Cave Alien (Ancient Earth Aliens 1)

“It’s not the past!” I smash the bottle on the wall of the ship and start jabbing the sharp edges into my skin. They do nothing, because I am made of harsher stuff than the bottle. I start laughing hysterically. I could not save her, and now I cannot die. What hell is this, to be trapped alive at an impenetrable distance from the one I love.

“Sedate him,” Krave says to the others. More scythkin keep appearing. He must have the entire brood with him. All here on a rescue mission I wish they hadn’t undertaken. Why could they not just leave me alone?

“STOP!” I growl.

“We’re trying to save you, idiot!”

“There’s nothing left of me to save. Not until I find her.” I stand up and run for the door. Three of my broodkin latch on to me, but it is hard to handle a scythkin if he doesn’t want to be handled. They cannot get a real grip on my extended blades and ridges, not without slicing into their digits. There are shouts and curses and in the end, a few thousand volts of the highest current imaginable coursing through my system.

I shut down. The world goes black. My last memory is of trying to reflexively choke someone. I don’t know who it is, my vision has been taken offline by the current, but I know they deserve it.

When I wake up, I have no idea how long I have been out. It doesn’t matter. Time is an irrelevancy now. I have to get back down to the planet. I am sure I can throw myself down, the same way they threw the communicator down. The settings will still be in the ship’s computer, I’m sure. I just have to get to it and hope we are not yet out of range. I doubt they moved away at any great speed. The resurgent Earth is inherently unstable. Disturbing it with gravitational fields accompanying fast travel would be foolish, and Krave would never allow that.

My plan is immediately derailed by finding myself secured with an almost endless series of straps and chains. There is a small white dog sitting on the floor, watching me with interest and maybe confusion. It cocks its head at me, dark eyes filled with animal wisdom. I never liked animals. I thought they were clockwork meat. But since I found myself surrounded by them on that planet, I now yearn for them almost as much as I yearn for Tres herself. That animal was made out of Earth. It is a conduit.

“Pants! Come here!”

A far-off female voice calls the animal and it responds with impressive alacrity.

“KRAVE!” I shout my brood leader’s name as I tug at my bonds. This is his doing. Nobody else would dare authorize this. I would turn them into slivers of scythkin and serve them to the rest of the brood as an appetizer.

Krave doesn’t come. Instead two others do. The medics. I never liked them.

“Let me out now, and I’ll spare your lives,” I threaten. “Make me find my own way out of this, and I cannot guarantee your survival.”

They look at one another, and then they smirk. They don’t believe me. They should.

“I’m sorry we’ve had to do this to you,” Tzan says. “But you’re going to feel better soon. Vrel and I are the best medics our clutch has, you know that. We’re going to take really good care of you.”

“Do not talk to me like an errant hatchling,” I growl. “Let me free. I have time to break.”

“You’ve broken enough time,” Tzan says. “It’s time you got better.”

“I’m not sick, you blazing idiot. Let me go. Now.”

But they don’t let me go. They leave me right where I am and they start talking to one another, discussing plans for my ‘treatment’. While they talk, I am gathering my strength. Nothing can hold a scythkin who truly wants to be free. We are capable of ripping through a shuttle’s hull with our bare hands if we want to. These chains and shackles tell me that they think I am weak. I will soon show them what a mistake that is.

And then there is a pinch.

And then there is more blackness.

I like the nothing. It is all I feel I have left, so it is appropriate to bask in the darkness. I hope I never emerge from it. I no longer have any business left in the world of the living. This is all that is left to me, the eternal void.

And then, it speaks.

“Vulcan…”

I recognize the voice immediately. It is coming to me from very far away, but it is her voice. She still has one. Death might have taken her body, but it has not claimed her essence. Some souls are too great to be taken by eternity. Hers is one of them.