by Marie Dry
He stopped and glared down at her with that fierce gaze. “Humans don’t have that kind of control over their bodies?”
“No.” She would have thought he’d have known this. Surely, they’d studied humans in the year they’d been circling Earth like a huge vulture. There were a lot of rumors about abductions and disappearances flying around.
He continued on, holding her upper arm, brushing the side of her breast. Goosebumps broke out over her body. Was that intimate touch on purpose?
The aliens came to attention. Their boots, striking hard against the deck of the ship, sounded like a thousand armies marching to war. The harsh sound assaulting her ears, Aurora flinched.
“Are you in command of this ship?” she asked.
“Yes.” For a guy who insisted on her company, he didn’t seem very big on talking to her.
His three-fingered grip on her arm firm, he led her through pulsing corridors that were not only wide but twisted and turned. If she tried to find a way off this ship, she’d get hopelessly lost. Even if she got to a shuttle, she couldn’t pilot it. She was well and truly trapped.
“This is a really big ship. It must take a lot of crew to run it efficiently.” Aurora wanted to roll her eyes at herself. Very subtle, Aurora Dawn Skuy. Still, taking into account the size of the ship, they’d had a fairly small welcoming committee.
Balthazar didn’t modify his stride to match her shorter one and ended up dragging her to double sliding doors covered in pulsing tattoo markings the same as those on the walls. He waved her inside. “You will stay here.”
She stepped inside, and her stomach dropped. The room was small and sterile with no windows. She couldn’t imagine staying here for months on end. No windows, nothing soft to sit or lie on. The pulsing walls had the same tattoo-like quality as the rest of the ship.
She turned back to Balthazar. “You expect me to stay here? I didn’t expect five-star treatment--” She motioned to the small bare room. “--but this?”
Her mind was bruised, and it felt as if a vicious hand had torn her heart in two. How would she save them all, trapped on an alien spaceship in this small cell, with the fate of the world resting on her shoulders?
“It is adequate for a human of your dimensions.”
“Humans need more room than this. We need to be able to move around and to sleep in a separate area.” Not that she planned to need space on this ship for long. If the only way she could get back to Earth was to seduce him and pump the butt-ugly cyborg full of picos, then so be it.
“The space is adequate.” His threatening tone said, or else.”
“You demanded my presence just to hold me prisoner?”
He walked forward, forcing her to back into the room to avoid bodily contact. “Yes.” The word echoed in the small space. “I will now observe you move.”
He stepped into the room with her, his presence shrinking it so that only a mouse might feel comfortable in it.
“Excuse me?” Did he just say he would observe her move? Visions of being made to dance like a harem slave flitted through her mind. She might be scared out of her mind, but she was no one’s performing monkey.
He gestured at her with that alien three-fingered hand--a demanding, very masculine gesture. “You will move, and I will observe.”
“Move how?”
He motioned to the opposite wall of the small cell. “Run to that wall.”
“What? Why?”
She’d half expected to be tortured. That he would demand she take off her clothes. But this was unbelievable.
He leaned his shoulder on the wall, looking like he planned to get comfortable. “I will observe you.”
She leaned against the creepy wall and crossed her arms, mocking his stance. “I’m not a hamster.”
She’d have liked to move away from the pulsing wall, but she didn’t want him to know how much this strangely alive spaceship disturbed her. Or how much she feared him. It took every ounce of self-control she had to defy him and not to huddle in the corner of this grim little cell.
He stayed silent, staring straight ahead, and then said, “A small furry animal kept as pets by small humans. The analogy is acceptable.”
Aurora was the youngest grand master ever appointed to the Phoenix Foundation. She wielded power. Politicians and royalty had been known to court her favor. And this creep tried to treat her like a hamster? She straightened and fixed him with a cold glare. “The analogy is not acceptable to me. You assured the president that I would be treated with courtesy.”
A noise started deep in his chest and emerged from his mouth, the sound metallic and, at the same time, animalistic. Aurora wanted to step away, to promise anything, even to act like a hamster, but she couldn’t move. He blinked once, and then he grabbed her, turned, and held her back pressed to the wall, her feet dangling off the floor. Again.
“I acquired you because I wish to study you. You are my human and will obey me.” He leaned down until his face was so close to hers that his features blurred.
She leaned back to get away from him, and the creepy wall of this creepy cell tried to massage her neck.
He held her by the neck while he spoke right into her face, his vicious teeth gleaming bone white in the light shining from above them. “Now run. To. The wall.”
CHAPTER 5
Where he clasped her neck, chills tore through the upper layer of her skin, as if it acted independently to shake off the alien’s hand. Aurora’s heart bounced in her chest like a tennis ball. He could break her neck, or crush her skull with that large hand on one of the most vulnerable places on her body. This was it. Now she would find out what he planned to do with her.
“No.” Aurora lifted her chin and straightened her spine. She wouldn’t cower and plead with him. She’d meet her fate as bravely as she could manage and, in the process, find a way to save Earth. The part of her that believed she deserved to be punished thought maybe she’d set her own fate that day, that terrible fateful day she’d kept running without looking back. Maybe all that was left for her was to be destroyed on an alien ship.
