I turned off the television set, agitated by the voices of the Vellreq. These monsters had invaded the Earth about three years ago, right when the automotive industry had reached an environmental crisis. The Vellreq had offered solutions, but I was an engineer; I knew that most of what they were proposing were half-baked ideas at best.
But real solutions weren’t what our governments was after. I had been working in my field for long enough to know that much. In fact, real solutions seemed to be a real turn off. What the government seemed to want these days were ideas that would leave humanity stalled and line their pockets. And there was no shortage of such ideas from the Vellreq.
Suddenly the apartment door slammed open and shut, and the rustle of bags filled the room.
“Em! Wanna hear a joke?”
“Not really,” I said, grinning despite myself.
My roommate, Therese, was always trying to make me laugh, but all of her jokes were about electrical engineering. We had met at a seminar, and she had found it all but impossible to believe that I had mastered three fields of engineering, none of them being electrical.
“Tough,” she said. “This is a good one! Three guys in Vegas get locked up in jail. The first one—”
“Fine, fine,” she said, a goofy grin lighting her face. “But I swear, this is one you’d get.”
“Are you hungry?” I asked, changing the subject. I was a practical type of person, and to be honest, jokes seemed like a waste of my time. I was always trying to solve one problem or another, and jokes, not to mention other people in general, usually posed an unwelcome distraction.
“Starved,” Therese replied. “I’m going to put these groceries away.”
“All right,” I said. “I made spaghetti.”
“Yesss!”
Therese’s voice echoed excitedly from the kitchen, and again, I couldn’t help but grin. She was one of a kind.
When she returned from the kitchen, she had a plate heaped full of spaghetti and plopped down on the couch behind me.
“You know, there was a woman today working on Project Orion—you know I’ve been following them since the Vellreq arrived—and she saw a ship leave a planet they thought was mostly dormant. Weird, huh?”
I cringed. “Is it anything to be worried about?”
“No, it’s mostly just scientific curiosity at this point. But she got an award and stuff for it.”
“Cool,” I murmured. It was always nice to hear about other scientifically inclined women succeeding. “Speaking of scientific curiosity, how was work?”
Therese exhaled and threw her head back dramatically. Her red curls bounced off her shoulders, and she frowned at me. “Hard. I thought it would be cool that we’d have a new project to work on, but the designs aren’t…Earth designs. If you know what I mean. I’m worried they have me working on the next A bomb or something.”
This news chilled me, and confirmed my already rampant mistrust of the beings visiting our world. “You can refuse any project that makes you uncomfortable, you know.”
Therese sucked her breath in and looked down at the floor. “Not if I signed a contract…”
“Therese!”
“I thought it was union work! I’m basically stuck working for this shady company until this project is done! And then, if I blab to anybody about it, the government will be knocking on our door to cart me away.”
“But you just told me,” I reminded her.
“Shit,” Therese said. Thankfully she laughed. “I was just being dramatic about the bomb stuff. But I just don’t know what I’m doing, and it’s making me nervous. I don’t want my powers to be used for evil!”
I couldn’t blame her there. I had declined several promising job prospects because I didn’t trust where they had come from. I was highly coveted in my field, but the job opportunities were limited to those with a lot of power and resources. And unfortunately, all too often that power had come as a result of shady dealings. You could never be too careful. I guess Therese had been blinded by her unfailing optimism.
“Well anyway, the benefits are top notch,” she said, as if trying to remember why she was working there in the first place. “I can afford all the junk food I want!”
I grinned and shook my head. “Glad to see you have your priorities straight.”
We spent the rest of the evening watching cheesy movies that both of us were surprised by my willingness to watch. Sometimes the world just seemed too bleak, and it was nice to get my mind off of it once in a while. Not everybody could be eternally optimistic like Therese.
Doom and gloom, now there was something I was good at. If only there was a man out there who wasn’t put off by my unfailing pessimism. It did no good to lie to yourself about the state of things. If you avoided the truth about the world, how would it ever get better?
“Very impressive, Ms. Hart.”
I couldn’t help but beam with pride. I had been working for a long time on my latest invention: an unlimited energy machine that I hoped might rival the gadgets created by the greatest minds of our time, but most people implied that it was a waste of time. My mentor and ally, however, understood my drive and invention’s uses immediately. As he turned the small machine over in his hands, his handsome face lit up with a smile. Too bad he was gay.
“Thank you, Professor Winston,” I said.
“Do you have a patent?”
“Of course,” I said. “But you know that nobody would ever buy this. I don’t think I would ever turn a profit.”
“But profit isn’t what this device is about, is it?” Professor Winston reminded me. “It’s about doing a service to mankind when we need it the most.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Who needs to pay rent?”
