by Elin Wyn
But going back to check on things meant that I would be likely to run into Sybil again, and be tormented again by things that I could never have.
My mind raced with different ideas. I came up with and rejected several excuses not to go with Jalok. Then I tried to convince myself that Sybil probably wouldn’t even be home, instead would be out enjoying the life of a young socialite.
Naturally, I knew that my hopes were likely in vain, but it was all I could do to keep my anxiety in check. On the way to the mayor’s house, I also spent time trying to figure out a way to cover up my disfigurement.
I came up with the idea of always keeping my head turned away from her, but quickly rejected that notion. All I would have done was make it obvious I was trying to hide the scar.
As we strolled down the avenue, Jalok going on and on about something I didn’t care to discuss, I stopped at a shop selling hats. Jalok continued on up the street, still running his mouth, until he realized I was no longer abreast of him.
He returned to the shop just as I was trying on a wide brimmed straw hat. Unfortunately, it didn’t do much to hide my face. I was just considering trying on a scarf when Jalok burst out laughing.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Just trying on a hat, what’s the big deal?”
“You’ve never even looked at hats before. What gives? Are you embarrassed to be seen with me because I’m dating a human girl?”
“Get over yourself for a nanosecond. I’m a feared Skotan warrior and I’ll try on hats if I want to, with or without your approval.”
I stalked out to the street in anger, leaving Jalok in my wake. He tried several times to engage me in conversation the rest of the way to Dottie but I didn’t give him the satisfaction.
The mayor’s house was a nicely appointed home with landscaping and those running lights by the sidewalk rich folks seemed to enjoy. The whole way up the walk, I felt like a condemned man walking to his execution.
There was no way to hide my disfigurement from Sybil. Surely, she would find my scarred visage hideous and nauseating, but there was nothing I could do.
We were shown into the home and led to a parlor, where Dottie and Sybil sat with beverages, going over the information from Nyheim.
Jalok and Dottie briefly kissed, and I stayed around behind him, hoping I would escape notice.
Sybil’s gorgeous face turned my way, and she actually smiled. I could detect no trace of any disgust in her expression, but being a politician’s child, she was probably skilled at hiding her true feelings behind a staged smile. I couldn’t take the scrutiny and turned away, staring out the window at the fading sunlight.
“So, what’s your theory, beautiful?” Jalok wrapped his arms around Dottie and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
“Let’s just stay here for a while and see what happens, alright?” Dottie shrugged. “I don’t want to influence the results by telling you too much.”
Sybil rolled her eyes. “You’ve been using that line since school. Sometimes you have to tell people actual facts, you know?”
Dottie and Jalok chatted, mostly about what she’d been working on. Sybil’s musical laughter joined in with their own, and I felt more alone, more isolated and unwanted, than I ever had in my life.
As the three of them chitchatted, I tried to pretend I was interested in some of the books lining the walls, but I couldn’t even register what language they were in.
The sound of the door opening heralded the arrival of Mayor Anatosian himself.
Watching the tenseness in Sybil’s shoulders, I could guess what Dottie’s theory was. I hoped for everyone’s sake she was wrong.
The august personage smiled when he saw his daughter. I’d seen him before, but not this close. He was a relatively unimpressive-looking human, not rippled with muscle like some I’d seen, but possessed of a certain presence that probably served him well in politics.
“Hi, Daddy.” Sybil smiled sweetly at her father. She gestured to Cazak and me, the movement only slightly stiff. “Have you met my friends, Jalok and Cazak?”
Anatosian’s gaze snapped over to Jalok, then to me. A strange flash of light came over his eyes, and I instantly became alert. Wasn’t that supposed to be a sign of the Ancient Enemies trying to possess someone’s mind?
“What is the meaning of this?” Anatosian’s face turned red as the fading sun, and his nostrils flared out with each labored breath. His hands clenched and unclenched into fists at his sides.
“Daddy, what’s wrong? Why are you—”
“I don’t want—alien scum—my house—kill you.”
“What?”
Anatosian’s eyes narrowed to slits and a guttural growl escaped his throat. Suddenly he wasn’t moving like a middle-aged human, but more like a predatory animal. Veins stood out on his forehead and arms as he worked himself into a lather, snarling and snapping like a beast.
“Daddy, what are you doing?”
With a howl of rage, the mayor of Kaster launched himself right at Jalok. If it had been me, I would have tried to restrain the mayor without hurting him, but Jalok was Jalok. So my cousin reached out and snapped a right cross against the mayor’s jaw.
Jalok and I were from a high-gravity world. A mere tap from either of us should have been enough to lay out even a burly human, let alone a middle-aged pencil pusher.
Instead, Anatosian didn’t even flinch. His grasping hands sought out Jalok’s vulnerable eyes even as my cousin summoned his scaled armor to the forefront.
“Cazak, don’t just stand there, help me!”
The note of desperation in Jalok’s tone made me leap into action. My final thought as I summoned my own scales was that now my face would look even worse, twisted up with anger and exertion. I probably looked like a monster to Sybil.
I came up behind Mayor Anatosian and grabbed him around the chest. I attempted to pull him off Jalok, but his grip was much stronger than I’d anticipated.
