by Calista Skye
He pulled up the virtual control panel and conducted a search for it. There it was – a small dark patch on the screen, indiscernible to the naked eye. It had started to shrink and would be a tight squeeze but Eyanis was confident they would make it. He collapsed the control panel and started to accelerate towards the rift.
“Brace yourself, Lanek” he said over the intercom, “We’re jumping through space”.
“Wait”, Lanek replied, “I’m in the show—”
The intercom cut out as the engines, lights, and probably the water, switched off.
Chapter 4
Helen woke up. She was cold. It felt as though she were lying in a fridge. However, where a fridge might be expected to be dark, this room was bathed in a pale blue glow.
She sat up. Gooey tendrils of congealing blood stretched from her arms and legs to the ground, chaining her to the floor. Looking at it, even thinking about it made her feel sick.
After a moment of nausea, she summoned the courage to free herself and pulled at them until they broke.
Where was she? The creature she’d seen in London was still there, in its three segments. The only problem was that London was gone.
Her students… She hoped they were all safe. What if some of them got lost due to the fact that the landmark they were relying on had suddenly disappeared from the skyline? Hopefully Nick could take care of them until she figured out a way to get back.
She took out her company phone to call him but there was no signal. Typical. It was always when you needed it the most that it didn’t come through for you.
She stood up and walked around the room, feeling the coolness of the walls. Or, this could just be one of those dreams that frightened you a bit, made you panic, and rewarded you with unfathomable and intense relief when you woke up and discovered none of it had actually been real after all.
Without warning, the ground and in fact, the whole room, started shaking. It was that unrelenting juddering feeling, like bad turbulence, only much, much worse. She was thrown against the wall, hurting her shoulder and bumping her head. Either way, it didn’t feel like a dream.
After what seemed like an age of being shaken, tossed, buffeted and flung once again into the half-dry blood of the creature, everything grew still. Helen lay where he was for a moment, feeling battered and bruised, though not necessarily too much worse for wear.
As she sat up again, she noticed a crease down the centre of the wall in front of her. A door? She half walked, half crawled over to it and pushed it. Nothing. She looked for a door handle or something but the surface was flat and unyielding.
Next to the door she noticed a panel with a vacant, black screen. She pressed it and a light flickered on. Suddenly, there were lots of options in some sort of writing she couldn’t understand. She tried a few but nothing happened.
Nothing for it, then but old fashioned banging on the door.
“Hello?” she called, “Hello, can you hear me? Is someone out there?”
Chapter 5
“You are dead” said Lanek, stepping into the cockpit with his hair dripping and nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. He stormed over to Eyanis, picked him up by his clothing and threw him to the ground.
“It was payback for Fruneg” Eyanis said.
Lanek picked up a pole which had been knocked to the floor during the travel through the rift in space. He swung it down at his companion. Eyanis rolled out of the way just in time, reaching for another pole as he righted himself. He stood up.
“Come on, then” he said.
Lanek swung the pole. It was straight on course for Eyanis’ head. However, Eyanis blocked the attack with his own. Lanek was the stronger of the pair but growing up play-fighting like this with him, Eyanis had learnt if he didn’t want to be pummelled, he had to focus on being fast, rather than strong.
“You forget I’ve just fought a d’gorran” said Lanek.
He tried to force the pole down but Eyanis was putting up a good fight.
“You forget you’re tired out from fighting a d’gorran, while I’m raring to go”.
Without warning, Lanek backed off.
“That’s what I thought” Eyanis said. Lanek held up a hand to silence him.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
“What?”
Eyanis listened. He couldn’t hear anything. But then…a thud on the door where the dead d’gorran was kept.
“Are you sure you killed it?” he asked.
“I took out its heart”.
Lanek reached for the gun attached to the back of his seat. He proceeded cautiously to the door and pressed a sequence on the screen next to it. The door slid open.
Something covered in dried streaks and splodges of blood fell out, into the cockpit.
“Okay. What’s that?” asked Eyanis.
Lanek kept his gun on it. It looked at him and instantly put its hands up, its brown eyes widened in fear. Lanek wouldn’t bet on it covered with all that blood, but it seemed to be female.
“One of the creatures from that planet” said Lanek, “We can’t go back now so just let her outside the hatch”.
“No, she’ll die”.
The creature said something neither of them could understand.
“Well, she can’t stay on board”.
“Then drop her off at the nearest space station. Someone there should be able to help her get home”.
“The nearest space station is weeks away”.
“Come on, surely you can last a few weeks with her on board”.
Lanek scowled. Could he put up with her for a few weeks? Yes. Did he want to? Certainly not.
“There’s no room for her here”.
It was a two-man ship – just two bedrooms.
“She can have my room and I’ll just share with you. It will be like old times”.
Lanek remembered well how, in their early adolescence, they used to sneak away in the one-man ship owned by Eyanis’s dad, seeking adventure on nearby planets. Back then, it would have been novel to pick up an alien creature from another world and bring it back to Asiroth as a pet, though his younger self had had something a little less humanoid in mind.
