“Then help me get home.” She spoke so softly I could barely hear her.
In a way, I wanted to help her, and knowing my father, her suffering would eventually end in a slow death. But there was nothing I could do.
“Maybe you can if you find a way to unseal this cell,” she added.
Maybe, but then what? Keep her hidden somewhere in the palace so I could periodically interact with her and gain a first-hand experience when it came to studying such an intriguing race? That would be an impossible feat, and I’d eventually have to turn her over to my father or take her back to Earth—another impossibility, considering my lack of resources and the fact that it would be considered an act of rebellion against the throne. My title as prince could only take me so far, and it wasn’t something I’d jeopardize for any alien—even a human.
“I don’t think I can.”
“Please, promise me you’ll at least try.” She brought her hand to her head and pushed a sweep of hair over her shoulder.
Her desperation surprisingly wracked my heart. “Like I told you before, that’s not possible. I’m taking a risk just being in this cellblock. The king cannot know I was here.”
“Garran!” Lestra’s voice rang through the hall in a loud whisper. “Slaine’s returning to his station. We have to go now before he checks the monitors. Hurry! We don’t have a lot of time.”
“I’m sorry, but I need to leave—now,” I said to America, looking from side to side and standing abruptly.
“No, please don’t go. I-it’s so lonely in here. I’m cold, and I’m scared.”
“I’d stay longer if I could, but I can’t. If anyone finds out I was here, I’ll never be able to come back.”
“So you’re coming back?” She stood and faced me, the refined, shadowy curves of her body rippling behind the pulsing wall.
One interaction had not been enough to quell my interest. And there was something more about her that intrigued me. I needed to see this female again to find out what it was. “Yes, I’ll try to return tomorrow.”
“Garran! Hurry,” urged Lestra from beyond the hall. “Or we’ll get caught.”
“Wait,” said America. “I don’t know your name.”
“It’s Garran,” I told her before I could stop myself. Damn! What if she accidentally said it in front of someone other than Lestra or me?
She repeated my name, but thankfully her human accent and lack of clicks made it undistinguishable.
“Yes, call me Garran,” I said, using her pronunciation, and after a last glance at America from over my shoulder, I jogged down the hall to meet Lestra, my footsteps echoing, hoping I had one more chance to speak with America before my father started his experiments.
Chapter Seven
America
An explosion of white light obliterated my sight. “I can’t see. Where am I?” And how in the world did I get here, out of my room, if I was, in fact, no longer in my cell? My hands grasped the cold edges of the table as I lay flat on my back unable to move. My heart pounded strong enough to drum a hole in my chest.
Was someone there? “Who are you? What are you doing to me?” I asked desperately, using all the oxygen in my lungs, gasping and coughing to refill them again. My throat tightened with an onset of tears. My blood pumped harder, and I gasped at the reality that I was immobilized.
Trying to lift my head from the table resulted in the pulling of my hair at the base of my skull, as if a vacuum hose took hold of it, sucking and drawing my head to rest once again on the hard surface beneath me. Lifting my arms and legs was just as futile. Any bit of movement resulted in the same force, the suction of air against my skin, keeping me pinned to the table, naked, vulnerable, and freezing cold.
Ready to explode with fear and anger, I ordered my legs to kick and my fists to beat, striking and hitting anything or anyone I saw, but nothing moved at my mental command. “Let me go!” I screamed.
I blinked through my blindness, straining to see someone or something, concentrating, sharpening my senses, trying to gauge where I was and what was happening to me. Turning my head from side to side, a wave of claustrophobia sent my pulse spiking so fast that I could barely catch my breath.
Was I awake or in the middle of some horrible dream?
No, this definitely wasn’t a dream. Strange noises erupted to my left, rhythmic but distinctive, punctuated by pauses and responses—a language—it had to be, but not like anything I had ever heard before. An odor, something chemical and unpleasant, came next, something that burned my nostrils, making me cough, gag, and swallow hard, trying to remove the bad taste it brought to the back of my throat.
