Chapter 2
Blair
Terrible squawking noises woke me out of a dazed slumber.
I rubbed at my tired eyes, only to be startled by the sound of sloshing water as I brought my hand up.
I opened my eyes to see a cracked glass pane that obscured most of my view.
A thick green liquid came up to my neck and gushed out of the crack in the glass in a steady stream.
Just beyond the glass, I could make out the blurred shapes of what looked like panicked birds fighting off a much bigger, snarling blob.
There was a shriek, then an orange bird slammed against the glass, causing the crack to spiderweb even further until the glass broke completely, and I fell from the tank in a rush of the green liquid.
The room was in utter chaos. Freaky looking owl creatures were locked in battle with the most pissed off lion I’d ever seen.
Rows of cylinder tanks like the one I’d been in lined the room, each of them held their own floating unconscious occupant.
“What…what’s happening?”
Someone screamed, and I followed the noise to find a woman with wild red hair holding what looked like a cattle prod.
She swung at the freak owls like a mad batter before bolting out of the room, several of the owls hot on her trail.
The lion noticed the girl’s departure and tried to run after her.
A blue owl zapped him with his cattle prod.
The lion gave off an enraged roar before sinking his teeth into the bird’s skull.
There was a crunch, and the bird fell limp.
The lion tossed it aside and took off in the direction the girl ran.
The remaining birds flew out of the room in absolute chaos. One chirped loudly into a mic on the wall while owls in white coats rushed in to cart off the wounded. Several larger looking birds grabbed cattle prods from a shelf on the wall and chased after the lion.
I slowly stepped away from my broken pod.
Glass crunched beneath my boots, alerting the owl shouting commands into the mic.
His large yellow eyes locked in on me. Both of us froze to a standstill.
Then the owl shrieked, pointing at me with his little clawed hand as he began shouting new commands into the mic.
I whipped my pistol from my jacket and took aim, but water gushed out of the barrel.
Not knowing what else to do, I pocketed the pistol, picked up the unconscious orange owl from the pile of broken glass, and chucked it at the screeching snitch, effectively shutting him up.
Before I could find out who the bird was calling, I darted out of the room toward where I saw the girl and lion escape.
For all I knew, the redhead had found a way out, and I sure as hell didn’t want to stay in the creepy-ass lab room with the rest of the floaty tube women.
Rushing down the hall, I followed the sound of screeching and snarls into a room to see the lion jump into an oval-shaped pod.
The doors closed just in time in the owls’ faces.
They beat against the doors of the pod, frantically trying to pry it open.
Air hissed around the tubes connecting the pod to the ceiling, and the pod unhooked from the dock with a loud clunk.
While the birds were distracted, I snuck into one of the remaining pods and pressed the green button along the far side of the wall.
The pod started up instantly, and the doors began to close.
One of the freak owls with a cattle prod noticed the noise and tried to fly in after me.
I shucked off my jacket and used it as a whip to knock the bird back out the door.
By the time the other owls had noticed what was going on, the doors had finally closed, and the pod jerked away from the wall in a series of mechanical hisses.
Sighing in relief, I tugged my jacket back on and moved to sit on the shag carpet. “Alien abduction aside, who the hell put a blush shag carpet in an escape pod?”
Aside from the window taking up one half of the dome, the ship was surprisingly bare, save for the green button I pressed to close the door.
There were no controls anywhere to be seen.
The realization had me wondering if the escape pods all had one predetermined location, and I just royally fucked myself by blindly following a stranger and her lion with no information.
Then again, anywhere the pod was taking me was probably better than the strange mad scientist lab I just escaped from. I hoped.
Without warning, this ship lurched, my body flung like a rag doll to slam against the wall, knocking all the breath from my lungs.
Before I could even attempt to get my bearings or remember which way was up, I was flung again as the ship pitched and shot in a new direction.
My back slammed against the wall, my arms akimbo as the speed of the ship plastered me in place.
I could do nothing but stare out the window and scream as the ship plummeted into an unknown atmosphere.
Any hopes of going home were thoroughly dashed when I noticed the continents of the planet I was about to smash into were completely foreign.
The only hope I had left was to land on actual land instead of the vast blue seas the planet was covered in.
My view was obscured by raging storm clouds fat with water desperate to fall.
The ship rattled violently, and I sealed my eyes shut.
I didn’t open them until the ship broke through the clouds.
Relief flooded my senses when land came into view instead of the endless sea.
Then lady luck said, “Fuck you, Blair, here’s a fire,” and the ship barreled into a forest set completely ablaze.
The escape pod lurched up and slowly brought itself to land softly into the ash of the forest floor.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I raged, trying against all hope to find some kind of control panel hidden underneath the carpet.
