Page 75 of Holiday with the Aliens

Each step back down the hall echoed eerily around her, and she kept turning her head back to make sure the door hadn’t slidopen. The farther she stepped away, the brighter the light down the hall pulsed. With a gentle whoosh, a door she hadn’t noticed before slid open, the lights beyond it almost bright enough to blind her. She couldn’t make out anything in the room, but now the hallway seemed dim in comparison.

She gave the wall that Arest was trapped behind one last look. She had no way to get it open, and as the minutes passed it became clear that he was in the same situation. Her only choice was to find another way around, and she knew that there was nothing back the way she came.

So she stepped through the door with nothing more than a prayer in her thoughts.

The bright lights dimmed to a more manageable level, and the door slid shut behind her. Stella didn’t flinch—she didn’t think there was anything in the place that could surprise her anymore. It was hell. Or purgatory. And while it kept her and Arest safe from the whirling snow outside, it was far more dangerous than any blizzard could ever be.

She was still in a hallway, almost like every other one she’d traversed so far. But instead of the solid beige that dulled her senses, the bottom half of the walls were painted steel gray, and metal grating lined the ceiling. She studied it for several moments, trying to determine if it was meant for storage or as a walkway.

Stella tried to imagine a map in her head as she walked these new halls alone. She’d relied on Arest to show her the way before, but now she had to find him. And to do that, she couldn’t afford to get lost. Of course, whoever controlled these halls seemed to be leading her. Since she hadn’t encountered a single monster since the lights started leading them, she decided to trust them for the moment. She didn’t see that she had another choice.

The hallway split, one way lit and the other dark. Though a contrarian part of her was tempted to turn left and take the darkened path, she went right and followed the light. Her fingers shook and she curled them into fists, sticking them into her pocket to try and hide the evidence of her discomfort.

It was colder here and her dirty shirt didn’t do much to protect her from the chill. Her teeth chattered and wind buffeted her hair, blowing it in her face. That had to mean she was getting closer to an exit. Right?

Stella picked up her pace, jogging down the hall as far as the lights were lit. It got colder and colder, but her speed kept her from shivering. But instead of an exit, the hallway turned again, and it grew warmer, more comfortable. Her teeth stopped chattering and she slowed down, confused.

The next break in the hall gave her a choice. She could turn left or keep going straight. And this time both hallways were flooded with bright white light. She could see that the leftward hallway curved and headed back the way she came, and the air was cooler. Maybe down there she would find an exit and help.

If she kept going straight, she would head deeper into the tunnels, and toward whatever trouble lurked.

But Arest was stuck in there. She didn’t have a choice at all.

She kept going straight. And when she came to the door at the end, it slid open silently and she walked through without any hesitation.

“Hello,” said a tall man with skin so smooth it didn’t look real. “I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience. Please take a seat.”

Arest walked into a cage.

The door behind him slammed shut and bars slid down, cutting off his escape but leaving him with a full view of everything in front of him. The cage was tiny, not even large enough for him to lay down and stretch out. Barely long enough to pace.

But he took in his surroundings and tested the bars. They were strong and embedded in the stone from the ceiling down to the floor. No amount of jostling would see them free. On the floor at his feet a control panel faintly glowed, the buttons for opening and closing identical to the ones he’d seen earlier.

So the cage wasn’t for him.

He held himself back from lifting the bars. They’d slid down for a reason and Arest wanted to know why. Something tickled the back of his mind, something he was supposed to be doing. But he couldn’t summon the thought to the forefront, couldn’t make himself know what he didn’t remember.

The room outside the cage wasn’t very different from where he and Stella had slept. The walls formed a circle and ended in a dome overhead. But unlike that room, there was no control panel on the wall, and on the far side, in a space almost completely shrouded in shadow, he thought he spied an opening big enough to be a short door into the room.

Nothing moved in those shadows, but his senses were on high alert. An unfamiliar scent tickled his nose, much like the creatures he’d already encountered, butmore. Worse. He remembered the gouges on the floor in the room behind him and knew that whatever had made them, used this room too.

Nicks scored the metal of the bars and Arest reached out a hand to trace them. The scores were superficial, but anything that could do that much damage to metal this thick could end him with a swipe.

The shadows stirred and one of the creatures he’d fought scurried out, scuttling across the room, claws clicking againstthe stone floor. It stayed away from where Arest stood, but Arest took a step back, just in case something decided to reach for him. But the creature paid him no mind.

It ran in circles, scratching against the walls and doing its best to stay away from the shadows that it had crawled out of. Arest crouched and peered, trying to make out what it was running from. A little keening sound of fear escaped the creature’s throat and danced down Arest’s spine. He knew terror when he heard it, no matter the species.

The shadows moved.

Sharp claws and sharper teeth glinted from the faint light as a beast more than twice as tall as Arest slid out of the shadows. It moved on agile feet, its height belying a grace one only found in dancers and assassins.

The running creature’s keens turned to screams and it fell over, backing into the wall and scraping desperately, trying to escape an inescapable fate.

Arest watched it all, heart pounding madly. It wasn’t a fight. The creature might have posed a little danger to him, might have gotten in a few lucky shots, but against a monster as big as this one, it had no hope. The monster reached out and snatched the creature up, breaking it without bothering to first put it out of its misery.

It took its prize back to the shadows and the sounds of slurping, of feeding, echoed throughout the room. Blood coated the air and was thick in Arest’s throat.

He looked back down at the panel on the floor. Someone wanted him to press the button and lower the bars. Someone wanted him to fight the monster.

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