Chapter Four

Eden stopped running. She gasped for breath as she looked back at Thiago's spaceship, which was now about the size of a coin. As Eden clamped a hand over her heavily thumping heart, she twirled around in place. What was she going to do now? She was in the middle of nowhere without any indication of civilization around her.

"I wonder if they sent me off to live with a serial killer," Eden thought out loud.

Her heart sank. Without warning, her cheeks ballooned with vomit. She turned to her side and hurled her upset stomach's contents onto the ground. Her chest still heaved, but her head felt refreshingly lighter as she shuffled away from the crime scene.

Wherever she was, it wasn't wintertime here. Eden was overheating in her Brooklyn winter attire. She stripped down to a white tank top, tying her parka and flannel shirt around her waist. Eden started down a path, decided to head straight for the horizon to find some help. Eden paced herself, knowing she had wasted energy with the adrenaline rush that had gotten her all the way here.

Her sneakers slapping against the gravel on the ground sounded like a lonely poltergeist walking back and forth in an abandoned attic. She was a nervous wreck and believed she had escaped from a murderer. Her teeth chattered despite the muggy heat of the windless terrain as her mind flooded with worst-case-scenarios, most of them ending with her body detached from her head and buried in a shallow grave. She felt a heavy sense of regret. She scolded herself for not trusting the peculiar feeling that she felt before stepping foot into TerraMates.

Snapping out of her self-pity, she slowed to a stop and frowned. She squinted her eyes up at the night sky covered with a thin haze of golden fog. The moon peeked out of a cluster of clouds and helped to illuminate her path. As she squatted to examine the ground, she quickly realized something was different here, and she hadn't stumbled onto a strange eclipse changing the color of her surroundings.

Eden scooped a mound of dirt into her hands. Its texture was like grains of sand as it cascaded through the spaces between her fingers. It had a dark, almost violet hue to it. The landscape surrounding her looked like it had popped out of a Halloween cartoon. Bright orange plants resembling cacti dotted the horizon. A handful of ten-foot leafless trees with purple bark spread around the vast stretch of land.

She sprang up from the ground and rubbed the dirt off her hands. Other than her daring escape from her crazy hermit "husband" who'd undoubtedly bred and nurtured the monstrosity he called a pet, she felt astonishingly well-rested. Had TerraMates injected her with a sedative that contained hallucinogens? Perhaps this sad wasteland was a toxic dump site created to give government conspiracy theorists something to discuss. As she looked on at the flora, watching as they appeared to move around without a breeze displacing them, she decided it was probably the former.

"Alright, Eden. You've got this," she said, her voice slicing through the icy stillness. The sound of her voice calmed her jumpy heartbeat. "You've never needed anyone to look out for you before. Now it's finally time to look out for yourself. You knocked a full-grown man onto his ass for disrespecting you a few days ago, and he was twice your size. You've got..."

Eden's self-coaching trailed off. Her widening eyes spied two, tepee-style tents in front of her. Sighing in relief, she scampered forward. As she approached the neglected site, however, the grin on her face swiftly faded.

Gathering her unmanageable curls over on one side of her neck, she stepped with slow, calculated footsteps. A blackened pile of burnt firewood sat between the tents, accompanied by copper pots, stained sheets, and something unidentifiable. Her budding curiosity got the better of her. Eden picked up a twig on the ground and stuck it under the filmy, mottled matter.

It was skin.

"Well, this is gross."

The semitransparent skin looked reptilian. Although science was never one of her best subjects, she was confident in asserting one particular fact. Whatever had shed the skin was enormous. She shook her head, tossing the twig to the corner. As with every clue that came her way, she was growing increasingly dumbfounded about her whereabouts.

What was more, she was usually an annoyingly light sleeper. She woke up multiple times every night to her sister Janine's tossing and turning. It still boggled her mind how she was able to sleep through the plane ride, boat voyage, or however they smuggled her to this godforsaken place.

"Okay, snap out of it," Eden reminded herself, consciously clearing her mind of all the questions pecking away at her.

She dropped to her knees and rifled through the tents, hoping to find a forgotten cell phone or tablet left behind by the drifters. Instead, she uncovered bags of trinkets and devices she'd never seen before, as well as more shed skin tucked away beneath the sheets. Her mouth dropped open, the worst of possibilities beginning to run through her mind. What if the drifters hadn't left the site, and a dangerous animal ate them? What if that thing decided to revisit the campsite?

Panicking, she quickly crawled out of the tent, coming face to boots with two thin, lanky men in oversized vests and fitted leggings. The shadows cast by one of the leafless trees behind them hid their faces. Overwhelmed with gratitude for any company, she quickly bounced up to her feet.

"Hey guys, I'm sorry to intrude," she said, raising her hands cautiously. "I wasn't trying to steal anything. I seem to be lost. Could you help a girl out?"

The men lowered their heads. They appeared to be listening to her but chose to remain silent.

"I know this is going to sound crazy, but could you tell me where we are? Do you even speak English?"

Eden was desperate, and she wasn't going to give up. She stepped forward and pretended she was using a phone. "Can I borrow one of your phones?"

Their features became distinct the closer she approached. To a distant eye, the men could pass for another pair of broke, slightly underfed transients drifting from city to city. A careful observer would realize they were not transients. Along with their greasy, grayish mops of hair, the cracked flesh of the humanoid creatures was sickly white. They looked like dropped porcelain dolls hastily glued back together. A marking of a red "U" intersected with two arrows facing up was on each of their foreheads.

