The airlock slid open with a hiss. Calexa stood behind the wall, not wanting to expose herself just yet.

“What are they doing, Raf?”

“One of them is approaching.”

“Only one?”

“Yes.”

“Let me guess. He just-so happens to be wearing a dark helmet?”

The Primean’s voice became fragmented. “I’m losing you, Cal… breaking up…”

“Hey, Raphael?”

There was the harsh crackle of static, then silence. The connection had died.

“Shit.” Calexa tensed as footsteps reached her ears. The tap, tap of the alien’s gait was slow and measured; a cold, hollow sound that grew louder with every step. Her neural framework went into overdrive and her enhanced muscles tensed.

Her body switched into fight-mode.

Stay calm, she told herself, suppressing the urge to spring from her hiding spot and rush the intruder. Her instincts screamed at her to fight first and ask questions later.

That method was effective in their usual line of work, but this wasn’t some under-the-table Fiveways mercenary job, and these aliens weren’t just low-rent criminals. This was uncharted territory, and she was way out of her comfort zone.

The footsteps stopped. Calexa’s breath caught. Her trigger finger twitched. With the silence stretched taut, every passing second became a bizarre kind of torture.

What was the alien doing? Even if he was standing just below the airlock, he’d have to haul himself up to her level if he wanted to enter the ship, because Raphael hadn’t extended the landing ramp.

A faint hiss emanated from below, followed by a strange scraping sound. The fine hairs on the back of Calexa’s neck rose.

The footsteps started again, growing louder and louder until they were almost on top of her.

What the hell? There was no ramp. The intruder wasn’t supposed to be able to walk up to her.

She pressed her back against the wall and raised her gun. From what she could hear, the alien was going to come through the airlock any second now, and even though she was supposed to try and negotiate a peaceful arrival, there was no way she was going to let him get the jump on her.

Maybe she could take him hostage. That would give them some leverage until they got a handle on the situation.

A booted foot appeared in the doorway, followed by a leg encased in seamless scale-armor, followed by the rest of him in all his sinister glory. He was like a shimmering mirage, moving fluidly like water and teasing her eyes with his strangeness. He was of the same height and build as the warriors she’d seen earlier, and he had the same black snake-like thing coiled around his left leg, but that was where the similarities ended.

His armor was different. His swords were different. The air around him bristled with dark energy. It was as if the very essence of him was too much for his physical body to contain.

The Mysterious One. Of course it had to be him. Trouble incarnate. She’d known it the moment she’d laid eyes on him.

What sort of being is this?

Calexa froze. Time slowed. In her hyper-alert state, she became obsessed with every little detail.

The way the light reflected off his armor, splitting into a thousand shimmering points. The way he moved, sinuous and graceful. That damn impenetrable helmet of his.

She could see herself reflected in its glossy surface.

In turn, he was staring at her. He inclined his head ever-so-slightly, but she couldn’t read his body language.

Hostile, or just curious?

Calexa kept her gun trained on him, her arm perfectly still.

“Vysh ku agete,” he said. Although it was a little distorted by the helmet, his voice was unexpectedly rich, and it sent a wicked thrill through her.

“Well, hello there,” she replied, knowing perfectly well that he couldn’t understand a word she said. “I assume you’re not going to try and kill me, because if that was your plan, you probably would have done so already. I don’t know what you want with us, but if you try and harm my passengers or crew, I’ll pump five-thousand negas of supercharged atomic particles up your ass.”

It was wishful venting. Calexa didn’t really know what she would do if things turned ugly. She was poised on the knife’s edge of danger, and the only useful thing she’d learned in all her miserable years on Dashki-5 was how to fight.

The alien didn’t react. He just looked at her as if she were mad. She wasn’t quite sure how he managed to give off that impression when she couldn’t see his face. Perhaps it was something in his stance. He seemed completely unperturbed, almost to the point of arrogance. His arms hung loosely by his sides, his hands were open, and he made no attempt to reach for his weapons, even though she was pointing a gun at his head.

Without raising a weapon in anger, he’d put her on the defensive.

Movement below captured her attention. Calexa’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

A metallic grey substance shifted and writhed on the floor, making a soft scraping sound as it slid over the alien’s feet. It wasn’t quite liquid or solid. It was somewhere in-between, and it was identical in hue to his odd scaly armor. The strange matter flowed around his boots as if it were magnetically attracted to him.

What sort of crazy technology was this?

The substance extended along the floor and out of the airlock, where it solidified into a ramp-like structure that became continuous with the dark grey floor. Was that how he had managed to get up here without too much commotion? With the aid of that stuff?

The Mysterious One raised his hand and crooked two fingers, beckoning her in a simple gesture.

