by Phoebe Nix
She jumped and turned around. “Is it time to go?” she asked. “Sorry, but all these stories…”
Karlol shot her a mischievous smile before scooping her up. She let out a small scream as he spiraled down the hole, his guards quickly following.
Chapter 9
Jocelyn opened her eyes and stared at Karlol’s wings in awe.
Her cheek was pressed against his bare chest, her senses full of his musky and pleasant scent. His wings thundered as they fluttered, and she watched the ripples that emanated from his feathers in the air around them. She could feel his body heat against hers, and his breath caressing her cheek.
Then she suddenly recalled that she was floating in midair, high above the ground. Karlol’s body cut through the air like a spear, but she was no longer scared. She looked down and watched the city up close. The tone buildings looked like New York City’s skyscrapers. On the ground, fallen aircraft were overgrown by moss, which extended along the side of the roads and into the massive potholes that were strewn across the otherwise deserted landscape.
“Wow,” she muttered.
Karlol smiled. “Are you scared?”
“Not anymore,” she answered. In the distance, she could see the twins following. Lore was flying closer, while Darneel was spinning and spiraling in the air, emitting some sort of translucent force field with a bluish tint around them.
“I heard one of your guards refer to you as a Prince,” Jocelyn said, the beating wings sending her fringe flying from her forehead.
He nodded. “I’m the Prince of the Vogel folk, next in line and impatiently awaiting the day I eradicate the human threat.” He paused and winked at her. “You’re not included.”
For some reason, Jocelyn’s heart began to speed up at his look. Stop it, it’s not appropriate to feel anything! She shifted slightly and smiled, although still wary and confused. “This all feels so bizarre, but more now that I know I’m not stuck in a dream. I never thought I’d live to see a man with wings, let alone one who would so casually fly me around town.”
Karlol chuckled. “I think if you give yourself time to adapt, you’ll find that you could belong here.”
Jocelyn gazed at the man’s eyes, where silver specks floated. For a fleeting instance, she thought about it and her new attraction to him, but she quickly shook the idea away.
You don’t look like a bird, Jose.
“I had a hard-enough time blending in with people at home. I don’t know if I’d succeed at doing that on an entirely different planet. It’s familiar, yet so different.”
“In what way?”
“The wars, and striving to be the dominant species. It’s all reminiscent of home. This city,” she looked beneath her, her eyes narrowing to shield her sight from the wind, “it looks like home. But it’s like people here don’t have to pretend. They don’t masquerade their wickedness.”
“Is that what home was like?” He asked, swaying to the left as he soared above an abandoned stadium.
The tiered stone seats were partly shattered and the field was completely covered in stone dust.
“It was tedious. Life on Earth is a little unfair. You’re just constantly running around in circles, chasing after currency so you can live.”
“Humans here have currency, I believe,” he joined.
“It’s like you’re born in a system that you have to abide by or starve to death. You don’t really live, you’re just stuck in a loop,” she continued. “But enough about me. You’re a Prince who’s next in line? What the hell were you doing in that courtyard? How did they catch you?”
The gap between Jocelyn and Karlol was consistently narrowing, and she suddenly no longer thought of him as an alien. Although her experience of being captured and nearly executed had been nothing short of traumatizing, she was glad that they had implanted that chip on her ankle.
Her eyes followed a swaying feather that fell from Karlol’s wings as he fluttered them. His body was completely hairless, and it never perspired no matter how much energy he exerted. His skin was smooth against her cheek. Her chest felt like it was bursting into flames as she continued to ignore thoughts of being attracted to this man.
She looked up at him and regarded his sharp teeth, smiling at her. With one swing of his talons or a bite of his teeth, Jocelyn could easily be killed. But, in a way, she felt protected as she tightened her grasp around his waist and heard his muffled heartbeats against her ear.
He turned to her, his eyes flashing. “More about me later. It sounds like you’re lucky to have escaped that place.”
“I still worry about my friends, though,” she muttered, her hair flapping behind her. Her head spun; this flight, however mesmerizing, was quickly wearing her out and she began to feel nauseous.
“Are you alright?” Karlol asked.
“Can we land?”
Karlol nodded, spreading his wings as they slowly descended. He gracefully landed on his talons and put her down.
The twins shortly followed, landing easily beside them. “Are we allowed to be here?” Lore inquired.
Karlol shrugged. “It’s abandoned. Our enemies are a long way from where we are.”
Darneel nodded in agreement.
They had landed amidst the skyscrapers and trod between the fallen aircraft and the deep potholes in the roads. Jocelyn ran her hand along the abandoned buildings and stopped to stare at the overgrown vegetation, which looked as though it was taking revenge on the civilization that had once destroyed it. Some of the buildings had fallen horizontally but were nonetheless astonishingly unharmed.
Lore’s eyes stared down at Jocelyn, who ignored her attempts to intimidate her. From the way the woman spoke to Karlol, Jocelyn concluded that there was some sort of sexual tension between them – but it was clearly one-sided, and this woman was in no position to harm Jocelyn.
But in a way, she felt bad for the woman. Behind her ferocious eyes, she seemed to be broken. As soon as Lore walked closer, Jocelyn smiled at her.
