by Sadie Marks
He opened one eye and turned his head slightly to see her and then snorted. "Add it to the list of things you want to know," he suggested, and then he reached out, snagged her around the shoulders, and pulled her up against his side.
She stiffened, giving him a dirty look but then reluctantly relaxed into the warmth of his body. She'd come to enjoy the cuddling with him and stopped fighting it every time he pulled her into his arms. That didn't mean she was going to forget the question, though. "Don't think I won't," she muttered under her breath and then ignored the shaking of his body as he quietly laughed.
The rest of the ride was as smooth and uneventful as an SDV could make it, and they both seemed to have plenty to think about so the backseat remained quiet as they breezed through the morning traffic smoothly and eased onto the highway out of the city. Once the steady skyline of buildings had begun to thin to just a few here and there, she started to wonder exactly where he was taking her.
To some Rustic house? She might be interested in seeing that, but then he'd said he was an outcast so maybe not. "Are we almost there?" she asked finally, after an hour of empty landscape flying by was starting to make her nervous. She'd hadn't been so far from civilization in years, and she was beginning to get a little anxious about the fact that they were the only ones on the road.
"Soon." He didn't open his eyes when he answered, and she bit back the urge to demand to know how he could tell when he wasn't even paying attention.
She chewed on her bottom lip and shifted in her seat as she wondered what would happen if the vehicle broke down. Was there even a signal so far out? That thought had her sitting bolt upright and fumbling in her pocket to retrieve her communicator. She didn't relax until she saw that she did, in fact, have a signal. Well, that was something, and she could at least amuse herself by playing with it, making the trip a little less tedious.
There was nothing really out here anymore. The scenery flashing by was dusty and withered. She remembered once, when she was a near-adult, all the kids in her block had been taken on a trip out of the city. There'd been stories about what things used to be like, back in the Old, but none of them had really paid attention.
She did know that it had been like this in a lot of places, except for the cities and small pockets of rurals where life was cultivated, but the news bursts on the 'Sphere said they were slowly bringing things back so maybe someday she'd get to see what untamed nature really looked like. Apparently, they hadn't been doing anything about this land, though, because it still looked as desolate as it had when she was a kid.
And when the car finally came to a stop, there was still nothing to see. She nudged Trev out of a light doze with her elbow, and he sat up immediately and then yawned. "There's nothing here. You must have given it the wrong information," she said as she turned to peer out the window. Even when she pressed her face to the glass and shielded her eyes from the sun, all she could see was empty land and some rocks.
"We're in the right place. Let's get your things."
"But—"
He didn't wait for the questions he no doubt knew were coming. He slid out of the SDV and pulled her bags from the trunk. It took some arranging, but shortly, he'd slung them all neatly across his back and came around to her side to open her door.
"Come on, we need to go," he said.
"But there's nothing out there!"
"There is; we just have to walk a little bit first." He reached down, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of the backseat despite her protests. When he started walking without looking back, she blew out an angry breath of frustration and used a backward kick to shove the door shut.
Muttering, she hurried to catch up to him because all the empty space was just too much for her to take alone. A ball of ice had settled in deep and she kept flashing nervous glances all around her. No normal person would enjoy being out here without a wall in sight; she was positive of that. She didn't realize she'd said it out loud until he laughed.
"Well, I don't know about that, but I'm not a big fan of empty spaces either. I've spent too much time in small rooms to be used to it anymore, but where I grew up, we had open places like this. Not so lifeless, though. My home was always filled with animals and plant life." He sounded wistful as he reminisced about his childhood.
All she could think was how backwards his life must have been. She hadn't realized how different it was in the rurals, but at least she was finally learning something about his past. "And you liked it?" she asked, sounding doubtful.
"Yes. Very much. I told you I was an outcast? I never got along very well with others of my age group, so I spent a lot of time alone."
She could feel him looking at her out of the corner of his eye, but she kept staring at the ground straight ahead. It was necessary, really, with such an uneven surface. "But what did you do out there all alone?"
"I ran, searched for interesting things. Sometimes I hunted," he said.
That pulled her up short, and she turned to stare at him with her mouth hanging. It opened and closed a few times before she could find the words. "You…hunted? You don't mean hunting animals?"
"Animals, yes. Sometimes just to watch them. Sometimes for food," he admitted.
She couldn't even—her stomach flipped over queasily and she had to swallow back the sudden bitter taste of bile. She swayed dizzily and he reached out to take her arm in a protective gesture, but she stepped back before he could touch her. "You killed things? Animals? Isn't that illegal?" No one did that because meat for food was all grown in vats now and it tasted exactly the same. At least that's what she'd been told. It wasn't like she had a comparison since she'd never had meat from a live animal before. No one she knew had. Her nose wrinkled at the grossness of it.
He sighed and shook his head. "I forgot you—things are different where I grew up, Sam. I'll tell you everything, but we have to keep walking. Just a little further now." He shifted the bags on his back with a shrug, trying to settle them into a more comfortable position while he snuck the occasional look at her, probably to see how she was handling the revelation that he'd killed and eaten things. It was just so strange. Could the rurals really be that different?
