Page 6 of Essa

Right now, he's in there panicking, thinking he took it too far. I'd never tell him I can feel those emotions. I think he might die if I did. He's hard enough to get close to without him knowing that I know it's all a front for how scared he is. Not that he knows what he's feeling is fear. He still thinks he can't feel it, and for the most part, he can't.

Make him think he's losing me? His fear skyrockets and masks itself with anger.

He was cloned from a super soldier made during the height of panic after the invasion. Two hundred years ago, scientists, attempting to make a human strong enough to beat off the alien species that invaded us, created a subsect of humans taller, stronger, and more aggressive than any other. Some of their DNA was kept to be experimented on because some people just can't help themselves.

I might've been in the same unit as Adam, but we were handled differently. I was experimented on long before the invasion as scientists tried to give humans super senses. I was given heightened senses to see how far humans could be stretched in that direction. Adam had his emotions carved away, and his responses to fear dulled.

Military researchers wanted to see if they could make living, breathing killing machines. Their only mistake was making us bond. They thought having one person who could center the emotional messes they created would help to keep them controllable.

They thought they could use me to make Adam comply. And it worked until they hurt me. I wasn't even hurt that bad, just one intern overzealous with the controls to my slave collar. But that was enough for Adam, so he found a way to break us out.

I clench my teeth and force my thoughts away from the bad memories of our past. We're moving on now. We're going to be better, do better things.

When we get our new identification cards and have the implants that mark us as clones removed, I'm making Adam talk to someone. I don't know who, and I don't know how. But he's going to talk through his problems because he has so many. His plan of hiding all of them underneath this false bravado is exhausting.

"What are your impressions?"

I pause in the hall near an open door when I hear Alik's question from inside. It's not too hard to figure out he's probably asking for impressions about Adam and me. Not that we left a good first one. Adam couldn't stop staring them all down and wanting to fight them. His jealousy would be cute if it didn't risk us getting booted from this ship.

"I don't know." It's a feminine voice. She doesn't sound as melodic as she did when she was asking Adam who put a slave collar on him, but it's the same woman, I'm almost sure. "Adam, the dark-haired one, was angry. I don't know if it was at the situation or me in particular."

I have the answer to that one. Both. I thought the golden woman was pretty, and the aura she was giving off seemed more than a little interested in us. That was enough for Adam to decide he hated her, or at least strongly disliked her.

Does it matter that while we were on Earth, he'd sometimes bring a woman back and want to share her between us? Nope. Apparently, he can want someone to join us, but me even thinking about it is off the table.

"Seth seemed kind enough, but he's not in charge of their pairing."

"The nice ones never are," Jovi says.

I don't like being told I'm not in charge, but it's more or less the truth. Adam listens to me, but only when he chooses to, and he makes it abundantly clear that he doesn't need to plenty of times.

"They're hiding something," Alik says, and my heart races. We're hiding plenty, but none of it has to do with them taking us to the aliens who can give us new identities.

"Are you going to eavesdrop all day?" a disembodied voice beside me asks.

I jump, letting out a yelp of surprise as the air beside me shimmers until the same scaled male that Adam called a lizardstands next to me. He's not completely naked, which means a pair of boxers snuck up on me. Weird. He laughs at my reaction, and unfortunately, my yelp alerts everyone else that I'm hiding out in the hallway.

"The pendant's red, Phial," Alik says, lower hands on his hips as he stands in the entryway to the room they're all in. "Don't bother them."

"So I just leave him to stand in the hall?" Phial asks, his feathers rustling on top of his head.

"No, it's fine," I say, hoping not to strain relationships even more. "The red is for Adam. He's in a mood." I press my lips together and take in a deep breath. "He's always in a mood. But we aren't keeping secrets. Nothing more than the usual amount of secrets that two clones who broke out of a research facility might have."

Alik looks at my body up and down, deciding something for himself. He tilts his head back toward the room he had come from. "Want to come talk with us? We're eating right now."

"Yeah, actually, that sounds nice." I rub the back of my neck, ignoring the warmth on my face. I'm too pale to care much about it. I get even slightly too emotional, and my cheeks are bright red. Before I enter, I pause and cringe a little. "Adam's probably going to come find me at some point, and he won't be happy."

Alik looks down at me, his lips pressing more firmly together as he assesses the situation. "Will he hurt any of us?"

"He shouldn't, but…"

I wince as I try to figure out how to say the next part without making it seem like there will be issues between us and the golden female. I don't want there to be issues. No, what I want is to maybe get to know her, have Adam admit he thinks she's kind of hot, too, and maybe figure things out from there. But that's wishful thinking, something I try not to do.

"The golden female."

"Essa," Alik cuts in with her name, and I nod.

"Essa can't be near me," I say, crushing my eyelids together and bracing for any sort of anger at that statement.

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