The woman nodded back, seeming a little confused by her sudden amicability.
“I’m sorry I had to stall your mission,” Jocelyn said.
Karlol’s smile faded as he watched Lore’s expression.
“You still are,” Lore replied coldly.
“Lore,” Darneel called out.
Karlol tugged on Jocelyn’s arm, leading her away from his guards. She felt a shiver in her chest as the man’s grasp seemed a little too aggressive. She pulled herself away and walked ahead of him.
In the distance, she could see a queer structure that stood out amongst the rest of the buildings. It was shaped like a pyramid, but bigger than those Jocelyn had seen in Egypt – much bigger. Toward the bottom, there was an arched entrance with a double door adorned in brocade-like curlicues.
She quickened her pace to a jog and the Prince fluttered his wings to catch up with her. Soon, he was just as intrigued as she was.
The doorknobs were shaped like wild boars. She slowly reached for one of them and turned it. It squeaked as the door clicked open, and she warily pushed it. She peeked through the narrow open slit before flinging the door open and stepping inside.
Her chest heaved, and she felt a rush of adrenaline running through her veins. Her head spun as she marveled at the breathtaking architecture. The interior looked completely unharmed, without a speck of dust on the crimson, carpeted floor. On the outside, it looked like an ancient building, but the interior looked staggeringly futuristic.
“What is this place?” she sighed.
Karlol looked over his shoulder. The twins were still loitering outside. He looked ahead to find that his human companion had already begun exploring.
There was a vast space where a curved white desk was placed with two zigzag-shaped chairs behind it.
Was this a hospital?
She trotted at a brisk pace and looked to the right at a long hallway, at the end of which was a glass door. Followed by a protective Karlol, Jocelyn took decisive steps t
oward the door. Their footsteps echoed in the hallway, and by the time she reached the door, she was already feeling chills run up and down her spine. The door didn’t seem to have a handle. She looked overhead and found no sensor.
“Damn,” she blurted. “Now, how the hell do we-”
Jocelyn’s eyes spotted what looked like a handprint scanner.
“When you said technology, I thought you meant TVs and microwaves. Not pyramids that look like god-damn biowarfare labs on the inside.”
She caressed the scanner out of curiosity, and was surprised to see the glass door slide open.
Her jaw dropped as she looked at Karlol.
He shrugged, looking just as perplexed as she was.
There seemed to be shards of broken glass in front of the door, her sneakers crunching on them as she walked inside the room. Control boards were peppered across the walls, but there were no screens. Along one of the walls were massive glass containers with metal bases, sheltering nothing but yellowish gooey liquid.
Yup, welcome to the future, Jose.
She was definitely in a research center.
Chapter 10
Karlol pursed his lips into a loud, harmonious whistle to call out for his guards.
He turned around and awaited the twins, but there was no sign of them.
He turned to Jocelyn and quickly followed her, lest she touch something that she shouldn’t.
“Have you seen this place before?” Jocelyn asked.
“No, but the technology is familiar,” he answered, following her every step.
The room was commodious, with a narrow hallway that led to what looked like a theatre with padded seats forming a semi-circle. Without any windows, the space was drenched in almost complete darkness. It took some time for his night vision to kick in.
“This is beyond fascinating. This place looks like something from a movie,” Jocelyn said through a wide smile.
Karlol was silent. He was as intrigued as the human, his eyes darting from one side of the room to the other. He hadn’t seen this kind of technology since the war, and he’d assumed that his people had destroyed every last trace of it.
Jocelyn sprinted at breakneck speed to one of the padded seats and sat with one leg crossed over the other. She grabbed the arms of the seat, checking if there were any buttons.
“Haven’t you done your fair share of accidental button pressing?” Karlol teased, but behind his smile, his concern was growing.
“Very funny,” she snickered before she rose to her feet. She paced toward one of the control boards and began pressing all the buttons, but nothing seemed to turn the peculiar devices on.
“I think we should leave,” Karlol urged.
For whatever reason, he had a bad feeling about this, but he couldn’t just pull Jocelyn away. After all, this was just abandoned devices that had likely stopped working since the war. Then again, she had somehow managed to open that door.
“Or at least wait for my guards to arrive before we explore any further,” he said, his wings beginning to twitch.
The thin hairs along his spine stood on end as his eyes scanned the room. A foreboding aura lingered, but he couldn’t detect what it was.
Ahead of him, he watched as Jocelyn crawled on all fours under the curved desks, collecting cords as she desperately looked for some way to turn everything on. She chewed on her lip as she organized the cords by color, plugging each of them to what looked like rectangular black boxes on the ground.
Karlol had no clue what she was doing, but it seemed that she did.
“I have a feeling something will explode,” Karlol jested, gazing out through the hallway.
“They’re just computers of some sort,” Jocelyn explained. “I’ve never seen anything like them. I don’t see any screens, which is weird.” She crawled from beneath one of the desks and dusted off her hands.
She placed a hand on her hip. “Yeah, I have no clue what I’m doing.”
Karlol shook his head. “Then, let’s go. We’re just wasting time.”
