The Clone’s Mate by Susan Trombley
Seven
I had to lay on that uncomfortable table for what felt like forever, though I was also terrified of what would happen to me when they finally took me off it. Thus, I was a blubbering mess when two aliens finally appeared, dressed in full biohazard suits.
At least, I figured that was what the suits were, since they had that kind of appearance, though they were made of a shiny, vinyl-like material. The aliens’ heads were completely covered, as was every other part of their body. Even their hands were gloved.
Curious that Nirgal and Tilhur hadn’t been as concerned about being exposed to me. I hoped they hadn’t discovered something that inspired this extra precaution when they ran the samples they’d taken from me.
What if I had some terrible alien virus? Or a flesh-eating bacteria? At the thought, my skin began to itch horribly, and I begged the silent aliens who unlocked the wheels on my table to put me under a hot shower and pump me full of antibiotics before my skin sheared off my body.
Naturally, they didn’t respond to me, or do anything I pleaded with them to do. Fortunately, my skin stopped itching as they rolled me out of the room and along a long, white corridor, not much different from the maze they’d put me into earlier.
Bright, blinding lights passed overhead, forcing me to close my eyes as they took me down the corridor to some unknown destination.
No, I knew their destination. They were taking me to Subject 34, hoping he would kill me.
I was really hoping he wouldn’t, and not because I wouldn’t mind feeling the way I had the last time he had me in his clutches.
Who or whatever these aliens were, they didn’t seem to be in complete control of their own experiment based on their frustrated questioning. Apparently, they couldn’t make 34 talk, though they’d mentioned a control chip.
I would find that more curious if my mind wasn’t racing with terror. The aliens seemed convinced 34 should have killed me, which meant that was his usual MO. The whole sex thing was the anomaly, and I wasn’t sure it had been good enough for him to want to do it again.
I wasn’t ready for my ride on the table to end when the aliens drew it to a halt. Only then did the pressure of the blanket disappear from my body. I sucked in a huge, grateful breath, my hands moving to reflexively scratch over the parts of my skin that had itched earlier. To my relief, my fingertips slid over smooth flesh. No sign of any rashes, bumps, or any other reason for the itching other than my own mind.
Without ceremony, the two aliens caught me by the shoulders as I sat up, then dragged me off the end of the table and shoved me towards a door. One look at the vault door that appeared solid enough to stop a tank made me struggle in their punishing grips, screaming as I flailed my arms, trying to land a wild punch on either side of me.
One of them took out a shock wand and jammed it into the naked skin of my side, my flesh jiggling as I convulsed, then dropped to the ground.
I’d bitten my tongue, though fortunately not hard enough to do any severe damage. Still, I felt the iron taste of blood in my mouth as they dragged me to my feet, the one with the wand still holding it at the ready in his other hand.
The other released me and stepped up to the door, entering something into the panel beside it that caused the vault door to unlock and swing slowly open.
As soon as the opening was wide enough to fit me, the one holding on to me shoved me into a small room with another door on the other side that was sealed closed.
I crossed my arms over my chest, shivering as my skin pebbled with goosebumps. I turned towards the outer door, which was now closing again, the biohazard-suited aliens standing on the other side of it. Once it clanged shut with an ominous echo, I turned to regard the room I stood in, noting that it contained no furniture at all and just looked like a large closet rather than some bug nest.
Meaning the nest was probably on the other side of that inner door.
The proof of this came when the inner door swung open towards the chamber beyond it. The smell hit me before the opening in the massive, heavy door parted enough for me to slip through it.
It was definitely the scent I recalled from the maze, only it smelled much stronger here. Like before, I noted that it wasn’t unpleasant. Just… different. Alien. Something exotic and worrisome.
There was no reason I should feel aroused in that moment, but I did, and I could only blame that on my recollection of my last encounter with the creature. Given nowhere else to go, I proceeded forward. I figured if it planned to kill me, there was nothing I could do to stop it, so there wasn’t much point in delaying things by cowering in the anteroom near the outer door that I knew wouldn’t open for me.
