Page 5 of Chased By the Alien Mercenary
Lyra
When the dust settled, a silence stretched that lasted seemingly forever. I barely dared to move from my tight curl behind the tipped-over metal cot, but, eventually, curiosity got the better of me. I scooted to the edge and peered around it. Darkness had eased, thanks to the dim lights along the ceiling, and now I saw the carnage in all its glory. Blood coated the walls, bodies lay torn asunder farther away, and I got a full look at the vacant-eyed stare of the pink-and-black alien.
The feral beast that had previously been attacking my cell lay sprawled on his side in front of the metal bars. One hand remained curled around the metal edge of the doorframe, as if, even unconscious, he could not stop trying to get to me. There were no claws tipping the dark red fingers now, and that hand looked curiously normal, human, even. His chest rose and fell, so he wasn’t dead; an odd flush of relief filled me at that discovery.
Beyond the carnage, a dozen men stood, including the strange alien with the golden marks on his scarlet skin. He was in charge, arms crossed over his chest, glowing gold writhing along his muscled forearms. He scowled at the blood and death, then frowned at my cell. Around him, his personal guard stood at the ready, weapons held in their arms, eyes watchful and sharp. They expected the feral alien to rise at any moment, and when he did, they’d shoot him again.
“Find out what they were after,” the male in charge barked, “and lock that one up. We’ll hold him hostage in case they come back again.” He flung his hand and gestured at the alien lying in front of the door to my cell. “He can keep her company, since he wanted to get in so badly.”
My stomach clenched in fear. They were going to throw him in here with me? Were they crazy? When he woke up, he was going to claw me to shreds, like he had done to the others. But I didn’t raise a protest, and I did not try to escape when they opened my cell and did as their boss ordered. Warily keeping him under gunpoint, they dragged him through the damaged, warped door, tossing him onto the floor in the middle before retreating in a rush. Then they set about securing the door with extra locks and a thick crossbeam.
Nobody said anything to me, just left me in my huddle behind the bed. The feral alien slept on, sprawled ungainly on his back in the middle of the cell, which now looked positively tiny. He took up so much floor space, yet he looked smaller too, deflated now that he wasn’t one big ball of rage and claws. I didn’t come out of hiding for the longest time, just watched and waited.
The head honcho left, off to oversee other things, though I could hear his voice in the distance for some time, barking orders. Guards dragged bodies from the hallway to be disposed of, then it became silent for a while. They’d left the lights on, though, so I had a view of the dripping and drying of the blood that coated much of the floor in front of my cell and the walls further away.
Should I scoot closer and investigate my new roomie? Seemed like a dangerous idea, he’d torn guys limb from limb a short while ago. Not someone I needed to get close and personal with.He was still out cold, his head angled away from me, and I could see that a red, sluggishly bleeding mark had burned along the side of his skull. It stood out starkly against the ivory color of his head. With a sharply demarcated line, it turned to a dark red at the back of his neck, and his round, so very human-looking ears were also red.
With a deep breath, I scooted out from behind the bed. My body was cold, and my thighs were beginning to tremble from the cramped curl. I had to move. When I sidled around his prone form, I could see his face, and though still ghoulish and alien, it wasn’t quite so macabre in rest. His lashes fanned against the pale ivory of his cheeks. His eyelids were a deep, dark red too, not black like they had initially appeared. They fluttered as if he was having dreams, and, fascinated, I moved a little closer.
A sound made me startle back, but it was only Keya coming into the tunnel with a bucket and mop. “Keya,” I said, moving to the door but avoiding the blood pooling beneath it. “What happened? Do you know?” She swished her mop over the floor, her back turned to me as if she didn’t want to talk to me. I didn’t really want to talk to her either; after all, she’d taken part in stripping me of my clothes and trussing me up to be served to that alien bastard in charge. She was my only means of getting answers, though, so I was willing to suck it up—for now.
Her long braid swished by her hip, wooden beads clicking together. I thought she was going to ignore me entirely as she worked on cleaning the walls and floors of the evidence of the fight. Or massacre, rather. Then her chin tilted, and I could see one blue eye peer at me over her shoulder. She sighed—long and loud—but then there was a rapid spill of hissed words under her breath.
“Mercenaries attacked. The master is in a frenzy about it. If you lay low, he might forget about you for a while. They could come back.” Her eye darted meaningfully to the unconscious body of the alien in my cell. Come back for him, this feral alien of a man. I wasn’t sure if she thought that was a good thing or a bad thing, but despite further questions, she remained mute after that, rushing to finish her gruesome job before she retreated back to the more brightly lit upstairs.
The lights still did not turn off, and I wondered if Keya was supposed to have done that but had left them on for me as a kindness. I wasn’t sure if she had any kindness left, as worn down as she seemed. I could be mad at her for having undressed me, readying me for a horrible fate, but I shouldn’t forget that she was a slave. Now that I knew what this awful collar around my neck did… she wore one too; her choices were hardly her own.
But right now, in this moment, I did have a few choices available to me—like searching the guy’s armor for anything useful now that he was sleeping, or trying to kill him while he was out so he couldn’t hurt me when he woke. I winced as the thought rose in my mind and discarded it immediately. No, I wasn’t capable of that kind of thing, and he was prone now, out cold. I was not the murdering type; the only shooting I did was with my camera.
As Keya abandoned me to my cell, I paced around my companion’s head before finally going to my knees at his side. I didn’t want to touch him and cause him to wake up, but they had barely searched him before tossing him in here. His pistol was gone, but there were more pockets on the belt that cinched his narrow hips—possibly even pockets in the sleek black armor he wore, too. It looked high-tech, at odds with his feral behavior.Wherever he’d come from, it was someplace advanced if they’d dressed him in this. Mercenaries, Keya had said—was he one of them?
