I just had to keep following him until I found out more about him. And of course, he might helped me find the Nusae relic...if it existed.
I sighed, turned my back to him and walked towards Silver. But then, I heard him coming to his senses. My heart beat faster. I hope he’s back to his usual self.
Chapter Six
Jay
Enough with those headaches already. I rubbed my temples instinctively, my cold hands cooled off my warm skin. My muscles felt sore, and I wasn’t sure I could stand on my feet without help. For some reason, I also found this feeling familiar, like something I was used to in the past.
And yet, I didn’t seem to remember anything about it. As I opened my eyes, I saw the human female, her robot and the wild man staring at me in fear. I smelled blood. I looked around me and saw the dead bodies of the predators that assaulted us before.
Did I do that? I want to ask them, but I knew the answer already. I did that. My body still felt the impact, and yet I was the only one scathed. A certain feeling started to swell inside my body. Thank God, no one else was hurt. It was strange for me to feel that way, but amidst the darkness of the spaceship, I didn’t want to feel alone anymore.
Alone. Alone was Esuh. A white, excruciating pain stroke my head. The word Esuh, a word that meant a lot to me, kept swirling in my head.
“You. Human. I...I remember!”
She turned to look at me, but she didn’t make another step towards me. She stayed put and talked to me from a distance. “Are you...are you Jay?”
What was that question? I just told her I remembered something so important, and she asked me if I was Jay? “Eladia, isn’t that your name?”
She nodded.
“I remembered the name of my people. And yes, I’m Jasih, the Prime Officer, and an Originator. Do you still doubt me?”
She rushed to my side. She laid out her hand wanting to help me get up, but I didn’t need help from puny humans. I could get up by myself. And so I did, my whole body in agonizing pain, but nothing an Esuh couldn’t handle.
“I’m sorry. It’s just…,” she wanted to say something but stopped.
“It’s what? Speak human!”
“Nothing. Again, I'm sorry. Now, can you please tell us? What’s the name of your people?”
She was hiding something, but I was in no mood to play her game. At the same time, she was the only one that could know what had happened to my people. “Have you heard the name Esuh? Esuh of the Two Faces?”
Her face suddenly lightened up in the hearing of the name, but I got the sense that it wasn’t from recognizing them. “Of the Two Faces you said? Do you remember more about your people? Why did they call you that?”
My hand jolted to grab her arm. I knew I was squeezing way too much, but maybe some pain could wake her up. Anger made me talk slowly, steadily. “Don’t...you...understand...what...I’m...saying...to you?”
For a moment, our eyes met, and I couldn’t move my head. Her fearless glare matched my own in every aspect. If she were two heads taller, with bigger muscles and another color, she would have been an Esuh herself.
I released my grip, and she immediately took two steps back. “I haven’t heard anything about your people Jay. But the next time you touch me, I won’t help you even if I find something about them.”
Silver, her robot, got in front of her now, and for some reason, that feral kid also wanted to protect her. He growled at me like I’m the enemy, but they seemed to have forgotten that I was a Prime Officer, that countless Esuhes counted on me and respected me. But this funny bunch didn’t.
They looked at me as if expecting me to apologize, but I just turned my head and searched the way out of my spaceship. Before taking another step, I heard the young one yelling at me, trying to say something. I acted like I didn’t hear him, but then the robot stopped me as well. “It’s dangerous out there. Zan is trying to protect you.”
It had a name after all? “Did this Zan kill all those animals or did I?” She didn’t answer. “I thought so. Get out of my way.”
Zan kept yelling, but I didn’t care anymore. Better out there with any of those monsters than in here getting disrespected by a bunch of weaklings.
“My camp is close. You can spend the night there with us and leave in the morning.” Eladia’s voice was rough, soulless. She didn’t want me there. But I couldn’t die, not knowing the fate of my people.
“Okay. One night.” One night and then I’m done protecting your sorry asses.
Two minutes later, we were walking down an open place full of a strange, black material. I heard Eladia talking to her robot assistant, discussing the importance of roads and tar in the archaic ages. Soon, I found myself getting intimidated by the sound of her voice. But still, I couldn’t get enough of it.
A round, pale object was flying in the sky. This planet’s natural satellite was beautiful but lonely up there. Back home, the three moons used to dance all night, casting many different colors to the sky. The night was as bright as the day, and the Esuh didn’t feel lonely. I didn’t know why that name gave me that painful feeling, but Esuh didn’t feel pain, no loneliness either.
Even by just remembering that one name, all those pictures came back to me. The Living Oceans that swallowed and spat whole worlds in their wake, and the Flying Fortress, the pride of all the Esuhes. Walking down this...road, I suddenly felt the weight of the world falling on my shoulders. Esuh meant lonely, and I felt like I was just beginning to grasp the meaning behind that word.
