Chapter 5
FIVE
LYSSA
He was the hottest alien I'd ever seen.
The only other alien I'd seen was a giant tentacle that had saved the rest of the women from the blast from the ship's engines, so that wasn't a difficult proclamation to make, but still, he was elite bodybuilder levels of yummy, with a square jaw and intense eyes that didn't seem to want to look away from me.
He was hues of gold and yellow, edging towards pink like a sunrise on the horizon, kissing the morning with the soft glow of long-awaited heat to break through the chill night air.
The skin and muscle on the top edge of one of his shoulders literally smoldered, smoke lifting up into the air, metal glinting in the artificial lights, and the smell of burnt flesh filled the air.
Sara had been right when she said we needed to take them out as a group. With a neck that thick, it would be difficult for even someone with arms like mine to choke him out.
I could feel the strength in his arms as he held me, an experience that was utterly unique to me.
Given that I was edging close to 200lbs of pure muscle, I hadn't ever had a guy literally sweep me off my feet before, and the fact that he was still holding me without the slightest indication of a tremor in his arms was downright impressive.
It also helped that he turned down my offer.
That offer had been sparked by my own arousal and interest in him, paired with the adrenaline of the moment and the clarity of the moment when I realized both that he was one of our captors and that he had put his body on the line to protect me.
I didn't know him, I didn't know what motivated him or his people, or even why they were keeping us captive, but it was clear that he was into me, and fist or cunt, I had no issue with using my body to secure the safety of the women who had been trapped in this hellhole with me.
If he had taken me up on it, however, I would have considered him to be pathetic and tossed him away the moment he stopped being useful. That, and I would have used his lust to give me an opportunity to try to take him out.
Any man who would accept such a trade when the woman was afraid for her life was a waste of space.
His turning me down and what he said when he did it made my respect for him jump to a higher level rather than lower, and turned my interest in his body from surface-level into something deeper.
Hopefully, it remained that way, because this situation had much more to explore before I made my final judgment.
"So where are you going to take us, Sunshine?" I asked. "Do we have a choice in the matter?"
He pressed his lips together and stared at me intently for a moment.
,,
I screamed as emojis popped up in my head, and punched him in the chest in surprise. He let me go, and I landed on my feet, taking several steps away from him.
"What the fuck was that?" I demanded. "Was that emojis?"
I continued backing away from him, and the other women came up and surrounded me.
"Emojiis?" Saeorca asked.
He lifted one finger to his mouth.
"Oh, I saw it that time," Saoirse said, and several other women agreed.
"Shhh," Adewesa said. "We get that, but why?"
"It's so cool how that tentacle saved us, but we should get out of here," Saoirse said, a strange note to her tone, like she was reading lines on a stage without really feeling them.
"Hold on, I'm still stuck on the fact that instead of talking, he is-" My words cut off as Adewesa's palm slapped over my mouth.
"Think about that last one for a moment," she said. "Think about the fact that these guys don't have the same cultural background as us, so think about what it means for an Orwellian Big Brother.
"Oooooooooh," I said.
She was referencing the old dystopian paperbacks she liked to talk about, the ones that warned of an omniscient failed police state where speaking out against the ruling class was suicide.
In those pages, the ultra-wealthy operated with total impunity, kidnapping, torturing, and murdering the children of undocumented teenagers who had been commodified, assaulted, and caged rather than deported.
I had a real issue with those books. Those authors underestimated the math of oppression.
A control system cannot function against a massive population united in a single truth: that the one percent are a cancer to be excised by collective force.
Subjection is not passive; it requires the active participation of the oppressed, and when the masses stopped participating, the entire system of control collapsed.
In the context of what this alien was trying to say, he clearly was emojiing that we were under surveillance and would die if we alerted the watcher.
,,, appeared again. This time, from the others' reactions, I could tell they saw it too.
"Interesting," Adewesa said.
I didn't know what the everloving fucksticks that was supposed to mean.
"Dross, follow me," Sunshine said, his voice deadpan even as he nodded towards Adewesa and widened his eyes a little.
he sent over.
Ok, I got that one. He was on our side.
I mean, I already knew that given the fact that his back was smoldering and torn, and I was alive instead of a corpse popsicle floating out into space.
"We should follow him," I said, as I got the messages, or at least thought I got them.
"But he called us dross," someone complained. "That means waste material. Why should we follow someone who calls us that?"
"Because he's hot," I said.
"Because he saved Lyssa's life," Saoirse said at the same time.
There was a soft click, and I glanced over to see that Sunshine had a gun installed in his arm that extended downward.
To shoot it, he would have to lift his palm up to make sure he didn't blast off his own fingers, a gesture he was making right in that moment as he pointed the gun at the complainer.
"Obey or die," he said, his tone that of a person who didn't know how to get out of bed in the morning.
popped up in my head, followed by:
"Don't be so dramatic, Sunshine," I said as I stepped in between the gun and the rest of the women. "We're super obedient. Pinky promise."
I held up my pinky.
The gun snapped back up out of sight into his arm, and he turned away from my offered pinky to lead the way back into the ship, putting his back to us like he had no worry that we would attack him or sneak away or anything of the sort.
His back was worse than his shoulder.
Huge chunks of skin and flesh had been torn from it, exposing metal-looking bones and bits that looked far more artificial than natural, as if he were a composition of parts both born and designed. I didn't have any idea how he could be up and walking at all. But despite the damage, he moved as if
"Keep him distracted," Adewesa whispered to me, and I nodded, lengthening my stride until I was walking next to him instead of behind.
When he turned left down the corridor, away from the direction of the room we had been kept in for months, I took a few strides ahead of him, turning so I was walking backward.
The corridors in this ship were immaculate, and besides, if I tripped over something, that would serve as a distraction.
Plus, I could see Adewesa gathering in a small group near the back to whisper to them.
"Oh, Sunshine, you are my Sunshine," I said loudly. We didn't know how sensitive these aliens' hearing was, so it was best if I made some noise so he focused on me instead of the talking behind him. "You make me happy when skies are grey."
His face brightened for a moment, and he opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, then sealed it shut, focusing on the corridor ahead of him.
he replied instead.
"Where are you taking us?" I asked.
"Dross are to be contained where the Wild Vaurelcar cannot reach them," he said, as he reached out and lightly grasped my shoulder, turning me down a junction to the right of him. As soon as I was pointed in the right direction, he let go.
"Where is that?" I asked.
he sent.
Right, so he didn't want to tell us where he was taking us, because he didn't want Big Brother to know?
"Tell me more about yourself," I said, searching for anything to keep him focused ahead of us, rather than the fact that several women had split off from the group at the juncture, going the other way. "What got you into this whole kidnapping human women business?"
"I cannot talk to Dross except to further my goals," he said.
"Well, your goal is to get us all to safety, so the best way to do that is to psychologically reassure us so that we are compliant," I said. "I would feel more reassured if I knew more about you."
He opened his mouth, as if he was about to say something, and another shudder ran through the ship.
It wasn't as violent as the first, and I was able to remain standing.
A burst of wonder exploded across his face as he stopped abruptly in the middle of the hallway.
"Plexus Command is gone," he said, and the wonder gave way to horror. "The ship is free."
I didn't have time to ask what that meant, as the walls took that moment to explode.