INTERSTELLAR HUMAN PETTING ZOO: POSSESSIVE ALIENS Page 2

  The security teams are made up of heavily armored little aliens with six arms and four legs each, but even with all those extra limbs at play I move at a much faster pace than they do.

  “STOP! HEY! STOP! Please?!”

  Their cries become more desperate and less authoritative the further we go. If I’m not mistaken, they’re also out of breath. My pride will not allow me to run from what would on Earth be equivalent to mall security.

  “I’ve got asthma!” I hear one of them gasp.

  A few feet away from the ship, I stop. I turn around and see that they have nothing but electric jab sticks that won’t do a thing to me, and self-righteous attitudes. I’m sure this crime will be reported to real security forces soon enough, but right now, this is the volunteer brigade, and my ego stings at the fact I ever ran from them in the first place.

  I’m interested to see what happens next. Will they try to take me down? Will they issue me with a ticket? Will they leave with their entrails decorating their bodies in new and interesting ways?

  All the teams stop with an almost audible screeching sound and stare at me, their stalked eyes blinking at me with a profound confusion. I wait a moment for them to try some kind of arrest, but predictably, nothing happens.

  “I thought so,” I say, turning and walking onto the ship. There’s not a single one of them who are going to risk their lives for one ratty looking zoo specimen, or to avenge the lives of a handful of criminal elbublians.

  “Seriously?” Reaper greets me at the door. “You stopped to showboat and intimidate?”

  “Yes,” I say, pushing past him. “Get this ship off the ground if you don’t want to be surrounded by real enforcement forces.”

  “You had to make that much of a mess!?”

  “I only killed the ones that deserve to be killed,” I say. “Now let me get this girl safe.”

  She’s curled up in my arms, so small and so still it would be easy to forget that she was there if she wasn't the most precious thing in all existence.

  “Put her in the containment area,” he says. “We can set up a new human triage area, just like we did before.”

  “I don't think so. No containment fields for this girl. She’s been through enough captivity to last forever.”

  I can see One peeking out from behind Reaper. She’s curious, but not as curious as I am, or nearly as worried. I have the girl, but I don’t know how long she will survive if she isn’t tended to immediately. I don’t feel much, if any motion in my arms. I’m not even sure she’s breathing.

  “You want help?”

  “I don’t think she needs two of us fussing over her,” I say. It’s better than saying what I want to say: No. She’s mine. Don’t fucking touch her.

  I was so angry when Reaper took One for his mate. When he met One for the first time, he took her for his own almost immediately, mating with her before I could. I thought he was being selfish. I thought of her as something that should have been shared property.

  For the first time, I understand completely why he refused. And I’m surprised he didn’t kill me for suggesting he let me have her, because now I have this quivering female in my arms, I know I will never want anyone else - and I will never let anyone else touch her. I don’t know a thing about this girl, but I know she’s mine. I know it with more certainty than I’ve known anything in my entire life.

  I never thought I’d have the chance to find love. It’s too early to tell if she might love me, but I already know I love her. The feeling is suffusing every tissue in my body. I feel an intense urge to protect her at all costs, an overwhelming need which will not allow me to relax until I have her somewhere secure.

  “You know where the medical bay is?”

  “Yes. It is one of the four cabins on this entire vessel,” I remind him. “Just take off, please. Use the hyperdrive. Jump as far and as fast as we can. I left a mess down there.”

  “Of course you did,” Reaper says. There’s no judgement in his tone, just resignation.

  Chapter Two - Breathe For Me

  Tarkan

  I carry the unnamed young woman into the medical bay. As I do, I feel the ship start to power up. It vibrates on two separate frequencies, one being the general hum of the ship’s main systems, the other the activation of the jump drive. That’s our secret weapon, apart from the fact it’s not a secret, and basically not a weapon. It’s actually an advanced evasive system, though scythkin can never admit retreat, let alone defeat, so we have to call it a weapon.

  Right now, I want to be far away from this rinky-dink little space station as possible. I want to know that the girl I have is safe from those who might pursue us, at least until I can make sure she is healthy and ready to fight by my side. Something tells me this one would never allow anyone else to fight her battles for her. That’s probably why she lost hers so hard and ended up chained in the back of a tent.

  I know I’m making these things up. I actually know nothing about her. A quick glimpse is all I’ve had, and it is enough to make my imagination start deciding all things about her. I feel as though I know her, though I don’t even know if she’s fully alive.

  Reaper knocks on the door.

  “Just wanted to check. You’re sure it’s actually a human?”

  “She’s human, Reaper,” I say, turning her in my arms enough to let him see her basic form. He glances at her and I see his expression close. He sees what I see, a figure that is barely female and hardly human because of all the abuse it has taken.

  “Be careful with her,” he says, as if that’s not obvious enough. Reaper thinks I am a brutal animal, and I am, most of the time. But I know when to be gentle, and this woman is bringing out the most nurturing side of me - though I have to admit, if I could rip her captor’s spines out and use them as flails to beat them with all over again, I would. There is no amount of pain I would not unleash on the bastards who hurt her this way.

