Page 4 of Alien Rescue

Someone held a cup to her lips. She was thirsty, but she wanted to sleep. “G’way, man-being, wanna sleep.”

“Drink, my breeder.” She remembered that voice—shouldn’t trust him—cool water on her tongue, and she drank greedily. Something about his words was wrong, but she couldn’t figure out what nagged at her.

She fell asleep mid-swallow.

Rose woke, and if she were stronger, she’d have jumped from the bed and run to a water source. Spiders tugged at her hair. She tried to lift her arm to brush them off, but she was too weak. Rose moaned; she hated spiders and creepy things with too many legs. They always found their way into the hole whenever she tried to prove herself.

“Calm, my breeder.” The voice was deep and belonged to the silver-and-gold devil. “I killed the spiders. They cannot harm you,” he said, sounding resigned, as if he’d told her that many times before.

“Nice man-being,” she murmured and patted him, then fell asleep.

The next time she woke, the metal-clad stranger was doing something to her hair. Normally she didn’t like anyone messing with her hair, but it was strangely soothing. She fell asleep before she even finished the thought.

She woke, and she didn’t know how, but she knew she’d woken many times before in this silver place. But now her brain was clear. Something with lots of big, white teeth, bigger and sharper than human teeth, stared down at her. “Crocodiles are extinct.”

“That is a very interesting fact, my breeder. You are a clever female.” He patted her head, and if she didn’t feel so weak, she’d have bitten his hand.

“Are you going to eat me? I don’t think I’ll make good crocodile food. You want to look for someone with more meat on their bones.” Never had she been so grateful for being on the scrawny side.

A loud sigh. “I am not a crocodile. I will not eat you, my breeder. Drink this water—no, don’t spit it out.”

She woke again and the crocodile held her upright. Rose stared up at him. He wasn’t even remotely like the picture of the crocodile she once saw. He was tall and muscled, really well built, with wide shoulders and narrow hips. Even the bone structure in his face was good. Strong and masculine, his recessed ears somehow fit him, and the ridge on his head gave him a dangerous appearance without making him look creepy. She squinted and it hurt to do even that.

His face contorted, became mixed up in her nightmares where he wasn’t humanlike. “Not a crocodile, a Komodo dragon.” That was what he was. She was sure of it. Somehow, they didn’t become extinct like they’d said on that program on the TC. They’d survived in isolation on that island and had evolved into man-beings. She weakly patted the claw holding a silver cup. In dreams you could pat a dragon. “Nice dragon.” Darkness took her again.

When she woke again, she tried to rub her itching nose and stared in horror at her arms. Her hands were gone. Eaten up by the dragon. She burst into loud tears.

“Why are you crying?” the upright-walking Komodo dragon asked her as if it was nothing that he’d eaten her hands.

“You ate my hands. I want to touch my nose, because it itches, and you ate my hands, you horrible Komodo dragon, and now I can’t touch anything.”

She thought she heard him sigh. “I have told you, I am not a dragon and I didn’t eat your hands. If I wanted to eat you, I’d go for the softer bits.”

She clutched her arms over her stomach, and he gave another loud sigh and reached down and pulled up the sleeves of the flannel pajamas she wore. “See, here are your small hands—safe.”

Rose beamed at him. “You didn’t eat my hands.” She giggled. “My pajamas ate them.” Something was very wrong with her. Even in her dreams, she never giggled.

“You are pleasingly small, my breeder, but it is difficult to find clothes to fit you. Most of them seem to eat you.”

“Dragons have flannel pajamas? Who knew?” She slept again, vaguely aware of the dragon tugging on her hair again.

She woke and it was too quiet. In the building where she’d worked and lived since she was eighteen, no matter what time you woke, someone was making a noise. Memory hit her like a vicious punch. The hole—Mr. Parnell had put her in the hole. And why did she remember a dragon giving her water?

She frowned. The smell was wrong—fresh, the artificial way the labs were fresh, only better and weirdly alien at the same time. She tried to open her eyes, but at first her lashes wouldn’t obey her command. She lay on something softer than the concrete hole they’d put her in. This, at least, was the same. Normally it took weeks for her to regain her strength. But she always forced herself to get up the moment her legs would hold her weight. It was worth the pain and discomfort, to gain Mr. Parnell’s approval.

Foreboding made her skin crawl. Something had gone very wrong. It took an enormous amount of strength, but her lashes lifted. Gleaming silver shards hurt her eyes. She instinctively tried to shield her face, but her hands wouldn’t move. She tried to blink away the moisture in her eyes.

Rose tried again to wipe away the water streaming down her cheeks. If Parnell was here, he’d think she was crying, and she didn’t cry. Ever. She frowned at a hazy recollection that she’d cried because a Komodo dragon, of all things, had eaten her hands. She lifted them and wiggled her fingers and sighed in relief.

She forced herself to lie still, for her eyes to adjust. At last they stopped watering, and this time, when she lifted her lids, she managed to open them wide. She blinked. What on earth? It must be a part of the lab she hadn’t seen before. Did she prove herself? Was that why Mr. Parnell took her out of the testing box? Her breath hitched. Was this large silver box a new test? It just didn’t make sense. Why would he put her in such a big box? Panic threatened to take over her and she fought it.

Rose took the fresh air deep into her lungs, grateful not to inhale her own sweat and faeces anymore. That was always the worst, that and the insects. She shuddered and her body ached, just from that small movement. Someone had bathed her and dressed her in something soft. Her insides cramped. This, she knew: it always took a while for her body to recover from being starved. Except she should be weaker, her body in unrelenting pain. And she was hungry, but not starving.

Her own breathing sounded loud in the silence around her. “Mr. Parnell?” Silence greeted her hoarse whisper. “Mr. Parnell,” she tried again, louder.

“Calm, breeder, you are safe,” came a voice too deep and gravelly to belong to Mr. Parnell. This voice sounded like thunder over music and pain and laughter. So many layers in there.

He leaned over her and put a claw over her forehead. She trembled; whoever this was, he wasn’t human. He was too tall to be human, his skin made of green and copper striations, and his eyes reminded her of purest evil. They were so black, she couldn’t make out if he had pupils. Red bled into the black of his eyes and her stomach turned. What was he? His clothes looked like a uniform, but she could’ve sworn they were made of metal. She shrank away from him.

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