My hand brushed his wide shoulder first, just a light touch, barely there at all. Immediately, his body shifted; his head twisted, turning toward me, and a low, rumbling moan rose from his throat. His eyes did not open, but his lashes fluttered, his expression growing tense and angry. No, pained. A wave of pity filled me. Yeah, that head wound had to hurt, and he could be injured elsewhere.
I touched his brow next, and it felt hot, feverish to my cold fingers. His head turned again, this time pressing toward my hand as if he were seeking my touch. It was silly, but the pain-filled groan and the search for my touch melted my heart a little. So, he was big and scary, but he was wounded now—he needed help. Enemy of my enemy and all that. Maybe he’d calm down when he woke and be willing to work with me to escape. I could use a big, strong alien like him in my corner if I wanted to get out of here before Goldie remembered where I was.
He wasn’t so scary when he tossed and turned with pain and dreams. I scooted a little closer, then used the corner of my blanket to dab some of the blood off his face. The wound at the back of his head looked bad, but other than carefully wiping the blood away, there was very little I could do. It had already stopped bleeding, the blood clotting and forming a crust. That was good, I hoped. “It’s okay, they’ve gone,” I told him, as he groaned and twisted along the floor. Whatever he was dreaming about, it was getting worse, and tension racked his body.
I didn’t know what else to do, and part of me was convinced I was making a terrible mistake by touching him. He was going to wake up and kill me, and yet… I didn’t really want to believe that, and I recalled that one flash of clarity I’d seen in his eyes just before they’d shot him. There was more to him than just a feral beast, there were nightmares, to start with. So I started humming a lullaby I remembered from when my mom used to do the same for me as a child.
I hummed and brushed with the corner of the blanket, cleaning his face and marveling at each sharp edge and plane, each alien feature. “It’s going to be okay,” I said, brushing along his temple where a particularly large drop of blood had dried. My voice hummed softly but merrily in the gloom of the cell, echoing back at me from the walls.
I blinked, feeling something hit my eye, and blinked again when more flurried into my face. Ashes. I gasped, staring in horror—suddenly, I was no longer in the cell with a feral alien man sprawled at my knees. Gray surrounded me, a flurry of ash swirling through the air like snowflakes. Still kneeling, I was no longer on a cold stone floor but on dirt and debris. All around me, buildings had collapsed, gray, barren ruins and blackened frames still smoldering with fire.
“What the…” I started to say and promptly inhaled ash that clung to my tongue and the roof of my mouth, salty and greasy. I gagged and coughed, eyes tearing up until I wiped at them with my blanket, still stained with blood from my feral alien. There was no sign of him here. Where washere? I didn’t understand what had happened; instant transportation was impossible, wasn’t it? So how had I gotten from a dark cell to what appeared to be the aftermath of a war?
Once the word “war” had risen in my mind, I saw more signs of it: bodies, collapsed and broken beneath the rubble, or burned and charred by the fires. Everything was coated in ash, making it hard to breathe, and it was so quiet that it sent chills down my spine. Nobody lived here—everything was gone, destroyed. Not even carrion feeders had come to this scene to clean it up. The skies were roiling with dark clouds, rapidly twisting and moving across the heavens in winds I did not feel. Alone, I was alone here. So very alone.
I wrapped my arms around myself and rose to unsteady feet to look around. The ashes drifted around me, warm in contrast to the cool dirt. The bodies were unrecognizable, but I thought they had red skin, aliens? Was this their home world? Was ithisworld? I tried looking more closely, stumbling over the uneven ground toward the closest body. A moan reached my ears—forlorn, pain-filled, soft, and high-pitched.
My heart started racing, sorrow filling my chest for whoever had let out that pitiful sound. Where was it coming from? I cast my head about—left, right—searching for the sound. When it came again, I raced toward it, jumping over a toppled wall and around the charred remains of several bodies hanging out of a collapsed and still-smoldering building. I tried not to look at their faces, tried not to see the death and despair. There was someone alive; I had to find them.
The moan—soft, so weak—came from a pile of rubble to my left, and I hurried toward it. Peering between the cracks and rocks for any sign, I called out, “Hang on! I’m here now! I will get you out!” The moaning stopped. “No, make sounds, please! I need to know you’re alive.” I urged the person under the rock to talk, tried to cajole them into making more noise, but nothing—noteven the faintest moan now. Doubts filled me. Had I imagined it? Was I in the wrong place? But that did not stop me from digging at the rubble as fast as I could.
I tore my nails until they bled, but I did not stop hauling rocks and planks until I’d exposed one slender wrist and a hand. I sat for a moment, frantically searching that small limb for a pulse, and found it, thudding erratically, but there. “I’ve got you now!” I swore, consumed with the task of getting him out—this small boy.
No older than twelve, but maybe younger, given his small body. He was still partially covered, but when I lifted a plank, I exposed his face: white, pale features, and then he blinked, and I was staring into ruby red eyes. My breath faltered, my mind spun with possibilities. But then he moaned, so sad, so fearful. I forgot about his ghoulish face and macabre markings, forgot about his resemblance to a certain alien back in the cell I’d occupied not that long ago. Instinct ruled as I shoved more rubble aside and pulled the boy free.
He clung to my arms, expression desperate, and I hummed for him like I’d hummed for the feral beast when he had nightmares. “It’s okay,” I crooned, “you’re going to be okay.” I blinked ashes from my eyes, stared at his small, gaunt face, and the white that marked his face like a skull. Blinked again, and suddenly I was back in the cell, kneeling on the floor, my feral companion cradled against my lap the way I’d been holding that boy moments ago. What the fuck? Had I just… Yeah, I must have entered his dream somehow, his nightmare. That was him, but as a small boy. Had that actually happened to him?
