Fluency

21

Bergen held his breath. He’d hit his target, dead on. The alien’s head snapped back. It staggered, crashing back into the wall, seemed to be stunned. Maybe he’d injured it. It seemed to be slow to recover. Maybe….

It straightened. Its head whipped around, zeroing in on his location.

“Oh, fuck,” he muttered. He tried to send another round into it, but the chamber was empty. He heard nothing but hollow clicks. Awesome. Great time to run out of ammo. Fucking perfect.

He couldn’t tear his eyes off the thing. He was frozen, couldn’t move. It stomped a few steps toward him and cocked its head to the side. It swiveled at the waist gracefully, in an almost feminine way, neatly dispatching the few creatures that remained.

It was menacing and beautiful. Now that the animals had been silenced, he could hear that it made mechanical sounds. Holy shit. That wasn’t the alien. The alien must be inside it.

The analytical side of him couldn’t help but admire the elegance in the design of the thing. It looked and sounded heavy, but moved nimbly. Some part of him lusted for it. He wanted to take it apart, figure out how it worked. Just that single, complex device in front of him represented an exhilarating lifetime of insights and discoveries. But that was looking like a pretty unlikely scenario at the moment.

Bergen heaved himself back with an energy he hadn’t known in days when the thing reached out, grabbed the nearest stack of crates, and flung them aside like they were tinker toys. He wasn’t about to die lying on floor, broken and beaten, damn it. He staggered to his feet, swaying and wheezing, close to passing out, and clung to the nearest stack of crates to keep from falling over.

The black behemoth stepped inside the enclosure and stood there, facing him. Long minutes passed. The fucker was taking its time, savoring the goddamn moment.

Bergen couldn’t take it another minute.

He flung expletives at the thing—raged like a rabid animal, spittle flying. He felt his face turn scarlet, the tension in his neck building as his blood pressure went up. He cursed the alien, its race, its ship, its home planet, its goddamn suit and its lack of proper ship hygiene—letting the equivalent of space rats infest the vessel, which was a fucking affront to cleanliness and decency everywhere. Just everywhere, goddamn it!

As he ran out of scathing words, he began to notice the thing had raised its arms, almost defensively…or what? Was it confused? What the hell was going on?

He lost his balance and slid back down to the floor as an ear-splitting voice boomed into the silence. He covered his ears. It was so loud he thought his ears might be bleeding.

“—just tell me how to turn on some kind of speaker so he can hear me! He can’t hear me! Oh. I—now he can.” It lowered its arms and took another step toward him. “Alan?”

Berg’s eyes widened. That thing knew his name. Then it all clicked into place. It’d been inside Jane’s head. It could know anything about him.

It crouched down in front of him, held out a hand. It was no less threatening in that position, he told himself.

“Alan—it’s ok. It’s me.”

He shook his head, hands still over his ears. Goddamn it. That fucker loved its mind games, didn’t it? What the fuck did it want now? It had Jane and Compton—now it wanted him too? It waited until you were a crippled, crushed shell, incapable of any kind of defense, and then it took you—for what? What deviant shit was this thing going to do to him? Torture? Anal probing? Live dissection?

He cleared his throat, gathered what saliva he could, to spit at that fucker’s blank, shiny, expressionless face.

At that exact moment, the voice thundered, “Retract the helmet.”

Even as it gave the command, the helmet split at the chin, tilted up at a forty-five degree angle, and began to lift, rotating on an axis, level with the point where ears would naturally be.

He’d already let the spittle fly…when he saw her face.

Saw Jane.

It struck her on the cheek. She blinked. “Really, Alan? Is this how you treat all the girls?” She lifted a hand, like she would wipe it away, but frowned at the black, gauntletted hand ruefully. The obsidian shoulders shrugged with a soft, mechanical whir as she dropped her hand again. She sighed and turned to scan their surroundings.

He stared at her hard and sank down farther, thoughts racing. He had to be hallucinating.

This wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. It was a trap. The alien was inside his mind, could make him think anything, do anything, if he let it.

Her voice was soft. So alluring. So tempting to believe. “It’s not safe here. You’re hurt. Where are the others?”

“Safe. You’ll never get them.” His voice came out a groveling whisper. He hated himself for it.

She seemed confused, worried. “I’m glad they’re safe, Alan. You know it’s me, Jane, don’t you?” She crab-walked forward a small measure. “This is Sectilius battle armor. I told you about it, remember? I had to protect myself before I came down here. There’s no way I could have gotten to you otherwise.”

Jane went in and out of focus. The adrenaline was wearing off. He just couldn’t be scared of Jane, no matter what she wore, no matter who was pretending to be her. Not enough to stay alert, anyway. He shook his head and whumped it against the crate behind him. That didn’t help.

“Alan?” She stood. Her face was a mask of concern. She turned and clomped away.

His eyes fluttered closed, but he still heard the juicy crack as she blew away another creature that had wandered in. It was nice of her to do that. He wanted a good look at that weapon. For sure.

She came back, stooped right next to him this time, and slowly reached out a hand to touch his knee with just a single, black fingertip. It felt heavy and cold through the fabric of his flight suit. He didn’t like it. “Can you walk, Alan?”

He huffed. “I’m not going anywhere with you.” It came out more as a moan than actual words, though. So humiliating.

“I guess I’ll have to carry you. I can barely control this thing, honestly. I’m afraid I might hurt you. It seems like I could probably crack you in two without even trying.” She flashed a quick, tentative smile. Her eyes darted over him and he could have sworn that they were filling up with tears. Determination was in her voice, then. “I’m not going to, though. I’m going to make it work the way I want. Everything’s going to be ok. I promise.”

He tried to fight, but his limbs just flailed a little bit, like limp noodles. Jane was going to have her way with him, alien or not.