The meaning was universal: come.

No fucking way. Calexa shook her head slowly, hoping he understood. You’re asking me to trust you?

She was not going to walk out there at the request of some obsidian-faced mystery alien when she had no idea what she was getting herself into.

Not when there was an unknown metallic thing snaking around his feet.

Not when she had no idea what this strange, dangerous-seeming creature wanted.

He shrugged, as if to say: suit yourself, and muttered something low and unintelligible.

The solid-liquid-metal stuff started to move. It slid across the floor, becoming fluid and tendril-like. It came straight for her, and it was damn fast. As it coalesced and gained speed, Calexa momentarily forgot about the gun in her hand.

Fear hit her like a punch in the gut. It was fear of the crippling, paralyzing kind, the sort of dread one felt when faced with the terrifying unknown.

The kind of fear she thought she’d left behind on Dashki-5.

If she were young and inexperienced, she might have frozen, but Calexa was intimately acquainted with fear, and she’d vowed never to let it control her again.

The liquid-metal stuff raced toward her, reaching her feet. Calexa suppressed a scream of horror as it touched her booted foot. In less than a second, it coiled around her ankle, forming a twisting rope that stretched along the floor from her leg to the Mysterious One’s feet.

It slid up her leg. It engulfed her other foot. It tightened.

What the hell am I supposed to do now?

Her options were limited. One, she could wait and let the metal stuff continue to creep up her body. Hell, no. That didn’t seem like a good idea at all. Two, she could surrender and follow the alien, but that would mean leaving her ship and its passengers, and that didn’t sit well with her when she had no idea what his intentions were.

Three, she could try and overpower him without killing him. That would give her some leverage. It was the only option. Take him hostage. Show them that we’re not toothless.

When one was completely powerless, one had to carve out an advantage.

Find something they want and use it against them. If you can’t think of anything they want, create something and convince them they need it.

She’d learned that in the damp, frigid underground Arena prison on Dashki-5, where no quarter was given and the slightest hesitation meant death.

It was a huge risk, but Calexa was all about risk-taking. When death was a constant shadow, risks didn’t feel like risks anymore, but more like rational decisions along a thorny, ever-shifting path toward survival. In her universe, inaction was the biggest risk of all.

But first, she had to deal with this sliding, shifting, living metal-stuff, which seemed to be completely under the alien’s control.

What the hell was he? Some sort of fucking telepath?

Calexa regained her senses, pointed her PX-45 at the moving target, and fired.

Boom! The powerful blast rocked the floor and split the moving metal-stuff into a thousand tiny shards. Whatever the substance was, the particle beam had seriously disrupted it.

To her horror, the shards softened and came together like a million droplets of water, merging into a torrent.

Calexa leapt aside, dancing out of the moving metal’s path. The power generated by her enhanced legs propelled her to the opposite side of the airlock. She spun and raised her gun, still clutching the frag-grenade in her other hand. Fat lot of good it did her now. Blowing herself up in confined quarters wasn’t exactly part of the game-plan. She’d envisioned using it as a threat against a hostage, or lobbing it out of the airlock as a warning.

She pulled the trigger again. The metal stuff exploded again, splintering into tiny pieces.

“Argh!” She cried out in alarm as some of the fragments hit her legs. They fell to the floor, liquefying as they merged with the shifting mass at her feet. Again, the substance surged toward her.

Relentless. It just wouldn’t stop.

Calexa danced backwards and found walls on either side of her. The bastard had backed her into a corner.

“Hey, Cal, what’s happening?” Mai’s alarmed voice crackled through the comm, sounding patchy and indistinct. “I thought I heard a shot go off. You okay? Want me to come up and sic Beauty on them?” Beauty was Mai’s nickname for her Irradium cannon.

“Stay down there,” Calexa ordered. “Guard the passengers at all costs. If they get past me, you’re it.”

“Understoo…” Mai’s voice faded away as the unreliable comm went dead.

Calexa was determined to make this alien understand that even though she meant him no harm, she wasn’t about to just lie down and let him have his way with her, and she there was no way in hell she was going to let herself be engulfed by that shifting metal substance—whatever it was.

She wasn’t a damn fool.

“Kuch ka,” the alien muttered. He sounded irritated. Calexa was pretty sure those were curse words.

“Fuck you too,” she growled. She aimed her gun at a spot on the floor. Undeterred, the Mysterious One started to advance, the grey metal swirling at his feet.

She squeezed the trigger for a third time.

The particle-blast was deafening. Droplets of dark grey liquid-metal exploded in the air.

