never get over.
I can hear Elle weeping uncontrollably on the cliff’s edge, and I easily imagine her holding her baby close, as if her dark brown arms could possibly provide any kind of defense against eight huge Xalthurians.
“Somebody help me, please!” she cries out to her fellow humans. “Please don’t let them do this. Please don’t let them take my baby!”
A few of the humans answer her like our mother did. Reminding her she knew this day would come. That she shouldn’t be upset and should hand the hybrid over before the Xals shoot her or worse.
But I strain against my parents’ hold, wanting to help her. Needing to go to her, even if that means my own death. The Xalthurians are closing in, and any second now they’ll—
It happens so fast, it takes me many, many moments to process what has occurred.
Elle is screaming and sobbing and then suddenly…she’s not. Her voice and the baby’s crying cut off without warning.
Then the next thing I hear is my mother screaming and wailing, “Elle, no, nooooo! My girl, nooo!!!!”
My father’s hands fall away from my arm, just as the soldiers step back…to reveal nothing on the cliff’s edge. Nothing but an empty space where Elle was standing.
She’s gone … Elle took another step back and now she’s gone. I can’t even be sure if she did it on purpose or if she didn’t know … didn’t know she had nothing left to step back to, except air. Either way, the result is the same.
A moment ago she was there, begging the Xalthurian Reapers not to take her baby, and now, she’s just…not.
The pain.
It’s like the time I broke my wrist. How I felt the snap, but somehow didn’t get it. Didn’t feel the pain until I raised my arm and saw the way my hand was hanging at a funny angle. Only then did I understand. Only then did I rush over to my older sister, crying out, “Libeth! Libeth! It’s broken! It’s broken!”
It’s broken.
Libeth … Elizabeth … Elle … my sister. She’s gone. She’s gone. And so is her baby. Because of the Xalthurians. Because of the Reapers who kept on advancing on a mother who didn’t want to lose her baby.
The world becomes a scream.
And I can no longer be held back.
I fly forward and shove the Xalthurian in the gold uniform—the Tel who made her such a magnanimous offer. Up close I see that he’s got to be at least seven-five. So tall, it feels like he could step on me. I don’t care. I want to fight him. I have to fight him. For Elle, who never had a chance.
When he turns around to see who’s shoved him, I swing on him, morphing into a hitting and slapping fury, until he pushes me back, the tips of his dark blue fingers pressing into my chest.
It’s just his fingers, just the tip of his fingers, but I go flying backwards and land butt first in the red clay dirt.
I don’t stay down for long. Not because I quickly leap back up. I wish. But jumping to your feet is kind of hard to do when you’re wheezing from having all the breath finger shoved out of you.
No, it’s the overlarge Xalthurian who quickly helps me back up…with a huge hand wrapped around my neck.
My inner rage scream cuts off abruptly and the sound of the real world comes back in. Suddenly, I can hear the crowd murmuring and my parents yelling in the background. Begging the Xalthurian with his hand around my neck for mercy on my behalf.
“Please, please…” my mother says. “Don’t make me lose two daughters today!”
The dark blue Xalthurian ignores her, his gaze lasering in on me. His eyes are red where mine are white, with a pair of black diamonds where a human’s pupils would be. He glares at me, the ridges on his nose bristling, but other than that…nothing. After a few moments of being almost but not quite choked, I realize he’s waiting, probably expecting me to beg for my life like my mother did.
But I don’t beg. I stare the huge alien in his red diamond shaped eyes. And I refuse to flinch. “She was my sister,” I tell him. “She wasn’t just a womb.”
Then, I spit at him.
Because if I’m going to die today. Hell, if I’ll go out begging this Xal for anything.
When my spitball lands square in the alien’s face, the human crowd goes deathly silent. And so