Page 24 of Claimed By the Alien Assassin
But for the first time since the invasion?—
I don’t feel like I’m walking in alone.
CHAPTER 6
DAYN
Touchdown is anticlimactic.
We cut engines a klick beyond the colony perimeter, setting down in a copse of mottled thornbrush where no one patrols and nothing wants to live. The ship wheezes as it settles, a final breath from something that’s survived longer than it should have.
My boots hit the dirt, and for one crystalline moment, I remember what solid ground feels like.
Drexar Seven smells the same as it did in the files—like damp metal and ozone and rot barely hidden by synthetic scrubbers. A world still carving out its place in the galactic food chain.
The image inducer hums at the base of my neck, bending light and shadow into something more palatable: tall, broad-shouldered human male, just sharp enough to command attention, but not distinct enough to provoke Vortaxian paranoia. The device pulses faintly with each breath I take, reminding me with every heartbeat that this face is not mine.
I am wearing a lie.
Josie doesn't look back as she peels off into the fringe of prefab buildings, her gait tight, confident, and burning with purpose. She’s fire in a world grown too used to cold. I let her go,because that’s the plan. She needs to be seen. I need to remain invisible.
The colony looks almost the same.
That disturbs me more than I expect.
Too quiet.
People shuffle like ghosts, eyes lowered, shoulders hunched like they’re bracing for blows that never come. No guards on the corners. No patrol drones in the alleys. Just the looming presence of the Vortaxian capital ship in the sky, casting a shadow like a dying god across the earth.
Psychological occupation.
Clever.
I take the long route around the outer ring, sticking to shadows, sensors tuned for Vortaxian resonance. A few spikes here and there—enough to track—but no heavy enforcement. Not yet.
They don’tneedbrute force. Fear does the work for them.
I pause near a half-rusted filtration tower, watching two men argue in whispers over a stack of hydrospanners. Their hands twitch like they expect to be punished for even raising their voices. When a child laughs somewhere out of sight, the sound is so foreign it draws a flinch from both men—and from me.
It’s not right.
Josie’s been gone less than an hour, but I can already feel the emptiness settling in my bones. I don’t like waiting. I don’t like watching. I’m a weapon, not a wick. And this whole damn place feels like kindling doused in dread.
Still, I know better than to force ignition. Not my role.
She’s the spark.
A woman passes me, hunched under the weight of a crate. Her eyes flick to my face—myconstructedface—and away again. She doesn’t see me. Good. The disguise holds.
I melt into a shadowed alcove behind a row of hydroponic tanks, tapping a looped scanner on my wrist. Josie’s beacon pulses faintly. She’s in the inner core now—near admin, if I had to guess.
She’s faster than I thought. Or more reckless.
Probably both.
I think about her voice, the way it cracks when she talks about this place. Not out of weakness. Out of fury. That kind of anger doesn’t come from ego. It comes from love.
No one fights this hard for something they don’t love.
