Bear in a Bakery

by Liz Paffel

  She was terrified for her Priya. Getting forced to couple up with an alien male and leave the planet was unfathomable. Keep your emotions out of it, her mother always said. Emotions have no place in rational thinking. They had an entire world population to think about here.

  They had to focus, damn it.

  She pressed the intercom again. “I see cells on the sample’s surface. I think they’re still alive.”

  “There’s nothing living from a pile of smoldering ashes, Alora. Come on.”

  “Maybe... it’s not organic in terms of what we’re used to.”

  Priya glanced up briefly, then went back to her computer. Her shoulders sank as she hunched closer to the computer screen. Honestly, Alora was surprised her friend had even shown up for work after receiving the Summons. She had a matter of days to spend with her family and take care of the final details before she’d leave Earth forever.

  In many ways, it was like dying. On Summons day, Priya would cease to exist on Earth. She’d just be... gone.

  Alora’s gut fell, tightness gripping her throat. She was terribly relieved that she hadn’t gotten a Summons herself, but maybe it would have been better if she had. Then she and Priya could have stayed together. Her world was less frightening with her friend in it. She could be there to comfort her friend, though that area of human nature wasn’t something she was well-versed in. She was about as comforting as a scratchy blanket, despite immersing herself in multiple self-help books and podcasts to assist growth in that area. It was the one area of study she didn’t excel in.

  Alora adjusted herself on her stool. Pulling a breath through her nose, she locked her sadness away and turned her attention back to the microscope. She took another look, but her mind wasn’t in it anymore.

  Nothing had been the same since the Axxeon had landed on earth three years ago. She’d been known as an academic prodigy most of her life, but then the aliens had landed in her grandfather’s corn field. And a trio of humanoids had come out of the triangle-shaped ship that ruined half the crop and approached her as she gaped at them from the kitchen window. One of them came into the house, and she must have fainted, because the next thing she realized was waking up on the kitchen floor with police standing over her, their pale faces and disbelieving eyes confirming the shadowy dream in her mind.

  She’d made contact with aliens. There were here, on Earth. And suddenly she wasn’t just known around the city for her intelligence; she was known around the world as the first person to make confirmed contact with an alien lifeform.

  Her face went cold with the memory of lavender eyes drilling into hers, searching as if reading her mind. The leader had been tall, with shocking neon blue hair, the exposed skin on his face and forearms a blend of blush red and faded green which turned slightly iridescent in the light. There’d been some sort of pattern on his flesh, but she hadn’t gotten close enough to determine what it was. Her muscles turned to stone from disbelief and shock, her brain scanning details that became somewhat jumbled save for one clear thought: he was surprisingly good looking. Humanoid, chiseled. Beautiful.

  As quickly as the Axxeon had arrived, they’d tucked themselves away into compounds scattered over North America and kept their distance from humans. They’d made agreements with world leaders, offering protection from the same enemy that had erased the Axxeon population of females in one swoop. That enemy had Earth in its sights, or so they’d been told. Yet, for the past three years, nothing had happened. No rogue alien ships had shown up and started attacking the planet.

  Alora had her suspicions, but what did she know? She was an introverted, socially stunted biochemist who lived the majority of her life in her lab in order to avoid the real world.

  She didn’t pay a lot of attention. Being a household name for a while had brought enough attention that she made every effort to hide out and focus on her work. But when the Axxeon suddenly demanded human women in exchange for their continued protection of the planet, she paid attention.

  Every woman did. Just two months ago, one hundred women from around the Midwest had been Summoned. They’d quietly disappeared and weren’t heard from, or about, again.

  Now, it was round two and Priya was among the mix.

  “Okay, I’m coming out.” She muttered the words to herself. She was ready to get out of the full bio-suit. After seeing the sample up close, she was glad that she’d donned full protective gear with impermeable fabric, gloves, and a mask. She’d felt silly at first for using so much protection, but she was glad she had. Whatever this was could be dangerous. For all she knew, the Axxeon could have brought a little something with them. Carefully, she removed the slide and put it in a container, then set it the specimen cooler. In the holding room, she slipped out of her gear before walking through a misty spray of decontaminant and entering the main lab.

  “I need another sample,” Alora uttered, mostly to herself. “Something to compare this to.”

  “Let me guess. You’re going to go search the ashes yourself.”

  “I’d like to see where Brandon collected the sample from. There might be other clues that tell us what this oddity is.”

  Priya swiveled on her chair. Her laptop was open to a shoe shopping site. The heels looked beautiful and expensive. “How about you forget about questionable organic matter for a minute and come pick out a pair of heels or two? If you’d rather get a new handbag or something, I’m down with that.”

  “I don’t wear heels or use handbags.”

  “Like I said, if you want something else, just come look. I found this site that reminds me of you.”

  Alora put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Pri, what are you doing?”

  “I want to buy you something, okay? Is that such a big deal? Here, look. These tee-shirts all have science-y sayings on them. This one says, ‘Never trust an atom because they make things up.’” Her smile wobbled. “I ordered a few things for my mom, but they won’t come until after... until after I’m...”

