Kate
My finger brushes over the cold bricks of the buildings, tracing their ridges and serrated textures as we walk past. We’ve been walking for ten minutes and the quiet and unknown doesn’t sit well with me. “What is it that they were doing?” I ask softly. Mom always used to tell us you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, so approaching the subject sweetly might help.
Definitely no steak knives this time.
Rune lingers a few steps behind, in the middle of what was once a busy intersection of the city. Surrounding us are gnarled structures that used to be offices and restaurants. Now they’re stone structures of crumbling rock and dust. My pulse pounds in my temples waiting for his answer.
He doesn’t, of course. Instead, he turns down a side street and walks ahead of me.
“Why do you think they tried to put the metal suit thingys on them?” I try again, sighing in frustration. “I mean, those guys were dead, so why bother?” I can’t make sense of it and not understanding bothers me.
He continues to ignore me, silently scanning the ruins of the streets.
I stare up at him, as sparks of anger dart out over my cheeks. He’s acting like I’m not even here—like my questions and feelings don’t matter. “Do you even know where you’re taking me?” I ask. He promised to get me to Claire, that’s where he better be taking me.
Still no answer.
“Do you even know why your people are here?”
Nothing.
“Do you know anything?” My tone is sharp and angry. “Or are you just some dumbass outer space asshole whose own species doesn’t even like him?”
“Do you ever stop talking? Or irritating people?” he snaps back, his eyes flashing with something that looks a lot like rage.
Oh, looks like I hit a nerve.
“No. Do you?” I narrow my eyes at him.He has no idea, I haven’t even begun to start trying to annoy him. I run my tongue along my teeth and fantasize about toothbrushes and other aggravating questions. “How old are you?” I ask.
He sweeps way ahead of me now, in long maddening strides, and I find I’m becoming quite happy getting under his skin. I feel somehow accomplished. Pleased.
“How about a family?” I ask, biting my bottom lip to stop myself from laughing. “Is there a mama and a papa alien?”
He looks back at me, lips pressing into a tight white slit.
“How about a girlfriend? Nah. A boyfriend maybe? Husband?” I smile, batting my eyelids. I take pride in annoying people.
Rune comes to an abrupt stop and whirls around on me. He draws a long breath and releases it. “We don’t have interpersonal relationships like your kind does.”
“Yeah? Really? The fight between you and your three metal amigos there looked pretty interpersonal to me.” I step closer to him and jab my fists on my hips. “What about a significant other? Your personality is so magnetizing I find it hard to believe that your—”
“There aren’t any women,” he says quietly.
“Say what now?” I ask, stumbling over loose gravel.
His voice is colder than before, raw. “The female population of my kind are extinct.”
I feel my eyebrows hit my hairline. “They must have been bored to death.”
His entire body tenses and he swallows hard.
There’s no way I’m keeping my mouth shut now. My mind is running with all the questions I know everybody would want the answers to. Questions tumble from my lips. “That’s impossible. How are your people made? How are there babies? Do the males have babies? Do you have sex, like, ever? What—”
His shoulders fall and his eyes practically roll up in the back of his skull. I’m satisfied I’ve hit my annoyance quota of the day. But I’m also intrigued as anything.
“There’s no physical contact,” he says nonchalantly. He looks away, devoid of any emotion, like he didn’t just drop the abstinence bomb.
“What?How the hell do you reproduce?” I ask, stunned. “You—I mean, you never—“