I wouldn’t last long in a forest fire, and I had no idea where I was or where to go.
Unfortunately for me, the doors of the escape pod opened with no regard for my safety.
Billowing smoke entered the ship, stinging my eyes and making me choke.
Covering my mouth, I looked through the suffocating smoke for any sign of life or the other escape pod, but I couldn’t see anything anywhere.
My eyes started to water. I blinked them shut before jumping out of the escape pod.
I picked a direction and started running, trying to keep my head as low as possible to avoid the rising smoke. In the distance, I caught sight of the silhouette of a man and ran to him, waving my arms. “Hey! Hey, I need some help over here!”
The man turned toward me, and my feet skidded to a stop.
Even with the smoke blurring my vision I couldn’t help but notice the arcing horns coming out of the man’s head.
Two sharp curves in the center bent them like lightning bolts.
I noticed the stick he was holding wasn’t a stick at all, but a spear, and the tip was poised to sink itself into the body of the man beneath him.
“Shit.” Retrieving my pistol, I took aim and shouted, “Stop right there!”
He raised his spear and poised to throw it straight at me.
I clicked off the safety and hoped against all hope it wasn’t jammed from our stint in that tube of liquid.
I squeezed the trigger, and the bullet burrowed into the shoulder of his throwing arm with a thud, and he cried out, dropping the spear.
In the distance, I could hear voices shouting.
The man turned toward the noise before turning back to me.
He clutched his injured shoulder before he grabbed his spear and ran off.
The smoke must’ve been playing tricks on me because I could’ve sworn I saw a tail. I shook my head and ran over to check on the man on the ground. “Hey man, are you all r—”
All right, so that other stranger definitely had a tail, seeing as this man did too. He also had hooves and horns and various other features that I’m sure would have been a lot more interesting if we weren’t about to die in a forest fire.
Crouching low, I pulled the man’s arm over my shoulder and hoisted him up. I gave his shoulder a rough pat and asked, “Any chance you could move those hooves on your own? I can help you, but I’m not strong enough to carry you.”
Unfocused teal eyes blinked open. The stranger coughed; his body sagged farther against me to try to get his footing.
Hoofing. Whatever. I tried guiding him to take a step, but his knees fell out underneath him, and we both went down.
The smoke was making my head pound. I knew I could only inhale so much more before we both passed out and died out here.
“Shit. Shit. What do we do?”
Somewhere past the smoke, I heard the crack of a branch falling, followed by a splash.
I dragged the stranger toward the noise, nearly sobbing in relief when I spotted a river.
Hot ash falling from the canopy burned my skin.
To my utter horror, the smell of burnt hair reached my nose, and I realized that my ’fro had caught on fire.
I threw the stranger into the river and dove in after him.
The water soothed the painful burn of ash, but the current was faster than I anticipated, and I had to struggle to hold my grip on the man and keep both our heads above water.
When a log floated near us, I lunged for it, but the heat of it burned my hand, making me shrink back with a scream.
Thinking quickly, I took a deep breath and hooked my legs around the torso of the stranger and stripped off my jacket.
Grabbing hold of him with one arm, I kicked for all I was worth and breached the surface again.
The river narrowed, and I kicked us toward a rock before shoving him against it.
When I was sure he wasn’t going to slip off on me, I covered us with my coat, shielding us from the smoke and falling ash.
“Oh, you are so lucky you got rescued by a bad bitch. Bad bitches do CrossFit!”
His head lolling to the side was his only response. I’m sure he’ll be impressed when he wakes up.
…If he wakes up.
“Okay, here’s the plan. We’re going to stay here until the fire dies down, and you’re not gonna die on me. Got it? Because I just worked hard to get your big ass onto this rock, and it would be real rude if you still died on me.”
The stranger didn’t answer, but he did cough, so he was breathing at least. Which meant he was probably going to live. Perfect. Loved it when a man listened.
He smoothed black locks away from his face and regarded me with bleary eyes. When they came into focus, I noticed that his pupils were dark green instead of black. In them held the same confusion I had when I saw him for the first time.
“Nice of you to join us, I’m Blair. You got a name or should I just call you Lucky SOB?”
The man tilted his head to the side. Then his whole body tightened when he looked around us. He jerked back, causing water to slosh in between us. His breathing became labored before he flailed wildly with a yell, nearly knocking me off the rock.
“Hey, stop flailing around, you could get us both killed!”
The dickhead flailed even harder because I guess he just wanted to die. My grip on the rock slipped when I took an elbow to the face, and we were once again at the mercy of the river’s current.