38. CHAPTER 38

Icouldn"t remember much after that. I think I fell asleep, though I couldn"t tell by anything other than feeling the gunk build up inside my mouth. Zai bandaged my wound with a cloth. Outside, he was taking some strange-looking bloated creature from a net. I assume those are supposed to be fish?

"Mind if I help?" I asked, feeling better aside from the dull ache of the wound.

"That won"t be needed. You should focus on healing. We don"t know the owners of this place, and if I"m correct and we are in the Rackni lands, then we don"t want to get captured. They"ll kidnap you and breed you for certain."

"Jeez! What happened here? Aren"t you all Valisian?"

"I believe they crashed here who knows how long ago and have been unable to escape. Or perhaps, they came here willingly." Zai shrugged. "All I know is that some of the plant life here causes a slow deterioration of the mind. I imagine that being trapped here, they must have eaten some before realizing their mistake. I do not know when they began calling themselves Lucanis and Racknis or when they began to fight one another. All I know is that Rackni have been kidnapping the omegas among the Lucanis and raping them to breed them and the Lucanis had enough."

"If they"ve been trapped here I sort of feel sorry for them."

"Don"t. Whoever they were before they came here is long gone. The only thing that can be gained from being here is knowledge and very important medicine, which I now must sadly abandon to save myself."

"You came here for medicine?"

"Yes. Though we were meant to land exactly in the region the plant grows in, our systems went haywire and we crashed a long way away. I suppose it was a blessing and curse. The plant grows in a region that is so harsh we would have died in hours. The curse is that we landed near these primitives." he heaved a sigh. "It"s not as if I dreamed of going to sleep in the end. I knew I would one day die. but dying without achieving what I set out to do is unforgivable."

"I think I heard that phrase used before... going to sleep."

"Valisians who are lucky enough not to die an unnatural death eventually succumb to sleep instead."

"So they just sleep and not die?"

He nodded. "Family usually care for them by placing them in a safe location."

"That"s something I can"t even begin to comprehend." I watched him continue to work. "Are you sure you don"t need any help? I think I"ll lose my mind if I lay in bed all day."

"We won"t be staying long. We have only a few hours before we"re trapped here for a few more centuries. I"m cooking us something to eat, and then we"ll leave," he said, slicing the animal open and yanking a bunch of greenish goo from the inside. After slicing the eyes off, he tossed it in the fire. He followed with the second before looking up, but not at my face. His eyes lingered on me, but below...

I looked down and saw spotting the rear end of my pants. I gasped my heart in my throat. It was official. I"ve lost my baby... I felt like my body was numbing, the feeling you get when your leg is about to fall asleep, but it was all over my body.

"I"ll clean the tunic," he stood and approached.

"No," I said, getting into the water and kneeling, using the cold liquid to scrub my clothes until a small stain persisted. I sat down and just stared into the woods across the way. "I want Lorvian to know what these people did. I want him to come back here and kill every last one of them," I muttered my wishes more to myself than the man playing with the fire nearby.

"I think we should leave now." He pulled the charred meat off the fire, wrapped it in cloth, and soaked it in the river. They sizzled as he placed them in the sack he carried. He put out the fire and led the way.

We walked away from the cottage, and now that we were on rocky land, my bare feet were taking a beating.

"Lorvian really wanted this child," I whispered as we continued on. "He was happy to tell me about it, for sure."

"What of your happiness?"

"I was happy, too. I finally felt like I was building something that was mine—my own family, as strange as it was."

"You don"t know if you"ve lost it. We"re very resilient if you didn"t know," he replied, pushing ahead. "It will take much more than a single arrow to kill it."

"I keep hearing about the healing capabilities of your kind, but Travol women lose their babies by Valisian men all the time, so much so that Lorvian turned to me, a man."

"Your kind?" He stopped and looked at me. "I knew it. You"re not Valisian."

"No... I guess I"m kind of one. I"m a human... or was...but something happened... actually, a lot happened. It"s hard to explain, I guess the long and short of it is that some Valisian scientist experimented on me and it seems to have worked more than expected."

"I see." He kept moving. "I thought perhaps Valisian omegas outside the planet had evolved to be much smaller, and your legs were strange." He chuckled. "It makes sense now. Though the thought of an alien transforming into one of us is quite fascinating." He stopped again and held up his hand for me to stop. "Hide!"

We ran for the large bushes and trees and vanished inside. Those freaking armored soldiers were ahead, but I don"t think they saw us, though they were still searching for us. Zai tapped my shoulder and gestured for me to follow him. We crawled along the ground away from the group, and everything was going according to plan. We remained low and hidden until we stumbled upon one pissing by the tree.

"Damn," Zai exclaimed and summoned the same gust of force from before, pushing him back, and now we were on our feet and running away from the chaos.

"We won"t make it!" I exclaimed when the soldiers caught up to us. Zai turned to blast them away. One soldier leaped high over the tumbling bodies of the others and swung his large sword down, only for Zai to evade with another gust of darker swirling force.

