Shared by the Alien Hybrids

by Lia Nox

  In unison they picked up the pace.

  I shook my head again, amused by how weird it was to be both their prize and yet also in charge. Warrior was the big alpha male, this I knew without a doubt, but there were odd moments when they seemed at a loss. I suspected they’d been caged in some way, used as tools. And now something had changed.

  Something they didn’t understand.

  The idea made me sad. These aliens, however strong and powerful, had such a softness to them - they saw the world in a way that I never had, and while it had a rawness to it, I wanted desperately to see it the way they did. In some ways, I had started to change my mentality already, and yet it was still so early into our journey towards a resolution.

  What else was in store for me, for my identity, as I continued on with them?

  Howls from the wind made the growing darkness all the more frightening. I knew that I was well protected, and I trusted my own ability to fend for myself, but the unknown was still a variable I hated. I much preferred knowing my surroundings inside and out, a preference I was sure Eyebrows, Warrior, and Grumpy mirrored. They were creatures of habit, as was I, and so in that respect we were all one and the same at that moment. Even when we weren’t sharing our desires with one another, we all had a closeness that bound us together.

  “Pakhtun.” Warrior called back. I squinted my eyes to follow where Warrior was pointing; far, far, in the distance was a menacingly foreboding structure, surrounded by nothing but a void of dirt.

  Nothing like the small building we’d left. Maybe there I’d find more equipment, some answers.

  Maybe even tools.

  But the barren field surrounding the building gave me chills.

  The deserts of other planets sprung to mind, and I mentally called the approaching area of this world “the plains.”

  Having done my share of tripping and stumbling down the mountain side, I was actually looking forward to a flatter surface to plant my feet on.

  Nobody waited for me to speak, we just moved silently further into the dust that was coating the mountainside more and more. It now made sense why dust had been everywhere: it was blowing in from the plains on the strong, directional winds.

  My mind raced as I thought about all the terrible storms that could whip up if the gales remained so strong; we’d be surrounded by dust and dried mud, with myself unable to withstand the force of its might.

  A hand reached for my elbow, its touch light. I gazed at Eyebrows and returned the smile he was giving me. Such a subtle movement, but it had made me feel completely at ease about the situation. That was his strength, that he could take a bleak moment and make it seem a little brighter.

  His hand returned to his side and his attention back to the others. I followed suit. I was too tired to continue to tinker with the translator, and without more components, it was probably a failed endeavor.

  All I had to entertain myself as we walked now, was my own feelings about how I’d ended up here and where it would lead me.

  Would we make it to the next station unscathed, or was another attack waiting for us up ahead?

  Axar

  My feet dragged heavily, as if I was inside a different body entirely, as my swirling thoughts sapped my strength.

  I’d been made to hunt, fight, and gather, yet all we were doing now was waiting for something to happen; it was a mission with no purpose.

  I hated how unfulfilling it all felt now, the press of the unknown all around us.

  Even with Zuvo and Tarnan by my side, keeping the prize safe just as I was doing, this all felt wrong.

  Out of time and place.

  Our masters and their cold-hearted nature had kept us grounded, trapped inside a prison we didn’t know we could have escaped from, our strength more than a match for theirs.

  Yet we’d stayed inside, like caged animals, watching and waiting to be given a new task to showcase our skills… my skills.

  I knew that out of the three of us, my blood lust was on another level entirely - Tarnan wanted to play, while Zuvo was too busy quietly turning over every little detail in his head. They acted swiftly, true, but it wasn’t on the same primal level that my behavior was.

  I growled out loud in anger, the noise causing the others to look at me; my comrades knew my issue, but our prize was less in the know. She looked unsure, maybe even a bit afraid. I clenched my jaw and threw a smile her way, in an attempt to show her that there was no threat to us, other than my raging need to kill something.

  Why had nothing attacked us yet, and where had all the other teams disappeared to? We’d been trained to hit in waves, our team going out first, followed by several others, each group trained to do a specific job.

  Now though, it was just us and this girl. The lack of battle, the missing cries of my enemies, made me tighten my jaw once again.

  In a bid to rid myself of this mounting frustration, I scouted on ahead, my eyes taking in the uninviting terrain laid out all around us. It was a desolate place. If I’d had a good imagination, I might have even said that it would swallow us whole, but romanticism wasn’t bred into me.

  The landscape allowed us fantastic vantage points but proved useless in terms of finding food to survive on. We’d have to turn to scavenging before too long, a task that I wasn’t sure our pretty prize would be able to handle. She was a strong woman, of that I was certain, but she didn’t have the same skill set as we did; we were designed to be fast, ruthless, and brutal.

  As I roamed over the landscape however, it became more and more apparent that we’d be hunting for food and supplies because there was no other way. Our last hope was that the station would prove useful but given the bleakness of the dusty plains around us, I highly doubted it.

  A shuffling sound to my left alerted me.

  Zuvo, Tarnan, and I all looked to see what lurked hidden in the swirling, gray shadows. Out of the darkness emerged a pack of animals, their fur raised in a warning ridge along their backs.