The three of us bounced around off the walls and smashed through a low coffee table in our struggle. Despite there being two of us, Mayor Anatosian was proving to be a daunting challenger.
Of course, I should point out that the two of us were striving not to hurt him badly, whereas he was vicious, an animal on the attack.
With effort, I managed to pry his hands away from Jalok’s throat, but then he turned his attention to me.
Then the bastard bit me. Actually fucking bit me! Civilian security came pouring through the door, but stopped dead in their tracks to take in the spectacle of an elected official sinking his teeth into a Skotan.
I wasn’t about to smash Sybil’s father’s brains in right in front of her. His strength was nearly equal to my own, but I managed to keep him at bay long enough for Jalok to sneak up behind him.
Jalok wrapped his arms around the good mayor’s neck in a sleeper hold, cutting off the flow of blood to his brain. Soon Anatosian slumped in my cousin’s grip, limbs going slack.
“Do you think it was—” Jalok’s voice trailed off, because he didn’t want to spill classified information in front of civvies.
“Had to be. Let’s take him back to a facility ourselves.”
The civilian security team didn’t argue the point as I called in a shuttle to ferry Mayor Anatosian away in.
I couldn’t help but think that Sybil must have been truly horrified with me, not just for being ugly, but for beating up her father in her own home.
She couldn’t be more disgusted with my actions than I was.
Sybil
A hovercar with the official seal of the Nyheim-Allied Worlds League pulled up in front of my home. When Dottie said she had arranged for a ride to take me to the airport, I didn’t think she meant this. The driver was a stern-looking K’ver.
I stood at the rear passenger door and stared at my reflection. When it became obvious that the driver wasn’t going to get out and let me in, I pulled the door open myself. I felt numb as I plopped myself in the seat.
I threw my bag on the seat in front of me. I don’t even remember packing.
“Where are we going?” I asked the driver.
“There’s an aerial unit heading to a site near Nyheim. You’re catching a ride with them.”
“Oh.”
Great.
We drove in silence. I had a million questions I wanted to ask, but the driver didn’t seem like much of a talker. The odds that he had the answers to my questions were slim to none, anyway.
“Do you know if a human named Dottie will be there?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” came the curt reply. Obviously, this wasn’t the job the K’ver had signed up for. I wondered if he was being punished or something.
It wasn’t until the car came to a stop that I realized we weren’t taking a flight out of the regular airport. We drove through a military base milling with aliens and humans alike. The driver followed directions to an airstrip crudely carved out of the ground. He came to a stop, turned the hovercar off, and then just sat there.
“What next?” I asked after a few moments.
“You get out.”
“I’m going through a fucking traumatic experience over here. Would it kill you to be a little nicer?”
“Have a nice day, ma’am,” he tossed over his shoulder. I grabbed my bag and jumped out of the car.
Dottie found me at once. Cazak was with her. He had a white gauze patch taped over where Dad had bitten him. I couldn’t keep my eyes from the wound. My father had done that.
My father!
“How is it?” I asked him.
He didn’t look at me or speak. Instead, he gave a shrug and walked off toward the aerial unit I guessed we were taking.
“I still don’t understand what’s happening,” I told Dottie.
“Your father’s being transferred with us to a detention facility.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“I know it sounds scary.” Dottie placed a hand on my arm. “I’ve seen the place for myself. It’s quite comfortable.”
“It’s still basically a jail.” I bit my bottom lip as tears welled up in my eyes.
“No, it’s not,” Dottie assured me. “It’s more like a hospital. It’s comfortable.”
“Hospitals aren’t comfortable.”
I felt bad for shooting down everything Dottie told me. She was just trying to make it easier on me.
Dottie led me to a security checkpoint. My bag was searched for weapons. Turns out, I packed way too many pairs of pants, one jacket, and a cocktail dress, for some reason. I must’ve been super out-of-it while packing.
“You can borrow whatever you need,” Dottie murmured as I watched my belongings get shoved back into my bag.
Next, two Valorni scanned my body from top to bottom. I didn’t know what they were looking for, but apparently everything I wore was unacceptable for military air travel. Had I known I was going to be getting on an aircraft today, I wouldn’t have worn so much jewelry.
It took ten minutes before I was allowed to board the flight. I’d never been on a public aircraft before. When Dad traveled for work, an aircar was provided for us.
I liked traveling that way. Watching the countryside change was one of my favorite parts of driving. That, and stopping at any place that looked interesting for food or shopping.
I expected seats on the aircraft. Instead, it was just a series of metal benches with straps that went over the chest and shoulders. Dottie took the seat nearest to the body of the plane. There were no windows. I sat next to her. Cazak sat down beside me.
And my father’s gurney was fastened to hooks in the floor so it couldn’t roll.
I looked away, struggling with the cross straps. They kept getting tangled or bunching all to one side.
Without a word, Cazak reached over and tugged on one of my straps. The harnessed snapped into place so that I could clip myself in.
“Thanks,” I said.
Cazak nodded and fixed his gaze straight ahead. Rather than force him into conversation, I turned to Dottie.
