Arrival, page 7
part #1 of Captured Earth Series
A shiver runs through me.
I cannot imagine what this species looks like alive and walking.
But what catches my attention the most is the face.
The dark eyes look back at me and even though there is no life within them, I can feel the soullessness of the creature’s gaze.
This thing has sucked our blood? Destroyed my world?
Impregnated us?
This what I’m looking at is responsible for so much?
I stare at it without breaking focus.
It is taking some time for my mind to comprehend that what I’m looking at is responsible for all the death and destruction I have witnessed.
My whole world is gone because of this creature. The machines hadn’t been some sort of advanced AI race. This creature had been its pilot.
They’d come here and taken everything.
Everything I’d known.
My whole family.
My friends.
My world.
“Why?” I whisper, the word almost inaudible before my voice rises. “WHY?!”
The word tears from my throat with as much emotion as I’m suddenly feeling.
My body shakes with the heartbreak of what I’ve witnessed over the past few months. Pain racks through my body, shaking my frail form.
I don’t know when I reach for it, but there’s a rock in my good hand.
I raise it and slam it down on the dead alien.
Once.
Twice.
Three times my arm rises and falls as I scream.
“Why?!”
Tears choke me as everything I have lost comes pouring out.
Sam appears beside me, her eyes wide. She doesn’t stop me but tears are streaming down her face too and only when my arm rises and doesn’t fall once more do I stop.
Someone is holding my arm and I know it is him even without looking up.
His suit writhes against my skin a little but the strangeness of it is dim compared to the heartbreak killing my soul.
I stare at the battered being in front of me, still choking on my own emotions.
All my family is dead.
Humanity is hanging by a thread.
And this thing is responsible for it all.
I hear some clicks and thrums and the alien’s body is kicked so hard, it sails toward the water.
I look up, my eyes clouded with tears to meet the unreadable lava eyes of the alien above me.
I cannot read emotions in that alien gaze of his. His red eyes…dark skin… He looks like the exact thing I am taught to fear.
The world has really turned upside down.
Nothing is the same. Nothing will ever be the same again.
Because I am torn.
Destroyed.
Speechless.
And the devil is holding my hand.
Chapter Eleven
FER’RO
The little female’s aggression makes us thrum with pleasure.
As she slams the small rock into the Gryken’s body, I do not stop her.
None of us do.
We can sense her distress. Her pain.
Her anger.
It mirrors ours.
She crushes the Gryken in the same way it has crushed countless worlds.
It deserves every blow she puts on it. It is only a pity it is not still alive to feel the pain.
I kick its battered body toward the water and it lands not too far from it.
The female has released some of what aches her inside, but she is spent.
I can see it in how her body sags.
“Plant it,” I say, and Ga’Var clicks in agreement.
He and some of my brethren move away toward the Gryken’s body but others remain.
My gaze flicks over them.
None have returned to our ship. Possibly, they are awaiting my command to do so.
Unofficially, I have become their leader. A role I do not want, but one I will perform with great honor.
If my race can help rid the universe of the Gryken, I will do all that is in my power to make sure that happens.
I hear Ga’Var hiss as he lifts the Gryken’s battered body. One of his hackles pierces right through it.
Both female’s stare with wide eyes as he impales it with a metal pole and slams the pole into the earth below.
A barbaric act, but one that sends a message nonetheless.
They are our enemy—ours and these beings before us.
My gaze flicks back to the female and I hope she understands the message.
We are not her enemy.
San’ten clicks sharply from behind them and they jerk.
I can tell their sense of perception is not very good. They are not very aware of the movements around them or how my brethren struggle to fight their instincts because of the scent of their fear.
“This one,” he clicks, his gaze falling on the female lying flat on the ground. “This one is infested.”
A hiss leaves my lips that I’m too slow to hold back.
I knew as much.
That is what the Gryken’s do.
They forcefully breed, cloning themselves in the wombs of other species.
In their short life-span, they kill many, many females, oftentimes tearing the female apart in the process of their birth into this world.
I saw it happen with my own eyes to the females of my world.
My hackles have risen again without me realizing.
I only know the image I’m projecting when I see it reflected in the brown-haired female’s eyes.
She lets go of the other and scrambles over to the infested one as if she understands we are speaking about her.
She is not capable of fighting us, yet she attempts to guard another.
Does she even know what the other female harbors? What is growing inside her?
We have to kill it.
San’ten clicks at her and makes to move toward her but the female shrieks and kicks at him.
I hear a low thrum from someone else—impressed by the female’s will.
It reflects my own feelings.
She’d impressed me from the moment she pointed her stick weapon at me.
I set my hackles down and click at San’ten.
“Wait.”
He casts his gaze my way, his symbiotes writhing a little. Annoyed.
“It is growing by the day,” he clicks. “Why wait? We should kill it now.”
