by Elin Wyn
Anger forced me to choke on my words. I wanted to tell Jalok how much I appreciated him and that I didn’t blame him for anything.
But I couldn’t make the words come. They were trapped in a cloud of irrational, seething anger. They’d stay that way until I had time to sort through my thoughts.
More than anything, I wished I could talk to the Puppet Master.
But there was no way Jalok would let me go to visit him in the middle of the night.
Instead, I curled up in the corner of the couch and did everything I could not to scream.
Jalok
My eyes snapped open in the shrouded dark of Dottie’s living space. I hadn’t been sleeping well ever since the chemical attack, and the slightest thing could awaken me.
In this case, it was some furtive movement from Dottie’s kitchen. I knew her movements, her footsteps. But now, the shuffling stride alerted me to the fact that the source was none other than Adam.
For a time, I considered returning to sleep. He was staying there after all, and despite my misgivings toward him—and his ill feelings toward me—he had yet to do anything overtly violent.
But my inability to slumber deeply meant that I was fully awake. Realizing that I would likely have to wind back down before I could return to sleep, I decided to wait him out.
Surely he would finish his business in the kitchen soon enough. At the time I figured that it would be better if we just didn’t cross paths in the late night hour.
So I laid there, perfectly still and silent, and waited for Adam to complete his task, whatever it may have been. Shuffle shuffle.
Rattle. The distinct sounds of a drawer being opened and someone rummaging around inside. From the metallic clinks, I believed Adam was digging about the knife drawer.
My heart started beating faster. I tried to calm myself down. Adam, for all I knew, might have been preparing a midnight snack for himself.
Completely innocuous and innocent.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something amiss.
I waited, silently, only the sound of my own heart pounding in my ears. If he were preparing a meal for himself, he would soon have to open the refrigeration unit.
Not that Dottie really kept much in there.
Still, there came no sounds of the fridge door opening, and now I was convinced that my gut instinct was correct.
Carefully, I reached up and unsnapped my knife from its sheath.
The knife handle felt good and reassuring in my hand.
Now I waited again, this time alert for any sign of danger. Adam’s shuffling steps approached, then halted.
“You know, I’ve always looked out for my sister.”
In the gloom, I couldn't make out exactly where Adam was, but I could hear his voice coming from the direction of the kitchen.
His voice seemed oddly stilted, as if he were speaking carefully from a script.
“Ever since we were little kids, it was me who was there for her. When someone pushed her down at the park, I was right there. If some jerk-off tried getting too friendly, I was there, too. You see, I won’t let anything bad happen to Dottie.”
There was a definite undercurrent of threat in his tone.
I’ve heard people try to talk themselves up into doing something stupid before, but this sounded different. Far too calm under the circumstances.
“Dottie is special. But she’s too nice. She’s too nice to people who are far more dangerous than she realizes. If she gets hurt by the alien assholes who fucked up our planet, well, those assholes…those assholes are going to pay.”
I remember thinking, ‘this is it.’
I’m going to have to kill Dottie’s brother.
And I’ll lose her forever.
That’s when the light suddenly switched on. Blinking in the sudden brightness, I saw Adam several paces away, brandishing a kitchen knife. When the light came on, I had rolled out of the couch and to my feet, my own weapon held at the ready.
Dottie stood near the hallway, her eyes still puffy and bleary with sleep, hand on the light control panel.
But her stark gaze was fully awake as she took in the sight of Adam and I a few feet away, apparently about to get into a knife fight.
“What in the world is going on?”
She turned her gaze from me to her brother, demanding an answer from one or both of us. I opened my mouth to respond, but the sight of Adam gave me pause.
He was sweating profusely, and his stark gaze had a surreal, unsettling shine about it.
With a guttural growl, Adam leaped forward, plunging the knife toward me in a downward arc.
I used my own blade to parry the strike, knocking his knife far out to the side. If I had wanted to, I could have struck while his guard was broken.
One upward slice and I’d have buried my blade to the hilt in his abdomen, reaching up through his rib cage to find the vulnerable heart.
But I didn’t want to kill Dottie’s brother—particularly not right in front of her.
So I didn’t complete the strike. Instead, I lifted my leg up to hip level and thrust out with a potent kick.
Adam took the blow in his solar plexus and sprawled backward. His face didn’t contort with pain, and he barely even grunted.
And through it all, his eyes maintained that same glossy, almost psychotic focus.
He lifted himself from the ground, a sprawling mass of sinew and limbs, and launched himself at me again.
Dottie’s scream echoed off the walls as he attacked anew. “Adam, stop. What are you doing?”
I barely avoided his whirring blade. He thrust high, and I ducked underneath. He thrust low, and I leaped into the air, my head brushing the ceiling.
And through it all, I passed up a half dozen opportunities to bury my own knife in his soft tissue.
“Listen to your sister.” That was all I managed to get out between wildly dodging for my life. My scales popped to the surface, and for the first time that frightened Dottie.
“Jalok, don’t hurt him. Please.”
Easy for her to say, while he was trying to stick me with his knife.
