29. THALIA

If Ahane was Robin Hood, did that make me Maid Marion? And if I was Maid Marion, could I be the awesome early version of her?

Ahane locked the diner after us and we headed down the concourse towards the casino. I made out that the dancers were the sexy caterpillar that still made me feel confused and Miss Seven Feelers. I smirked and ducked to the side, grabbing Ahane’s tail.

He startled but didn’t try to yank his tail out of my grip. His scales flickered with surprise. The good kind of yes, ma’am surprise we both enjoyed.

I twirled the tip of his tail, which was now in several metallic bangly-shards, as I walked down the concourse with him. I sauntered past Miss Seven Feelers rattling his tail back and forth and she shot me the six-eye-death-stare and her feelers vibrated with audible rage.

Ahane caught on and fell half a step behind me, his scales betraying that he found my attention more than a little to his taste.

Miss Sexy Caterpillar made a multi-tuned tooting noise, and that only made Miss Seven Feelers do an angry cricket impression.

Bitch.

“Pick,” Ahane whispered as we passed into the realm of purple lighting and misplaced optimism.

I led him by his tail to a table that seemed like they might make him work for their money.

He made himself comfortable and then I made myself comfortable on his lap. Did not use his balls as an ottoman this time.

“Are your feet comfortable?” he whispered, sliding his tail up and down the back of my calf.

“Yes.” I hauled myself up to his ear so I could very faintly whisper, “don’t want you distracted.”

A tug on my calf and a High Dialect scolding for speaking in English. And probably for not upping the difficulty level by distracting him.

So the plain brother had a twinkle of ego.

Would have to step on it later.

Ahane arranged his pieces and I tried to figure out how the game worked while also keeping an eye on the other patrons. From the depths of my hood, I was able to watch the comings and goings of the casino and the other tables without it being obvious what I was doing.

There were a number of the same faces I’d seen around the concourse. The ones that never left. But now there were ones I hadn’t seen around in a while. And ones I’d never seen before.

The second group held the most interest. Those were the ones who would come and go. The best candidates for me finding my ride to somewhere else. Cozy up to them, get friendly, try to figure out if I could trust them with the oh, hey, I’m Human fact. I’d get one shot at that big reveal. And I was fine with however that ended. Death, probes, or survivor’s guilt.

Ahane moved some of his bright pink pieces, which knocked some small yellow pieces off the board and into the pool. This made the articulated on our right corkscrew his feelers so tight they became trembling springs sticking out of his head and his carapace made a szzzzzssss!!!!!! trilling sound that vibrated each of the twenty-six bones in my feet.

Ahane glared at him. The three other players kept playing.

The articulated made a disgusted noise, scooped his remaining pieces into their tray, and shimmied off, his feelers still coiled and vibrating with fury. The bouncers didn’t try to approach him as he headed for the booth to cash out his pieces. Instead, they tap-tap’d out of the way and let the angry amoeba/centipede shimmy and trill his way out onto the concourse.

On the next round, Ahane claimed half a dozen pieces from the pool. This particular go fish must have been a good go fish based on the reactions of the rest of the table.

A new player, this one also an articulated, took the angry tuning fork’s spot. The new arrival was a male of the same species as the hole-dancer. The difference between the males and females was striking, with the males having semi-permanent tentacles emerging from their bodies, plus stubby, shorter protrusions that were like legs and they looked like squishy, chubby giraffes when walking.

He made a glug glug noise similar to a non-specific Human male grunt of acknowledgement. I turned my head slightly to watch as he arranged his pieces. His face was confined to an oval patch of bright color at the end of his neck, with two rectangular eyes and what seemed to be three rectangular pupils, and a rectangular slit for a mouth that reached both edges of the oval patch.

One of the other players said, “Any news?”

So this guy was a regular, I just hadn’t crossed paths with him yet.

He looked in my direction for a few seconds, flecks of color moving along his body/neck.

“New cook and his assistant,” another player grunted, waving his arm in our direction, then he said, “News?”

“I may have news,” he glugged.

“Don’t fucking make us bribe you, you cheap [vulgarity, no translation],” the player directly to Ahane’s left said. “We’re not paying your network fees. Find profit elsewhere.”

Gluggy chuckled and bobbed up and down. Ripples traversed through his surface blubber.

Ahane tossed Gluggy Player one of his little green pieces. “Talk so they’ll shut up and play.”

Gluggy Player extended a flab of blubber and snaked the green piece to his own tray before Ahane could snap it back. Angry pink dots formed across his underside. The player to his right leaned over and said, “Don’t piss off Cook.”

Gluggy grumbled as the dots multiplied into shades of grudging purple. “More of the usual. But there’s news there are Humans in the Gestalt.”

All attention snapped to Gluggy Player. Ahane’s scales went a shade lighter. “Earth has joined the Gestalt? I didn’t give you that piece to tell us stories.”

“No,” Gluggy snapped back in an angry rubber-band voice, “it was all over the news. From 25XA.”

Ahane’s scales flared violent gold/red.

Gluggy rippled with smugness. “It seems a group of Humans were rescued and taken to 25XA, but instead of going into custody, the High Temple intervened, and that’s where they are.”

“A group?” someone asked, hushed. “I thought they hadn’t achieved space flight.”

“They were rescued, idiot,” someone else said.

“How many are the Greys taking?” the third said.

