by Ellen Mint
“I am no such thing!” Nolan snarled, the raw vitriol sending me scampering for the door. “Trini, wait. I can…” His soft voice caused me to pause in fleeing, and also the fact I had nowhere to go.
But I wasn’t going to let him off the hook so easily.
“You keep saying you’ll explain, but you never do,” I bit back at him, exhausted with this half-truth dance.
Running a hand over his scruff, Nolan began to pace like the proverbial caged tiger. Those tended to snap at whoever stood between it and freedom. The hairs on the back of my neck started to rise.
“I’m not human…”
“No shit.”
He glanced at me in surprise, but I ground my teeth and settled in for the big fight. Nolan, or whatever his alien name was, wrung his fingers through his hair. “My people, the Dra’id, we…we’re genetically capable of natural camouflage.”
“Like chameleons?”
“Not exactly.” He shook his head slowly. “More like the squid or octopi of Earth. But without the tentacles, I assure you. We can alter the cells of our skin to perfectly match the background, and sometimes the shape of any terrain as well.”
I stared hard at him, trying to spot where his skin would begin and the wall would end. But no matter how hard I squinted or tilted my head I could only see a human standing there. “Wait, that…that DNA scanner. On your ship,” I babbled as my mind struggled to cling to anything that offered sense in this universe. “It said you were from earth?”
“It would,” he shrugged, “because this DNA is. Long ago, my people perfected the technology to alter our entire genome—most of our genome.”
“Why?” That sounded terrifying, painful, a complete betrayal of everything you were. To fundamentally change yourself so completely you’re another species sent me reeling. Beyond plastic surgery, to have different organs, teeth in your mouth, to breathe from nostrils that aren’t in your nose. How could anyone agree to that?
He seemed to sense my sudden shock at the whole idea and raised both palms. “To better aid in…”
“Infiltrating,” I whispered to myself. Like he did on earth. As he kept doing all across the galaxy to other species. To steal ideas and research from unaware people and sell them. A liar and a thief do not a good guy make, Trini.
Nolan shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand. You won’t tell me anything this entire trip. The entire time we were together! Then you dump this mega-bombshell like I should already know. I don’t, okay. Stupid human here.”
“Stop that,” he interrupted. “You are so far beyond stupid it’s embarrassing.”
My cheeks lit hot and I had to glare at the floor to escape his worrisome gaze.
“I didn’t tell you because…because people don’t look kindly on a society that prides itself on change,” Nolan said.
“No. That can’t be true. The backbone of all strong societies is growth.”
“Really? And how well do your people take to change? How happily do they embrace a person altering the shape of their nose, or the color of their hair, or even the length?”
Okay, that was a fair point. Someone trashed my sister’s locker when she went blond and the principal shrugged it off. Humans weren’t the biggest fans of being asked to accept the new.
“The Dra’id are different?”
“Yes and not exactly. Every species has its traditionalists. Perhaps it comes with sentience, a need to uphold the past and the whims of the dead. But…” He sighed and stared at the hands he hadn’t been born with. “You wouldn’t understand.”
I ground my jaw, wanting him to explain, but Nolan threw on that mask. The one he wore in the lab when I’d ask him personal questions. He never wanted to answer, he never got into where he lived, where he came from. It was all a lie. Every word from his lips.
“What matters is the Tank,” he pivoted to the problem at hand. “I’m afraid that…they wouldn’t accept my bid.”
“Too low?”
“No, but they consider a Kirkan more worthy of the prestige than a…” Nolan flinched and shook his head. “Unless you have another idea how to get the research?”
I shoved my hands into my pockets to touch the disc. Hand it over to him, tell him I could keep being his get-rich-quick mark. Help a liar.
“No,” I said while sliding my hands out of my pockets.
“Then we wait,” Nolan commanded like I was his lapdog.
“Why?” It was over. The Kirkan would get the answer soon enough, or the Tank would prove I was wrong all along. Either way, we lost. Game over.
