Dr. Lain Brousseau
I pushed my glasses up so that they were resting on top of my head and stared into the sky, my eyes automatically finding the spot where Planet 139 rested. I couldn’t see it in the inky darkness of the night without my telescope, but I had studied it for so long that my eyes could find its place in the sky no matter where I was. I couldn’t rest without finding the answers. How many of its inhabitants were on that ship when it disappeared? Where could they have gone?
It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I would never uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of the spacecraft. Our ships as they stood would never have made the long journey out to the reaches of space where Planet 139 was located and survived. The answers I needed were buried in the cosmos. And there was no way I would ever find myself close enough to fully understand. Somehow, I was just going to have to move on.
“Good evening,” a musical, masculine voice said suddenly from behind me.
I froze in terror. I knew I hadn’t heard anybody else come out onto the rooftop with me. And there was something strange about the voice that was speaking to me. It didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard before. And although the words were pronounced perfectly, there was something strange about the way they were pronounced. As if whoever had spoken them had never uttered such harsh syllables with its perfect tongue. Even the Vellreq were harsher sounding – much more like the grinding of a machine’s motor than a harmonious, beautiful voice like this one.
But the beauty of the voice behind me didn’t take away my fear. I was too frozen to turn around and face it. But whatever he was, he didn’t seem to mind. He continued speaking, and I could feel him coming closer.
“I hope this doesn’t hurt,” he said, close to my ear. His breath sent a seductive shiver throughout my body, but I tried to fight it. Nothing about this situation was sexy.
I cried out when I felt a sharp pain in the back of my neck. I could feel every inch of a long, needle-like puncture disappearing deep inside of me. I tried to run or to scream, but before I could make a sound, I collapsed to the ground as a pool of black drowned my vision.
“Let me out of here!” a woman shrieked.
The words shook me to the core, and I frowned, trying to sit up to look at whoever was yelling. I barely made it up half an inch before my head fell heavily back on a metallic surface and filled with pain. I was paralyzed.
“What’s going on?” another woman’s voice said. She was slurring, as if she were drunk. But I realized that if I opened my mouth and tried to speak, it would come out sounding a lot worse than what she was managing.
“Everybody, please remain calm,” another musical voice, different from the one I heard on the rooftop, filled the room from a loud-speaker. He spoke in the same careful way, and despite his perfect English, I knew it was a foreign tongue to him. I tried to open my eyes and look around, but there were no lights. We were in a pitch black room, darker than the darkness behind my eyelids. I had to steady my breathing as panic began to well in my chest. I had never felt so claustrophobic in my life.
“Who are you?” the same hysterical woman who had first spoken shouted. “Let me out of here!”
“I assure you that you are all safe. You will not be damaged. We are the Thressl’n. From the planet Jenal’k. We will do everything in our power to protect you.”
“Let us go!” the hysterical woman sobbed.
But from the sound of the feedback, it was clear that the matter was settled. We would not be leaving the dark abyss of our cell. Nor would we be seeing much of anything.
Through my panic, my scientific mind began to turn. My intrigue was almost enough to combat the chill of fear in my breast. Who were the Thressl’n? The Vellreq had never mentioned them before. They had only spoken of a handful of inhabited planets nearby, one of them being Planet 139: the one I was assigned to. I was stricken by a sickening thought. Did the disappearance of their ship have anything to do with our abduction?
The Vellreq refused to tell the humans proper names for anybody in the galaxy, not even themselves, delighting in the strange conglomeration of syllables that we came up with to name things from distant lands. I had always found their manner of interacting and commenting on humans very insulting, but I couldn’t blame them for withholding information. With knowledge came power. Without it, we were nearly as clueless as before. With their knowledge came leverage in our societies and governments as well. And it wasn’t as if humans treated each other much better than the Vellreq treated us. I couldn’t blame them for acting the way that they did.
I was pulled out of my thoughts by another announcement from our Thressl’n captors.
“This is Commander Zerk’k Arkti,” the voice said.
My heart pounded hard in my chest. It was the same voice I had heard from behind me. It surprised me to hear it so much that I gasped out loud. Apparently, my paralysis was wearing off little by little.
“I’m sure you are all very unnerved right now,” Commander Zerk’k Arkti said. I found myself wondering if Zerk’k was a surname or a first name, or if his whole name was Zerk’kArkti. “But I give you my word. We will travel safely, and no harm will come to you once we reach our destination.”
There was something so tranquil and soothing about his voice. It had a masculine rumble, a dangerous edge to it, but somehow it made me feel safe. Maybe safer than I had ever felt in my life. Though that could be attributed to the fact that, to my knowledge, I had never been in life-threatening danger before. Until now.
“Please respect each other and our staff throughout the duration of our journey. Those who cooperate will be rewarded upon reaching the Planet Jenal’k. That is all.”
With a click and a brief moment of feedback, the beautiful voice left the dark room. And although I had the impression of other women around me…at least ten…maybe as many as a hundred…I had never felt more alone than when Commander Zerk’k Arkti’s voice left me in the dark.