Alien Freak - Calista Skye Page 0,41

differently than ever before. Here I am, inside an Elder moon with an alien! Worrying about her health, worrying about her welfare, worrying about what she might think if she notices my obvious arousal. The fact that I haven’t even impregnated her yet is frankly ridiculous.

I’ve never felt this weak before. Even my venom didn’t kill her.

My tongue shoots out, just to savor her scent on the air.

It increases the pressure in my pants.

This is not the time. But infected by the Fentrat or not – her rear jiggles so enticingly it hinders me from thinking clearly, so I pull up alongside.

“What do you think this was used for?” she asks and indicates everything around us.

“Nobody knows. It must have had an important function, but there’s no indication about what it was. Some think these machine moons had something to do with how the Elders left the galaxy.”

“People have been here before,” Averie observes and points to a circle of trash around a black spot on the floor, the remains of a campsite with a fire. “I guess we won’t find anything on this level?”

“Probably not,” I agree. “On the bright side, there have been no dangers, either.”

We go down another level, then realize that it’s unnecessary to walk to different pillars – they all seem to go all the way through, and we can use the same one to go more than one level down.

Still there are no dangers, and still it just smells of old looters.

“Let’s go as deep inside as we can,” I decide, because this is getting urgent. The fine, dark hairs around Averies eyes are now intermingled with tiny, green sprouts. I see no reason to tell her.

When we try to enter the ninth level, she saves my life.

16

- Averie -

The green leaves on my fingers are growing, and when I try to pull at one to rip it off, it hurts so much I have to stop. It’s like trying to tear off skin.

I do my best to push it to the back of my mind. Maybe it’s not as bad as I think. Maybe it will pass. Maybe I’m not turning into a bush.

The portal to the ninth level is at the end of the curved corridor. We can’t go further, which means we can’t go lower down in the shells. All the shells we’ve seen so far have been looted, Zaroc says, so there will be nothing of interest there.

The portal is closed, but there’s a lot of trash on the floor.

Zaroc goes up to it. “That’s a good sign. If it’s closed, the looters may not have been able to get in. It looks like many have spent a lot of time here, trying to open it.”

I spot something from the corner of my eye. It takes a second to figure out what it is.

“Zaroc, stop!”

He freezes, his hand an inch from the portal, and looks at me. “Yes?”

I point. “Let’s find out how he died before we touch anything.”

He takes a step back from the portal.

The skeleton looks nothing like a human, or even the remains of any animal I’ve ever seen. It has a weird, flat skull and no ribs, but eight long limbs with three joints each. The alien must have been dead for a long time.

Zarcon studies the portal from a safer distance. “That reminds me of some stories I’ve heard about these places. The portals sometimes try to kill intruders… ah.”

He puts his hand close to the portal again. “I thought I felt something. There’s definitely a strong electric field. Anyone who touches the portal will get a hard shock. And if I can sense it from this distance, then it must be enough to kill. Easily. If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have joined that one.” He nods at the skeleton.

“Can we still open it?”

He examines the portal. “There’s no visible way.”

It looks like he’s right. It’s just a portal, closed with what looks like a steel plate or hopefully a door.

“Is it automatic? It just opens when the right person wants to go through?”

“Anything is possible in Elder moons,” Zaroc ponders. “I hope this isn’t the end of the line.”

“Don’t touch anything,” I urge. “Not even close to the portal. I get the feeling there isn’t a trick to this. I assume the other portals were open already.”

“It would seem that many have tried to open this one, but none have succeeded,” he says and looks at the floor. “Many campfires have been