Sidney
Tessoul raged in his cell, his makeshift cage made of the bones of an old trailer, rigged up with an electroshock field and thick bars. Our militia had done everything possible to trap him, and while I knew it was once the plan to get a Vithohn in captivity and find out what he knew, it no longer felt like that was necessary.
Now Baxley expected me to get the information out of him, and all I knew was that there was a war coming.
I looked down at Ed, sweet and sleeping in my arms, and wondered how he could possibly be a Kilari. I petted his squishy head and rocked him in my arms before letting him loose on my bed to snuggle into me.
He had to be harmless.
My eyes shut, heavy and damp, and I slept hard for the first time since Tessoul and I had been apart. I didn’t know what to say to him after I’d left his cage and he’d only begun spouting off nonsense and looking out-of-body somehow.
My eyes burst open just hours into the night when I heard a crash outside and the unmistakable pops of our turrets. Not more fighting, I thought. Not again.
I raced up from my bed and peeked out the slatted blinds of my trailer; I watched as five Vithohn rushed our camp and started grabbing our women. Apparently, they wanted a piece of whatever everyone else was having.
One of the women was being pinned down and assaulted by the Vithohn, and I could hear Tessoul screaming—a harsh, vindictive cry from his cage—telling them to leave.
I raced for my boots and my gun and made my way out the door, firing at will as the cold hit my face.
The Vithohn looked up, and I started running toward the women he was touching, shooting at him and watching his force field come up over his body like a laser shell.
I shot off a few more rounds and watched as the militia gathered, several more of them being taken by the Vithohn as they tried in vain to help me.
Then Ed appeared, rolled out from my trailer, and sent a surge of pain through the Vithohn.
I ran to him, scooped him into my arms, and held him out toward them. Their reaction was as if I were holding up sonar rays that only they could hear: loud, painful ones. They bellowed and recoiled in pain.
The group of them retreated, grabbing our people as they did so.
I followed after them into the woods. Old familiar, I thought. I ran until my legs ached, feeling nothing but sweat even despite the cold breeze.
Baxley grabbed my arm, pulling me back and pressing his finger against his lips, trying to get me to quiet down. Years of being together had taught us how to fight side-by-side like some kind of well-rehearsed dance. He knew my thoughts and moves before I did, and vice-versa. We knew each other so well.
I watched as the Vithohn maneuvered through our series of booby traps: our pink lava designed to crush and burn them.
I wondered what would happen to the five women they’d stolen if they did fall in. Were we waiting to watch our friends die?
My arm jerked out of Baxley’s grasp, and I spun on my heel, turning back to the trailer park in disgust as we let the Vithohn leave: let them win yet another battle.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I said sadly as Baxley caught up with me.
“There’s nothin’ we could’ve done,” he said with a reassuring hand to my back.
I shrugged. “I know.”
“We’re the same, you and me,” he offered, and I began to laugh.
“Oh no,” I smiled weakly. “Are we about to bust into an ‘old sport’ soliloquy? Because I don’t think I could take that right now.”
“Not fancy enough for a soliloquy,” he chuckled. “You okay, kid?”
I stared, twirling my gun in my hand, checking the rest of the camp for anyone who might be hurt. In truth, the rest of the militia had fled to their trailers to grab more guns or simply to hide. The Vithohn knew where we were now; they were after our females.
“The girls,” I shrugged.
“They’re getting aggressive,” he said and then clarified, “The aliens.”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all this but,” he brushed his arms, “Hell, you’re stronger than anyone else here. You can take it.”
He paused then, and we spent the next twenty minutes checking the camp, making sure everyone was alright. We lit a fire and reset the turrets; I looked at Tessoul with pleading eyes, and he wouldn’t even look at me. He was shaking.
He needed to leave, and I knew I had to find a way to convince Baxley, which would be especially difficult given what had just happened.
Baxley nodded toward Tessoul’s cage as we ended the far corner of the park and said, “You get any more information from him? He know they were comin’ for our people?”
“He’s not speaking to me, really,” I said coldly.
“Aww,” Baxley mocked, punching my arm lightly as if he were about to call me ‘slugger.’ “You in a fight?”