"Sorry," Eden squeaked, edging away from them. "I'll just be on my way now. Please don't kill me."

They lunged at her. Eden managed to throw out her leg and hook onto one of their ankles, sweeping one of the attackers off of his feet. Attacking the one made her vulnerable to the other, who was now looking at her back. The one on his feet leered, snaking his hands under Eden's arms and hauling her to the ground. Rubbing his head, the fallen drifter regained his balance, wrapping her flailing legs in a tight, unbreakable grip.

"Let go of me!"

Eden's screams rang into the night, making the pulsating beat in her ears go into overdrive. Out of nowhere, a vicious hissing sounded next to her. The velvet bristles of Hercules' legs wrapped around each of her attackers. Stunned, the two instantly released Eden to deal with the new threat, dropping her carelessly onto the ground. Hercules' rock-solid grip had trapped the aliens. The growling Arachtera flung the men to the side and catapulted them high into the air.

"Hercules, good boy!" Eden gushed, stroking the creature's head as he nuzzled against her, cooing appreciatively.

"Is there a problem here?"

Thiago stalked towards her. As he bent forward, offering his hand, his hood fell onto his shoulders. Eden's pupils swelled. The knots in her chest unraveled as she gazed intensely at him. He was clean-shaven and appeared to be in his mid-thirties, with unusual patterns shaved into his bed of pale, platinum-blonde hair. She found it especially difficult to tear away from the surreal, steely blue stare of his eyes.

Two golden hoops on Thiago's cocked left eyebrow wiggled as he waved his hand in front of her face.

"Are you going take my hand or not?"

"Sorry," Eden muttered, grabbing his hand. She glanced up at Thiago fleetingly, who stood a head taller than her. She noticed a similar flesh-toned marking on his forehead as on her attackers. Thiago's mark was subtle. "What were those things?"

"Arkadians," Thiago replied curtly. Apparently he thought that would answer her question.

"Huh? Never mind. But listen. Thanks for coming after me. I guess we got off on the wrong foot."

"I told you to stay. You should have listened to me," said Thiago unpleasantly, strutting off in the opposite direction. "Humans."

"Don't give me the side-eye," Eden called after him, jogging to stay alongside Thiago as Hercules skipped next to the heated pair. "Could you blame me? I still have no idea where I am."

"Are all of you like this?"

"All of us? You mean, women?" Eden yelled, unable to contain herself. "What are we like exactly?"

"No. Humans. Are you all this ungrateful?"

"Wow," said Eden, clapping her hands dryly. "That's rich coming from someone who took an abducted victim."

"You know what?"

"No, I don't know what."

Thiago reached into his cloak and pulled out a device, whispering a few words into it. Eden's words cut short as the ground vibrated underneath them. Thiago's spaceship maneuvered to them on auto-pilot. As wind came from the engine, blowing the hair out of Eden's face, not a single sound escaped her mouth. The ship made a shaky landing as it lowered itself to the ground, landing a few feet away from them.

"I saved you." Thiago shook his head. "Why don't I just show you?"

Petrified but intrigued, Eden followed him, tentatively boarding the spaceship.

Thiago set coordinates for the nearest city. Eden sat shotgun next to Thiago as Hercules entertained himself in the back with his scratching post. She appeared tense. Her back was rigid, placed an inch away from the triangular end of her chair. Her fingers unconsciously drummed along her thighs.

"What are we doing?"

"I'm proving my point," Thiago replied. He reached over his control panel to lower the shields on the window from the passenger's side. "Go ahead. Look for yourself."

"No way," Eden whispered. Her breath fogged up the glass as she peered through the window. "This can't be real."

Thiago steered the spaceship with double-pronged controls, smoothly coasting past buildings and infrastructure set on multiple levels of the city. Eden was amazed to see robust, circular tubes crisscrossing elevated pods like interlinking elevators. She gasped, pointing her finger at a group of blue-skinned creatures in formal suits moving up a pipe, separating at an intersection and disembarking into different pods. Spotting a family of big creatures with chubby, humanoid torsos and six tentacles, she squealed.

"What did I tell you?" asked Thiago softly, clicking his tongue as he looked out his side of the window.

"They're adorable!"

Thiago followed her line of vision and shook his head. "No, not those weirdos." The craft jerked sideways, flying over an exceptionally busy pod that featured tall casino towers and gambling stations. He pulled down a lever to enlarge the view through their primary window. Thiago leaned back in his seat as he folded his arms across his chest.

"Those weirdos."

As she watched, Eden could feel the blood in her veins grow cold. Creatures wearing expensive clothing and glittering jewels swarmed in and out of the pod. Although dolled-up alien partners accompanied a few, most were dragging scantily-clad human women with leashes hooked onto their shock collars. The women seemed well-fed and had faces donned with glittery, colorful make-up and hair pulled back into elaborate up-dos, but misery was written all over their vapid expressions.

"To my knowledge, there's no return trip to Earth. Have you finally gotten it through that thick human skull of yours?"

Thiago paused, his face softening abruptly as his eyes rested on the passenger next to him. Her head was hung low. Her large, mossy-green eyes glistened as they welled with tears. Deliberately blinking to keep them from falling, she turned away from the alien. She chose instead to look out her side of the window with her chin cupped in her hands.

Thiago cringed, feeling a sharp pulse on his forehead. The self-righteous, superior feeling of being correct quickly subsided as he pulled back the throttle and flew them out of the city.