Chapter 9

Kleena

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Kleena hissed in a hushed whisper, still trying to keep a small barrier between her and her savior’s embrace.

She knew she shouldn’t trust him, especially when he seemed to be trying so hard to cop a feel, but she had no choice. It was either run by his side or risk immediate recapture. She wasn’t sure what was going on with this city, but as long as she was isolated, she was at risk.

The flames of the explosion lingered in her mind. She could still feel its heat, and remember her temporary relief upon escaping the rubble. But she still had nothing to return to and no knowledge of which direction she was going.

Behind her was the threat of her potential captors. The mere idea that one of them might have escaped the explosion to restart the operation scared her. In front of her was this new snake-like Niri that resembled the Naga of human folk tales. One whose alien appearance somewhat revolted her, in spite of how handsome his more humanlike features were. She knew he was different somehow without being able to articulate why. But that didn’t mean she could blindly trust him with her fate.

“Am I sure what’s a good idea?” the Niri questioned her. “Liberating you from the auction house? Blowing up the slave quarters?” Kleena pursed her lips, trying to find the words when he spoke again. “Because as far as I can tell, both of those things are well and truly behind us. So, I don’t know what I have left to apologize for.”

He again gripped her hand to keep her moving in the right direction, but she pulled away, stopping their movement completely.

“We have to keep moving,” the muscular figure pushed her.

She was somewhat impressed that his slithering tail could keep up with her human legs. She’d always been under the impression that Nagas were slower than humans, if only by a little bit. She figured they had less endurance, and she could use that against them in the future.

But as she heaved and gasped for air, the strange male hardly seemed winded.

Kleena heard footsteps coming from the streets nearby. And as the Naga looked from left to right cautiously, he pushed Kleena further into the alley, obstructing her view.

“What are you doing?”

The creature gripped onto her sleeves, trying to tug off her scant shirt.

Was she about to be violated here in the middle of this alley?

“Shh,” he hissed, before moving his hands carefully away. “If you’re running around in slave’s clothing, there’s no way you’re fitting in. We need to get you something more appropriate.”

She looked down at her shirt, noticing for the first time the soot and dirt that covered the already ragged apparel.

The Naga turned around nervously, breaking open a shop window.

Alarms rang out.

This was a spectacularly bad idea, Kleena thought. I’m going to move from slavery right to prison!

She looked from side to side, expecting a surveillance droid or an enforcer to appear.

“These should do.”

The alarms stopped and the Naga appeared, pushing open the broken door. Shards of glass fell off of the metal as the frame swung out. He held the most nondescript shirt she had ever seen.

“What was your plan if you didn’t have the shirt?” she cocked an eyebrow.

She gestured, and he immediately stepped aside as she walked into the old shop. Casually, and looking over her shoulder the entire time, she lifted the rags off, putting on the hooded clothing he’d stolen. She hated to admit it, but compared to the scraps, it was a good deal more comfortable.

“Oh please,” the Naga said behind her, as she walked out fully dressed. “You’re hardly my type anyway.”

She smirked at this in spite of herself. “Hardly your type?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You have no meat on your bones. You’re all scrawny and underfed.”

And without fully knowing why, Kleena brandished her hand and slapped the Naga. The collision rang out over the alley. For a moment, the creature processed the impact. Then a subdued smile appeared on his face, almost mocking her.

“You’ve got some venom,” he said, unable to hide his admiration. “Where we’re going, though, you’d better keep that to yourself.”

Rubbing dirt on his face, he rounded the corner, guiding her around the narrow and incomprehensible alley toward a commotion.

In the market sector, throngs of people had gathered, well past curfew, in between buildings and around neon lights. Kleena wondered how they weren’t concerned by the nearby break-in.

“Just keep your head down,” the Naga whispered in a gruff voice. “We’ll fit right in.”

“This is an outrage!”

Kleena’s heart leapt out of her chest. She turned in an attempt to make out the voice. Had she been discovered?

But the Naga just squeezed her hand, as if to say, “If they found us out, we’d be dead anyway.” His hand was warm despite his reptilian nature, and his grip on her hand was somehow soothing. She found herself at ease like this, and hoped he’d have reason to keep his hand on her like this for a while.

“You really want to upsell me on human femurs? We’re in the midst of a slave boom!”

Strange alien creatures she didn’t recognize haggled, hidden away from the public eye in dim corners of the market.

“My wares are exotic, and I can charge a fair price for them,” a curt voice replied. “If you’d like to try your luck elsewhere, be my guest.”

She could hear the jingling of coins and a soft grumbling.

This was what the city had tried to protect them from. She knew the darker corners had grown far more violent and contentious in recent months, but she never imagined this.

She felt a tug on her sleeve, and turned suddenly.

“We gotta go,” the gruff rescuer said.

Before them, a number of Naga slithered among the crowd, clearly looking for something—their pace frantic.

“I thought you said it was all behind us,” Kleena whispered, trying to duck away inconspicuously.

“If I thought it was behind us, would I really be telling you to blend in? Just—”

Kleena felt another tug on her sleeve and faced the Naga in confusion. But when her sleeve received another tug, this one far more insistent, she lowered her gaze, noticing a human child. As soon as her gaze met the young boy’s, the child began moving frenetically, rushing among the crowd.

She looked to the Naga for reassurance but only received a shrug in response. “I guess we follow?”

But she knew she had to move quickly, her eyes barely tracking the movement of the young boy, who had also garbed himself in brown cloth. In a mere moment, the child would be impossible to locate.

“Careful,” the Naga urged her.

Thankfully, the boy seemed to be leading them away from the authorities, into the smoky and dim alleyways they’d just escaped from. Only as Kleena followed, not sure if she had gone mad, she noticed the boy moved among the walls with a deftness and familiarity.

He wanted me to follow him. Didn’t he?

There was something in the boy’s eyes. It was momentary. Perhaps she’d only hallucinated it. It felt like a sense of understanding.

“You sure you’re not leading us into a trap,” the Naga beside her wondered.

Shifting quickly to avoid scraping herself against a metal wall, she looked up at her rescuer in confusion.

“You mean you don’t know who this kid is, either?” she hissed.

“I just figured you probably knew what you were doing.” For being a stranger, he was surprisingly trusting.

The more the pair moved and ducked, navigating between buildings and over puddles of rainwater, the more sporadic the child’s movement became. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear that the complicated trail was meant to shake them, not to guide them. But Kleena kept her faith, pursuing the child even when it seemed likely that she had just been imagining everything.

Finally, among the dark and nonsensically winding alleyways, Kleena glimpsed the orange light of a torch just ahead. Turning the corner, she found a small abode built into the back of a shop, the door unpainted and the windows dusty.

“Mom, we got another one! Two this time!”

Kleena froze.

Clearly, the Naga had been right. Mistaking the child for a helpful guide, Kleena must have trusted a demon. She imagined that soon they’d be losing their organs, left for corpses in an alleyway somewhere. Her sense of panic was unmistakable as she stared into the Naga’s eyes for reassurance.

But he wasn’t rushing them away from the situation, neither attacking or dodging back into the dark alleys.

Had he planned this all along? Had she fallen out of one bad situation only to find herself in an even darker place?

A well-complexioned woman, whose face was covered in sun blemishes, appeared in the doorway before Kleena could flee. She looked uneasily over the threshold.

“Were you followed?” she asked the child in an uneasy and urgent voice.

The boy shook his head in response.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” the woman demanded of Kleena and the Naga. “It’s not safe! Come inside before they find you!”