“Oh. Okay. Well. It was nice meeting you… ohhh ahhh! What are you doing?”
He reaches out and takes me by the hand. The effect of this is my relatively small hand being absolutely enveloped in his much larger and more clawed one. His grip is not too tight, but there is no way I will be escaping it.
My reaction might seem a bit overkill given the gesture is generally a mild one, but there’s something in the energy of the way he does it that freaks me the hell out.
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to kidnap you,” he says, both making me feel like my reaction was accurate, and starting to walk away from the food court. He keeps my hand in his, and he is striding toward the docks.
Kidnap me? After we shared burgers? I am stunned by the decision, and by the way he immediately executes it, before I really have a chance to process it. I guess that’s how kidnapping works.
“I really think we should discuss this!” I call out as he more or less drags me about.
He pauses at one of the quieter, more industrial corners of the station and turns to look at me.
“What do you want to discuss?”
“Why are you kidnapping me?”
He smiles and pushes some of my hair out of my face. It got all mussed up in the course of my abduction. “Two reasons. And kidnapping is the wrong word, actually.”
“Oh, good,” I sigh. “It felt like you were just going to steal me away and keep me for yourself.”
“I’m going to make you my pet,” he says.
“What? Why?” I am half-pretending to be shocked. I know that aliens take humans for all kinds of things, from mates, to pets, to general supplies. We can be kept on ships in relatively small cells and turned into a good source of protein and essential vitamins and minerals with minimal processing. Some of them like to eat us raw.
The alien, Freak, explains his plan to me in simple terms designed to ensure that I understand. He is patient as his deep voice catalogues my many shortcomings.
“You’re human. You’re small. You’re weak. You’re wet. And you’re a very long way from home. You will serve me as my pet, and I will look after you as your master.”
The creature saying this to me is right about a lot of things. Compared to his towering alien frame, I am small. Given his massive muscular strength and the fact that he can easily hold me up scruffed with one hand, he is stronger than me too. I am wet because I almost drowned. It is also true that I am a lightyear away from where I started.
But I am not going to be his pet.
I could tell him that, but pictures are worth a thousand words, and actions are worth, like, a million.
I snap my teeth at his wrist. I catch blue scales and thick hide in my mouth. Neither one feels particularly bad, but they don’t yield beneath my bite. It’s like trying to chew through animal hide.
“One hundred percent attack, zero damage,” he laughs at me. “This is how you repay me for my kindness?”
“It’s not kindness if you’re trying to steal me from myself,” I argue. “I’m no alien’s pet.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. You’re my pet.”
“You just got free from captivity, and the first thing you do is take someone else captive? How does that work?” I wonder if I can argue myself out of this. I hope so.
“I’m not going to experiment on you. I’m going to look after you. Besides, having a human is useful at times. You make good emotional support creatures.”
“We do?”
“Of course. I just pulled you out of your drenched ship and you have been adorable about it. If we could do this more slowly, and if I could take you more gently, I would. But I am sure that there are Datari Composite ships on their way to this location even now, and I am out of quantum tunnels.”
He’s taking me because I was nice to him, because he wants to, and because he regards my free will as being mostly irrelevant.
I try to bite him again. This time he catches my jaw in his other hand and makes a tutting sound at me. “Uh uh,” he says. “Once was cute, but twice is becoming a habit, and I’m not going to allow my pet to become a biter. Try it again, and I will muzzle you.”
“I’m not your pet!”
“I am not going to argue this with you, pet. Not now.”