“Because I intend to steal the data before the Think Tank gives it to the Kirkan.”
Thief. A liar and a thief. How did I keep forgetting what he was? I knew it while standing in his kitchen on earth, but I didn’t want to listen to my internal warning.
“You’re unbelievable,” I said, turning away from him. “I don’t care anymore.”
“You don’t care? This is your research that he stole.”
“Which you intended to steal for yourself in the first place! Dra’id, human, Yaxha, it doesn’t matter. I am an idiot for thinking that I could have ever…I would have ever…”
Damn it. The cursed tears rose and I dashed for the door. Nolan called my name but I didn’t answer. I just ran through the emptiness of space.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHAT AM I doing here?
A warble burst from one of the children in a pack of them that an alien struggled to keep in line. I expected to find tears, but the others made the same noise as they pointed to another type of alien fumbling to hold onto a crate. My fingers reached for my neck, wanting to cling to the pen and nervously click the button until I could get away.
But there was no pen, no release, no escape.
I didn’t belong here. The fact I couldn’t recognize children laughing and feared the worst should be proof enough. Though…I could have that problem on earth too. Why did so many damn emotions have to exist? And often in combinations that’d make no sense!
Happy sad—when your friend gets their dream job but in another city.
Angry scared—when you’re so terrified you get mad and start hitting everything in sight.
Or angry sad. When everything you thought you had in your life was a lie concocted by the only person you stupidly put your trust in.
Water trickled down the wall of grey slate, tumbling far below the balcony. I peered over the railing, watching as it vanished into an orange and white corona deep in the station. The longer I stared, the more I felt it watching back wondering who that useless lump of amino acids, carbohydrates, and lipids was standing above it. Why did she keep staring as if she expected to find an easy answer buried inside the heart of a spaceship?
“Careful,” the voice of my nightmares appeared. I jumped so fast, my knee bashed into the safety barrier and I yelped in pain. None of it fazed the Kirkan, who stared its beady red eyes down the long fall.
“Stay back,” I said, gliding along the safety wall and raising my fists as if I could stop it.
To my surprise, the monster didn’t attack, but crossed its black, oily, human-like arms and stared. “You are a very skittish species.”
“Last time I saw you, you tried to kill me,” I snarled, drawing the attention of the flock of children and their babysitter. Instead of the Kirkan, it was me they glared at for bringing death into their happy field trip.
“What was that idiom?” the Kirkan said, her head tentacles fluttering as if in thought. Her sunken eyes narrowed beside that massive beak, and she pointed to the wall. “Water into the plasma coils. What are you doing here alone, human?”
I couldn’t hide my flash of disappointment in time and I tried to turn away.
“Ah, of course, the Yaxha revealed its true colors as they always do in time.”
The Kirkan took a step closer and I one back. It kept the space between us the same as we walked further from the crowds. “
We were never properly introduced. I am Shiban of the Adastra.”
What the hell was this? First, she posed as a doctor to steal from me. Then she tried to strangle me, shoot me, and finally used me as a bargaining chip to run off with my data. Now she wanted to play nice?
“I don’t care,” I said, flashing my teeth. “I know enough about you.”
“From a Yaxha whose word is as solid as a puff of fog across the Yimari moors. What did he do to you, dear?”
My head spun from the about-face as this tentacle creature transformed into a concerned aunt in a nanosecond. The Kirkan’s words lingered in the air, Shiban’s box hissing as it waited for my response.
What did he do? He tricked me into trusting him. Believing him. Making me… I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. I fucked an alien. An alien that looked, tasted, felt human. But he was hiding, no different from the squid creature crammed in a metal suit. Lying.
No doubt lying about everything else too. And I’d almost asked him if I could… It didn’t matter.
“It’s not your fault,” Shiban whispered.
I whipped my face up to her, splattering the tears in my eyes. At that moment, I wanted to hear those words no matter the lips—or voice box—that said them. And they came from the person trying to kill me instead of the one who swore he’d protect me.