  This was a beast we’d not tangled with before, had they been newly created as we’d slept? The very idea sickened me. As if the spiders hadn’t been enough for them to throw at us.

  These creatures seemed to be mammals of some kind, bred to walk on all fours, but the way they snarled and bayed wasn’t natural to me. The only creature that came close was the yonava, a bulky four-legged brute with the force of ten men.

  One of them barked and a crescendo of movement rushed us all at once. I threw myself into the fray, my body connecting with one of the beasts head on, its snarling face of teeth crashing into the heel of my foot.

  I was vaguely aware that Tarnan had remained close to the girl, with Zuvo not too far in front of them, both of their bodies blocking any oncoming attacks, in case one of these hounds got past me. Not that they ever did. I was just too quick for them.

  I clawed at the air, my teeth barred in response to their snarls, while my body bulked up to its full quivering mass.

  I lunged at the latest threat.

  From behind me I heard gasps of surprise and fear, our prize clearly frightened yet excited by the display I was putting on.

  I grinned wickedly as I tore at the flesh of yet another beast.

  The others may have had their special abilities, but this was mine, and I’d be damned if anyone could do it better than me!

  Spinning and slashing, I let the blood lust take me until nothing moved.

  As the carnage subsided and the beasts fell one by one in a heap, I relaxed down my shoulders and sucked in huge lungfuls of air; it felt good to flex my muscles again.

  After being asleep for so long, I’d been more than ready for a proper battle, it was just a shame they hadn’t been ready for me.

  “Wait!” I turned as I heard her, my body immediately tense again.

  She was stood over the bodies on the ground, her face twisted with concern, an expression that was matched by both Zuvo and Tarnan.

  At first, I couldn’t see their cause for worry, but as I looked fu
rther I noticed that something was incredibly odd about the beasts that lay mangled on the ground: they hadn’t bled.

  Not anywhere on them, or myself, was there one speck of blood. The battle had been an easy one for me, but there should have been blood after a tussle like that…

  What my eyes saw troubled me.

  Zuvo came to by side, his face stern, etched with quiet curiosity; he was worried, but he was also eager to know what had happened.

  Tarnan was the least bothered of us all, the prize included, as he seemed more than satisfied that the fight had been won, and that I had released my pent-up energy.

  As much as I wanted to join him in his satisfaction, I was too preoccupied with the strange remains littering the ground, as well as my disappointment. I’d wanted a true test of my power, not some trickery that had no meaning to it.

  “What’s in here?”

  She pulled at the sliced open side of the beast closest to her, with no results.

  Laughing, Tarnan moved her hands, ripped the flank asunder.

  And… it was filled with nothing.

  No meat.

  No food.

  Just a hollow frame, stinking like the masters toys.

  Our prize turned to me, resolve written on her face.

  “Station. Pakhtun,” is all she said as she signaled for us to leave the dead where they lay and find shelter in the nearby building. All of us nodded and moved like a fluid unit, but I could sense that Zuvo wasn’t completely satisfied at having to leave behind the dead bodies. My guess was that he wanted to study them, pick them apart and see what made them “live”, but he did nothing to show his displeasure about it.

  The biggest gripe I had with everything that had happened so far, was that it lacked organization. In the past Zuvo, Tarnan, and I had known exactly what was expected of us and had fulfilled it perfectly; there had been no room for interpretation or error.

  Yet now we were scrapping our way through unassigned missions that had no value.

  I felt powerless and I hated it.

  I wasn’t someone who was used to stumbling about in the dark - I attacked and took what was rightfully mine. I trained my body to be the best weapon it could ever be, my goal being to be the best; I had to come out on top. I just had to.

  So what was I going to do if this situation meant I couldn’t do just that? I rolled my shoulders to divert the tension away, but it still clung to my body.

  As I afforded a quick glance at each of the others, I saw that they carried a similar sort of tension in their muscles too, even in the muscles of our prize’s petite frame. None of us said it, but there was a charged atmosphere around us as we made our way inside the station. It was an undeniable powder keg that was going to explode if not released.

  We entered inside, prepared for the worst but hoping for at least some semblance of normality. What we got was more of what had gone before: dirt, discarded tech, and signs of a struggle of some kind. Had the masters been here and a battle had broken out, one which they couldn’t have called us in to help with? I found the scenario unlikely, as they’d always woken us before when needed, but there was little else by way of an explanation.

  A clatter sent me reeling, but to my annoyance it was just Tarnan kicking about bits of the broken equipment, his mind racing to occupy itself.

  Zuvo, like myself, seemed to have found the sudden eruption of noise less than helpful but had also decided to remain quiet for now. As we stood and looked around, subconsciously shaken by what we saw, the girl started picking up bits of tech and pressing them together.

  What her ultimate aim was I couldn’t say - it was all useless rubbish to me.

  Technology wasn’t natural to the earth, and so I preferred keeping it at a distance.

  As I surveyed the group, I watched as each of us tried to overcome the sense of foreboding that had gripped us since that shock ambush outside.

  I also tried to ignore the re-emergence of hunger that was tearing at my insides again, asking to be given something to sate its need for food after my burst of energy.

  Now that we knew some of the animals were no good for eating, we were limited in our options.