"Okay," she said in a voice just above a whisper. She followed as he started walking again but felt subdued. The killing thing, it made her nervous, reminded her again that she didn't know much about his past, and while she thought she had a pretty good grasp on who he was now, she couldn't help wondering what she'd gotten herself into.
Not that there was any point in worrying about it now. The SDV was long out of sight and she wasn't sure she could even find the road again. All she could do was keep moving forward to this secret location he wouldn't talk about.
"How much longer before we get there?" she asked, aware that her tone sounded sulky. She was tired of walking over the rough terrain. Her shoes weren't really designed for it and her feet were starting to hurt.
"Not much. Actually, I think we're here." He raised one arm over his head, squinting because of the sun and finally moving until he could see better. "Yes, this is it," he announced with some excitement.
She blinked and turned in a slow circle as she took in the vast nothingness around them. "This? This is it? There's nothing here!" she shouted. Her arms waved around, pointing at the flat, empty landscape as the panicked thought raced through her mind that she was in the middle of nowhere with a person who was badly in need of mental rehabilitation. Of course, she should have known their relationship was too good to be true.
She was working herself up for a good rant and maybe a sprint back in the direction she thought they'd come from. The SDV wouldn't be there any more, of course; it would have auto returned to the city after a half hour without instructions, but maybe someone would come by.
"Sam, you're going to have to trust me," he said as he carefully dropped all of her bags to the ground and approached.
"Don't! Don't touch me. I should have—trust me to pick a—I can't believe I—"
>
He reached out and snagged her into his arms, cutting off the panicked babble in mid-syllable. "Sam. Listen to me, okay? Things are about to get very strange, but remember what I promised you. Once we're gone, I'll tell you everything."
She tried to speak, mouth working soundlessly as she shook her head. Whatever she would eventually have said was lost when the ground began to shake beneath their feet. She threw her arms around him, clinging and completely mindless in a panic. Next, came a low roaring sound, and her hair began to whip around wildly from a ferocious wind.
She hid her face against his chest and refused to look at whatever was happening around her. The noise got louder, the wind got worse, and then there was a bone-jarring thump as if something heavy had hit the ground hard. The ground rippled, and she would have fallen if he hadn't held her tight and then suddenly…silence.
She looked up first, checking his face for signs of reassurance and he smiled at her and slowly turned her around without letting her go. Her mouth dropped and hung open wide as she stared at the— "What the hell is that?" she demanded.
"It's my ship. I think you can see why I didn't have it pick us up in the city. This is the safest place to board since there's no one around to start screaming and shouting when they see it land."
Her head whipped around so she could stare at him, and he gently, ever so carefully, put a finger under her chin and pressed up until her mouth closed.
"I know. It's a lot, I understand, but we really need to get moving. Our ships can't be detected by your, uh…" He coughed delicately before finishing. "…primitive technology, but there are others watching who will notice if we're here too long."
"What?" Just that one word was all she could manage. Her eyes slowly dried out from an inability to blink and she just stood there as he released her and started picking up the bags again.
"Come on, Sam." He gave her an encouraging look and jerked his chin toward the ramp that slowly lowered until it sent clouds of dust spraying upward. He started walking, but when he saw she hadn't moved, he sighed and came back to her. "Sam? Are you with me?" His forehead wrinkled as his eyebrows met at the bridge of his nose. He looked concerned.
"Is that—is that a spaceship?" she said in a voice so low, she could barely hear it herself.
He didn't have that problem, apparently, because he nodded. "Yes, mine, but if we don't get off the ground pretty fast, there's going to be trouble. Now move your ass, Sam." He gave her a tug to get her started walking past him and then cracked the palm of his hand across the seat of her pants to speed her up.
She yelped and shot him an offended look that didn't have half as much vigor as it normally would have. She felt drained, emotionally and physically—just completely lost at the moment. It didn't even occur to her to tell him she'd changed her mind because she could barely believe this wasn't some weird dream.
She flashed back to her old addiction days and remembered how real those mindscapes could be. Something like this was just the kind of scenario Craig loved to build. The kind that could really mess you up because you lost track of the real world entirely and believed what you were experiencing. Maybe she'd gone into one of them and just never come out.
Oh, fuck, what if it was the alien mindscape with the tentacle monsters? That one had her skin crawling for weeks after she'd emerged; if she'd emerged. Her life had taken such a weird turn that she really wasn't entirely convinced any of it was real anymore. She made it up the ramp but came to a complete stop in the entranceway. She leaned inside, looking around with a tentative glance, and only when she was sure nothing with tentacles was going to come slithering out at her, did she finally enter the ship. It wasn't what she'd expect from a spaceship. It was messy, for one thing. Every available space seemed to be filled with weird junk that had been strapped down.
"Wait." She spun around with a gasp and stared at him as he entered behind her. "I've seen real spaceships on the 'Sphere and they're nothing like this! They're like giant dick-shaped things. This is like something out of an alien vid. And you—" She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You said 'our ships'; does this mean—are you trying to say you're an alien?" The last bit came out like an accusation, but her mind had already worked the problem and come to the solution that he had to be.
