by Maia Starr
"I am so glad you remembered. I am so scared. I don't know what's going on out there. Lily, it is like the end of the world."
"Yes, I know it is worse than you can imagine. The capital city is gone," I said to her.
"What?! "She said with tears in her eyes.
"Yes, there is a lot to talk about. But don't be scared. We are here now, and we are going to look after you, "I sent to her.
"We?" she asked. I turned behind me to Zian. She gasped.
"But Lily, he is one of them," she said with wide eyes.
"I know. But he is different. He helped me escape. He flew me here in his ship. He can be trusted," I said to her.
"If you say so, sister. I am just glad that you are here. Come, come inside before someone sees you," she said to both of us. We entered the small house and locked the doors behind us. We didn't know what to expect, and we were not prepared. But one thing was certain, I now had everyone that I loved in my life, my sister and Zian.
The battle that day was unlike anything I had ever seen. We lost almost every major city and millions of human and Corillion lives. It was a battle that wiped out resources for both humans and the Corillion. It left both sides crippled. It was a dumb battle in the end. It seemed like neither side won. There was no clear victor as each had fought equally and had defeated each other. It was almost like a tie. That did not do anyone any good. At least with a clear winner, there would be someone in charge. But instead, there was just complete chaos because no one had won. Now everything was in complete ruins, and we had to start from the ground up again. It was time to rebuild, and Zian and I had to keep our promise to be the ones to do it. We had survived for this.
"Do you want me to take him inside?” Adelaine asked me, as she held her hand out to my son, Earthane Crace.
"Yes please, this is going to take a while. Go with your aunt,” I said to him as I gave him a kiss. Earthane was born nine months after the battle, and he brought us great joy. It was terrifying to be pregnant in a postwar world, but our hybrid son was the future of the planet, and we were going to do whatever we could to make sure that it would be a good place for him.
“How far along are you on that project?” Zian asked, as I looked over the blueprints of a new registration system. It was the same bridal registration system that I had negotiated with him.
“I think I am half way there. Of course, once it is actually put into action I will know more about what needs to be done. Right now it is just a framework, but I think it will be a good one.”
“I know that it will be, because you are the one creating it,” he said.
We were sitting on the porch of the small house that we all shared: my son; my sister; and my husband, Zian Crace. We were still on the island in the middle of Lake Michigan, one of the few areas spared by the battle, mostly because the Corillion did not know that it existed. We were fortunate to have local food sources consisting of fruit trees and fish. But the rest of planet, and especially the cities, were not so lucky. Most had relocated from the city and began the simple life of farming.
"Have I apologized today?” Zian said to me.
"Yes, a hundred times already. I have told you over and over again that you do not need to do this,” I sent to him.
"But I do. It is all my fault. All of this. I am the one that set the plan in motion. I am the only one to blame for all of this,” he said to me. He had been taking the blame, and taking it hard ever since the battle.
"I will tell you what I have told you before. I am glad that it was you. A war like the one we had with the Corillion was going to lead to that massive battle one day. It was going to be someone else if it wasn't you. But I'm glad it was you because you changed, you've allowed yourself to change. If it had been anyone else, it would have been much worse. We would've never had the data on the formula to the solution that contaminated the water, and so we wouldn't have been able to come up with a cure to the water contamination. You are the one that gave that to me. No other Corillion would have done so. It was you for a reason. Even though it is a heavy burden to carry now, you were chosen."
"You truly believe that?” he asked me.
"With all my heart, because I could not love you if it weren't true,” I said to him. And it was true. Ever since that day we had never separated. He was right all along. We would need each other after all that we had been through. Now, the Earth needed the both of us. We were rebuilding, and we were rebuilding in a world where the Corillion and the humans had to coexist on one planet.
"There is no other Corillion that I would want by my side other than you. You have given me our son and saved me. You have saved me more than once. If you had not abducted me when you did, I would have died days later in the capital city at the embassy, since it was the first building to be bombed. That's where I would've been. I wouldn't be alive except for you. I wouldn't be here to help rebuild and to create the system that we need to be able to coexist. My sister wouldn't be alive if you did not have the heart to allow me to call her that day to tell her to get out of the city. You did that for me, and you did not have to.”
"You always see the better side of things,” he said to me.
"And you always see the darker side of things."
"I guess that is why we are good together. We balance each other out,” Zian said as he pulled me onto his lap. I gave him a kiss.
"Well, that and many other reasons,” I said with a smile.
"That is very true,” he said as he kissed me again. I was in love with him. I loved him more than I could ever imagine and it blew my mind that the ruler of the alien race that I had hated had become everything in my life. It was now centered around him and my son. I never ever thought I would be a Corillion wife, but it had to happen. Our union created a jumping off point for Earth and the Corillions to begin peace talks. It was a very important union, and I was glad that so much good could come out of our love and marriage.
