No, I’ll find them and torture them.

Every angry thought burns through my mind, but I know I have to let it all go. I just don’t know how.

Voice coming from above, I hear a sentinel say, “Sir, these are the brutes wanted by Slain.”

Heavier footsteps echo and shake dust onto my face. Trying my hardest not to cough, I sit and listen.

“Yes,” a deep voice growls. “The mining contractors that defected. Is it true? You found that female?”

Vraik screams. “Let us go, you fucks, or I’ll take you down myself.”

The sentinel leader laughs, deep. “You have killed a sentinel, betraying the Empire in the process. Where is the female?”

Vraik spits. I imagine the glob hitting the sentinel’s scarred face.

Silence, followed by the sound of a metallic fist to alien jaw.

“Beat them until they talk,” he commands.

“We won’t do any such thing,” Rekker shouts.

Rekker says, “I love Emma, and so do the others. She’s our bride.”

Twelve

Emma

How did that song go?

You know, the one you used to sing to taunt the other kids on the playground? The one that made a mockery of the first feelings of love.

“Emma and some brutal aliens, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”

First, comes invasion. Then comes marriage. Then come the sentinels, leaving you with the baby carriage.

I trace my fingers across my stomach, curling into my navel.

What really comes first are the tears. No matter how tough I want to stay, they always break down my walls first. Second, comes the sickness, the undeniable nausea that makes my stomach lurch.

I vomit across the floor. It’s unladylike, but there are literal alien bones everywhere.

All at once, my memory comes flooding back to me, and I just can’t do it anymore.

I can’t keep running. I can’t keep fighting. It’s too much for a girl like me.

I am alone. Not alone like I thought I was before all this went down. This time, I am truly alone.

Only the dead surround me, and their spirits don’t feel too comforting.

I need to head back home.

It takes me a few hours to come to terms with everything. For a while there, I thought I might never stand again. When I do, I feel like I’m floating. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s just me, floating in space.

I lift myself up and stumble against the wall. Hands feeling the rough brick, I scan each crevice until I feel a hole.

I reach inside and feel a lever. Pulling, a door opens to bright sunlight. A spacecraft sits before me, covered in an ivy looking plant.

An inkling of doubt runs through me. It looks too rundown to fly. I was given the ability to read their language, but I’m not a pilot, let alone a rocket scientist.

Tags: Penelope Woods Science Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net