I crept into the large chamber, my feet sinking into sand as soon as I stepped past the boundary from the anteroom to the subject’s enclosure. It was dark in the room, and the only light came from the smaller outer room that I had been thrust into by the aliens. That was just enough to limn the towering boulders and spiked plants that I saw within.
As I drew closer to one of the spiky plants that looked like an oversized version of a succulent, the ceiling overhead lit up with a series of stars and two moons. I stared upwards in awe at how realistic it looked, then recalled where I was and paid more attention to my immediate surroundings. The addition of the moonlight showed me the dangerous spines of the plants so that I didn’t stumble into them. It also showed me the rock formations that I was certain weren’t natural.
Light from the ceiling display also revealed the round curve of a skull nearly buried in the sand nearby, causing me to scream when I spotted it, and then stagger backwards, bringing myself to an abrupt halt before bumbling into another spiky plant.
My heart thudded as I regarded the sharp spines while slowly backing away from them. At this rate, I was more likely to impale myself to death on one of these stupid plants than get killed by the monster.
I had to be smart about this, except that I wasn’t feeling very smart at the moment. I was terrified, and I also felt a sense of true hopelessness. No matter what Subject 34 decided to do to me, I wasn’t escaping this nightmare any time soon.
I wasn’t likely to escape it at all, and I had to accept that. Now, it was just a waiting game for death. I could stand at the entrance to this hellscape to wait for my demise, or explore a little further in.
Since I’m not a patient person and never did like standing around with nothing to do, I kept moving deeper into the chamber. I passed several rock formations until I reached one that appeared to form a crevice low to the ground.
There were more bones scattered around this dark entrance and many of them looked unmistakably human. Or humanoid.
My brief bout of courage disappeared as I gasped and peered frantically around me, slowly backing away from that horrific lair of a man-eater.
I spotted no sign of the creature, nor did it crawl out of that impenetrable darkness. My eyesight had adjusted to the much lower light now, and I could see further into the chamber. There wasn’t much to settle my gaze upon. Just more of the same rocks and plants and sand, all faintly illuminated by semi bright alien moons.
No sign of Subject 34.
I could smell him though, and his scent was stronger near his crevice. He was probably in there, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to get down on my hands and knees and check for him. Instead, I backed away, my ears ringing from the silence as I strained to hear any sound coming from that dark opening.
I finally moved until it was out of sight, turning my attention to the rest of the enclosure. I could climb the rocks, if I were willing to risk scraping my skin up on the rough, sandy surface of them, but there wouldn’t be much point. The false sky told me the chamber was completely enclosed and the only escape was undoubtedly through that vault door I’d entered.
“Now what?” I muttered as I made a complete circle around the enclosure in a far shorter time than I’d anticipated, only to discover that the vault door had shut on me and now I couldn’t even escape into the antechamber.
I sighed and made to sit on the sand, before recalling that I wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing and sand had a bad habit of going into places it didn’t belong. That left me leaning against a rock, my head in my hands, struggling not to weep with hopelessness and frustration.
My fear had faded, though it didn’t completely abate, and depression replaced it. Maybe it would be better if 34 killed me and added my bones to his collection. Then I wouldn’t have to face any more terrifying interviews while forced to lie on a shock table.
Then I wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that I was never going home, and even if I managed to escape, ten years had passed on Earth. I had no idea what would happen if I suddenly reappeared there, but I knew that when I’d been abducted, I’d had nothing worth returning to. I wondered briefly what had happened to Mike and his new trophy wife. The kid they’d had would be around ten by now.
I also wished I’d asked more questions of Nirgal. Like who the hell the “Akrellians” were and what they were doing to my home world. I wanted to know how they’d even gained control. Didn’t our government have all kinds of missiles and a space defense or something?
