I almost can’t do it. I almost can’t not shove my cock into her.

But we’re in danger.

She’s in danger.

I stay still and so does Felia.

Yes, there it is, unmistakable noise in a dead silent jungle.

There’s the sound of slight footsteps. But there’s another sound that overrides it. It sounds like… chanting?

It sounds like some kind of prayer. I have a memory of something like that from Earth… this is the memory that hits me the hardest, more than any that have come before. For a second, I’m lost in the internal world of my mind. This is a fragment. It’s not a complete memory, but it’s not just the beginning of a fragment like the others. No, this is something different. I was on Earth, before I became a cyborg, in… some country in East Asia. Or maybe it was India. It’s fuzzy. Nothing’s coming to me clearly. But I was there, and it wasn’t my home. It was a strange place for me to be. Someone was chanting. An old man. He was so thin he was just skin and bones, with a rag partially covering him, but he had a regal presence. He carried himself the way I’d never seen anyone walk, sit, or stand. And he chanted continuously.

The chanting here in the jungle brings me out of my memory.

I don’t want to return to reality, even if it means exposing us to more danger. That’s how strong this desire is in me—this desire to be fully human, to remember who I was before I was turned into something not quite human and not quite machine.

Without speaking, I signal to Felia to follow me.

We move silently on our hands and knees, crawling into a patch of thick vines behind a tree.

We might be out of sight here. The vines are thick, some of them almost half a meter in diameter.

The chanting gets louder.

“What are they saying?” whispers Felia.

“I’ve never heard their language before.”

Minutes pass. The chanting only gets louder.

“There must be a lot of them,” I say.

“I hope they don’t find us,” whispers Felia.

She’s leaning into me for protection.

“Your cock’s still hard,” she says, putting her hand playfully on it.

“We’re in danger,” I say, trying to stress the importance of not being seen.

“I know,” she says. “But it’s sooo hard.”

Her hand starts massaging my cock, working magic with her fingers, making it even stiffer. This is definitely not the time for this, but it feels damn good.

I suddenly realize we’re both still naked.

“The clothes,” I whisper.

Terror overtakes the playfulness that was on her face.

“What,” I whisper, “you weren’t worried just a minute ago?”

“You’ve got to get the clothes.”

“I know. But they’re out there.”

“You’ve got to go now.”

“I’m going!”

I can’t believe we didn’t realize that we’d left our clothes out there for the chanting aliens to find.

I rush out, completely naked, through the vines, moving towards the clothes, partially crouched and trying to limit how visible I am.

The chanting is louder.

I look towards the chanting, and I can see them.

They’re definitely not humans.

They’re completely green, with three antennae poking up out of their heads. They’re about Felia’s height, shorter than I am.

I can hear their words clearly now. “Agawag, agawam. Basha boskum sumsa baskum. Agawam, agawag.”

I don’t know what the hell that means. Nowhere in my circuitry is the knowledge of any language like that.

They see me. There are a dozen of them, wearing robes, and they all look up to see me at the same time, lifting their strange heads.

While they’re not humans, they’re human-like. They have two arms each and two legs. And they have noses, mouths, and ears. The only real differences are that they have three antennae each and are a different color than we are. We? Am I really one of the humans, or am I something else? Am I just a tool that humans use?

There’s no time to worry about that now.

The aliens stare at me as they continue forward, not breaking from their chant.

For some reason, I don’t feel in danger. Is this human intuition?

I just stand here, watching them approach.

They stop a meter in front of me, their eyes looking at me, their antenna waving slightly, inclining towards me.

The chanting ceases.

The tallest of the group, who stands in front, opens its mouth and says, “Agawam agawam.”

It bows before me.

“Agawam, agawam,” I say, figuring it’s some sort of greeting.

Now it says something that I don’t understand. It sounds like static from one of those old radios.

But after thirty seconds or so, the static changes to Standard International English, as clear as if the alien was a native speaker.

“Welcome to our planet, human,” it says.

“How do you speak our language?” I ask.

