I release the door, which snaps shut. I scramble to find another way to get it open. My comm will not work, not a second time, or a third or more, despite increasing the level if programming in the nanos.
“Driok.” Maggie is holding her head. “I don’t…feel so good.”
I catch her before she hits the floor, her eyelids fluttering closed and her body going limp.
“Maggie, my mate, my spitfire.” I shake her gently. The pulsar pistol falls from her hand and is absorbed by the floor.
For a long time, I stare at the spot it was. How can the floor do that while we’re standing on it?
“It’s about time I got a Sarkarnii of my own.” A voice seemingly drops into my head rather than echoing off the walls of the dome.
“You do not get anything,” I respond, the words coming out like day-old fee, sticky and difficult to move.
I gather Maggie into my arms and shift into my Sarkarnii form. It’s hard at first, but once I get her scent in my nostrils, it becomes easier.
I’m too large for the space, but now I have no overseer to please, I care not. Instead I let rip with a flame at the side of the dome, on which is hotter and deadlier than anything I’ve ever used before. The metal melts, and I shove my way out, taking to the air over the city, in time to see the most tremendous explosion in the distance.
My ship…my crew…
I look down at Maggie in my arms. My head swims. I don’t know how far I can fly or how long I can hold this form.
But I must. For her. For our sarkarnling.
I must save us all.
MAGGIE
Istare at the metal for a little bit longer. My mouth feels like a wet flip flop, an aged wet flip flop, and my brain isn’t firing on all cylinders.
Finally, I decide to look somewhere other than the wall and nearly have an accident.
There is the most enormous city scape beneath me. Not the rotten carcass of Szorn. This place is what I’d have expected an alien city on an alien planet to look like. Swooping sky scrapers which appear to defy gravity, flying cars…well, okay not flying cars, but little shuttles zipping about everywhere. Parts of it appear to float, and these hold pockets of greenery, interspersed by a multitude of other colors. Twin suns illuminate the myriad of glass and metal surrounding me.
I remember to breathe.
I look around to find I’m on a mezzanine level in a larger room. I’m wearing only my underwear.
And there’s no sign of Driok.
Ice seizes my chest.
Where is he? I was on Szorn with him. We were together. Something went wrong and…
My head starts to pound with a steady rhythm, making me feel ill. I don’t understand any of this. Have I been abducted again?
How flipping unlucky can one girl be?
I find my clothes folded at the end of the mattress I’ve been lying on. It’s large enough for two, and the scrunched up sheets would suggest I haven’t been sleeping alone, but then who knows?
“Driok!” I call his name. My voice rasps as if I’ve been on a night out. Many nights out.
There is no response.
Was he here at all? If so, why did he leave? What sort of danger are we in?
I wrap my arms around my stomach involuntarily until I realize what I’m doing and stop. I don’t need to be so damn sentimental. It’s then I spot it, the single iridescent scale in among the silky sheets. I pick it up and hold it to the light. It has to be from a Sarkarnii, doesn’t it?
The nausea is back once more. I need something to drink or somewhere to throw up, both of which are not on the mezzanine level. I pick up my clothing and my comm falls out.