“Stop! I can’t breathe,” I gasped, filling my lungs with the fouled, stagnant air, my head spinning, my eyes blinking wildly.
But who or what was I speaking to—the passengers aboard the triangular ship that took me away from the woods? The alien who visited me? His words replayed in my mind: the king has an unusual desire to study the unknown, and the unknown includes alien life forms. No, not him. He said he didn’t agree with what the king was doing to me.
A deep sting erupted at my ankle. Was it the touch of an alien syringe in an alien hand? My jaw clamped shut, and my mouth closed and sealed, as if the soft inner skin of my lips was rimmed with dots of superglue. Who was doing this to me and why?
Calm down, America. Calm down before you lose your mind. There was no sense in fighting.
Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. Every muscle in my body trembled, pulsing with panic. Closing my eyes increased the nausea pulling at my gut and the horror bubbling in my brain, coiling it into a spiral of thoughts I couldn’t contain. Maybe I was dying or already dead.
I’d never see any of them again—my mom, my family, my friends. This was it. I’d never be a wife and mother, live the American dream.
I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.
And what would they do with my body when I’m dead? I imagined my naked corpse in a tube of formaldehyde, the side of my face sunk against the glass as gravity took its toll.
No! No! Stay alive. Stay alive. Breathe. Breathe.
Breathing through my nose was difficult, but I managed to suck in deep, burning lungfuls of air and talk myself through the pain as it radiated up my leg and into my hip while I tried to regain control of my thoughts.
From my hip, the pain exploded into my chest, making my back arch uncontrollably and bringing down the crown of my head to meet the table. A series of three labored breaths through my nose eased the pain as it slowly retreated back into my lower legs. Is this what death felt like, or was this worse than death itself?
The remaining pain doubled with a jab of something cold against my thigh, something that pushed and twisted, something sharp that stopped when it hit bone. The sides of my face and my ears were warm and wet, but from what? Blood was my first thought. My stomach tightened. My chest heaved. And then I realized it was from my tears, thick, warm tears I couldn’t control.
Take a breath. Feel your chest expand. Another deep breath. Yes, that was it. I was still alive. Breathe. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
Ouch! No! Another pain, a deep poke, cut into my wrist. A bath of warmth came next, something wet, maybe this time blood. Stop. Please stop. A slow prickle worked its way up my spine, colder and colder, settling into my chest and limbs.
Now was I dead? My eyes were opened. Was I blind? The smell was gone. The voices were gone. Everything was black and quiet and still. My nostrils flexed. No, this wasn’t death, but it was almost just as bad.
My emotions continued to twist and turn like my stomach as I blinked against the darkness, trying to move my limbs and fighting the fatigue and a sudden flood of exhaustion that was strong enough to make me believe I’d die in my sleep.
Stay awake. Stay awake. Stay awake.
More cryptic voices.
My muscles became limp, my thighs, my calves, my arms, and the suction at the base of my head released. I wiggled my fin
gers, my toes. A pair of hands caught me at the ribs, a grip hard enough to break bone. Cold fingers encircled my ankles, and I was lifted from one table to another, the back of my head banging against its surface with an odd twang.
Blinking and straining to see my surroundings, my hair caught a small breeze as I was whisked to who-knows-where, the table being pushed or pulled in one constant direction.
I turned my head to the side and closed my eyes.
Please, please! Let me see!
My eyes burned and watered, but I was still partially blind when I opened them. White walls appeared, fuzzy and nondescript, curving as they met a high ceiling dotted with lights that stole my restored vision the longer I looked at them.
Someone was at my right, walking briskly beside my table. Another was to my left, and as I strained to hear, I caught the quick breathing of a third behind me. With my compromised vision, all three were as blurry as if they stood on the other side of the wavy wall of my containment cell.
Where were they taking me? A place to continue my torture, something that would lead to my death, or was I going back to my cell?
No! No!
