“Kate?” the voice whispers again.
“Asshole?” I ask, feeling a spiral of tingly giddiness deep in my chest.Shit this was one of the times when Rune saved me. I need to fight for control of my thoughts. Pious cannot find out where Rune is.
Rune’s boots shuffle quickly over the gravelly floor and warm hands slip over my skin to my face. “Are you hurt?” His voice is brittle, shaky.
“What? How?” My words stumble out as I press the palms of my hands over his. “I…don’t understand.”
He drags his thumb gently over my jaw. Through the darkness I can just about make out his features, yet I know how close he stands from the warm fan of his breath on my cheeks.
“Those men…” I mumble, my stomach clenching painfully.
“Are no longer a problem,” he says darkly.
I stare at his shadowy figure, a twinge of bitterness bubbling in my chest. He and his alien friends did this; they caused all this crap to happen. Now he’s the one to come and save me. I raise my chin from his grip.
“But you. You’re still my problem.” I’m shaking, getting sick to my stomach again thinking about what’s outside the door.
“I was never the problem,” he whispers, inching closer.
I bare my teeth, wanting to lash out. “You and your kind destroying my world was never a problem?”
His hands, large and hot, press down against my shoulders, flattening my back into the wall. “I’m the one who came to save this world.”
“What?” I ask, pushing back against his weight. “I don’t understand. You said that...” but I stop, because I’m wrong. He never said anything. He never even told me his name.
“Rune,” he says into the darkness consuming us, sliding his hands off me.
“Ruin what?” I ask, mind racing.
“My name. It’s Rune,” he says, pronouncing it slowly.
Pious taps over the buttons and lights. “Where is he now? This is useless information, parasite!”
Parasite. Parasite! I’ll show him parasite.
I concentrate, focus on a thought, a memory from not so long ago. Something stupid and foolish I did, but maybe something that could help me now. I’ll make him see something I did that would make someone like Pious sick to his stomach with fear of the diseases I may carry.
“Stop fighting me, female. Your pathetic brain is no competition for our software.”
I start singing a song in my head, let the bass beat out a rhythm, until the song is overwhelmingly loud in my mind.
“What is that?” Pious asks, hearing the music.
The illusion opens up into a crowded club.There’s smoke and flashing colors of lights. A layer of sweat is slicked over my body as I dance with a stranger. His hands are on my skin, every inch of it that’s bare—and there’s a lot of it that’s bare. His shirt is fisted in my hands, lifted up to see the hard, muscular expanse of stomach beneath. His lips are on my neck, his tongue licking out and tasting my skin. He says filthy things into my ear.
I wanted to get lost that night, wasted, carefree for one night. I scored a hit of ecstasy from one of the guys I knew from my literature class and all I wanted to do was dance and fuck and run from reality for a while.
“I want to fuck you,” the stranger says.
I cringe at the memory of me being so reckless, but I smile at Pious as he watches me let a stranger fuck me in a filthy club bathroom.
More than once.
With no condom at all.
“Disgusting parasite!” Pious roars, ripping me out of the uploading station.
He tears at my faceplate and yanks it off as I scream and curse at him.
The last thing I see is his metal fist coming at me.
