AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Nope,” Ree said, shaking her head. “It’s like something out of a science-fiction novel. In a minute, we’ll all be in chainmail bikinis, being sold as sex slaves.” Instead of sobbing or throwing a fit, she turned to face the room, legs crossed in front of her and leaning forward, looking hard at all of us.
“You have a plan?” Hiroki asked, tone lifting at the end, hopeful.
She shook her head. “Nope. But we’re damn well gonna make one. I’m not getting sold off to the highest bidder without a fight.”
It was with that in mind that we scoured the room, looking for anything that could be used as a weapon. Or pried off of something else, then used as a weapon.
The aliens, for their part, had been thorough. Every damn thing in the room was attached to the floor or the walls. Part of me wanted to worry that they seemed to be very experienced kidnappers, and maybe that was true, but a handsome twink with wire-framed glasses pointed out that they’d need to be prepared for zero-gravity situations in space, so it might not be as sinister as it seemed.
Or it might be exactly as sinister as it seemed.
I kept flashing back to the almost disinterested expression on the alien’s face when he’d caught me and before I’d passed out. Maybe alien faces didn’t work like human faces, but there’d been nothing on him that I’d have called an emotion. More like I was the iced mocha someone had ordered, and he was about to call their name and set me out on the counter for pickup.
Eventually, we all decided that our options were limited, but we did have one recourse. We were going to stick together, and we weren’t going to make things easy for the aliens. So instead of spreading out as they’d left us, we all doubled up, each sharing one of the big beds with one other person, and leaving eight empty beds close to the doors.
When that metal wall panel slid open and an eight-foot-tall blue guy walked in, I had to take a deep breath. In my drunken stupor, I’d thought the alien the night before was huge, and maybe this was a different alien, but fuck, he really was enormous. Just immense. No wonder the beds were easily big enough for two people each, and they might just be cots for these people.
And the dude was ripped, with abs like a male fitness model. Something about it looked... not like clothes, exactly, but the way it caught the light made his skin look hard, like he was wearing armor. His brow and cheekbones were sharp, and they had that same look—like if I made the mistake of punching him in the face, I would only succeed in breaking my hand.
But also, since he was more than two feet taller than me, I wasn’t sure I could reach him to punch him. I didn’t think hitting him in the giant meaty muscles was going to do anything. The tallest among us was Ree, model-height and wearing four-inch heels, but even she was just over six feet like that.
The alien had in his arms what looked like a white plastic washtub with handles on either side, and around his right shoulder was a circular mark that looked like a silver tattoo of an intricate mandala. It shone almost like it ran on batteries, flickering in the bright recessed lights in the ceiling, and I had to force myself to look away from it.
He glanced at all the empty beds, frowning at them and then giving us a look that reminded me of my stepmother’s most superior “are you fucking kidding me?” expression. He didn’t try to come at us, though, just came to stand in the middle of the room, then hoisted the tub.
When he opened his mouth, I half expected him to speak some alien language we couldn’t understand, and get pissed that we didn’t get it. The other half of me expected him to crack in two or speak in my Roman History professor’s voice, because there was still a chance this was a dream.
No such luck. His voice was inhumanly deep and mellifluous, and while he spoke English with some hesitation, he did it well. “I am Crux. This is food. You will be fed... thrice. Thrice daily, as that is your way. The trip home is twelve days long. You may use these facilities as you wish.”
And then the motherfucker turned and walked out, ignoring the rush of questions and demands we all threw at his retreating back, as though the cacophony of eighteen voices didn’t even register in his mind.
So the aliens knew English. And they didn’t give a damn about what we wanted, clearly. I didn’t want to think we were on our way to some kind of intergalactic slave market, but with my limited—read nonexistent—knowledge of aliens, it was hard to imagine what else they might want with us.
“These facilities” turned out to be a couple bathrooms at the back, one of which had a shower that seemed to work by buzzing really loudly—but it did work. I guessed other than that, he meant, what, the beds? There was sure as hell nothing entertaining there. No TV, no books, no nothing. Our phones all died on the second or third day, so instead, we all took to telling stories. And since most of us already spoke it, teaching Kenosi and Genevieve English, as much as we could.
Kenosi took to it like a champ, desperate to have a way to communicate with people. I could feel a kindred spirit in the way he leaned into people and watched them avidly as they talked. He was as desperate for human contact as me.
Genevieve was less interested. More listless and miserable, and spent a lot of her time crying, which... it was hard to blame her, even when listening to it started to give me a headache. We’d been abducted by aliens, for fuck’s sake.
If I had anything more than a dead-end job and a crappy apartment to go home to, I’d probably be crying uncontrollably too. Given the giant icy rock on Genevieve’s ring finger, she just might have something she wanted to get back to.
The days passed like that.
True to his word, the alien—or one of a handful of other aliens—brought us food three times a day.
Us? We tried it.
Tiny Hiroki tried to slip out behind the alien bringing the food when his back was turned, but he was brought back in seconds later by another who’d been waiting outside. All he’d gotten a look at, he told us, was a metal hallway with another few doors.
Ree threw herself at the big guy, Crux, smacking him with her purse and just generally trying to cause havoc. The asshole had laughed—laughed!—at her, even as she tried to scratch his eyes out.
He’d put her over a shoulder and finished the food delivery, then tossed her onto the bed she was sharing with me, grinning as she bounced. “It will be most amusing to get you in the lab, little one,” he’d said, and walked out.
And... what the hell?
The lab?
The lab?
