This Computer was both the smartest and the dumbest thing I had ever come across.
It was only then I realized I was in a room that might have multiple exits.
I cast around.
A single bed sat pushed in the corner and a broad window looked out on the lake outside.
The sun had already risen and cast long shadows across the road.
It would have been an idyllic morning… if it wasn’t for the fact I’d been abducted by Liam or Sar or whatever that thing was!
On the wall adjacent to the main entrance was a second door.
Aha!
I ran, threw it open, and bolted through it.
I skidded on the tile floor, barking my shin against the bath’s edge.
I lost my feet but my momentum carried me forward.
I rolled inside it and struggled to get to my feet, flailing worse than a turtle that’d been knocked over.
The bathroom.
Of course it was the bathroom!
What else could it be?
Well, I’d never been on a spaceship before, so I supposed it could have been anything.
I marched back into the room and staggered as the entire room shunted to one side and drifted on its axis.
I stumbled and pressed my hands to the wall.
Out the window, the obviousness of what was happening played out before me in real-time.
I was flying.
Well, I wasn’t flying but the ship sure was.
It floated up, turned in a long arc, and then rose into the sky.
As it picked up speed, the view showed the world becoming smaller and smaller.
I fell to my knees and held on tight to the wall and clenched my eyes shut tight.
I’d never been the biggest fan of heights.
I peeked out through one eye and watched as the entire continent of the United States zoomed away from me.
We pierced through the atmosphere with great ease and sailed into the long darkness of space.
Although I didn’t like heights, space was entirely different, like being on a large boat when you were afraid of the water.
You could fool yourself into believing you were in a hotel and not floating out in an ocean that could kill you a million different ways if the boat wasn’t there.
I got to my feet and surveyed my situation.
I hadn’t moved an inch and yet it had become a million times worse.
I was in space.
Space.
The final frontier.
The big dark.
The infinite nothing.
I gasped in surprise as a ball of red zipped past the window, swiftly followed by large chunks of asteroid.
We must be traveling at some speed to be passing through the solar system this quickly.
I couldn’t even make out the Earth from here.
Home.
It was gone, taken from me the same way Ras had been…
Ras!
I spun around to face the door—I didn’t know why I did that as presumably Computer was everywhere.
“Computer!” I yelled. “Has Clint, I mean, Captain Ras been blasted into space yet?”
“Negative. He remains in storage bay twelve.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“He’s scheduled to be ejected in ten minutes,” Computer said.
No…
“Cancel that order!” I said.
“Captain Ras issued the order himself. It cannot be canceled by anyone of inferior rank.”
“Captain Ras is the one who’s going to be ejected! He wasn’t the one who gave the order! I was someone else! Someone called Liam. Or a creature called Sar that looks like him!”
“Negative. The captain’s voice perfectly matches that on the captain’s file.”
“I’m telling you it’s not him! You’re about to blow your own captain out the damn airlock!”
Computer didn’t respond with another reply.
Only silence.
Deathly silence that would condemn Ras to float in space forever.
I imagined him waking up in his pod at some point and find our plan had failed.
I had failed.
“Computer, please tell me there’s some way to stop the pod from being expelled into space.”
“The order can only be canceled by Captain Ras or a superior officer.”
I shook my head and slid down the wall.
No matter how many times Computer told me, the message hadn’t sunk into my thick skull.
But now it had.
I couldn’t do a damn thing to protect him.
Shink!
The door hissed open and someone stepped inside.
“Clint!” I said, bolting to my feet to meet him.
The door shut and the figure standing before me was unlike anything I had ever seen before.
He was tall, almost seven feet in height, and the horns that jutted from his head looked fearsome.
His skin was tinted green and shimmered when the light touched it.
His torso bulged with thick cords of muscle, aided by the fact he was bare-chested.
And his eyes…
His eyes.
They were the color of melted gold, shining even in the darkness.
At first, it was only his eyes I recognized.
They were Clint a.k.a. Ras’s eyes.
The man I’d lost my heart to.
No, not man…
A creature from another world.
Was it such a surprise?
No, I couldn’t say it was.
I realized a part of me knew the truth the entire time.
It just took a while for me to piece it together.
Seeing the spaceship come out of the lake, the advanced technology, his incredible strength when he fought Liam, and blasting off into space dispelled any further doubts I might have had.
His other facial features were similar to Ras too.
The sharp nose and square chin, the angle of his brow, and the thickness of his wavy hair.
Except, Ras had never looked at me with the same cold indifference Sar, his twin, did.
He lacked his warmth, his kindness.
I might as well be a cow or an empty vase.
He cared as much for me as either of those objects.
“Please,” I said. “You have to cancel your order to eject Ras into space. He doesn’t deserve that.”
The creature sneered at me with that same lack of interest.
“He is a M’rora. I am a Shadow. We have been at war for eons. He deserves death, and he would not hesitate to do the same to me if the situation were reversed.”
Yes, but you’re the bad guy.
You deserve it.
“I’ll give you anything you want if you spare his life,” I said, feeling sick to my stomach. “Just name it and it’s yours.”
“You are what I want.”
I was afraid that was the case.
In the creature’s golden eyes, what had so mesmerized me about
