Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
I am wearing a neck-to-toe pink jumpsuit with pockets at the hips, thighs, knees, and ankles. I am still dripping wet from the knees down, but the fabric is designed to repel biological material and it doesn’t get much more biological than water, so I think I’ll be dry soon.
“I am hungry,” he says.
I don’t know if I am hungry too, but it doesn’t much matter.
He picks me up and uses me to scan my face to pay for both a big bowl of noodles and two burgers replete with fries. Ancient human food. The best of the best. These recipes have been handed down for generations, and have become so popular you can get them almost anywhere.
We sit down at a table in the food court and the two of us dig into our meals. My rescuer eats like he is starving. I eat like I never thought I’d get to eat again.
“I should probably get your name,” I say.
“Freak,” he says. “That’s what they call me. Pretty sure I had another name before that, but Freak is what sticks in my head now. The rest will come back later, once my energy returns.”
I frown slightly. I didn’t notice it before, because we were in motion high above the ground and I was as scared of gravity as I had been of water right before, but now I look at him more closely, I see that in addition to scars that look like they probably came from rough living or combat, there are some that look medical. They are surgical in their precision and they are straight where the others are rough or angular.
“Uhm, what kind of being are you? I’m human,” I say.
“Psyon,” he says, his handsome cheek flexing with amusement because he obviously thinks I should know what he is.
“I’ve heard about Psyons before!” I say. “Never met one, though. They say you guys can control time and space and you don’t live on a real planet, but you have a special realm that can only be accessed by your kind.”
“Most of that is true in various ways,” he says, smiling a little. “Thank you for reminding me.”
“You forgot?”
He shakes his head. His blue hair waves with the motion. I want to touch it, but I don’t because that would be weird. “Can’t remember a lot of things right now. They’ve been experimenting on me for months. Maybe years. Time doesn’t run in the usual way for creatures of our kind.”
“That’s fucked up.”
He eats another big bite of burger and nods.
“Yeah,” he says when he’s swallowed. “It is.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“Me too,” he says. “Why were you about to drown?”
“My best guess is the fluid tank punctured internally, fried the door locks and capsule electrics. Then the water dispensers somehow got jammed on and kept producing H2O.”
“Series of unlikely and unfortunate events. Sounds more like sabotage than accident,” he frowns.
“I don’t know who would do that. I don’t know anyone here.”
“Where are you from?”
“Genesis Prime.”
“Oh. One of the original human colonies,” he says, grinning and pretending to doff his cap at me.
“Oh, yes. Very original. I can trace my ancestors all the way back to Artemis 113,” I say, pretending to think highly of myself.
He smirks.
“You’re in a good mood for a man who just escaped a torture camp,” I notice. I also notice he doesn’t seem to be scared of anybody coming after him. He’s not even trying to hide. I wonder what he did to them all in order to be so comfortable now. I look into his golden eyes, and I feel an intense shiver run through me as I feel a very particular kind of power.
“Yes,” he says, mimicking my tone and cadence. I get the feeling he’s talking to me almost the same way I’d talk to someone I thought was simple. I can feel him dumbing himself down for me. Psyons are smart. Like, crazy, wicked, beyond human comprehension intelligent. The casual way he’s talking to me right now is probably his equivalent of the way people talk to dogs.
“Is that because you were imprisoned somewhere that’s not actually this station but you escaped through a series of quantum tunnels that nobody else could ever hope to perceive, much less use themselves?”
I hope I sound smart. He looks at me with surprise, so maybe I do. “Yes,” he says. “That’s not far off precisely what I did. And you’re right. The Collective that had me captive is not located here. But they will trace me. They are also quite advanced technologically. So I am in a hurry of sorts. I need to cover my tracks in the same way any fleeing animal does.”
As he speaks, I look at him more closely. Every time my eyes land on a part of his body, I see evidence of what must have felt like torture.