Adrenaline shot through my veins, and with a deep breath, I pushed up from the table and rolled to the side, straining to see, struggling for strength. My feet hit the floor, and staggering, I burst forward in a clumsy sprint.
Where was I going? I didn’t care. I just wanted away from them, away from there.
Voices behind me. Male voices. Strange shouts. Rapid clicks and odd vocalizations.
My shoulder hit the wall to my right and then to my left as I rebounded to the other side of what I guessed was a long hall. A dark, rectangular shadow ahead—a door, maybe. I slammed against it, searching for some kind of knob or lever.
But hands met my back, pinning me to the door, and I turned my head, longing to see more than the blurry, human-like silhouette that pulled me into the hall and threw me to the ground. My knees hit first, and I dropped forward, catching myself with my palms.
Another pressed his knee into the center of my lower back and I collapsed, my cheek meeting the icy floor. With its next move, my arms were behind me, and its hands, thick as if gloved, burned bruises into my tender skin as I fought against an iron grasp.
I caught an arm with my hand, and as it jerked its body away from me, my fingers scraped against the oddly hard yet smooth bicep beneath its shirt sleeve, and I could only assume it was wearing some type of body armor.
Something thin, cold, and wiry bound my wrists. I jerked from side to side, kicking to rise to my knees, but fighting was futile beneath their weight.
Through my misty vision, I saw the glint of a long needle, and with a sting, it penetrated my upper arm.
Keeping my arms crossed over my breasts, I withdrew toward the corner of my cell. The skin on my arms chilled. How long I had been unconscious, I had no clue, but I was so tired and so weak that it took every bit of strength I had to make it to the gray wall. Thankfully my sight had been restored.
Two feet away lay a metal tray on the floor, holding three colored, brick-sized blocks: one green, one brown, one yellow. I leaned forward with an outstretched hand, hooked the edge of the tray with my fingers, pulled it toward me, and was met with some familiar odors—some kind of meat, vegetables, and I wasn’t sure about the third. They were solid, manufactured bricks of food, but my stomach was too upset to eat. My mouth and throat were too dry anyway. I needed to drink some water, but my body was too stiff and exhausted to stand.
Flexing my back and stretching out my legs, I saw the possible cause of my new weakness. The skin covering a large vein on my wrist was bruised, purpley-blue with a tiny red dot in its center. Someone had taken my blood. But when? While I was asleep? And how? What happened to me? Was I removed from this cell unconscious and taken somewhere else? And then I remembered the bright light and the pain that screamed through my immobile body while I was being examined by alien captors I couldn’t see.
“What the hell did you do to me?” I yelled with raw lips, finding the strength to stand and using the wall for support before making my way to the water fountain.
The water seemed colder than it was before, making my teeth hurt. I trembled, rubbing my arms, bringing my thoughts back to the mountains where I stood with Atlanta, Logan, and Kevin, looking up at the strange object in the sky.
I was cold, so cold! I needed clothes. “You could have at least given me a blanket,” I shouted at the undulating wall.
My left thigh was swollen on one side and bruised at the hip, a hard knot of a bruise the size of a golf ball. When pushing upon it lightly with my finger, a familiar pain returned, one that burned and blurred into a faint memory.
A table, a bright light, strange voices, and deep pain— Yes, I remembered the blinding light and lying upon a hard, cold table with edges so sharp that they cut into my fingers when the sting came, and I tightened my muscles, forcing my hands to lock beneath it. And I remembered stumbling through a dark hall, half blind, and then being caught, restrained, and drugged. A deep bruise encircled my wrists, and my ankles were dotted with plumb-colored fingerprints.
I dropped to the ground and gave the tray of cold bricks a quick kick with my foot, sending it toward the curtain of cloudy crystal. All three bricks rolled from the tray, hit the liquid wall, sparked, sizzled, and turned into a puddle of ash.