“I’m using an International Galactic Translator.”

“I’ve never heard of that. So you can understand me?”

“Of course. The IGTs are available at any galactic market.”

“The IGTs?”

“The International Galactic Translators. But you humans don’t explore much anymore. You don’t leave your planet except to mine… But you, you’re not quite human, are you?”

“How do you know?”

It’s very strange to be speaking through this IGT device. The words are crystal clear, but I’m still speaking to a green alien with antennae on an alien planet. Before leaving to kidnap Felia on Earth, I’d never been anywhere but Mina Dos. Occasionally we’d see alien ships flying by, but we had no contact with them ever, and the humans on Earth avoid them.

“We sense things.”

“You’re telepathic?”

“Not quite.”

“Do your friends speak too?”

“Yes, but only sometimes. I speak for them.”

“So you’re… connected?”

“Something like that. By the way, your friend can come out from the vines.”

“You know she’s here?”

“Of course. We sense her.”

“Felia!” I call out. “It’s OK! Come on out.”

Somehow, I get the feeling that these aliens are safe and gentle beings. They don’t wish to hurt us. If they did, they could have already done it. I get the feeling that their technology is much more advanced than ours. And, after all, I may be strong and a good fighter, but I don’t have any weapons whatsoever, nor my armor.

“I don’t have my clothes!” cries Felia.

“It’s OK,” says the alien. “We are not offended by nakedness. There is no reason to be embarrassed.”

“You hear that, Felia?” I call out. “It’s OK!”

It takes Felia a full minute to decide to come out. I’m almost at the point of going over to the vines myself to hand her the clothes, but before I can she comes out, naked.

Her breasts are buoyant. Her skin shines. Her hair is fanned messily around her face, falling on her shoulders. She looks incredible, almost painfully beautiful.

“Welcome to our planet,” says the alien, bowing to her. The other eleven aliens follow suit, bowing to Felia.

“Here,” I say, handing her the clothes.

“There is no need to be embarrassed by nakedness,” says the alien.

Felia holds her clothes in front of her anyway, covering herself.

“What’s the name of this planet?” I say.

“Xenos,” says the alien. “We have lived here for millennia. We haven’t had much contact with your species, since we understand that those on Earth don’t… wish to make contact. But years ago, an explorer came here. We always welcome guests.”

“Was that white tube in the ocean yours?” I say.

“Yes, it’s part of our transportation system. We saw that you used it and we came to greet you.”

“How does it work? It’s some kind of teleporter?”

“Something like that. It’s hard to explain. It works on sub-spacial waves. Our technology is much more advanced than human technology.”

“I can see that,” I say.

“We would like to take you to our city,” says the alien.

I look at Felia. She nods at me. I can see it in her face—she doesn’t fear these aliens. And neither do I.

“Sure,” I say. “That be great. Our ship exploded. We crash landed. We don’t have anything, and we have no way to get back to… our planet.”

I don’t mention that I’ve kidnapped Felia. But that’s easy to forget, anyway. It feels more like we’ve been going on a very strange date.

“There’s another transporter near here,” says the alien.

“What’s your name?”

“We don’t have names like humans. We are all connected.”

“So you all have the same thoughts?”

“Not exactly. It will all become clearer to you once you see our city. Come with us.”

They lead us through the jungle, navigating the vines and trees expertly. The thick foliage seems to part for them. They don’t chant now, but we don’t chat either. We walk behind this strange formation of the dozen aliens. Their antennae wave and wobble as they walk, and I start to get the strange sensation that they’re actually moving or controlling the jungle somehow with their antenna. They don’t carry any tools with them. Back on Earth, I know that people in the jungles used to carry machetes or at least knives. Now, of course, there are hand held laser devices that will take care of any foliage.

Felia looks a little nervous. She walks close to me, her body rubbing against mine. She holds my hand tightly.

She’s put her clothes back on, but she still looks just as beautiful.

The white tube isn’t as big as the one that was in the ocean.

