Chapter 4:
Fiona
Everything had been quiet since our ship was overthrown. We were brought the meager supplies of food and water each day by the orange shifter. None of us would say anything when he walked in. We would all be overtaken by an acrimonious silence that would hang there until the man left.
I looked to my right at the cage where Benjamin had been placed and then quickly taken and felt a sick pang run up through my body. He was the last of security left to protect us, and they had taken him down like he was nothing.
It would have been almost silly how quickly they’d disposed of him if it weren’t so haunting.
I assumed I wouldn’t be getting much sleep while we were held prisoner. It had been a week now since we’d been put in the cells and the silence was almost maddening. I could tell the shifters didn’t know how to use light switches since we’d been sitting in perpetual brightness since we landed. I could feel my eyes were bloodshot from the lack of dark: the lack of feeling settled.
Libby broke out into a shrill sob suddenly, as she did mostly at night. Christina’s swollen eyes barely looked across the cell at the blonde girl. Libby was huddled in the corner of the bed in the fetal position, pulling her legs close to her chest and heaving. Anxiety and space travel didn’t go well together.
Her deep sobs cracked into the air, and my ears twitched back at the sudden sound.
“It’s okay,” I hushed and reached my hand out across the small path that separated our cells.
“She’s not even listening,” Christina offered, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes.
I shrugged and continued to watch the blonde embrace her meltdown. “I know,” I said. “We have to think of something.”
“Like what? Do you have some laser cutters handy that I don’t know about?” Christina griped.
I rolled my eyes and looked at the girl in the cage next to me, our eyes widening as we heard footsteps tromping nearer to our corridor. The white door slid open, and the same shifter who had taken Benjamin appeared.
He had a spattering of blue and yellow scales that trailed down his built arms. He had black eyes with tall slits for pupils and a crooked nose. I traced my tongue side to side on the back of my front teeth and watched him with trepidation, as though I would take to flight as soon as he spoke.
The shifter walked deeper into the jail, chair in hand, and walked in front of my cage, locking his tired eyes with mine. He thumbed in Libby’s direction and pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance at her screams.
“That,” he pointed, “has got to stop.”
I frowned at his callousness and shot him a look of disgust. “Sorry her pain is so inconvenient for you.”
“Seriously,” he mused almost in a comedic tone, which just pissed me off even more. “I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t think. Okay, I’m lying. I can do all of those things,” he grinned, which quickly fell from his upturned lips. “I just do them with a dull throb in my brain now, and I’d really like that to stop.”
Libby didn’t even hear him. She continued to do a melded scream-cry into her pillow. My eyes flicked down to the stacks of food trays that she had left on the floor, still packed with food.
The blue-and-yellow shifter cringed again, turning his profile sharply behind to look at Libby. Then he set down the chair he was carrying and faced it backward so he could sit and use the backing to rest his arms on.
I thought it an odd choice for him to sit. If it were me, I would have stood to assert my authority. But, there was something casual about him. If his appearance didn't frighten me so much, he might have seemed friendly.
“You’re killing me,” the Weredragon said with an impatient sigh.
“Well, she’s scared!” I argued with a deep frown. “What do you expect?”
“Silence,” he offered. “So, what? She’d be more comfortable out of the cell?”
I swallowed. Was this some sort of trick?
“I guess?” I said unsurely.
“Well, what’s going to shut her up?” he asked impatiently.
“Her quarters are up a floor. C9 cabin. Why don’t you just lock her in there?” Christina said quietly.
I shot her a tense look, wondering what the idea was behind it and why she would bother with such a ridiculous idea. But, to my surprise, the shifter quickly stood and turned to face Libby.
“Will that make you happy?” he snapped, both impatient and parental.
Libby sniffed and moved her hands from her face, sitting up in her bed and shaking as she finally caught sight of the shifter.
“W-what?” she asked.
He clicked his tongue. “You want to go to your room, or what?”
Her eyes moved slowly back and forth from his, also unsure of the trap.
“It’s not a hard question!” he pestered impatiently, his slick wings spreading while he spoke, just as though he were gesturing with his hands.
The shifter blew out a long breath and slid his card along the lock so Libby’s cell door opened. He scratched the back of his neck and then held out a hand to the girl.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She swallowed and blinked off a few more tears. “Libby,” she petered out nervously.
“Libby,” he said, testing the words out. He took her hand in his and said, “Gandadirth.”
“Hi,” she said.
“Yeah, hi,” he rushed. “Okay. I’m going to take you to your room, making sure there’s nothing in there that you can use to contact your people and make our little mission any more unpleasant. Alright? Oh, yeah, and don’t even think of hitting me with something.” His eyes darted to the chair he’d brought in. “Like that,” he offered. “You can bash that across my back, and I won’t even flinch. Got it? In fact, you can try it right now just to get it out of the way.” He paused. “You want to try it? Go ahead: grab it!”