A shower of metallic glitter filled her vision. Impossibly, the damn stuff had surged up off the floor as she’d fired, forming a narrow column that had very effectively blocked her shot.

It had protected him.

The glitter turned into a dark blur as it fell, and suddenly Calexa was staring at her reflection in the alien’s gleaming black faceplate.

“What the…?” She prepared to fire again, but his hand was around her wrist, squeezing hard. In the blink of an eye, he was all up in her face, powerful and inscrutable and overwhelming.

Too damn fast… when did he…?

There was a soft crunch as his strong fingers made light work of her combat suit’s exterian reinforced sleeve. Calexa hissed in pain as his fingers dug into the semi-flexible material. Although she’d undergone countless rounds of enhancement therapy, she was still human, and she still had some of her pain receptors.

The Mysterious One’s grip fucking hurt.

His free hand came up. She raised her other arm to block him but diverted at the last nanosecond, remembering that she was holding onto a goddamn frag-grenade. The thing still had its safety on, but if it were to suddenly get hit with great force…

It wasn’t as if she could just drop it, either.

Calexa didn’t want to die just yet, so she pulled her grenade-arm out of harm’s way and allowed him to slap the PX-45 out of her gun-hand. The particle weapon clattered to the floor.

Still, the alien didn’t let go of her wrist, although he eased his crushing grip just a little.

Strong. And fast.

“What do you want?” She ground her teeth in frustration as she tried to wrench free of his grasp.

“Tvach,” he growled.

Calexa yanked her arm backwards, trying to distract him as she clipped the frag-grenade back onto to her weapons belt in a single swift movement.

Now that her left hand was free, she swung hard, her fist connecting with the side of his helmet.

“Tch.” He made a soft sound of surprise but didn’t go down. He barely flinched, and the next thing Calexa knew, his other hand had encircled her left wrist. He was trying to bring her arms down by her sides.

He seemed to want to restrain her, not kill her.

Calexa was having none of it. She raised her leg and delivered a swift, powerful kick to his torso. There was a jarring sensation as her boot connected with his hard body. The impact sent him reeling backwards, forcing him to release his grip.

She pressed her advantage, following through with a flurry of punches. As she moved closer, she brought her elbow up, smashing him in the face.

“Kuch,” he snarled, bringing up his arm to block her. Her hand crashed into his forearm but he held fast, resisting her attack.

Before she could comprehend what was happening, he modified his attack, dancing inside her range. He hooked his lower leg behind hers and sent her off-balance.

She toppled to the floor.

Calexa fell onto her back, and the alien came tumbling with her. He broke his fall by slamming both palms into the floor on either side of her head.

“Fuck,” she growled. If he could swear in alien, then so could she. It infuriated her that he’d used some cheap, sneaky wrestling tactic to get the better of her.

He was on top of her, his armor-clad body pressing into hers. He was damn heavy, even when he was using his arms to bear most of his weight. Only now did she begin to appreciate how seriously big he was.

Calexa wasn’t exactly a small woman in human terms, but the alien on top of her made her feel delicate, which was ridiculous.

Curiosity burned away her restraint. “Why do you hide behind a mask? What the hell are you?”

But he couldn’t understand a word she said, and even if he did, Calexa wouldn’t have given him time to form an answer.

She didn’t like being pinned down like this.

Correction: she absolutely hated it.

A torrent of unpleasant memories flooded through her.

“Aargh!” With a cry of anger, Calexa pressed her hands into the floor, gaining purchase as she harnessed all her strength.

She slammed her forehead into his, headbutting him.

Her combat helmet smashed into his dark visor with a bone-jarring crack. The force of the impact reverberated through Calexa’s biometal-reinforced skull, momentarily disorienting her.

“Kuch ku vydak,” the alien snarled. A thin fissure had appeared in his helmet, running diagonally from the top of his visor to the left edge.

Calexa didn’t waste time. She headbutted him again. It fucking hurt, but she was a tough cookie, and she was used to experiencing—and inflicting—pain. The crack in his helmet’s visor became wider, but the opaque surface didn’t break.

Suddenly, she couldn’t move her head. His hand was on her helmet, just over her forehead, holding her down.

“Temek ka,” he growled. He sounded more frustrated than anything else. To her surprise, his words were followed by a short, exasperated laugh.

“Is something funny?” Calexa wrapped her legs around him and squeezed hard, removing any trace of amusement from his voice. He grunted in pain as she twisted her body, using the momentum to topple him onto his side.

They were both lying on their sides now, facing each other. Calexa squeezed harder. Her bionic joints and enhanced muscles gave her immense power, and she used her strength to lock the alien in position.

The leg-lock was a crude old wrestling move. She’d picked it up in the Arena stables on Dashki-5.

