Stolen

EVE

I hate that I have hope after so many days because it is just one more thing that can be taken from me.

The physical ailments of being underfed and dirty have done wonders to keep my thoughts away from hopelessness and knowing escape was impossible.

But when faced once again with hope, the realization of how horrible my chance is of escaping is shoved down my throat.

This alien—or am I the alien here?—he’s saying the right things for me to hope that I might get out of here. I don’t hold much hope of Earth; just freedom from this is all the hope I am allowing now.

Even if I was able to go back, how could I, knowing just a fraction of what I do now? Could I go on being normal with my family? I know they are looking for me.

My mom has probably already taken a mental break from reality, and my dad has called my uncle, the crazy General. In addition to government agencies.

If I went back, I’d always be looking towards the stars no longer wondering if there was someone out there, but which species will be the next to come to Earth? Would they be friendly?

Would I invest in a bunker in Nevada, buying nasty dry food to last for decades and some type of water filtration so I can drink my own pee?

I look at him again. “My name is,” I speak into the device and I say “Eve,” in English, not wanting the translator to change it.

“Eve,” he says, putting emphasis on the V and making me smile. “Ardaxur,” he points towards himself, smiling, which I repeat. At this, his smile goes from forced to real, and it’s breathtaking.

It’s nice to know smiling isn’t only a human trait because it looks as though it was meant to be on him all of the time.

Some of his front teeth are quite a bit more pointed than mine, and I wonder if his species eats a lot of meat.

He points to my computer and speaks into it. “I help, add words. Must learn Universal. My learn of your native tongue will not help you here.” He takes it from me slowly and examines it, looking all around it.

He’s looking at the ports, and I can see he wants to connect with it in some way. I walk away from him and go down to show how I was able to connect it with the ship.

His face goes from annoyance to triumph as he stares at it. Then back to me, and his face turns dark again.

He encircles the other end of my jerry-rig with his huge six-fingered hand. “That’s so cool,” I stare at his hand. He looks at me confused.

I hope I’m not breaking his concentration or any cultural faux pas as I hold up my hand, showing him the differences in our hands.

He just shrugs his shoulders and looks as though the differences in us are no big deal to him. But I guess they wouldn’t be.

Even if he may not be familiar with humans, I’m sure he’s seen some pretty jacked up aliens. Does he try to find similarities in other species with his?

When I look at his hand, I expect to see glowing—maybe red or blue? But I don’t see anything. I pick up my computer slowly, getting comfortable against the wall.

He sits directly in front of me, blocking my view of the outside—or blocking the outside from me. He indicates not to use it, but it’s fine. I have so many questions, though they can wait.

He’s been here several hours now, and my twice-daily meal arrives via a robot. Though disappointingly, it isn’t the cool kind that sci-fi shows have.

It’s boxy, contains food, leaves it, and goes. No dinner conversation tonight.

Since Ardaxur has my computer and I don’t want to interrupt him, I get my food and see that they left food for him. Fuckers. He gets real food and I’m stuck with Alpo?

I bring it over and set it down. He looks at my food and scowls, looking from me to the food. He’s not stupid; he doesn’t ask any questions, as I refuse to meet his eyes.

I’ve been eating animal food to survive. He takes my plate of “food,” throws it back near the door, and gives me his food.

I won’t argue. I’m starving. But I don’t want to eat all of his, so I try to push some of it his way; he holds his hand up, refusing anything. I smile shakily and take my first bite of real alien food.

“Oh, fuck, humans don’t know what they’re missing. These fucking asshole aliens were holding the good stuff back.”

But I also know I can’t eat this too fast. It smells amazing, and I don’t want my body to reject it and force it back out. After days of little food and food of one texture, I need to be smart about this.

The phrase must have translated to him, as he seems to be hooked up to my translator, even though he’s working with it, because he lets out a shocked sound. I look at him questioningly.

He pointed to the translator. “I think this translator, though I’m not done with the upload, failed to translate properly,” the machine speaks after he does.

“What did you hear?”

