Kass
Idress in the dark while Vhaz pretends to sleep.
My old pants are stiff with dirt and blood, torn at both knees. The shirt barely exists—more holes than fabric. But they're human clothes, Earth clothes, and wearing them feels like armor for what's coming.
My hands shake as I try to tie what's left of my boots. The laces break. I curse quietly and give up, tucking the loose ends in. Everything about me is literally falling apart, held together by alien saliva and stubbornness.
“Female is leaving early.” His voice is carefully neutral, but I feel his coils tense beneath me.
“Sun's almost up.” I stand, testing my balance. My legs work. That's all that matters.
“Portal won't open until noon.” He uncoils slowly, giving me space to move.
“I know.” I climb to the platform edge, pause. “Need to see it happen. The whole thing.”
“Need breakfast first.” He's already moving toward our food storage.
“No.” The word comes out sharper than intended. “No food. Clear head.”
He stops but doesn't argue. We both know eating will make me comfortable, and comfortable might cloud judgment. My stomach is already tight with anxiety—food would just come back up anyway.
“Water at least.” He hands me the gourd we share, fingers brushing mine.
I drink because dehydration would be stupid. The water tastes like this place now—slightly metallic, tinged with phosphorescence. When did that become normal? When did Earth water start seeming wrong in memory?
“I'm going.” I hand the gourd back, wipe my mouth.
“Female knows the way.”
“Female has walked it in her head all night.”
He doesn't respond to that. Doesn't need to. We both laid awake pretending to sleep, feeling each other's breathing change with thought. Neither of us discussing what happens in six hours.
I climb down from our shelter—my shelter—the shelter. Don't look back. Can't look back. If I see him watching me leave, I might not be able to go at all.
The beacon gets brighter as I approach, shifting from blue-white to something that hurts to perceive directly. Like looking at a piece of another reality forcing itself into this one.
I stop at the clearing's edge, maybe thirty feet from where the light touches ground. Close enough to see everything. Far enough to run if I need to. Though run where? This is it. The only exit.
The ground beneath the beacon has started to crack. Not breaking—warping. Reality bending like heated plastic. I find a rock to sit on and watch the slow transformation while the sun climbs.
My pussy clenches with morning need. The proto-eggs from yesterday have dissolved, creating the familiar ache. But I didn't breed this morning. Didn't want that affecting my choice. My body protests this decision with increasing urgency as the hours pass.
By mid-morning, other creatures have gathered at the clearing's edges. Local wildlife drawn by the wrongness, watching from safe distances. Nothing comes close to where I sit. They can smell the apex predator on me—Vhaz's scent soaked into my skin, marking me as claimed.
The beacon starts to spin around eleven. Slow at first, then faster, creating a vortex of light. The crack in reality widens with each rotation. Through the growing tear, I catch glimpses of elsewhere. Gray sky. Rain. Concrete.
Earth.
My chest tightens. Not homesickness exactly. Recognition maybe. That was my world. Those gray walls held my life for twenty-eight years. Everything I knew, everyone I loved, existed in that monochrome space.
Tommy exists there.
The thought makes me stand, move closer to the spinning light. My baby brother. Safe now—his death sentence commuted the moment I entered the portal. But still there. Still in that gray world, probably wondering if I'm dead or bred or something in between.
Which I suppose I am. Something in between.
The portal tears open with a sound like silk ripping.
The beacon collapses inward, inverts, becomes a perfect circle of home. Through it, I can see Cleveland—the intake facility where this started thirty days ago. Same gray walls. Same industrial bleakness. Even the same fucking Forever 21 sign barely visible under industrial paint.
I stand slowly, legs unsteady. Thirty feet. That's all. Thirty feet and I'm home.
My feet move without conscious thought. Ten feet. Twenty. Twenty-five.
I stop at the threshold.
This close, I can smell Earth through the portal. Exhaust fumes. Processed air. That particular mix of humanity and desperation that cities wear like perfume. My eyes water—not from emotion but from pollution I'd forgotten existed.
I reach out one hand.
My fingers breach the barrier and Earth hits me like a slap. The gravity's wrong—heavier. The air tastes recycled, processed, dead. No phosphorescence. No life. Just gray and brown and the weight of seven billion people trying to survive.
But Tommy's there. Safe now, his death sentence commuted, but still there. Still my baby brother who trusted me to save him. Who I did save, by coming here.
My whole hand is through now. The portal recognizes me, starts to pull gently. Come home, it whispers. Come back to your world.
I could step through right now. Walk back into that facility, collect whatever credits they give returning women. Find Tommy. Try to rebuild some kind of life with this modified body that will never stop craving what only exists here.
I stand there for a long time, hand through the portal, body here, caught between worlds. The pull gets stronger, more insistent. I can feel the portal's edges starting to destabilize—maybe an hour before it closes. Maybe less.
“Tommy,” I whisper to the gray world beyond. “I'm sorry.”
Sorry for what? For not coming back? For choosing myself? For finding something worth staying for?
All of it. None of it.
I think about writing him a note, tossing it through. But what would I say? “Your sister chose alien dick over family”? “I found home in a toxic swamp”? “I'm happy”?
That last one stops me. Am I happy?
The answer comes immediately. Yes. Fuck yes. Happier than I ever was in that gray world. Happy in a complicated, difficult, dangerous way that feels more real than anything Earth offered.
“Well?” I say to no one. To myself. To the universe. “This is it.”
The portal pulls harder. Time's running out.
And I laugh.
Not bitter. Not hysterical. Real laughter that echoes across the clearing and sends the watching creatures scattering. Because it's so obvious now. Standing here with escape literally at my fingertips, I finally understand.
I was never going to leave.
“Fuck. That.”
I pull my hand back. The portal resists for a second, clinging, then releases me. I take three deliberate steps backward. Then three more. Then turn and walk away without looking back.
“Dramatic female.”
I don't jump. Part of me knew he'd follow, even though he promised not to interfere. He's coiled at the tree line, trying to look casual but his tail is doing that anxious twitch.
“Dramatic serpent. Had to watch?” I walk toward him, each step taking me further from the portal that's still spinning behind me.
“Had to know.” He doesn't move, making me come all the way to him.
“Know what?” I stop just outside his coil range.
“What female chose.”
“Female chose twenty days ago. Maybe longer.” I step into his space, close enough to touch but not touching. “Just needed to see the door to know I'd never walk through it.”
“Why?” His tail twitch gets worse.
I look back at the portal, already starting to shrink. “Because that's not home. Hasn't been home since the first week. That's just the place I used to live.”
“And this?” He means the swamp, the shelter, us.
“This is where I live now.” I close the distance between us, pressing my palm flat against his chest. “With the bastard serpent who makes me need him twice a day.”
His coils shift, wanting to wrap around me but holding back. Waiting for permission maybe. Or confirmation.
“I choose you,” I say clearly, so there's no mistake. “You specifically. Not this place, not the breeding, not survival. You.”
Something changes in his expression. The careful neutrality cracks, showing something raw underneath. His hand comes up to cover mine on his chest.
“Female—”
“Shut up. I'm not done.” I press closer, feeling both his cocks starting to emerge just from proximity. “I choose you, asshole. Still hate you, but I choose you.”
“Known fact,” he says, but his voice breaks on it.
We stand there for a moment, the portal spinning smaller behind us, everything finally said that needed saying. Then his coils snap around me like they've been dying to, pulling me completely against him.
“Mine,” he says into my hair. Not a question.
“Yours,” I confirm. “Bastard.”