Rounding my back, I leaned forward and closed my eyes, letting my long, brown hair fan about my shoulders. What was my mom doing right now? How was she handling my disappearance? Was she scouring the woods for evidence that I was still alive, hoping she wouldn’t find my dead body? Was she holding news conferences so she could beg my kidnappers to let me go? Was she at home, lying in bed, depressed and crying, asking why this had to happen to me? Or maybe she had done all three.
The unanswered questions roiled in my mind again and again, again and again, sending me into a spontaneous fit of panic. But after their tenth rotation, like counting sheep, the repetition made me drowsy. My heartbeat slowed, and the pulse in my neck became undetectable.
Stay positive. Stay positive, I told myself. Be strong. Crying won’t help.
Slumping against the wall and closing my eyes, I decided I’d rather sleep than think about my uncertain fate. But just as I was about to drift into a self-forced slumber, the vent in the ceiling opened, filling my cell with its annoying hum as it sucked away the smoke and smell of the burning food cubes.
Chapter Eight
Garran
“Garran, is that you?” America was a mere lump of a shadow, with two small projections, her feet extending from one end.
“Yes, it is me,” I told her and settled next to the containment wall, drawing my knees toward my chest.
“I was hoping it was just a dream.” Her figure lengthened, and in the next minute she was in a sitting position across from me, the curves of her soft body oddly Enestian.
“I’m not sure what you mean.” I had anxiously checked her file several times, but it hadn’t updated since the day before.
The silhouette of her arm showed, and her shadowy hand ran the length of her body. “Ouch,” she said when her palm crossed to her hip. “But it wasn’t. It was real.” The cadence of her voice faltered, and with her next words, I knew she was crying.
“Oh my God! What did they do to me?” She wept.
“You are in pain.” That bothered me. More than maybe it should have. She was just another alien, right? But at the same time, I wished I was in her cell, not just to see her foreign form face-to-face, but to give her some comfort, a hand to hold or maybe an arm around her shoulder.
“Yes, I, I was on a table. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see. I thought I was dying. I tried to get away, but they, they…” She broke into a sob. Her head dropped, and a sweep of hair fanned against her body like a snow sparrow unfolding its wings.
Damn. Heat erupted under my brow plate, and my jaw casing locked in place. Time was running out, and I realized
I cared not only because I wanted more time with this creature for curiosity sake, but also because she didn’t have much more time. I had to get inside that cell and do what I could to soften her sadness.
My father had already completed his first stage of alien examinations. There were three stages. What each entailed? I didn’t know, since I avoided the lab and any part of my father’s experiments that used live specimens. But I did know each round of tests progressively became more invasive until he finished with the creature’s live dissection and death.
The soft blur behind the rippling curtain rose, stumbling as America came to her feet. Her hand came to her head, which I assumed was to wipe the tears from her cheeks, and as she turned, she pushed her hair from her face.
“I am sorry this has happened to you,” I said as I stood. And this time, I genuinely was, her suffering slowly overriding my ethnocentrism.
So Enestian she appeared from behind the oozy containment sheet. The soft curve of her chin, the rounding of her shoulders, and just like my planet’s females, her upper body sloped inward to a tiny waist and turned outward again to defined hips and thighs. I wondered what it would be like to touch her skin. Draw my hand along her body. Would her flesh depress or was it firm? Would it feel smooth or would my palm catch upon the contour of a crooked bone or rough hair, something reminiscent of a prickly dew plant?
“Then make it stop. Please!” she whimpered. “Make them not hurt me again. Make them let me go.”
“If I could, I would, but like I’ve explained before, I have little influence over the king.”
She sank her thin arms down, reaching to hug her drawn-up legs once she hit the floor. “I want to go home,” she said softly. “Three days but it feels like three weeks.” Her head lowered to the top of her knees. “I missed my shift.” Her words were muffled, and I imagined her pale lips from her intake picture resting against her knees while she spoke.
“Your shift? I do not understand.” I lowered back to the floor and scooted as closely as I could to the rippling containment wall.
Gamma Rift Page 4