Over the past year, we had come up with many new plans, new plans that allowed both of our peoples to flourish. Only we would have been able to produce the results we had, because of who we were and our experience from both sides, Earth and the Corillion. It had taken us to create a new system, and it took all of our energy. But it was worth it; it was worth all our work so that our son could grow up in a place where he was accepted. Through our marriage came peace. Through our minds came a new system. And through our hearts came a new love. We were happy, even though we were living in a dystopian version of the Earth that I used to know. I was happy to have Zian at my side with my family. It was a new beginning. It was a new everything.
The End
Savage Alien(Preview)
By Stella Sky
Chapter One
Sidney
I’m a good listener. So when Karen started screaming, “Run, run, run,” I took off like a bat out of hell.
I didn’t even turn around to see if she was alright.
Instead, I listened to the sounds that were echoing behind me, a ‘THWOOP THWOOP THWOOP’ siren that reverberated through the ground. The sound of the creatures. The aliens.
I hadn’t seen streetlights in so long that they were almost blinding as I ran down the dampened streets of the abandoned city. Snow bit against the ground under the beams of light and quickly dissolved as it hit the pavement.
The backstreets of my old neighborhoods twisted in sudden darkness like a maze. If I could make it to my old house, I would be able to escape through the woodlands behind my backyard. Back to safety.
The vibrations of the aliens who were no doubt still chasing me grew stronger. So strong that I thought I might lose my footing, but then I saw it. My old front door. If I had a moment for my brain to catch up with my sight, I might have cried then. But I just wanted to get into my backyard and hide.
I raced past the old wrought iron fence, a rotting black, and found myself in the middle of the wet back lawn, still covered with heavy rotted fallen leaves, freshly snowed on.
My
breath was barreling out of me as I knelt down and pressed my back up against the shed, shaking against the wriggly metal. I heard a loud scream in the distance; down the road maybe. Something foreign. One of them.
I felt my teeth chatter violently and gripped my sidearm, waiting for the beast to come at me.
Make my day, bitch, I thought. But nothing happened.
Then suddenly ice-cold fingers were on my arm, and I flinched back, falling hard against the shed siding.
“Baxley, shit!” I swore and pushed my commander away from me; his black curls and stiff beard looking shiny under the motion-activated lights.
“Where’s Karen?” he said, his gravelly voice difficult to understand when he spoke in a whisper as he did then.
Karen, our lead scientist, was taken by them eight days ago. We being a small group of survivors. The revolutionists who hid and managed to keep out of sight long enough for the aliens to leave us alive; leave us alone, believing there was nothing left of our people. No one left to kill.
And then one day, Karen was gone, and everything changed. Twenty years of hiding all thrown to shit because she had a hunch to test.
Baxley and I went on a mission to get her back, but she didn’t welcome our rescue. Turns out she liked her cage.
“Not here,” I snapped back, pushing Baxley away from me.
“You left her?” the middle-aged man snapped at me, pulling me up and leading me instinctively toward the woods.
“Hey, she told me to run.”
“Yeah,” he said dismissively, raising and lowering his brows quickly. “Way to follow orders.”
I matched his expression and quickened my pace so that I walked next to him. “Hey, that’s what I thought.”
My commander rolled his eyes and held his gun close. “So, what? We just leavin’ her back there? With them?”
I shrugged, pre-annoyed. “She seemed pretty happy to me.”
We made our way into the thicket: a dense wood that sprawled on for miles. It was in here that we were first able to lose the creatures: shake them from us long enough to catch a breath. But that was a long time ago.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked quickly.
“Just what I said.”
Baxley sighed. “Will you stop bein’ snippy and give me a straight answer, for once? You’re the biggest pain in my ass.”
“You love it,” I teased. “B, we have to talk.”
“What, you breakin’ up with me, kid?”
I smiled his way, but neither of us picked up on the conversation offer. We had an odd relationship. Not only for commander and soldier, but for me being twenty-two and Baxley a cool fifty-five.
At first, I thought of him like a… not father. But like a plucky uncle. One that always had great stories and seemed to run into the zaniest people. But by the time I turned seventeen, I began having different feelings toward him. I went through a crisis then. An, ‘if this is all there is, why not?’ phase where I rebelled.
I rebelled within a rebellion, and it looked a whole lot like me sneaking into Baxley’s trailer—that’s where we hide, by the way: an abandoned trailer park on the outskirts of town—and kissing him deeply even as he protested.
Out of either instinct or routine, we both crouched for cover, hearing a distant hum that neither of us could identify as being close or far away.
Baxley drew his gun and traced it along the dark thicket, and I followed suit. We stayed deathly silent then until the hum disappeared for certain.
“When I said Karen looked happy,” I began again, “I meant… she was kissing that thing.”
“Rape?” Baxley asked in a furious whisper, his brows drawing together in confusion.
