by Amber Stuart
Letting go, I looked down, and saw that, yes, it was the wrong arm.
"Hey," I mumbled, catching hold of his other hand. "Sorry."
The hybrid was already pulling herself to her feet.
Nihkil pulled me with him now, using his hands and part of his body to push and tug me up the hill, away from where the woman already staggered back to vertical.
I looked for the other hybrid and saw that it had retreated into the jungle, disappearing along with the gray-clad soldiers. I glimpsed his tattooed face right before he vanished altogether, sliding behind one of those tall, fern-like trees.
Meanwhile, Nihkil kept climbing the gully, staying with the steeper, narrow thread where it led up the hill behind us. I fought to keep up with his longer strides, and to keep my balance on the glass-like rocks in my boots, sliding and nearly falling only to have him grip me hard enough to keep me on my feet. He continued to tug me insistently behind him, breathing hard.
I saw his eyes flicker nervously between me, the cliffs, the hybrid herself... and the shadow overhead.
"You will never escape with her!" the hybrid called after us.
I turned around and saw those orange eyes shining out of the dark of that massive shape overhead.
"We will find you!" the hybrid said. "There is no distance far enough. Cooperate with us now... give her to us, and we will give you sanctuary. You will be freed. Unlocked...”
The wind rose, kicking up clouds of black sand.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard frantic shouts.
Staring up the slope, I realized that less time had passed than I’d thought.
Those guys in the scuba suits had already started to reform on the cliff. I saw more of those metal poles, and the older soldier shouting orders and pointing with his hands. They seemed to be regrouping for some kind of counterattack.
Nihkil moved slower now, mostly because we'd reached the steepest part of the gully. I could almost keep up with him now, but I was still having trouble keeping my balance on the rocks. I placed my feet carefully, not wanting to drag us both down.
Looking back over my shoulder, I watched the woman with the orange eyes follow us.
She’d already closed the gap a lot.
Too much, maybe.
In fact, as I watched her, she moved freakishly fast up that same stretch of sharp rocks. I found myself watching her fearfully once I realized she was gaining on us, irrationally afraid of her. She hadn’t really done anything to me, not yet.
Blood trickled in a thin line down her head from where I’d nailed her with the rock. The red blood looked shocking against those bone-white braids and the white skin of her face.
She took another leaping step towards us, and now Nihkil watched her, too, facing her even as he continued to walk backwards. She took another step and Nihkil tugged and pushed me behind him. He held me back there and at an angle, using his body to shield me from most of the cliffs, as well as the female hybrid herself.
"Stay back!" he said.
Nihkil held up his free hand, his voice harsh, even as he gasped for breath.
“Back!” he repeated. “Do not come closer!”
Realizing again that he was wounded, that he wasn't moving right, I wondered if I should be the one pulling him behind me up the hill, rather than the reverse.
"Help us," the orange-eyed woman said. "Morph, do not fight us. Help us. You know how important she is... how fragile. You know what they will do to her. Do you really want that blood on your hands? Help us now, and we will free you."
I felt Nihkil tense, as if warding off a blow I couldn’t see.
I gripped his fingers tighter, tugging him towards me, further up the steep slope. He looked paler now, too pale. His eyes darted around, still assessing options, still watching the three sides.
But I could feel his attention never really left the female hybrid.
“Nihkil!” I shouted, shaking his arm. “Come on! Let’s go!”
The hybrid took another step.
Nihkil moved back also, but not far enough. His hand felt clammy in mine now.
“Nik!” I said, louder.
He only seemed to hear the hybrid when she spoke.
"You belonged to Malek once, did you not, friend?" she purred. "I saw the mark... you were owned by us before, yes? Why not come home? We would make a place for you again. We would keep your family safe... and this one, too...” Her eyes turned shrewd, darting towards me. "We will even let you keep her... providing you do not damage her."
Nihkil’s fingers crushed mine, growing hotter still.
