Earth Is Mine

Chapter 23

My skin crawls at Lazarus's touch and I flinch as his hands move up my thighs. I recoil and shift to the edge of my seat, away from him and for once he doesn't punish me for it.

Instead he laughs, a frivolous laugh filled with arrogance. He has me in the palm of his hand and he knows it.

Every nerve in my body ignites with panic as I glance at his bed for a split second. If he wants to have his way with me tonight, I would not be able to stop him. The thought fills me with a worse dread than I felt when Polaris screwed everything up.

"You can deny it all you want, Bone Breaker. But you do find me attractive," Lazarus drawls, his voice smug and content. "It's in your DNA, after all."

This time I turn to him, my eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

"That does not make sense. I find you repulsive," I say.

"Such harsh words from such a pretty mouth," Lazarus cups my chin roughly, forcing me to glare into his eyes. "You have forgotten your place. Do I have to remind you that speaking to a Plutonian like that will get you punished?"

I close my eyes in pain as his fingernails dig into my skin but then he lets go of me, making me gasp in relief.

"As I was saying," Lazarus continues as he picks up a glass of purple wine. He gestures for me to do the same and I pick my glass up reluctantly. "It is in fact in your DNA to find me attractive, Bone Breaker. After all we are your predecessors."

I frown again, wondering what is he going on about and he smiles in delight at my perplexity.

"I forget, you were brought here when you were a child. You don't know how Earth is," He stands up and grabs my arm. He pulls me to the back of the room and throws me onto a sofa facing his many computer screens.

"Let me show you the ideals of beauty on Earth," His fingers glide across a panel on the sofa's arm and a few large monitors spring to life.

My eyes grow wide as I see images of Earth flash across my vision.

"These are the movies they play there, from before you were born to now and these are the models on most of the magazines. Can you see the pattern here?"

The last thing I want to do is agree with him but I can't deny what I am seeing. There were some actors with varying skin and hair colour in the beginning but the movies and models he is showing me now all have the same blue eyes and blonde, almost white hair.

In fact, their hair and skin colour seem to be getting paler by the second, making them look more and more Plutonian.

There are no girls or guys who look like me or Rosie only those like Stela.

"These are the top actors, actresses and singers on Earth," Lazarus runs through a string of clips and movies as I watch on in tense silence.

I watch a clip of a human dressed in some odd blue and red outfit and he swings around buildings with some weird white string that shoots out of his wrist.

He saves a bus of children and the crowd loves him. They shout out his name in praise, something that sounds like 'Ciderman' and he takes out his mask only to reveal a pale face, blue eyes and blonde hair.

Something about the way the people are chanting his name horrifies me to the bone, because to me he looks a huge Plutonian wannabe. All of them do and the fact that the humans are calling him a hero makes me want to kill someone.

"It's all been part of the plan, for years and years. Social conditioning for when we finally arrive and take over," Lazarus says proudly and the mention of the imminent invasion make my eyes widen in horror.