“He didn’t have her sprawled out on the sidewalk,” I offered in a tone that might as well have been a shrug.
“You know what I mean,” he warned.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Karen had a theory about the aliens, these Vithohn, that I found disturbing. I’d spent nearly my whole life fighting them. Learning to trap them. Taking cues from Baxley on how to handle myself in a militia. My father was part of Baxley’s militia, and when he died, Baxley took me under his wing. I was cocking guns since I was eight.
To me, the aliens were the ultimate enemy.
But Karen… she had different ideas about them. About ways to control them: change them.
“I’m not leavin’ her,” Baxley said suddenly, stoic.
“Then you’re risking your own life, not mine,” I argued, traipsing further into the wilds. “I’m not going back there.”
“She’s our second in command,” he snapped.
“And you’re first in command, so deal!”
Baxley didn’t like being our commander; he didn’t like others thinking he was in a position of authority. It was all a moot point, anyhow, since everyone revered and respected him. Everyone went to him when we needed someone to tell us how to survive.
“Fine,” the dark-haired man seethed through gritted teeth. “Then as commander, I say we’re going back!”
“B, trust me, she wants to be there.”
Baxley’s eyes darted back and forth from mine in a fury, and he grabbed my arm: the second time he’d ever been aggressive with me. The first time was when I kissed him that first time; he’d shoved me back and grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me. Then he kissed me again, just to be sure it was wrong.
Before he had the chance to scold me, a crashing came down hard in the distance; tree branches thudded to the ground in a sure signal that we’d been spotted.
I waited to see what Baxley’s play would be: steely silence and an excellent hiding place or pure panic and run. He chose the latter.
We took off, shooting in opposite directions as the Vithohn let out a terrifying shriek. Baxley had just enough time to make eye contact with me to let me know I would be used as bait this time.
The air went warm; even in the cold, the alien’s diamond textured, snake-like skin drew a heat to the surrounding area and I knew he was close.
I dug my spiked boot into the ground and spun on it, running left, breathing in the sharp winter air and feeling it hit my lungs like daggers.
Swerving west, I had a jolt bump up in my stomach as I felt the smooth grip of the creature against my leg. My heart thumped against my chest, and I just managed to get away from his grasp, plucking my leg from his grip like I was watching myself from afar.
I heard Baxley fire off his weapon, probably aware that the thing was getting a little too close to me and I fired back, smoking the Vithohn in his thick arm and watching as his self-induced force field sparked up instinctively.
“Come here, asshole!” I yelled
I goaded him toward me, watching my feet as they danced on tiptoes to avoid our carefully dug holes.
Suddenly, I realized he wasn’t alone, but the two other sets of footsteps shrank back as we all watched the smooth, tight-faced creature rocket down beneath a shallow covering of leaves: a thin façade of ground covering, one of our carefully calculated traps.
My militia had dug holes around here; a drippy pink acid we concocted set in pools of thick plastic that would hopefully be good enough to roast off a limb or two. Anything to keep them on unstable footing would work fine for me, especially now.
I couldn’t help but bellow a small laugh as the creature went splashing down below into the bubbling acid, unable to activate his shield.
The creature emitted a piercing, rhythmic sound that sent the hairs on my neck shooting upward. I gritted my teeth, wondering if it might be a war cry and that I was totally screwed.
I looked down in the pit and watched as the taupe-skinned foreigner thrashed around and grabbed the side of the pit, attempting to pull himself up.
Cocking my gun, I laid a bullet into the alien’s face and watched as his flesh parted against the slug before collapsing into the pink depths and dissolving.
I crouched quickly, flattening my body against the
frozen ground as I heard the other footsteps nearing.
“Where is he?” the Vithohn alien seethed. He had the same taupe skin and a large head, bald, that came back into a rounded point. His bone structure was harsh and chiseled; a wide-bridged nose and brown eyes that were always shrouded in blackness; his armor glowing with blue lines that scattered along black fabric.
“I can’t be sure,” the female said—whispered.
Her voice was familiar: human. I instantly recognized her as Tiffany Caites. Our communications officer. Looks like she was communicating just fine.
The Vithohn looked around the forest furtively. “You said there are traps.”
“Oh yeah,” she said, almost laughing. “We didn’t leave an inch.”
“That’s comforting,” the creature said with a quick lower of the brow: his tone almost comical in nature.
I swallowed hard, unfamiliar with the Vithohn being anything but mindlessly aggressive. I didn’t even know they could talk, I was so unaccustomed to their ability to converse. Now here he was being… sarcastic? Playful?
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, putting his arm around Tiffany protectively.
“What about Dreicant?” she asked, leaning into him.
I assumed they meant the alien I’d just smoked.
The man looked around, sniffed the air, and the dismissed her.
“He chose his own fate,” he said.
“We could help him,” Tiffany said in her childlike tone: feminine and soft-spoken. “Karen is here now; she led our science team.”
