Page 66 of Taken to Lemora
Even still, I’m not a fool I know I’m no match for him, either, and that I’ll need to be careful. My thumb rubs over the scar on the inside of my palm. This is a new adversary but the mission is still the same. Freedom. Return to Lemora. Return to Raingar and his wild and grumpy ways. But first, I will need to be patient.
Jerky movement beneath me makes the ache in my skull more intense. The male gets up and moves to the wall behind me. He passes right by me to do it and he doesn’t even look at me or acknowledge my presence in any way. It makes me feel like a ghost.Like I’m already dead. Nob. I shudder violently as the entire carrier beneath me sways.
Nob, not a carrier. A ship. It’s a small one. At least, this chamber is small and there are only two openings. One is a round circle in the wall that looks in on what I assume is a wet room judging by the clear, circular tube that falls from the ceiling to the floor. There’s a hole in the floor behind it where, if I had to guess, the poop goes.
The other opening is sealed with a white hatch. The male extends his wrist toward some sort of scanner and a red light fires from his wrist to the white surface. There’s a hiss and then the male spins a physical handle mounted in the center of the round hatch. Next, he swings it open inward.
I panic, worried about the air pressure and hold my breath, but when nothing changes, I release it. I glance at the control panel, but I know I won’t be able to figure it out in the time it takes for him to come back, so I lunge for the hatch instead. I throw it closed. I’m surprised when it seals shut beneath me…too surprised. It was too easy.
I look at the handle and try to spin it closed but it doesn’t move beneath my touch. Panic grips me.
I stagger up onto my feet and fall. My head…ithurts. I can’t focus. The little ship that is my new cage doubles around me and then triples. Somehow, I manage to drag myself up onto the stool. It spins. Pagh!Pagh? Did I just say pagh, like Raingar?The thought makes my lips twitch, despite the circumstances.
My hands settle on the controls. Well, the non-controls. Rather, my hands fumble over the sand. It’s cold to the touch and feels strangely like liquid. My fingers fumble around on top of it, but no matter where I press, nothing happens. There are no markings, not in any language, and I’veneverbeen introduced to technology like this, so I don’t know where to begin. So I touch everything.
Feeling defeated, I slump and turn around on the stool, trying to see what I might use in this austere environment as a weapon, but before I can get up and move to one white cabinet built directly into the wall, out of nowhere, an orange light turns on in the ceiling over my head. It blankets everything in a creepy orange glow. And a breath later, the hatch explodes open.
The half-male, half-machine —my captor— bounds up into the white room with a female in his grip. He’s holding her by the shock of red hair cascading around her bare body. She’s completely naked and screaming.She’s crying, too.
I straighten up to the best I can and square my shoulders to face him. “What are you…”
But he barely even registers me before he takes his metallic hand to my face first and then to my stomach. He backhands me before his open palm forms a fist and finds my stomach. He punches mehard,grabs me by the hair and tosses me and the other female into the corner.
We land heaped on top of one another, my red and brown skin clashing against her skin, which is a far lighter color. Her hair…she has so much of it. It’s all I can touch. It’s in my mouth, underneath me, waves and waves of orangey red that’s a much rougher texture than my own curls.
“Are you…alright?” I ask her, coughing as I try to speak through the pain spreading through me. My face feels like it’s been hit by a lightning strike. I cup my right jaw and cheek and chin. Already my eye is starting to swell shut.
She says things in a language…but it isn’t one I speak. Igmora always said that the males want their females to speak to them in their own language without the use of a translator — that translators are unnatural and that males should always feel at ease. So I was never equipped with one. Instead, I spent my whole life learning dozens of languages, with particular focus on Meero, Lemoran and Egama. None of that helps me now.
“Shoooareeyooo!” She shouts, scrambling madly to get away from me, likeI’mthe bad guy.
I groan, trying to roll onto my knees, but the ship lurches wildly beneath me as its engines power up. I brace myself, but the female beside me must be unused to small space crafts such as these because she flies into the wall, her skull crashing against it with a loud thunk.
I crawl to her, trying to get her to calm herself, but she’s got her hands up and is panicking at my nearness. And then a horrible screech fills the chamber and I look back up at our captor to see that the male has returned to his seat but he isn’t sitting. Instead, he’s standing with both hands braced on the edge of his control dock staring at the black sand which rises and falls in time to the screeching.
The female with me claps her hands over her ears and though every instinct I have tells me to do the same, I try to resist because the longer I listen, the more I think I can make out word patterns in the chaos.
And it sounds Eshmiri.
“…don’t…what…” Another painfully loud screech, but then words rocket through in clarity all at once. “Tintin, get those shields back up right shroving now!” The voice is female and sounds distressed. “How could you lose them! Gibli, get over here…” And then the sound screeches out again.
Our captor’s hands fly over the control dock and the ship takes another wild turn that sends the female crashing into me. I try to steady her, but she’s terrified — beyond terrified. It’s like she’s a youngling completely inexperienced with creatures outside of her own species.
Perhaps, I briefly consider, she’s from another planet where there is no access to inter-Quadrant travel. The thought horrifies me — the poor thing must be in shock and I know what it’s like not to have freedom. I know what it’s like to be submerged all at once.
I had Raingar to hold my hand, though. Even if he let go once or twice, he always came back to steady me. Because he’s the mate I never knew I could have. I squeeze my eyes shut tight as a foreign and unfamiliar sensation washes over me.I miss him.I’ve never missed anyone. I’ve never had anyonetomiss.
A green light comes on overhead and a voice I recognize in every one of my bones radiates throughout the small chamber. The sands shift, forming pictures that bounce to life with color. I don’t expect to see his face. I never expected to see his face again, but…there he is. Tyto, in the flesh. Not quite, but far, far too close for comfort.
“Where are you?” He hisses, his forked tongue sliding out between his small, sharp teeth as the sand comes together to form his shape with devastating accuracy.
My —our— captor doesn’t respond. I know I should be more worried about the female hyperventilating beside me, but since his voice was conjured into existence, I haven’t been able to move. I’m plastered against the wall, like my co-prisoner, but unlike her, I’m not breathing. Meanwhile, she’s breathing far too hard.
“I forgot your Sky rules about speaking,” Tyto huffs, sounding livid. “Do you have her with you?”Sky? Our captor is Sky!
My skin loses all feeling. The pain recedes, becoming nothing in the face of my terror. Sky. The stories Igmora told me. That’s where Igmora threatened to send me if I didn’t behave. She told me that on Sky, I’d be butchered or used for breeding new monsters in this world. And even though I did everything they ever asked, she and Tyto have sent me there anyway.
Why here? Why now? Why are they doing this? Why didn’t I try harder to escape from the beginning? From the moment I was a youngling and I began to understand the differences between right and wrong? The moment I knew that the way I was being treated wasn’t right, so it had to have been wrong? The first time I was denied food, I should have tried to escape. I should have run the first time Tyto beat me with his tail.
