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He shrugs, and lets me out about twenty feet from the barricade. Close enough to yell stuff. Not so close they can grab me easily.
“DON’T SHOOT HIM!” I scream the words at whoever will listen.
“Detective, you need to come in!” A loudspeaker addresses me by job title.
“I’M NOT COMING IN. I’M STAYING WITH THE VICTIM!”
“We need to clear the scene.”
“YOU MEAN YOU NEED TO SHOOT THE SCENE IN THE FUCKING HEAD.”
The voice on the loudspeaker clears its throat. “Detective, you have come into contact with a very dangerous situation.”
“THE SITUATION HAS A NAME. HE’S NOT VIOLENT. HIS PRESENCE HERE IS AN ACCIDENT.”
I am making myself hoarse from the screaming.
Then the loudspeaker ups the volume.
“WE ARE COMING IN TO RETRIEVE YOU. DO NOT RESIST.”
“LIKE FUCK YOU ARE!”
I’m going to be very fired when this is over. That’s a foregone conclusion. What I’m doing now might be treason or something? I don’t know. What I absolutely know is that there is a wounded humanish creature down on the pier who will be severely hurt if I don’t stand up for him.
There's a break in the barricade, and like a horror movie, arms extend through. Followed by people. They don’t want to be beyond the barricade. This is not a world they long to see. They want to be back on the side of normality as soon as possible.
They are masked and goggled, humanoid shapes as faceless as it is possible to be. They come closer and their gloved hands reach for me. Fuck no. I nope the hell out of there as fast as I can, running toward my alien friend while the rest of them make their own minds up as to how far they want to come down the pier. Not very far, as it turns out.
“Your partner is gone. And you appear to have fled your own people.” Brawn makes both observations quite calmly.
“Yes,” I agree. “We were ordered to retreat.”
He scowls at me, as if he is suddenly displeased. “You are disobeying orders?”
“I don’t answer to the person who gave them.” And I don’t think I’m going to live long enough to face the consequences of not following them, I don’t add out loud.
When I became an officer, I knew that one day I might end up not surviving because I tried to help someone. I never thought that someone would be a ten-foot-tall alien bleeding out slowly on the pier, but it doesn’t really matter who it is.
My chin is suddenly tipped up by an alien finger. I am surprised by the gentleness of his powerful touch.
“What is happening, human female?” He inquires softly, but with great purpose, as if he knows I am lying.
“My name is Ariel,” I remind him.
“Ariel. What are you doing?”
That’s a damn good question.
“It’s not what I’m doing. It’s what they’re going to do.”
“What are they going to do?”
“I think they’re going to kill us both and then blame it on some other people probably.”
Again his face contorts. “You think your own people are going to kill you?”
“Uh. Yeah. Probably.”
“I feel as though you should be more worried about that.”
“Maybe.”
Maybe I should be, but the truth is though I don’t know what’s going to happen, I know it’s almost inevitable. I can feel the unpleasantness coming though, a slow wave moving across the face of the planet. The last few months have not been kind. The world has seemed less and less recognizable by the day and my outlook has become a little more dim with the passing of every solar cycle. Maybe I need to just snap out of it.
This is the first time aliens have made an open appearance on Earth as far as I know. As if the planet isn’t already in enough chaos. This is a very big deal. That means it’s going to be a complete fucking shit show. This being California, the military are all over this, but I’m betting all the acronym agencies are looking for their piece of the pie, and Washington is going to be losing its shit, assuming they know.
I can’t worry about everything. I can only ever worry about doing my job, and my job is to calm this guy down and try to stop harm from coming to him.
“You are very strange, Ariel.”
I laugh at that, the judgement coming from a massive, scaled and fanged alien king who is probably dying from internal injuries he doesn’t even know he sustained. He still has the sippy cup, though, and he’s still drinking from it, so that’s something I managed to do for him. That’s a difference I made. You have to hold on to the little things.
We sit there, silently, me next to him, and we wait for Fate to play her next card. At any moment, a shot could ring out and this could all be over. He could be over. I could be over.
