The Human Hunter (Alien Overlords 1)

“Yes. I was seriously injured. Hence all the augmentations. It took me months to recover, to learn to walk again. When I did, I hated humans more than I have ever hated anything.”

“How terrible for you.”

She does not sound sympathetic, which makes sense because she no doubt considers the slaughter of her people my fault. If she has just remembered that, I expect she’s horrified and furious.

“You remember our relationship.”

“I remember your betrayal.” Lyric looks up at me. “You must have recognized me the minute you met me at Gettem. You could have killed me on the spot.”

“I recognized you. I couldn’t believe it. I thought you were dead, and yet there you were, standing in front of me. But it was quickly apparent that you didn’t recognize you. I knew you were the girl who saved me….”

“The girl who saved you,” she says slowly. “Yes. I was the girl who saved you, wasn’t I? Not my best idea, as it turns out.”

“I know I owe you a great debt. A debt greater than I can ever repay….”

* * *

Lyric

“I am sorry for what happened to your people,” he says.

“Ah. Yes.”

“How did you become elite?”

There’s the million-dollar question.

“I, er, it was something we did after the…. After everybody died. A way to forget.”

“So you became elite to escape the pain, and I became a bounty hunter to escape the shame.”

“Yes.”

“What else, Lyric?”

“What do you mean, what else? I just remembered everybody I love dying because I saved you. Does there need to be something else?”

“You must hate me,” he sighs. “I am sorry. When I returned to base, my absence had been noted. They wanted to know where I’d been. They made me tell them about the tunnels.”

“So you just… told them?”

“I was on the verge of being expelled as a royal guard. I considered it my duty to report what I knew. It was a way of saving face. It turned from an ill-advised night out to a mission of noble reconnaissance. They were so pleased with me they made me one of the king’s personal guards. As fate would have it, that was why I was with him when he died.”

“Did you go down there? Did you kill them yourself?”

“No. That was an eradication team. There are several, made up of failed soldiers.”

He says that, but of course, he would say that. He is invested in me not remembering. And I am invested in him not knowing. Those augmentations I hacked, the ones that make him whole—he needs them because of me.

“I owe you a thousand apologies. What I took from you, what I did to you, it can never be taken back, and it can never be undone.” He goes to his knees before me, his massive frame bent in contrition. “Please, Lyric. If you remember any of our tender times….”

“I’d remember them only as ways you used me in order to kill my loved ones.”

I am not angry, not in the classical sense. I am feeling a strangely disconnected cold fury. Intellectually, I am angry, of course. But physically I am just numb. I think I have been numb since yesterday when the lash was supposed to break me down.

“Lyric…” his voice cracks. “What can I…”

“You don’t owe me anything,” I tell him.

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t owe me anything, because I was behind the rockets that killed the king, and smashed you into a thousand pieces. Me and my people, everybody who was left after the raid. You have those infinitely exploitable augmentations because of me. And you left the royal guard in shame because of me. And your king died…”

“Yes. I knew you led the attack and gained your revenge. You were entitled to it. I did not begrudge you it.”

“So why the anti-human rampage?”

“I had to take my rage out somewhere. Dispensing korabi justice felt like the way to do it.”

I nod, slowly. It is not a satisfactory answer, but I don’t think he could ever give me one that was. We have hurt one another terribly. I maimed him to the point of death, and he was essentially responsible for the slaughter of all those I knew and loved. How could any kind of romantic attachment survive these revelations?

“It is time,” Tyvian announces, interrupting us in the middle of a conversation which we really need to finish. I am left in the turmoil of revelation as he tells us the inevitable news.

“The king has called for the prisoner, and the punisher. The second session is to begin. He has asked me to convey that today there must be blood. He will not take a mere whipping.”

“He will not be satisfied until I am dead, like the rest of my family.”

“Probably,” Tyvian agrees. “Not today, however. Today is about spectacle, a gradual increasing of pain and human anguish. The king wants to see her suffer. If you cannot deliver, you will be replaced with a team of torturers.”