Dhakhar

by Annabelle Rex

  “What did they do to you?” he asks, voice all warm honey and sympathy as he raises his fingers, brushes them against the spot on my forehead where the tentacle creature gripped me. I flinch, memories ripping through my mind again.

  Princess.

  Princess.

  Princess.

  “Please get me out of here,” I say, my voice little more than a moan of pain and fear.

  Dhakhar gives a sharp nod. “Come on.”

  He takes my hand, leading me down one of the tunnels. Turning a corner, we come face to face with some of the kidnappers. Dhakhar back-pedals, pushing me the way we’ve just come as bullets whip past us, clipping against the stone walls, sending sharp little slithers of stone flying through the air.

  “Run!” he says.

  I haven’t run anywhere since my last PE lesson almost ten years ago, but bullets are an excellent motivator to keep going, even when my heart starts to ache with the effort of it, legs turning to lead weights, lungs burning with every snatched breath. I run with no consideration for where we’re going, and Dhakhar follows me, taking pot shots at our pursuers every so often.

  I run and run.

  And then my foot hits the floor and keeps going through it, my body tumbling downwards. My legs hit solid ground, the force of the fall jarring my whole body, teeth clanging together, but I keep falling - slipping and sliding now over the rock. Scrabbling with my feet, I attempt to slow my descent, burning the skin of my palms as a try to grip the walls either side of me. Then the tunnel spits me out and I roll to a stop amongst the broken bits of rock.

  Once again, I don’t want to move. Only this time it’s not fear pinning me in place but the sudden feeling of every muscle and bone in my body crying out in pain. I hurt everywhere. And in the cacophony of pain, I can’t tell if any of it is serious, or if all of it is.

  A few more bits of rock rain out of the tunnel, striking me - little insect bites of pain amongst the building ache. Then something heavier lands. I open my eyes, but see nothing, the darkness absolute. Then something snaps and a spark of light appears, followed by a dim glow that gradually grows brighter, illuminating first just a hand, then an arm and, eventually, a face.

  Dhakhar.

  “Can you stand?” he asks, crawling towards me. “I don’t think they’re going to follow us down here, but… Can you stand.”

  He puts his hands under my arms, lifting me. I groan as I settle my weight onto my feet, my entire body protesting. But I stand, and when Dhakhar starts walking, I follow, limping only slightly.

  He picks a tunnel, I think at random, swinging his light round its entrance. Apparently satisfied, he starts walking down it. I follow a pace or two behind, a pain brewing in my body that I fear is only going to get worse. I ache everywhere, but the worst of the pain is in my left ankle, and every time I step on it, the ache gets a little sharper, a little louder.

  The worst of it, though, is I don’t trust my eyes. I saw a ghost. I looked at Dhakhar and saw something else, something horrible. How can I trust that what I’m seeing now is real?

  Trust the pain, I think, stepping with my worsening left leg. Trust the pain. It cuts through everything else.

  “We still seem to be going deeper,” Dhakkar says, looking at the floor. “Not much, but there’s a slight downwards slope to this tunnel.” He turns back to me, his light making me squint. “Eventually, it’s going to open out into a room, or branch off into other tunnels. As long as we aim to go in a straight line and when we get a choice of directions, always pick the tunnels going upwards, we should find our way out.”

  I nod, holding my arms around myself. The darkness beyond the edges of Dhakhar’s light is absolute. I wish he would take my hand again.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” he asks, waving the light up and down as if to check me over.

  “Charlie,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Before. You called me Charlie.”

  “I did,” he says. “I… should I apologise?”

  I shake my head. “No. I prefer it when you call me Charlie. Don’t call me ‘ma’am’ or ‘princess’ any more. Please.”

  Princess.

  Princess.

  Princess.

  The memory threatens to rise again, but I stuff it back down.

  “Charlie,” Dhakhar says, cautious. “Are you okay?”

  I nod, even as tears escape from my eyes, running down my cheeks and dripping off my jaw.

  “I’m okay, I… Let’s just get out of here. I don’t want to be down here.”

  “Listen to me,” Dhakhar says, and looks at me with eyes all intense and serious. “I am going to get you out of here, okay? Jaxran is coming back with reinforcements, and they’ll take out the rest of the hostiles, and then they’ll come looking for us. You are going to be just fine. I am going to make sure of that.”

  I nod, swiping the tears from my face.

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

  I’m not sure how long we walk for. Without light, there are no indicators of the passage of time. I only know that it feels like it’s been forever, but then, when every step is a bit of torture, a few minutes has the power to feel like forever.

  “You’re limping,” Dhakhar says.

  “Feels like I’m stepping on broken glass when I put my left foot down,” I admit.

  Just the left foot, at least. The right still feels okay, and no other part of the general ache has developed into anything worse.

  “You probably jarred your ankle when you fell,” he says, shining his light on his belt. Several guns and knives hang from it, but he shakes his head. “Nothing I can use here to strap it.”

  “Let’s just keep walking,” I say, preferring the thought of pain to being in this tunnel any longer than necessary.