Air ratted from the hooked beak and Shiban turned to gaze at the waterfall. “This is what they do. Infiltrators who pretend to be others, befoul people’s minds and…hearts.”
Shit, was it that obvious?
I kept my mouth shut and paused beside the alien that nearly murdered me. The one that was now trying to comfort me. Wringing my hands over the banister, I foolishly listened to the platitudes that could be just as empty as anything Nolan said.
Shiban groaned and one of the leg tentacles strained back as if the creature slumped in exhaustion. “It is unfair that the galactic core even grants them passes to unincorporated worlds. At least those of us who know of the Yaxha’s tricks can be prepared for their callow ‘culture.’ But you and others like you…you’re left with nothing to protect yourselves.”
I drifted the tips of my fingers over my throat. The one that’d been bruised by eight massive welts until it was the Yaxha who healed me. “But letting someone like you, someone who tried to murder me a pass to Earth is just fine?”
“At least I was honest about it.”
“In the guise of a human. It’s not like you strolled down main street as your full squid self and demanded my research,” I said, my emotional quagmire driving to pure angry-angry. Heat prickled at the back of my neck and straight down my spine. It boiled under my shirt at the audacity of the Kirkan. Of all of them. They were lying, stealing, pretending to be something they weren’t. But it was the Yaxha they blamed for their sins.
“I would cease that strain of thought if I were you,” the Kirkan thundered and a tentacle’s suckers popped off the glass of the banister. The tip wrapped around my chin, hauling my face up as red eyes glared. “Yaxha are capable of unimaginable horrors without pause. Their duplicitous nature is inborn and undeniable. We are nothing like them.”
“So you hate an entire species just because of…of the way they look?”
“I would welcome them if they remained in their natural bodies. But they think themselves better than us, better than every other upstanding species and refuse to remain in what nature gave them,” Shiban thundered, the tentacle suckered to my chin lifting me. Pressure built up along my entire jaw and I felt my toes straining until they nearly left the ground.
Suddenly, the Kirkan dropped me and—with a pop—yanked off its suckers. A sting remained in the three welts left behind on my chin, which I haphazardly protected with my palm while glaring.
Shiban resumed staring at the wall as if nothing else mattered. “Can they be held accountable for what evolution transformed them into? That is best left to philosophers. But, should they be punished for what their cultural malfeasance does to others? That is what concerns me and others in the galaxy.”
It sounded like an excuse for genocide to me.
“Tell me, little earthican,” Shiban said, making me feel two-feet-tall. “Are you not outraged by the deception? Do you not feel betrayed by an action the Yaxha will never apologize for?”
Damn it. I glared at the wall and dropped my hand from my stinging chin to cross them. To try and shield my foolish heart instead.
“Imagine that feeling, but amplified across a million people, hundreds of planets, endless civilizations ripped to pieces by deceit and lies. And there, at the heart of it all, is a single species who claims that they were simply doing what they’ve always done.”
“What happened to you?” I asked.
The red eyes opened wide and the beak clacked, reminding me how Shiban could bite through my arm if she wanted. But even through my foggy brain, I knew what that expression was. I hit a nerve.
“Personally? Nothing at all. I’m merely looking out for you and your interests.”
After you tried to kill me. I didn’t say it aloud, well aware that there was just as good of a chance that she’d finish the job now. But I stared longer at the Kirkan. Nolan called them brutes. Shiban called his people liars. Were they both wrong and right at the same time?
It could be said of humans too. We’re great deceivers, spinners of half-truths, white lies, any excuse to get what we want. We commit atrocities delved from the depths of unimaginable nightmares and not miss a wink of sleep while doing it. But we also devote our lives to compassion, to kindness, to love.
Gah! This is why I’m not a philosopher. Math was easy. One number plus another equals the answer. Philosophy was nothing more than here’s the problem and ten thousand different answers, which are all correct to varying degrees of rightness.