“Wasting time? Look at this place!” She twirled with her arms spread like a child endeavoring to make herself dizzy. “I wish I could show this to my students. I’ll have you know, Karlol, this whole place is strange. At some point, I thought I’d come across fucking Lancelot, and now I’m pretty sure I’m going to personally meet E.T.”
Karlol furrowed his thick, bushy brows. “I hope you realize that I have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about.”
Jocelyn’s laugh echoed feebly in the room. Karlol was seconds away from snatching her and flying out of the building.
“Wait a second,” she said suddenly said as her smile morphed into a full-blown grin.
Oh, no.
Trotting past him, Jocelyn dropped to her knees by the main control panel across the theater seats.
“I don’t know much about human technology,” Karlol said, “but I’m quite sure that their devices don’t work by pressing random buttons.”
The control board was curved along the wall opposite to the seats, comprising of switches and buttons of varying colors separated by slits. On the far right, a handprint scanner stood vertically on steel supports. Jocelyn’s widened eyes had a manic sparkle in them as she slowly approached the scanner with her arm outstretched, her fingers twitching in anticipation.
Karlol’s throat bulged and his muscles stiffened, his eyes flicking from the scanner to Jocelyn’s hand. She pressed her hand against the sensor, her grin slowly fading.
Nothing happened.
“Wait, what? But it worked outside,” she moaned.
Karlol breathed a sigh in relief. “We should go now.”
Frustrated, Jocelyn gave a kick to the steel supports that held the scanner. The device spat out a spark. Then another.
Karlol spread his wings and thundered toward Jocelyn, shielding her. The control board glowed and hissed as sparks showered them. Jocelyn parted the wings cocooning her, stepping forward as she stared at the glowing controls.
The slits separating the boards emitted beams of blue light, forming a holographic screen in the air. Hissing continued until it distorted into white noise. There were flashing images on the screen.
Karlol’s spine straightened and he slowly moved his wings back to get a better view.
“We have…” a female voice from the screen said as a blurry image of her flashed. “Destruction is…”
The flickering image of a woman gradually turned into a steady three-dimensional display. Karlol grabbed Jocelyn by the shoulders and pulled her back a few steps. She looked frozen in place, her expression stoic and her eyes refusing to blink.
The woman on the screen looked emaciated and malnourished. She must have been in her 70s, and wore her thick, snow white hair in a high bun. Deep creases ran along her puckered forehead, and deep lines crossed along her face. Her eyes were sunken and black-ringed. The woman looked abjectly lifeless.
She was clad in a white suit, and for a second it looked like she was addressing Karlol and Jocelyn. But it was likely a recorded entry; the woman was speaking to a camera. She spoke in a monotone with nonchalance that exuded long-endured misery and agony.
“This is my last entry,” she shouted over the sounds of explosives and wailing.
Behind her, there appeared to be a blaze, humans running around in circles trying to put themselves out.
“The world has gone mad,” she continued. “Today marks the day our major cities have fallen. The five countries of Lookar have devolved into anarchy.”
Jocelyn sucked a gasp through her teeth, her hand covering her mouth as her eyes watered. An agonized scream sounded in the background as the woman carried on.
“Mankind is on the brink of destroying itself. Our experiments have failed, and the hopes for raising new continents is gone. We have lost control, and can only pray that we do not have a lasting effect on the planet we have called home.”
“What is she talking about?” Jocelyn whispered.
“Our hope is wholly placed on the ships to the new planet,” the hologram continued. “We hope they’ll make it, and that they’ll find a way to make life flourish again without making the same mistakes.” Her voice finally faltered.
The woman paused for a moment, glancing briefly over her shoulder before looking back to the camera. “I hope Earth becomes the planet we all wished Lookar could have been.”
Chapter 11
When the screen distorted to white noise, Jocelyn let out an undulating sigh.
She collapsed to her knees, her crying muffled by the hand she pressed on her lips. Karlol leaned down to help her to her feet, but she pushed him away. He kneeled beside her, with a comforting hand on her shoulder.
We never learn. We never fucking learn.
Jocelyn’s fury had her dumbstruck. She was partly angry at herself, with the way she had enjoyed the flights and tours around the post-apocalyptic city, when millions of corpses were buried beneath her. She was standing on a grave, and she had disrespected the suffering of her own people.
Karlol’s lips parted then closed; he was speechless.
There was nothing he could say that would ease the avalanche of emotions that had settled in her, chiding her. Turning to him, Jocelyn regarded his glittering eyes behind the sweep of dark hair; they were filled with pity. He must have thought of her as just another blood-thirsty human, and she didn’t blame him. She gently pushed him away, but he was adamant to stay by her side.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said softly.
The twins finally sprinted into the room, gasping for air. “Is anyone hurt?” Darneel asked in an ear-splitting shout.
Karlol lifted a finger to hush him, gesturing to a cowering Jocelyn.
Lore was silent as she watched Jocelyn struggle to rise to her feet. Her sniveling continued, and she refused to look anyone in the eye. Her face suddenly straightened, embarrassed by the scene she had made. She stormed out of the room, accidentally bumping into Lore’s shoulder on her way out.