“There is still time.” My gaze bores into his dark eyes till his ba’clan settle down and his hackles flatten.
The brown-haired female is looking between us now and I notice she meets my gaze more often than not.
Perhaps I am becoming less terrifying.
Taking a step forward, I crouch to her level and her dark-haired friend scoots away and almost backs into Ga’Var, who has returned from the water.
“The Gryken is planted. The message clear.”
He clicks at me and I click approval back.
The brown-haired female’s gaze is darting between Ga’Var and me now and at her attention to us, I hear him thrum.
Immediately, I hiss at him.
I do not know why.
He blinks at me, but his thrum stops.
For a moment, I blink at him too before pulling my gaze away.
She is still staring at us, those expressive eyes of hers confused and a little frightened.
But her fear scent isn’t as strong as the night before.
It is bearable now.
“What is your designation?” I rasp. Her language is strange on my tongue. Too many syllables.
She blinks at me, those wide eyes getting a little bigger.
“M—my name?” She glances at the other female who has moved slowly away from Ga’Var. “You want to know my name?”
My ears twitch at the sound of her voice. A thrum starts in my throat that I stop before the others can hear.
“Yes.”
She glances at the other female again. “My name is Adira. Adira Mosely.”
The name is surprisingly short for the amount of syllables in her language. I turn it over in my mind.
“Adee’rah’mohs’lee.”
She blinks at me as if she cannot believe I am speaking to her and her lips twitch and turn up a little. “Just Adira is fine.”
Adee’ra.
“And you? What is your name?”
I pause for a moment. She has given me the shortened version of hers. So I will do the same for her.
“Fer’ro.”
She blinks at me but her eyes are not as wide as before.
She glances at the other female and they exchange something in their gazes that I do not understand.
Hope?
“Nice to meet you, Fer’ro. Welcome to Earth.”
ADIRA
They did not let the dead alien rest on the ground for long.
With hisses and snarls, clicks and thrums, they pierced the octopi-like alien thing with a sharpened pole and planted it near the edge of the lake like some sort of effigy.
It is like a ritual, one celebrating the death of the thing, and I do not know if they do it for me and Sam or for themselves.
One thing is for sure though, they seem to hate the thing as much as we do.
It is drying out even as I stare at it, shriveling under the morning sun like a raisin.
Mina is awake now, her eyes barely open and I notice the alien with the charcoal eyes watching her.
He’d approached her earlier with those spikes of his rising and his fangs bared.
I’m sure he and Fer’ro had been talking about her.
Maybe they know what’s inside her.
Maybe they were going to hurt her.
I’m not sure, but the dark-eyed one had stopped when Fer’ro spoke to him and I’m getting the sense Fer’ro has some sort of rank over the others.
I watch them now, trying to figure out where me and the rest of humanity stand, when Mina leans against me.
She is so weak, she cannot rise.
She needs to eat if she has any chance of surviving this for much longer.
We all need to eat.
I look toward the lake and wonder if there are any fish in it.
Maybe, if I could catch some…
But the aliens around us still have the hairs at the back of my neck standing on end.
They don’t scare me as much as before. They seem intelligent and it doesn’t appear that they mean us any harm.
I am still hesitant to trust them though.
They are not from this world after all and I still don’t know why they are here or what they want from us.
None other except Lava Eyes, Fer’ro, has spoken to us and my gaze searches the shore for him. I catch him as he rises from the water and his eyes find me immediately.
It is somewhat disturbing, the way his gaze seeks me out and I find myself glancing away quickly.
He doesn’t stare at Mina and Sam like that, and I wonder why.
When I look up again, he’s setting down a piece of shiny metal into a pile, his gaze still on me.
They seem to be dismantling the machine piece by piece and it hits me that…their ship, the black bird, is nowhere to be seen.
I wonder if it sank during the attack too.
I stare back at him as he rises and, either I’m getting used to the stares or I’m getting used to the fact that he and the others have mostly left us alone.
Apart from that strange circle they’d formed around us while we slept, they haven’t come close again.
They watch us though.
Always watching and I know there isn’t a chance of us escaping without being noticed and caught immediately.
I’m still looking at Fer’ro when he takes a step toward us.
My heart skips a beat and I hold my breath.
Is he going to speak to me again?
I have a lot of questions I want to ask.
But as he nears, my stomach takes that moment to growl and he pauses suddenly, his ears twitching underneath his suit.
“We’d be getting that nasty food sac around now, wouldn’t we?” Sam whispers.
She was right. As much as I don’t want to think about the time we spent in that machine, now would be when we’d be eating. The orb…no, the thing controlling the orb fed us on rotation. Once every day and at the same hour.
My stomach growls again and I press my palm against it.
I will have to try and find us food.
It’s clear these aliens aren’t going to let us go, not that we could get far anyway, in our condition.
