“He’s breathing, but I can’t get him to wake up, and I can’t carry him.” She wrings her hands. “I don’t know what to do. Kira told me to take you guys back to the cave—”
“She what?” I get to my feet with great effort, sending another wave of sheeting pain through my body.
The red-haired one – Harlow – wrings her hands again and paces. “She said that if they took her, I need to take you back to the cave so you can be safe. She doesn’t want anyone coming after her.”
“She is my mate!” I roar. I won’t leave her. I’ll get my spear, take off after their ship, and demand—
“They have guns!” Harlow cries. “And Haeden is dying!”
Haeden. My old friend. My truest friend. I stagger over to his side, clutching my wound, and roll him onto his back. His breathing rasps shallow in his chest, and the wound is in his gut. I can see the white of his innards in his wound, and there’s blood everywhere.
He needs to get back to the healer, soon, or he will die.
I’m torn. I need to go after my mate, but it’s clear that if I leave, Haeden will die. With a snarl of helpless fury, I turn to Harlow. “Why are you just standing there?”
“I don’t know what to do!”
“Get something to bind his wound! Quickly! Or get poles for a travois!” With a travois, maybe even Harlow can take him back to the caves. I grab her arm before she darts off. “I must go after Kira. Can you take him back to the tribal caves if I make you a travois?”
Her face is pale but resolute. She nods. “Tell me the way and I will do it.”
My heart sinks. She doesn’t know the way to the caves. One slight storm, one wrong turn, and she will drag Haeden into the wild where he will die. I press a hand to my forehead. The stink of blood is everywhere. We must do something soon, or predators will come after it to investigate.
I…cannot go after Kira. Not if it means leaving these two helpless ones to die. I close my eyes. Forgive me, my mate. I will come for you as soon as I can.
Then, I turn to Harlow. “Take a knife and cut two poles for a travois from the trees. I will find something to bind Haeden’s wound.”
“What about the ship? We can use it—“
I shake my head. I don’t trust it. “We’ll take him back to the healer. Hurry.”
She nods and darts away.
KIRA
One of the basketball head guards hisses at me as he hauls me up the ramp to the alien ship. “Walk faster.”
“I’m walking as fast as I can,” I mutter. Actually, that’s not true. I’m dragging my feet deliberately. I don’t want to go on the ship. I want to run for the hills, but I have to be brave. I knew this was coming if we couldn’t scare them off.
And I have a Plan B, the contents of which are still safely tucked inside my mouth, between gums and cheek.
I’m still terrified.
Nothing’s in my control anymore. These things would just as easily take back my dead body as they would my live one. And I don’t know if Aehako is even alive or dead.
I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll totally break down. I have to think about my plan.
They drag me into the hold of the ship despite my deliberately slow steps. Instead of flinging me down into another hold like they did before, I’m taken to a sterile white room and dumped onto a narrow white board of a bed. Oh God. This looks like an operating room.
The guard that has taken me as his personal hostage looms over me, fingering his weapon. A few moments later, the door opens and another one of the Little Green Men comes in. He speaks, and his voice has a different timbre than the others.
This is the infected one that was mentioned? It tilts its head toward me, curious.
“Yes,” the guard says in his growling language.
I try to chirp back to it, to let it know I understand its words.
Its head tilts again. Is it trying to speak?
“It’s stupid,” the guard says, and smacks my arm with the butt of his gun. “Want me to kill it?”
“I’m not infected,” I say in the guttural language of the szzt. “I have a symbiont. A creature living inside me. But it can’t be removed without killing its host.”
A parasite? How very curious. I wonder that I can remove it anyhow. I should like to study this and see how long it can survive in an artificial environment, if at all.
They want to kill me just to see what happens? These guys are dicks, as Liz would say. “You can’t do that,” I say quickly. When they simply stare at me, I cast about for a logical explanation as to why they can’t. “I’m worth more alive than dead.”