Chapter 2
Fever-Induced Hallucination
Everything hurt. Her feet. Her ass. Even her fucking ears.
Nicole groaned. Why did everything hurt? The last she remembered—
Her eyes shot open. Shit! She had to…
Instead of the steel-gray of the escape pod’s rounded interior, she stared at a light blue ceiling from a reclining position. Not sitting, as she had been in the pod, strapped in tight with safety belts.
Had it all been a dream? Some fever-induced hallucination?
Kidnapped and held for three weeks—maybe, since time was extremely difficult to measure since her smartwatch had died almost immediately—by those hairless red aliens.
She turned her head and gave herself a minute to let the pounding subside. Her vision blurred, but she saw a tall metal pole next to wherever she was sleeping, and a clear tube led from it to her arm. An IV? Was she in some sort of medical facility?
Nicole could only hope. What a relief if the pain, fear, and confusion of the past however-many days were merely the result of a medical condition.
The headache from earlier kept her flat on her back, but she examined the room.
There seemed to be no windows, but the dim lights mounted halfway up the bright green walls offered enough illumination.
Counters lined most of the room with cabinets covering at least half the wall space.
Various screens and computers were strewn about.
A small area was curtained off on the other side of the room, which was probably forty feet long and ten feet wide.
A…what did Chris say the army called them? A CHU.
Quarantine. She must be in quarantine with some sort of new pathogen she was exposed to on the job. Most days, she loved being an EMT. The thrill of the ambulance ride, the satisfaction of helping someone, the adrenaline of it all. But there were hazards, and it seemed one had found her.
She relaxed a bit. Now that she had an explanation, she needed to wait for further instructions. Soon enough, someone would realize she was awake—maybe a camera somewhere—and they’d come in wearing a hazmat suit, and she’d have all the answers she needed.
Nicole took a deep breath. It wasn’t the recycled air from the spaceship. Wait, that had been delirium. It was recycled air from an isolation room in a hospital. Or here.
But this wasn’t recycled air. It smelled like food had been cooked here, a little of dirt, and a spicy scent, almost like cologne or aftershave.
Despite the pounding whenever she moved her head, Nicole sat up and swung her legs off the built-in bunk.
Someone had wrapped the ankle she’d twisted in her mad dash for freedom.
Her feet ached horribly as she stood on shaky legs.
When she didn’t kiss the floor, she took a step. Her injured ankle held.
Her arm stung, but only a thin pink line remained. She prodded her forehead, certain she’d conked it, but the bump was gone, leaving only tenderness. All part of her delusion?
She dragged the pole connected to the IV line with her as she shuffled around, looking but not too closely.
Something was off with the room, but she couldn’t say what.
Screens, books, a desk, a chair. All normal.
A kitchen? Less normal, but she might need to stay isolated for a while longer.
Nicole picked up a tablet. Good, she could use some entertainment while she waited for the doctors to show.
She clicked a button, and her heart stopped for a split second. The writing wasn’t English. It wasn’t anything she’d ever seen on Earth. But she had seen it on the medical kits the aliens allowed her to use on her fellow prisoners, which was all too similar to the writing on the ship’s equipment.
It hadn’t been a hallucination. It was real. Aliens were real.
She opened the drawers in the kitchen until she found some fabric. She ripped out the IV and pressed the fabric to the wound. One thought drove her: she had to get the fuck out of here.
Nicole stumbled to the door, praying it wasn’t locked. Fuck if she knew whether God could hear her this far from home, but it sure as hell wouldn’t hurt. The handle turned easily, and she pulled open the door.
The light temporarily blinded her and heat poured in.
She’d driven to LA once in the middle of a summer heat wave.
This heat was much, much worse. Blinking, she took in the desolate landscape.
Orange rocks, brown dirt, barely green spiky plants, and a turquoise sky with two moons.
Whatever hope she harbored that it had all been a dream, a delusion, some adverse reaction to medication, vanished.
A trilling sound drew her attention. A lean figure approached from a shed about thirty feet from the CHU, waving their arms. All she could make out was the silhouette, but it was decidedly not one of her captors.
Too thin, and taller than her. The red aliens were built like rhinoceroses, thick and muscular, and generally shorter than the figure approaching.
But she may have landed in the proverbial fire after escaping the frying pan.
She couldn’t chance it. She stepped onto the ground with a wince. The dirt was hot, as hot as asphalt in the middle of August, but Nicole had no choice. She had to make a run for it.
The figure waved their arms even harder and ran toward her.
Veering left, she forced her feet to move one painful step at a time.
The trilling, so close to birdsong, grew louder, and feet pounded the ground behind her.
There was no way she would escape her newest captor. She was too injured, too weak.
With a whimper, her knees buckled.
But before she could hit the scorching dirt, strong arms caught her and lifted her carefully. She struggled, squirming in the alien’s arms. It would have been more useful to struggle against a brick wall. Their arms tightened firmly but gently and held her against their rock-hard chest.
The chirping turned decidedly annoyed, and she stilled as they carried her into the CHU. The aqua scales under her cheek seemed to flash and subtly shift color, growing more yellow. They were softer, pebbly rather than smooth, and reminded her of her college friend’s gecko.
