Page 1 of A Monster's Light
Chapter 1: Dana
I fidgeted with the hem of my top as I waited nervously in the stark, white room. Security had patted me down thoroughly, taken any recording devices I had, and shoved them into a locked box behind the counter. The only electronic device I was allowed to keep was my temporary in-ear translator, something required to do my job.
Omnia Pictures, my employer, even had to prove that it didn’t have recording abilities, which was a good thing, both for them and for me. I didn’t want our conversation recorded at all. I had ulterior motives for my trip today.
Behind that heavily armored metal door was a Kadrixan warrior. The demon-looking aliens lived on another continent here on Vokira, the one with the large mountain range. They’d arrived only about five or six years ago, and Nova Vita had started trading with them. The colony would provide women for their yearly rut, and they would give us the ore they mined from the mountains. That treaty had ended about two years ago, just around the time my best friend, Julie, went missing.
She’d disappeared right after successfully fighting off a kidney infection. She’d been MIA for over a week when I got the message that she was finally being released from the hospitaland that she’d call me when she got home. But she never did. And she never replied back either.
Julie and I met during a memorial service commemorating those who’d been lost to the Big Tsunami. We’d both been teenagers then, but since our parents had left us both sizable sums, they’d considered us fully independent adults. On Nova Vita, majority status was determined not by your age but by your ability to support yourself. Lost and with no one else, we’d moved in together. Since then, we’d traversed life as sisters from different misters.
We’d lived together until I got hired officially at Omnia Pictures after three years of unpaid internship. Just in time too, because the nest egg Mom had left for me was starting to run out. One of the criteria for working there was that we had to live in company-approved housing in a company-approved neighborhood with no housemates, because of the sensitive nature of our work.
When Julie had gotten that infection and went to the hospital, all communications stopped. I figured it was because she couldn’t take calls in the hospital. When she continued to ignore me after the single message saying she was going home, I’d shown up at her place to find it empty. And by empty, I meant completely cleaned out.
I’d immediately gone to the nearest enforcement station to make a missing person’s report. They’d waved me off and told me she’d gone to the Utopia Project because of medical bills. One of the officers had boasted about arresting her himself for non-payment, and it had taken all my willpower not to punch him in the balls and end up being arrested as well.
I didn’t completely believe them though. There was no way she would’ve chosen the Project, not with what I’d told her about it.
The whole thing was a lie. At the time, we didn’t have proof, but the entire colony knew about it now. The Utopia Project wasn’t the perfect society where the government gave you everything you needed to live like it was advertised, but a thinly veiled excuse to strip rights from poor colonists so they could be used for anything the colony-owned corporations desired. A lifetime of free food and board in exchange for releasing your right to property and autonomy was just slavery repackaged, no matter how many catchy slogans they slapped on it.
The door opened and a guard stepped out, a frown plastered to his face. “They have the monster sedated just enough to see you now.”
“Why does he need to be sedated?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be hard for me to interview him if he’s all drugged up?”
The man shrugged and said, “It’s spring.”
It took me a moment to realize what that meant. Springtime meant the rut.
“Wait, he’s not…”
“No, not yet,” the guard said quickly. “I don’t think. It’s just a precaution because you’re a woman. But don’t worry. I’ll be right there if he goes feral.” He tapped the energy weapon strapped across his chest. “I won’t let the monster hurt you.”
“I see.” I followed the guard nervously through the hallway, hoping that I’d actually get some time alone with the Kadrixan warrior so I could ask the real questions and not the silly, useless ones on my clipboard.
As we went through several more locked doors, each corridor featureless and identical, I touched the top button of my blouse, rolling it nervously between my fingers. I still couldn’t believe they’d overlooked the signal jammer completely during their search.
The guard stopped in front of another metal door, this one with a window just above my head, clearly designed for someone taller—proof that we were still in a man’s world no matter how we spun it. I got up on my tiptoes, trying to look through, but I was still too short. The guard opened not one but three locks before reaching for the door handle.
I frowned. “Isn’t that a little excessive?”
“No. The Kadrixans are beasts.”
I swallowed the retort that animals weren’t usually kept in super-secret detention facilities behind four metal doors and multiple locks and just nodded.
“Don’t cross the red line on the floor.”
“Why? Is it going to shock me?” I looked warily down at my left wrist, where they’d installed my identity chip when I was born. Law enforcement didn’t need bars to hold Nova Vitans when they could just deliver a debilitating shock to any prisoners who tried to leave their cells. They’d also used this tactic to quell protests.
The fact that this Kadrixan was locked up must mean that they hadn’t installed any chips in him yet, or perhaps the chips didn’t work on them. Was that even possible?
“No, nothing like that,” said the guard. “The red line is how far the monster can reach, even strapped to the wall. I’m not actually allowed to kill him because he’s too important of an asset. So don’t step past the red line.”
So much for his previous proclamation that he wouldn’t let the monster hurt me.
“Okay, stay behind the red line. Got it.”
The door swung open, and I gasped at the sight of the alien warrior chained up against the wall. I’d seen them in videos before. Hell, I’d been the one who’d written the article about the meeting between our officials and their leader. But I’d thought maybe they’d doctored the videos to make them look more like old-Earth-style demons—we did that a lot to prove our point at Omnia Pictures—but now I knew they hadn’t.
