Page 27 of Alien's Challenge
“Who is Miriam?”
“She was with me when I was taken,” she said, realizing she repeated herself. “She’s my friend. Kinda.”
While Miriam was a colleague, one Alice found annoying, and this whole thing was sort of Miriam’s fault, she didn’t deserve to be left behind. Alice might not like the woman, but she had a heart.
“Speaking of abductions, so aliens. That’s a thing,” she said.
“Obviously.” Faris sat on a chair and kicked his feet up on the mattress. Shoeless, she had a good look at his very alien feet. Four long toes and a talon—thumb?—at the back.
“Aliens are a thing,” she repeated. Placing the empty bowl on the side table, she sat cross-legged on the bed. “Honestly, I should be a lot more freaked out than I am. I guess I haveStar WarsandDoctor Whoto thank.”
Waking up to inhuman faces had been more shocking than upsetting. What had upset her were the gaps in her memory and her sluggish brain, a side effect of the stasis pod.
“There has not been a war with Earth. This doctor misinformed you,” Faris said.
That was the cutest thing she’d ever heard.
“Okay, so let’s start with the basics,” she said. She had a long list of questions and starting with fundamentals seemed the best approach. “Aliens know about humans, so why don’t humans know about aliens? I mean, until I woke up here, I would have told you that aliens are make-believe.”
“I do not know intergalactic policy. Earth may be protected because the inhabitants are primitive.”
“Primitive!”
“Earth lacks interstellar travel.”
“We went to the moon,” she protested.
“Any species can bang two rocks together and go to their planet’s moon. It is not difficult,” he said, voice dripping with boredom.
Wow. The arrogance.
Alice swallowed the urge to argue. “So, aliens know about Earth and occasionally steal people.”
“What is known of Earth is very little. Humans appeared here two years ago. A ship with human cargo detonated and the cargo was ejected. Your pod was part of a salvage auction,” Faris said.
She blinked, hearing his words but the meaning did not quite sink in.
“Two years? Two years!” She jumped up from the bed. “I was in a stasis pod for two years? Oh no, my mom thinks I’m dead.” She paced the room, the floor cold against her feet. “I figured a few days, a week maybe. I could say I took an impromptu trip but not for two years. She probably thinks I was eaten by a bear.”
Alice gasped. “Or murdered and buried in a shallow grave. Poor Mom.”
She had to get home quickly, just to tell her mother she was alive. Her job would be long gone, but that didn’t bother her. Interesting. Her heart hurt imagining her mother cleaning out Alice’s apartment, though.
Then, a thought. “Wait, how long is a year for you?”
“A rotation around the sun.”
“Yeah, but how many days? A year on Earth is three hundred and sixty-five days, and a day is twenty-four hours, and an hour is... wow. This isn’t helpful.” Comparing units of time seemed fruitless, and nothing good happened from panicky math.
A hand gently touched her shoulder. “I do not like this face you make.”
“My I’m-about-to-freak-out face?”
“Yes, it is very…” His thin lips pulled down into a grimace, and his eyes squeezed shut.
Alice covered her mouth with her hand. She shouldn’t laugh. It wasn’t funny, but something broke in her and the laughter turned into tears. She was a mess, a crying, blubbering mess.
“My apologies. I did not intend to upset you,” he said. He rested a hand on her shoulder, stiff and uncomfortable, like he seldom touched people for purposes other than stabbing.
