From what I’ve gleaned through my two days of observation, the planet I’m on is Earth—or at least the Earth after it was destroyed by storms of radiation. The people who watch over me are the remnants of those who were left behind. Mutations, I think, but I can’t be sure. They’re never close enough for me to get a good look. I’d have to be inches away to see clearly without my glasses. Too much reading, my foster mother used to say.
There can never be too much reading, I’d answer.
Well, this isn’t any book.
The shadowed figures in front of me are clearly real.
This is happening.
I’ve been kidnapped by aliens.
How friggin’ cool is that?
Once the fear wears off as I listen in to my daily visitors, I begin to learn more about the aliens who care for me. I think they call themselves rekkers. And they have other human women and mates they’ve reproduced with. I could swear I heard a baby cry at one point. I wonder how that works. Are they anatomically similar to the males? Do they lay eggs like my beloved arachnids?
For a while, when they’re off doing…whatever it is they do outside my little room, I wonder if I could handle laying eggs in a nest with an alien lover. After a time, I drift back out of consciousness. I’m not sure why I’m awake and they don’t seem to be aware. Maybe there’s something wrong with whatever they’re doing to me. Maybe I’m dreaming.
In my dream, I hear two of the rekkers having a conversation. They may be arguing. It’s hard for me to tell. Then the other leaves and my arachnid speaks only to me. The fog in my brain dispels and I find myself answering.
Oh crap, oh crap, what was I thinking?
I’d been safe inside my little room, like I’d been safe behind my glasses or my books.
The more I speak with Oz, as I learn he’s called, the more I realize maybe I won’t be entirely safe with him at all.
“You said you’ve been awake for a couple solars?” Oz asks conversationally.
I try to remember to breathe. I may not be able to see them all, but the room beyond my little bed filled quickly once Oz ran to tell the other rekkers news of my being awake. “Solars means days? Then yes, that’s right.”
“Perhaps it was another malfunction like with Molly’s pod,” someone on a walkie-talkie sort of thing says.
“You didn’t check her before you left?” Oz demands, his words punctuated by a loud popping sound. I sure hope he didn’t break something.
“Of course I did.” The one on the other side of the walkie-talkie is a rekker they call Avrell. I assume he’s some sort of doctor because after Oz realized I was awake, he’d called the others, who insisted they call Avrell to check my vitals. “She was stable when I left. I’d given her a shot of microbots to see if that would solve the issue of her not waking up from cryosleep. It was either that or do nothing. Whatever seemed to be wrong with her must have been fixed. Truly it’s a miracle she even woke.”
“Microbots?” I ask, horrified. “Robots?”
“Microbots,” says one of the human women they call Aria. “We use them to cure injuries. We were unable to wake you when we decided to wake the others. Avrell is our doctor. He’s out of the facility at the moment helping others in our faction at the prison.”
I gulp. “Prison?”
I can’t see her expression, but from her response I imagine it to be encouraging. “Don’t worry. No one here or there will hurt you. They’re just doing this examination as a precaution to make sure there is nothing else wrong with you.”
“We know this is all very overwhelmin’, sugar, but we’ll explain everythin’ once Oz and Avrell have looked you over real good.”
I nod and try to remember to breathe. It had all seemed so easy when it was only the smooth-talking Oz in the room with me. Then he’d yelled for someone called You Vee and they’d summoned the others. Four arachnid types and three of their mates. There was barely enough room, what little of it I could see, to fit all of them in the hospital room where I’d been sleeping.
“All right,” I whisper. I could be wrong, but I think Oz looks at me. Oh, how I wish I could see his face to know what he’s thinking. It makes me feel terribly naked to not be able to see everything around me. I already have a bad enough time reading social cues as it is, what if I’m making a complete boob out of myself? Then I wonder if I’m mentally unsound because a normal person would be freaking out at the thought of being kidnapped by aliens. I should be more upset!