Chapter Seven
Eladia
In my family, we had a saying: ‘you can’t be silent or hungry, or else you’ll stay silent and hungry.’ To be honest, I had never quite understood the meaning of that peculiar saying, not before I found myself walking on that red thing I could only guess was some kind of moss.
Seeing Jay walk in front of me, his head up but totally absent the whole time, reminded me of the things my mom used to say. However, I was still not feeling comfortable around him. What if he turned back to that...Dark Jay? What had triggered that reaction of him?
Questions span inside my head, but I couldn’t find the strength to ask him. Well, not before I heard Silver laughing two strides behind me. I slowed down and allowed her to get closer to me. She and Zan seemed to have a pleasant chat, but I was more surprised at the fact that Zan was walking on his two feet and not on his four.
When I first saw him before, I thought that his longer limbs and stronger arms indicated his inability to master walking on his two feet, but I was totally wrong. I stumbled upon a strange conversation:
“And so, how old are you?” Silver asked, trying to add more information to her research.
Zan replied using a raucous, seemingly random, choice of words from different languages. Silver laughed at him again. What could he say to her that would make her laugh? She just asked him how old he was. I decided to delve deeper into the matter.
“Hey, Silver. I see you’ve got a new friend.” I smiled, but I didn’t feel the joy reaching my eyes. Jay was still on my mind.
“Oh hello Eladia. Yeah, Zan is superb. He’s intelligent, and funny, and doesn’t munch on his words. He’s a perfect gift. Thank you again, Eladia.”
I suppressed the need to hide behind my palm and decided to take the usual path: “He’s not a pet Silver. I thought we talked about this before.”
For an Android morpher, Silver had an extensive array of expressions; the one she was casting at me now was a blend of bafflement and disappointment. What was with robots and pets? I would never understand them.
“So, what are you talking about? Has he seen any signs of the relic or anything towards it?”
Her holographic face flashed. “Now that you mention it, there was something he said that was weird. According to a story, his ancestors told him, humans didn’t exist until very recently. A surge of growing potential seemed to appear in this part of the world a hundred years ago, right about the time Mr. Jasih appeared.”
Nice. Now she could pronounce his name too. And what was about the honorifics? “That’s really interesting. That’s why other Chroniclers didn’t find anything in other parts of the Primordial Earth. The new species of these mammals must have started their evolution in this section of the world. But, that also means-”
“Yes. The only reports of technology apparently affecting life are that of the Nusae.”
She was right. Oh, my God, she was right. But that meant that Jay must have had something to do with it. I left behind my second thought and raised my pace to get to Jay’s side. I hoped that if I talked to him about it, then something may jogged his memory and more information about his previous life would come to the surface. Hell, he may also knew the exact location of the relic.
I got closer to him, but he didn’t slow down. I’m almost sure that he had seen me, but he started walking faster, intentionally. Finally, I caught up to him. “Excuse me! Jay, can you please slow down? I have something I want to ask you!”
For a change, he seemed to hear me; he slowed down, but not nearly enough as I would have expected him to. My ponytail swing furiously, and in my mind, I thought that I must have looked like a crazy person. Well, I didn’t care. He might knew something about the relic.
“What’s with you humans and all these questions? Where are you from? Who are you? What’s your purpose in life? I mean, do you ever stop to think why you wonder so much about useless things?”
He was furious alright, but I couldn’t let his bad mood fester me. “Now that you mention it, you seem to know many things about many species. Have you ever heard the Nusae?” I was now following him, but he suddenly stopped. I pumped into his back and almost fell to the ground. “Hey. A little warning next time?”
“What about the Nusae? How do you know about the Nusae?”
So he did know something about them! It seemed that only the memories of his people, Esuh, were the ones he had forgotten. “For the last time, humans have colonized half the galaxy. We’re right up there with all kinds of species, like--”
He started walking fast again like I had never even talked. We arrived at a type of a crossroad, full of green and purple trees that touched the sky. Their trunks were big enough to compete with the fallen buildings, but the important part was Jay drawing away from me.
I was trying to follow him, but my breath was scorching my lungs. I realized that I had been walking for almost a whole day and that I hadn’t had a single drop of water for hours. But something inside me drew me towards that man. His will to fight, to lead, to infuriate me every waking moment was unbelievable.
Now I was running behind him, but he didn’t stop. Somewhere in the back, Silver and Zan followed us, but I didn’t have time to stop and wait for them.
Again, Jay suddenly stopped and turned to face me. He didn’t talk, not even seem angry; a cold calmness reigned over his face. His nerve! He made me chase him around, and now he looked like he had just met me.
“Hey! Listen...you stupid...alien!” I lacked oxygen, and my vocabulary narrowed down to simple words and phrases. I panted my lungs out, but I didn’t stop. Instead, I found the strength to raise my voice even higher. “You...will...tell me everything...you know about the Nusae!”