That means there isn’t much of a chance to forage—not that this is the ideal location for foraging either.
I know nothing about living in the wild.
Sam moves toward us and presses the back of her hand against Mina’s forehead.
She takes her temperature like this at different intervals, making sure it’s stable and hasn’t risen.
While she is taking care of Mina, that means I need to find us food.
I’m not sure how I’m going to manage it.
I have my broken wrist curled toward my body and every fiber within me aches.
I’ll have to hunt one-handed and limping.
There’s a click close by and I realize it’s the burgundy-eyed alien. I didn’t notice his approach and that makes me stiffen a little.
They’re big, huge, but move so fluidly and silently.
A few more sharp clicks come from his mouth and several of his kind look our way.
Fer’ro steps toward us.
I don’t know where he gets it from, but something appears in his hand.
A pouch.
He stretches it toward me, his gaze studying my face as if he’s watching for my reaction—no, as if he’s afraid I will scream and run if he comes closer.
Watching me, he moves closer and his suit retracts.
Sam gasps.
It’s the first time she’s seeing one of them without the dark suit covering the entirety of their body.
He doesn’t take his eyes off me but his gaze is earnest, if I could call it that.
Clicking at me, he stops mid-click then speaks so I can understand.
“Sustenance,” he says.
My gaze falls back to the pouch in his hand.
The pouch wriggles and my stomach immediately turns.
Pulling it back toward himself, he raises the pouch toward his mouth and nips the side with his sharp teeth.
Whatever is inside begins wriggling even more.
I watch him as his mouth opens and, for the first time, I see his tongue.
I don’t know whether it is me that gasps or Sam.
“Fuck…me…” Sam mutters.
Indeed.
Fer’ro’s tongue sweeps across his lips before he dips it into the pouch.
It is so long and thick, I can only stare at it with wide eyes.
I’m transfixed as his tongue retreats from the pouch’s entrance with long strings of dark spaghetti in its grasp.
For the tip of it has curled around them, holding them as he pulls them into his mouth.
“Did you just see that?” Sam grips my shoulder, her eyes also wide. “Tell me that’s not his tongue.”
I gulp as I stare. I don’t fucking know what the hell that thing was but it has got to be his tongue.
What else?
Fer’ro closes his mouth, his gaze on me as he chews.
There. Are. Popping. Sounds.
Like something fluid-filled being crushed by those sharp teeth of his.
Spaghetti doesn’t pop and as he chews, a dark line of fluid appears just at the edge of his lips.
Stomach acid comes up into my throat and I force it back down.
Once more, he stretches the pouch toward me again.
“Looks like spaghetti,” Sam whispers.
She obviously hadn’t seen the pouch wriggle.
“That,” my stomach lurches again, “that isn’t spaghetti.”
As if to prove that it’s edible, Burgundy-Eyes makes a click and reaches for the pouch. He dips a sharp claw inside and takes out the black “spaghetti.”
It wriggles between his fingers and I definitely puke into my mouth as he throws his head back and drops the thing in his mouth.
“Oh…God,” Sam groans. “That’s disgusting.”
Both aliens’ ears twitch at her words and I stiffen, bracing myself if they retaliate at her offensive words.
But all Fer’ro and Burgundy Eyes do is glance at each other, their ears twitching as they look at the pouch.
He gestures to me again but I swallow hard, pulling on the little bravery that I have left, and I shake my head.
“We can’t eat that,” I say.
Well…we technically could but no matter how hungry, I don’t think I can eat alien worms.
Fer’ro looks at the pouch.
“I can find us food if you allow me to.”
My suggestion makes the large alien stiffen. I can almost see his muscles harden in his shoulders.
He knows it’s a test.
Are we prisoners here? Or are we free to go?
“I won’t run again.” I do not know why I say that. Desperation maybe.
I couldn’t run even if I wanted to. I’m too weak and the bruises I’ve suffered are very much still there.
Fer’ro studies me for a moment. “Where will you hunt?”
Hunt?
Surely, I don’t look like I’m any good at doing such a thing. Do I?
But maybe this is the first time they’re encountering our kind. Maybe we’re just as strange to them as they are to us.
I don’t know about hunting, but I can think of something.
If humans aren’t good at anything else, we’re good with adapting…coming up with ideas.
“I can find us food,” I repeat, surer this time.
“Where?” he repeats. “Where will you hunt?”
I lick my lips.
Is this a test for me now?
Jerking my chin toward the water, I swallow hard. “There. In the water.”
Fer’ro studies me for a few moments before he glances at Burgundy-Eyes.
There’s a click and a thrum between them.
He looks back at me and clicks as well. Then, as if realizing I have no idea what he just said, he speaks. “Come. Show me how.”
Sam grips my arm, her voice low and insistent. “You can’t go off with him.”
