1. THALIA

Iscrunched myself into the tiny cockpit that was only meant for one warm body, and that warm body was a body my size, not the 25XA’s size.

I hadn’t gotten much of an education on the specific species of the “Gestalt.” I had been told a few things, and the rest I had picked up from the under-thoughts of my main handler. For some reason, He had been very preoccupied with the dragon-like 25XA, specifically one who was tall, male, and the color of twilight. Preoccupied enough He hadn’t been able to keep it clear of our interactions.

So preoccupied I’d actually been able to get glimpses of the 25XA from the touch of His mind against mine.

I had more immediate problems. Prince Red there was Gestalt, and the Gestalt didn’t like Humans. Reason? I had no idea. Wasn’t like we’d ever lost track of a space probe, so they couldn’t be pissed that Voyager 2 ran over their dog or infected some remote colony with Earth microbes or they were offended by our taste in music.

The Gestalt also did not like the Greys. But for all He had tried to play dumb about why that was, Greys were lousy liars. They knew damn well what the Gestalt’s problem was. They just didn’t understand why it was a problem, ergo, they didn’t know what the problem was.

I didn’t know what “it” was, but the entire thing gave me HOA pissing match vibes.

Were all 25XA this big? He was thick, hulking, broad, wrapped in muscle and coated in scales that gleamed like smoldering, dark rubies from some dragon-horde in a fantasy movie. Even though we were coated in dust, debris, and collapsed secret base, he shone. After looking at the featureless, spindly, creepy Greys for so long, he was dazzling.

He had a tail that ended with a finial and it shifted shapes and textures. His long, slender fingers were tipped with gemstone claws and a final digit that ended in a crystalline claw. His eyes were the color of tropical sunset sky, and the iris was a slit, not round, giving him a menacing, reptilian look. The colors of his scales shifted as he spoke, reflecting his mood and tone, and his voice was raspy as it came out of his throat like wind from the back of a forbidden cave.

He stank (so did I, probably), but under the scent of filth, his scent reminded me of cranberry and holiday spices.

Lace something with cranberry and I wanted it. Didn’t matter what it was. Once a boyfriend had even cajoled me into sucking his dick by violating a can of cranberry jelly to give it a good coating of flavor. Which had been creepy, weird, and desperate, but I’d appreciated his commitment.

Had not improved my gag reflex or the fact he refused to deal with the lower lawn.

He’d been angry. I’d gotten angry. Had been a prelude to a breakup.

Was this 25XA also the owner of a proportionally enormous red trouser submarine?

You really shouldn’t be curious about alien anatomy. And you really don’t want aliens being curious about your anatomy. It turns into the worst game of show me yours and I’ll show you mineever.

Present company smelled like the holidays back home, and that was equal parts nice and heartbreaking, and I was done with feelings. No more feelings. No more feelings until I was back on Earth. Then I’d have all the damn feelings.

The Greys had always been curious about feelings. Emotional reactions bewildered them. Not because they didn’t have feelings (they did… sort of), but that they didn’t understand why feelings mattered.

Telepathic speech meant always understanding their meaning. There was no missing their logical understanding of why, yes, you are indeed angry/upset/afraid/whatever else.

They acknowledged your feelings like they acknowledged the existence of a chair.

Screaming and pleading and crying into the abyss eroded everything Human inside you. Cruelty and torment you can fling yourself against, and still feel yourself, because it makes you aware of what’s being violated.

Screaming at a Grey is screaming at a sentient wall. There is no cruelty behind it, and you know there is no cruelty, because their mind is in your mind. Upset by your feelings? Their solution was to simply stop having feelings.

It wasn’t that the Greys gave zero fucks. The Greys had engineered all the fucks out of themselves.

Hehad been fascinated by feelings more than the others, but He hadn’t been a regular Grey, either. Just like I hadn’t been one of their other Humans. Those other Humans got their memories chopped up, muddled, smeared. Or they were simply sedated.

I had made a deal.

And I’d never forgive myself.

Had the others been rescued, or had the 25XA space commandos blown shit up, pissed in a few Grey skulls, and left all of us to die?

