by Gemma Voss
In a daze, I stumble to the railing and lean against it, sucking in the crisp air. Clarity rings through me.
Thank God I am alone out here because I must look like a madwoman, crying and smiling. None of what Pakka says matters. Kila loves me and I love him and no matter what they say, we’re going to find a way to be together. As this truth settles over me, each breath feels like new life. My eyes close and I steady my breathing. I’m going to give myself time to get collected, and then I can march right back to the lab, get my work done, and find some special way to tell Kila that I love him.
I’m not sure how much time passes as I bask in the glow of my new revelation. But while I am leaning at the railing, enjoying the October chill, a blaring horn begins to sound. My hands clap to my ears on instinct.
It startles me, and my eyes immediately go to the rooftop access door. Inside, red lights are flashing. When I go to investigate, I peer through the glass panel and find that the security lights at the next landing down are going off. I pull at the handle, but the door is locked.
“Fuck,” I whisper, and jiggle it repeatedly to be sure its locked. I can faintly hear someone speaking through the intercom system, but I can’t make out what they are saying. It must be a security breach, but there’s no way I’ll be able to find out what’s going on from up here. I didn’t even bring my cell phone with me. For all I know, it could be a regular drill. But Jen usually tells me about those in advance.
Knowing the doors won’t unlock until the security system is no longer on alert, I move to the opposite side of the building. There is another railing there, and I am hoping to glean some information from what the security guards are doing. Some sort of chaos is transpiring over at the front gate. The protesters are scattering. Most of the group is running across the lot or getting into vehicles to drive away. Signs and various trash have been dropped where they stood, abandoned on the black top. But a small percentage of them are moving forward to the gates. From up above they look like ant people, but I see two bodies rush towards a security guard who is leaned up against the fence.
Then, the guard slumps and I realize in horror that the two protesters have run forward to help the man. The other people that have stayed are also helping. They fling open the doors to the guard tower and go inside. Am I to really believe that the guards inside there are also hurt? The siren goes on blaring as I begin to panic.
I don’t know how long I stand there, watching the scene out front near the gate. I have no idea what is going on, but I can’t lift a finger to help anyone. At the very least, I feel safe up here, but that doesn’t help my worries for Kila and the others. Kila is under, and he was supposed to be starting surgery when that siren went off. Could whatever happened have interrupted the surgeon, or caused some kind of accident? I clutch my arms around me and suck in air frantically.
On a positive note, it looks like one of the security guards has come to. Off in the distance, I hear more sirens— the familiar sound of police cars and ambulances. They must be headed here.
There’s a crash and a slam from behind me. I startle, whipping around in time to see black clad figures swarm through the roof access door. A scream rips from me before I have any sense to think that being quiet might have been a better course of action.
Immediately, a gun is pointed my way. I clap my hands over my mouth and freeze. All the figures look to be men and they are wearing classic black masks with cut out eye holes. There are six of them in total— three with guns, three holding duffel bags.
“Hands up,” the man with the gun demands. I obey, slowly, trying not to provoke them.
“What do you think?” he says, nodding at one of the other guys. Behind him, one of the men with duffel bags has begun setting up some kind of rope on a propeller on the opposite edge of the building, the side that leads to the small back parking lot.
“Shove her down the stairs. No need to get messy,” the other replies.
Well, at least I’m not getting shot but I might still be dead in about five minutes. The man tucks the gun he pointed at me into his pants and moves toward me. I flinch involuntarily.
“Don’t fuck with me, or this fall will break your head open,” he growls at me. I nod, shivering all over. When he gets close, I see that they’ve even painted black around their eyes where the holes are to fully disguise themselves. “And don’t even think about screaming, or I’ll shoot you.”
He clamps down on my arm so hard I whimper and then begins to drag me to the door. The whole handle is jacked up from their forced entry to the roof. He swings it open and I tense up, bracing myself for the impact—
Then, nothing. He’s hesitating, still bruising my upper arm with his grip.
“Hey, look over here,” he shouts to his crew. “This is that bitch from the news. She’s the one, the one that talks about that bullshit race nobody’s ever seen.”
Then the others all turn to stare me down, and I wish I could disappear. I can’t bring myself to speak, afraid anything I say will result in pain or immediate death. Oh God, I think, stomach roiling. These are the people Vic tried to tell me about. They were planning something and they’ve done it. I almost freaking survived but now I am so dead— dead, dead, dead because I fucked an alien. Hey at least it was the best sex I ever had. These are the sad desperate thoughts of a woman who believes she’s about to die.
“Take her,” one of them says. I didn’t think I could get any more afraid. Wrong again. My fear expands until there’s nothing in my brain but a silent scream, the scream I can’t let out of my mouth. “We’ll see how long she can keep up the lies.”
“No… No, no, no,” I murmur, starting to wriggle and break away from his grip. “I don’t know anything. Please just leave me here—”
The man backhands me so hard that I see stars. The right side of my face begins to pulse as he hefts me over his shoulder. The other man takes off his glove and shoves it into my mouth until I’m choking on it, tasting the sweat. One by one they start to scale the back wall of the building, and the last one to go is my friendly captor.
