Chapter One
Lauren Kate
I wasn't sure where I was. My left arm ached a little bit as I rolled onto my side. I breathed out, and sand and dust came up around my face. What the hell was going on? Were we still in the desert hiking? For some reason, I couldn't remember what happened. I remembered hiking in the desert with an all-female group on a yoga retreat in California. We had gone on a midnight hike. Everything got fuzzy after that.
I rolled onto my back and looked up at the sky; it was sunny so it was daytime. But strangely the sky had a bit of a purple tint to it like nothing I had ever seen before. Maybe it was just the way the sky looked out in the desert. I wouldn’t know since I never really ventured out of the city; I spent most of my time in my office at the law firm.
But it was a midnight hike, and now it was morning. Why was I still in the desert? Had I fallen or gotten lost from the group? I sat up. I looked around, and my eyes grew wide. There were large chunks of metal all around me. Some of them were releasing black smoke into the air. Some were crumpled like they had been beaten with a bat. I looked around; this was not the desert that I had seen before. This was stark with orange sand.
“What the hell?” I said to myself. Then I stood up. Putting weight on my left arm hurt a lot. I looked at my arm; it was severely bruised, but I didn't see any blood anywhere. My head hurt as soon as I stood up. I looked around and could not see anyone else.
“Hello!” I shouted.
“Hello?” I heard a voice say. It was a manly deep voice. I was startled. Where the hell was I? Then out of nowhere, a very tall man with blue skin and silver hair walked around a section of the metal pieces. It looked like he was covered in the orange sand and had just stood up as well.
“Oh my God. What are you? What happened? Who are you?” I said feeling frantic.
He put his hand up as though to calm me. “I am Ambassador Jion Lek. I am a Kynon. We have crash landed on an unknown planet. That is all I know. I just woke up. Where are the others?” he said looking around.
“The others? What? I don't know what you are talking about. Get away from me,” I said taking a step backward. This being was very tall, almost ten feet. He had silver-purple hair with incredibly stark black eyes. The shades of blue on his skin were different. Most of his skin was a lighter blue, and there were stripes like a tiger in a darker blue on his skin. He did not wear a shirt, only a belt that looked like a futuristic tool belt with a bunch of things in it as well as something that looked like a gun. He wore tight trousers that reminded me of a wetsuit and really big thick boots that went up to his calves and seemed to have compartments as well. What was going on?
“Don't be alarmed, human. I am what you call an alien on Earth. Now don't be so frantic; I need to figure things out, and I can't have my mind racing with thoughts while also trying to calm you down,” he said.
“Alien? Are you serious? You are an alien? How did I get here? What is going on, I don't believe you.” I said looking suspiciously at this creature that called himself an alien. I did not trust him. Even though he seemed sensitive and somewhat kind and a bit attractive, I did not trust him.
I turned around putting my back to him and began to run. It was hard to run in the thick orange sand, and my legs felt like Jell-O. I could not be far from the yoga retreat, and I didn't know what this alien creature wanted from me or if he was even real. Was I having a hallucination?
“Wait! Human! Don't run away from me!” he shouted.
Then I heard the sound of him running behind me. I began to be more frightened. I ran faster, but I was a petite woman, and my stride was not a very long one. I ran harder thinking that I was running very fast, but suddenly I felt myself knocked off my feet. I fell onto the sand on my belly. I felt a very strong arm roll me onto my back. Now the blue alien was laying on top of me. His body was very heavy, and I could smell his manly scent all around me. I was breathing hard with my breasts heaving up and down. He had my hands pinned over my head with his arms. His face hovered above mine. I could see into his eyes very clearly; they were black, but upon closer inspection, they were almost a light gray crystal color, as though I could see right through them. His long silver hair fell on either side of his face, making him look wild and dangerous. This couldn't be a hallucination; this was real. There was an alien on top of me holding me down.
“Get off of me, dammit!” I shouted.
“Stop struggling!” he shouted back at me.
“No, let me go. Let go of my arms. Get off of me!” I said.
“You are not going to make this easy for me, are you, human?” he said.
Then he got up but at the same time held onto my arms and pulled me up with him. He moved my body as though I was light as a feather. I had to admit that this was the first time a man was able to pick me up and throw me around the way he was. I was on my feet, but only for a second. He put his hands on my waist picked me up and threw me over his shoulder. Then he turned and started walking back toward the chunks of metal. I kicked and punched as much as I could.
“What are you doing? Let me go,” I said to him. But it was no use. He was acting as though I wasn't even speaking. He had an agenda of his own, and he was focused.
“I need time to figure out what has happened. I can't have you running off. I don't know what planet we are on; I don't know what is out there. I need to know what happened to the others. There is much I need to know, and this wreckage could provide me with answers. But I can't look at it and decipher what is going on with you being hysterical and running away.”
“I can run away if I want to. You don't own me,” I said.
“On the contrary, human, I do own you. I see you have forgotten. You are technically my property, or at least the property of Captain Alicron Qinov. But I was on that crew and that mission, and he is not here so technically, at this moment, you are mine. I will take you back to my home planet as the mission operations suggested, but not until I get to that point. For now, I need you to be calm and be quiet,” he said. Then he plopped me down on my ass in the sand. He pressed me against a hard piece of metal. I struggled but it was no use; he was a hundred times stronger than me. He opened a compartment on his belt and pulled out a very thin looking string, like a piece of yarn. He wrapped it around my wrist and tied me to the metal. I struggled against it and was surprised at just how strong the small piece was.
“What are you doing? You can't tie me up like this. I am not yours. I am not your prisoner,” I said trying to argue my way out of this. I was a lawyer, after all; it was what I did.
“Do you ever stop talking, human? What is your name?”
“Why should I tell you, you brute alien?” I spit at him.
“I can continue to call you human if you like. But it would be much better if I knew your name. I am Ambassador Jion Lek, but you can just call me Jion.
“Ambassador? Ambassador to what? Actually, I don't care what your name is. I just want you to let me go. Let me go, and you will never see me again or have to deal with me. You can figure out whatever it is you are going on and on about trying to figure out. Just untie me and let me go on my way. I have to get back to the retreat. I have to get back to my home in Los Angeles,” I said.
He laughed. “Don’t you get it, human? How can you not remember? The crash must have made a problem in your memory. You are not on Earth any longer. We, the Kynon, abducted you and several other human females. Then we crash landed in this strange place before we could make it back to our own planet of Xeion. That is the case; that is your reality. I suggest that you adjust to it. You will wander off into this desert looking for your Los Angeles only to die out there.”
“Crash landed? Not on Earth?” I repeated. I looked around. This didn't look like any desert on Earth, and the sky did not look like the normal Blue Sky of Earth. Was it possible he was not lying about this particular thing? It couldn't be. It was unbelievable. Why didn't I remember being taken by them? I needed to talk to someone else, anyone but this blue brute that had pressed his body on top of mine. I needed to get answers from anyone else but him.