The guard turned his head toward her and looked at the offering sitting on her palm. It was a perfect burger, bun lightly toasted, lettuce crispy, tomato fresh enough not to be smushy against the heat of the perfectly seared and seasoned ground beef patty. Nobody could resist a burger that good, not even a royal guard.
“Not supposed to eat on duty.”
“I won’t tell,” she said, extending her hand. “Go on. It’s so good. I don’t want to waste it.”
The guard grunted something that might have been thanks and took the burger. He was suspicious at first, but one bite later, he was hooked. She saw it in his eyes, they flared with something like fire and he devoured the rest of the burger in a matter of seconds.
She had never seen anybody enjoy a burger so much. Not even when college kids came in drunk as hell, having only eaten ramen all week. The guard was eating the burger like it was the only food he’d ever tasted in his life. Given most of the Homelanders seemed to eat bits of rock, maybe it was.
Katie took the opportunity to size the guard up. He had greying in his beard and kind eyes. Dominax’s eyes were pure black, but this guy’s were more of a soothing brown. He was massive and wore exceptionally shiny armor, but he gave Katie a good feeling. He was like a nice bouncer at a particularly exclusive club — and Katie knew how to get in good with bouncers.
“You’re like, massive,” she told him. “I wish I were massive. If I were massive, I could go back home.”
The guard chewed, but his eyes on her suggested that he might be listening.
“So, uhm, what’s your name? I’m Katie.”
“Alf,” the guard grunted between bites. It might have been his name, or it might have been the sound he made swallowing. It was hard to tell.
“So I was just going to work, on my world, and Dominax appeared out of nowhere, snatched me up, and brought me here. How fucked up is that?”
The guard, who still had his mouth full of burger, may have thought it was super fucked up, or not very fucked up at all. It was hard to tell over the sounds of munching.
“So now I guess I’m stuck here. My family’s going to be worried about me, but they will never know what happened to me. And I’m too old to go on a milk carton, if they even do that anymore.”
She kept talking while he ate, fishing fresh food from the magic drawer whenever it looked like he was going to finish and say something. If Dominax came and caught her, the plan was to tell him that she was just sharing the wealth, as it were. She didn’t know if the magic drawer cost anything to use, but that wasn’t her problem. Her problem was getting the fuck out of captivity with a beast who thought she was stupid.
Three burgers later, the guard refused a fourth.
“It’s nice of you to share, small human,” he said. “I am sorry you are not enjoying being on Homeworld. This is actually a very popular destination for the young of many worlds.”
“It is? Why? It’s all lava.”
“Well, not all lava. And despite what he may say about his authoritarian regime, Dominax’s laws are somewhat laxer than many in the region. Homeworld is considered a place where a young person can find their place in the universe.”
“You mean, get laid.”
“That, too. I wouldn’t know. I have been married a long time.”
“That’s nice,” she said, still wondering what sorcery allowed her to stand and speak to an alien in another language from another world and have near perfect understanding. The magical burger box was far from the only mystery on this world.
She took a step out of the room, but the guard put his massive hand on her head and pushed her gently back inside.
“I cannot let you escape.”
“Why not?”
“My job is to keep you where you are.”
“So I can be ravaged and impregnated by a rogue king against my will.”
The guard looked uncomfortable.
“You didn’t become a guard for that, did you?”
She was pushing her luck. Maybe that is exactly why he became a guard. Maybe he thought his king was infallible. Maybe he was going to tell Dominax she had tried to bribe him with burgers. There were a lot of maybes, but right now this guard was the only way out of this room, and there was no escaping the planet without getting out of this room. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost, sort of thing.
“I became a guard because my father was a guard,” the guard said.
“Hey. Me too. I became an asshole because my father was an asshole.”
The guard gave her a stern look. “You should not speak about your father that way.”