His tones were surprisingly jovial and light, as though he were teasing a small child. I didn’t know if that made me feel settled or absolutely terrified.
Libby said nothing, the tears welling up again as he spoke to her and he began waving his hand in front of her face.
“No, no,” he begged. “Don’t do that… thing again. Let’s just be quiet, alright? No chair necessary. Let’s just get you to your room.”
Libby nodded and took his hand more eagerly this time. She walked behind him, hand in hand, as he made his way toward the exit. Libby brushed her blonde hair behind her ear with her fingertips and locked eyes with me. A silent promise that she would try whatever she could to get us out.
Gandadirth must have seen us make eye-contact because he jerked her forward and spun her to look at him. He twisted her arm so she was pulled close to his chest and he leaned far down to meet her face.
“I said don’t try it,” he warned. “Now, I think I’m being pretty generous here. If they had sent anyone else down here, you would be a heaping pile of goo on the floor. Got it?”
She swallowed hard, and I scoffed.
“Oh, that’s nice,” I snapped at him, grabbing the bars of my cage and trying to get a better look at the massive beast.
“Well!” he argued back petulantly and then tightened his grip on Libby’s arm, dragging her out of the room.
A desperate silence built between me and Christina as we watched the door close behind Gandadirth. We both stood frozen in the quiet for minutes before I finally exhaled, long and loud. I didn’t want to say it out loud, but I was sort of happy for the sudden silence. Scared for Libby, of course, but it was the first time the room had been completely silent since we’d been down here.
Christina sat back down on her cot and looked at me through the bars.
“That was…” she began and then trailed off.
“Odd?” I finished.
“Yeah. That was odd.” She paused for a long time before asking, “Do you think they’re going to kill her?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
The raven-haired girl brought her legs up onto the bed and shrugged. “Maybe she’ll be able to–”
I cut her off with my finger to my lips before she could finish her sentence, moving my eyes carefully toward the security camera in the corner of the room. If they were smart, they would have had someone in the security sector watching us over the monitors.
Christina stared up at the camera in silence before offering a middle finger to the lens and flopping back down on the bed.
Days went by then before we saw Gandadirth again. We were slipped food and hydration packs from one of the other shifters, but he came in, dropped the supplies, and then left without a word.
I watched the door open on what I could only calculate was now Tuesday and saw the blue-and-yellow shifter walk through; his massive stature was intimidating. He wore some sort of armor on his legs and remained shirtless, showing off his muscular build with just a weapon strap crossing his torso. I could see my laser pistol resting comfortably in a makeshift holster at his side, and I groaned inwardly.
“We meet again,” I said, standing to face him.
He approached my cage, close enough for me to smell him and he smirked and said. “Did we really meet before? I felt more like that was a ‘scuffle.' A blip in time.”
“Whatever, then,” I shrugged.
“Whatever, indeed!” he mocked. “So, how should we go about this? Should I just kill you now, or did you want to make polite chit-chat first? That’s what you humans do, isn’t it? Or, is this just female specific?”
“And that’s what you Weredragons do—kill first and think later?” I set my jaw. “Where’s Libby?”
Gandadirth blinked in surprise and let out an amused, if not annoyed, breath. “So, we’re not smart?”
“I don’t know,” I seethed. “Whose planet was shrouded in darkness and whose isn’t?”
“This is your argument for staying alive?” he mocked. “And hey,” he defended in a firm, strong tone, “that wasn’t my choice. Dobromia’s a wreck, and I’m blaming you.”
“I was the one coming to help,” I argued.
“Wow!” he said, slapping both massive hands on the sides of his mouth in mock shock. “Magical female, come to fix all our woes!”
“Fiona,” I said sternly.
“Wow!” he repeated. “Magical Fiona, come to fix all our woes!”
“I was the representative come to–”
He waved me off. “Yeah, yeah. Look,” he said sharply. “That’s not going to happen now, obviously. Now I get to get rid of you in whichever way I see fit.”
We locked eyes in a battle now, and I felt a tingling up my throat. “If you were going to kill me,” I dared, “something tells me you would have done it already instead of taking me back to the Earth with you.”
“And how would I have done that?” he asked, leaning into me.
“Strangulation? Throw me out the airlock?” I offered, and Christina widened her eyes at me in a silent protest.
“Some excellent ideas!” the shifter said with a laugh. “So, why would I be keeping you alive?”
“The same reason everyone keeps a prisoner alive,” I said with a twirl of my hand. “Information.”
“No, see, I’ve had enough human information. In fact, I’ve had enough human!” he announced, going higher on his last note. “We have one of those now, co-ruling our planet. Remember? That’s what plunged us into this never-ending cold that’s formed. Thanks.”
“Then…” I took exactly one step back and craned my neck to get a better look at him. “What?”
“Simple,” he said. “You’re going to help us get onto the Earth.”