Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Briar
B attling against the wind like it’s a top-tier video game boss, I reach the ramp leading up into the… not airplane. The spaceship. It feels crazy that I’m even contemplating that spaceships and aliens and life on other planets exist. But here I am, utterly convinced the eight-foot lizard man following behind me is an alien.
Another galaxy. Another galaxy.
Those words circle around and around my head, like I’m a record player. The ground under the soles of my shoes isn’t Earth ground. And the air in the wind isn’t Earth air.
Oh, shit! I didn’t even think about how I’m able to breathe. There must be oxygen on this planet. And what the hell had Sorin given me to drink back in the kitchen? It tasted sweeter than any water I’m used to, but it clearly hasn’t poisoned me.
My hands and legs are shaking so much I can barely step onto the ramp, but I force myself to keep moving, climbing steadily upwards into the entrance to the spaceship. As I step inside, the wind immediately drops away.
The difference is astonishing. My hair, which had been whipping around my face, falls limply around my shoulders, and I can suddenly open my eyes fully, instead of squinting, even if I’ve got to wipe away all the grit caught in my lashes. My hands are a completely different color than usual, distinctly grayer, because my skin is covered in minute particles of alien-planet dust, much finer than any sand on a beach.
Sorin crowds up behind me. He’s so tall, he’s got to duck under the doorframe to enter. His eyes aren’t nearly as bright as they’d been inside, and then he blinks, and I realize he’s got two pairs of eyelids—an outer pair similar to mine and an inner pair that are so thin he must still be able to see even when they’re closed. That’s… remarkably handy. He wouldn’t always be blinking dust out of his eyes.
He’s watching me closely, his emerald irises practically glowing in the shadows of the ship.
“The other Humans were down the end of this corridor,” I whisper. “We’ll grab them and— Fuck!” I jerk backward as Chloe steps right into my line of sight. “You knocked the shit out of me.” Glaring down at her, I press my fists to my hips and resist all temptation to back away from her so she can’t knock the shit out of me for a second time.
“You’re awake.” She looks me up and down, and then glances at Sorin over my shoulder, seemingly unimpressed. I’m guessing today isn’t her first day of knowing aliens exist.
“Yep. That’s me. The girl who woke up.”
“You were supposed to wait inside,” she scolds, like I’m an errant schoolkid and she’s my teacher.
“Wait inside the spaceship , you mean. The spaceship! ” I emphasize my words, but she doesn’t react to me knowing the truth, so I continue on, saying, “It’s not like you left any instructions, and the door was unlocked.”
“I thought it was rather obvious that the first rule of survival is not to go blundering your way around an unknown planet… ” She prattles on, but I don’t need to pay close attention to what she’s saying to know it’s insulting.
She’s holding a twelve-inch tablet, with its screen facing Sorin and me. It’s displaying a screenshot of the kitchen. Sorin’s standing in front of the table, with his back to the camera. I’m in front of him, on my hands and knees. I’ve got my head tilted back because I’m looking up at Sorin, and my mouth is open in a very suggestive pose.
I know the screenshot must have been taken right after I’d crawled out from under the table and right before I’d stood up. I must have been speaking for my mouth to be open like that. But to everybody else who sees this picture without context their first thought will probably be that I’m about to suck Sorin’s dick. Made even worse by the bird’s nest that’s my hair.
I shove my hands into the back pockets of my jeans in a desperate bid to hide my shaking—from Chloe, from the cameras undoubtedly filming us right now and even from myself, as I try to convince everyone (me included) that I’m not scared of the bitch manipulating me.
She’s not even bothering to be subtle about it.
I try to think back to what Sorin and I had been talking about right after the others had left the kitchen. Had I said anything about trying to wake the other women and returning to Earth with them? Had I voiced my plan to escape right in front of the cameras? I don’t think so…
“Vaa skom?” Sorin steps up beside me, breaking my internal contemplation and bringing my attention back to the conversation.
“Don’t you start—” Chloe begins.
“Hey!” I demand, cutting through her reply. “How come you know what he’s saying? Is it your tablet that’s translating?” I make a grab for it, but she steps back, clutching the tablet to her chest, the screen now facing away from me. I’m left glaring at her perfectly manicured nails—French tips with little white plastic bows glued at the cuticles.
That bitch knocked me out cold all without breaking a single nail!
“Why are you doing this?” I suddenly want to know what Chloe gets for helping with our abduction.
She laughs, clearly pleased I asked. “Oh, this show is a part of something bigger than you can understand.”
Really? She wants to play the you’ll-never-understand-me card? “Is that what Mr. Smith told you? God, you’re so gullible. This show is going to tank. Nobody in Australia is going to believe for a second that Sorin’s a real alien.” My stomach sinks, even as I’m speaking. Of course LOVE GALAXY won’t air in Australia, Idiot Briar! It’s going to air across outer fucking space. God only knows how many planets that is, but it probably equates to a fuck-ton of fame and fortune and finance. For Chloe.
She rolls her eyes, as if I’ve just proven her point of not being able to understand.
To be fair to me, I only discovered aliens exist half an hour ago. I haven’t had much time to process this life-altering revelation. Still, the urge to slap her is real. So real I actually take my hands out of my pockets. Sorin wraps one of his four arms around my waist, as if he’s preparing to hold me back.
He’s sweet. And right now he’s my only ally. What I really need is for Harlee and Lydia to wake up.
“When do we start filming?” I ask. Maybe I don’t have to try and wake them myself. Maybe, I can wait until Chloe’s done all the hard work of waking them and explaining to them about aliens and space and shit. Then, I’ll sneak Lydia and Harlee away from the cameras and Chloe and Mr. Smith, and the three of us together can decide our next course of action. “What will it involve? A rose ceremony or—” I’ve already run out of my reality TV dating trivia. “How about we pretend that this —” I make a circle motion with my hand, indicating the three of us and our current stand-off—“never happened. As they say, the show must go on.”