I parried another blow, and my arm vibrated from the impact.
It seemed impossible that his spindly body could generate that much force. Despite my Skotan heritage, I found that Adam was driving me back.
I back pedaled a few more steps until I wound up flush with the wall. Adam continued his assault, oddly silent except for gasps and grunts of exertion.
Somehow it was more unsettling than his previous threats.
Then it all went to hell.
My foot got entangled with a power cord and I was unable to stop Adam’s thrusting attack. I could only watch and hope my scales absorbed the brunt of the impact.
I hissed as his blade slid along my abdomen, but despite a flash of pain his knife failed to penetrate.
Still, the attack had nearly succeeded, and it changed my tactics.
I still didn’t want to kill Adam.
But neither could I allow him to kill me.
My stance changed. I lowered myself closer to the floor, presented half of my body as a target, and held the knife behind me with the blade reversed.
Adam came at me, slashing down at my head with a speed that belied his humanity. I brought my own knife upward, and the two blades collided.
There was a grating, gnashing sound which set my teeth on edge. Sparks flew from our blades as they ground against each other.
I couldn’t believe how strong Adam was.
He slapped both of his hands onto the hilt of his blade and tried to push me backward. That’s what I had been waiting for.
I stepped into his body, pivoted on my lead foot, and slammed my hip into his midsection.
With a twisting motion, I hurled him over my shoulder to land hard against the floor. The knife in his hands went bouncing away, but I had to make sure he would no longer be a threat.
I brought my hand down in a chopping motion, b
ut I aimed for his temple instead of his throat. My scaled fist cracked against his nose, and Adam’s head lolled to the side.
His eyes lost the unusual shine, and then closed.
“Oh my god.” Dottie kneeled next to her brother and placed her fingers on his neck. She sighed with relief. “He’s still alive.”
“Of course he is. I’m a professional. And you don’t like it when I kill people.”
I snagged my comm off the coffee table and called for backup.
Despite the late hour, I was answered almost immediately. I explained the situation and sat down on the sofa, holding my head in my hands.
Dottie picked up the knife her brother had used and threw it out the window.
Not exactly protocol, but I had to admit it was out of his reach that way. I expected civilian security to arrive quite soon.
“Why were you fighting? What happened?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed, feeling all of the fatigue from my lingering injuries. “I don’t know, Dottie.”
We both started when a knock came at the door. I stood up and answered, and was shocked to find both cousin Cazak and Rokul there, along with Tella.
They entered the apartment and stared down at Adam’s unconscious form.
“Is he…?”
I shook my head.
“No, he’s alive.”
Dottie rambled, talking a mile a minute as she struggled to take in the situation. Fortunately, Tella took her gently by the hand and led her a few steps away, murmuring softly the whole time.
I was left with my cousin, Rokul, an unconscious anti-alien bigot, and a whole lot of questions.
Dottie
“Can’t you go one day without getting into some kind of srell, Jalok?”
Cazak spread his arms out wide, gaze narrowed as he tried to stare down his cousin.
Difficult given Jalok’s size, but he was trying.
I was afraid of what might happen. The horrid sight of my brother and the huge, scaled Jalok fighting with knives had emblazoned itself in my mind.
No matter what I looked at, or what was said, I only heard and saw superficially.
“It wasn’t my fault.” Jalok stared down at him and sneered. “I’m fine, by the way, thanks for asking.”
“Hanging around humans has made you soft.”
“Maybe. I was soft enough to take him out without seriously hurting him.”
“Gentlemen.” Tella pushed the two Skotan apart and gave them both a glare. Though both aliens dwarfed the scarred woman, they gave ground before those fierce eyes. “You’re upsetting Dottie.”
Jalok looked my way, his face a wreck of conflicting emotions.
On the one hand, he seemed to want to comfort me, but on the other he knew he had just nearly killed my brother. I didn’t know what to think in that moment, so I turned my face away from him.
Tella took me by the shoulders and firmly steered me back into my bedroom. My legs were like rubber, barely able to hold me up. It seemed as if no matter how much air I sucked into my lungs, I still couldn’t breathe. Drowning on dry land.
“Sit.” Tella guided me to my bed and I obligingly sat down on the mattress. She knelt down before me, giving me the once over, and then reached into her boot and withdrew a metal flask. “Drink.”
I turned my face away from the proffered stainless steel nozzle and protested.
“Drink.” She spoke more firmly, and I accepted the flask.
Whatever was inside burned all the way down, but I found it easier to breathe. Tella took the flask back, stared at it a moment, then shrugged and took a pull herself.
Outside of my room, I could hear Jalok talking to Rokul and Cazak.
I didn’t want to hear it, but I had to know.
What had happened?
“Want to go over that one more time, cousin?” Cazak’s voice wasn’t even muffled by the thin walls.
“I told you, I knew he was going to attack me because the fridge never opened—“
“That’s an assumption. What evidence do you have to back that up?”
I heard a sharp intake of breath from Jalok. “What’s that supposed to mean? Whose side are you on?”
