Chapter 28
GILLIAN
I’m more annoyed with myself than with Dalox. I’ve known him a very short time. I’ve let him in. I’ve let him take me to places I never thought possible.
I let him do all of this because he’s the first alien who hasn’t tried to hurt me or force me into doing things I don’t want to do.
I can still smell the dust of the pit. Those memories aren’t fading fast.
But it doesn’t mean I should trust him. I can still hold onto my pride and my desire to get back to Earth. Even if the way I feel about him has changed so fast.
No one falls in love overnight. I’m reacting to my situation by allowing Dalox under my skin. This is all an emotional reaction to my situation.
There is nothing between us, nothing for me anyway, nothing which isn’t artificially created by my mind and being abducted by aliens.
I appreciate my fellow humans have found some form of life here. I don’t know them well enough to judge their decisions, but I am firm in mine.
“Then we leave now. The sooner I get out of here the better.” I say, my jaw tight.
As we leave my room, Dalox hands me something curved and metal. “Have you used a pulsar?”
“Is this a ray gun?” I turn the item over in my hand. It fits snugly, despite the fact it’s clearly made for a being much larger than me.
It’s not like I expected from the movies. Instead, it’s rather elegant and lightweight. Hardly a weapon.
“Ray-gun?” Dalox knits his brow, and I shouldn’t think his confusion makes him look young and rather cute.
“You know.” I point the thing away from us. “Pew-pew.”
A beam of light comes out of the thing and blows a hole in the wall. I drop it.
Dalox catches it.
“Something like that,” he rumbles, holding it out to me.
“I think I’ll pass, if you don’t mind.” I continue to stare at the damage I’ve caused, the fizzing of broken electrical connections and a small fire which is snuffed out by multiple small robots who come out of nowhere. They set to work fixing my damage.
“As you wish.” Dalox tucks the ray gun into a bandolier across his chest and gestures to the door. “Perhaps this exit,” he adds. “The one you attempted to make is not operable.”
I think he’s enjoying this.
We make our way through various metal passages, Dalox’s footsteps ringing out behind me, until we reach a large atrium filled with plants. I do a double take, as given this is a space filled with males, a dedication to horticulture isn’t what I would expect.
Which I appreciate is unfair of me. I don’t know anything about the Sarkarnii, other than they turn into dragons and Dalox has absolutely no sense of decorum or how he blusters around stepping on everything with those huge feet.
“This is…nice,” I say.
“The plants help regulate the air and provide water for the aquiums,” Dalox says, moving to walk in step with me. “We are going to a place with many plants. I am glad you like them.”
I recall the screen on which I identified the silvery blob of a space ship in a sea of blues, reds, and greens.
“A forest?”
“And more. The second continent is not habitable other than by the wildlife which fills it.” He gives me a long look as we continue through the atrium and back into the passages. “You may wish to reconsider having a pulsar once you see it.”
“As long as it’s not giant cockroaches,” I respond. “I’m good.”
Dalox narrows his eyes. “I don’t believe there are cuck-roa-chez.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
We continue through an airlock, and I find we’re in the neutral sector again. It’s a short walk before we reach what appears to be a dead end.
Funny place to keep a vessel of any kind.
Dalox looks around, pulls out the pulsar, and fires at the blank wall before I have time to say anything.
He blows a hole in it. Much larger than the one I made earlier. The sound of the explosion reverberates in the huge space.
“One good thing about Dante and his weaponry testing proclivity,” Dalox says as the noise echoes away, “is no one ever questions an explosion in the neutral sector.”
“Why?” I stare at what he’s just done. “Why did you do that?”
“I needed a way in.” Dalox reaches inside the hole he’s made with his huge claws and rips at the metal, making the hole wider.
I see the void behind it.
“A way in where?”
“To the ship.”
I admit, this seems strange, but then I’ve seen stranger. And none of this place belongs to me, so if Dalox feels the need to blow holes in his own home, that’s up to him.
Also, given my earlier inadvertent destruction, I can’t really admonish him for his.
Having made a Dalox-shaped hole, he waves me inside. It’s dark and damp. A light flickers on, dimly illuminating the dirty passage.
“What is this?” I query as he goes ahead of me.
“Exhaust,” he says over his shoulder. “It’s not far to the ship, my mate. Follow me.”
In no time at all, we reach another dead end.
I put my hands over my ears, anticipating Dalox will use a similar method to last time.
However, instead, he pulls out a small black square, places it on the wall, and a slit of light slowly glows into an oval, which swings open, letting in a wave of cool air with the scent of dust.
I hesitate.
If there’s dust, perhaps there is a pit. This can’t all be an elaborate ruse to put me back in the pit, can it?
“With me,” Dalox says, holding out his hand, the obsidian claws mere pins compared to the velociraptor style ones he used to rip at the metal of the wall. “My Gillian.”
For all I don’t want to trust anyone, for all I have told myself over and over I cannot trust Dalox, a creature who has the emotional sensitivity of a bull in a china shop and a similar physicality, Somehow, I do trust him. And I place my hand in his.