“Now that I’ve finished healing your body, I have been able to focus on translating their languages for your understanding.”
“So, you’re acting as my universal communicator, but instead of being implanted behind my ear, you live in my body.”
“Precisely.”
While I needed time to get used to sharing my body with another lifeform, right now, I appreciated his help in understanding what was going on around me. That would make the coming days smoother—I hoped.
My only other source of relief was that the female didn’t sound stressed or afraid. In fact, Tori seemed relaxed, judging by the jokes she made with the two males in the room. Seemingly, she was friendly with them, perhaps even more with Celyze.
Maybe I could win her over and convince her to help me escape. Perhaps she would leave with me if she were indeed trapped here as well.
“Does she know that we know she’s awake?” Tori whispered, her voice closer to my side than before. “She can’t trick your medical scans.”
“Well, she does now,” Zyxel growled from my other side. “This is why I didn’t want you in here.”
“Don’t get your coils twisted in a bunch, Zyxel. I was just making an observation.”
When I opened my eyes, I hissed, automatically covering them with a hand to ward off the bright lighting of the room. Why did the medical personnel always turn the room’s lights to full intensity when their patients were trying to wake slowly? It took a while before the Circuli medical team realized that waking to bright lights caused headaches and irritability. Whoever these people were, they hadn’t caught on—or maybe, they wanted the upper hand since I had tried to escape last time.
“Celyze, have you tried communicating with her?”
“That was the first thing I did when I entered this room,” Celyze said. “She must have the same strong mental shields as Tori and the rest of the humans in our crew.”
A sapphire-skinned male stood next to my medical bed, one hand outstretched and ready to grip my wrist. His long hair’s color matched the white speckles that danced along his skin, defining his agile body. A pair of white-and-blue wings fluttered on his back. Without his coloring, I could’ve mistaken him for a demi-human or perhaps a fairy from my stories from Earth.
Humans.
Celyze had declared that Tori was human and that more were aboard. However, I doubted Tori could truly be human. Earth had supposedly been destroyed, along with all other evidence that humans had ever existed. The Yaarkins wanted a monopoly on our species, genetically engineering our children and creating a diverse set of demi-humans by splicing our DNA with other species.
Kaede and his sisters had been their greatest successes. Their mother had been part of the second generation of humans who were genetically enhanced and spliced with an unknown alien species that allowed their offspring to inherit more of their sire’s traits. Each sibling had been born to a different father. The Yaarkins had added an AI system based on theirs and forced them to work as a unit, thus creating the deadly squad that now served the Aldawi.
The female in front of me seemed toonormalto be a demi-human. She lacked the solemn stare that was the default expression of most demi-human experiments, frozen into place by all the terror they had faced over the years. Instead, she appeared full of life with no signs of past trauma in her bubbly demeanor.
Who was she? What was she?
“Can’t you touch the patient to communicate with her?” Zyxel demanded. “Or do I need to get the commander in here?”
Celyze’s icy blue eyes widened as he shot a glance between Zyxel and me, his mouth wide open.
“Don’t touch me,” I hissed, squinting as I sat up. I didn’t know what this Celyze was capable of and didn’t want to find out, even with Vowels protecting me. “I’ve had it with everyone wanting to touch and prod at me, so don’t you dare try it.”
“You can understand us?” Tori asked, standing beside Celyze at the foot of my bed. Her bright-green eyes locked onto mine as she gave me a gentle smile. Pressing a hand to Celyze’s chest, she pushed the blue male back to take his spot beside me. She thrust her hand out, her blonde hair streaked with multiple colors bouncing around her as excitement filled her face. “Hi! I’m Tori, and this is my mate, Celyze—”
“Tori!”
The cheery female’s expression instantly morphed into a scowl as she glared at Zyxel across my bed. “Don’t you dareTorime. I remember how you welcomed me when I first came aboard the ship. You have a worse bedside manner than the commanders. Do I need to remind you about your failed attempt?”
The crimson-and-gold male pursed his lips as he returned her glare, annoyance etched onto his face. Was I about to witness a fight on my bed?
Scanning the room, I realized I wasn’t in the same bare guest room I had first woken in. This one looked more like a long-term personal infirmary, fully equipped with medical equipment and spacious furniture. A second bed sat in the corner, resembling the one I had woken in, wrapped in Zyxel’s nest of coils.
There was a clear division in the room on how they wanted to address me. Zyxel seemed to want to force answers out of me through brute force while Celyze seemed to be on Tori’s side, since he hadn’t argued with her moving closer to speak to me.
“Should I be worried?”
“The three of them mean you no harm.”
“Not even Zyxel?”
