“Not many captives ask me for favors. Then again, not many captives come to me as you have. You haven’t screamed or begged for mercy once. Aside from when you were being beaten for punishment, of course.”
I do not bother to get my hopes up. I know he won’t really look for my father. Nobody does. The elders of our community didn’t, and I don’t think Freak did either. It’s my mission, and I’m going to fail it because I can’t get away from anyone long enough to do it.
“Do you know where he was last seen?”
“No.”
“And your owner could not find him?”
I shrug.
“What would it be worth to you, little human, for me to find the father you seek? What would you pay for it?”
“Everything,” I say without thinking.
“Interesting. Everything is a lot,” he says. “You must be truly desperate to find him.”
“Well, yeah. He’s my dad.”
“He should be looking for you, not the other way around. If one of my daughters were missing, I would do anything I could to find her.”
I wonder if Freak would be pleased to know that his enemy shares his opinion. Probably not. He’d be furious. I can only imagine how angry he must be.
“Well, unfortunately for me, I am not one of your daughters,” I say tiredly. “My father is a nice guy. I’m worried something’s happened to him.”
“Either he is dead, imprisoned, or has run off with a woman,” the Lizard King says as if he knows.
“Maybe,” I say. What else is there to say? Am I going to pour my heart out to an evil king who has stolen me from the alien who saved me from certain death in the effort to recapture him?
“I just have to keep going,” I say. “Because if I can’t find him, then I’ll never know what happened, and he’s out there somewhere, maybe suffering, and maybe dead, like you said, and if he is dead, then I need to know, and if he’s not then I have to save him, and…”
“Why save him? Is he weak? Is he elderly?”
“He’s fifty,” I say.
The Lizard King tips his head to the side and regards me with one lizard eye. “I can find him for you, but I don’t think that will help you.”
“I mean, it would. It would literally solve all my problems.”
“Until he goes missing again. The human lifespan ranges into the eighties and much later. Are you going to spend your life chasing him about like a wayward toddler?”
I narrow my eyes. I did not expect this much pushback. I did not expect any, actually.
“I want to find my dad,” I say.
“Do you want to find your dad, or do you want to find the meaning where your father is supposed to be?”
“Fuck’s sake,” I curse under my breath. He’s not only evil, he’s also deeply psychological. No wonder he is such a scourge on the universe.
The Lizard King laughs. “Do not worry, human. As the war escalates, you will probably have to be sacrificed and then the matter of your father’s location will become a complete irrelevance.”
“Well,” I say. “That’s something at least.”
The Lizard King practically giggles.
I get on with evil guys way too well. That’s my problem. Freak is a good guy who has some bad shit to do sometimes, but this guy is the kind of casual evil that gets me shot into the sun. Just because he’s pleasant to talk to from time to time doesn’t make him any less dangerous. These conversations don’t mean anything to him.
I’m pretty sure he is keeping me close to use me as a shield. A human shield. He thinks if I am here, then Freak won’t risk murdering them all with extreme violence.