“Hey, why are the girls there?” I asked, watching as two women had walked up to Tessoul to speak with him. “Trying to extract information?”
Or just making sure he was alright?
“Yep, that’d be my guess,” Baxley said with a cold plume of smoke to the air as he puffed on a cigarette: his anxiety relief.
“I thought that was my job,” I argued.
Baxley laughed and began to walk away from Tessoul’s sight until he saw that I stayed put. He took large steps and dragged his feet in the mounting snow, walking back over to me. “You’ve done enough,” he said and then on a more serious note shared, “We were so, so worried about you, kid.”
“What’s he doing?” I ignored, pointing at Tessoul, who was shaking in an explosion of emotion. It was the pull; I knew it.
“I don’t know. He keeps raging; it’s insane. We need Karen. We gotta bring her back and study him, find out what’s setting him off. We keep having to zap him.”
“You what?” I spat out in disgust. “Karen was right about them, B. I saw it with my own eyes. They’re tame. He’s tame now.”
“Yeah, I talked to the thing, I get it,” he murmured.
“And I saw more at the base,” I reasoned. “If we can figure out what makes them settle down on a larger scale—”
“Without opening a brothel,” Baxley interrupted, taking another drag.
I snapped my fingers in agreement and continued, “Then we can really start something. I mean, he’s really calmed down. He feels a lot of guilt over everything that’s happened. He was even talking about gathering females to try and steady his crew before I ever brought it up. I didn’t even have to sell him on it.”
“I bet,” he scoffed.
“I don’t think he has any secrets, B.”
“That why you keep comin’ back with nothin’?” he needled.
“Well, you know what? You didn't even give me a chance to talk to him before you went ahead and shot him! Okay?”
Baxley laughed, hard. “What, you think he would have willingly got into the cage? Let us poke and prod at him?”
“I think none of this was necessary any longer, yeah,” I seethed.
“With that?” he pointed to the center of my legs. “That what you’re gonna convince him with?”
I set my jaw, balling my fists. “You need to back off.”
Baxley stared at me then, and his eyes fell away from the glaze that had just covered them when he said such awful things to me. He’d never spoken to me disrespectfully, ever.
“I’m sorry,” he said stoically; ashamed. “You’re right. I’m off. I’m way off. You’ve just been gone so long, and everyone’s been… well, we’ve been a mess, kid. Now he comes back with you, and you’re all…” He gestured his hands to me and couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.
“Wasn’t that the point?” I argued.
“No. The point was to study him and find out what he knows. Not screw him in your trailer.”
I licked my lips then and felt them chap immediately against the air. I spun on my heel.
Baxley followed beside me, watching as I crossed my arms, and he said, “You don’t think I have the right to say that, soldier?”
“I think you went about this the wrong way and I think we need to let him go, right now,” I fumed.
“Are you kidding me?” he breathed, incredulous.
I continued to walk away from him, incensed, and he grabbed my arm and pulled me hard so that I spun around. “There somethin’ you’re not tellin’ me, kid? You love this guy?”
I set my jaw.
“Maybe I do,” I said, and I watched his eyes crumble. “They’re going to keep taking our people, B. So, unless you want to see this camp disappear, he needs to get the hell out of here. They sense him; it’s a thing, okay?”
Baxley looked at me then and ran a hand through his dark beard. “No,” he said, dire. “We fight.”
“Stop this! You’re being stubborn, and I get it, but we have five pockets left! Just five groups living around the world. And from what I heard, the Lotus Group was attacked yesterday, and we still haven’t heard back from them. Get it? This could be it for us.”
“So you want him gone?” he repeated.
“I think we would be safer if he left. He goes back to his camp, we grab Karen and be done with it. Whatever the hell we decide to do, we need her with us.”
Baxley chewed his lip then, searching my eyes. I knew what he wanted; he wanted Tessoul to leave. Now that I admitted my real feelings, all he could think of was how he could say yes, send him away, without it looking so pitifully transparent.
“I want reports from the girls,” he began, all business as he pointed to the girls in the distance fawning over Tessoul, even despite his body arching and slamming against his confines; despite the attack we’d just witnessed. “They say there’s nothin’ he’s hiding then send him out. But I want Karen back tonight.”
“Fine by me.”