time.

  Jay finally turns and looks at me. I can’t shake off the feeling that something has changed inside him, a vital part of his personality. Only that now his eyes are not empty like before. There’s concern in there and a feeling I can’t quite place in his limited palette of sentiments.

  “As you heard, the cube’s active. It pulsates for some time now, especially when I point it towards the sky.”

  Okay, that’s new. I meant to avoid answering their questions, but now I have a million questions myself. But, there’s only one that seems to matter now.

  “Why didn’t you say a thing before? We’re in here for an hour now, and you didn’t say a thing. We could have saved some time coming up with a plan or something.”

  Jay looks me straight in the eyes. “Because I didn’t want to say something. Also, I didn’t know if we would get out of that place alive. Take your pick, whatever makes you feel better.”

  Damn you, Jay. He still thinks I’m just a human trying to patronize him. But I have no time to play family with Jay anymore. The Nusae Artifact has become a priority now after zombies and men with demon masks started appearing.

  I crease my brows and turn to face the main console of the shuttle. From that moment on, I start thinking out loud. “The cube pulsating must mean that it transmits some type of signal to somewhere, leading us to the next piece of the puzzle. Before, Silver was able to find the receiver of that signal.”

  “Eladia, can I make a suggestion?” she suddenly says.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I can use the data I’ve collected from the cube and visualize the signal into some sort of a light beam. By using the spaceship’s holographic projectors, we can have a visual of the energy signal as soon as we embark.”

  “That would be awesome but for now, can you do me a favor? Do you have enough computing power in this shuttle to calculate the general direction the cube transmits at?”

  “Yes. It will take me a minute, though,” she says.

  I lean on the main console and check the incoming data from the energy ray the cube emits when I feel a hand gripping my shoulder. For a moment, I wish it’s Jay’s, but I know inside me that I would have known it if it was indeed him.

  I turn around, and my heart sinks ever deeper; it’s Dale.

  “I know this must be the worst time possible but can you explain to me what’s going on in here? I thought you were going to spend a couple nights in the station, enough for them to bring the crisis under control, and then return to Mosa and continue whatever you were doing. But now...now you sound like you want to leave the planet.”

  His eyes, those deep brown holes that swallow your soul, seem concerned. I can almost feel his worry through his hand squeezing my shoulder. He’s afraid.

  “I’ll explain everything to you as soon as we get to my spaceship, Dale. Until then, please bare with us. Nowhere it’s safe to discuss what we’re doing, especially inside the space station.”

  He nods but I can see that I did nothing to reassure him that everything's gonna be okay. As a matter of fact, I have no idea what am I doing or if we’re gonna survive this adventure. In the end, maybe I avoid answering his questions because I’m afraid what I might hear coming out of my mouth as well.

  When everyone gets seated, we’re finally just outside the space station. The number four is flashing on both sides of the entrance. The shuttle is soundproofed, but the chaos out there has its own, distinctive sound, the kind you don’t have to hear to know it’s bad.

  People are running up and down through the entrance hallways, trying to serve the demands of the ship owners and not cause panic at the same time. What I see is pent up anxiety blowing up to hysteria. It’s bad out there and for once, I’m happy we’re heading straight to our spaceship.

  I turn to say something to the rest of my crew, but right then I see the giant holo-screens on the walls of the space station. A great part of Mosa is already in ruins, fires raging and moving corpses killing people in their path. The crisis is worse than I expected...way worse.

  I then realize that Yaerus is the second planet humanity brought to an apocalypse.

  Silver finally ends with her calculations. A sign on the intergalactic map appears before me, a large circle born in the middle of a blank area of the Known Universe.

  “This can’t be possible!” I say out loud.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Dale asks me.

  “The cube transmits straight to a lost planet. That means that it transmits straight to nowhere.”

  Everyone’s looking at me as I utter those two sentences. Hell, I have no fucking idea what’s going on.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Jay

  Our shuttle arrives at the spaceship without any serious implications. I thought I’ve seen everything back in my days, but corpses walking? That’s a first. Or at least feels like that. Something inside me tells me, though, that if I’ve seen corpses walking in my past life, I would certainly remember it.

  Back in the hospita
l, while we were fleeing from the corpses chasing us, they suddenly stopped. It felt like they wanted us to get away. But, since then, everything else went to hell. Mosa has declared that the city is in a state of crisis, the local authorities trying their best to take control the situation.

  We were flying for about an hour in that tiny, metal box and it feels good stretching my feet inside the spaceship. Eladia’s spaceship is big, I admit it, but not as big as mine before it crashed on Primordial Earth. What I wouldn’t give to be there now, repairing it. I never did a good job searching for information related to my past while being there.