Scales! This simple, biological fact drove home how far she was from everything she’d ever known. Species away, worlds away, maybe even galaxies. Her breath hitched as she fought the tears.
The alien kicked the door shut as they entered and deposited her gently on the bed. The downy light brown feathers on top of their head caught the warm light and looked similar to blond hair. They withdrew with a sigh, flipping the lock on the door as they passed. Dammit.
If they had meant her harm, why would they have healed her wounds, pushed IV fluids, and wrapped the ankle she had injured in her escape from the red aliens?
When the alien reached the point furthest from the bed, they held up their hands and trilled.
Nicole shook her head. This alien looked nothing like her captors, acted nothing like her captors.
Besides being twice as wide as the lizard person at the far end of the CHU, her abductors had hairless—and featherless—red skin, ranging from a deep burgundy to a bright magenta.
And they were mean as hell. They had never missed an opportunity to hit, punch, push, shove, pinch, or otherwise hurt her.
Pulling her legs against her chest, she carefully wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on her knees. She tried not to cry, but warm tears escaped the corners of her eyes and slid down her cheeks.
The alien blinked at her, slit pupils dilated in the dimmer indoor light.
Their features were not so different from her own, but with a pointier nose, narrower slits for nostrils, larger eyes, and more prominent ocular ridges.
Not nearly as unnerving as she might have expected, until they trilled again.
“I don’t understand.”
They held up a finger and spun around. Shuffling through the gadgets on the counter, they emitted a short whistle when they found something. They stuck a hand in a pocket and pulled out…
Were those glasses? Yep. The alien perched them on their nose and tapped on a tablet. Slowly, as though knowing all she needed was a small push to send her scurrying like a rabbit, they approached. They held out the tablet and stopped when it was barely within her reach.
Tentatively, Nicole stretched out her hand. When the alien made no move, she snatched the tablet and scooted farther away. They retreated too, far enough not to be a threat.
She looked at the device. The same writing as before covered the screen, but she couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. The lizard person in front of her whistled and trilled for a few seconds, and the tablet’s screen changed, new writing appearing.
Oh, dictation. Was this some interstellar version of Google Translate?
“Thank you,” she said.
The words on the screen changed again but stayed in the same alphabet. Or writing. Or whatever. She was a medic, not a linguist. However, she wished she’d taken a language that used a different alphabet so she might have a chance at figuring all this out.
Can’t change the past. Can only learn and apply the lessons to the future.
Nicole flipped the device around so the alien could read it. They leaned in, glasses sliding to the end of their nose and brow furrowing. Confused?
They blew out a breath, sending the feathers on their head bobbing. Yep, confused. The expression and the way they ran their fingers through the feathers, putting each back in place, were both familiar and disarming.
The alien looked at her and made a circling motion. More? Yeah, if the computer was learning her language, it would take more than two words.
“My name is Nicole.” She spun the device around. “What’s yours?”
They pushed the glasses up their nose but didn’t answer. She tapped her palm on her chest a couple times and repeated her name.
“Nicole.”
They made the same circular motion.
“About three weeks ago, someone snatched me as I ran in the park by my apartment. I woke up in a cell with a dozen other people. Humans. These red aliens came in, chained us all together, beating anyone who tried to resist, and put us to work cleaning, hauling, and tending plants in their ship. Spaceship. How long is this going to take?”
Nicole flipped the device around again. She didn’t want to relive the last few weeks. Another circular motion. Fine.
“One day, when they came to get us for a shift, some of the others tried to take them out. Kill them, I guess, and try to escape. The aliens beat them bloody. I managed to slip out after taking a few hits. I had no idea what I was doing, I just ran. The screams were…”
Nicole shivered at the memory. In her days on the spaceship, she’d treated many injuries with the medical kits the red aliens provided.
She couldn’t leave them all behind and tried to drag a cellmate with her.
The aliens had pulled the young man, no older than twenty-five, back into the fray and kicked the shit out of him, and she’d run.
She fought the bile climbing her throat at the memory.
A trill came from the device. Nicole stared at the screen, subduing the images of pain and death. The lines of text synchronized with the trills, then stopped. The alien whistled at her and made the continue motion again. Oh, it was translating. Cool.
“I stumbled around, looking for someplace to hide. I thought I found a closet. But the lights came on, and there were a bunch of seats. A video played, showing these red aliens strapping in. So that’s what I did.
I think I blacked out from this.” She pointed at the tender spot on her forehead.
“And…what are they called, g-forces? Anyway, I slid in and out of consciousness. I remember the pod shaking and getting hot. The next thing I knew…I woke up here.”
She turned the device around, and both she and the alien waited until it stopped trilling. They made a “give it here” motion with their hands, and when she held it out with bated breath, the alien stepped closer for only as long as it took to grab the tablet.
They punched some buttons and scrolled through whatever was on the screen.
The glasses slid down their nose again, and the alien absently pushed them back, like a nerdy professor type.
Hot, nerdy academic was her favorite, as her string of exes could attest to.
But hot, nerdy alien? Nicole didn’t even know if they were male or compatible or whatever.
She had to hope their intentions were good.
The alien trilled again, but this time, in a masculine AI voice, the computer said, “Hello, Nicole.”