Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Not that it would be a successful attempt.
Amusing, however … well, that might be a different story.
His bushy, dark brows lift in anticipation of me possibly lifting my talon-tipped fingernail to point in his direction to say I understand the implication of the figures being humans.
But no.
I let my black gaze linger uncomfortably on him. I can tell the general dislikes the fact that he cannot distinguish where exactly my gaze pinpoints on him because while his pupils follow me acutely, he rarely makes eye contact with me for very long knowing I could be looking at, through or past him all at the same time.
Perhaps, I like that.
I like that he knows, and it’s visceral.
A part of my very being senses how my size, presence, overall appearance, and undoubtedly the unknowns surrounding me are all compounding on the general’s mind as the time passes us by and he gets no closer to chatting with me than when I first emerged from the water. I am a threat, even though I have yet to act like one. I am a problem, even if I am not being one.
Despite the human indulging my silence for hours beneath his home in this lab-slash-bunker with his stack of images meant to entice me into some form of communication, he didn’t let me forget the truth.
He sighs harshly, standing from his side of the metal table in the middle of the room. Pushing in the chair he’d used to sit, he gives me another glance. I, too, was offered one but standing felt more appropriate even if it did leave me closer to the bright lighting overhead than I liked. Especially considering how the human’s guards still fill the main lab space in various doorways and corners, all with weapons held close while their untrusting gazes keep a close watch on me.
All the lighting makes it feel like I’m on a stage. I regret to inform these humans that there will be no show. At least, not one they will like.
“You’re going to have to explain your intentions here,” he tells me.
Again.
At least this time he doesn’t repeat the same spiel about detailing my home planet, the ship I arrived in, and what last entered, or exited, for that matter, my body cavities.
These humans are strange beings.
“Or,” General Lockett says, uttering the word an octave lower and more threatening, “your visit here might become far less pleasant, Alien.”
Well, actually, I am not at all sure that I will enjoy my stay. Nor did I assume he would care if I did.
So, at least that makes two of us.
*
I wish the large cage in the general’s laboratory might be easily explained away, but the males who direct me into the other room offer nothing except the jut of their weapons in my direction. Following their unspoken orders, I walk inside where I know will become the cage. The moment I’ve passed from one space to the other, the bars quickly come down, ensuring I have no way out. I smirk as I look at them, watching how it unnerves the males on the other side of the bars. I’m sure I could escape with the right inspiration and a little time, and some part of them knows that, too. I walk towards the bed, but don’t sit on it, instead standing with a tight grasp on my survival bag that none of them has tried to take.
Yet.
Anything is still a possibility.
General Lockett, having already taken his leave to return to his sprawling home aboveground, ordered the males to remain where they will watch me until told otherwise. I’m not exactly sure how long that is, but the stretch of silence between the human males left to guard me and my unmoving form in the cage is almost unnatural.
“Is it even breathing?” one of the younger males asks another from where they stand near the paneled exit across the room.
I answer that question by turning my head in their direction and letting out a hiss that peels back my upper lip enough to show the enlarged canines that would surely tear the little human’s throat apart. If only I cared to know what their blood tastes like.
“That!” the male shouts suddenly. “You saw that, didn’t you? He heard what I said!”
“I think you mean he understood it, idiot,” the other human on the left replies, dryly.
He doesn’t, however, look towards me.
“Maybe don’t provoke it,” someone else mutters.
Wise, I want to say.
I don’t.
It would be odd to say I can smell their fear, but it’s true. It permeates their sweat, changing the very air in the room the longer the males are locked in the illuminated space with me, and I taste it with every breath. Another time and place, and the feral side of me might consider the weaker males in the room a nuisance needing removed. Considering the current state of my circumstances, that might not be the best option at the moment. Time continues to tick on, but there is no way for me to gauge just how much of it passes before the stationed males begin to take their leave.