5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Z’Ree

I run until I can’t run any longer, then run some more. Frightened that the man is following me, I keep looking over my shoulder. Every time I do, I bump into something and soon, my entire body hurts. Still, I don’t stop, not until my legs give up on me and I collapse on the dirty floor.

Pushing myself against the pipes lining the wall behind me, they give off a sinister rattle, I change my mind and give them a wide berth instead.

The signs surrounding me are all orange and filled with ominous warnings. It seems I’ve wandered into the part of the ship where important things like air filtering are handled. I laugh at the irony. I could probably kill everyone on the ship if I messed with something in here. Too bad that would include me dying in the process.

Even after everything that’s happened to me, I don’t want to die. I’ve never had the chance to live in the first place!

I’ve always been running and hiding. All I remember is my parents looking over their shoulders wherever we went. We always lived on the outskirts of cities, never really interacting with anyone except for messenger bots and the few UGC officers tasked with protecting us.

I used to hate those officers for not doing their job properly. If they had, then the slave traders wouldn’t have found us! But the truth is, those males and females gave up their lives in attempts to protect us. It didn’t do us much good in the end but at least they tried. Since then, nobody has ever tried to help me for the sake of helping me. It was always about their own gain.

It’s stupid, really, this whole, ‘me wanting to live’ thing. I can’t ever have a normal life. There will always be someone hunting me down, wanting to take advantage of me. The less Silithrae that remain in the galaxy, the more valuable I become. The slavers will never give up.

I smirk as I remember their stupid attempts at creating more of my kind. It’s impossible. No amount of cloning or forced breeding can ever produce viable offspring. The only way a Silithrae can conceive is with their crystal kin, the one person in the entire galaxy that is destined to be our partner. We can enjoy ourselves with whoever we want, but there can never be a child unless our crystals resonate at a certain frequency. This was the main reason our population was in decline even before the slavers began to hunt us. And after they did…

There’s no hope for my species anymore, just like there’s no hope for me.

I whimper like the pathetic wreck I am. I knew the human was setting a trap for me and I still walked straight into it. Has the galaxy ever seen a more stupid creature? Perhaps extinction is just what I deserve.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t make sense of the man’s behavior. He’d caught me. He had me right where he wanted me. Cornered, with nowhere to run. Then he…apologized? And let me go?

I don’t remember everything he said, I was too overwhelmed with panic to focus on his words, but I’m fairly certain he said he was sorry. At that moment, I thought he was apologizing for what he was about to do to me. I’ve heard that one before. “I’m sorry I have to punish you, but you’ve been a very bad girl.” I shudder. Those bastards even had the nerve to appear apologetic when saying it.

But the human didn’t say that. He said he was sorry for scaring me.

I rub my throbbing forehead. The pain residing there is getting impossible to ignore, just like the dryness in my throat. I should have at least taken the stupid water he’d brought for me. But what if it wasn’t water? What if he’d put something in it to knock me out?

Drugging me would be the smartest move for him. He wouldn’t have to chase me down. He could just play the good guy, give me the drink I so desperately craved then wait for me to pass out. Then he could easily take me to wherever these guys are keeping their slaves. I haven’t come across such a room while searching the ship yet, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. They were docked with a floating slave auction, after all. They were hardly there for sightseeing.

His attempt at being nice to me is what scares me the most. I’ve met a lot of masters in my years of being a slave to know there are two kinds.

The first are the brutes. They have a short temper, yell all the time and beat you to a pulp for the slightest mistake. Or beat you for no reason, just because they feel like it. Still, they are preferable to the second kind. The smart ones who rarely raise their voice, who smile and act all nice and friendly. The cruel ones.

These types won’t simply beat a person. They’ll figure out what that person is most afraid of and use it against them.

Scared of tight spaces? Get shoved into a small box for a week.

Can’t swim? Let’s see how long you last in this water tank with sides so smooth there’s no way to climb out. Not even when you claw at the surface so much you break all of your fingernails. You can just about push yourself off the bottom of the tank with the tips of your toes, but the reprieve only lasts a few seconds before the water closes over you again, getting into your nose and mouth and lungs and…

Fuck!

I punch the nearest wall, the pain from my bruised knuckles helping me return to the present. I’m not in that fucking tank anymore. I’m free, at least for a little while, before the crew of this ship comes after me.

The human from the storage room must be one of the cruel manipulator types. He’s pretending to be nice in order to find my weaknesses, so he can use them against me later. That’s the only logical explanation for his behavior. I think?

What else did he say? That I was safe? That nobody would hurt me? The mere thought of that is ridiculous and yet…he’d sounded sincere. Maybe he’s a good actor?

He did let me go, though. He promised not to come after me and he hasn’t. He’s known about me for more than a day but, as far as I can tell, the crew still hasn’t started hunting for me. Either he didn’t tell them about me or he convinced them to leave me alone. But why?

The continuous loop of questions buzzing through my mind are only making my headache worse. I’m dehydrated, exhausted, and…hallucinating?

I must be hallucinating, because there’s a huge insect staring at me. The situation feels so surreal that I don’t even scream. I just watch it. It’s watching me back, its mandibles clicking.

I stifle the hysterical laugh building up inside of me. I’ve imagined dying in dozens of different ways, but being eaten by a giant blue insect certainly wasn’t on the list.

The animal cocks its triangular head, letting out a quiet chirp. A few seconds later, two more creatures appear in my field of vision. They’re all blue, with many, many long gangly limbs, some of which end in sharp-looking pincers. They look about four or five feet tall. If I was standing, they’d reach somewhere around my chest but, as I’m currently curled up in a ball on the floor, they’re all looking down at me, seemingly as weirded out by my presence as I am by theirs.

They exchange clicks and chirps and must conclude that I’m relatively unimportant because they all turn away.

Stupefied, I watch them claw at a thick cable running along the ceiling. They don’t seem worried about getting electrocuted. The lights flicker as they separate one end of the cable with their sharp pincers. Without sparing me another look, they set off, dragging the severed end of the cable along. I stare off in their direction, mouth agape long after they’ve disappeared deeper into the underbelly of the ship.

Fuck me. Did that just happen or did I imagine it? Am I truly hallucinating from dehydration? I don’t feel like it, but do crazy people actually know when they’re crazy?

Fuck. I really need to get some more water. If I’m hallucinating bugs now, what will I see later?