The dark figure sinks into the ground and disappears, while the bright one falls on its knees and runs away.
I know that the girl was trying to tell me something, but I can’t keep up with her. I feel cold and alone in the middle of this ruined city, and the only thing that comes to my mind is if I’ll ever see her eyes again.
Eladia.
The things I would do if I could see her again.
Suddenly my eyelids get heavy, and I spend a moment breathing in the dark. The cold feeling that covered my hands before has now returned, only that it comes straight from my heart.
A moment later, I’m falling into an endless pit. I stretch my hands above my head, trying to find something to grab onto, but it’s hopeless. I give up and fall to the great darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Eladia
I stumble and fall on the closing doors. I hit my fists on the wall but nothing happens. Jay was just lost in a flood of light and darkness, the light coming from the cube and the darkness from his parasitic transformation.
Dark Jay is once again awake and now, more than ever, I’m not sure how I feel. Even so, it’s never good when he is around, and it’s certainly not good that Dale saw him change. Now, he has to come with us no matter what. He knows way too much to be safe on Yaerus.
Zan and Silver arrive at the same time behind me. The young boy seems overly energetic like he’s happy that Dark Jay woke up, but I don’t share his feelings.
“Eladia, Eladia! You have to follow him,” he says to me.
Why should I be the one that goes after him? He can come and find me himself if he wants. I won’t make the same mistakes I did before. But, something in the boy’s voice draws my interest. Those two were always somehow connected. When the one felt danger, so did the other. And Zan was always somehow protective of Jay and the other way around.
Maybe he’s right.
Dale suddenly appears next to me. He has something to say, I can tell, but I stop him. “Look. I can explain everything to you, but you have to decide now. If you’re staying with us, then you have to stay with us until the end. If you don’t, then it would be better for you if you fled Yaerus for some time, at least until the crisis is sorted. What’s your decision?”
I know that I should have asked him earlier, but he can’t stay on Yaerus, and if he doesn’t want to come with us, then he has to flee the planet until the men with the masks get as far away as possible. Either way, we’re losing time. We should have been on our way to the blank spot for some time now.
I stare him deep in the eyes, and I see he’s trying to avoid my eyes. He’s on a dilemma, a pretty bad one at that. But, as he probably knows already, there’s no time for him to procrastinate.
“Yes or no, Dale?” I push him until the man gives me a slight nod.
At that moment, I hear the engines of the elevator working, only, this time, it’s coming down. Silver gets in front of us and opens her arms wide, ready to use her fencing ability if needed be. I’m not sure that all those precautions are needed, but you never know with him.
When the elevator finally arrives and the doors open, Dark Jay is lying on the floor, and his white hair cover his face. He’s sleeping.
“Thank god. I couldn’t have handled another monster today,” Silver says in her robotic, emotionless voice.
How she manages to have so much character in her voice without tone variations is above me, but still, she’s my best friend. And I’m certain that this fact says way too much about me.
Dale suddenly rushes forward, pushing Silver and me out of the way. He checks his vitals and opens Jay’s lids to check his irises.
“He’s okay. He has just passed out. Now, is someone going to explain to me what’s going on here?”
We all look at each other, but none of us takes a step forward. Well, I and Silver don’t move. Zan, on the other hand, has other plans.
“This Jay, he’s bad. He kills and frightens Silver and Eladia. But, he talks more. The other Jay is good, but doesn’t like to talk.”
He said everything with such a serious face that I burst out into laughs, thinking that it’s a joke. Dale flashes a wry smile at me, but Zan doesn’t seem to get what’s going on. Soon, my laughter fades and only the memory of it remains as I move to Dale’s side.
“Silver, we’ll move Jay to his room. Can you start the engines and get us on track to the blank spot? Also, let me know when you have an ETA. Okay?”
She nods and disappears behind the closing elevator doors. Now it’s just Dale and me in the small room.
“I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing telling you what’s going on with Jay, but it’s the best thing I can do to thank you for helping him back at the hospital.”
He looks at me with the same confused eyes as before. He opens his mouth, ready to talk, but I don’t let him. This is a long story he’s asking me to share with him, and that’s without answering all his questions.
Soon, we’re in the middle of the upper floor hallway, him carrying the heavy upper part of Jay’s body, me his feet, talking about my past like we’re old friends.
During our way to his room, I explain to him everything that happened between us during our short adventure on Primordial Earth. I tell him about the dangers of traveling to a primitive planet, and Silver accidentally picking up the signal to his crashed ship. Then, I describe everything in great detail, how I helped him out of the cryo-pod, and how he changed to his dark self to kill those predators.
The hours pass by, and I can’t stop talking. I tell him about the insectoids, the feline that almost attacked us, about the other, underground human. At that moment, I had to explain to him Zan’s origins to fully understand what we went through. He seems more confused.
