Page 89 of Shattered Silence

Then one woman did. She screamed, jumped out of the pool, and ran toward the quarters. The other woman’s head bobbed up from beneath the water. She gasped.

Ah. Now he had their attention.

“Who the fuck are you?” Andross snarled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I’ve already called the bot-guard. You’ll be neutralized any fucking mo—”

Something—a machine—rose up in the air behind Enki. Without looking, he reached behind, flicked out one of his throwing knives, and…

Shik. The sound of inferior metal being torn apart by Callidum was a familiar one. The bot-thing, or whatever it was, fell by the wayside.

Enki stepped into the light.

“K-Kordolian!” the woman shrieked, moving closer to Andross, as if he could offer her some sort of security.

“Get the hell up off me, bitch. This obviously isn’t the time.” The man pushed her away, and she lost her balance, falling backwards into the water with a splash.

“You. Go.” Enki pointed towards the warmed living area where the other woman had disappeared. “My business is with him.”

The woman didn’t waste time, hauling herself out of the pool and grabbing a small cloth that she used to cover her parts as she scrambled toward the living quarters. She shot Andross a spiteful glare as she stepped inside…

And then she was gone.

“Look, you fucking moon-elf. I don’t give a shit if you’re the former conquerers of the Universe or whatever. You’re on Earth now. Our rules. If you don’t get off my property right now, I’m calling the Enforcers. What do you want? A movie-part? A pic? My fucking stash of credits?” He waved his hand around in a false display of bravado. “Go on, take it. Just get the fuck out of here. I was just about to get some mind-blowing head, you asshole.”

Enki stared at the man, exerting great self-control just to retract his claws.

“Hey, moon-elf. Do you even understand Universal? Do you know who I am?”

Enki grew sick and tired of the man’s voice. He moved, becoming a dark blur as he darted across to the edge of the pool. He grabbed Andross by the hair and hauled him out of the water. The man twisted and flailed and gasped. Enki flipped him around, grabbed one of his ankles, and strode across to the edge of the very tall building…

Where he dangled Andross in the icy wind, over the snow-covered street.

The man screamed. “Oh god, oh god, oh god!” He babbled in his own language, shouting and cursing, looking up at Enki in horror. “Who the hell are you? What do you want from me? Don’t kill me.”

Enki swung the man back over the edge and dropped him on the stone floor.

“Aaargh!” Andross screamed as his pale wet body hit the icy surface. Small white flakes of ice started to fall from the sky above, drifting slowly to the floor.

On Earth, there was beauty in the ordinary, and the beautiful—his Layla—was divine.

Enki squatted down beside the terrified naked man, waiting until Andross had calmed down enough to look him in the face. “Wh-what do you want? Man, I can pay you a lot of cred—”

“This is about Layla.”

Andross stiffened. “Layla Rose? She’s gone, man. A long time ago. That’s got nothing to do with me.”

“Oh?” Enki lifted a finger.

Andross flinched. “Wh-what d-do you want to know about her?” He was shivering now, his unnaturally white teeth chattering.

Enki rose to his feet. “I don’t need to know anything from you. After this night, you do not get to speak of her ever again.” He dropped a device in front of Andross, a small human-designed holorecording machine that Sera had given him. “Fix it.”

“F-fix what?” The man sat up and curled into a ball, trying to conserve his body heat. It was amazing how quickly humans succumbed to the cold. Enki found this climate quite pleasant.

“You know what you did to her. Fix it.” Enki was starting to lose patience. This human truly did not understand how close he was to death right now.

Or perhaps he did. Fear began to percolate in Andross’s eyes as he picked up the device with trembling fingers that had turned a peculiar shade of blue. Enki could always tell when his victims moved from denial to acceptance. The imminent threat of death tended to make that transition occur rather quickly.

“W-what do you w-want from m-me?”

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