Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 45130 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 226(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45130 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 226(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
“Juliet!”
I wince. “Sorry, I have to go.” I’m gonna bail on the spa outing but I still shouldn’t be sitting here talking to some guy I just met.
“Juliet,” he says, as if savoring my name on his lips.
Even though I know I have to get going, I can’t help asking, “What’s your name?”
“I am Shak.”
“Shaq? Like the basketball player?”
He frowns. “I do not know this bass get ball player.” He overenunciates the words like he’s not familiar with them. “I am Shakshaacac. Called Shak.”
I arch an eyebrow. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”
“No,” he gives me an enigmatic smile. “Not from around here.”
“Juliet! Come on.”
“Gotta go. Nice to meet you, Shak.”
“Maybe I will see you again.”
I don’t know why my chest warms at the thought. I have a boyfriend and I should definitely not get excited about the possibility of seeing Shak ever again.
“Bye.” I wave and walk away.
Maybe in another life, Shak. Maybe in another life.
Chapter Two
Shak
1 Day Earlier
I finish tying my boots and then walk to the thick porthole of my barracks to look down on the planet that will be my new home, should I succeed in this mission.
Earth.
“Man, I’d kill to be in your place.” Ezosish comes up from behind me and claps a hand on my back. “You lucky snake.”
I turn to face my barracks mate. Unlike me, Ezo’s scales have not yet receded and the bony ridge of his brow is still too prominent to pass for human. He has to endure several more rounds of the treatment until he can join me on earth.
My father got me into the program early and unlike many, my body did not reject the treatments.
We must blend in with the humans if we are to walk among them. Secrecy is the first directive. None but the elect few even know of our presence hovering above their planet—and even they do not know our true purpose in coming here.
I turn and grasp Ezo’s forearm. “Soon enough you will be ready.”
Ezo’s eyes light up, a blinding blue that broadcast his caste. He is among the military caste—not the lowest caste but near to.
We were not the first choice for this task. But too many of the upper castes died in the initial attempts because the ‘treatment’ to combine human DNA with that of the Draci is sometimes more art than science. They still do not know why transformation takes in certain cases and does not in others.
Whatever the reason, it falls to the disposables like Ezo and me to take up the mantle and save our race.
“Think of all the things you’ll see,” Ezo continues excitedly. “The primitives still use wheeled conveyances! Promise me you will ride in one. And all the foods! And maybe you can finally solve the mystery of why all the humans gather together to watch and scream when a small number of them run back and forth with a ball. Is it religious? Something they must do to balance their endocrine systems? Do they do it because—”
I glare his direction and cut him off. “I am not going down there because I am curious about the primitives, Ezo. I do this only to bring honor to my family name.”
He just stares back at me. “You mean your family who abandoned you as a bastard to the junkyards of Ogrocu when you were only a child?”
I yank my glowing blue scylathe from its sheath at my waist and thrust it up against Ezo’s throat. “Do not disrespect my family name. My father is King Thraxcruhxas. I take this mission so that I might bring honor to his name and the royal blood that runs in my veins.”
Ezo raises up his still-webbed hands. “Okay, okay. Don’t take my skin.”
After another moment, seeing the sincerity in his eyes, I drop my weapon back to its sheath. Ezo is a good friend but I have endured enough insult in my long life. I climbed from the junkyards of Ogrocu to the mining pits and then to the construction crews of the Salvation Ships, which earned me passage off of my dying world. And now I have a chance to finally ascend to the station that ought to have been mine by birthright.
When I succeed in this, the first to ever do so, my father will finally name me his son.
I breathe out harshly and turn away from Ezo, pausing a moment to stare at my new face in the looking shell. It is me but not me. My hands go to my soft, alien face.
The flesh is soft where I am used to hard scales. Inefficient. An enemy need only strike me once and I will bleed. My unwebbed hand touches my ‘nose,’ the human equivalent of a snout, apparently. Instead of thin, hard lips, my fingers touch soft, full flesh.