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“What the fuck is happening?”
“Good to see you awake,” Rex says with a broad, shit-eating grin. He doesn’t bother to actually look at me. He doesn’t need to. He knows he has me right where he wants me.
“Seriously. What is happening. Where am I? What is going on?”
Rex looks at me over his shoulder for a brief moment before returning his attention to the controls. “I have rescued you from the alien defilers. I am taking you home.”
I don’t want to ask the next question, but I know I have to.
“What did you do to the alien defilers?”
“We killed them and we took this auxiliary ship. Their main vessel had several. We’ve taken most of the ships, crewed with three and four soldiers…”
I interrupt his tedious explanation of what I am sure he imagines to be his brilliant plan.
“You killed Kahn and Arkan.”
“Of course. It was the only way to secure you. Once we saw you, our plan was finalized. Bringing you back to your father, returning you to Earth is all that has ever mattered. And we are returning with an incredible cache of technology that will see your father’s dominion grow. This is a triumph beyond triumphs. In fleeing your wedding, you set a chain of events in motion that has brought us knowledge, power, and riches beyond anybody’s wildest dreams. You will be celebrated, Stella. You will…”
Rex keeps talking, but I am not listening. Everything sounds hollow all of a sudden. The notion of a universe in which Kahn no longer exists feels like a very cold and miserable one. I once thought the worst thing would be to get caught and taken back to my father’s house. I thought it would be worse than death.
Now I know that’s not the worst thing. The worst thing is being taken back to my father’s house and knowing that I got the only creature in the universe who ever loved me killed in the process, including his family.
“And how did you get me without waking me up?”
“You’ve always responded well to sedatives,” Rex says. “It was not hard to slip some into your food. It also wasn’t all that hard to slip some into theirs.”
So it wasn’t a fair fight. They drugged us all, and…
“What about the other girl?”
“What other girl?”
I clamp my lips together. Arkan must have kept his mate away from the soldiers. I haven’t really seen Arkan’s pet since I woke up. That was smart. A contingent of horny men is a clear and present danger to any female on a ship. Either that, or Rex is just so single-minded and hyper-focused that it hasn’t occurred to him to think about anybody besides me. That’s possible.
“Why didn’t you take the big ship?”
“We couldn’t work the controls,” Rex says. “The Voros ship is quite different from the other ones. More complex. More advanced. Don’t worry. We’ll retrieve it later. Now that we have this ship capable of leaving the planet, our scientists will be able to replicate the tech, and…”
I tune out again. He’s just so pleased with himself he doesn’t notice my lack of response. He has an almost rapturous expression on his face. This is the peak of his career. My father will reward him richly. He’ll probably have an entire city quarter to his name by the end of this. I’ll be married off to the highest bidder with the most power — though that might change, given the fact that my father will now be in possession of alien technology.
I feel the sickest, most crushing sensation as I realize this is all my fault. If I had not run away, I would never have been alien abducted, and the soldiers would never have come into contact with Kahn and Arkan. My decisions have led to so much suffering, including my own.
Maybe my father was right. Maybe I would have been better off married. If I had let him have his way, Kahn and Arkan would not have any humans to worry about besides the ones they want to worry about. They wouldn’t be dead on their own family ship now, their bodies floating through deep space millions of miles away from me.
12HOMECOMING
“We are home, Stella.”
The journey must have taken weeks, but I have been almost entirely numb for all of them. Even when we risked re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere in this relatively dinky little craft, I didn’t particularly mind if we all burned up. It felt like it would be a correct sort of thing to happen, really. All the fight has gone out of me, and Rex’s latest words bring me only more despair. I don’t want to be home. I don’t want to be anywhere. I feel absolutely adrift from everything, as if I, myself, have ceased to mean anything. I don’t belong here.
We land in triumph, probably. I don’t really notice or care. There’s always a lot of yelling in the city. Sometimes it’s excited yelling, sometimes it's more like murderous screams. It all just sounds like noise to me as I am flanked by soldiers and escorted ‘home.’
My father’s residence is one of the few entirely intact and repaired buildings in the city. Once upon a time it was a library. I know this because the letters of the word still remain on one of the ornately carved parapets. It was probably something else before a library too.
It is heavily guarded, of course, but Rex and I are well known enough that even after all this time my father’s guard does not have the balls to stop us or ask questions.
I cry softly to myself as Rex leads me back into my family home. I will not be making another escape anytime soon. The eyes of dozens of soldiers are on me, and the cold gaze of dozens upon dozens of cameras are also tracking my movements. Rex leads me into one of the many vestibules, a place of theoretical privacy. Once upon a time these made a nice place to study or take meetings. Now they are a good place to contemplate the end of all things.
