Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
“I wish I could see your faces,” the voice on the other end says. “Smug Psyons suddenly realize they don’t actually rule the universe just because they have a slightly better than average sense of time.”
My blood runs cold. I know that voice. It is the voice I heard in my captivity for hour upon hour. It is the voice that promised me pain and delivered it in abundance.
“We are going to board. Do not try to resist. Our weapons are locked on and I can promise that unlike yours, ours will be effective.”
“They have lock on us,” Aric confirms. “Six times over. We could try to jump, but we’re at short range and they’d detect our energy signature.”
“We can step into the home world,” Drak reminds us. “We don’t have to stay here and wait to be boarded.”
“Then they get our empty ship,” I say. “No. We stand our ground. We prepare ourselves.”
“Maybe we put some pants on,” Aric says.
“We put some pants on,” I agree with him.
* * *
By the time we are boarded, we are all wearing pants.
They decide to enter the ship via a phase transition, a transport mechanic that raises all kinds of questions as to whether or not the people who arrive are the same ones who left, but for once none of us are interested in philosophy.
Three DC citizens arrive. They are lizard-like in their appearance, even more scaled than we, with large eyes set on heads the sizes of unpleasant domes. These are distant cousins of ours, and like any family, the fighting between our kinds is all the more vicious.
They arrive armed, of course. They have weapons trained on us with obvious threat, and more than a hint of smugness. They think they have overrun us. They think they have out-maneuvered us. Their arrogance is extreme. It will be the end of them.
The DC who spoke on the speakers has made an appearance in person. He is heading up the group. I know his name. Alred. I know because that is what the technicians called him when he gave orders for me to be tortured.
“Last I saw you, you were in a containment chamber with lines coming out of every part of your body, screaming with pain,” Leader Alred says.
I decide to kill him.
He does not get a chance to wield a weapon against me. Neither do the other two. We step through space, glitching out of the world they believe is real, entering our home realm for a moment, and then re-emerging in their faces. To their frightened gazes, we seem to disappear and reappear while ripping into them.
I kill my torturer with my bare hands. My claws lengthen, my fangs extend. The illusion of the almost human maw breaks as my mouth becomes more like a bloody snout containing jaws flashing with multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth. It is all over in a matter of seconds. Their bodies are no match for ours. Scales and muscle and guns seem as though they will offer resistance, but they do not. Before we evolved psychic powers, we were a viciously predatory species.
“Well,” Drak says, wiping some blood and visceral tissue from his face. “That was… dramatic.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
The DC had forgotten we are still descended from ferocious primates, much like humans are. The first time they took me, they hadn’t forgotten that. They drugged me. They made it so I could not resist. My capture was carefully orchestrated. It was organized with respect.
Today, they thought holding us at gunpoint would be enough.
They could not have been more wrong.
* * *
Mara
The fuck did I just see?
I knew something was wrong when I heard voices. I sneaked out, looked through the room. I saw the copper lizard people wearing their long black coats, holding guns that looked like they’d be capable of ending all of us.
And then I saw Freak and his men do the most feral, vicious thing I have ever seen in all my life. They tore them apart, breaking bone, consuming flesh, rending the internal organs of those who came to attack them. There are bits of scale and bone and coat all over the bridge. They’re going to be cleaning up forever.
Someone grabs me by the collar from behind, wrapping a hand around my mouth at the same time. Fear spikes inside me. I try to call out for Freak, but it feels like a big heavy fuzz has descended into my mind. I’ve been rendered helpless in every sense.
“We’ll be going, I think,” he says.
In a flash, I am gone. Well, the ship is gone. I am still here. But I am looking at a much darker set of structures and I know in my gut this is not a good thing. Flashes of awful memory still zap through my mind. I have to assume that I am going to be hurt in return for what was done to these aliens’ leaders.