I’m going to drown.
Already, the water was soaking her to her calves. If she stayed in her seat much longer, with the way the ship was sinking sideways, she’d be trapped with her head below water. The mask might have been a source of oxygen, but she didn’t want to be trapped in the ship as it sank to the depths. She ripped off her mask and smacked the release for her harness several times before it finally clicked, freeing her to tumble sidelong into the water.
With a gasp, she scrabbled to grab onto the chair, using it to hold her head above the rapidly rising tide.
Not like this, she thought desperately, glancing helplessly around the ship. Death by impact had sounded quick, painless. This was… something else. Fear pounded through her veins.
The water kept coming until she was pressed up against the far side of the ship, her hands digging into the vents. She had her head tipped back and her lips brushing the metal siding so she could make use of the scant few inches of air left to her. Something slammed into the ship. For a moment, she thought she’d struck the bottom of the ocean, but something squeaked, shrill and deafening, across the window. Bioluminescent blue suction cups undulated over the glass—testing or tasting, she didn’t know.
Cordelia moaned in horror. Was drowning better or worse than being eaten by an alien sea monster? She shook violently, the terror and chill water both biting her to the bone.
TheCassandralurched and pulled upward so fast that she nearly lost her grip on the vents. The water lightened outside the window. As it did, the tentacle gripping the ship dulled, turning a flat, speckled gray. A furious shriek pierced through the sound of rushing water. A moment later, the craft was hauled back to the surface, pulled up into the air by some unseen force.
The tentacle fell away with another shriek. Water gushed back out of the ship. It poured too violently for her pitifulchoice of anchor and fatigued hands. She lost her grip and was slammed to the ground by the shifting water. It dragged her toward the open side of the ship as it rushed back out the same way it had bled in. She screamed, her nails clawing at the smooth metal floor panels.
At the last moment, she managed to grip one of the metal supports that had once cradled the pods, clinging to it for dear life. Water sluiced over her head, briefly drowning her. She coughed, her whole body trembling from the effort of holding her weight.
A shriek from below drew her attention. The creature hadn’t returned to the depths. It was there below her, churning the water with a dozen tentacles as long as theCassandraherself, pointing a beaked mouth lined with hook-like teeth at her.
She screamed, swinging her legs, desperately trying to scurry back onto the ship. One of the tentacles stretched up out of the water, reaching for her dangling legs.
“No, no, no!” she shouted, pulling them up as high as she could. The exhaustion threatened to overwhelm her adrenaline. Her body had been through too much in too short a span, and so soon after waking from cryo.
“Please,” she begged the universe. “Not like this,please!”
A blinding light fell upon her as a whirring, blaring sound filled her ears. There was a small, black aircraft hovering beside her, slightly bigger than an SUV.
A door popped open as she stared, sliding up and out of the way, and a man stretched out of the opening. He was dressed all in black, nearly all of him obscured up to his eyeballs, which were a bright, impossible green. His eyes had no sclera, and his pupils were vertical slits that narrowed as his eyes met hers. The skin she could see was pale lavender, and he had a pair of massive, twisting horns sprouting from his head.
“Help!” she cried as the shock subsided, swinging her feet up again as the tentacle brushed the sole of her bare foot. “Help me, please!”
The vehicle came closer, and he leaned over the side, dangling from a rope. His hands stretched out to her, snagging around her waist. She let go with one arm, turning into him and wrapping it around his neck as she swung her legs up around him. He grunted, taking her weight, and she let go of the beam.
She knew she had to be strangling him, but she couldn’t bring herself to loosen her grip. His aircraft drifted away from the ship as he pulled them both back into its interior. The outer door sealed around them.
All the noise of the outside world was suddenly cut off, leaving only a soft whirring and the sound of their panting. She finally loosened her grip on his neck, sitting back in his lap as she straddled him.
“Thank you,” she whispered, holding herself up with straightened arms braced against his shoulders. “I thought—I thought I was going to—” She shuddered, the horror of it all rolling through her.
Moving slowly, as though she were a wild animal, he reached between them and pinched the fabric covering his face, dragging it down below his chin.
“Oh,” she murmured.
He had a long, sharp jaw, full lips, and high cheekbones. It was as though he’d been chiseled from stone. The only strange thing about his face, other than his eyes, was his nose—broad and flat, it would have looked less out of place on a large cat. There was a speckled pattern of darker purple that trailed over his cheekbones and disappeared into the high neck of his shirt. His lips were a darker shade of purple than the rest of his face, and when his tongue flicked out to wet them, it was starkly black.
Alien. He was an alien. She was sitting in an alien’s lap.
Maybe she should scream or scramble away, or something, but her mind was strangely blank with the revelation. It didn’t feel real. She was mesmerized by the impossibility of it. All those years of longing for spacefaring, and she’d never actually considered that she might meet a sentient alien being.
He said something to her then, and she recognized his low, lyrical voice from the intercom.
“That was you trying to hail us?”
He said something that sounded like an affirmation, his hand reaching up to brush a matted tangle of hair out of her face. She flinched away from the touch, and his hand hovered in the air between them before falling to the side. He had six fingers instead of five, each a little too long for a human. He watched her with his massive green eyes, tossing his hair out of the way. It was as black as his tongue had been and just a little longer than his brow. She shifted in his lap, disconcerted by the force of his attention.
He made a strained sound, his hands falling to her hips, stilling her. Another lyrical strand of words left his lips.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
