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I don’t know why I’m telling him this. I don’t need him to understand who I am and have become. Besides, he’s been through worse. I wasn’t created in a laboratory on a remote planet.
I was just a girl who got caught up in some bad luck. That happens to many people.
He takes my hand, and I try so hard to hold back tears. I hate him for our predicament, but it’s not his fault.
I’m stronger than this. Over the decades, I’ve built a fortified wall. I did it to protect myself. I did it to move on with my life.
News flash: no one moves on from the bad things in their life. They just learn how to deal with it.
I can deal with this alien. It’s just another thing that caught me off guard.
He rolls and sits up, and I can’t help but stare at his rippling abdomen muscles. He truly is a specimen to behold.
“You are different,” he says.
“You believe me?” I ask.
“Because of how I’m built, my eyes process information much faster than any human. One look, and I knew you weren’t like them,” he says.
But there’s a punishment for being so good. I can’t leave. Well, technically, I can. Except, Fassbender and Zakar would find me in hours.
It doesn’t matter how free I am, something always stands in the way.
He rises. His body towers above me, naked. His flesh is solid as a rock.
On Earth, of course, his outfit would be unacceptable. Here, life is savage and untamed. Naked is what he’s used to.
I’m not sure my body knows how to react. My eyes can’t stop staring. How can I want to run away from something so bad, yet be so curious that I stay?
I know the consequences, but they don’t seem to matter.
He chuckles and offers me his massive hand. I take it, and he hoists me off my feet. “I am Turin,” he says.
Carrying me up the stairs, he holds me with ease. “I’m, uh, Naomi,” I say.
Quietly, he carries me to another room. Once inside, he sets me down.
“This room is where they kept and observed us,” he says.
In the center are two beds. The rest of the room is empty and white. Near the cots, a large glass tablet lay shattered on the floor. I bend and trace my fingers over the pieces.
He says, “They showed us violent images. Movies from Earth, cut to teach us how gruesome your species can become. They made us tap into our predatory mind. After years of this torture, anger became our core emotional state.”
I stand and face him. “I don’t like this place,” I say.
“Come, I’ll show you more,” he says.
Again, he leads me into a room nearby. Inside are tablets that are still barely running. “Spare battery power,” he says, tapping against the transparent screen.
He pulls up footage. Violent footage. The scientists who came before us were no scientists at all. They were paramilitary. Trained to antagonize and abuse.
Oh, God. Is Fassbender part of the same group? Did he bring us here, knowing he’d need our expertise this time around?
My first instinct is to look away, but what I’m seeing is real.
Far too real.
The paramilitary thugs beat the aliens. Every last one of them. They ridicule and torture them. Wearing masks, they shock them with electrified rods.
