Chapter 6
Chapter Six
What was the Earth woman doing?
Ice debated on whether he could trust her. This could be a game to see what he’d do. The woman had captured him, brought him here with the others, and now she helped him? It didn’t make sense. Then again, nothing on this weird planet made sense.
Oh, how he missed the isolation of his frozen home world. To think he’d thought it a good idea to come here. He should never have agreed to this trip.
What else could he do though? He didn’t know his way around the alien facility, and this woman was the only one who appeared to have any kindness in her.
She held up her hand. He kept walking. She stepped in front of his path and pressed her palm hard to his chest before wrapping her hand over his mouth.
She wanted him to be quiet. When he did as she indicated, she relaxed, pointed at her ear and then at the turn in the corridor.
He tilted his head, hearing footsteps. He tensed, lifting his arms to fight. She motioned at him and kept still. The sound grew fainter and was followed by a loud bang as if a door closed.
She nodded at him and leaned to look around the corner. Soon he found himself following her in a strange rhythm—run, stop, hide in a tiny room with many toilets, run, duck, pause, hide in a shelf-filled room with stacks of material, strange bottles and containers.
She grabbed black material from a shelf and thrust it at him. “Put this on.”
He looked at it and then her.
“I can’t do anything about your skin color, but I can try to hide you until we make it out of here.
” She took the material from him and unfolded it to reveal a shirt.
She threaded her hands into the armholes before grabbing his.
She pulled his arms through the holes. Then she finished dressing him by forcing the material over his head.
As the material remained bunched on his chest, not fully falling to his waist, she returned to the shelf and came back with pants.
She hesitated as she looked at his waist. She reached for him as if she would pull the white pants from his hips.
Her breathing deepened, and he thought about kissing her again.
Sure, it would be stupid, but he wasn’t exactly thinking with…
Oh, so that’s what the human words “thinking with your little head” meant. Now he understood the phrase.
Clever, clever humans.
She pulled his shirt down all the way and tugged on his waistband, leaving the pants he wore in place before handing him the black ones.
He thought about pretending he didn’t understand what she wanted him to do.
But then, considering the circumstances, playing games right now wasn’t the best of ideas.
He pulled the pants from his hips, kicking them aside.
She made a small noise, and he glanced up to see her eyes focused on the nearby shelf a little too hard, giving the metal rack more attention than it deserved.
Ice hid a smile as he dressed.
“I hope you know where to meet your ship because I don’t have a clue where to take you,” she said. “The men haven’t been successful in finding the other aliens that you landed with, so hopefully they’ve made it home safely.”
Ice felt relief in knowing his brothers weren’t here. Though, he couldn’t help but wonder if that was why she’d released him. Did they think to use his obvious attraction to her against him? Did she think he’d lead her to his family?
Either way, it didn’t matter. As soon as he was free of this place, he would rid himself of the woman and find his family on his own—even if he had to search the entire planet.
She glanced at him and, seeing him dressed, took shoes off of a shelf. She leaned over to put them on his feet.
“You’ll need this jacket and,” she placed a cap on his head, “this.”
When he didn’t put on the jacket, she grabbed his arms and threaded them into the sleeves. Glancing over him, she nodded. They went to the door. She looked out—and suddenly pushed on his chest to make him back up before continuing out the door.
“Hey, Ken, they got you out patrolling the border?” her muffled words came through the door. He leaned his ear against it to better hear.
“What gave it away?” came a wry response.
“My bad,” the woman quipped. “I should have known you wore desert camo to pick up drunk chicks at the local dive bar.”
“Eat me, Elle,” the man said.
“Not even if you were the last meal on Earth,” she responded.
Moments ticked by before the door opened again. She grabbed his arm and pulled him out.
“Ugh, that Ken is a dick. You have my permission to melt him with eye laser beams or whatever you aliens do.”
Ice couldn’t melt anything with his eyes, but he made a mental note that this Ken man possibly deserved death.
“Damn, this would be easier if you spoke my lang—”
A blaring siren sounded, and red lights began to flash. The woman’s demeanor changed instantly, going from stealthy to panicked.
“Keep your head down and we might just make it out of here.” She grabbed his hand and forced him to run. It wasn’t long before he heard others behind them.
“Lock it down. Lock it down!” a man yelled. “Sharp?”
“On it,” Ice’s liberator yelled.
“Sharp, stop,” the man shouted back.
She ran faster.
“Sharp, that’s an order!”
There were no more warnings. A loud pop sounded behind them seconds before a light fragmented over their heads. Tiny shards rained down as they ran under them.
Another shot sounded, this time striking the wall by Ice’s shoulder.
She jerked around a corner. She lifted his hand and placed pieces of metal into his palm.
“I hope you know how to use keys and drive. Look for the blue sedan by the number seven.” She held up seven fingers then drew the number seven in the air before she pushed him away, indicating he should keep running.
“You go. I’ll hold them off as long as I can. Whatever you do, don’t stop.”
She turned her back on him, bracing herself as the footfalls came closer.
Ice frowned. He was not leaving her.
He spun her around and tossed her over his shoulder before running full force in the direction she’d told him to go.
The woman struggled in protest at his plan.
Ice didn’t care. If she truly was scared of these other Earthlings, he was not leaving her behind to face them alone. They would escape together.
The annoying siren kept blaring, cutting the sound of his running so that it came in punctuated bursts.
Two large doors came into focus and he charged faster.
More shots were fired, ricocheting around them.
Something stung his leg and arm, but he kept going.
He charged through the doors, leading with this palm to slam them open.
The dark room that greeted them smelled like the engine room of a spaceship.
The woman kicked. “Put me down!” He let her go, and she slipped off his shoulder. “Fuck, you can run.” She hurried back to the door and took something out of her pocket. She slid it against the wall and began punching numbers into a keypad.
“Lockdown,” a serene voice said. The beeping continued on the other side of the door. “In three, two, one, initiated.”
Fists pounded as the men shouted at them from the other side. “Sharp, goddamn it, open the door!”
She sighed heavily and gave a small smile. “That will hold them for a second. Come on.”
She tugged his arm, taking him to a blue sedan by the number seven. He knew what a car was from the uploads, but he had never seen one. He looked at it curiously and continued to follow her.
“No.” She stopped him. “Get in the passenger side.”
He didn’t know what that meant.
“Argh, come on,” She grumbled, tugging him around the vehicle to the others side. She opened the door, placed her hand on his head, and roughly guided him to get in.
Ice watched her run around to the other side. She slid in next to him, jamming the metal keys into the dashboard and revving the engine to life. Within seconds, they were driving through the dark room, past lines of various-shaped cars.
She stopped, lowering her window to rub her magic card against a box. The wall lifted, streaming sunlight into the darkness. A golden landscape stretched before them, shaped like the icy tundras of home, and a wave of longing washed over him. Specks of color dotted the ground.
As they drove out into the sunlight, he felt the heat intensify on his skin and he uncomfortably drew his arm away from the direct ray of light into the shaded areas of the car’s interior.
“Welcome to the Utah desert, blue man. Now let’s get you the hell off this planet.”