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I curse under my breath, loathing how complicated this situation has just become. It was already a mess, but now, with Galactor minions skulking around the planet, the stakes are even higher. I cannot allow them to make a mess of this pristine planet, pollute the time line, and potentially make it impossible for me to be rescued.
I cannot kill any humans, but I can kill them. I have to kill them. That is a little silver lining to an otherwise difficult situation. Once again, I have prey to hunt. I am thrilled at the prospect. But… I also have the human to protect. She cannot be returned to her tribe. They would likely kill her on sight, and then I would have to kill them, which I am already very tempted to do. If not for the order not to disturb the timeline, the chief of that village would be wearing his guts as a necklace. However, he seems to be an prolific breeder, and there is every chance that his genetics have an important role to play later in Earth’s history. So I must leave him the use of his testicles, even if he deserves to have them removed violently and pushed back down his screaming throat.
With thoughts of Tres on my mind, I return to the cave. There, I find that she has woken. She’s sitting up, looking alert. She is strong, this little human, even if her flesh makes her weak. But what do I do with her now? I have an impulse to keep her with me, but like the desire to kill Trelok, that may not be one I can give into. Certainly not in the long term. She needs to be with other humans. There is that tribe on the other side of the mountain. She may be able to make a home there. She might be able to find her father there, find some joy in her life.
“What am I going to do with you?” It’s a rhetorical question, asked more to myself than to her.
“Keep me,” she says. “You saved me from death, and so I am yours. I have no life but you.”
Her words are so impossibly sweet, and delivered with soft earnest tones which once again threaten to unmake me on the inside. I cannot keep her. Krave would never allow it. He would never remove her from the planet, not without some serious leverage. But I also cannot bring myself to tell her that.
She thinks I am her savior. She thinks I am some kind of dark god, a daemon who has saved her from vicious humanity. I cannot tell her the truth of my origin. I cannot get to know her any more than I already have. I have to keep my distance from her until I deliver her to some friendly humans who will treat her properly.
Tres
I cannot read his expression. I wonder if he wants to be rid of me. He saved me, but I am a pathetic little creature compared to his powerful being. Trelok did not have any use for me. How could Vulcan?
“I understand if you want me to go. I will go. I was made for the other side of the world, for the volcano and the ancestors, and…”
“I want to keep you,” he says. “But time is the master of us all, and I do not belong here, in this time.”
I don’t understand. “What is time?”
“What…” he begins to repeat the question then falls silent. “It’s the distance between one sunrise and the next. Many, many thousands of those have passed between this moment and the one I am from.”
“That does not make sense. Does it matter what the sunrises do if we are together?”
He makes a rough sound, as if I have somehow hurt him.
“You are an incredible little thing,” he rumbles. “Think of time like a place, but strung out very long and very thin, a line we must all walk along, a line which has gotten tangled up on itself and now threatens to choke the life that lives on it out of existence if it is not smoothed out.”
“You cannot change the coming up and the going down of the sun,” I say. I do not think I will ever fully understand what Vulcan means when he speaks. His head is full of things which are beyond me.
“Perhaps not, but I can try to fix what I broke. We need to move, Tres. There are enemies close by, and I do not want any harm coming to you before I kill them.”
“What enemies?”
“Other… other beings from the tangled time, the space beyond the stars.” I can see how much effort it takes for him to try to explain these things in a way I can understand. I feel so dull and foolish compared to his intelligence which burns even brighter than his gaze. “I was not the only thing to come here, but I will be the last to leave.”
