Chapter Two
Korus
Memories came up in flashes. Running through the field and feeling the damp, wet grass, deathly cold. The fire erupting and screams: high-pitched screams.
Darkness blanketed over the rest of my memories, suddenly come to in a wild inhale of breath—a gasp for reality.
I shot up in the bed I was placed in, scratchy blankets covering my body and tubes shooting out of my arms. I could hear voices, but they were muffled.
My vision blurred in and out until finally, I could see clearly. A woman with curly black hair was barricading her body up against a thick yellow door with another woman, short, light hair and freckled skin.
“Security, for goodness sakes!” the black-haired woman shouted, absolutely furious.
I swallowed hard, tasting a metallic tinge in the corners of my mouth.
The security called for finally arrived, pulling two men away from the other side of the door. Their feet squeaked and squealed against the tiled floor, making it apparent that the men weren’t leaving of their own accord.
“What’s going on?” I said, my own voice sounding foreign and hoarse.
“Sorry about that,” the dark-haired woman said with a sigh. She consulted a thin, electronic chart that she was holding between her hand and thumb. She sounded irritated as she finally stepped away from the door. “We’ve got some insane reporters out there. Apparently, you’re a celebrity now.”
Celebrity?
“Oh…” I said, unsure what she meant by that. “Uh, good?”
I took a stab at an answer and, while she offered me an unimpressed gaze, seeming to accept my response.
“And all you had to do was almost die,” she mused, still looking at my chart. “How are you feeling?”
I took a deep breath and felt my chest tighten, my arm ached, and there was a deep heat that seemed to burn and swell with each breath I took. “Never better,” I wheezed out, and the beautiful woman offered me a smile.
“So, you were in quite the crash out there,” she said nonchalantly.
I looked around the room, and it was clear I was in some sort of medical facility. The walls were gray with a blue stripe ground around the room. A flickering light was bolted to the wall above me, and there were monitors and stands all around me.
To my right, there were two windows, draped fabric preventing the bright outside light from spilling into the room. Just to the left window were two chairs and a table, for visitors, I supposed.
“You had a lot of damage to your arm, but surprisingly not a lot of burn damage considering the state of the wreckage,” she said quickly. “You should be feeling a tightness in your chest for a few days, but that will go away. Lighter colored skin will start to replace your wounds, and you may have some scarring, but we didn’t need to do a skin graft. Otherwise…frankly, you’re lucky to be alive.”
She was so beautiful I could barely catch my breath. Her long hair was pulled up in a string of falling curls, and she had square glasses framing her oval face.
Green eyes looked up at me, and I exhaled loudly, realizing I hadn’t responded to her yet.
The woman looked over at her blonde associate and shrugged.
“Sorry,” she said stiffly. “Should I talk slower?”
“I just…need a moment,” I stammered.
“You’re probably still in shock. We want to keep you here for a few more days to keep an eye on you, make sure you don’t have any internal bleeding and then die on the spot.”
I swallowed again, loudly, and looked to the nurse standing next to her worriedly.
“Um,” I mumbled.
“Sorry!” the blonde said with a soft smile and a little giggle. “Dr. Smith has a terrible bedside manner. You’re going to be fine!”
“Thanks,” I said, though still not entirely reassured about what was happening with my body. It was certainly different than the last time I saw it.
The dok-tor looked embarrassed at that, her face flushing a bright pink as she looked down at her chart.
“Right…sorry,” the doctor said. “The police are waiting to talk to you, but I can hold them off if you want some time to get your story straight,” she snorted.
I cocked a brow and felt my hands moisten. “Oh,” was all I could stupidly say.
The crash site…I remembered now. I’d been spotted by the humans. My mouth drew open in a wild array of fire, a deep heat rising up from the pit of my stomach and raging out through my bared teeth.
I could hear sirens in the distance, and I knew the humans were coming. My best bet for survival was to shift, to transform from my true self—a powerful, winged warrior—to a human.
Transformation wasn’t something I did often. It was painful, bones shrinking and scales melting into solid skin. The bones that sprouted my wings felt like the impaled me as they returned to my flesh. And all I was left with was a human body, weak and ravaged by the elements that I had created.
“Thank you for uh…” I gestured to my torso, my muscles wrapped in a thick layer of bandages. “Saving me.”
“That’s what I do, nonbiased,” she snipped back and scribbled something down on her electronic pad.
“But…” I drew my brows together and looked between the doctor and her associate before smirking, ever so slightly. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have saved me?”
“What?” Dr. Smith said, looking up in surprise. “No, of course I would have.”
“You seemed to be implying there would be a reason you wouldn’t have saved me, should your work not have prevented you from being unbiased.”
The blonde nurse laughed and seemed to be enjoying herself, looking toward the doctor for some sort of rebuttal.