  This was a matter that bothered Zuvo more than me. “Axar, if we can’t hunt properly, and the caches are spoiled, we may have a problem.” He never looked away from the broken ruins he was examining.

  “We’ll be able to hunt,” I tried to reason, certain that I was right that food would come along. “Just some kills may be worthless – we won’t know until we take something down.”

  And, as a very last-ditch effort, the stations could still hold some packets of food left behind that hadn’t spoiled. Not many, but enough to hold us until we discovered what was going one.

  We’d have to keep moving, searching until we found answers.

  Delia

  I wasn’t sure what we were all meant to be doing, but I didn’t think that standing around would serve much of a purpose.

  After the long day’s hike and the fight out there, we needed food, yet neither Warrior, Grumpy or Eyebrows looked like they were going to go hunting any time soon.

  I couldn’t tell if hunger didn’t affect them like it did me or if they were waiting for food to come to them.

  It wasn’t the first time that I wondered about the life they’d led - it must have been so structured, because now when they had free rein, they seemed hesitant. They were all proud and skilled creatures in their own right, but they had clearly always had a master holding the leash.

  My guess was that Warrior had expected the animals outside to have been a useful food source, so the discovery of their non-organic makeup had thrown him into turmoil. In all honesty, it had thrown me off too.

  What the hell had attacked us?

  They’d looked like animals, had behaved like it too, yet they hadn’t shed a single drop of blood.

  And when Eyebrows had torn one open, it had clearly been man- made. Or alien made.

  Something.

  And the damn translator wasn’t working again. I’d started to sort through parts, hoping to find something I could use.

  While my fingers worked, I thought hard. Why would the translator work at all? Why would there be such a thing out in the remote building where I’d found it?

  People, aliens, must have come from all over to visit this planet for some reason.

  Maybe it had databases of languages built in and was trying to match my words to something it knew. That would explain why it failed more than anything else. It wouldn’t have anything to work with.

  “Guys, for the first time in my life I’m hoping that ancient aliens theory is right,” I muttered.

  Maybe it was something else. Maybe it read brainwaves, or was in some sort of learning mode, or....

  Dammit.

  And without another one to compare it to, I was in the dark. Not just in the dark, but in the blackest void.

  Maybe it was time to think about something else.

  “Guys?”

  They didn’t respond, still searching the room. I tapped my foot to get their attention, before holding out my hands in exasperation.

  “Find anything to eat?” I brought my hand to my mouth, then tapped my belly, feeling like an idiot.

  Initially nothing seemed to click, but when I repeated my actions, Warrior came over and touched my stomach, an act that Eyebrows and Grumpy quickly mimicked; their touch was soft, as if they were frightened to damage me. They then moved their hands, in unison, to my lips.

  “Food?” I asked. They all replied by pointing back to the bodies outside, and then to the damaged state of the room around us.

  It made sense to me now, though I still didn’t understand why none of them hadn’t gone outside to look for more food. I’d have offered, but I wasn’t a hunter, and knew that I was more likely to get myself killed than find food.

  “More food?” My question had them stumped, an outcome I’d predicted even before the words had left my mouth, but I hadn’
t known how else to suggest that they look for another source of nourishment. It stood to reason that there must be something on this forsaken planet that we could eat; plants still grew, and creatures had managed to survive, so it was natural to believe food suited to our bodies existed too. Now came the task of explaining that to them…!

  “Outside.” Came my next response to their questioning faces, my tone firm but friendly - I didn’t want to sound like I was ordering them around, but neither did I want to starve to death.

  Not when I’d come this far. Grumpy shifted on his feet while looking at Warrior, who then looked to Eyebrows with a shrug. I sighed.

  “We need food.” This time I pointed at my stomach, then my open mouth; it was a primitive way to translate what I meant, but it seemed to work.

  Even if they didn’t fully get my meaning, Warrior had already called the other two to him and was whispering words of instruction.

  Eyebrows and Grumpy nodded in agreement before Warrior rushed off at high speeds out the door, his movement lightning fast, as if he could walk on the very air itself.

  As I stood and allowed my awe to linger, Grumpy came up to me and started to remove my cloak, with Eyebrows following his lead.

  I was surprised at their sudden desire to undress me, though I couldn’t deny that the removal of such a heavy cloak immediately helped to cool my flustered body.

  After traveling on foot in challenging conditions, followed by the tension of the fight, I’d started to overheat, even more so now that we were inside.

  Hands that removed my cloak now parted the hair on my neck, moving it out of the way to expose the flesh there. I wasn’t sure why they’d done it, but their touch on my flesh had made my body flush in a totally different way.

  Eyebrows leaned in and kissed at my neck, his lips so soft against my skin. A small moan, barely audible outside of our close-knit circle, rushed from my mouth; it made him kiss more deeply.

  To begin with, Grumpy had watched his comrade kiss me, his eyes watching all my responses. But it had soon become clear that he wouldn’t be able to resist the urges that had started to seize control - he wanted me too. Coming round to the other side of me, Grumpy nuzzled into my neck, towards the nape, and ran his tongue up to a straight line.