The silence lengthened and thickened. It took every ounce of courage she had to hold that eerie gaze. She tried to shrug off his hand, to turn away, her blue and gold dress swirling with the angry motion. His hand tightened. She winced. “Let me go, you’re hurting me.”
Surprising enough, his grip didn’t hurt her. She didn’t know what to expect or how to act. The fear, that terrible fear she’d been running from since her time on the streets, dogged her footsteps like an unwanted acquaintance determined to hook up.
Balthazar released her and stepped back. Aurora had to lock her knees to keep from toppling over.
“You will be what I command.” There was no give in him. How was she supposed to win his confidence? Get close enough to inject him with picos. “Run to the wall, human Aurora,” he said, as if it was a reasonable request.
That deep masculine, but alien voice, coupled with the way the wall tried to massage her back, made her stomach churn.
Aurora stumbled away from him and the wall. Right now, she’d give anything for a large desk to put between them. “No. I. Won’t.”
She was tempted to do it, to run to the wall like a good little hamster, if only to put space between them. She was alone on a spaceship with a creature who’d lifted her off the ground as if she weighed nothing. But still, the small voice in her head shouted at her to be braver than this.
He stepped forward, heavy and threatening. “Run to the wall,” he said again.
This time there was more than “or else” in his voice. This time, it said, “or die a horrible painful agonizing death.”
She didn’t know how she knew it, but she had this deep sense that he would respect her for standing her ground. Being nothing more than an entertaining pet hamster wouldn’t help Earth. “No,” she repeated. He came another step closer, and she added, “Couldn’t we just talk and get to know each other?”
“Talk?” he sa
id, as if the word had a taste that soured on his tongue. But at least he wasn’t ordering her to run anymore.
“Yes, you know--” She moved away from the wall, forced her feet to step toward him. “--conversation. It’s the thing that people do when they want to get to know each other.”
He turned his head, his shoulders following with a smooth rotation, not human and, she suspected, not Tunrian either. “I prefer to see you run.”
“Not that again.” She shivered and clutched her arms around herself. It didn’t help, even her teeth clicked together from the unpleasant cold.
“This room is set to the optimal temperature for a human. Why are you shivering?”
“I’m freezing.” Aurora forced the words out through lips stiff from the cold.
Balthazar reached out, felt her cold cheek, and then touched the wall that surged to meet his hand. “I have adjusted the heat to a higher level for you,” he said, as if he’d handed her a priceless gift.
“Thank you.” Did he communicate with the ship’s system with that touch? Their technology was so different she doubted she’d be able to gather any useful information, even with her eidetic memory.
The door opened, and two aliens carried in her bags. Aurora blew out her breath. Maybe Balthazar would leave her alone now, give her time to come to grips with the situation. From the moment the president’s soldiers had invaded her office, she’d not been able to stop and think.
Compared to Balthazar, the two aliens were smaller, their shoulders not as broad. Balthazar’s eyes showed more intelligence, more...humanity, for want of a better word. He touched another section of the wall, and it slid aside with a soft sucking sound. The alien soldiers dumped her bags inside the new space.
They didn’t talk, but they made eye contact with Balthazar. Communicating with him on an internal frequency? They stacked the large suitcases at the bottom and then filled up the closet space to capacity. One of them touched the wall and the space closed. They left without even once glancing in her direction.
Balthazar turned to her. “You are now warmer and may proceed to run.”
Aurora had to clench her hands not to go for the hairpin filled with picos. One good jab, and she’d never again have to listen to him going on about her running. “No.”
Balthazar paced up and down in front of her, the small room making his movements seem even more restless. It was ironic that he was now the one moving from wall to wall. He turned mid-march and pinned her with that disconcerting blue-gray gaze. “My scanners indicate that you are wholly organic. Are you a person?”
Aurora blinked at the shift in subject. She’d half expected him to start in with the running again. “Why are you asking me that? Are you not wholly organic?” Maybe now she’d find out exactly what he was, why he called himself a cyborg.
“I ask the questions, human. Are you a person?”
Or maybe not. “Well, yes.” Did his question mean he was mostly machine?
“You have a soul. Because you are wholly organic and a person?”
“Yes, I have a soul,” she said cautiously. Something about the way he asked the question gave her pause.
“Do you tear it in two and share it, or do you carry an extra one?”
“Uhm, I only have one, I suppose.” She didn’t like where this conversation was going.
He clasped her neck again. That huge three fingered hand sent the kind of chills down her spine that no tale of horror could manage. “Tell me, what is a soul?”
Of all the things she thought would happen once they got to the ship, having to run like a hamster and philosophical discussions about the soul, wasn’t it. Aurora shrugged. “I’m not sure. I suppose it’s the part on the inside of each person that makes them human, that allows them to care, to love.” Until she had to explain it, she’d never considered how ephemeral a concept it was.
Again that metallic rumbling from his chest. “Humans consider artificial life forms to be without souls?”