A sound broke over the soothing trickle of the water, causing the Kirkan to glance up. “Ah, it seems as if the Think Tank has arrived at the answer I needed.”
That caused me to scowl. No matter how I felt about Nolan, at least he didn’t steal my research and give it to someone else to finish. He wasn’t planning to take all the credit for himself.
I waited for Shiban to give another pithy joke at my expense, then wander off to take the Tank’s research and leave. But she remained beside me, gripping two of her six tentacles to the banister while she unraveled a long line of rope from a pocket.
“Trini.”
My heart sank at the voice, but I glanced over my shoulder dutifully. Nolan stood by the doorframe into the more popular room. Come to think of it, somehow all the tourist families wandered off, leaving just the three of us alone. There went the hairs on the back of my neck again.
“What?” I asked and took a step to the right separating myself from both aliens.
“We should…” His eyes darted to the Kirkan then locked onto me. “We should go. Come on.” Nolan extended a hand to me as if I would take it. With as much emphasis as possible, I crossed my arms over my chest and locked them in tight.
“Don’t,” he said curtly, like scolding a child. “This is not the time. We need to get out of here.”
“Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.”
That cold, dead laugh slammed into my heart. I pivoted to the voice box hanging off the Kirkan’s waist. She didn’t move from facing the wall, only kept coiling up that rope. “You overextended yourself, Yaxha. The human no longer trusts you.”
“What? Trini…” Nolan took a step closer and, on instinct, I took one back straight into the banister.
“Ah,” I flailed my hand forward, trying to keep my balance. It was only a slight jolt, the barrier high enough I needn’t worry, when a tentacle slapped around my wrist. “What are you—?” I shrieked. The Kirkan yanked me off my feet and straight into the air.
Fuck! My hip bashed into the glass as my body fumbled over the banister and dangled above an endless drop where red hot plasma waited to burn me to a crisp. “Stop this!” I cried as if it was all a big mistake.
“Put her down!” Nolan fumed, and he raised his human fist as if about to clobber the Kirkan.
Suddenly, the tentacle opened and my body fell. “No!” I shrieked, just as the Kirkan’s rope coiled around my wrist like a lasso and cinched tight. “Fuck!” I screamed instead, my wrist cracking as the full force of my falling body ripped at it. Dangling above painful, unending death, I strained my head up to find the rope knotted so tight to my wrist the skin bulged a sharp red.
A burn gnawed at my wrist and pain struck clear down my dangling shoulder. But it was preferable to the fall. I reached up to grab at the banister with my loose hand, and the Kirkan opened its tentacle. The rope dropped further, my legs skidding down jagged rocks hidden from the view above.
“Ahh!” I shrieked, trying to dig my toes in to save me.
“Stop that!” Nolan cried.
Blinking through my tears of pain, I stared up through the barrier to find he was frozen in place. All the power was in Shiban’s hand. “Give it to me,” she said. “Or...” She opened her hand once more, dropping me another inch.
“You fucking calamari!” I screamed. Blood dribbled from my knees and the long scrapes into my battered skin from the wall. But I couldn’t get a foothold. Every divot that jabbed through my flesh was too small to hold me.
I was going to die. I was going to be vaporized inside an alien space station above a waterfall!
“You think you can get away with murdering someone on the Think Tank ship?” Nolan said. “This is neutral territory.”
Shiban snickered. “And this one was illegally poached off-planet. I’d be doing the customs board a favor by frying her alive.”
“Please,” I cried, scrabbling to cling to the wall with my working hand. “Please don’t do this!”
“You made it cry, Yaxha,” the Kirkan brute laughed. “Now, give me the chit you stole.”
“What? There’s no chit. Nothing. You stole my research,” I thundered, my ears throbbing with the sound of drums.
“Please be quiet, contraband. The adults are talking,” Shiban said and dropped me even further. The plasma ball looked miles away, but I could already feel the heat of it charing at the soles of my feet. With each swing, it grew more painful, like walking across hot coals. Ah! I tried to leap away from it, but nothing worked.
