Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 36875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 184(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 184(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
My eyes drift toward the open door. I wonder. I wonder, if I can get clear enough out of here and far enough away from Manik, if the ship might be able to initiate a transport. It might half-kill me, but it is possible that being beamed out of this atmosphere is not as dangerous as being beamed in.
* * *
Manik
Their skulls were good skulls. I took a little too long examining them, apparently, because when I return to the cozy front room, Lyssa is gone.
She has taken the suit I made her, and she is gone. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I am not. She had no response to my declaration of loyalty, and I do not know if she believed me or not.
“You are in trouble now,” I growl underneath my breath as I prepare to go out and reclaim what’s mine.
Her trail is laughably easy to follow. It is a big, wide trough through the snow. Her suit means she moves slowly and without any artifice.
I soon see her up ahead. My anger makes me want to go grab her and drag her back, but I can see the funny side of this. Most escape attempts are panicked and intense affairs made in haste. Hers is painfully slow and adorably awkward. Where is she going? What is she trying to do? Escape into the freezing wilds?
She keeps stopping and looking up, raising her hands to the sky. What is she doing? Is this some kind of human ritual I am unfamiliar with? Then it occurs to me. She’s going to try to get her ship to initiate a transport. She’s going to get herself killed.
I burst into a run, covering the hundreds of yards between us in a matter of seconds, and grab her up off her feet.
“Do you want to die!?” I shout the question into her face.
“Don’t kill me!” she shrieks in fear.
“No, you little idiot. Trying to transport from this planet is deadly. You should know that already. I thought you were more intelligent than this. I thought you had a basic understanding of explosion bad. You are an absolute liability, do you know that?”
I toss her over my shoulder and I carry her back to my hideout. She gives up the fight quickly after a few token struggles. I think she knows that what she was doing was stupid. And I think she also knows she is in very big trouble. My mind is racing with thoughts. I want to punish her, but every idea I have is far too harsh for her to survive. I thought she was intelligent, but her actions today have proved otherwise. Intelligent animals learn from past mistakes. Clearly, she has learned nothing at all.
Upon return to the hideout, I bolt the door and secure it in several other ways to ensure that her little human fingers will be unable to operate it again.
“I have to keep this locked now, because you don’t have the ability to look after yourself on even a basic level. You need to be crated and contained.”
“LET ME FUCKING GO!”
Somewhere along the way back to the hideout, this girl decided that she should yell at me. I can only assume she has abdicated all sense and reason, because she saw death and she did not want to see death. But that is how life is.
She’s an absolutely spoiled brat who thinks because somebody sold her a bounty hunter license, she can do anything she wants. I am supposed to be the crazy one, but she is the one who keeps ignoring reality.
“You are going to be leashed,” I tell her. “And I am taking your suit away too. You make your decisions based on emotion, and frankly, I think you crave disciplinary attention. There’s no other explanation for being that absolutely braindead.”
“Hey,” she frowns. “I’m not stupid. I’m a risk taker. I knew Computer wouldn’t initiate transport if it was dangerous.”
“Your computer zapped you into a fireball in the first place,” I remind her. “You have a very short memory, or you are being deliberately rebellious to get a reaction.”
“Why would I want a reaction from an alien who kills people!?”
“Why would you run into the deathly cold to die in a ball of flame? Your motivations are as opaque to me as I suspect they are to you, Lyssa. You act on impulse. Man disappoints you, you run off into space and start putting your life at risk. You overreact.”
“Hey, fuck you!” she shouts. She’s angry now. She’s forgetting how much trouble she’s in and who she is talking to. She’s being puppeted by her obnoxious, self-righteous rage. “I’m a fucking bounty hunter, and you are under fucking arrest, you…. You… alien psycho!”
I grab her and I pull her over one thigh. She is still cursing up a storm, but that does not matter. I intend to light a fire across her hide of the likes she will never forget.