“Well, no...” The way he held his body, the threatening tone of his voice, clued her in to tread very carefully here, especially since he still had her by the back of her neck.
“You made laws against self-aware machines.” It was an accusation made while he loomed over her. If only he’d step back or start that nerve wrecking pacing again. Anything was preferable to him standing this close, his hand a manacle on her neck, those slitted eyes staring down at her with a clinical interest that chilled her right to the center of her being.
He stood too close, dominating her senses with his oddly pleasant smell, his touch, and then that creepy wall went for her butt. Again.
She sidled away from the wall and, to her relief, Balthazar let her go. “When you said you were a cyborg, did you mean you are an artificial intelligence?” It would explain why they don’t talk to each other. Why he can’t grasp the concept of a soul.
“I am cyborg.” He leaned down, and she couldn’t help but shrink away. “Show me your soul, human.”
She threw her hands up in the air, almost hitting him. He tracked the motion like a missile tracked a target. She froze in place with her hands half raised. “It’s not something one can show. It’s simply there,” she said.
“Why?” he grated.
If only he’d step back, maybe her brain would be able to function again. This close, he distracted her and affected all her senses--large and dangerous, his voice a rumble in her ears, his body warm against hers, and exuding a wild, oddly pleasing, spicy odor. “Why what?”
“Why are you lying to me about a person having this soul?”
“I’m not lying?”
He was almost childlike in his belief--a savage, six-foot-seven child who looked capable of killing her with one hand.
“Show it to me. What does the soul look like? How do you see it?” he said with obvious suspicion.
“I...it’s when you look into someone’s eyes, you see the soul.” She kept a wary eye on him. If he tried to get at her eyes to see her soul, she was getting out of here, even if she had to bust through the walls. She had an eidetic memory. Many things she’d love to forget were forever burned in her mind. But even with all that knowledge in her head, she couldn’t come up with an explanation of a soul that might get him to back off.
He planted a huge three-fingered hand on the wall next to her head and leaned down, brought his face so close to hers, she saw double. “How will you give me a soul? Tell me now, human, how does a soul get into a person?”
Did he just say she was supposed to give him a soul? She was so dead. Remain calm Aurora, win his trust, inject him with picos, and get off this ship. “I...I don’t know. I suppose it happens when they’re born.” She could’ve kicked herself. This was obviously important to him. He said he was a cyborg, and that meant he was made and not born. She should look into his eyes and swear she saw a soul. The question about giving him a soul she’d try to ignore. If he’d demanded her presence so that she could give him that, she was in big trouble. Bigger trouble. Sometimes she wondered if she even had a soul, let alone having a spare one lying around to give to someone else.
“You despise me for not having a soul. You think that I am not a person because I was not born like you? That I cannot feel. That I am not worthy of a soul.” He might be half emotionless machine, but he simulated menace real well.
“No, of course not. I think you’re a person,” she said, her voice an embarrassing squeak. How hard could it be to pretend she’d give him a soul?
“You said a person has to be born to have a soul,” he insisted.
“I said I don’t know. No one knows how a soul gets into a body.” Damn, she’d meant to pretend to know how to put a soul into him. The way he glared at her made her want to volunteer to run for eight hours straight.
He grabbed her shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled. “Did you feel it move inside of you?”
He peered into her eyes, his hand encompassed the whole of the back of her neck, sending dry ice
shivers down her spine. He turned her head left and right, using the light to see deeper into her eyes. His face was so close to hers, his breath wafted over her cheeks, and her vision blurred.
She pushed against his chest and could’ve cried when he let her go and stepped back. “No.” Aurora gingerly felt her teeth with her tongue. “But I’m sure you loosened some teeth.”
“Do not think you can lie to me.”
Don’t pity him, remember what you have to do, Aurora. She frantically searched for a way to change the subject, before he tried to rattle her soul loose again--anything to get his mind off acquiring a soul. She tried very hard to look on the verge of collapsing from hunger. “I’m hungry. Are you going to feed me, or is starving me on your agenda of tortures?” Please let it get him off the subject of souls.
He went to the door, his firm footsteps like the slow deliberate beating of war drums. “I will bring you food.”
“Balthazar?”
He stopped and turned. “Yes?”
“People don’t like to eat alone. The food just isn’t the same.” It was a place to start, to win his trust--the starting point from which she could betray him.
“I will eat with you, and you will explain to me how you will gift me with a soul.”
He left.
Aurora sighed and laid her head down on her up drawn knees. Her shoulders shook, and she laughed--loud hysterical laughter that bounced off the walls, like echoes of screams against stone cliffs. Never in a million years would she have thought she’d end up on a spaceship with an alien who thought he could shake her soul loose, an alien who expected her to give him one. She shivered and tightened her arms around her legs. Maybe she could say abracadabra, wave her arms around, then convince him she could see a soul in his eyes.
The door opened, and he walked in balancing two plates of food on his palms. Even walking and carrying two plates, he managed to look dangerous, competent, like a soldier. He came and sat down on the floor opposite her, his movements surprisingly graceful. His uniform stretched tight over his wide shoulders. Balthazar handed her one of the plates.
