Page 3 of His Human to Chase

“What’s your name?” I ask her. I reach for her hands, and she gives them to me easily enough. We all just really need some human companionship in this place. We used to get it from friends in other units, and then they started shunning us, and none of us made it a priority to get to know one another. Well, some of the others did, but they were a small group that stuck with each other.

“Alice,” her chest shakes as she says it. “Yours?”

“Skylar,” I offer her a small smile.

Alice’s tears have returned, but she just brushes them away any time they start to fall. I want to tell her everything the doctor told me. Tell her that we’ll find mates in the new world, and they’ll apparently be warriors. I want to tell her that if she’s feeling empty and hollow, it’s because the Hands have been experimenting on us with the pheromones from the aliens we’re going to mate with. “I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you that I feel really, really good about going.”

“The doctor spoke with you.” She doesn’t say it as a question but more of a statement. When I nod, she sighs and throws her feet off the bed so she can face me. “He tried to tell me too, but I kind of lost it.”

“That’s understandable. They kind of did some fucked up stuff to us.”

Alice cocks her head to the side and then shakes it again. Whatever she’s thinking, she doesn’t trust me enough to tell me. Which is fair, considering this is the only time we’ve ever talked. The only thing that bonds us right now is that we’re both about to be sent off Earth to breed with some aliens that are apparently affected by our pheromones.

“Are you scared?” Alice asks, but I know it’s not the full question she wants to ask.

“Scared of which part?” I try to keep her focus on me so she doesn’t fear whatever it is she wants to ask. I want to assuage her fears since we’re going to be related as soon as we both get claimed by our respective aliens since they’re brothers. I’ll tell her that when we get to the planet, too.

Damn, so many things I have to tell her, but I also have to get the one I’m going to mate away from the other. She’s going to be getting the shortest, most concise bit of information ever, and I’ll just have to hope the other women there can fill her in on everything else.

“They chose all of us to go because we’re fertile and fit all of the other criteria like being straight, nonreligious, and with no ties to Earth,” Alice says all of this like it’s common knowledge when I’m absolutely floored by this information. “You didn’t know?”

“No.”

I think of the other women in unit A12. I don’t really know any of them well enough to know if they’re religious, and I kind of assumed they were all straight. But Alice is right about none of us having ties here on Earth. My family had already moved to Nebraska when the world crapped out. I was just about to follow them before the government started shutting down roads. There are two sets of sisters in our unit, but all of them are within the unit. There was another set, but one of them was removed, and the next day, so was the other.

“I asked about it during my visits with the doctor. He told me what their criteria were and only hesitated when telling me about religious practices.” Alice isn’t crying anymore, which is nice. Maybe she’ll be more comfortable telling me what’s actually bothering her.

“Why would he hesitate on that?”

Alice frowns and then knots her hands in her lap again. “I’m not religious or anything, but I never, you know…” She flops her hands in the air like I’m supposed to magically understand what she’s saying. “I’ve had boyfriends and was close to doing it, but then they all died.”

I lean forward in my chair, brows pulling together and lips persing as I try for the life of me to figure out what she’s saying. Maybe I’m an idiot. Maybe she’s not being clear. Maybe… Oh, wait.

“You’ve never been with a man?” I ask a little too loudly because I’m proud my brain was able to piece together the very obvious hints she was giving me. I cover my mouth when she goes red and then whisper. “You’ve never been with a man?”

Her face is bright red when she finally nods, and I’m left open-mouthed and wondering how the hell the Hands decided she was a good candidate to go to another world to have alien babies. At least I have seen and touched a penis before. For all I know, Alice is as innocent as a nun. I open my mouth and close it when I realize I need to be a little less vulgar in my terminology, but I need to know everything since I’ve decided we’re going to be friends.

“Alright, have you ever seen a penis?” I cock a brow at her, keeping my back straight like we’re not about to have a very intimate conversation. Her face grows even redder, but she opens her mouth and tells me everything.

Skylar

“You’ll feel a small pinch,” The doctor says as he holds up a giant needle gun and plunges it behind my ear. Small pinch, my ass. The pain sears through my skull before disappearing and leaving a small ache in its place. He doesn’t give me time to recover before he grabs a second gun needle thing and does the same to Alice, who is holding onto my hand. Her nails dig into my skin, and I let out a soft hiss when the pain must be the worst for her.

“Can you both hear me?” the doctor asks.

“Yeah,” I mutter. Alice just nods her head.

“Good. You should now be able to talk, read, and communicate in the language of the creatures you will be interacting with.” The doctor motions for us to follow a different pair of Hands. His movements are slower than they normally are, and when I really look at him, his human disguise or mask or whatever it is seems to be slipping more and more. His eyes catch mine for a moment, and his mask slips completely from them. Bright white stares back at me for the longest moment until he gathers his composure and turns away.

“You should follow the others.” His dismissal is clear, and I don’t know him well enough to ask why he’s so upset right now. Not that we have any time for a conversation anyway.

The Hands who came to get us told us we had very little time to dilly-dally, so we were taken straight to the doctor, told we weren’t getting our briefing or food, and herded around without a say in anything. Now, we’re standing in a large room with lots of Hands at various computers. There are murmurs about A12-05 already having gone through, but the storm wasn’t over, and they’re not sure where she ended up. I try to stifle my horror at those words because a new horror is snipping at my clothes.

“Hey, could you not!” I screech as a Hand starts cutting at my pants with safety shears. The Hand doesn’t even pause to look up at me as he continues to cut. I don’t move because as much as I don’t want to be stripped of my clothing, the Hands are stronger than us, and I’m not trying to be held down and stripped. I need to put on some kind of strong face, at least since Alice is standing next to me, shaking like a leaf as new tears manage to make their way into her eyes.

A second Hand steps up to Alice, but at least they gave her a female presenting Hand to cut at her clothes. I’m over here with a hulking behemoth of a man kneeling in front of me as he tosses scraps of my clothing to the side. He looks at me as he removes my underwear, and a smile crosses his lips. “Fuck off,” I mumble. “We all know I’m about to go bang a warrior, so don’t even try me.”

The Hand chuckles before rising to his feet. “I should have offered to be around the humans more often. You would have been entertaining.”

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