“More than we knew, it seems,” Gluggy said, clearly disgusted. “Cheap [vulgarity]. Guess you haven’t been home in a while, [vulgarity].”

Ahane’s scales rewarded him with an angry prickle of yellow.

The table looked at me. One leaned over to Gluggy, “He doesn’t think the Temple did him any favors.”

Ahane went nearly purple with fury. His tail squished my ankle. My toes went numb.

“For that,” Ahane growled, “I am going to make quick work of the table.”

I gave him a kick in the upper thigh with my toes but he ignored me. If he was going to talk that much shit, he better fucking back it up.

“Since I’m not allowed to kill you,” Ahane added to Gluggy.

Gluggy noodled his neck/body and bright blue spots moved around his face-oval, and he opened his mouth, which stretched the entire length of the oval and raised his head up in the process, revealing an intricate network of concentric bladed teeth-rings.

Oh WHAT THE FUCK.

“Calm down,” the player across from us said. “Just play the damn game. And keep giving news.”

“I’m going to focus on the game,” Gluggy said.

“You can’t tell us there are Humans in the Temple and leave it at that,” the player on Ahane’s left said.

“I don’t know much else. It’s happening on 25XA and I don’t buy the 25XA feeds. So you’re hearing what I’ve heard. There’s supposedly a Human Gestalt citizen now.”

“Bullshit.”

“That’s what I said. And she has a cat as a protection animal.”

Two of the players burst out laughing.

The conversation shifted to giving Gluggy shit for even listening to stupid rumors about Humans and cats. Ahane didn’t seem to react one way or the other to the news beyond it seemed absurd. Attempts to lure Gluggy to talk more about the rumors of Humans in the Gestalt failed: Gluggy really hadn’t heard.

They had faster-than-light travel, but news of Humans hadn’t reached every corner in… weeks? Months now?

Every corner of Earth would have known about aliens in under two minutes.

But beyond the scant details that Gluggy had provided—which made its way all through the station and set it abuzz—there were no other details to be had. Not who had done the rescue, what had happened to the Humans, how many Humans there had been, what had happened to the people who had brought the Humans in, nothing.

But it was still a few crumbs.

“So the Humans survived,”Ahane said, tone quiet. Suppressed.

“You mean you don’t know what happened to the people who brought them in.” I clarified.

He nodded once. “I would think—and I may be wrong—that if anyone other than Special Enforcement rescued them, that would also be rumor-worthy. So was that detail censored on 25XA and never made the feeds, and people are assuming it was GSE or…”

“Or your friends were charged with Sentient Trafficking and that’s being censored.”

His scales did a full-body grimace.

“It’s more than we knew before. Maybe you could trundle the ship to beacon space and stop at the first node and request 25XA news.” I offered.

“Of no use if it’s being censored,” he said gruffly. “Which it probably is being embargoed, because they don’t want word to get out that 25XA is providing asylum to Humans.”

“Is that really what’s happening, though?”

“We don’t know,” he said, frustrated.

“Isn’t the Temple kind of a Gestalt-wide organization?”

“Yes, but this is the Temple of 25XA that did all this.”

“Oh, I see. You mean that the other Temples might not agree, and the other planets might not agree with 25XA bowing to the Temple. So the whole thing is being hushed up while everyone figures out what the fuck to do.”

“Especially if 25XA is going to be accused of harboring Humans,” Ahane said in a hushed tone. Then he crystalized. “The Gestalt would pick a fight with 25XA for harboring Humans, but won’t do a thing about the Greys bringing the Humans into the Gestalt at all! And might hang my family for this. Easy targets.”

I put my hands on his chest. “You didn’t leave us to die. You did the right thing.”

“And who decides what the right thing is? Is the right thing the thing that gets my family and home cast out from the Gestalt? Is that really the right thing?”

I didn’t have an answer. The wound speared right through the heart.

He cupped my elbows and gave me a gentle shake. “I’m sorry, Thalia. That wasn’t fair of me to say. I don’t blame you or any of the others. We did what we did, and you didn’t have a choice in any of this.”

“I sort of did,” I said softly.

“Do not start with that,” Ahane bit out. “You were a prisoner. You survived. You were an experiment.”

I could have said no to everything. I could have fought and resisted the whole way.

He pulled me close for a slow, gentle, sweet kiss. He ran his hands over me. His scales flared a fiery rose shade, sparkling with frost and snow throughout the core. He spoke in High Dialect, the meaning of his words coursing through both of us. Then he rasped, “You survived. The entire cosmos can disagree and I will not change my mind on it. You didn’t intend to hurt anyone. Your regret that you might have is punishment enough. He never gave you a real choice. He only convinced you of it. Perhaps,” he whispered, pleading with me, “He was more Human than you knew.”

I hugged him tight and buried my face in his chest.

“You can cry,” he whispered.

“I don’t cry. Not anymore. He took it from me.” The sobs were locked up tight behind the dam and His disgusting mental fingers waiting to analyze it. They needed a precise balance of just enough soul to get the result they were after, but none of those pesky feelings.

Of all the things He had done to me, taking my tears had been the worst.

“Thalia,” he whispered my name in High Dialect. “Thalia, Thalia, Thalia. Beautiful, precious flower that was lost by fools.”

He stroked my hair and wrapped me in his arms and tail and didn’t let go.