Into a fate unknown.
Answers You Will Perhaps Not Like
I fell and fell…First through the water… And then through air… Until…
I awoke with a gasp, body jerking, brain seizing. Huge guy who’d tried to kill me last night once again sitting at the foot of my bed in seiza.
Except now loads of daylight streamed into the cavern, warming it to the temperature of an early spring day. He’d put on a shirt—some kind of loose gray linen thing with a deep V-neck and no discernible buttons. And instead of looking at the ground, he stared straight at me, his emerald gaze unblinking.
As if he’d been patiently waiting for me to get around to waking up.
This time, I grabbed the strange-smelling fur blanket and took it with me as I immediately scrambled to my feet and tried to run.
“Dorcasss! Dorcasss! No!” Suddenly, the male who’d tried to kill me last night was in front of me with his large hands raised. “Do not run from us. Pleassse.”
I pulled up short. And not just because he surprised me by asking in an unexpectedly nice tone.
This was more the kind of stopping you do right before you hit a brick wall.
I had been right last night. The guy who saved me, then tried to kill me, was gigantic. Sports was not my beat, and I didn’t personally know any basketball players, but he was taller than any on the global roster. I was sure of that. Closer to eight feet than seven if I had to eyeball my guess.
And made of solid muscle. His carved body filled my entire eyeline, blocking out everything behind him. So yes, he might as well have been an organic wall as far as this facedown was concerned.
I reeled back, fully ready to run in another direction—but stupid holoscribe instincts.
My primal flight response was interrupted by my need to ask, “Hold on, how do you know my name?”
Long beat. As if he was processing my question. “We have placed your duffel in the bath space.”
He extended a hand toward somewhere behind me, and I looked in that direction to find that the cavern wasn’t quite a solid slab of rounded stone.
There was a set of double doors, framed and made of wood, on the wall farthest from me. And then, about a meter away, I could make out a rectangle etched into the wall. Faintly glowing, as if to say, “Hey, I’m actually a door, too!”
“We have set out fresh clothes for you as well.” The savior-killer’s voice drew my eyes back to him. He was no longer hissing his esses, I noticed. “If you wish, you may cover your nakedness with them and eliminate your bladder yourself.”
That was actually a really thoughtful offer… that I could not take just yet because so many questions.
Even if English was his second language, I did not like what that “yourself” he added to “eliminate your bladder” implied.
However, I went with my most pressing question first.
“Thank you, but can we talk about the part where you put a knife to my throat and scared the poop emoji out of me last night?”
Another long pause. Then: “We are sorry about that.”
I waited for more. But he only stood there, towering over me like a huge, ethereal, non-answering tree.
“Sorry about that?” I glared up at him. “That’s all you have to say?”
His expression shifted, a minuscule tightening at the corners of his mouth. “No, of course not.”
I began to hope for an explanation. But then he just said, “We are pleased you survived the night after your great fall through the portal that brought you to us.”
My mind swam. I was so confused. It felt like my heartbeat had moved up to the part of my brain responsible for processing new information.
Also…
“We?” I asked him. I looked all around for the other person or people he might be referring to, sincerely hoping they weren’t invisible.