  “I’m going to be careful. I’m going to scan her and then…”

  “You know how to use the scanner?”

  He’s hovering, my concerned older broodkin who doesn’t trust me as far as he can throw me, but this girl doesn’t have anybody else beside me. I’m the one who set her free. I’m the one who will make sure she never has to endure the humiliation of capture again.

  “Just shove it up her butt, right?” I snort at him. “Reaper, I want to get her comfortable.”

  “Nothing’s going up my butt…” I hear a soft utterance from my arms. She speaks! She understands me!

  “Don’t worry, I was just teasing my commander. I’m going to take care of you.”

  “Like you took care of the bad guys?”

  Her eyes are open a sliver, two bright blue slits of intensity looking at me from the nest of chain remnants and what might be ragged cloth bandages stuck to her body.

  “No,” I say. “Different. I’m going to get you better.”

  “Worse. Better. It’s all the same. All the things are one thing. Nothing matters.”

  Her speech is vague and slurred. They likely drugged her to keep her calm, when she rattled those chains too much and they didn’t want to deal with her struggles and screams anymore.

  Settling her down on the observation table, I reach for the medical kit. I’ve actually never used this before. Scythkin don’t really get sick, and when we’re physically hurt or wounded, we just heal. Other species aren’t that lucky though. We have a human health kit, thanks to One being on board, so I should be able to find something to treat her with.

  “Get a pin prick blood sample and run it through the analyzer.”

  I’d almost forgotten Reaper was there.

  “Of course I’ll do that. You can go. Deal with One.”

  I can feel him wanting to take over, but he knows better than to try. This is my girl. Mine. He leaves, silently, but I know he won’t have gone far. He can’t go far, this ship is tiny.

  “I need to get a sample from you,” I tell her. Some instinct tells me that it is important to let her know what I’m doing to her. She has been kept worse than an animal, but she’s not an animal. She’s a thinking, feeling, living little repository of rare humanity.

  She doesn’t seem to notice as I draw a drop of blood from her finger with the little device that will scan it. My suspicion is that she feels the pain, she just doesn’t react to it anymore. That’s what happens with animals that learn to be helpless. Humans are no different than any other animal. Neither are scythkin really. It’s just much harder to put us into a state where we shut down. Our nervous systems welcome pain. At a certain point, we start to process it as pure enjoyment. Some humans have similar capacities, but not under the brutal circumstances she was kept in.

  I don’t know what to say to her. I’ve never been much of a conversationalist. When Earth still existed, we used to talk about the weather, but there’s no weather out here, and I doubt she cares. I doubt any human ever cared, but it never stopped them talking about it almost constantly. I decide to try the conversational gambit.

  “Do you like rain or sun?”

  “Huh?” She looks over at me with a confused expression. “What’s rain or sun?”

  A human who can’t make small talk about the weather is a human who is barely human at all.

  “Do you like weather?”

  “Does it matter whether I like weather? Wither might I see weather? Whether I want to or not?”

  She’s barely coherent, poor thing. The marks of her captivity are damning and nasty, and the results of the scan are even worse. The computer begins to print out three categories of health concerns. Diseases. Deficiencies. Addictions. She has entries under each of them.

  Subject is only borderline viable, the computer reports. Recommend immediate treatment, or
humane euthanasia.

  Euthanasia isn’t going to happen, but the computer doesn’t understand anything more than medical realities. She’s not just sick. She’s addicted to several substances, sedatives no doubt designed to keep her compliant.

  The computer spits out a syringe of its own concoction, a cure-all designed specifically for the young woman still curled in my arms. Treatment one of sixty, it coos. Begin immediately for best results.

  I inject the medicine into the soft tissue at the curve of her hip and watch her carefully. For the first couple of minutes, nothing happens. She just lays there, a dead weight that is far too light for my liking. I find myself holding my breath so I can watch hers more carefully.

  She’s conscious, but it’s a kind of consciousness which isn’t really present. Her dull blue gaze is beautiful, but empty. It’s almost as though she’s nothing more than a suit like the ones we wear. She’s been turned into something that is only skin deep.

  I am angry. Furious. I can imagine how beautiful she would have been if she were healthy and happy, how those blue eyes might sparkle with life and light. But they are glassy and glazed, and her breath is coming so short and so shallow I am afraid that the computer’s diagnosis might be right.

  I might have been too late. I might have rescued her only to watch her die.

  “Come on,” I say softly, rocking her in my arms. “Come on little human. Breathe for me.”

  42

  The large one has me, the male alien who is made of knives and brutal death rage. I am laying on my back, on the bed but cradled by his massive limbs. I feel so small. I have felt small ever since I awoke in captivity, but this is a different kind of small. What I used to feel was nothing more than irrelevance. I meant nothing. Now I feel small in comparison to the big beast who broke my chains as if they were twine, whose hands and appendages took life with a joyful alacrity which made watching him very entertaining.

  I felt the sharp bite in my rear just now. Another injection. So many things have been injected into me. I tried to resist it at first, but I couldn’t. They were always too strong, just like this one is. I barely flinch as I feel what is likely to be another cocktail of drugs which will make me unable to control my own limbs infiltrating my body.