He goes through an outburst, telling me that it’s not possible for humans to evolve so fast, but as soon as I explain to him that there was a Nusae Artifact in the area, he kinda nods and lets me go on. I continue by telling him about our latest adventure, this one on Mosa. I leave out all the embarrassing parts, including mine and Jay’s intimate night together. When that scene pops in my head, I shudder. He quickly asks me if I’m cold. I shake my head and continue.
At some time, I reach to the part that we arrive at the hospital, and he’s shocked that the man in front of him was still alive. I decide on the spot to keep the part of the two Originators that got assassinated a secret; and that a man wearing a red mask is the murderer; or that another man with a blue demon mask saved us.
And so, when I finally get to the end of the story, I realize that all this time we’re in Dale’s room, drinking a second glass of scotch. I feel a bit dizzy, but sitting on his bed, his hand touching mine, I kinda feel safe. It’s not something erotic, but it’s more than enough for me. I just want someone to tell me that everything is going to be okay
“And so...you and him? What’s going on between you two?”
He’s perceptive as well. I see. There is no point in hiding it then, I think at first, but as I watch deep into his eyes, his anxious stare that kinda reminds me how I was when I was watching Jay that night, I stop.
“I think I should go,” I suddenly say to him.
I thought he would try to stop me, but he’s a gentleman, as always, and even escorts me to my room. However, feeling like I was dreaming, I don’t remember him leaving my room that night. He just left me there and by the moment I blinked once, he had vanished.
Where am I? What am I doing outside? And where is Dale? All those questions suddenly appear at the top of my head. I know we were together just now, but I can’t remember what we were talking about.
It’s weird, I’m not all that drunk. I should be able to remember at least a part of our conversation, but something is wrong with me. Or Dale’s hiding something behind those big, blue eyes. My feet hurt, my back hurts, my head hurts. Everything on me has that numbing sensation of hours sitting on a bed.
I open the door to my room and walk inside. I change to
something more casual, something more suitable for sleeping. Before lying on my bed, I walk all the way to the only window in my room. I look outside and see the stars standing still, fixed points of gas and fire. The stars have been kind with me since I’ve started researching the Great Mystery, but now, I’m not sure that it was luck that made me get this far.
Dale is hiding something, Jay is two people in one body, and seeing his dark counterpart coming to the surface again, woke something inside me, a desire I didn’t know existed. My hand travels down on my skin, all the way between my legs. I moan and stop. There’s no way I’ll masturbate for him, but I can’t take my hand away. His white hair, his ash-gray skin that doesn’t reek of death, and that jovial, half-maddening attitude are more than Jay will be able to give me his whole life.
After all, he’s the same person, just not the same personality. I...I can work with that.
I shake my head snappily and stop. I pull my hand up and change side on the bed. I try to push his image out of my head, but I can’t.
This man has driven me crazy.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jay
I open my eyes and breathe in heavily. The cold air burns my lungs, and I choke on the sudden entry of oxygen in my blood. My eyes fill with countless black spots and my head spins from the feeling of saturation that comes with the first breath.
It takes me some time to understand what’s going on but soon, I have a good understanding of the situation. Everything shakes around me, the lights tremble, and a crashing sound comes from the lower floors. If I have to guess, then we’re in the middle of a battle.
I laugh at no one in particular, waiting for an answer to come from down the hall, but nothing. The human female, the one I fucked on that roof, is nowhere to be found. I don’t know, but that makes me feel sad, tired. Always running behind her, trying to get her to understand my way of thinking, but she never keeps up with me.
“I’m hungry,” I mumble to myself, trying to fall back to sleep, but the shake gets worse.
I can barely stand still even while lying on my bed, let alone walk. Either way, I somehow manage and get on my feet and head for the hallway.
I stroll a bit around, trying to find someone to tell me what’s going on, but for a place this big, every room is empty. Back when I was commanding the Esuh, when a ship this big was empty, bad things followed.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” I yell, but no one answers to me.
Shit, where is everybody? A thought flashes in my mind; maybe they abandoned me in this spaceship and left. Or maybe they’re all dead.
So, why is someone attacking an empty vessel?
I turn to my left and find myself in an open space with a long, metal table in the middle. This place feels familiar in a haunting way. I know for a fact that I haven’t been up here before, but my mind and body recognize it. I incidentally stretch my hand and push a button located on the edge of the wall. I don’t know why I do that, or what was the purpose of that move, but suddenly I hear her voice, Eladia’s voice, talking through the speakers.
“Jay, are you awake?”
Her voice sounds raspy as if she has been shouting for hours.
“I think this is pretty apparent. I don’t sleep walk after all,” I reply to her, letting myself indulge in a tint of sarcasm. I kinda need it right now.
“We’re under attack, Jay. If you can hear me, head for the bridge. We’re gonna need as many hands as possible.”