Guaranteed none of the others, if they were still alive, would be wondering if I had survived.

I rubbed the probe wound on my neck. Still tender from a recent violation.

Never forget it was a violation, even if you complied.

Don’t want a feeling? Just don’t have it.

Hehad always given me more information than he was supposed to, and far more than he’d intended to. But he’d turned all that into his experiment.

Even using masculine pronouns had been part of the experiment.

He’d never given me his ‘designation’ (the Grey version of a name), but he’d been intrigued by how a pronoun (He) could substitute for a name in both our species’ understanding.

The 25XA glanced in the she’s still there way, then turned back to the console. The quickness of his attention jerked my mind back to the present.

His face was sort of Human. Strong jaw, nose, two eyes. His teeth appeared to be sort of Human, but were larger and the front ones at least were sharp. All the same… handsome. Or the Greys had just fucked with my standards.

But He had conveyed to me that many species in the Galaxy were “taproot” species. What Humans would call “humanoid,” and we all shared a number of genetic commonalities. But nobody knew if that was because of some impossibly ancient common ancestor, or if it was convergent evolution, or some combination of the two.

Hehadn’t told me any of that to share information. He’d only given information to watch my reaction to said information. My reaction had disappointed Him.

I’d learned not to ask questions, just like I’d learned to stop feeling.

I needed to stay focused on staying alive long enough to get back to Earth and flip them the finger from the middle of a busy metropolitan center.

Hewas going to come for me. He’d find me.

My brain spasmed in my skull. My probe-wounds throbbed, and my lower belly churned and clenched. Something like nausea twisted around my throat and up into my sinus and back behind my eyes.

Forget my life plan to secure work at an Antarctic research station as a meteorologist. New life plan: live in an extremely large city surrounded by millions of people. Tokyo sounded good. Maybe Seoul. New York City. Never go anywhere that wasn’t swarming with people and cameras. Try to forget this ever happened. Just be one of a million other Humans with tons of trauma they didn’t ever talk about or deal with. Bury that shit deep, deep, deep and let it come out in all sorts of self-destructive ways.

The 25XA wrestled himself out of the pilot’s chair. I yanked myself into a tiny ball to make room as he caught himself on a panel and held up one massive boot over my head. His tail caught the chair, and he managed to not crush me.

What a way to die: getting crushed by a dragon-alien boot.

Beat the alternatives.

Without a word, he rebalanced himself and went into the cargo bay. He seemed to fill the entire space. The floor shook with each of his heavy steps. My jaw rattled.

He yanked open one of the panels. A bunch of sparks showered the floor, and there was a hissing and gurgling sound.

He reached around inside the panel with his claws and tail. The hissing increased, then went shchhnnnnnnn…. He grumbled, jabbed the insides with his tail, and then stomped over to another panel on the floor. He ripped that up, rummaged, and smacked something in there with his tail.

Tail-smack/kick/slam: the final hope of all frustrated mechanics. Start with turn it off/turn it on, finish with kick it. Two sides of the same desperate please work coin. Or the to keep mechanic frustrated, turn over card.

My ears rang. The Greys preferred things polished, refined, minimal, efficient, quiet.

Another clang and he let out a curse in a burst of breath.

My heart rate jumped.

I started to hum The Itsy Bitsy Spider.

He stomped back to the cockpit.

My lower body clenched, and I instinctively steeled myself to feel His mental fingers contemplating every fold of my brain.

The mental fingers didn’t come. Instead, a wave of heat and heaviness and the scent of cranberries made me open my eyes again. I stared right at two very solid tree-trunk legs.

I tilted my head back.

His face arranged itself into a terrifying frown. All the little ruby scales around his eyes and lips shifted. He sort of had hair—it was more like fronds than actual hair, and it looked like he sat down with the bladed edge of his tail and went swish swish and tossed the shiny crumbs at the feet of local peons.

Life had more or less been shades of white and gray, with the occasional shock of color depending on the day’s procedure or chemicals involved. This guy was all shock and my jaw went slack and I may have made the same intelligent sound as a child being dazzled by a cake buffet.