“I’m just saying, this is how it’s going to break down if there’s an investigation into this. You have to be prepared if this goes sour, Cousin.”
“How could it go sour? He attacked me.”
“You had stated you’d already drawn your knife at this point. How do you know he wasn’t just afraid you were going to assault him and panicked?”
“The lights weren’t even on then. Can humans see in the dark? He had no way of knowing I even had it out.”
“Well, you have me there. What happened then?”
“Dottie turned the lights on, and he went berserk. He got me a couple times with the knife, but it didn’t penetrate my scales. I took him down using nonlethal means. I called you right after. That’s all there is to it.”
I turned away, unable to even process any of it.
Adam had attacked Jalok? In the dark? With a knife?
Tella sat down beside me on the bed.
“How you holding up, kid?”
“My brother just tried to kill my…” I swallowed hard. That was a level of complication I couldn’t even deal with right now. “… bodyguard. Right in front of me. How do you think I feel?”
Tella shrugged.
“I think you probably feel like shit, to begin with. I think you might also feel overwhelmed and are on the verge of shock, so you need to calm down for me, all right?”
I remember thinking, it was easy for her to say that. I tried to take her advice, and focused on slowing my breathing.
My head still swirled with overwhelming notions, but at least my heart wasn’t about to explode.
“What’s really messed up is that Jalok is the one who found Adam for me in the first place. I thought maybe they could be friends. But Adam was suspicious from the start.”
Something occurred to me, something I hadn’t really had time to digest.
“Why did Jalok help find Adam originally? It didn’t gain him anything,” I asked.
“Hmm.” Tella fought, and lost a battle to keep a smirk off her scarred face. “Well, why did he? Why do you think he would do that?”
She turned it around on me. But as I considered the possibilities, none of them made any sense. Except one.
Oh.
“He did it to make me happy.”
Tella chuckled.
“Does that help you process this whole, ah, mess better?”
“Not really.” I sighed, and pulled my knees up to my chest. I rested my chin on my kneecaps and rocked myself slowly. “It’s all so messed up. Why does it have to be happening like this? Why would my brother try to kill the man who reunited us after so long? Why did the two men I care about the most have to engage in mortal combat right in my living room?”
My erstwhile counselor patted me on the shoulder and nodded sagely.
“So you do care about Jalok. Are you sure you two aren’t a thing?”
“I—“ My mouth hung open, and I couldn’t make myself deny it.
I did care about Jalok. Despite him being a huge jerk a lot of the time, and being in need of a serious attitude adjustment, he was a good man. Good alien.
And the things he’d done with my body, that loving, passionate touch…
“Jalok has a good heart.”
Tella smiled, and stood up.
“That’s true.”
“It is true. But—what do I do with all of this, this mess? I’m so confused. I know Adam doesn’t like the Vengeance crew, but he would never have taken things this far before. I love Adam, but now I’m a little bit afraid of him.”
“I wish there was something I could say to make it better. You’re in a tough spot, but maybe there’s an explanation for what he did. Don’t write him, or Jalok, off just yet.”
I stood up as well, and crossed my arms over my chest.
�
�Who said I was giving up on either one of them? I just want this nightmare to be over. I’m only human, okay? I’m not some big shot hero like you.”
Her face twisted into a sardonic grin.
“I’m no hero, Dottie. No one really is. All we can do is act when destiny calls upon us. The ones that succeed get saddled with the hero bullshit. The ones that don’t, well, are they any less valid? A lot of folks have died, in the Xathi invasion and just trying to coexist on this planet. Nobody died tonight. Maybe you should focus on that, before you start to panic. Adam is alive, and Jalok is too. You didn’t lose either of them.”
That’s when I realized what was happening. During the Xathi invasion, when I thought I’d lost Adam, there had been a profound sense of emptiness.
Then I got him back, and that void had been somewhat filled. Nothing could make up for the time he had been missing, but just having him close again had been fulfilling.
Then, when I saw the two men I loved the most fighting each other, that yawning chasm of loss loomed before me again.
It was as if I’d been shoved up to the precipice of a deadly fall and hadn’t quite convinced myself I was safe.
Suddenly I felt dizzy once more. I swooned, then collapsed onto my rump on the bed.
“Oh god.” I hung my head in my hands, shoulders shaking with sobs. Tella sat down next to me and put her hand on my shoulders.
“Hey, it’s all right. Just let it out.”
I cried for some time, until my face swelled up and I could barely breathe through my nose.
Through it all, Tella just sat there next to me, providing comfort without any obligation, allowing me to vent my feelings without judgement.
A commotion in the living room drew me from my reverie. I wiped my face on the handkerchief given me by Tella, and opened the door.
A group of first responders had arrived. They were taking Adam’s vital signs, and preparing to load him onto a waiting gurney.
“Hey, take good care of him, all right? He’s—” Jalok sighed, and shook his head. “He’s important to somebody important to me, get it?”
“He’ll be in good hands.” The technician smiled up at Jalok with the patience of a saint. I guess one needs to have that sort of feckless aplomb in her line of work.