I vaguely recalled they’d had that when I was abducted. Of course, back then the idea of aliens had barely even occurred to me. I didn’t spend much time dwelling on it. Like many others, I’d brushed off the increase in UFO sightings as simply human-made experimental aircraft that wasn’t being disclosed to the public yet. I figured after about three decades, we’d learn all about those “UFOs” and discover they were just advanced military aircraft.
It wasn’t that I lacked the imagination to believe in aliens. I just focused my thoughts on other things. Even my alien landscapes had been the product of surreal dreams rather than an attempt to envision other worlds that might really exist.
My thoughts had led me down a rabbit hole that allowed me to forget for a brief, blissful moment that I was on the brink of death. The chittering sound above my head quickly shattered that moment, causing me to scream and jump away from the rock, looking up to see Subject 34 crouching on top of it.
He was watching me with his expressionless domed eyes and mandibles that told me nothing about whether he was going to eat me… or do something far more enjoyable on my end.
He remained still, completely unmoving in an eerie and inhuman way. I trembled in terror, slowly backing away from him with my hands up in front of me as if I could stop him if he attacked me.
“Easy there, Subject 34,” I whispered, figuring he wasn’t likely to be able to understand me anyway, but unable to remain silent. “Don’t eat me, okay. I’d be bad for your cholesterol.”
He cocked his head, his mandibles twitching. I shuddered and took another step back. He crawled over the edge of the stone, the claws of his lower hands digging into it while his upper set of hands lifted, the pincers extending from his forearms over his hands, opening slightly as he regarded me.
His movements appeared swift and staccato, more insect-like than humanoid. His wings twitched behind him in brief flutters, creating a slight buzzing sound each time they moved.
“I’m serious,” I said in a slightly louder voice when he didn’t immediately attack. “I’m really bad for your health. Three out of four doctors agree that Rhonda-flesh raises your risk of heart disease.”
As I babbled on, barely aware of the nonsense I was spouting, he crawled further down the rock. Then he dropped to the sand in front of it, causing me to shriek in fear.
Yet all he did was straighten to his full height, then stand there, as unmoving as he’d been when crouching on the rock.
“You know, you’re not much of a conversationalist, are you?” I muttered, noting how much my hands shook as they remained in front of me. “I’m an introvert myself.” I glanced in the direction of his crevice, which remained out of my view. “Of course, I don’t make a habit of eating the people I don’t feel like talking to.”
I dipped my chin as I added, “not that I haven’t been tempted to bash a few heads in on occasion, but I’m a civilized girl. I just painted pictures of those annoying people later and smashed the canvases.”
Subject 34 watched me in silence, unmoving. I sniffed the air cautiously, wondering if he would release some kind of pheromone to tell me if he was DTF like before, or was more interested in chowing down on all my chewy bits.
So far, I smelled him with no problems, but I barely felt a tingling of arousal, and I’d had that from the moment I’d entered this place, so I didn’t think he was emitting any additional “mating pheromone.” He didn’t smell bad though, even this close. In fact, he smelled surprisingly good. Good enough that I inhaled deeply, detecting a floral undertone to his musky, earthy scent that I hadn’t picked up before.
Then I realized I’d picked up that teasing scent from the moment I’d entered the chamber. It only took a quick glance upwards to realize there were flowers on the tops of the spiky plants. That floral scent probably came mostly from them, but it did also seem to emanate from his direction, mixed in with his alien odor.
Nope, not aroused like I had been in the maze, but I did want to get a little closer and press my nose against him and inhale, like I would sniff a shirt just out of the dryer. The longer he stood there staring at me, the stronger that desire to approach him grew.
I resisted it for as long as possible, continuing to babble inanities and nonsense without really listening to myself. My will was nearly broken as that scent washed over me, but apparently, he’d grown impatient with waiting for me to do something. He exploded into motion so quickly that I barely had a chance to suck in a breath for a scream before he caught me in his lower arms, his upper pincers spreading wide on either side of my head like he intended to snap it right off at my neck.