“What if she tries to kill us in our beds?”
“Look at her”, said Eyanis, “Does she look like she’ll try to kill us?”
Lanek looked at her properly for the first time. Brown eyes etched with fear, brown hair tied back in a simple ponytail – an unusual combination. She was smaller than an Asithian and looked harmless enough but as he knew from his own fiancée, looks could be deceiving. However, he knew Eyanis was not going to back down on this one.
“Fine” he said and lowered his gun.
Helen took that as a good sign for now, though she still felt apprehensive. She couldn’t understand a single word they were saying. They could be discussing how best to kill her or rape her or any number of things. They kept gesturing towards her so she knew that whatever they were saying, it was about her. She looked up at the two men. They seemed human, though something about them was off somehow. For a start, one had thick sandy brown hair, hanging somewhere past his ears. A few locks had been bound with beads and coloured threads and a purple feather draped down towards his shoulder. However the thing which really caught her attention was his eyes. They were the same shade of purple as the feather. They made him look striking, and perhaps just a little bit intimidating.
The other looked more… ‘normal’. His eyes were blue, though perhaps more vibrant than she was used to seeing, and his hair, hanging to his shoulders was black and clung to his forehead in what looked like damp tendrils, though, of course this might naturally be how his hair was.
Unlike his companion, this one seemed only to be wearing some kind of sarong and a scowl, on his face. In this dim light, at least, his skin had a luminescent, bluish tinge. An Intricate black marking adorned his torso, and rippling over the muscles of his abdomen.
Even though Helen was uncertain of the situation,
had no idea who he was and couldn’t understand a word he was saying, she had faculty enough to see that he was very good looking and very toned. In fact, the skin was so taut over his muscles, it looked like it could almost have been painted on. It was just a fleeting observation.
The one with the sandy brown hair and purple eyes suddenly left the room, leaving her with the dark-haired one holding the gun. He seemed annoyed, and since his gun was pointed straight at her, she kept as still as possible, so as not to provoke him. Instead, she tried to guess where she was, based on his appearance. It turned out to be impossible, however.
Their unusual eye colours and luminescent complexion, coupled with the beam of light that had descended round her by the Thames right before she blacked out, made her open to the debate that they might be extra-terrestrials. Or, she could be dreaming, though she doubted that as she was feeling pretty lucid right now.
She decided to test her first theory.
“Where am I?” she asked.
The potential alien narrowed his eyes suspiciously at her. He said something which naturally Helen didn’t understand but it was okay. She was an English teacher. Bridging the language gap was what she did. Besides, she’d taught English before to someone who couldn’t speak a word of the language and by the end of the lesson, she could say her name and what country she was from and even ask Helen the same questions. Of course, Helen was now minus a whiteboard and a few good visual aids but she could try at least.
She gestured slowly to herself – slowly being the main word – because the gun was still very much pointed at her.
“I’m Helen” she said and repeated her name a few more times. Then, she gestured towards him.
“And you?”
He looked back at her in cold silence, as did the gun.
“Helen” she said again gesturing at first towards herself, and then back at him, “And you?”
“Lanek” he said.
Helen smiled.
“Lanek” she repeated. At least she had a name now. She felt like she had made some sort of connection with him.
The door to her right opened and the other one returned. He was carrying a small, black box. He said something to Lanek, which seemed to be about the box, or what was inside.
Helen watched, apprehensively as he opened it. It could still be something harmful.
He took something from within and gave it to Lanek. Lanek attached it to his ear. The two of them exchanged a few words. Lanek shrugged and turned to her.
“Helen” he said.
“Yes, I’m Helen”, she said, “And you’re Lanek”.
Lanek turned to the other man and nodded. He said something to him but Helen could only understand the words ‘Helen’ and ‘Lanek’.
Whatever he said, his friend seemed delighted. He took another of those items from the box and passed it to her. She took it, gingerly. It bore a slight resemblance to a hearing aid, though it was clear and a lot slimmer, perhaps only half a centimetre thick.
“What’s this?” she asked, pointing to the device. As she spoke, coloured lights flickered all over it.
“Nyaki” said Lanek. The lights flashed again.
“Nyaki?” asked Helen.
Lanek nodded. Helen began to have the sneaking suspicion that Lanek could understand her.
“What does it do?” she asked.
Lanek drew back his hair, uncovering the nyaki attached to his ear. She placed the nyaki over her own ear in a similar fashion. Nothing happened. Could they be trolling her to make her look like an idiot, or was this one of those shows who pranked unsuspecting people for laughs?
“I take it you can understand us now” said Lanek.
“Wow” said Helen. She needed a moment. So, this was what the nyaki did. Just then, she’d heard Lanek speak the same language as before, but the difference was that somehow, in her brain she understood what he was saying. It was a strange sensation.
“Can you understand me?” she asked.
“Yeah” said Lanek.
The other one watched their little exchange in fascination.
“This is amazing”, he said, “I want in on it”.