A regular opponent would have been screaming in pain by now, but this guy just went still. There was no give in his strange scaly armor, and despite the fact that Calexa was trying to crush him like a python, he didn’t appear in the least bit distressed.

At least her head was free now, as was her left arm, which was extended above her head. As her hand slid across the cold metal floor, her fingers brushed against something.

Her PX-45.

“Got you now,” she said softly as she brought the gun into her line of sight. She pressed it to the side of his head. “Freeze, or I’ll blow your fucking brains out.” Her voice was cold and harsh. Surely he’d be able to understand her intentions, even with the language barrier.

In reality, she had no idea whether his helmet could sustain a blast from a close-range particle weapon, but either way, she was bound to do some damage.

Just shoot him. A sinister little voice in the back of her mind told her to get it over and done with, but she held back.

She couldn’t kill him. Not when there were two dozen formidable black-and-purple warriors waiting in the wings. She didn’t want them to go nuts.

And not when she got the feeling that he was… holding back. So far, he’d been on the defensive, blocking her attacks and using his hands to fight instead of his weapons.

Her legs were still wrapped around his torso. The fact that he hadn’t yielded was testament to his strength and skill, because Calexa was a freak, and she was used to taking on many opponents at once.

But he was alone, and he’d been able to match her blow-for-blow.

Not anymore. She had the upper hand now.

To drive her point home, she tapped the end of her gun against the hard surface of his helmet, eliciting a loud, hollow crack. His only reaction was a minuscule shake of his head, followed by what she swore was a sigh.

He muttered something unintelligible, and suddenly there was pressure around Calexa’s neck. Something cut into the flexible material between her helmet and her shoulders.

It was a weak point in her combat-suit. After all, her neck had to move. Although impervious to blades and blasts, the material there was malleable, made of thousands of tiny exterian links.

Therefore, it was also compressible.

What the hell?

He hadn’t moved his arms. He hadn’t moved at all. Grunting with exertion, Calexa tried to squeeze her legs tighter, but the thing around her neck wouldn’t budge, and she was starting to get a little light headed. She coughed, struggling to breathe.

A strange metallic scraping sound echoed in her ears. It was the noise made by that stuff; that creepy liquid-solid moving metal. She’d momentarily forgotten about it, and now it was around her neck, choking her.

Restraining her.

It spread, moving down her neck and across her shoulders. It extended down her arms.

No, not that! A familiar old feeling rose up inside her. Fragments of memories flashed through her mind.

Her neck stuck in that god-awful, too-tight collar. Agonizing pain shooting through her arms and shoulders, the result of being bound in the same position for hours-upon-hours. The sharp sting of fresh cuts on her arms and face. The coppery scent of her own human blood.

The anger burning inside her, all pent-up with nowhere to go.

As the sliding metal tightened, Calexa’s mind went blank and panic set in. All she knew was that she had to get free.

She released her leg-lock and tried to wriggle away, but the stuff tightened.

Mysterious One reached out toward her gun.

No!

Something wild and frantic exploded inside her. She would not be restrained. Never again! Calexa closed her eyes and blindly pulled the trigger.

Blam! At close quarters, the noise was deafening. A faint ringing echoed in her ears.

Then everything stopped.

Is he…?

Her eyes fluttered open, and she saw the alien lying several meters away from her, his hands crossed protectively over his face. He must have rolled away as she’d fired, although how he’d moved so far so fast, she had no idea. The metal substance was scattered across the floor in the form of various blobs and shards that twitched and quivered.

Calexa went still. Her eyes widened. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears. Was she seeing correctly?

Part of the opaque black surface had caved in, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of his face. Through the crack in his visor, she saw a single silver eye, surrounded by obsidian skin. His pupil was a narrow black slit.

His gaze was cold, yet curious. It wasn’t the look of someone who’d just been shot in the face.

She gasped for air. The pressure around her neck didn’t relent. She couldn’t move up off the floor. An unknown force held her down.

The alien stood up and walked toward her. Calexa tried to raise her gun, but the liquid metal substance along her arm had solidified, forming an unbreakable restraint. She growled, her frustration turning into crippling fear as the Mysterious One came to a halt beside her.

She was helpless, defeated by an alien that possessed power and technology far beyond her understanding. He squatted on his haunches beside her, studying her with his odd gaze.

His lone visible eye drew Calexa in, and for a split-second, she forgot her fear as fascination took over.

“Mvarak ku bea,” he said softly, and perhaps Calexa was imagining things, but she thought there was a note of admiration in his voice.

But that made no sense, because the thing around her neck tightened, and her vision blurred, and she couldn’t breathe, and…

Everything went black.