Page 14 of Alien Abduction for Experts
"When she gets into her bi-yearly mating cycle, her emotions became extremely unstable. Karangi usually spend this time with their mates, who emit a pheromone that counteracts the effects. Since we weren't Karangi, she was taking medication during these cycles."
"Or maybe she just went crazy for good," Hix mused. "She's always been teetering at the edge. Her work - and us, back then - stopped her from stepping over the line, but I knew that us leaving made it likely that she'd go mad."
His brother nodded. "It was a calculated risk."
"Why did you leave her?" Trish asked. "Besides her being a psychotic bitch, obviously."
Hix smiled, a dreamy expression transforming his face into someone a lot younger. "When we first met her as students, she was wonderful. Clever, sharp as a Ferven blade, witty, beautiful. Both of us fell in love with her right away."
"And neither of us had expected that," Hex added. "Back then, we were very different and were going through a bit of a personality crisis, like most Gemi'i do at some point. Even though our species has always been this way, interacting with aliens who don't share a body can create jealousy and unrest."
I could imagine that. Being stuck with a second male within me? No way. We'd probably be dead by now, having killed each other.
"When we met Kat, it was just what we needed," Hix continued. "Both of us loved her. It gave us a common purpose and connected us again, turned us from enemies into brothers once more. It was good for her, too, I believe. She was a workaholic, never spending any time outside her office, so having us to distract her from work was important. It was very cliché, falling in love with your teacher, but she never made it feel awkward."
I couldn't imagine Professor Katila in love. Workaholic, yes. Everything else, no.
"Why did you break up?" I asked.
The two males looked at each other as if to decide how much information to give us.
"It was no longer working," Hex said after a pause. "She was becoming erratic, jealous, emotional. She didn't want us to leave our dwelling. She didn't want us to be alone with female students. And she wanted..."
He sighed, letting his torso-brother continue.
"Offspring. She wanted offspring." Hix sighed deeply. "But our species aren't compatible. Gemi'i lay eggs, but Karangi give birth. Like you humans, I believe. We may have been willing to adopt, but that's when her behaviour was getting more and more unpredictable. We didn't want to bring a youngling into that kind of volatile environment. When we refused, she threatened to get some of her scientist friends involved who'd take our seed by force. She was obsessed by the idea that through science, she could carry our offspring. And the one thing you need to know about her is that once she's come up with a plan, she won't veer off that path. She'd decided she wanted younglings with us and that was it. She didn't care about our opinion on the matter."
"We tried to reason with her," Hex continued when his brother fell silent. "We distracted her with presents, asked for help from her university superiors, but nothing worked. She got worse. One day, we woke handcuffed to the bed. She'd gone to work and left us there. That was the moment we agreed to leave."
I was stunned by their story. Force them to give her their seed? What kind of person would do that, no matter the gender? Katila was even crazier than I'd thought.
"There's no way we're going to return you to her," Tricia said with determination. She stared at me, as if expecting me to protest, but I had already come to the same conclusion. Handing them over to that crazed female was as bad as abusing them ourselves.
"That's very kind of you, human," Hex said and shot her a warm look. "But we always knew this moment would come. We've been waiting for it. And we've not been sitting around idle while back on our home planet. We came up with a plan long ago. Now we just need your help to put it into action."
"What plan?" I asked, reminding them that I was the one they had to convince.
"What matters most to Kat - besides her offspring fantasy - is her work.Without it, she's nothing. No influence, no power, no purpose. So, we're going to take it all away from her."
"We already tried reporting her to the IGU authorities. In return, she destroyed our brain slugs, making us unable to communicate with our mate for a while," I said, my heart sinking at how useless their plan was. I'd expected something more from these two clearly intelligent academics. They'd had time to come up with a really good plan and all they had was the idea to destroy Katila's klatting reputation? Bah.
"We have evidence," Hix grinned slyly. "We've got enough to get her in front of a tribunal. Maybe even a criminal trial, if we send this to the right people. She's bent a lot of rules over the years. Ignored student welfare. Even endangered her students."
"You could say that" Matar interrupted. "She klatting shot at us."
Hex nodded, which looked a little weird considering that Hix's head stayed in the same position. "We can add your recordings of that to our files. That will make it even more damning. The juiciest bit however is that we were her students when she first started having sexual relations with us. Of course, we were willing and over age, but the IGU strictly forbids relationships between staff and students. Add to that the fact that she handcuffed us to a bed, robbing us of our freedom, plus threatening to physically harm us... it's not looking good for her. Especially because we filmed it all."
Trish gasped. "You've got it on camera?"
The torso-brothers grinned. "We knew she was going to cross a line," Hix explained. "So, we installed a hidden camera in our bedroom. To be honest, we'd assumed she'd try and do worse than just handcuff us. Still, it was a good decision. We recorded some of her craziest outbursts, ready to be sent to Professor Z, the IGU headmaster. Once he sees that, she'll be without a job."
I shook my head. "That doesn't sound like a good plan to me at all. So what, she'll be out of work. What will stop her from coming after us, after you? I bet she had a good salary and has saved enough to pay for some space pirates to attack the Jade."
Hex wasn't dismayed by my scepticism. "There's a paragraph in the IGU contract which states that whoever will fall foul of the University's rules and regulations forfeits any salary paid to them in the past, as well as assigned accommodation. Her bank account will be empty. She won't have the means to take revenge. She'll be powerless."
"I say we kill her," Matar muttered. I was tempted to agree with him, as tasteless as that option was. Neither of us were murderers, but we'd do whatever we had to in order to keep our mate safe. Trish was our priority.
Hix and Hex looked shocked at the idea. "We loved her, once," Hix said, putting a lot of emphasis on the l-word. "She did horrible things, but we could never kill her. That's not our way."