He took another nyaki from the box and attached it to his own ear.
“And the sun thus departed along with his soul. Her lips were now stained with the blood of her lover and she wept over his lifeless form”.
“Really?” said Lanek.
“I just wanted to introduce her to some Asithian literature”.
“Some people would introduce themselves first”.
“Oh. Okay”. It seemed that in his excitement over the nyaki, he had skipped a few steps.
“I’m Eyanis” he said.
“Helen” said Helen.
“I think you can put the gun down now” said Eyanis.
“Not ’till I know who she is and how she got on board”.
They both turned to her.
“Well, I was hoping you could help me with that, actually”, she said, “One minute, I’m about to have lunch in London and then this gigantic creature just falls from the sky and starts terrorising people and then, this armoured man just comes out of nowhere in a pillar of light, kills the beast and somehow, I get beamed up and the next thing I know, I’m here, wherever ‘here’ is”.
“It seems it was our fault you were brought aboard”, said Eyanis, “So, I think you can put the gun down, Lanek”.
Lanek looked like he would rather kill a hundred d’gorran than put the gun down. But he reluctantly followed the advice of his friend.
“That was Lanek down on the planet”, said Eyanis, “the armoured man, not the d’gorran”.
‘Down on the planet’…
“Don’t tell me we’re not on the planet anymore…”
If this was one of those prank shows, she would just go with it for now and then afterwards, claim that she knew the whole time but was just playing along.
“Okay, I won’t then, but it doesn’t change the truth” said Eyanis, without an ounce of humour. It was clear to Helen that even with a nyaki, some nuances of her language were going to be untranslatable.
“Well, can you like, take me back?”
“We can’t” said Lanek.
“We used a shortcut to get here which has now closed. It would take months to get back and we’re kind of in a hurry”.
“So I’m stuck in space?”
“We’re going to drop you off at the nearest space station and someone there will help you get home”.
But the disco on the Thames… Something told her it might be cancelled (might have been cancelled – what time was it, anyway?), what with the London Eye falling in and all those people crushed to death…
“So, how long is it to the nearest space station?”
Eyanis looked at Lanek.
“Shall we go to Laundis?”
“Rigna could work out closer” said Lanek.
“Yeah”, Eyanis agreed, “Well, if it’s Rigna, it’s probably going to take about two weeks”.
“Yeah. Sounds about right”.
Eyanis turned back to Helen. She was not impressed.
“I have to stay here for two weeks?” she asked.
“I know it’s not ideal”, said Eyanis, “But there really isn’t any other alternative”.
“We could let her out the hatch” said Lanek.
“What is it with you and the hatch?” asked Eyanis.
“It’s an alternative to going all the way to Rigna”.
“No one is going out the hatch”, said Eyanis.
A series of beeps erupted from the cockpit.
“Sounds like an asteroid belt or something” said Eyanis. He made his way over to the control panel and sat down.
Asteroid belt? That sounded ominous.
“Is that something to be worried about?” Helen asked.
“No”, said Eyanis, keeping his eyes on the screen, “This is a Serl-Vogad ship. You’re in safe hands”.
Of course, Helen didn’t know wh
at a Serl-Vogad ship was. However, it sounded like it was good at not being obliterated by asteroids, which was good enough for her.
Chapter 6
“You know”, said Eyanis, not looking away from the screen, “I’m sure Lanek would give you a tour of the ship and show you where you’re staying. If you want to change your clothes or anything, feel free to wear any of mine”.
“Thanks”.
Helen scrambled up. She accidentally caught Lanek’s eye. He was staring at her. She couldn’t quite read his expression but it didn’t really matter. Everything about him was intimidating. He turned to go through the doors on his left. Reluctantly, she followed, not particularly sure she wanted to be alone with him.
The other side of the door was in stark contrast to the dark cockpit with its black padded leather walls. The corridor she stepped onto was white and spacious, lit by panels of white light which transitioned into yellow and then green as they walked passed. The panels were broken by gold, oval doors, two on either side.
Without warning, he turned on her. It was so sudden, so harsh that she stepped away from him until she found herself backed into the corner. She could feel the cool, smooth surface of the wall against her bare arms, which the sleeves of her T-shirt failed to cover.
In one swift movement, like a leopard closing in on its prey, he was looming over her, his hand resting on the wall near her head. His face was close to hers, close enough to kiss her. Coupled with his state of undress, there was an intimate and possessive sort of masculinity about him which somehow made her heart beat faster.
He fixed her with his piercing gaze.
“If you’re a spy, come clean now” he said in a low, menacing voice.
He moved closer to her. His breath tickled her ear as he dropped his tone.
“Because I will not hesitate to slit your throat if I find out you’re lying”.
“I promise you I’m not a spy” she said trying to sound confident and unaffected, and hoping she was succeeding.
He lingered for a moment longer and then drew away.
“This is the kitchen” he said, as though the previous conversation hadn’t happened. He approached the door. Its gold surface rippled and began to disappear. A second later, it was gone.
