Page 52 of Xefe
“I remain true to my oath. True to myself. My supreme.” He placed his hands over mine, his heated palms warming my cold fingers.
“Not even to save your life?”
“You are wrong. I will fix this. I will not lose who I am. Till death. Supreme first!” He placed me on the rock and backed away. “Loxo will be here tomorrow to pick you up. Stay safe, earther. Concentrate on the competition. Your lives depend on it.”
CHAPTER 23
Loxo escorted Nieve,Querida, and I to our doom. The high-tech alien arena overwhelmed me. The roar of the crowd and the whirl of the cameras all felt familiar, but the sounds and smells bombarding me made no sense. They were foreign and so terrifying in theirothernessthat I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. Thousands of Aavvee screeched and screamed, seated in a stadium the size of a small city. Sounds of shattering glass overwhelmed me. Their words blended together, so I had no hope of translating.
We’re going to die.
When I’d woken up this morning, I was alone. Sunny never returned. My heart still ached, but I couldn’t allow my worry for him to overshadow surviving this event. So I could keep looking for Valentina. She was my number one priority. Step one, make sure Valentina wasn’t on the planet. Step two, find a way home. Step three, take Freckles out before or after the other two steps.En punto.
“How are we going to do this?” Nieve’s hand shook as she chewed on her nail, looking as radiant as usual even though she wore a sack. Her glowing skin and glittering hands only added mystery to her beauty. It wasn’t fair.
Querida looked cleaner but still murderous, her frizzy mop of red curls a jumbled mess atop her head. Her coal eyes studied everything, but she didn’t say a word. Different day, same channel.
“I’m thinking.” Everywhere I looked, I saw the Aavvee. All too eagerly anticipating a bloody fight. How many of us would die today for their amusement? The totality of it staggered me.
“What?” Querida noticed everything.
“Look around.” I was too shocked to censor myself or lie. “We might be the only humans on this entire planet.” In reflex, I reached out and grabbed Nieve’s hand. She did the same to Querida. I’d never felt so small in my life. After a few moments, their touch centered me.We can do this.We had to.
“Earthers, are you well?” Loxo, our constant shadow, shattered the moment. He’d glued himself to us. After I’d taken off yesterday, I didn’t blame him. Luckily, he believed me when I said I would never,everdo it again, especially when I added the solemn words, ‘Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.’
“Let’s take a lap and think.” We jogged around the perimeter, and Loxo trailed after us. By the time we lapped the whole course, my tight muscles had loosened. I felt like I could strategize beyond the panic. The arena was massive, and all of the equipment was gleaming white and shiny. Because it was inside the mountain, we didn’t have to worry about the force fields or Guardians.
“Alert, earthers. Here comes your competition,” Loxo whispered, wearing a poker face for once.
The floodgates opened and varying aliens rushed out. Immediately, the green team took center stage. Muscled and horned, with massive chips on their shoulders—they shoved their way through the crowd. Surprise, surprise, Greenie from the soup station stood front and center.
There were also snake-looking ladies with scaled skin and forked tongues. Plus, smaller gray aliens with short legs and bald heads. Beyond them, I caught flashes of purple hair and hoped to see Nheenya, but the crowd moved too quickly. A largenumber of Aavvee rounded out the group. Most of them looked starved or half-dead, but that only meant they had nothing to lose.
The aliens separated and lined up—four per group.
Uh oh.We were going to have to pull this off as a three-man team. “There might be some surprises, but that’s the squad we have to worry about.” I pointed at the green, mean girls. They obviously had the inside track. They wore stylized uniforms similar to Sunny’s and walked around like they knew somebody.
“Mierda, look at what they’re wearing. Why do we have to race in potato sacks?” Nieve plucked at the heavy sack.
“They’re the favorites,” Querida whispered, her stabbing scrap metal in hand.
“Okay, ladies. I’m about to blow your minds. We’re going to do something we’veneverdone before.” I paused and finally blurted out, “Blend in.”
“I’m sorry,nena.” Nieve flicked her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t blend.”
I rolled my eyes, not in the mood to deal with her attitude. “It’ll give us the element of surprise.” I couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“Are you sure?”
“No! Of course I’m not.”
“You’re the one with all the special Oro running through your veins. You speak their language, and you have super-powers or something. Which you still haven’t fully explained to us. Querida and I don’t have that advantage. We have to work with what we’ve got. ThankDios, we look so good.” Nieve high-fived Querida.
“That doesn’t mean I have everything figured out.” I adjusted my potato sack in agitation. “You need to come up with solutions, too.” I took a deep breath, hating that I couldn’t handle things solo. Working together was for losers—unlessyour life was on the line. “We just have to be one of the top four finishers, so let’s not stand out if we don’t have to. It’ll be a better surprise during the final race.”
Nieve shrugged. “I’ll try my best, but my radiance precedes me.” She turned her back, but I saw her wink at Querida. “If we don’t figure out how to get across the last part, it won’t matter anyway.”
True.I looked around the dense stadium for the thousandth time. “Hey, Loxo, where’s Sunny?”