“Why should I? Do you think you’re that important to me?” His voice was low, yet menacing. I took a step back. Just a precaution. He didn’t seem to control his change.
“I didn’t say that. But if you tell me everything you know about them, I might help you remember who you are!” I couldn’t lower my voice; my anger had turned to a cacophony of words.
And then it came; the roar.
He opened his mouth, and he just roared at me, like the Lions did way back, when humans still lived here. Still, I was so mad at him that I didn’t want to stop. “Do you think that you can get your memories back without me? How? You didn’t even know the name of your species until now!” I yelled the last word.
Just barely, I sensed Silver behind me. Zan snarled next to her. It was somehow reassuring that I had people behind me—well, a feral human and an android, but it counted as a help, though that didn’t make me feel any safer. After all, he was the man who had killed a pack of those creatures earlier, all by himself.
I expected some kind of reaction, but it never came. On the contrary, he took the same expression he did just before the attack on the spaceship. The attack on the spaceship? That meant…
“Eladia, I think it would be better if you lowered your voice…” Silver told me, but I knew it was too late.
Jay came closer to me, and he told me almost whispering: “you and your loud words. You must have woken up the whole forest.”
“We’re in the middle of this, and now you want to assign blames? Fine then. Your roar didn’t help either.”
Zan shushed us both. We turned and faced him at the same time; he pointed behind us.
“Do...do you hear that?” I muttered. Jay snorted.
At first, it was a muffled sound of tiny feet crowding in front of us, but with every passing moment, the sound became an uproar of countless insects walking.
I couldn’t see anything, so I thought it would be better to know what we were facing. “Silver, give us some light.” And then, we saw them. “Oh...my...what in this world are all these?”
Thousands, no...tens of thousands overgrown insects crawled around us. We thought that they were coming from behind us, but no. They had already surrounded us. Big, disgusting heads, with dark bluish eyes were watching us. Spiders, or something close to a spider, with six long legs and two smaller, all hairy, were moving fast towards us.
“They are of the insectoid family, but I’ve never seen species like these. They seem to be a mix of two different organisms, but I don’t know how to characterize them.”
Silver’s voice was the last thing I could hear. A gentle pinch on my neck started spreading a warm feeling to my head and then to the rest of my body. I wanted to scream, God how much I wanted to let out a big, lengthy scream, but I couldn’t.
I felt tiny legs walk on my skin, inside my shirt. Tears clouded my eyes, and I thought everything was over. Strangely, I already felt lighter, like I was getting carried away by two strong arms. Was that what it felt like when dying? It was a nice feeling. I could get used to it.
My blurry eyes showed me random pictures. I saw Jay’s face, his strong eyes, and hard lines, came closer to mine. For a moment there I thought he would kiss me; and at that moment, I wanted him to.
Chapter Eight
Jay
Damn you Eladia. You had to go and get bitten by one of those things. My hands ached, but not so much as I thought they would. I wasn’t sure if it had something to do with her or those things that were biting me. Yet, I didn’t feel dizzy, just a bit hazy.
At least, this planet’s gravity was comfortable. Jumping from one branch to the other was a breeze, even with the extra weight from the half-dead human. Her skin was getting cold, fast. I managed to kill the little cricket that bit her, but I didn’t have time to help the robot and the savage. They would have to take care of themselves for now.
The higher I got, the denser the darkness became. I didn’t have a plan yet, so I just ran as fast as I could. The picture of the waves of those six-legged creatures somehow disgusted me. I was never too fond of insects, but those little monsters were an extra layer creepy.
I finally got to the top. The air up here was clean and smelled kinda nice. I felt the wind caressing my face and tangling my hair. I looked down to my extra passenger, and I saw something different. Her dark hair was finally free of that ugly tail on her head. The breeze gave her an otherworldly feel, while her hair flapped in the wind.
The beating muscle of my chest wanted to touch them, but my head stored the most vital organ of my body, and told me that there was no time for emotions. Her life was in danger.
One big leap to the dark later and I was back on the road, only, this time, I could see my surroundings correctl
y. I searched for a light source, only to find a peculiar looking bird. But it had a funny look to it. Its skin glistened in the night, and instead of wings, it had two fin-like instruments, one in the top and one in the bottom. Its belly was the light source I was looking at.
“This planet is crazy. Now I get why humans turned out as crazy as they did.” It chirped and flew around me. It smelled of flowers and something wet. My skin prickled at the thought of what could that mean.
There was water nearby.
I followed it behind a curtain of vines, all of them heavy with red-colored buds. The path was rough and full of metals and rocks, but my steps were steady. I took my time over an opening to the ground which smelled funny. Eladia now had trouble breathing, and her blood pumping organ was beating fast.
Alien Romance Box Set: Romantic Suspense: Alien Destiny: Scifi Alien Romance Adventure Romantic Suspence Trilogy (Complete Series Box Set Books 1-3) Page 73