  Alora leaned down and wrapped her arms around her friend’s shoulders. Priya was her only real friend. She understood Alora’s social awkwardness and inability to socialize in a way that formed lasting relationships with others. Since childhood, Alora had difficulty connecting with other children. Her mother blamed it on her high intelligence, had often said people with a lower IQ just weren’t worth her time.

  As she grew, Alora began to understand that she’d had so few opportunities to mingle and hang out with people her own age that she’d been socially stunted. She’d been homeschooled, quickly labeled a prodigy and enrolled in college level courses. Her life had revolved around tutors and extracurricular classes in language, music, mathematics, all within the walls of the home she was rarely allowed to leave. She graduated with her Ph.D. at twenty and only then did her world expand slightly as she left home to go to work. A year later, she moved into her own studio apartment and while an entire world opened up then, she was still learning to navigate interpersonal and intimate relationships.

  “Pri,” she said gently. “What can I do?”

  Her friend threw her hands in the air, breaking the embrace, her straight black hair swaying around her petite shoulders. “How can you keep working like nothing’s happening? You didn’t get the Summons, so you act like it’s just another day around here while I’m literally going to lose my identity, my freedom. My life. I don’t want to have sex with an alien, Alora. I don’t want to leave Earth.”

  Alora swallowed down the lump in her throat.

  No one could believe it was real when the announcement blasted all over the news about the Interspecies Repopulation Program. Single, childless women of reproductive age with college degrees were notified that they were automatically enrolled in the IRP program, and if selected with a Summons, were required to appear at the noted time and place or risk persecution.

  She didn’t personally know any of the women chosen in the first Summons round, so it wasn’t as personal for her. But this time, it wa
s too close to home.

  Alora picked at the hem of her polo shirt. “I’m sorry, Priya. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

  “I can tell.”

  “I just... I just can’t stand the thought of losing you. I’ve been thinking.” She raised her eyes slowly and dropped her voice as if someone might overhear. “Brandon said he’d help if you, um, want to disappear.”

  Priya’s eyes went huge. She stiffened in her seat and tightly shook her head as if she were concerned about being overheard. “They’ll find me.”

  “Not if we—”

  Priya held up her right arm and turned her hand palm up. “Look at my wrist.”

  A small pucker mark marred just below the heel of her hand. A soft blue glow pulsated from deep within the scar.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Seeing the anomaly gave her an immediate pain behind her left breast, as if she’d been pinched. Alora touched there on reaction.

  “I assume a tracking device. I’ve already snuck up to third floor in the hospital and used a portable ultrasound on it. It’s a tiny implant sitting on the inner wall of my radial artery, so I can’t just dig it out. The Axxeon who delivered the Summons grabbed me before I could react, and this thing shot straight into my wrist.” Her sad, terrified eyes shone with tears. “Don’t you see? I can’t run. There’s nowhere that I can go that they can’t find me.”

  “Let Brandon try and get it out. He’s a fire medic; he’s trained to—”

  “Alora.” Priya’s gripped her wrist firmly. “He’d have to cut my artery open to get it out. It’s over. There’s nothing anyone can do.”

  Alora shrugged out of her lab coat, folded it neatly in half and placed it on the table. “I’d cut my own hand off before I’d let them take me.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “I said that I’d cut my hand off and lose the tracker before I’d let them take me.”

  Her four walls and this laboratory were her entire world. There wasn’t much outside of the boxes she lived in, and as much as she daydreamed about exploring the very city she’d grown up in, the idea of doing anything alone terrified her. She’d been working up to having dinner by herself at the bistro two blocks from her apartment. It had been almost a year and she hadn’t quite talked herself into it yet.

  “I’d never survive,” Alora said softly. “But you will, Priya. You will. You’re strong and smart and you know how to navigate your world and relationships. You have what it takes to survive. I don’t. Being Summoned would break me.”

  The only place of sanctuary her entire life had been her grandfather’s farm. After the Axxeon landed there, people flocked to it like it was a tourist attraction instead of a working dairy business. Her grandfather had been forced to sell his cattle and find work at a factory after the constant intrusion of people wanting to take pictures of the place aliens had landed interfered with his ability to farm.

  Priya crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “Your mother is a monster for sheltering you the way she did. But you wouldn’t break. Behind that wild hair and oversized tee shirts is a warrior woman just waiting to come out.”

  She’d never see herself that way. She was too cautious of the outside world.

  Priya closed her laptop with a sigh. “I’ve seen the Axxeon on TV. Tell me again about the day they landed. You’re the only person I know who’s seen one up close.”

  Pulling over a rolling stool with her foot, Alora sat next to her friend and clasped her hands together. There’s so much about her interaction with the Axxeon that was fuzzy, and sometimes it seemed her brain made things up to fill in the blanks.

  “I was doing dishes and looking out the little window above the kitchen sink when the first ship landed. I seriously thought I was being pranked somehow. But then two more landed right behind the first one and I kind of blanked out a little. I felt so dazed that I didn’t realize I’d shattered a glass and sliced my palm open until I saw the blood. And then a long staircase thing came from the ship in the center and three of them came out. They had black masks covering their faces, and they were dressed in what looked like leather flight suits, but I could see their hair was bright blue. And that’s when it really hit me that this was real. These were aliens.”

