He goes still beside me, and looks to be thinking, or choosing his words carefully. “Bending time and traveling through it would alter everything. The first person to see one of our ships—just the thought of seeing one of our crafts—it would alter the future. The slightest incident could change the world. Some would never be born, some would never fall in love—have offspring—”
“Like Back to the Future,” I whisper.
“Like what?”
“It’s a movie from the 1980s where someone goes to the past and changes the future, then he messes up and has to go back.”
“Well, a mess-up would change everything, in some instances it could erase lives, cities, countries—it’s an enormous idea—but it’s true: one insignificant detail could be so significant it could wipe out an entire world.”
“Okay, but…if something were to happen to someone in my time it would alter your people, not my people from the past, right?”
“That’s not how time works, Kate. If you bend time, that straight timeline bends at both ends.”
“Is that why people on Earth disappeared?” His callous actions changed everything. All of this was his fault.He is the enemy.
“I have no way of knowing for certain, but it sounds plausible.”
I study his features in the glow of the starlight. “So when you came here tosteal a few women,” the words are bitter on my tongue and come out as such, “what went wrong?”
“Pious challenged and changed the plan.” His voice is low and vicious and full of betrayal.
“And Pious was a friend to you?”
He shifts back and takes a long breath, “Pious is my brother.”
His admission doesn’t surprise me. But for some reason it hurts, this omission of facts, it hurts personally. He’s just part of one big dysfunctional abduction-loving family. One he forgot to mention to me.
He advances down a step, his eyes still locked on mine.
“Well, there’s probably a hundred women on this ship right now, aren’t there? Pious showed them to me, I saw them with my own eyes. So, you’ve got what you came for, right?”
He stills. “I do,” he admits.
“That’s not right, you get that, right? It’s not right taking someone against their will.”
His jaw clenches. “We need them, Kate.”
Asshole-alien-twatwaffle-women-napping-mother-fu—. “I’m going to fight for them, Rune.”
His face shows no emotion.
“I’m going to fight until every single woman on this piece of shit ship is free or here by their own choice.”
“You would fight even me?” His question is loaded, yet it’s said with a small slip of a smile.
“Yes.”
“You females are very fierce,” he whispers.
“Trust me, Rune. You haven’t seen fierce yet.”