  But Dhakhar shakes his head, stepping close to me and pushing his light into my hand.

  “Stay here,” he says, snapping another light and shaking it until it brightens. “I’m going to scout ahead.”

  “Stay here?” Terror fills me at the thought.

  “I won’t be more than ten minutes,” he says. “I’m just going to have a quick jog down the corridor, see if it’s going anywhere. Then I’ll come back and we’ll make a plan. There’s no way the hostiles are following us now. We’d have heard them. They have no idea where we’ve gone, and they probably don’t want to be down here any more than we do.”

  “They think we’re going to die down here all by ourselves.”

  “We are not going to die down here,” he says, firm enough in his conviction that for a second, I believe him. “Sit down, rest. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  And then he’s off, jogging away down the corridor, his light gradually fading into the distance.

  I look down at my light. It looks like a glow stick, only bright enough that if everyone in the club had one, it would be like daytime, not a fun fluorescent disco. I grip it tight in my hands, even through it causes stabbing pains in my skinned palms. All I can hear is my own breathing, the distant echo of Dhakhar’s footsteps fading along with his light.

  I can’t help looking at the darkness behind me, ahead of me. I’m a little island of light in a sea of black, and anything could be out there.

  Creatures lurking. Creatures with tentacles and…

  “Stop it,” I hiss to myself. “Stop it stop it stop it.”

  I close my eyes and try to picture things that make me happy. Going shopping with Nat, even when we can’t afford to buy anything. Going for drinks in the pub. Jason. Waking up next to him, watching him get dressed into the previous night’s clothes as he talks on the phone to his crew.

  I’ve got to clean up the mess you made today.

  No. It’s just the dark. Just whatever the octopus thing has done to my brain. Jason is good. Jason is kind. He saved me from Mark he…

  Slipped drugs into my bag without me knowing.

  Lost his temper with me in the pub because I was arrested.

  I h
ug my knees to my chest, trying to hold myself together, but the tears are back and I can’t stop them.

  You know you’re the most important person to me.

  You know who you are.

  You’re my princess.

  My princess.

  In my head, the voice saying it alternates between Jason’s and my father’s until I don’t know which is which any more.

  You’re going to die down here.

  The voice seems to come from inside me, and also from all around me, as if the walls are whispering. And this time it’s definitely in my father’s voice. I jam my hands over my ears, but the whispering voice just laughs.

  You are going to die down here all alone.

  In the corner of my eye, I think I see a tentacle slithering out of sight.

  “He’s coming back for me,” I say to myself. I’m not convincing.

  Why would he come back for you? What do you bring to the table? You’re useless, Charlie Warren, and you know it. Wouldn’t last five minutes in a supermarket.

  I keep my hands pressed so firmly over my ears, I don’t hear footsteps approaching, don’t notice Dhakhar until he drops to his knees beside me.

  “There’s a clearing not far ahead,” he says, slightly breathless. “It must have been somewhere the miners set up - there are storage bunkers and huts. I’m thinking we should shelter there for the night. Rest up. It’s not so late, but I can’t guarantee we’ll find somewhere as good if we keep walking. We can make a plan in the morning. It’s maybe ten minutes. Think you can make it, or do you want me to carry you?”

  He doesn’t sound like he’s horrified by the idea, but despite the memory of his hands on my face, my mind goes back to the way those women gasped, horrified, when he shook my hand.

  About as much use as a chocolate teapot, you are, the walls say in my mother’s voice.

  “I can manage,” I say, pushing myself upright.

  When you push me, sometimes I snap, Jason’s voice croons from the ceiling.

  I limp forwards, each step stoking the fire in my ankle until the tears aren’t just from fear, they’re from the pain, too.

  I know you’re a bit thick, love.

  “At least let me take some of your weight,” Dhakhar says, his hand closing around my arm.

  I can’t help myself around you, Charlie. You’re making me do this.

  I yank it away. “I can manage!”

  “Princ… Charlie. You don’t have to…”

  “I do!” I yell. “I do have to. I have to do things for myself for once in my life. No one will help me. No one cares. No one…”

  “Charlie,” Dhakhar says, and the exasperation in his voice grates against my edges. “I’m trying to help you. You have an injured leg. You’ll hurt yourself worse if you don’t let me.”

  “Just go! Just leave already. I know you’re going to the moment I’m not looking. Spare yourself the bother and just leave me now.”

  “I’m not going to leave you, Charlie. I swear.”

  Part of me wants to believe him, but part of me just can’t.

  “Why wouldn’t you?” I say. “I’m awful.”

  “Charlie,” he says, voice as soft as I’ve ever heard it. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but you aren’t being rational right now.”

  And because absolutely what I want to do is prove his point, I burst into fresh tears.

  Dhakhar just shakes his head, a hint of amusement in his lips. Then he sweeps me up into his arms.

  I don’t have the energy to protest. And after a moment, I don’t even want to. Being close to him, his body heat bleeding into me, is settling me somehow. My head rests against his chest, my ear pressed to the point above his heart. The steady beat of it fills my head until my own heart starts beating in time with it. A calm, reasonable pace for the first time since the kidnapper dragged me out of the room with all the other women in it.