He looks at me, grinning, and says, “sexing anal sphincters,” and I burst out laughing, as he does as well, his laugh deep and gravelly.

“No,” I say in Universal, having learned a few basic words, and I see this pleases him. But then I need my computer again.

“I don’t think slang and curse words are going to translate well.” I smile widely, and then take another bite of food, closing my eyes and moaning.

When I open my eyes, he’s looking at me perplexed, as though I just asked him an impossible question that he can’t find the answer to.

“Give me several units and I can download your language, as I have found a database. My internal system needs time to analyze it. But you need to learn Universal.”

“I am, and I will. I learn languages fast. That was part of my job before,” I wave around, “all of this.”

He nods his head. “Just eat for now, and let me do this.”

ARDAXUR

I was surprised, sorting through information on Eve’s device, that her civilization seemed fairly advanced, though hadn’t gone too far into the stars. But I knew that there were so many reasons for this.

Her planet was small, and they perhaps didn’t have the resources to accomplish such a feat or weren’t desperate enough quite yet.

My species’ origin planet hadn’t done so until we had little choice. There are worse things than a planet not being forced to make drastic decisions.

But I also learned enough of her language that I could try using it with the help of my implant for now.

I think she understood the need to learn Universal, but the need to know more information quickly before I contacted my director outweighs that need.

“Do you understand me?”

Her eyes, blue surrounded by white with blackness in the center, shot to mine. “Did you learn English that fast?”

“I meant it when I said you needed to learn Universal, but for now, I need information before I contact someone.

This will be faster, with fewer... translation errors,” I said, grinning at her. She laughed at that.

“It’s been almost two weeks,” her voice broke, and I reached out to take her hand, so small, but so significant. “No one understood me, and they treated me like an animal.”

“I am so sorry that I saw you only as an unintelligent animal, Eve.” She nodded, water coming out of her eye.

From what I read of the information available, humans did this when they were upset. How could she be anything other than upset? I fumed at the situation.

“We’ll move on, Ardaxur. First, does everyone call you that? Do they call you anything else? Can I call you Dax?” She asked in such an excited way that I only became angrier that she was here.

Each sentence she spoke, each word coalesced in my mind that I was speaking to a sentient being that was being held against her will.

I thought about this for a moment. “No.” The hair above her eyes came together. “Most beings call me Ardaxur, or if I am at work, they use my title for respect.”

She started speaking so fast, if it hadn’t been for my implant, there was no way to keep up with her.

“I’ve been so hungry, Dax,” she went on quietly, my annoyance with her calling me Dax overshadowed by her words. “They stopped feeding me as often when I attacked one of them and kept yelling.

I think their plan to weaken me worked.” I saw the anger in her eyes and felt it myself at her words. They were starving her.

But I didn’t like “Dax.” It meant nothing. I will argue this later.

“You attacked them?” I smiled at this, impressed that she tried, but hating the consequences and that it meant her starving.

“That’s what this purple stain on my shirt is,” she pointed towards it. “I had to go through some self-defense training for work, and even though I barely passed, it was better than nothing.”

Her eyes rolled oddly back in her head as she looked up. “It wasn’t enough. If I’d known when I was doing the bare minimum that I’d be stolen by aliens, I would have put a bit more effort into that training.”

“I’d never thought I’d see this, either,” I tell her gently. “I imagine the next time we’re blindsided, we’ll be a bit more prepared.” I had to get up and pace.

“Take my food, anything they bring, take it. I’ll be fine. That congealed mass they bring isn’t even fit for the actual animals in here. It’s no wonder you’ve lost muscle.”

I wanted to ask, but hoped I didn’t offend her. “Is this how you always look?”

She scoffed. “No. I was covered in dirt trying to escape, and I can’t waste enough water to clean myself.”

She took her device and started going through files. I only scanned the informational ones and nothing else. “Do you want to see pictures of me?”

I think I translated the word correctly and understood “picture.” She takes my hand and pulls me down to sit next to her. I hadn’t noticed it before, but her hands are too cold.

