Page 21 of The Death Games

She glanced over, her gaze searching mine as if trying to piece together the mystery of the alien she found herself tethered to.

Maybe she was looking for assurance.

Maybe she was trying to figure out if I was friend or foe.

All I could offer was a level stare and the hope that my eyes reflected the sincerity I felt.

The silence inside the pod was deafening.

Not the cold, tense silence of before, but a shared one.

A silence that spoke of understanding, of the burgeoning trust between two beings thrown together in extraordinary circumstances.

My head tilted slightly, observing her.

There was something in the way she carried herself now.

A subtle shift.

She wasn’t the fragile human I thought she was when we first met.

No, there was a strength in her.

A will to survive.

It made me admire her even more.

The turbulence of entering the planet’s atmosphere jerked us from our silent reverie.

The pod shook violently, rattling us inside.

I instinctively reached out, wanting to shield her from any harm, but she just met my grasp with her own, steadying herself.

Crash landing wasn’t new to us anymore.

The jarring impact, the momentary weightlessness — it was just a part of the Game.

But every time was still as disorienting as the first.

When the dust settled and the pod’s door whirred open, we were met with an all-too-familiar alien landscape.

Vast expanses of purples and blues, exotic trees that reached towards the tri-colored sky, and a silence that was eerie.

Without thinking, I moved to scoop her up, to restrain her as I had done previously.

It was a reflex borne out of the need to ensure her safety, to prevent her from attracting any unwanted attention with a scream.

But she took a step back, her eyes defiant.

“I won’t scream,” she whispered, her voice firm. “I promise. But you have to trust me just as I’m trying to trust you. Don’t give me a reason to break that trust.”

I paused, weighing her words.

She was right, of course.

Trust wasn’t one-sided.

And if we were to survive this ordeal, we had to lean on each other.

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