Professor Winston laughed good-naturedly. “You could always teach here if you’re worried about a paycheck. It may not be the most glamorous career, but it’s reliable.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything more bleak than trying to explain my ideas to a bunch of rich kids who would rather make fun of them than try to understand them. I’d had enough of that when I was in school.
“Understandable,” Professor Winston replied. “If you won’t teach them, would you mind terribly if I did a lecture on your device?”
“Of course not,” I said. “The more people who utilize it the better. Or else we’re going to be in a bad way.”
“They may demonize your work,” Professor Winston warned. “Or steal it and give it a new name so that it can serve darker purposes.”
“I’m already registered. The patent is in the databases. If they really wanted to, it wouldn’t take much for them to take what they wanted of my work and think nothing of it. Just doing work like this in the first place poses a risk. I trust you to reveal it at your discretion.”
“I quite appreciate it,” Professor Winston said, offering the device back to me.
“No, I made that one for you. Sorry it’s so tiny, but I didn’t have a lot of time last night—”
“Wow,” he breathed, studying the small device. I had never seen him so awestricken, and to be honest, it made me feel rather proud of myself. “You did all of this in just one night?”
“Yes,” I nodded. “But the research took over a year.”
“You’re brilliant, Emily,” Professor Winston said, shaking his head. “You’re far ahead of your time.”
“Hopefully I’m just in time,” I replied.
His face lit up with another handsome smile and he gave me a small nod.
“Yes,” he said, holding the little device up to the light and circling it in his fingers once more. “I believe you are.”
***
I always felt a little bit better about the world after talking to Professor Winston, and made my way to the waterfront with an unmistakable hope in my breast. If anybody could get people to care about the greater good of mankind, it was him. Vellreq be damned. There was a lot to say about the human spirit. Or at least I hoped there was.
I settled onto the beach as I did every weekend. Watching the water rolling was inspirational. All of those atoms moving together and apart, creating the rolling of the waves, sparked something creative in me. I probably never would have finished creating my unlimited energy device without it. But instead of seeking rewards, I was going to distribute my invention slyly to the people who knew how to use it. People like Professor Winston.
Suddenly, a cold wind lifted my papers from their folder and a dark shadow was cast over me. I frowned; rain hadn’t been in the forecast that morning, and meteorology and all of its related technology had really made advancements with the help of the Vellreq. There should be no good reason for this strange weather.
I squinted into the sky, shocked to see that only a patch of it was darkened. A shadow was being cast over me, despite there being nothing of note in the sky. My mind immediately went to the Vellreq, but their ships were quite loud and bulkier than the shadow being cast. What was going on?
“Got you!”
I cried out in pain as my neck was pierced by something cold and sharp. I whipped around, hoping to figure out what the hell was going on, but before I could, I slumped to the ground and entered into a deep, dreamless sleep.
***
When I woke up, my entire body was filled with pain. I tried to cry out, but no sounds came from my throat. I couldn’t even squeak.
“Welcome, human,” a terrifying man’s voice spoke suddenly from behind me. I wanted to turn to face him, but nothing I did could inspire my limbs to move. I was frozen, heaped on the ground like a discarded toy. Apparently, I had been given a large dose of some extraterrestrial date-rape drug.
“Ernng!” I finally mustered. I still couldn’t move though, and the voice laughed cruelly from behind me.
“You’re mine now,” he said. I could hear his heavy footfalls as he circled around me, and wished I could do something, anything, to injure him as he had obviously injured me. The back of my head was on fire, as if he had carried me by my hair, and I was fairly certain that blood was trickling from my nose and lip.
“It won’t do you any good to fight this,” he said, gripping my head so that I could look at him, his black eyes flashing with morbid pleasure. If I could have gasped, I would have. He looked and sounded nothing like the Vellreq. In fact, if he weren’t so cruel, I guessed his voice might have been somewhat pleasant and lyrical. As it happened, however, he was a very cruel man who seemed to delight in my pain, and every word out of his mouth was grating.
I wanted to spit in his face, but all I could do was study him in horror. His eyes were metallic and cold, and his skin was a deep teal color that made his dark demeanor seem even more menacing. He had only four fingers on each hand, and was bizarrely muscular. The appearance wasn’t necessarily revolting or fear-inspiring, but regardless, I was starting to feel very afraid.
“Captain Zod!”
A voice came from the man’s arm bangle, and he sneered at me before lifting it to his mouth.
“What?!”