She’s not large, and it’s too cold in here. Plus, the clothes she wears are not enough. Annoyed with myself, I take as many clothes off as I can without scaring her and hand them to her.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. You’re cold. I’m not. I’m free, and you’re not. But I swear, I will make this right. Before you show me your “pictures,” let me contact my superior. We need to right this.”

She nods, and I can’t do anything other than an information drop. If anyone hears me talking, it might result in them trying to be rid of the evidence. Of Eve.

Even though I support the stance we take on this, I do realize that beings will do anything to hide it. So I need to be careful, and I need to explain to Eve the importance of her not letting them know she is intelligent.

They would have already killed her to save themselves had they known.

I sent both Virtorn and his mate and medical director, Mola, everything I knew. From my original goals to meeting Eve, and being truthful with how horribly I acted towards her at first.

I told them everything. Mola would need to be able to care for her, and possibly learn about her species.

They often worked together, and I knew Mola would be pestering Virtorn to send an informational gathering pod to her planet and put all information I took from her device into a separate file for them.

I flag the communication as the highest priority, so no matter what they are doing, they will stop and read it.

Eve had sat there patiently, for the several moments it took for me to compile and send everything. Looking down at her, I found I was excited to see what she and her species looked like normally.

Smiling, she handed it to me, showing me how to go through them. The first picture she showed me made me snarl in disgust at the difference before me.

Because even though she was of a different species, there was a beauty to her features that I had not seen before. Her skin was pink and some shade of white.

Her blue eyes weren’t hollowed as they are now, surrounded by dirt. They are bright and burn hotter than the blue suns, set to explode with force. Her hair was dark brown and looked smooth.

But what she had now was dirt-filled, and seemed as though it would crunch under my fingers. She was smiling, which I’d seen some of. But not like this. I wanted to see this.

“I promise, I will do anything to see this look on your face again,” I place my hand on the side of her neck, and turn her head up.

“I swear to you. Show me the rest of your pictures, and then we will talk about what needs to happen.”

She closed her eyes and leaned into my hand, making me want to pull her closer. But I wouldn’t.

So I took my hand away and kept looking. In some of them, she was surrounded by what she says are family and friends.

They all look different, which I find odd, but I guess our origin planet had more variety at one point. War has a way of stripping variety, amongst other things.

In one she was on a “roller coaster,” an odd look of panic and fun in her features. In another she was hiking in mountains on her planet.

In all of the pictures that she was in, I liked those the most. Her planet was beautiful, and not too unlike some that I’ve visited, though still very different.

Until I got to pictures of what I’m told is a wedding. Previously, she’d been in average clothes.

She wore a long red dress, and as a being from a planet with two red dwarfs for suns, I appreciate anything red. There was a definite difference between the female form of my species and those from Earth.

There was a “video” of her at this wedding, dancing, though this was like no dance I’d ever seen. She called it the Tango.

Her and her partner glided across the floor, staying close, and moving as one. They danced in one seamless motion after another. Not unlike the dances of my world.

I needed to ask her about this, but then realized I’d been in a trance for so long, looking at pictures and videos, not even realizing that the night was ending. Which meant so much; we’d have to stop this for now.

“Eve, look at me.” She pulled her gaze away. “The night cycle is ending. We will talk more later, or perhaps whisper if need be. But you cannot let anyone think you are anything other than an animal.”

I had to know she understood me, so I lowered my voice. “Do you understand me? I will explain it later, but just do as you’ve been doing.

Sleep, and I will watch over you. I will wake you if they bring food.”

Swallowing, she nodded. “It’s been hard to sleep because I’ve been cold. Can I sleep against your legs, or back to keep warm?”

“Of course,” I said hoarsely, as the lights came on. She lay down next to where I sat looking out, waiting to hear back from Virtorn, my leg pressing against her back.

I couldn’t lie down right now. I wanted to watch. I wanted to see how they treated her. I was recording all of it, and it would all be used.

I had felt her body relax, and her breathing deepened against my leg as I saw the occasional mercenary walk by, looking disgusted that I’d “made friends with the beast.” Yes. They would all die.