Chapter 9
What happens next is a mess. All of us are herded out of the place the others were being held, and into a ship of some kind. The women are scared and hurt, and most of them think they’re just being abducted again. They’re probably right.
The aliens who have us in their custody try their best to be reassuring, but once you’ve been hurt by a big evil-looking alien beast, you don’t trust one again very quickly.
I am the least hurt of all, but even I have a butt plug to remove that shouldn’t be there. The feeling of being violated by a powerful creature who wants nothing but to use you is terrible.
I ask for the bathroom and pull the thing free, looking at it for one hateful moment before throwing it into the plumbing.
My body is still tense with the anger I felt upon finding my friend treated so badly and hurt so much.
These new aliens might be here to save us, but I still want revenge.
I crave it. Again, memory pulses in my mind.
I am starting to feel that my brain is no longer willing to keep these barriers up.
Whatever happened to me to break my mind is starting to break down.
I leave the bathroom, and I run into the scaled alien, along with the women who are milling about in the common space, looking various levels of uncertain and angry. I am sure they are scared. I am.
“These women need to be taken care of,” I tell the alien. “They need to be returned to Earth right away, where the doctor and the village can help them. Are you taking us home?”
“We’re not going to hurt you,” the scaled one says. “We’re going to take you back to Earth and release you in a safe area. Please make yourselves as comfortable as you can. We know the ship is somewhat small for this many people, but everything is at your disposal.”
I turn to Seeker, who is looking a little happier. I want to talk to her about everything, but I also know there’s not much I can say after all she’s been through.
“You have alien allies,” she says.
“I do?”
“Seems like it,” she says. Her eyes look behind me in a meaningful kind of way. I turn and follow them, to the tall figure of the scaled alien, who looks directly at me, then crooks a long finger at me.
I feel a rush of excitement and nervousness low in my belly, along with that feeling I’ve had before, a sort of familiarity I can’t quite entirely identify.
“Come here, you,” he says. “We need to speak with you. The rest of the ladies can help themselves to food in the galley. There’s plenty of it. There’s also baths and beds and places to nap pretty much anywhere you might care to find them.”
“You want me?” I point a finger at myself.
“Oh, very much,” he says.
I hesitate for a moment, but then I follow him back to the depths of the ship where a little cave-like room contains all the big aliens who rescued us.
I am a little confused as to what’s happening.
They all seem to know me, and they all seem somewhat excited to see me.
I can feel a sort of chemistry with all of them, but I can’t be fucking all of them, right?
Is this why I couldn’t form a bond with any male human when I was in the village? Does some part of me know that I am already taken? It feels like the mystery isn’t going to be a mystery for much longer.
“So. Hi,” I say as I face the three of them.
They look at one another, and then back at me. There’s something in the air, something unspoken that they seem to think they share with me, and I can’t remember to save myself.
“We found you again,” the Minotaur says. “I hope it’s for the last time. We were so worried it was going to take years again.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I really don’t remember any of you.”
The pretty blond man lets out a frustrated sigh. The other two seem to be in better control of their emotions. There’s warmth in the Minotaur’s tone and the kind of relief nobody can really fake.
“So we know each other?”
“We love each other,” he says.
“Wow,” I reply. “That’s really sweet, but…”
“That’s okay,” he says. “This time, you made a video before you ran away.”
He presses a button on a machine, and flickering light appears on the opposite wall, creating a moving picture synchronized with audio.
I see myself sitting in a chair. The video is at a bit of a weird angle, and my voice is hushed, as if I don’t want anyone to hear me. I am wearing a very fancy silver dress, and I am looking cute with my hair in pigtails, and my eyes made up with silver and black liner to match the dress.
“Hey, me,” I say. “I’m me, and so are you.
So if you’re, I mean, I’m seeing this, it’s because I ran away from my owners…
” I make a weird expression with my face as I say that last word.
“Anyway. It’s because I ran away and probably got my head fucked up by whoever is fucking up heads down on Earth.
But it also means I’m watching now. So, hi, me.
You’re in the middle of a plot in which aliens are abducting women from Earth to fuck against their will.
The three aliens who are probably pissed with us right now are good.
Their names are Kronos—he’s the one that looks like he could be human if it wasn’t for the sharp teeth and the crazy muscles; Sharp, he’s the dragon-y looking one; and Boss, he’s the Minotaur.
Anyway, they’re on our side, so don’t freak out when they catch me again.
They’re going to beat our ass. Let them.
They’ll probably make it hot. Also, you stole their ship.
So. They kind of have a reason to be pissed. Okay. Good luck!”