I sauntered back and tumbled when another soldier came for me. My body tingled, and it was as if my mind connected to every nerve in my body, and it rushed through a force of power. I felt my hand around his neck, squeezing. I felt the blood stop and the windpipe give way.

"Oh my God," I breathed. The force released, and the armored man hit the forest floor, the armor clanking. "What the hell was that?!"

"We must hurry!" Zai grabbed me and ran. We climbed over large branches until we reached the edge of the woods, and I saw a pod standing upright nearby.

"Oh my God!" I pointed ahead. "It"s one of the pods!" I ran toward it, but something was off. Lorvian, Cormac, and Connor were nowhere to be seen. Reddish-brown blood was splattered along the floor, leaving a trail near a bush.

"What manner of creature left this behind?"

"Had to be Cormac"s blood."

"Ah, an alien. How odd."

"Odd?"

"I"m assuming your alpha is a Valisian."

"Yeah, he is."

"Yet he seems to have multiple alien companions…" He let it linger in the air.

I focused my attention on the medkit lying around. I looked for any sign that Lorvian was here while Zai was rummaging through the pod until the beeping noise stopped.

"There"s a chance your friends may return, but we don"t have time to wait, and I"m sure they know by now what could happen if they remain on this planet."

"Aside from the Lord of the Rings elves trying to kill us," I sighed, wanting this ordeal to be over. "What do we have to do?"

"There is a place created by Valisians long ago before their minds went sour, old tech that had been lost to the ages but may still work. I"ve traveled there from time to time." He went to the back of the pod, and what life left had gone dark after he pulled something from it.

"What are you doing?"

"We might be able to use this to power the old tech and send a stronger beacon," he held up a flat device with wires jutting from it like exposed arteries.

"How far do we have to travel to get to this place?"

"Thankfully, not far. Just up that path there." He pointed to the base of a small mountain, but a mountain nonetheless.

"That path looks like a damn mountain!"

"We can make it if we use our jīva to push us along. We"ll exert ourselves and won"t have much energy for anything else, but we will make it in a reasonable amount of time."

"Jīva? I don"t have that!"

"I saw you use it!"

I was confused, but then again, what else explained what happened in the woods?

He hesitated. "Get on my back." He looked over the ridge again, and sure enough, they were coming toward us. Those bastards just won"t quit!

"They don"t give up, do they?"

"Apparently not."

He didn"t look particularly strong, but I wasn"t overweight either. Hopefully, it was enough to get us through this.

He pushed off, and we glided fast and away from the pod.

We had been traveling for a long while when I noticed his breathing was labored and wheezing.

"I can get off if you need to rest."

"No, I"m fine, just tired," he breathed. "You must do the rest once we get there. I won"t be able to..."

I looked out into the whirlwind of dark energy. We were high up and near the summit of the mountain, and by the time he stopped and collapsed, it was getting dark. He crawled to the door and pushed it open. "Hurry," he said through his strained voice.

I rushed inside the rusted station, which looked like a small outpost. "It"s almost night," I said, unable to see everything.

"We won"t be able to leave come morning." He crawled inside and pushed the door closed.

"Okay, tell me what to do!"

"Insert this power supply into that chamber." He handed me the device and pointed at a tube ahead, and I followed his instructions as he told me how to insert it and what buttons to press. He remained on the floor, drained of strength.

The station whirred with life.

He crawled to the beacon and stood up, still weakened, as I turned on the comms.

"Lorvian! Are you out there? Hello?"

"Caspian?" Connor"s voice came on through the bits of static until he was clear.

"Connor? Where"s Lorvian?"

"I"m here," he said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. But something was wrong. His voice sounded haggard.

"What"s wrong? Your voice sounds strange?"

"Just flushing toxins out of my system. We"re on our way to your Nav Point. I"m glad you"re okay."

"Yeah, I"m glad you"re okay too. Did Cormac make it?"

"Yeah."

"Good... Lorvian... I think our… just hurry, okay," I said, too afraid to tell him I may had lost our baby.

I turned off the comms; better to do that than have him wring the news out of me. I was afraid he wouldn"t want me anymore, that I had nothing to offer, or that he may just decide I wasn"t worth saving. I knew this was all paranoia on my part, but what did I have to offer anyone? I was a fuck up and had been my whole life. I refused to listen to him and now my baby paid for it. He would have every right to kick me to the curb or worse.

A loud bang, and then another hit the door. "I don"t think that"s Lorvian," I said, on guard.

"No. They followed us here." Zai leaned against the console. "If your friends do not come soon, we are done."

I heard the ship"s engines barreling towards us. I waved, hoping he saw me through the station"s glass window, which was as wide as the station itself. I turned on the comms. "We can"t get out! They"re at the door!"

"Get down!"

We dropped to the floor as the guns shattered the glass around us, and Lorvian leaped across. Grabbing me, he dove into the airlock.

"Wait!" I said, pointing to Zai, who struggled to stand. "He"s a friend!"

I watched Lorvian go for him and bring him across. I still didn"t know if I could trust Zai completely, but he got me here, and I couldn"t stand leaving anyone to whatever fate these bastards had in store.