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I have the strangest feeling in my belly. It takes a minute to realize what it is, because it’s not something I’m accustomed to feeling: guilt.
I feel bad for sneaking out. I feel bad for taking advantage of Kahn’s kindness. I feel bad for creating a dangerous situation where any of us could have been seriously hurt or worse. I feel horrendous for getting caught by Rex. He didn’t know I was here, and now everybody knows.
I fucked up, and not for the first time.
But for the first time, it suddenly feels like my fault. And it suddenly feels like I care.
I mope back to the room, knowing that Kahn will return, and that when he does, I am going to be in trouble.
Proper trouble.
The kind of trouble that is going to make me sorry and sore.
9REVELATIONS
Kahn
The human twitches in my grip.
I thought I would kill him when I saw him touching Stella. I felt pure rage surge through me. Not the cool, collected murder urge I am accustomed to feeling. I have always been so logical and so in control of my temper. But when this man put his hands on her, I felt like an absolute animal.
Arkan puts a hand on my shoulder. I hear his voice in my head. Soothing.
“She’s safe.”
But she’s not safe. None of us are. Not while we exist in this uneasy truth with a pack of fierce hominids. Even now they are probably trying to break out of the room Arkan locked them in.
“Are the other humans secure?”
He glances at the bridge’s control panel.
“Yes. And Stella is back in your room. I’ve closed the doors. The ship is in a complete lockdown.”
For now. Until that pack of animals finds a way to pry the doors open and flood toward the bridge. I suppose, if anyone were to hear my thoughts, I might sound afraid of humans. I am not. I am afraid of what they will make me do to them. I will not be caught off-guard. I will not fall where others have fallen. And I will never, ever allow them to put hands on Stella again.
“Let… me… go…” the human rasps.
“Not until you understand that Stella is off limits to you. To all humans.” I flex my fingers and tighten my grip, cutting off a little more of his air. I wonder if he has ever been held this way. I wonder if he has ever been made to feel truly helpless. He is an older male, and clearly one who has excelled in the military. The way he gripped Stella was with an easy kind of ownership, as if he had every right to touch her. As if she belonged to nobody, least of all herself.
He does not respect her. She is a thing to him.
“You’re going to kill him.”Arkan’s voice enters my mind. I notice that he doesn’t intend to stop me. Maybe he is beginning to understand the nature of the burden we have brought upon ourselves by not returning this contingent of potentially hostile humans to Earth. I have tried to tell him over and over that they will never be tameable or controllable. He didn’t listen. I wonder if he is starting to understand now.
I loosen my grip ever so slightly. This gives the human the opportunity to start talking. He wants to explain himself. I don’t want to hear a word, but I know I have to.
“You don’t understand,” Rex says, his neck straining with the urgency of every word emerging from his throat. Again, I am reminded of how easily I could crush his windpipe. I probably should. The entirety of my being is currently being directed toward the task of refraining from doing just that. He deserves to die, but he also has information I do not have.
“Make me understand.”
“Let me go…. And I’ll tell you.”
“You will talk now.”
“Let me go…”
Held in a literal death grip, this human still believes he has a position of power to bargain from. I would laugh, if I had any capacity for amusement at all in this moment — which I do not.
“If you do not explain yourself, I will kill you and get the information from one of your underlings. Someone less willing to die for no discernible reason. You are trying my patience, human.”