Suddenly, everything fell into place. The weird way he talked, like he couldn't think of the right words sometimes. The odd habits that he'd passed off as being a rustic—no, she'd passed them off as that. Come to think of it, he'd never claimed to be, she'd just assumed. She took a long slow breath, exhaling forcefully to control the panic as she took a nervous step back and nearly tripped over a stack of boxes.
He looked at her thoughtfully and then turned and swept his palm across a panel at the side of the entrance. The ramp slid up with a rumbling sound and the doorway sealed before he answered. "Alien? Yes. I guess from your perspective, I would be."
"Was anything you told me true?" The question was soft, full of hurt bewilderment and she hated that her feelings were spilling out like that, but she couldn't help it.
"Everything I told you was true. I just let you fill in the blanks on your own," he said, correcting her calmly.
"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me you were a—"
"An alien?" He laughed, giving her an amused look. "Would you have believed me?" He pulled open a panel and began packing her bags inside, and then he closed it firmly and took her by the arm. "If you think you're surprised now, just wait," he said as he pulled her down a short corridor which ended in what was obviously the control room of the ship.
He pushed her gently into a seat and then took the time to buckle a webbing of restraints around her. She squirmed and tried to push him away. "Too tight! And—and I didn't agree to leave the planet!"
He sighed and pushed her hands out of his way so he could finish the complicated procedure. "They have to be tight, baby. Sorry, and you agreed to travel with me. I just didn't mention how far we'd be going."
"That's a pretty big fucking omission, don't you think?" she demanded. She flailed her arms at him in anger, but she was all buckled in and it did no good. He was already settling into the seat next to her, the pilot chair, she imagined, and getting himself trussed up similarly.
"Yes. It was, and I wish I could have told you everything, but I couldn't take the chance. Telling a human any of this is twenty kinds of illegal." His voice was distracted as his hands flew across the board in front of him, flicking switches, pressing buttons. A complicated display sprang up in front of them, but she couldn't understand any of it.
"How illegal is stealing one?"
He paused, turning to look at her for a second, and then he laughed. "About the same, actually, but less chance of getting caught." His fingers slid across the hovering display, and suddenly the low hum of the ship got louder. She squeaked as it shook and tilted slightly, grabbing at the arms of her seat in a panic.
After a few seconds, it leveled off, but any chance of relaxing was wiped out when she felt it begin to move. Her stomach did a little flip and her heart rate accelerated until she was sure he could hear it pounding away even over the engine.
"Press back against the seat. When we take off, it's going to be fast, and unfortunately, I didn't have the money for the fancy gear so it's a little on the rough side," he explained. He shifted in his chair, following his own advice. His arm went up, doing something complicated with the virtual display. Suddenly, the ship lurched, and Sam passed out for the first time in her life.
Chapter 4
She woke up, yawned and stretched, and then opened her eyes and was hit was a wave of confusion. She knew instantly that she wasn't in her apartment, but that didn't make sense because she never slept anywhere else. Even when she went home with someone from the club, she didn't sleep over. It was just sex, and then she was out the door.
Things came back to her slowly and in fragments. She remembered Trev, and a smile curved her lips. Then she remembered agreeing to leave wit
h him, which settled the confusion for about three seconds. That was how long it took for the rest to come rushing back, and she sat up with a shout, "He's a fucking alien!"
"I am both of those things, yes."
She recognized his voice instantly and her head swung around to find him sitting calmly in a chair in the corner watching her. "What happened?" She winced and her hands went up to push against her temples in a vain attempt to stop the throbbing pain in her skull.
"You fainted, so once we were locked on course and past your planet's satellites, I unstrapped you and carried you to bed."
"I've never fainted in my life!" She was offended at the idea of it—which amused her in the afterthought since it wasn't the worst of her problems just then.
"Might have been from the acceleration; you humans are fragile like that." He shrugged. "To be fair, you had just been hit with a lot of emotional stress too, and I'm sorry about that. The good news is while you were out, I went ahead and took care of the language issue. This old hunk of junk might be low on luxury, but at least the med bay is top notch—for a mobile unit anyway." He looked pleased with himself, but she could only stare in confusion.
"I have no clue what any of that meant. What language issue?"
"Well, my English wasn't the best, and running a translator constantly is a problem. Now you speak Sadec, so it will be easier," he explained.
She tilted her head, not in the least enlightened by that. "I don't speak Sadec."
"Don't you?" He smirked, one eyebrow going up, and she gave him a scowl in return.
"No! I…wait…" She trailed off and then her eyes widened. "I. Don't. Speak. Sadec," she said slowly, enunciating each word as comprehension dawned on her. "That's not English!" He was right; she was speaking some other language.
"No, it's Sadec. My language. If you pay attention, you can tell, but it should mostly feel seamless to you."
And it was true. This time, she listened carefully, and she could tell that he wasn't speaking her language, but she also instantly understood each word. "I think I need to lie down again," she said quietly and flopped back on the bunk then winced, because it jarred her aching head.