“You are making noises,” he stated.

Maybe I’d even tell him the words so he could sing along while he squished me.

“If you know something about this ship, now would be the time to share that knowledge,” he added.

Oh, shit. He thought I’d been reciting what to do in case of an emergency? I was not a quick reference handbook. I was a vast reserve of nursery rhymes.

“Considering you knew how to get into the bay.” The statement couldn’t have been more pointed if he’d delivered it with the tip of that tail.

My neck was getting a cramp from maintaining eye contact. “If I had wanted to die, Big Red, I’d have stayed back on the asteroid.”

Maybe I should have let myself stick around for the Reaper, but that wasn’t the same thing.

“Ahane.”

“Excuse me?”

“My name is Ahane.”

Ahane. Felt like he’d just run those huge hands under my skin directly on the nerves. He said it sort of like a breathy growl. “Aren’t we on course for the Grey Homeworld anyway?”

Saying his name felt good, too. Like letting out a breath you’d been holding. Ahane.

“The ship has dropped out of cruise,” Ahane stated.

“…and?”

“We will not make it to our original destination. Our coolant and fuel leaks are too serious. We took damage when the asteroid base exploded. Unless you know some repair or tertiary system I’m not aware of, we’ll have to find somewhere to set down.”

“Don’t know a thing.” Bummer if this was how I died. But that was okay, and maybe it was even fair. I’d escaped, and He’d sworn I’d never escape.

I leaned my head back against the wall and sighed contently. I’d take this little victory to my cold, interstellar grave. I raised my middle finger.

See this? This is me giving you the cosmic finger. I escaped, you clammy Grey bastard. I escaped.

Something threw more sparks back in the bay, and a distinct hiissssss started. Ahane cursed and folded himself like biological origami into the pilot’s seat.

His fingers moved over the control. I watched from my grave-to-be. “You really have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”

His scales didn’t so much as flicker. “I do not.”

Wow. A guy who could admit he had no idea what he was doing. My insides proceeded to get more squishy.

He glanced at me again, and now his scales washed a bit more snow-touched.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” I said, head still tilted back. It relieved the aching pressure on my neck wounds. “I’m just at peace with my demise.”

“We are not dead yet.” His growl rattled the interior of the ship.

The thing that was trying to catch on fire in the back belched more sparks in response.

My feelings receded further.

Ahane sorted through the screens and controls until he managed to bring up what looked like a 3D model of a globe. The globe was mostly empty except swirls of assorted color tangled within it, and a few specks. He waved his hands over it to rotate it.

His scales went from smoldering, steady ruby to churning ruby at the base.

One of the panels blinked. The ship’s AI had come up with an option.

>> Recommend: Deploy Final Resort Distress Beacon

How about… no.

I shifted out of my numbness, crawled over to the chair, and smacked the NO option. Which was the Grey symbol for negative. The Greys didn’t use “no” all that often. They didn’t understand no.

The audible sound of Ahane’s tail sharpening said exactly what he was thinking.

I whipped around to face him. “You want to end up a Grey test subject, tell me. I’m just going to step outside first. I’ll warn you that the Greys were looking forward to that twilight-colored one of you showing up. I’m pretty sure you’ll make a lovely consolation prize.”

The thought of the twilight-colored 25XA had made Him clammy and moist and damp in the only type of arousal a Grey could experience. I’d vomited uncontrollably. He had put himself on endless repeat just to observe His reaction, and mine.

Even thinking about it made me clutch the console and dry heave.

But when the posse had shown up, none of the Greys had been aroused.

If Ahane was going to do something stupid like holler yoo-hoo, OVER HEEERRRREEEE, he could do it over my dead body.

Hehad escaped. I was sure of it, and I wasn’t going to give him a reason to explore whatever proto-fury or proto-rage he may be experiencing on my account.

I glared at Ahane. My fingertips squeaked along the console and his scales.

Ahane looked down at my hand.

His scales didn’t so much as flicker as he turned his attention back to the controls.