Alien Freak - Calista Skye Page 0,60

but it never stopped. Not a day went by without reports that one or ten or a hundred Lancefers had been killed.”

My arm is going numb, so I change my position, putting my face close to Zaroc’s neck, giving it a little kiss. I get the feeling he has never told anyone about this before. “Go on.”

“We were desperate. The adults who were left disguised their children as members of other species and left them with trusted friends on other worlds, while they themselves kept going, wanting to trick the Gurandu into following them and not to look for us, the children. That also didn’t work. One by one, even the children were killed. Some shot from a distance. Some thrown from tall buildings. Some cut into pieces. Some torn apart. Some bitten by their own pets who have been given deadly diseases. The hunters gain extra points for killing in unusual ways, you see.”

I press myself to him, hugging him. “I’m so sorry, Zaroc,” I whisper into his ear.

“A couple of years later, everyone had been confirmed dead except my grandmother, my sister, and I. We had sought refuge with an extremely honorable people called the Hent. They were primitive, and they lived in underground caves. Real mazes that took a lifetime to be able to navigate. But they were good friends with a hyper-advanced species called the Tereta. The Tereta had developed a technology for uploading your personality into a computer, so that it could live on after your death. Giving you a second life, in a sense.”

A large hand strokes my hair absentmindedly.

“My grandmother secretly did that, just to check if it was possible. Her idea was that we three could do that, upload ourselves, so that we wouldn’t be completely gone. It worked, and the Tereta helped her upload herself into a small computer. Before she could return to show us, she was caught by a hunter who threw a constrictor net around her. It’s a fine-mesh metal net that kills by getting tighter and tighter until it’s all merged in a solid ball the size of your fist. I try not to imagine what that must have been like.”

“Oh my God, Zaroc,” I wheeze into his neck, which is now wet with tears of sympathy. “I don’t know what to say.”

“She managed to throw the computer out of the net before the end, and it was retrieved and given to us. My sister, Princess Ayarana, was two years younger than me. She got it into her mind that the Hent couldn’t protect us anymore, which was probably true. And she coolly reasoned that of the two of us, I would have the best chances of escape. I didn’t know that part until later. I got ready for her and me to leave the planet together, flying a small spaceship that the Tereta gave us.”

Zaroc pauses, just breathing. I don’t interfere. This is hard for him to talk about.

“Somehow,” he finally continues, “the hunter IruBex knew. As I said, they’ve seen everything before. He was there, that dark night. He came out from behind a tree, a shiny gun in his hand and his assistants beside him. Ayarana caught his attention, forcing him to choose between chasing her or me. He chose her – she was smaller and easier to take. She yelled at me to take off, to fly away. Then she ran. And in that desperate moment, I took off in the ship. My plan was to swoop down in front of her as she was running, get her aboard, and then shoot for space. That ship had no weapons.”

My hand gets wet when I stroke his cheek. I sniffle, wanting him to know he’s not alone in the sadness.

“But that was not her plan. As I watched, she waved at me. Not ‘come here’, but ‘get away’ and ‘good bye’. Then she was gone, running into the underground cave system, knowing that would keep the hunter occupied for the longest. The last I saw of her out the windshield of the ship was her small, bright pink hands, stretched out and up to me, forming a heart symbol. It means ‘love’ in our culture. She was sixteen.”

We both do some sniffling for a while, me ruffling his thick hair and stroking his wet cheeks because I don’t know what else do to for him right now.

He clears his voice. “Anyway. In there, Ayarana ran as far as she could, drawing the hunter away