  “Did you find the other women?” I say, snapping out of my moment of relaxation at the memory of them.

  “Jaxran took them back out of the mountain. They’ll be home safe by now,” he says.

  “Good.”

  I sink back into his arms. Close my eyes. See nothing more than the backs of my eyelids. Hear only the gentle beat of his heart.

  I feel the moment we step out of the tunnel into the clearing. The air becomes lighter, less oppressive, and the sound of Dhakhar’s footsteps changes - the echo coming back to us from a much greater distance. I keep my eyes closed, though, right up until I feel Dhakhar step up on to something, and he shifts me in his arms so he can reach out and open a door.

  We’re in a small room, like a portacabin. One of those prefab buildings so common on building sites. It even looks, in the limited sphere of Dhakhar’s glow sticks, similar to an Earth office. A desk in one corner, a living space of sorts at the other end - a small table and chairs and what looks like a kitchen, though a very small one. A thick layer of dust has settled over everything and the air smell strange, musty.

  Dhakhar sets me down on one of the chairs, then pulls the other round so he can sit in front of me.

  “I’m going to take your shoe off now and it’s probably not going to be nice,” he says, lifting my injured foot into his lap, unbuckling the boot.

  I nod, brace myself for the pain. It rolls out from my ankle like waves of knives as he pulls the boot free. Then he explores the joint with his fingers, each touch another knife digging in.

  “It doesn’t feel too swollen,” he says. “Probably just a small sprain, but you’re going to struggle tomorrow. I’ll have a look round, see if there’s a first aid kit. Might be able to fashion a compression bandage, maybe even a splint.”

  He sets my foot down, then goes to stand.

  “Wait,” I say, the word out of my mouth almost before I’ve decided to stay it.

  He lowers himself back into the chair, looking at me with soft, concerned eyes.

  “Don’t…” I say, mortified to have to ask this, but too scared not to. “Don’t leave me here on my own. Please.”

  He nods. “Sure. I won’t go anywhere. I’m right here.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and try to mean it for all the times I didn’t say it before. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. They did something to my head. I feel awful. Like they filled me up with all the bad emotions.”

  He reaches forwards, brushing my hair to the side. “You’ve got a mark on your forehead here.”

  I know he means ‘a mark’ like a smudge of dirt, but my brain hears ‘Mark’ and I’m back outside my sister’s wedding venue, wearing my bridesmaids dress, and Mark is walking towards me.

  “Charlie.” Dhakhar’s hand on my face draws me back. “Where did you go just then?”

  “Somewhere horrible,” I say.

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  I shake my head.

  “Okay,” he says, sitting back, his hands resting on his knees. “That’s fine. But… tell me what to do. Tell me what helps.”

  I look at his hands. His touch helps. That not-so-Human contact. It keeps me rooted in the now. Stops the memories taking over.

  “I…” I swallow. “You won’t like it.”

  “Well, now I’m intrigued,” he says, flashing me a brief grin.

  I hesitate a moment, then reach out and take his hand, closing my eyes so I don’t have to see the distaste creep back into his face. For a long moment, he goes quite still. Then his fingers thread through mine and his other hand goes over the top, sandwiching my hand between his. I open my eyes.

  “Doesn’t this make you feel uncomfortable?” I ask.

  Dhakhar gives a soft laugh. “No. That’s… You noticed that, huh?”

  I nod.

  “That’s a Vetruen thing. The touching. They don’t… they just don’t.”

  “Vetruen?”

  “Like H’V… Like the Commander. They are… were… are the dominant species in the Universe. So their culture is considered the norm. It cr
eeps in to how the rest of us behave.”

  “Oh. But you don’t mind it?”

  “I don’t mind it as long as you don’t mind it.”

  “It makes me feel better,” I say. “It’s… nice.”

  Our eyes meet in the half-light

  “You’re glowing,” he says, frowning.

  I look down.

  The necklace beneath my top is glowing a faint red.

  “Bought it at the market,” I say, brushing the material of my shirt aside to reveal the flat piece of crystal beneath.

  He nods. “It suits you.”

  The crystal glows a little brighter.

  Chapter 15

  Dhakhar

  I sit with her until she’s calmed down. I hold her tiny little hand in mine and all those feelings I’ve been having since I first saw her, those feelings I’ve been squashing down and pushing aside, come rushing back in.

  We’ve broken a barrier now. My touching her isn’t just not abhorrent. It makes her feel better. She’s soothed by it. Humans must be touchy creatures - another way they are outside the universal norms. And dammit, but I want to keep touching her. Want to touch more than just her hands.

  My mind goes back to the moment in the corridor when she’d been panicking, and I used my body to trap hers, to stop her kicking and punching until I could get through to her. I should only have been thinking about her safety, her welfare, but I wasn’t. Some part of my subconscious was cataloguing exactly how it felt to have her body pressed up against me, because I can recall it now in painful detail. The soft swell of her breasts against my chest. Her hips locked with mine.