“Here’s the deal,” he whispers. “If you try to screw around while we go down, I’ll drop you so fast you won’t have a chance to say you’re sorry, okay bitch? In fact, the game from here on out is what I like to call Survivor. The rules are, do what I say and maybe you’ll survive.”
He doesn’t wait for a reply and heaves me into a more balanced position. I’m faced with a wobbly view of the approaching ground as we propel downward. My mouth opens to scream but it only causes the glove inside to tickle my throat. I feel like I’m going to choke to death or throw up and be forced to swallow it. I don’t know whether it’s the fear, the pulsing pain in my face, or the ten stories between me and the parking lot, but I black out then and there.
Chapter 21
KILA
I open my eyes, and everything around me is white.
“Ella,” I say, thinking we are in her bed, somewhere in her sea of white pillows and thick blankets. My voice is groggy and the inside of my mouth tastes like rubber.
“Kila.” There is a gentle tug at my arm. “We are in the operating room.”
I narrow my eyes on the face before me and try to make it not so blurry. There’s a blue spot of hair bobbing in front of me. “Oh, Kiva,” I say distantly. “What are we operating?”
A sigh. “It is a human phrase. This is where the surgeon did your procedure. Remember?”
“He’ll need a minute to recover his senses,” a foreign voice says.
“Thanks, Dr. Vaxxon. We’ll handle it from here.” That sounds like Pakka. The brightness begins to fade slightly, so that I can take in the silvery faces surrounding me. My team. All four of them.
I lift my arm, but it can’t quite move.
“Ah, will I be able to move soon?” I ask. Kiva comes into focus. He’s hanging over me, inspecting my face. I feel something tugging at my skin, followed by a little popping sound. It seems he’s removing some stabilizer co
rds from my head.
“The good news is that the procedure went well. All your brain activity is perfectly normal, and the cut site healed up nicely. Suppressor removed without issue,” Pakka is telling me.
I try to sit up, but I cannot. I try to pick up my leg, but I cannot. “Does this mean there’s bad news?” I say. I can’t possibly be paralyzed, otherwise I don’t imagine ‘without issue’ would be an honest assessment.
There is a pregnant pause while I begin trying to wiggle my fingers and toes. The room is coming into focus. It’s a sterile box with only an equipment cart and a light fixture overhead. Kiva, Pakka, Mori, and Vala are all at my side, wearing matching grim expressions. I realize that my fingers are responding just fine, so I tug at my arms and legs again.
And then it’s clear. I look down at my body and see I’m strapped tight to the gurney. Strong leather cords are crisscrossing me all over. Is this some strange dream?
“What is this?” I demand.
“Take a breath and relax, Kila. We need to tell you something,” Pakka says.
“Let me up,” I say, testing the strength of the cords by straining against them. “Where is Ella? If this is some attempt to take her away from me, I swear I’ll —”
“Please relax,” Kiva insists. His voice has a calming effect, and I realize vaguely that Kiva would never be a party to anything that would hurt Ella. His presence gives me a sense of trust. “This is about Ella, but it’s not what you are thinking. We’ve taken precautions strapping you here because we don’t want you to hurt yourself or others.”
I go limp and suck in a sharp breath. “Tell me where she is,” I grit out.
Mori gets straight to it. “She’s been taken. There was a security breach while you were under, and while a team of six men infiltrated the computer system and crashed the cameras, they also found Ella and took her with them when they escaped.”
I blink for a moment. Then, all at once, rage fills every nerve in my body with electric energy. I snarl and growl, nostrils flaring as I desperately tear against the bonds that keep me in place. Mori and Vala fall on my arms and chest, pressing me down.
“Let me up, you Ka-forsaken spineless Deviant-born bastard shika trash—” I shout curses at them in an unfiltered stream. “Cave-dwelling rat-eating shikava… Ka-forsaken scum worse than the bottom of an Azza boot —”
“Look at his eyes,” Kiva says. “They’re absolutely black! Greak Ka, he’s lost his mind.”
“Where have they taken her?” I scream. “How could this have happened? Pakka, she was with you!”
“I know, I know,” he sighs. “I am guilty. That I am sure of. We had a discussion that upset her, and she went seeking ‘fresh air’… She hadn’t returned when the security breach began. The building locked down and every door sealed shut.”
“How long?” I snap. “How long since she’s been gone?”
“Two hours,” he says.
I shut my eyes and imagine every horrible thing that could have happened to my precious Ella in the span of two Earth hours. I cease my fighting against the bonds and dig my fingernails into the side of the gurney.
“Release me,” I beg. “If any of you feel any sense of compassion, any shred of loyalty towards me as your crew member, as a fellow male, as a fellow warrior. If you care for me at all or ever did, you will release me immediately.”
“We are doing this because we care for you, Kila, and we are trying to keep you from whatever insanity you are planning. If you go on a rampage and kill humans in the process, there will be nothing we can do to protect you from either Earth or Alliance authorities.” Kiva’s eyes plead for me to cease fighting against them. But I will not.