I look out of my peripheral vision to see how the aliens react to that. Boss smirks. Kronos looks a bit pleased with himself. Sharp doesn’t give anything away, but I get the sense he is also amused.
“I don’t know what to say,” I say when the video ends, which is right after I embarrass myself. “So you’re telling me, or rather, I’m telling me, that I keep running away to try to stop these evil aliens from abducting women and selling them for sex and food to other evil aliens?”
“Yes,” the Minotaur, Boss, says. “And you belong to me and these two.”
I look at the other two. Looks like a pretty boy hunter and a snake man. Snake man has stern dad energy. Pretty boy hunter has very sharp teeth and an air about him that makes me think he is probably more dangerous than he looks.
“Belong,” I say. “That’s a strong word. Makes it sound like you own me. Did you buy me at some point? Was I for sale?”
The question is a trap, because obviously I am not for sale. I am a free human. I come from the wilds. I am a survivor among women. I am absolutely fucking not a human for sale.
“You were never for sale. You allied yourself with us when you were in trouble many years ago, and we have been trying to keep you safe ever since.”
“You keep running away and getting your mind wiped for your troubles,” Sharp says. (That’s snake man’s name.) “We’ve begged you to stop, but you keep putting yourself in harm’s way.”
“Worth it, to try to save humans,” I say.
“She’ll never learn,” pretty boy Kronos curses. “No matter what we do, she won’t stop trying to save literally everybody but herself.”
I don’t like him talking about me as if I’m not in the room. He’s obviously annoyed at me, which makes me instantly annoyed at him.
“Do I look like I need saving?”
“If we had come in any later than we did, you would have tentacles in every hole you have,” Kronos says bluntly.
I recoil at that mental image. It’s graphic and it’s grotesque.
“Stop trying to scare me.”
“There’s no way to scare you,” he says. “You don’t respond to fear. You never have.”
“That does sound like me,” I admit. It’s not completely true. There are lots of ways I’m controlled by fear. I stayed away from the cold lands underneath the flying cities because I feared them. But if someone had gone missing in there, I would have gone in after them. I think.
“You ran,” he says. “We asked you not to, but you did it anyway. We freed you from a mental prison once, and you ran right back to it. You are so disobedient, and you have absolutely no interest in common sense or self-preservation. You have an obsession with trying to save those who cannot be saved.”
Now would be a good moment to point out that I don’t owe him anything because I don’t know who he is, but the video tells me that I cared once. I feel a pang of guilt, knowing that my every decision costs someone else something they don’t want to give.
“Looks like the ship is currently full of women who could be saved after all,” I say. “Maybe it’s worth having my brain hollowed out every few months if it means these women aren’t in that hell hole anymore?”
“Gah! Hopeless!” Kronos says. “You are an absolute carnival of chaos. There is no reaching you, no teaching you.”
His sharp teeth flash, and the drama of his tone is incredibly, well, dramatic. I stare at him as he throws something of a tantrum, though I am sure he would not like to hear it described that way.
“I am thinking of stealing you and taking you off to a private prison where you will be forced to be safe,” he says, pointing a shaking finger at me. “The things I will do to you in order to guarantee you have a long and happy life as our mate, our pet, our little fuck hole…”
“Hey,” I say. “That’s rude.”
“Oh, is it rude?” He asks the question in a tone that suggests he doesn’t care.
“It is rude,” Sharp says. “Remember, she doesn’t recall our previous intimacies…”
“That’s her fault!” Kronos exclaims.
“Is it? Have I been wiping my own memories?”
I ask the question sarcastically, but the way they look at me makes me feel very nervous. They’re staring at me as if they had never considered that possibility before, but have started to actively consider it now.
“Why would I do that?” I ask the question with my voice shaking.
“It allows you to not feel guilty about leaving us behind,” Kronos points out. “And it will help you avoid the scrutiny of your enemies, because you are clearly brain wiped.”
“I don’t remember if I did this to myself,” I say.
“Exactly,” Kronos says.
“Exactly,” Sharp repeats.
“How would that even work? How could I run off and get myself brain wiped on purpose? I don’t even know who to go to in order to have that happen. It would be luck, if it was even possible at all.”
“Someone is watching you. Someone knows where you are. And someone is doing this to you,” Sharp says.
“We have to take her back to Earth and watch her. We need to surveil what happens once she gets down there. Someone is aware of her. Someone is fucking with her brain,” Boss adds. “It’s time we found out who.”
“Besides, the only way to stop them catching wild humans is to go down and guard the wild humans,” Kronos says. “We need to protect these people, and we need to kill any human official who deals with any trader.”
“It’s simple now you say it,” I say. “Everybody’s happy.”