The bridge? What bridge? I don’t know where the hell I am, and she wants me to head to the bridge? However, just like before, my body seems to know the way.
I walk down another long hallway, this one full of round, thick windows. Intrigued, I look outside and see a pitch black juggernaut attacking our tiny ship. The assaulting ship is big enough to fit five of our ships in its belly, but we’re faster. If the pilot is worthy, it’ll try to outrun it. Instead, it seems like we’re moving closer and closer to another black, floating thing. I can discern dark shades of green below, but I have no idea what it is.
Before I realize it, I’m standing before an elevator. The automatic doors open to reveal an empty pod.
I walk in, and the doors close behind me. I’m trying to grasp the situation, but it now slips away from my hands like a pair of Renters. Fuck, those things were delicious. My hand stretches again to push a button on the right side of the pod. There are other metal buttons as well, all of them showing numbers. It goes all the way from zero to six, but I decide to push the button with the number five on it.
Right, when I feel the pump of the pod ascending to the upper floors, we get hit again, only, this time, it’s bad. The power goes out, and the elevator stops between the third and fourth floor. I’m on my knees, the sudden stop making me lose my balance.
“What the fuck? What’s going on out there?” I say to myself.
Everything is dark for a moment until the emergency systems kick in. A reddish light trembles for a while and then it stabilizes. The alarm finally kicks in and for the first time today, I see a pair of legs hurrying down the hallway.
“Hey! Hey you! What’s going on? Where am I?”
The human stops. Well, I’m not sure that the person running is a human, but from what I’ve seen these last days, it’s a pretty good guess. The human roams for half a minute in front of the stuck elevator and then leaves without saying a thing. The last thing I manage to see is this human wearing a green mask with a twisted expression on it.
“What the hell? You could have helped me, you asshole!” I shout at him, or her, and then hit the automated doors.
The rush of the first punch brings the need for more. I want to kick my way out of this cage, but no matter how strong I am the walls don’t even bulge. Well, not until one more round hits the hull. The place shakes and pieces of the ceiling fall on the floor. That last hit somehow helps the elevator to unstuck, and I’m finally on my way to the bridge.
Passing from the fourth floor, I see the damage the enemy spaceship has done to ours; the things are critical. Fire licks the metallic surfaces of the hallways and little explosions come from the monitors and cut wires hanging from the ceiling. It makes up for a devastated scenery.
Shit, we’re doomed.
I leave behind me the previous floor, and I ascend to the fifth. In front of me, I see a robot, a savage, and a beautiful woman fighting for their life. But it’s too late. The robot knows that and the savage boy knows that as well; only the human female seems to deny it.
So, I wait for the elevator to stop and the doors to open before I stride out. My body is almost moving by itself like I share my consciousness with somebody else. The one thing that makes sense, though, is that we both want to save her.
I see Silver transforming into a small capsule around Zan, leaving Eladia out. But I don’t have time to elaborate on that. I stomp my feet on the ground and plunge forward to grab her before the fires make it to her first. When I sense her cool skin on mine, I immediately feel reassured.
I’m not sure why; Esuh usually don’t have feelings. But, I’m starting to wonder, what is an Esuh? I haven’t met anyone like me before, so why I can’t be the version of myself that I like?
We are engulfed in flames, flying out of the spaceship window straight into the dark space. I take a deep breath and shut my eyes.
It’s over.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Eladia
We’re falling for a lot of time. It’s harsh and painful and frightening, but after a while, I got used to it. I’m not exactly sure what happened back there, but from what I remember, it must have been rough. One moment I’m on the bridge under heavy fire from an unknown class 5 black juggernaut. Silver and Zan were behind me, warning me that we have to evacuate the shit.
Something has gotten into me since the night I talked with Dale. I don’t remember a thing afterward, and I’m not myself anymore. I want to prove to everyone that I can keep us alive, that I can survive. I fight for life, with teeth a
nd nails until I feel a strong force sweeping me away. The last thing I remember is seeing Dark Jay’s purple irises.
He covers my body with his as we fall into nothingness. Dark Jay was asleep for five days straight after the cube incident, five days that it took us to travel to the blank spot. The blank spot is a codename signifying an actual blank spot on the intergalactic maps.
When the last war between the prior five great species ended, the Phadh set off a Nova Bomb to cement their status as the first and most powerful species of the galaxy. A Nova Bomb draws the exothermic power of a dying sun, a supernova, to charge a beam of light particles. When those particles change from their particle form to their wave form, the concentrated energy of the supernova spreads to every neighbor planet like a cosmic pool.
Alien Romance Box Set: Romantic Suspense: Alien Destiny: Scifi Alien Romance Adventure Romantic Suspence Trilogy (Complete Series Box Set Books 1-3) Page 87