“If anything happens to her, you should carry me straight to the funeral pyre,” I tell them. “I could not live with it.”
“How can you say that and not see what the hormones have done to your mind?” Mori asks. “We all wish to see Ella safe, and we will do what we can to help find her, but you speak as if your life has no value without her. It’s insanity.”
I let out a cold, angry laugh. Perhaps I have lost my mind, but it happened long, long ago. I realize this now, because Ella has brought my sanity back from the ashes since I’ve known her. How can I make them understand?
“I have been insane. I have always been angry. Do you not realize this? You will all know this truth soon, as you live on without that handy little chip which for so long kept us at some low level of living… You will realize you have always been lonely, or sad, or angry just like me. I have felt this since they day my command unit was left to die on an Azza-run planet. I have felt this since I watched each and every member of my team die screaming. I have felt this since they left me in a desert with nothing but rags to cover me— laughing, laughing at my pathetic cries.”
Now they are listening. Every single face is turned towards me with wide eyes as they realize what I refer to. They have never heard details of this story from my own lips.
“Do you know why I survived?” I shout at them. “DO YOU?”
Kiva shakes his head just barely.
“I SURVIVED BECAUSE I WAS ANGRY,” I rage, screaming my voice hoarse. I rip at the bonds and my arm snaps free. I clench my free hand into a fist. “I survived because every bone in my body wanted retribution. It was the only thing that made me crawl through sand, lick the dew from the top of a rock, eat from a dead carcass and hope it would not kill me… You think that I am like this because of Ella? You are lying to yourselves because I know you feel something deep inside. It’s probably crawling to the surface as I speak.”
I am faced with silence as my chest heaves from my quickened breathing. They stare at me, and I wonder if a single word I’ve said has gotten through to them.
Then with one swift movement, Vala leans forward and cuts the straps with his knife. Kiva’s mouth drops open.
“You are right,” Vala says. “But we won’t let you do anything alone. Promise us that at least. We will work this research team as a command unit.”
I nod. I am surprised, relieved, and energized all at the same time.
“I, too, would like to find Ella-vi,” Kiva pipes up.
I glare towards Mori, expecting his negative argument.
“This is madness. I find your obsession disturbing. But I have nothing better to do, so I am in,” he says with a grimace.
We all turn to Pakka then, awaiting his reply.
He tenses, looking rattled. “Fine! Yes... YES, fine… But what is the plan? What will we do? We don’t know where she’s gone. The local police and the Alliance investigators are already working to find her. And more importantly, we haven’t a single weapon, or armor, or… anything!”
“Actually,” Mori says, “That’s not precisely true. Do you think I would travel to an unknown planet without any?”
“Yes!” Pakka blusters. “Considering that to do otherwise would be illegal and against the Alliance Intergalactic Science Board’s rules of participation?”
Mori grins. “I have a masking trunk that works on all scanners, Pakka. Do you think me a fool? We might be scientists now, but once a Kar’Kali warrior, always a Kar’Kali warrior. I never take a mission unprepared for a fight.”
“There is no time to waste,” I say, gritting my teeth. “Now get me off this thing.”
Kiva jumps in to help Vala cut the other straps that bind me.
“That doesn’t answer the important question of where you think we’re going to go with your illegal weapon supply?”
I swing my legs over the side of the gurney and test their strength by pressing my feet onto the floor.
“I know exactly where we are going,” I announce. “We are going to find a man named Vic Williams.”
Chapter 22
ELLA
When I come to, I’m relieved to find that there’s no glove in my mouth anymore. But I guess on the list of negatives, that’s probably an indication that no one can hear me scream.
The room is dar
k, but I can make out the basics. It’s a bedroom. One that looks deceptively normal. There’s a hardwood floor beneath me, a basket for laundry, and a bed that’s made with a fluffy duvet cover. It certainly doesn’t seem like the kind of place you keep a kidnapped woman.
My legs are tied together at the ankles and the knees, and my wrists are tied together behind my back. I test my mobility and find that all I can do is roll around and inchworm across the floor. I could probably get up on my knees, but what would be the point? I’d just be uncomfortable.
I tense immediately when I hear voices getting closer to me. They’re yelling at one another— a man and a woman.
“What the hell are you doing here? I told you I’m done, I’m not going back there,” the woman is saying.
“Oh, that’s fine and dandy… But you owe a debt to Beck now. I was just here to drop off a visitor. You’ll be babysitting until the heat is off, then we’ll pick her up,” the man says. I hear a door opening.
“No fucking way! Get back here! I SAID I WAS DONE! I don’t owe him anything—”
“You’re done when we say you’re done,” the man replies. “Fuck it up and find out what happens.”
SLAM! The door shuts so hard the house shivers. A scream of frustration sounds from the other room, where I assume the woman speaking has been left alone. Then I hear some destructive thuds and bumps. She must be throwing things around. I perk up, realizing she’s probably my only jailer right now. An unwilling fellow woman. Maybe there’s a chance I can befriend her or overpower her… something.
My heart starts to pound. I lick my lips. “H-Hello?” I call out. “Hello? Can you hear me?”
