Page 12 of Ruby
I begin to sob and struggle again, energized by my added awareness of the situation. The only other woman I can see not encased in one of the glass pods tries to placate me; grubby hands petting my shoulder, unfamiliar words whispered in my ears. My sobs are clearly not going to do us many favors in this situation, but I can’t stop and I attempt to shove her away, irritated to be touched as my mind races.
“It’s just such a shame to be this close and not be able to pop down to the planet. I hear the resort on the island has any sort of low-tech distraction you could ever...” The thing to the left begins to make some more whiny comments as the middle one audibly smacks his filthy lips.
The disgusting alien never gets to finish his sentence.
A tone—what must pass for their alarm system—shrills loudly, accompanied by an undulating light rhythmically pulsing from previously unnoticed light fixtures set into the wall, and our captors jump, flesh wriggling, clearly startled, then immediately move in separate directions. Two of them hurriedly head away from us and my eyes dart around the glass prison, looking for a way out.
My heart is thumping painfully inside my chest and I am sure everyone can hear it.
The ship shivers, somehow dislodging me from whatever stasis field I had been held in. I collapse to the floor—a mewling flesh bag of pain—with a heavy thud and a yelp of pain. It must be the reason why the last of the disgusting blobs turns to look.
“She will die if you don’t get her back in,” he gurgles loudly, gesturing toward the other woman and I don’t understand what he means until the woman tries to reach for me again.
I slap her hand off me and continue shrieking, the tears hot in my eyes from pain and fear.
“I’ll leave her to die!” he screams to the woman through pink, slime-flecked jowls and I realize he is referring to me.
I am the person being left to die.
The lights flicker once more and the metal of the ship groans loudly as something hits it again and I start to realize that I maybe in far more trouble than I had initially assumed. I can hear what sounds like large objects ramming into something.
I want to open my mouth to ask the woman if this is hell and if she is real but before I have the time to react, the woman gets on her feet and whacks me across the face so hard that my ears start ringing.
She yells at me. “Get up!”
Fire is blazing in her alien, fully light-blue eyes, almost louder than the alarms blaring around us.
I acquiesce, my hands wrapped around my sides as I struggle to raise myself from the ground. I want to ask her all of the questions muddled in my brain but she wordlessly pushes me backward so that I land in the small chamber that I had initially fallen out of before it closes with a soft thud, leaving me in shock.
My eyes widen with fear, my balled up fists banging at the clear glass in front of me.
Fuck! She only put me right back where I started.
The woman walks up to the glass and gently places her palm against it and suddenly I cannot move once more.
My heart skips a beat, painfully, and in the panic I cling to my strongest mask.
“You fucking…” the Bitch roars, my throat burning and tight, panic strangling out any possibility of further words.
She doesn’t even look at me. Instead, she turns to face our captors and they say something to her. I’m too panicked to understand, the rage trying to rise in me to displace it, but even the Bitch isn’t strong enough to help me.
My chest tightens, vision blurring as a panic attack threatens.
My arms start feeling like lead and the other woman’s bright blue-purple hair is the last thing I see before everything turns dark around me.
5
Szhe’ka
I wake up to darkness and a smell that I can only describe as ground, far too concentrated and heavy than I am used to.
My head throbs and when I try to move, my bones feel as if they have been taken away from me and put back, and a sharp pain shoots through my wings. I attempt to stretch them out but the pain makes me yelp. It hurts too much to move and despite the drumming in the front of my head, I force myself to remember how I got here.
The memory of being caged floods back—the red blur of Tch’tek’s falling form, Nnaiv’s sorrowful song and the smell of death itself.
Then silence and pain.
My back starts to throb again as I force myself to recall what happened after. The scent of trespassers, the rancid gas released into my face over and over again. More darkness and even morepain. Nothing else comes to mind and I am only exhausting myself trying to think.
