Page 52 of Her Alien Boss

They’re afraid of me. They can’t comprehend me. They probably can’t hear me, because my head is sticking out of the atmosphere, so really, all they can actually see is my feet and my legs and arms and maybe my torso. My attempts to broadcast a message of peace, goodwill, and theft are failing.

Everybody on the planet is getting a very large dose of existential terror, and it is my fault. It is not easy being a mechanical monster larger than many moons.

I check my feet, wondering if I have accidentally made contact with the planet and performed an accidental horror by flattening a bunch of stuff.

Oh, no, it’s okay. I’m hovering several miles above the ground. Nobody is crushed. Everybody is freaking the fuck out, though. I feel like Alice, from Alice in Wonderland, when she was stuck in the house and had to eat the other side of the mushroom to get smaller. Except I don’t have any mushrooms.

The reaction from the locals is not that different from the way the animals tried to get Alice out of the house, though. They tried to set fire to the building. I continue to feel tiny little impacts on my tootsies. I assume that’s missiles and stuff tickling the plates of metal and such. It feels nice, actually, like little fish nibbling at excess skin.

* * *

Arkon

I watched in horror as the Fematrix turned into a thin smear of fast heat into the depths of space, taking my mate’s brain with it. There are few feelings as helpless as knowing that you have lost the very interior of your loved one to the capricious decisions of a mechanical mind.

We are able to track the robot, which is, of course, returning to Earth. That’s what Evie wants, deep down. It’s what every animal wants, to be where it feels safe.

She should have been safe with me.

Suffice to say when Drak wakes up, he is in cuffs.

“I…”

“Don’t say a word,” I cut in. “I am keeping you alive so I can get her back in her body.”

“Well…”

“Shut. Up,” I repeat, giving him a swift kick to the ribs. I am aware he thinks he can talk himself out of this. He cannot. I am on the verge of destroying him. My fury is beyond any I have ever experienced before.

“But…”

It takes everything I have not to murder him. He will not follow even a single direction.

I get up, grab a cord, and step on his chest before wrapping it around his head and in his mouth several times, making it impossible for him to speak.

“I’m going to cut your tongue out if you make so much as another noise,” I tell him, meaning every word. “The only reason you still breathe is you have the ability to get her brain out of the machine.”

He stares at me blankly.

“We are going to retrieve the Fematrix,” I tell him. “And you are going to restore the love of my life.”

“Don’t forget, she’s also the mother of your child,” he says when the cord falls away. “The body is pregnant.”

Absolute worst pregnancy announcement ever, and I’ve seen one where ten thousand hectares of irreplaceable forest went up in an afternoon.

“If you ever call her the body again…”

“Yes. You’ll kill me. I understand. Shall we recall the Fematrix, or would you like to waste time?”

“You can recall it?”

“Of course I can,” he snorts. “You think I would make an all-powerful being that does not respond to my desire?”

“You’re right,” I say. “Mad of me to think otherwise. Get her back.”

* * *

Evie