Page 47 of Across The Stars
“I’m not exactly council material.”
I thought about my job on Earth. A stripper. I was a goddamn stripper and I was meeting with a valerian council.
“Your profile mentions a minor in communication and linguistics,” Vahko pointed out.
“Uhh, I’m out of practice.”
“Well, unfortunately, you’re all we have. Sam—the sick one—she doesn’t seem able to speak to anyone. She’s been throwing things at Salukh’s head for hours and whining about gravity.”
I adjusted my sore shoulders. “The gravity does suck. I feel like I’ve just aged forty years.”
“You will get used to it. Much of your soreness is because of your wounds anyways. And you should not have to be here long. We’ll find a more suitable situation after you speak to the council.”
I rolled my eyes and trudged forward. “Fine.”
The room was smaller than I imagined. I half expected some giant chamber with a high roof and a round table. Instead, it was a square room with a skylight, a few chairs, and a holographic desk in the middle that gave the room a blue tint. I stood on one side of it while three valerians sat on the other and Vahko stood by the desk, arms crossed loosely over his broad chest.
Damn his broad chest. Why did he have to stand so… so… sexy?
Snap out of it.
I felt my high school presentation anxieties rushing back at me and swallowed a bout of nervousness. Take my clothes off and give me heels, but this council thing was not what I was used to. My palms were sweating and I tried to remember what it was I was supposed to talk about.
“This is Innifer,” Vahko said to the other valerians.
Each of them was dressed in monochromatic colors. One was in a deep red dress made of something that conformed to her body like liquid. The other two were both males in white suits with some kind of glowing badge on their shoulders.
“Hi,” I said, pressing my lips together nervously when I was met with expressionless, alien stares.
Their eyes were similar to Vahko’s in that they were pale with subtle flecks of color in the middle and they were all on me.
Vahko stepped forward, locking his hands elegantly behind his back again. Clearly, he was good at this sort of thing.
“As the only known survivor able to address the events we responded to, I thought it best she come recount what happened herself…”
His voice trailed off from my senses when I noticed the woman in the red dress wasn’t looking at him, even while Vahko was speaking. She was looking at me. When Vahko was finished, her stare only sharpened. I guess scrutiny wasn’t just a human thing. She was judging me like I was her failure of a child.
“Innifer,” the woman in red said. “My name is Kasiri.” Her eyes shifted to Vahko and then back at me. Then she stood with a slow, graceful movement, her hands clasped in front of her. “I understand you’ve been through a lot and I am sorry for that.”
Glancing down at the table in front of her, she sighed. Then she swiped her light blue fingers over the slick surface and a 3D hologram popped up. I furrowed my brows at a photo of me from four years ago on Earth. It was from Sam’s social media and it was of the two of us shooting tequila at a bar after I’d found out I was getting evicted from my apartment and my life was falling apart… again. We looked happy, but only because we were drunk out of our minds.
Embarrassment made my ears catch fire.
Kasiri looked collected, but I had known people like her. Inside, she was disappointed. It was like talking to my mother all over again as a rebellious teen, only my mother would have slapped me by then and said something incredibly degrading to get her point across. Her eyes shifted to Vahko as if preparing to scold the pair of us.
“InniferSaint,” Kasiri said. “We contacted the Nexus upon your arrival here. They pulled your files for medical records in case we needed to do more than patch up a few cuts and bruises. It didn’t take long for them to discover that you and your friend are here under false qualifications.”
My skin felt like a prison now. I’d just been found out and I was on an alien planet. Did that mean the Nexus wouldn’t come to get me? Did it mean they would come just to arrest me? Send me back to Earth? I gulped audibly and balled my hands into nervous fists. It wasn’t the greatest time for my secrets to come out. I was stressed enough after barely surviving an alien attack and finding out most of the people I knew could be dead.
“Care to explain?” Kasiri said.
“Um,” I said softly, at a loss for words.
I could see Vahko side-eye me in my peripheral, but I didn’t want to look him in the face. He was holding his composure just as well as everyone else in that room aside from me.
“It wasn’t supposed to go this far,” I said in a near whisper.
“The Nexus wants to know if you and your friend are terrorists,” Kasiri asked, still no hints of anger in her flat tone.
