His fingers tense around my limbs, and I smile.
I like Vruksha. A lot. He is straightforward, honest to a fault, and headstrong.
Blinking back the darkness, I take in the shadows hiding my new surroundings.
“We should go back for a flashlight...” I say quietly.
“They don’t turn on without batteries, and the batteries they need, I don’t have.”
“Oh…”
Hmm.
I’d rather he take me into a dark passage than continue telling me about the females of his species. Anything over that. The haunted look on his face as he spoke unnerved me. What he told me was heartbreaking. To lose your entire family the way he has? And not know what happened to them?
I can’t imagine. I said goodbye to my parents at a young age because that is the way of life during wartime. I’ve barely thought of them since. But I know they’re still alive and working on The Grimstep, a colony ship focused on the strength and longevity of the military—including militarized advancement. They’ve had several more children, none I’ve ever met, but I think they all left around the same age.
I’m not… sad about it, I don’t think. I frown.
I don’t know anymore.
I don’t want Vruksha to have to relive the pain of his past because of me. I feel guilty asking about it at all. Even if I want to know him and understand this world he’s living in.
Where he came from...
He frightens me sometimes still—especially when I glimpse the fervor in his gaze when he’s staring at me when he doesn’t think I notice. There’s a wildness in his eyes when he does, and it makes me tense.
It’s those moments that remind me he’s an alien, with alien views, and alien laws different from my own. An alien species that thrives outside society. Vruksha’s a starved male animal, ready to pounce. I smile softly.
The shadows fade, pulling me from my thoughts. Light returns, and it’s far brighter than what we have in the bunker. Soon, flashing beacons of every color are around us, driving back the darkness, and large shapes materialize on either side.
“What is this place?” I ask.
“The tunnels,” he says, sliding us past the blinking lights.
“And these things?”
“Old tech, robots, I think… they’re called server towers?”
Servers? I push up in his arms and stare at the towers. I know what servers are.
“How are they still on? Are they actually running? Is there another generator?”
“They run because energy is being fed to them, as to why, I don’t know. Perhaps there are more generators down here, better than mine. I have never found any. You seem surprised to find the tech running here. Why is that?”
“Because systems die, metal corrodes. Maintenance is needed to sustain tech.”
“The Lurkers didn’t destroy the tech. They destroyed the life surrounding the tech.”
I shake my head, and he continues moving through, like none of this is out of place. “So, you know about the Lurkers.” I strain my neck to stare at the towers behind us as they fade back into the darkness and we turn a corner. We’ve turned multiple corners…
“And these tunnels?” I pry.
“What about them?”
“Do you know why they’re here?”
“The same reason why they’re everywhere I assume. The tunnels have always been here.”
“Everywhere?”
Vruksha hisses softly. “They ssspan for miles in many directions. So many questions.”
I look around. How did I not know this? Do Peter and the others know? They couldn’t. We all had the same briefing. The military facility we came down to investigate was chosen because it was once specialized in Lurker technology. If we were going to find this anywhere, it would be there. Underground tunnels were never mentioned.
Vruksha stops, and I hear the groan of a heavy door opening. The chill deepens when he takes me through it. It shuts behind us.
And then there’s nothing. Nothing but darkness.
I fidget. “Vruksha?”
Light bursts forth, blinding me. By the time I can see again, buzzing has filled my ears. He carries me into the room as I rub the last of the fuzzies from my sight.
My lips part when I get a good look at where I am. I push away from Vruksha’s chest.
“Let me down,” I say, my excitement skyrocketing, and he gently sets me on my feet. I lean against him and his tail coils around my waist.
Screens. A bank of screens covers the far wall, and below them is an old system of computers. Some are blacked out, some are blinking, while others are blurry with static. But the majority of them work and images appear on them. Pictures of the forest, the landscape, and even the facility. Live feeds of the entire region.
This is a… “Security room.”
A well-hidden one.
Vruksha slides to the control panel where there’s an old leather swivel chair. He pushes it over to me, and I grab it.
“Sit,” he orders.
I purse my lips and sit. “Are these the screens you always mention?” I ask, staring at the one overlooking the facility. I see the ship, the tents, the robots, and guards scouting the perimeter. There’s more now. I even see the skiff that carried me and Daisy away from the place.
My stomach churns despite my excitement seeing it all. Knowing life has gone on without me... like I was never important at all.
My fingers tangle together, and I hide the wave of hurt that hits.
“The screens I mention?” he repeats. “This is only a few of them. There are screens everywhere if you know where to look.”
“There are? Like these, not the orbs?”
“Yesss.”
He moves to the control panel and types something in. I watch raptly, awed to see this wild, primitive male, who I once thought was no better than a beast or a monster, use a computer like it’s second nature.
The screens change when he’s done typing, and words appear in large letters across them, but so do people, and images, and… destruction.
Aliens.
Large, lumbering bipedal beings covered in leathery green skin. They’re nearly human in appearance if it weren’t