I yanked harder on his arm, grabbing his wrist with my other bound hand and pulling on him with all of my weight. The hybrid stood even closer to us now, maybe half as far as she had been. While trying to get the two of us up that steep segment of hill, I stumbled again. My knee met rock, too hard for me to ignore.
When I landed smack dab where I’d split the skin before, I cried out in pain.
For a moment, my cry seemed to snap Nihkil out.
With his help, I managed to pull myself back up, sucking in sand-filled breaths. By now, I was exhausted to the point of collapse, from adrenaline and fatigue and whatever else. My neck and spine felt like they’d been fused together. Even so, I forced my limbs faster, fighting for traction in the sinking black sand that now replaced most of the glass-like rocks.
That time, Nihkil’s long legs matched mine. He began to push me to go faster, instead of the reverse, leaning his body to compensate for the steep angle.
Dropping the pretense, and the attempts to bargain, the hybrid began to run up the hill towards us, low to the ground, her gaunt form bent in the wind to meet the angle of the slope. She was closing the distance when a mechanized-sounding voice rained down from the hovering shadow overhead.
When it did, the skull-faced woman hesitated, looking back.
Then she took another step.
Light flashed from overhead.
It blew a hole in the middle of the woman’s chest from behind.
Totally unprepared for that, I shrieked, more startled than appalled. The wind tore the cry from my mouth.
The female hybrid’s body hovered, blank eyed, just before it fell.
Lights continued to flash from the hovering shadow, chasing the soldiers in gray uniforms further back into the trees. Those lights blew holes in the cliff face above us, knocking over trees, setting some on fire. Explosions rocked some higher part of the ridge, where I couldn’t see.
Not long after that, black smoke mushroomed up towards the sky.
I watched the smoke bloom upwards, even as another staccato pattern of flashing lights erupted from the hovering ship.
Still coughing sand, I dragged Nihkil out of the gully.
I was trying to get us under cover, aiming for the undergrowth on the lower part of the ridge. Tall fern trees whipped in the wind a dozen yards from where we climbed, but at least from there, I reasoned, we wouldn’t be seen.
I tried again to get some idea of what hovered over that gully.
Five times the breadth of any cargo or navy plane I’d ever seen, the ridged, boulder-like shadow hovered as if on invisible rails, girded by rotating rings. Fire erupted from a side portal as I watched, rippling the sky.
As I stared, the voice from the ship's underbelly thundered again.
That time it was loud... so loud it hurt my ears. I gasped, covering one ear with a bound hand. Fingers caught my elbow then, and I shrieked, startled.
But it was only Nihkil.
He looked at me, his black hair whipping in the wind.
For a moment we only stared at one another.
He looked as if he wanted to speak, as if he had something to say, but after a few breaths, that feeling in him seemed to grow dim. He removed his hand.
"Do not be afraid," he said.
Again, his lips didn't move right for his words, and again, I wondered how it was he sp
oke to me at all, given all this.
“...It is here for us," he added.
I studied his battered face, only half-hearing him. When the ship bellowed louder, I turned back to look at the sky. Another gust of wind filled my nose with black sand.
"Is that a good thing?" I said finally, holding my hair in one hand, trying to keep it out of the wind and failing. It continued to sting and whip my face as I looked at him.
His fingers tightened on my wrist, pulling me closer.
"She was right," he said only. "It will not be safe for you with them, either."
"Why?" I said. "Are you going to tell me?"
His face grew pained.
"Did you close the door?" he said. "It is bad that you came here. You should have stayed behind... but I must know. Did you close it?"
I stared at his oddly-changing eyes, watching them turn from a pale gray to a darker, almost ocean-green. He was barely standing, I realized. I still didn’t understand most of what he’d said, what it meant, but now was clearly not the time to get into it with him.
Anyway, I was pretty sure he'd just saved my life.
Again.
I squeezed his fingers, trying to reassure him.
“It’ll be all right,” I said.
