The Alien King’s Pet by Loki Renard
13Sick
“Thirteen… fourteen… fifteen…”
She was still shy of the number of money credits needed to get a ticket off planet, no matter how many times she counted her stolen savings. The cost of living in the Golden City was way too fucking high. She’d thought New York was bad, but that was nothing on this place.
As far as she could tell, it wasn’t actually possible to get a ticket back to Earth itself. The travel agent she’d talked to said the best they could do was a human colony. That sounded like a promising start.
Every now and then, she would think about Dominax. It wasn’t that she missed him, necessarily. But she did miss a certain part of his anatomy. That cock was… mmm. She’d touched herself more than once remembering being in his bed, or in his arms in the middle of the fucking sky. He had given her pleasure like no man ever had — but he’d also been a disciplinary monster who brooked no dissent.
To make matters worse, the search was intensifying. She no longer felt safe going out other than during the depths of night, where people couldn’t see her eyes, which were a dead giveaway. Avoiding eye-contact only worked sometimes.
To make matters even worse, she was sick. She didn’t know what was going on, but every part of her body was achy and she was overwhelmed with nausea on a far too frequent basis.
Katie must have missed the knock at the door in the violent midst of the full expression of that nausea. One moment she was disgorging the contents of her stomach, the next she was hosting an unexpected guest.
“What’s wrong with you?”
She opened her eyes to find Darma standing over her, looking confused and somewhat annoyed.
“What are you doing here? Why do you keep following me?” She asked the question with weak irritation.
“You’re supposed to keep your food inside your stomach,” he told her, as if that were something she didn’t know. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” she grunted. “It’s your shitty, weird, wing-person food. It’s making me sick.
“Well, then you’ll be glad I hunted you down again. I brought you something from the palace,” he said, holding up a greasy bag. “Burger and fries?”
“Oh, thank god,” she said, grabbing for it. “This is so fucking cool of you, you have no idea.”
She spoke while she was shoving the burger into her mouth. Earth food was so fucking good. There was literally nothing as good in the entire universe. This was what she’d needed. A taste of home.
Darma looked incredibly unimpressed when she deposited all of it directly onto his shoes less than a minute later.
“You have to stop that,” he growled. “These boots are made of… well, your stomach contents now.”
“I don’t know why I am sick. Maybe I’m being poisoned.”
“There are no human doctors in this city. So we can’t get you any kind of medical treatment,” Darma frowned. “But you can’t stay here alone like this, sick.”
“I’m not alone. I have you. You show up literally every two seconds.”
“But I’m not here all the time,” Darma sighed heavily. “If you fall over and hit your head and bleed out in that pink suit you’ve been wearing for, what, almost three months now…”
“I’m not going to fall over and hit my head. There’s not even room in here to fall over.”
Darma did not look happy. It was nice of him to be concerned, but it also really wasn’t his business, or his problem. She was surprised he kept coming back.
“I’m not leaving you like this. I’m not leaving you at all.”
“God, stop fussing, I’m fine. I was just sick a couple of times.”
“If anything happens to you, Dominax will…”
“Hey, fuck Dominax. What has any of this got to do with him?”
“He’s the king who has soldiers and spies looking for you all over the city,” Darma said. “He’s not giving up on finding you.”
“Why is he still looking for me? It’s been a hundred days. How does he know I’m still in the city? I could be anywhere by now. I should be anywhere. I should have skipped onto a freighter and blown this…”
She was interrupted with another wave of nausea. This time she managed to keep everything, which was actually nothing, down.
“He has good instincts,” Darma said. “That’s what makes him king.”
“Yeah. Well. Mine are better. But you’re right. I’ve spent too long in this city. Eventually people are going to catch on. I need to get on a shuttle or freighter. Hell, put me on a rocket ship to Mars.”
“I agreed to help you,” Darma said. “But helping you off this planet, that puts me in more danger than you can understand. Dominax is running out of patience. He’s on the verge of tearing the city apart with his own bare hands.”
“Yeah. Well. Fuck that guy.”
She didn’t really mean it. It was actually very flattering to be pursued this hard. Flattering, and a little bit completely fucking terrifying. She still remembered the whipping the king had given her when she’d cursed him out. She couldn’t imagine what he’d do to her when he caught her.
“Just… Stay in here, alright? No running around the city. There’s a bounty out for you.”
“Has he actually managed to put together a picture yet? Or are you all still describing the concept of humanity to one another and getting confused where all the pieces go.”
“There are some artist renditions.”
“Oh, I have to see them. Please.”
Darma made another one of his sighing sounds. “You are enjoying this far too much, human. I’m starting to believe the text on the flyers.”
“What text on what flyers?”
He pulled one from the pocket of his pants and showed it to her.
There was a passable version of her face staring back at her. Not exactly accurate. It looked like someone had dictated features into a machine and the machine had put them together in roughly the right order.
“I still can’t read this shit.”
“It says WANTED: HUMAN. Badly behaved, wildly criminal, foul mouthed, and surprisingly bossy.”
“I bet it says none of that.”
“No, but that’s what it should say,” Darma said. “I knew you were trouble when I first saw you, but now you’ve got me tangled up in this scheme with you so tight there’s no way out for me or you. You have to keep your head down. If you get caught now…”
“God. Chill. The guy is desperate. Putting up pictures of me like a lost dog. There’s no way anybody is going to recognize me from this.”
“I have to go,” he said. “Try not to do anything really stupid before I can come back with more food.”
“I won’t do anything st…”
BAWOOOOOO!
A trumpet sounded, a massive hollow noise which vibrated every roof slate, wall siding, and rivet in a several mile radius. She felt the sound to her bones, and in the core of her teeth.
“What the fuck was that?”
“Not what. Who. That is the call of Konan, the Beast King. His ship must be in port.”
“Konan, the Beast King? That’s a hell of a title.”
“He will distract Dominax. That is good news for you. Now may be the best time to make an escape.”
“Escape? Oh. Right. Yes. Absolutely. I should escape. Nothing for me here, huh.”
“Not if you want to ever return to your world.”
“Yes. My world. Earth.”
Darma tilted his head and looked at her. “You know, you could have been gone about a hundred times over already.”
“Don’t rush me. I’m still preparing.”
“You mean you’re sick.”
“I am not!”
The statement was emphatic, but somewhat undermined when she threw up again and passed out, only narrowly avoiding braining herself on the corner of her pod bed when Darma caught her.