Chapter 7
Halley
What the heck just happened? I swear one second Keelo and Eot were standing side by side. And then the next they’d transformed into…into…one giant hybrid alien. They sort of melted together, like hot candle wax, and solidified into a single entity.
I blink, clearing my vision, but there’s no denying that they’re nine feet tall, with a nasty-looking scar down the center of their back, as if they’re actually two halves of two people glued together, Frankenstein-monster style.
They’re still wearing pants. Kind of. The fabric has stretched and torn to accommodate their dramatic change in size, and the waistband is sitting low on their straight hips as if the elastic is about to give up on life.
The leather straps holding their sheathed axes have fared better, and where they were each carrying one weapon, they’re now wearing two, crisscrossed over the broad expanse of their back.
They don’t bother with the axes, though, turning their face skyward and roaring their rage.
The security goons aren’t surprised by the transformation—and neither is Rin. Evidently, they’d all been expecting it. Security do appear surprised, however, when their stun guns strike the hybrid alien and nothing happens. They don’t fall over or even seem to notice they’ve been struck.
Through all of this, I’ve somehow managed to keep hold of Rin’s hand. Or maybe it’s Rin who kept a hold of me. Either way, she yanks on my arm again, and I stumble after her, coming to an abrupt halt at the back of the spaceship.
Up close, it’s larger than I’d been expecting. Much larger than an airplane, closer to the size of a mansion, if a mansion had wings and exhaust pipes. What I can’t see is an open door.
“How do we get in?” I ask Rin, but she doesn’t answer.
Instead, she focuses her attention on a small hatch in the ship’s metal hull.
She digs what are claws into the narrow gap between the hatch and the hull and pries it open.
The metal covering bends under the force of her strength to reveal something similar to the panel of a circuit breaker, which I’m guessing are the internal controls for a door.
Apparently, she’s planning on hijacking it open. Maybe the hybrid alien forgot to give her a key, or perhaps the door’s voice activated, like Xile’s ice maker.
I glance over my shoulder, catching sight of a combined Keelo and Eot swatting at the security team as if the seven-feet-tall, built-like-a-brickhouse Lyd’os with guns are nothing more than harmless insects.
One flies through the air, lands on his back and rolls down a sand dune, head over heels.
He’s going to have one heck of a headache when he wakes up—assuming his neck isn’t broken.
With a hiss of air and a strong wind against the back of my neck, a door in the back of the spaceship slides open.
Rin climbs in, finally releasing my hand.
The threshold is about four and a half feet off the ground, and while I can get my elbows up that high, my biceps aren’t in a position to fight the war against gravity and the rest of my body weight.
When Rin grabs one of my arms again and heaves, both of my feet finally leave the ground. For one breathless moment, I’m dangling out of a spaceship by the sole strength of an eight-year-old. Then two enormous hands are on my ass, and I’m being lifted inside.
I wish I could say I was graceful. Even with everyone’s help, I end up sprawled over the floor on my stomach, and the first time the door tries sliding closed, it gets stuck on my feet. Quickly, I pull my knees up to my chest, and the door successfully shuts.
The floor’s vibrating. I cross my fingers that means we’re flying away from the planet that’s been my own personal hell for the last month.
Slipping off my glasses, I press my eyes tightly closed, letting the cold of the metal floor seep into my skin. Anyone might have thought it was me who fought off a battalion of security guards, with the way I’m acting. But the truth is I’m on the verge of passing out.
It’s like I’ve been holding my breath since my abduction, surviving by sheer force of will and on a constant stream of adrenaline.
I’ve been stinking hot for a month, constantly covered in sand, constantly being scolded and abused.
And now…now I’m on a spaceship heading who-knows-where, with a child and a literal giant.
And yet everything is silent, and I can finally hear my own breathing again.