"No," he said. "It won't."
I stared around at the waving trees, feeling my jaw harden. A glimpse of sunlight filtered between billowing clouds.
Nodding, I gripped his hand tighter.
“All right,” I said. “Then it won’t.”
8
AN OBJECT CLAIMED
WE MADE OUR way slowly down the cliff again, in spite of what Nik told me.
As we did, the shadow descended, broken by the flashing of lights like flickering eyes.
Trees on the cliffs above cracked and broke like matchsticks under the ship’s weight. A green-gray appendage descended from the ship’s hull, then connected wetly with a portion of the river of glass rocks.
Once we reached the bottom of the gully, we stopped.
Nihkil leaned against a boulder next to me.
Eyes glazed, he breathed too much. He clutched my fingers in his good hand, having tugged me closer to him again, at some point after we arrived there.
He didn't let go.
Neither did I, for that matter, although I couldn't have said why exactly.
I half-expected him to pass out, so maybe that was part of it. Despite how I felt myself, I had to admit, he looked worse. I wasn't sure what I’d do if he did pass out. Now that he sat so close, I really got a good look at how big he was.
Not just his height, although he was tall, yeah.
Somehow, the density of his body made him look heavy, too.
Even as I thought it, his grip tightened on my fingers. Realizing what he wanted, I wedged my boots against the rock, leveraging my weight to help as he dragged himself upright.
The elephant’s trunk appendage lit up.
It probably should have weirded me out more than it did.
Maybe I was too tired to care.
Or maybe my mind kept replaying his last words to me, about how I wouldn’t be safe with these people, either. Whatever the reason, I found myself staring at the ship and its odd accessories without being able to muster a lot of shock and awe.
I watched as an opening melted through one cylindrical wall of that same appendage.
It happened fast, like a match to plastic and with a surprising lack of fanfare.
With an equal lack of fanfare, six beings strode out, four of them wearing the same black, scuba-type outfits that Nihkil wore himself. Branch-like protrusions wound out from the forearms and elbows of those same four in uniform, attached to their wrists with featureless coils. Metal, tube-like ends protruded past the ends of their fingers.
I guessed those things on their arms had to be weapons, from the way they held them.
I glanced at Nihkil, and saw his eyes on the weapon-things, too.
A broad-shouldered man of young middle age stood between the armed guards. He didn’t wear the same clothes as the others, and he was smiling.
"Ledi," Nihkil told me.
His voice was so close I jumped, then turned.
Nihkil didn’t react to my startle. He leaned down a second time, his mouth not far from my ear as he pronounced the name a few more times for me.
“Ledi,” he said. “Lea-dee. He is human.”
"Human?" I looked away from Nihkil, staring at the approaching group, even as it hit me that I'd never considered that any of them might be anything else. "Just how many other kinds of creatures do you have running around in your world, Nik?”
Nihkil hesitated, looking at me. I noticed only then that his hand now rested on my shoulder, its weight heavy, but not unwelcome.
“...He is safe," he said finally.
I glanced up at him, frowning. “That didn’t sound convincing. And it’s not what I asked."
"They have a supernatural with them."
My gaze returned to the group approaching us. That time, I saw the other being walking with them. Studying her face above a billowing, dark-blue robe, I sucked in an involuntary breath, backing into Nihkil. He gripped my shoulder tighter in his good hand.
"It is all right," he said. "It is not her."
I stared at the bulbous head, the opaque orange eyes nested in deep sockets above overly-large cheekbones. As if to remind myself, I glanced at the broken body of the hybrid on the rocks, reassuring myself that she was still there. She was.
Nihkil was right. These two didn’t even really look the same. For one thing, the new hybrid’s skin shone nearly blue. Still, she’d looked similar enough to the last one to freak me out for those few seconds.
"So these supernaturals," I muttered to Nihkil. "They're some other race? Not human?"
“Half-human. Supernaturals are an anomaly. Rare.”
“How rare?”