  She tried to smile, to give her friend encouragement. “They don’t look too much different than human men. I mean, they’re taller and more muscle-y. And their skin is odd shades of greenish red with this pattern all over it. But their eyes are like human eyes, and their face structure is similar. One even had a dimple in his cheek when he smiled. Which, you know, shows that they have some human nuances.”

  The one who took off his mask as he approached the window from the outside and looked at her. “He had lavender eyes. And a strong face with slightly pointed ears at the tips. Wide lips and straight, white teeth. I don’t know, I guess he was almost... handsome.”

  Before she could shake her stupor, he’d been inside the farmhouse. She’d screamed, and that was all she remembered. To this day, the thought of fainting in front of aliens gave her the worst uneasy feeling. Yet, she’d woken up fine. Completely untouched, apparently. Except for the laceration on her palm that was mysteriously gone.

  Another blip of desperation went through her. She grabbed Priya’s hands. “You have to see Brandon and let him dig that thing out of you. We’ll run, together. I have money saved, enough to get us by until we can—”

  “My family will not let me run. They think the Summons is some badge of honor or something. Besides,” Priya wiped at her eyes. “My mother’s cancer treatment was mysteriously paid for yesterday. Don’t you see? They bought me and now I have to make good.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Well, don’t be. Just, prepare yourself because I’m sure you won’t be far behind me. You’ll get Summoned, Alora. There’s no way you won’t be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Priya burst from her stool and crossed her arms over her chest. “They’re Summoning highly educated women, from what I hear. Every woman selected has multiple degrees and a good job. You’re highly intelligent, overly educated, beautiful. And, you’re a damn virgin. That’s like winning the human breeder lottery right there.”

  Alora swallowed hard. “I can’t help it that I haven’t had time to date. I’ve been working.”

  “Really? That’s your take-away from what I just said? To defend yourself against not dating?”

  They both smiled and Alora shrugged. “Sorry?”

  “Work, work, work. I swear. I don’t even know what to do with you.”

  Alora sniffed and gave her friend a wan smile. “Maybe just let me be my geeky, self-absorbed, boring, virgin self, for as long as I still can. Okay?”

  “Fine, girl. Fine.” Priya hurried over to her desk and pulled open the bottom drawer. She produced a bottle of wine and two plastic cups. “We’re going to have a drink together before you leave to find more alien ash samples, and then I’ll finish off the bottle myself. Because who cares if I get drunk at work, right? What are they going to do, fire me?”

  They each dropped to the floor with their backs against the lower metal cabinets. Priya opened the bottle and filled the cups. A loud clank from the hallway startled them both. Wine splashed over Alora’s cup and onto her khakis. She grimaced. Their coworkers might be returning from lunch and would find them drinking. She set her cup behind her and encouraged Priya to hide the evidence, but she just shrugged and took a drink from the bottle.

  The sound came again, like a metal tray being knocked over against the wall outside the door. They looked at each other before getting to their feet. Priya downed her entire cup of wine and tossed it. A shadow passed by the glass window in the door, then another.

  Prickles razed Alora's spine. Licking her lips, she edged toward the row of windows to her left. Something niggled her mind—a little voice that said they needed to get out of here.

  Suddenly, the dark outline of a person forme
d in the door window. She made out the outline of shoulders and a broad chest. Whoever it was, was much taller than the door.

  “Priya,” she blurted hurriedly. “Come over here. Let’s go.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Priya, please. Come over here.” Alora crept to the first window and manipulated the lock. It resisted in her grip, stuck from years of never being opened. She moved to the next window, found the lock to be the same.

  The door handle turned.

  “Priya. Come. Here.”

  The door burst open, displaying a broad chest clad in dark brown leather, strong arms with bulging biceps wrapped in light tan fabric, long fingers, big, square hands. Her heart leapt into her throat.

  Axxeon.

  The alien dipped his head to enter, standing again to full height. Her brain pulsed with the memory. So tall—nearing seven feet—so strong, she could be crushed between their hands.

  The warrior stepped in and scanned the room. He wore a type of communications headset with a device over his left eye. He spotted her and the device shone red.

  “Alora Church,” he called out in a booming voice. Another Axxeon stepped in behind him, with a pair of what looked like neon yellow handcuffs in one hand. “You are required to appear before the King.”

  She pressed her back to the next window, hands behind her butt as she worked the latch. Priya slowly opened the drawer on her desk, her eyes shifting and catching Alora’s. The window latch came free. Her pulse screamed in her ears, her chest near bursting from fear.

  “Alora!” Priya tossed her something, making a half turn to grab a glass beaker from the workstation behind her and spinning back to aim it at the aliens. Alora caught the set of keys her friend threw her, just as the beaker shattered on the floor and emitted a gas cloud. It billowed and blocked the Axxeon’s view.

  “Alora, run!”

  She hesitated a moment, catching her best friend’s eye. Priya nodded and Alora didn’t think as she slid the window open, jumped to the frozen ground three feet below.