“That transporter you saw in the ocean was meant for ships,” says our alien host. “This is for individual being use.”

It looks just the same, though. Inside, I can see the blackness.

“Where does it take us?” I say.

“To our main city.”

“What’s it called?”

“It doesn’t have a name. It’s like us. It’s part of us.”

I can feel Felia shivering as she looks into it.

It gives me a strange feeling.

“Where is your city?” I say.

The alien points down to the ground.

“Underground?”

“Far beneath the crust of our planet. We come to the surface only rarely. Our bodies are used to a more… secure environment.”

I wonder if they could have evolved from insects? With their antennae, these aliens look like they could be a high evolved version of the earthling ants. We don’t have them on Mina Dos, though, of course.

“Guests first,” says the alien. “I understand that’s a common expression on Earth.”

“How did you know that?” says Felia. I can hear the suspicion in her voice. I can tell she’s starting to feel nervous about these aliens, now that we’re about to walk into another strange white tube that’s going to take us deep down into the planet with some technology that’s unknown to us, alien and strange.

“We monitor our neighbors,” says the alien. “We receive all your media broadcasts.”

“Is it true what they say,” says Felia, “that you receive the TV programs decades after they’re broadcast?”

The alien moves its antenna in a way that makes me think that’s its way of chuckling.

“No,” it says. “We have technology that allows us to receive everything instantly.”

“Come on,” I say to Felia, taking her hand again.

We walk into the tube. As we do so, we can feel ourselves leaving the jungle.

If the jungle was strangely silent, the tube is even more quiet. There isn’t a sound, and even our footsteps seem to be muffled.

Last time we were pulled into the blackness against our will. This time, we have to do it all ourselves.

“It’s even more terrifying having to walk right into it,” says Felia.

“It’s going to be OK,” I say.

“But we don’t know anything about these aliens,” whispers Felia. “We don’t know their intentions.”

“We don’t have any other options,” I whisper, looking behind me. The aliens are coming through, following us at a distance of a few meters. “We wouldn’t last long in the jungle. There aren’t even any animals to hunt. And we need to get off this planet eventually. We’ll need a ship for that.”

“So you can take me to Mina Dos?” says Felia.

I ignore her comment. What can I say, anyway?

“Do you think the general is going to follow us here?”

“Yeah,” I say. “The human fear of aliens isn’t enough to stop them from coming. They know they can’t let us cyborgs have an advantage…”

“Unfortunately for me it seems like I have just as much to fear from the general and the flotilla as you do.”

“Unfortunately,” I say, agreeing with her, grimacing as I say it. “I don’t think they’d even flinch when they pull the trigger…” I shudder internally at the thought of Felia dying at their hands. “They’d rather eliminate you than admit that you were ever kidnapped.”

“It’s horrible,” says Felia. “I never knew they were so… cruel.”

“They’ll do what they have to do,” I say.

“And my father…?” She asks the question, knowing that she has to know, but that she doesn’t want to hear the answer.

I pause for a moment. I don’t want to be the person who tells her that her dad is just as vicious as the general and the rest of them.

“He wants to exterminate us all… all the cyborgs,” I say. “Publicly, he has one image, and privately with the military he has another agenda that he pushes…”

“He never says anything about it to me,” says Felia.

“I don’t know him,” I say. “But our spies have obtained plenty of recordings of his secret military meetings. He’s… intense. But he’s just doing what he thinks is best. The only way he sees humans surviving is if they kill all the cyborgs, down to the last one… And obviously I can’t let that happen. But who knows, maybe he knows something that I don’t… What I do know is that he fears us. They all do.”

Felia doesn’t seem to know what to say. She’s silent.

“Well,” I say. “Here we go.”

The blackness is right in front of us, shimmering. It’s intense looking, and I can feel something too, some kind of void that opens up before us. It’s very strange, but it seems to have an intention, as if it wants to swallow us up.

I grip Felia’s hand tighter, and her hand holds mine with the strength of a vice.

We step forward together, entering the blackness.