Nihkil exhaled, as if I’d asked a question with too many ramifications for a simple answer.
“Perhaps one in several hundred thousand births,” he said. “...Perhaps closer to a million. I do not know the exact statistic. They are an anomaly.”
I wondered if he thought repeating the same words to me would eventually cause them to make sense to me. If he did it enough times, that is.
So far, it wasn’t working.
Maybe he read some portion of my frustration on my face.
"I will explain later," he said.
When I glanced back, Nihkil’s eyes remained trained on the small group approaching us. I was still studying his face when his fingers tightened on my shoulder, pulling me closer to him.
In what felt like no time at all, Ledi halted a few feet in front of us.
Standing there without speaking at first, he looked from Nihkil to me and back again. His mouth twitched in what might have been the beginnings of a smile. When neither I nor Nihkil moved, his gaze shifted more directly to Nihkil.
That time, his facial expression grew into a question.
I flat-out ignored him.
As much as I could anyway.
"Who is she?" I asked Nihkil, watching the supernatural, instead. "Do you know this one? Better than the one that tried to kill us just now?"
"Yulen," he said. "I do not know her... not how you mean. I do not interact with them."
"Assholes, eh?" I said with a wry smile, still watching her.
Nihkil's voice came out puzzled that time.
"It is not allowed,” he said. “I am not allowed to interact with supernaturals, because I am morph. But in this case, she works for Yaffa, the same as I do. We report through the same command structure. On occasion, it is appropriate that we interact where expedient in the course of our duties. But I thought you were asking if I knew her personally. I do not."
I nodded, almost as if I understood what the hell he was talking about.
Again, I noticed that Ledi guy staring between
me and Nihkil.
His previous amusement had been entirely replaced with puzzlement now. I also saw what might have been a faint thread of irritation.
Then his eyes found and focused on Nihkil's hand on my shoulder. Somewhere in that brief pause and appraisal, his eyebrows rose a bit higher.
Finally, the suspense seemed to be too much for him.
"What is this?" he said to Nihkil. "Will you tell me?"
Again, I understood him, even though his lips didn't match the words I heard in my head. Feeling Nihkil stiffen behind me, I nudged him with my shoulder, pulling his attention back to me, even as I continued to ignore the other man.
"How do I understand him?" I said. "That's not English, is it?"
"He engaged translator," Nihkil told me. “...To be polite. That is how you understand. It is how you understand me, as well."
"Some kind of machine?"
"It is alive... but yes."
“Alive?”
“I can explain this later.”
Not sure how to pull that apart, I did my best to shrug it off.
I was tabling a lot right then, and while my reality meter was getting stretched and bent all over the damned place, I didn’t really see how I had much choice.
Mostly because, whatever Nihkil said, or however he tried to reassure me, I didn't feel at all safe right then. Not by a long shot. And this guy, Ledi, might be okay, but I wasn’t going to engage another alien here until I absolutely had to.
Maybe because of that, I didn't move away from Nihkil, but stayed right with him.
For his part, Nihkil hadn't let got of me since that supernatural got shot.
Even as I thought it, his eyes swiveled directly to Ledi's.
"I register a claim," he said.
Ledi's smile flattened a touch. He cleared his throat, glancing at me.
"Clearly," he said, giving Nihkil a taut smile. He paused, frowning a bit more as he glanced at me again. "Is that the first thing you say to me, friend?" he asked Nihkil.
Nihkil bowed his head politely to the other man.
I watched Ledi's face while he did it, and only saw a deeper frown in those light green eyes. He didn’t want deference from Nihkil; in fact, Nihkil’s formality seemed to irritate him. Those green eyes turned then, regarding mine, almost as if he’d felt my stare. Ledi’s dark brown hair hung down his back in loose waves caught by the wind and something turbine-like in the ship's engines. Multicolored threads decorated his clothes, spirals like what I’d seen in Aboriginal paintings. He wore rings on four of his fingers.