“I took a Hippocratic Oath to—” the raven-haired woman began, but I interrupted.
“Is there something you want to say to me?” I asked, noting the suspicion in the eyes. If she was implying I needed to concoct some sort of story then obviously she played into the belief that the crash had something to do with the Parduss, which was something I couldn’t have her believing.
“Something you want to ask me?” I followed up, needling her.
“What?” she scoffed incredulously. “And be like one of them?” She gestured to the hallway, the men who were trying to get in the room, was all I could assume. “I’m just here to read you your vitals and keep you informed, but if you’d rather Nurse Maddie keep you up to date, then by all means.”
“I’m uh…” Maddie piped up, twiddling her fingers nervously. “I’m not really qualified.”
“Here you go,” the doctor said, shoving the chart in her friend’s hands. “I give you my full permission.”
“You don’t like me,” I said, almost amused.
“That’s not really my—” the doctor began.
“You don’t know me, but you don’t like me,” I smirked.
The doctor looked at me, fixing a curl behind her ear. My eyes trailed across her body, fixating on her jutting curves and then back up to her eyes. She was done talking, that much was clear. But if I had any hopes of hiding my true identity, something told me I was going to have to get her on my side.
Without another word, the doctor spun on her heel and left the room.
Maddie looked at me, awkwardly, and took a big inhale. “Uh, sorry about that,” she said with a half-smile.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked, suddenly feeling a sting of pain in my chest that caused me to lurch forward.
Maddie gestured her hands toward the source of my pain but hesitated as I waved her off. “Oh it’s…” she shrugged. “Brooklyn—I mean, Dr. Smith! She’s just overworked,” she said, correcting herself quickly. “Now, let me see here,” she looked down at my chart, swiping her finger horizontally along the screen. “Says you suffered a cracked rib. They had to reset your shoulder, and you had some severe burns across your chest, but other than that it seems like you’re good to go.”
“That explains the pain,” I said, gingerly grazing a finger along my chest.
“But, the good news is, I brought you your first meal of the day!”
That was good news. I was starving.
I propped myself up in the bed and looked over to the small tray Maddie fetched from across the room. She uncovered a bowl to reveal a wiggling, strange, square substance that looked like cubes.
My brow cocked up without thinking, and I received the tray from her.
“I see,” I said, looking down at the possible lifeform. I shifted the tray and watched it jiggle some more. It looked like the globular runoff from the deep cave dwellers my people would devour back on Cadir.
“Does not like Jell-O,” Maddie said, making a mental note to herself.
“So, this…Brooklyn. She’s been overworked?”
The blonde nodded and gave a half-hearted shrug. “Well, that and…you know.”
I blinked, setting the tray down. “What?”
“The crash site?” she offered, as though that should answer everything. “You know!”
“No,” I said tersely. “What of it?”
“Oh, well, we have a bunch of reporters here like you saw earlier. And uh,” she laughed, “they’re all wondering if you an alien. So, I think Dr. Smith is just a little annoyed with all the fussing.”
I searched my knowledge of the human vocabulary but couldn’t really recall what fussing meant. Still, I nodded. I couldn’t keep doing things that made me look out of place.
“So, we’re just going to have to keep you here a couple of days,” she continued. “Make sure your burns aren’t getting infected.”
“Alright,” I said. “Thanks.”
“If you don’t need anything else…” she began, trailing off as she tucked my file under her arm.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Okay, then, if you need a nurse just hit this button,” she gestured. “Otherwise, someone will be in to check on you again tonight and change your bandages.”
I nodded, and the nurse left the room, the silence overtaking the space once more, save for the humming of the machines around me and the footsteps out in the hall.
With a brief once-over, I examined my human form, wishing I had something reflective to catch a glimpse of myself. I’d never seen what I looked like in this body. I’d only shifted to full human form a handful of times. Once, to escape the Earth.
The battle here was tougher than we expected. Back on Cadir, when warriors fought they used sheer strength. Muscle and fire. Here on Earth…they used guns and lasers, giant weapons of mass destruction.
I was one of the lucky ones who was able to escape the wrath of the human war. I was also one of the only ones foolish enough to come back after all these years.
For now, anyway.
It had been so long since I had seen a female that I became instantly enamored with this…doctor. Her curves, the irritation in her tone, her ability to heal my body. Her presence hit me like a rush of adrenaline through my limbs.
She was absolutely intoxicating, and she couldn’t even stand me.
I chuckled to myself.
She should at least get to know me before she came to her already correct opinion of me.
If I was going to get out of this situation alive, no human army involvement, then I would need to soften the doctor to me. Especially if she could prevent the authorities from talking to me.
This would mean I would have to find a way to endear her to me, and I was positive I knew just how to do it, but it wouldn't be easy.