“I need you to tell me more,” I said.
“I can’t tell you much until he’s examined. That’s not my area of expertise,” she replied, her eyes filled with concern.
“Just tell me something. Anything. Even your best guess, I don’t care.” I knew I sounded crazy but I didn’t care. More aliens filed on to the plane and clipped themselves into their seats.
“If it’s not the you-know-what,” she looked around, and I realized she probably hadn’t been supposed to tell me about the people being possessed, “my guess is it’s some kind of neurovirus,” she said. “He’s behaving similar to how Xathi hybrids behaved, only there’s no crystallization of the skin.”
“But all the Xathi are gone.” I turned to Cazak. “Right?”
He gave a curt nod in response.
“That’s why we don’t know for sure what it is,” Dottie continued. “For as many similarities as there are to Xathi hybridism, there are as many differences. We call them ‘the possessed’. It’s a mystery.”
“That’s not very comforting.” I chewed my bottom lip.
“I’d rather give you honest answers than comfortable ones.”
“You’re right,” I sighed. “I’m sorry. I think I’m still in shock.”
“That’s only natural.” Dottie patted my knee. “Just know that he’ll be in the best place he could possibly be. The scientists that cured hybridism will be working with him.”
“That helps,” I nodded.
“Good. I’m going to try to get one of them in a conference chat.” Dottie pulled out a datapad and started tapping away. I decided to let her work. She’d already told me everything she could.
The aircraft took off with a thunderous roar. I clutched my shoulder straps until my knuckles went white. When the aircraft tipped, my stomach felt like it was going to jump into my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to pretend I was somewhere else, anywhere else.
It took twenty minutes for the aircraft to level out. Only then did I open my eyes. To my surprise, Cazak was staring at me, his expression blank. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything.
“Thank you,” I ended up stammering.
“What?”
“Thank you for not hurting my dad,” I said. “He took a good chunk out of you with that bite. You would’ve been in the right to do some damage in return, but you didn’t.”
If Cazak was surprised by my words, he didn’t show it. He stared at me for a long while before answering.
“You’re welcome.”
He looked away, fixing his gaze on a point at the far end of the plane.
I noticed he angled his head in a strange way. From where I sat, I couldn’t see his scar at all. I wondered if he was doing that on purpose.
Was he ashamed of his scar? That seemed silly. He was a giant, powerful, dedicated soldier. It seemed only natural that he would acquire some scars along the way. As strange as it was, I liked the way his scar looked.
Cazak was handsome, more handsome than any of the human men I took up with out of boredom. There was no point in denying that. He was the first person I’d felt an honest attraction to in the longest time. His scar only added to that.
I wanted to tell him as much, but he didn’t seem interested in talking to me. Besides, I didn’t know if he found me as attractive as I found him. What if I told him what I thought and he looked at me like I was crazy? What if he wasn’t attracted to humans at all?
Dottie and Jalok seemed to be in love, not just in love, but perfectly matched, almost as if it were fated. That didn’t mean every alien was keen on humans as romantic partners.
Why did I care so much? I barely knew Cazak. The thing was, I wanted to know him. He had that quiet, mysterious thing going for him. It was undeniably attractive. Plus, I couldn’t shake this feeling that there was so much more to him beneath the gruff exterior. I wanted to know him.
But now didn’t exactly seem l
ike the best time to try to get to know him. If I did, it would be more about finding a way not to think about my father than actually listening to what Cazak had to say. Besides, he didn’t look like he was in a conversational mood.
I didn’t want to annoy him before I had a chance to get to know him better.
I wished the aircraft had windows. I was starting to feel claustrophobic. I looked over at Dottie’s datapad. She was frantically typing back and forth with someone, hopefully someone who knew what was happening to my Dad.
“Any news?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“They’re going through his readings now,” she explained. “Once we actually get him to the facility, they’ll be able to do more.” She bit her lip. “But you have to understand. The tests are being designed as subjects become available. We just don’t have much to work with.”
“So, basically, the top scientists are forced to guess?”
“Yes, but they’re much better at guessing than anyone else,” Dottie smiled. I appreciated that she was trying to make me laugh, but I didn’t feel like laughing right now.
“Try not to worry too much,” she said. “I know that’s the most unhelpful thing to say, but-”
“I know what you mean.” I offered her a weak smile.
Unfortunately, all I could do was worry.
Cazak
Our shuttle lurched as it encountered turbulence in the skies over Nyheim.
I had spent most of the flight trying to keep the scarred side of my face turned away from Sybil. There had been a tiny smidge of hope in me that she really didn’t mind, but the other voices in my head drowned it out. I still believed that there was no way someone like Sybil could ever be interested in someone like me, not even out of pity.
I glanced over at her out of the corner of my eye and found her speaking to Dottie again. Sybil’s lovely face was marred with a worried frown, and she held her unconscious father’s hand. It had to bother her that his wrists were strapped to the gurney, but precautions had to be taken.
There was still a lot we didn’t know about the Ancient Enemies and any effects they might have had on human physiology. For all we knew, the sedatives would be ineffectual on someone in the throes of possession.