They weren’t speaking English, but I had manufactured a translation device as soon as the Vellreq had made themselves known to Earth. It was a pretty clever invention, if I did say so myself, that was able to take a chunk of dialogue of any language and learn its nuances so that the wearer could get a pretty accurate translation of the language being spoken. It got more accurate over time, and was able to pick up little turns of phrase and metaphors that would usually be lost in translation. Therese had helped me with the electrical part. That’s how we had gotten to know each other.
“Should we deploy the soldiers?” the tinny voice from the radio asked. “We have a hundred beds to fill and only a few of us Thressl’n here to get the job done.”
Ah. So these men were known as the Thressl’n.
“Of course!” Zod said. “Do it now! And don’t bother me until you get back.”
“But sir—”
“Do as I command!”
“…yes, sir.”
Zod dropped his arm, and his cold eyes turned back to me. I wanted to scream at him, demand to know just what in the hell he was planning. A hundred beds to fill? Who were these horrible creatures, and what did they want with Earth?
Pain filled me as Zod gripped my hair once again and lifted me so that I was level to him as we met each other’s eyes.
“Oh, human,” he said, a cold smile parting his lips. “This is going to be fun.”
***
It was a horrific couple of days after that. Zod was a cruel and malicious captor, and nobody knew that I was on board the ship. Gradually, I learned that a hundred women had been taken captive for breeding purposes, and Zod had decided to claim a prize for himself.
While none of his cruelty had been sexual in nature, I was sure that it was heading that way. I feared arriving to the Planet Jenal’k more than I had feared anything in my life—even my end of the year exams.
My body constantly ached as Zod drug me around the room, keeping me limp and compliant by injecting me again and again with the same serum he had used initially. Whenever anybody would call or come to his door, I would be shoved unceremoniously into a tiny closet that smelled terrible, a scent I couldn’t identify and doubted would even be found anywhere on Earth.
Zod would tend to his duties and then return back to the place where he had left me, stretching my fingers too far apart or poking at my eyes. I felt like a fly that had been captured by a curious, cruel child. Everything he did seemed to hurt.
“Just wait until we get to my place,” he would tell me, eyeing my body with grotesque lust plastered on his face. “Nobody on the planet Jenal’k will even know you’re there. You’re going to regret ever laying eyes on me.”
As if I didn’t already! But he seemed to get off on his cruel joking. I was almost relieved by the time I heard the announcement that we were arriving on Jenal’k; I had built up so much fear and anguish worrying about what was to come that it would almost be a relief for it to be over with.
“Now arriving. Everybody, secure yourselves please.”
The announcement was loud, and Zod looked down at me and grinned.
“You’re going to like it at my house,” he said, his metallic eyes glittering. “I have a lot of fun things planned for us to do there.”
If I could have thrown up, I would have. Unfortunately, the concoction he had been injecting me with over the past few days worked as a muscle relaxer of sorts, and I had no way of being able to move, let alone indulge my gag reflex.
A sudden turbulence shook the ship, and Zod’s eyes lit up. “Time to get ready to go home!”
He dragged me across the room by the hair and the pain made my eyes water. He always moved me by tugging the same patch of hair directly on the top of my head. When he let go, his fingers were full of strands of auburn hair, and the smile on his face was alarmingly sadistic.
“Let’s get you into the bag.”
I tried with everything I had to struggle against him when I saw the long, black bag he pulled out of his closet. It was clearly a body bag, I imagined for the crew that were lost to the dangers of space exploration.
Zod seemed to be able to see the fear in my eyes, because his smile took on a level of cruelty I hadn’t witnessed yet, no matter what he was doing to inflict pain on my body. I realized that the only way to survive this situation was to remain as stoic as possible. The fear just seemed to fuel his dark desire to do terrible things. I would have to tap into something very strong within myself to get through this. But I didn’t know if I could.
“There we are,” Zod said. “Into the bag.”
He cackled and draped the black bag over my face, quickly zipping it shut. I immediately felt cut off from the air around me and nearly dissolved into hysteria. But now of all times was when I had to keep calm. I had to be strong.
It took a remarkably long time before the ship landed. The turbulence was very excessive, and then there was about half an hour of calm. Finally, the announcement that we had arrived on the planet Jenal’k filled the ship, and everybody began bustling around preparing themselves to leave.
It wasn’t until about two hours later, however, that the bag was lifted from the floor of Zod’s room.
I had been mute and unable to move for so long that I, and the person holding my bag, were shocked when I squirmed in the bag. It fell to the ground, and I couldn’t help but gasp in pain.
“Help,” I whispered weakly.
But there was no help for me here. I was trapped on the Planet Jenal’k with a race of cruel extraterrestrials. And I was headed to the home of the worst of them all.