Kate
Iwatch him leave, then stomp down the spiral steps behind him. Images of the end of my world flash like a bad horror movie in my head. I try to push them back, but they’re playing a loop of double features, the repetition is sickening.
That jerk gets me so pissed off. If he had just snuck down to Earth and asked any group of women to leave their life there to go on some extraterrestrial adventure, he would have a shipload of alien-fetish fan girls up here, all willing and ready to make little alien babies. I mean, come on—he’s from a race of perfect alpha males—all muscle and easy on the eyes. It would have been so easy to pick up a bunch of interested girls, all in one night. Jesus, he could have just burglarized a freaking fertility clinic and no one would have been physically hurt.
When I reach the bottom of the steps and walk through the small secret opening, Rune is talking quickly in hushed tones with Jex. Both of them ignore me.
“How did Pious challenge your ideas?” I bark.
Their heads lean together closer, neither one answering me.
I lunge forward, shoving my body between them. “I know you hear me talking to you. How did Pious challenge your ideas? What’s the difference between what he’s doing and what you wanted to do?”
He swears under his breath, then reaches out to cup his hand around my arm, pulling me tight against him. “I didn’t mean for this to happen!”
“And what was it that actually happened?” I demand.
His expression darkens, but his explanation does not come.
“Are you that much of a coward, you can’t even explain to me what it is?”
Jex’s words, like ice and fire, break through Rune’s silence. “We believe that Pious and the rest of the council are hunting all the ancestors of the Caelum’s maiden voyage. He’s destroying everyone who opposes him before they were ever created.”
Rune puts a hand up to stop me from speaking. I slap it down.
“Kate—”
“Don’t you Kate me. There were eight million people living on the island of Manhattan alone, Rune. He just made them all go away? They were all related to the people on board your stupid ships? So you did come to destroy my world? You piece of shit!”
Between us, Jex looks utterly astonished, glancing back and forth between us. “Sir?” he asks.
“Enough!” Rune commands. His voice is loud and imposing. “With all due respect,” he says moving closer and looming over me. “Your gender is infuriating. Think whatever you want, female. But I must wonder if my people made your gender extinct on purpose.”
“I hate you,” I growl.
“Of course you do,” he shouts back, turning away from me.
I draw myself back and stare after him, wanting more of a fight. He thinks I’m the one that’s infuriating?
“Kate,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. He glares at me with a tight jaw before he continues. “Did it ever occur to you that you might be the one that’s wrong?”
“You came to Earth to steal women and destroy my planet,” I say quietly.
“You’re wrong.” A trace of grief flickers in his eyes. “My forefathers left Earth four generations ago becausethat’swhen humans were dying out. We monitor the planet every season, trying to find even the smallest sign of life—but there hasn’t been any. That’s probably why Pious traveled back in time.” He rakes his hand through his hair, in frustration. “I should have realized when there where healthy people here…I should have realized what he had done.”
Oh.
“How did humans just die out?” I can barely believe his words. I bet it was some disastrous nuclear war.
His eyes are cold when he replies, “Think about how my people have had to live, Kate. We do not touch. We show no flesh. Our oxygen is filtered and regulated.”
I shake my head trying to understand.
“Everything we need to survive is built into our armor. It feeds us the exact nourishment we need to sustain optimal health and it protects us.”
“It protects you from what destroyed everything?” I try to keep my voice even.
“It protects us from what your people have eventually done to mine.” His eyes are dark with anger. “So, Kate, when I speak of finding females to help repopulate our species, I am literally speaking about the future of YOUR species. We did not do this to you. You did this to us.Your generation did it to mine.” Without another word, he jerks away and sets himself up in the small alcove that he could plug his armor into and closes his eyes.
