I am put into my room, which has no windows which makes sense because it is an interior room. I do feel a sense of warmth and comfort when I see that they have restored it for me. It looks like a cabin again, complete with windows opening onto nonexistent forests, and the soundscape of a babbling brook for extra calm. My favorite part, the bed, awaits. I lie down and wrap myself in the perfectly weighted blanket which goes over me. It smells of me, and a little of Tyrant.
12 The Truth
Tyrant doesn’t make a reappearance for quite a while. Judging by how many times I get tired and fall asleep, only to wake up to some kind of alert, I’d say it’s several days before I see him again. It is hard to tell because the ship is noisier than it was last time. No matter when I step outside my little space of confinement, be it day or night, the halls ring with the stamping boots of soldiers and the tolling of alarms.
“THERE IS NO AUDIT!”
A raging voice awakes me from one of many naps.
He looms over me, furious, and I know that the jig, as it were, is up. I wanted to tell him myself. I was waiting to explain things, but I didn’t get the chance and now events have overtaken us.
“Explain yourself!” he demands.
“I… uh… wanted to see you again.”
Tyrant’s face performs a contortion which makes me extremely comfortable. He does not find my answer cute.
“You wanted to see me again, so you called the king from his fleet in the midst of war to come pick you up for an audit which was not going to happen?”
Okay, that doesn’t sound good. I’m going to have to resort to the truth.
“You’re not going to believe this, but my boss tried to kill me when I returned to Earth. I think he kills all the accountants who have interaction with alien species. He sent me to a fake doctor who prescribed poison pills.”
Tyrant’s jaw tightens.
It really sounds crazy, and I don’t know if that’s better or worse than just sounding like a lie.
“Why did you not simply tell Terrible that?”
“Because I’m pretty sure Terrible would be more than happy for me to take poison pills. I’m sorry, Tyrant, I really am. I was desperate. They weren’t going to let me live knowing what I knew. They were going to get rid of me, one way or another. You're the only person I might be safe with.”
He looks at me with that iridescent stare, the one which sees right through to the core of me, the one which made me fall so completely in love with him I couldn’t survive being away from him. Even if Mr. Rogers hadn’t plotted my murder, I think I would have withered away to nothing without him.
“You are not safe here.”
He intones the words heavily, and regretfully, as if he wishes things could be different. But they cannot be. They are as they are. And they are fucking awful.
* * *
Tyrant
She is such a pathetic little thing. Not intrinsically, but circumstances have made her a woman out of space and time. I have just had another extensive conversation with Mezzarogers. Tania knows him as Mr. Rogers, but he is no more human than I am. He is a monstrous entity in a human suit — and he probably was trying to poison her, now that I think about it. I am angry at myself for not properly ensuring her safety. The human world is treacherous, as is the universe as a whole.
“I’d rather be unsafe with you than unsafe on my planet,” she says. “I know this is probably weird and stage five clinger-ey, but I missed you.”
I have no idea what stage five clingy means. But I missed her too.
I’m not sure I can say that to her right now. There is a war happening. A brutal, bloody, terrible war which has been raging since more or less the moment I dropped her off.
I could tell her that I have regretted that decision every moment since I made it — except for the extreme peril of the situation she has now put herself in. If she had been honest with me, I could have found another way to protect her.
“Please don’t look at me that way," she whimpers, her lower lip trembling and her eyes welling with that all so human wetness. I almost envy the human capacity for emotion. Hers is quite literally dripping down her face.
“Tania…”
I have to punish her for her lies. I cannot allow my leadership to think that I am being manipulated by a human — even though I am absolutely being manipulated by a human.
I have no way of ascertaining the truth of the situation. In war, there are no rules. In life, there are no rules besides the ones I make.