  Is it even my body anymore? It doesn't feel like it. It feels like something meaty I wear, something that isn’t me. Something I’m saddled with in spite of myself.

  I close my eyes and accept my fate. I stopped trying to control it when I realized that I would never really be in control. Even if I managed to escape my captors, I would be caught by others, or broken by fate. A deep sense of meaninglessness and misery suffuses my soul.

  Usually I nod off after an injection, but this time something different happens. I start to feel more alert. I feel strength rushing back into my body, my muscles starting to twitch and move again. I’m coming back to myself. The fog is lifting. I am becoming something different. Something aware. Something animal.

  Tarkan

  She turns her head slowly and looks at me. Right in the eye. How can one little female be so frightening? I have battled hordes of vicious enemies, creatures of unspeakable brutality, species so dangerous that even scythkin shy away from battle. There are leviathan creatures on some unconquered worlds which are capable of taking twenty or more of us in their mouths and crushing us, aliens which have massive burning voids for eyes which inspire terror so deep and so existential that warriors have collapsed simply from looking into them. This is just a little human, but the way she looks at me in that first moment of consciousness gives me chills. I didn’t know I had the physiology for chills. I’ve never had them before.

  Looking into her eyes is like seeing a thousand horrors of the very worst kind. It is like seeing the destruction of worlds - though that may merely be projection. I helped destroy many worlds when Reaper and I fought for the scythkin invasion forces. I thought I liked the destruction of worlds. I was quite proud of most of them. But now, seeing myself through her gaze, I realize it’s not that I’m afraid of her. It’s that she is instantly instinctually terrified of me, and I feel that horror reflected in my own gaze.

  A sudden scream heralds her return to the world of full consciousness. She was drifting in a haze before, but now she becomes immediately, swiftly, dangerously alert. She stiffens and then bolts right out of my arms, turning into a devil of feral activity. Biting, kicking, hitting, it is as if every aggressive impulse in her body has been triggered at once and she can’t contain it. It’s not that she is attacking me, as she is attacking everything. The world itself. All creation is under fire - and I’m the closest thing.

  I do not do anything to stop her. Scythkin cannot be harmed by humans. They have soft nails and blunt teeth and their skeletal system is exceptionally fragile, not to mention covered by nothing more than meat. It is a ridiculous design, one Reaper and I have mocked many times over the years.

  What do I say? What do I do? I search my memories of comforting human phrases for one that might fit the situation.

  “Whoa, whoa, you’re okay.”

  Nope. That doesn’t work.

  She just keeps flailing, screaming incoherently, crying out so loudly I consider sedating her, but given I just brought her out of her stupor, that doesn’t seem like the best idea either.

  “Calm down?”

  Again, the words do nothing. I am at a loss for what to do.

  “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands?”

  She lets out a wail and tries to smash her head into the wall. That’s definitely not how the song goes.

  I’m sure Reaper is watching on the monitors. The sounds coming out of this girl are feral and they would be terrifying if I had not spent my entire existence hearing the wails of the dying. These are the sounds of someone coming back to life, someone who is fighting for her soul.

  She allowed me to carry her out of captivity, but she was weak then. She’s still weak now, but the medication has given her enough energy to fight me, and I can see by the fire in those pale eyes that she is going to fight with every bit of that energy, and more besides.

  I might expect her to be grateful for her rescue, but that is naive. Anything truly hurt takes a long time to trust. That might mean she bites and curses and screams more than she cuddles and kisses and does all the sweet things Reaper gets to enjoy. I don’t care. I’ll wait as long as it takes for her to learn that I am not going to hurt her. Not ever. I owe all of humanity a debt I know I will never be able to repay - but I’m going to start here, with this girl.

  She hasn’t said another coherent word in among all the screams, but I sense she wants to say something. Instead of speaking, she keeps chewing on the reinforced ridge of my arm, as if the biting is making her feel better. It is possible that it is. A lot of humans eat during times of stress, and keeping the mouth active is a good way to tap into the same calming circuits. I decide to let her gnaw on me, retracting all the sharp edges so she doesn’t impale herself dangerously.

  It takes some time, but eventually she starts to calm down. Her attacks have not made any difference, and I have not retaliated. I let her cling to me with her aggressive hold and gnaw until she more than likely starts to hurt her own jaw in the effort to attack me.

  “Easy, kiddo,” I say, trying another Earth-grown expression.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Kitten?”

  “Don’t call me that either.”

  “Baby?”

  “No!”

  “Snookums?”

  “That’s not even a word!”

  “Yes it is. I heard it many times on Earth.”

  Her expression clouds over. “Earth?”

  It means nothing to her. She doesn’t know what planet her species originated on.

  As she releases her grip on me, I sit down, lowering my height. That seems to calm her somewhat. Her eyes still dart warily from side to side, but she looks less like she’s about to faint where she stands. A moment or two later, she sits down as well. She’s exhausted. I can see how hard it is for her to stay this alert. The energy from the medicine is not enough to make up for all she has lost over her time in captivity where I don’t think she ever got to move.