Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Briar
I watch Sorin until he’s out of view, then I climb back down the ladder to his kitchen to find he’s left his tablet on the table, and it’s beeping. As if he set an alarm and forgot about it.
Hesitantly, I poke the screen with an index finger. Could I make an outgoing call with this? But the idea that its reception could reach all the way to Earth is laughable. Besides, I can’t exactly ring my parents and say, ‘Oh, by the way I’ve been abducted by aliens. Please send an uber to pick me up.’ They’d hang up on me before I’d have a proper chance to speak.
At my touch, the beeping stops as the screen illuminates, displaying a message. It’s two brief paragraphs long, and my eyes are skimming the English half before I’ve fully registered that this is something I can read.
Sorin and Briar,
Things have been heating up between you.
Now it is time to heat up the kitchen.
Your first task is to have a romantic meal together.
#DateNight #LoveGalaxy
Hashtags? They use hashtags in space? I examine the other paragraph, the one written in the language I can’t read, but there aren’t any hashtags among those letters. So maybe the hashtag is the Human equivalent to whatever it is that aliens use as social media tags on… ‘Spacebook’ or ‘Galactictok’. MySpace!
“I’m not doing this,” I tell the closest camera.
“Yes, you are,” comes Mr. Smith’s voice.
I jump, my heart practically leaping into my mouth. Evidently the cameras work as a two-way radio, or else there’s a speaker somewhere around here I haven’t spotted yet.
“Or did you want Chloe to pay you a visit?” he asks.
“Are you threatening me with more rubbish commentary or another whack over the back of my head? One of those is arguably worse than the other, and it’s definitely Chloe’s crap commentary.”
I want to argue that Sorin isn’t even here, that there isn’t any food in the kitchen, that I don’t know how to use a cast-iron stove that looks like it should be part of the film set for a period drama, but I’m pretty sure Mr. Smith would accept none of those excuses.
“Fine!”
“And don’t forget to speak out loud to the camera when you’re on your own.”
I heave a long-suffering sigh so he knows exactly how I’m feeling about these stupid tasks.
If Mr. Smith is still watching me, he doesn’t let on.
I try reading the English paragraph out loud. It’s easier said than done (pun intended) because I feel like a fucking fool talking to myself, and I can’t stop wondering how many aliens are going to be eventually watching this one-sided conversation. A million? A billion? A trillion? It’s enough to turn a person mute.
“I d-don’t know anything about this kitchen,” I manage to say aloud. “And I’ve g-got absolutely no clue what Sorin even likes to eat.” I open a few cupboards, feeling uncomfortably like I’m snooping, but find no ingredients. I do find one frying pan, one pot, one ladle, one chopping board.
Sorin has taken minimalism to a whole new level. This is a bachelor pad if ever I’ve seen one.
“Maybe there’s a pantry somewhere else in the house.” There are five doors leading out of the kitchen. Then, obviously, there’s the ladder up to the exit outside and another ladder leading down to the tunnel. “Here goes nothing.” I approach the closest door. They’re not automatic sliding doors, like on the spaceship; these ones have good ol’ fashioned doorhandles. The hinges creak, probably shouting at me in whatever language doors speak for being a snoop, searching through Sorin’s things without his permission. Just my luck, it leads straight into his bedroom.
I know it’s Sorin’s room and not a spare bedroom because one side of the mattress is lower than the other, like he always sleeps on the same side. It’s a simple bed, with a sheet covering a mattress but no pillows or blankets. There are mismatched tables on either side of the bed, like they hadn’t originally been designed as a pair.
The table on the untouched side is empty. The table on Sorin’s side of the bed houses a cup and another tablet, resting precariously at the edge as if it’s been tossed aside. It’s smaller than the one in the kitchen, battered, and the screen has got a web of cracks, as if this was Sorin’s original tablet that he replaced with the ever-so-slightly newer one in the kitchen.
I should close the door and back slowly away, but I’m crossing the threshold before I can stop myself. This room smells even stronger of Sorin. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not an overwhelming scent; there’s just enough to suggest he spends more time in his bedroom than in his kitchen. Maybe he doesn’t cook often. Maybe he usually eats back at the main house. Or maybe he doesn’t need to eat several times a day every day like Humans do.
“He’s really tidy.” No dust bunnies dancing over the floor or cobwebs in garlands across the ceiling. And like the kitchen, his bedroom’s devoid of decoration—no photos, no art. The walls are whitewashed. There’s a basin of water and a washcloth on a stand next to the door, and a spare pair of boots tucked into one corner. I suppose if you don’t wear clothes, then you don’t need a wardrobe.
I press down on the mattress. It’s soft and well-sprung, and the urge to lie down on something that won’t attempt to murder my hip is almost too much to resist. If there’d been a blanket, I’d have thrown it over my head, just to escape the GoPros for a few minutes.
Because, of course, there are cameras in Sorin’s bedroom. One’s clipped to the headboard, and another’s mounted to the wall. “Real subtle,” I mutter, “having all the cameras focused on the bed.”
A poster or two would go a long way to making the room feel more lived in. Maybe a fake window with a cityscape and a couple of colorful throw pillows. And why no blankets? Does Sorin not get cold? Or are his scales particularly sensitive to being covered?
If this were my room?—
I shut that thought down before it’s fully formed. That’s what Mr. Smith wants me to think. That’s why he sent me here, to keep me away from the other women in the hopes I’ll stop concentrating on my plan to escape and instead fall in love with Sorin.
I flee Sorin’s bedroom in the guise of continuing my search for food.
Throwing open the door of the next room, I pause. It’s completely empty; there’s not a thing in sight. Zero. Zilch. Nadda.
Well, except for a camera.
“Clearly, this isn’t where I’ll be sleeping.”
The third door leads into… a bathroom? There’s a drain in the floor’s center, a hole in the ceiling with a fine mesh grate over it and a few buttons set into the wall. I’m about to press them when I suddenly realize this has got to be the shower, and the buttons probably control the water flow and temperature.
What I can’t work out is the hatch that’s set into one wall, about two-foot square. I press on it, trying to pry a fingernail in the narrow gap between the hatch and the wall, but the whole thing swings forward. I jump out of the way just in time to not get hit by a toilet.
“Thank God there’s a toilet that actually looks semi-similar to the ones on Earth.” I never did fancy peeing outside, ass to the wind, or trying to explain the Human digestive system on intergalactic TV. There’s a button on the top and everything, and when I press it, black water flushes the bowl.
“Black water? That’s strange.” Is it drinkable? Maybe it’s recycled. “Maybe it isn’t water at all.”
The second-to-last door leads into a walk-in pantry, thank fuck. Shelves line every wall, and every shelf is holding some variation of storage containers, bowls, barrels, boxes, tins or jars of food. Most have handwritten labels, which of course I can’t read. None look like food you’d find on Earth, although there are some tubers that resemble potatoes if I squint, and something that might be a cross between a cabbage and a… pineapple?
So far, my meals have come from the spaceship, and it’s been prepackaged stuff obviously brought from Earth.
“I don’t know what any of this is,” I say aloud. “I don’t know how to cook any of it, or even if I can eat it.” Maybe Ril II food is poisonous to Humans. Or maybe whoever set up the cameras in the pantry removed anything I can’t eat. A dead Human isn’t exactly on brand for a romance reality show.
Getting no reply, I gather an armful of the most Earth-comparable ingredients. Guess I’m on my own, then.