Bo and the Beast (Book #1) (Completed)

6. The Alien

Bo's finger jerked and the power rifle jammed, but she barely even noticed. Somehow, despite her best intentions, her whole body was just as locked up as the gun at the sight of a creature that should have been on a far distant planet. All she could do was stare in sheer terror as the alien raised its arm and swung it toward her.

The force sent Bo sailing through the air. Her spine smashed against the unwavering wall and she crumpled to the ground in a ball of burning pain and crumbling bits of brick. For a few frenzied seconds she struggled to breathe, heaving against the dust and the crushing feeling in her chest where the alien's fist had landed. A drops of blood fell from her hairline and landed on her nose as she lifted her gaze.

The alien kept up its advance, stalking toward her with measured and even steps. Bo fought to gain control of her situation, shaking her brain out of the fog and trying to think of a plan. Any plan. Her shattered knee reminded her that she could not sweep its legs out from under it, and that she also could not run. Her dad still seemed unwilling to pick up his gun, and was yelling something from his cell with his good arm still raised. That left her only form of defense to her fists and her other handgun, both of which were smashed under her chest.

"Don't hurt her!" Her father's voice leaked through the buzzing sensation in her head, and Bo gave him a confused stare. Did he think a simple request would stop an alien from killing? How could he not remember the ruthless destruction that species had reeked on earth during the war? Yet he kept pleading.

A sudden burst of anger exploded in her stomach. Anger at her father, anger at the aliens, anger at herself. She wasn't one to die this way, huddled on the floor of a prison. She wasn't one to die at all.

She pressed up on her hands, pushing past the white heat of pain that sizzled in every inch of her body, until she could prop herself up on her elbows. It was enough to maneuver her power rifle from under her and hit the ammunition ejection button. The jammed power cell revealed itself in the loading chamber, and she plucked it free before hastily reloading a new one from her pocket. She didn't bother to aim perfectly. She only needed to hit the alien once in order to gain enough time to ready a deadlier shot.

The gun buzzed with energy and then kicked back. The shot rang true, whipping through the air in an angry red line. Bo's legs tensed, ready to get into a better position as soon as the alien went down.

From somewhere to her right, a flash of white skipped across the room and slid in front of the alien. She only barely had enough time to register the sheen of a robot's optical lens before the energy blast ripped into the metal body of the alien's new shield. Sparks exploded in the air along with flashes of blinding light. Bo screwed her eyes shut against the sudden light that bathed her skin in white harshness. Through slits in her eyelids she saw the alien staring her down behind the mangled metal of the destroyed robot. Its cold eyes were unfathomable and its hand reached out to shove the robot out of the way.

The shower of sparks died and the room plunged into darkness after their brilliance. Bo's eyes, still burning, watered too much for her to see more than a blur as another robot approached her from the side and ripped the rifle from her hand. She scrambled after it, but before she made it more than a few steps she felt a metal clamp press against her wrist, arresting her movement. She was about to wrench her hand toward her chest to break the grip, but became too shocked to do more than blink when a tinny voice burst from the nearest robot with a blast of static.

"Please do not resist our attempts to secure you." Bo stared into the singular glass lens in the middle of the robot's pillar body. Had it just spoken to her? As if hearing her inner thoughts, a yellow pin-light flashed by the robot's eye and it repeated its request. "The Service-Matons request compliance."

Bo, ignoring the fact that a robot was talking to her, instead grabbed the clamp around her wrist, trying to pry it open. It was stronger than any human hand, and the robot didn't even wobble as she slapped and shoved the appendage holding her in place. In the end she only skinned her knuckles until they bled, unable to shift the robot's grip.

"She's a human. She will never comply." The alien spoke for the first time, its voice so deep and low that it was almost more growl than words. Bo winced at the sound of her language in its mouth. The few times she'd been unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity of aliens, they had only spoken in their rolling language.

The small light flashed again by the robot's circular lens.

"Bring her closer," the alien said. It still stood mostly in the shadows, concealing its form beyond the pulsing blue light than ran through its skin and the fact that it stood taller than even Aston or any other man Bo had ever seen.

Bo sunk her weight into her heels to try and stop the robot from moving her, but she was no match for the robust anti-grav engine in the robot's workings that enabled it to hover a few inches above the ground. Tiny thrusters somewhere in its innards kicked into life, filling the room with thrumming vibrations as it hauled Bo forward. She sunk deeper into the back half of her body, finally stopping her forward momentum, but still unable to break the clamp that still circled her wrist. The robot, unbothered by her stubbornness, continued to strain forward, until Bo couldn't bear the pain in the joints of her shoulder and wrist anymore. With a string of curses and sweat pouring down her face, Bo stumbled forward until the robot stopped directly in front of the alien.

This close, she could see that the alien was male, and dressed as if it was a part of the Terra Preservation militia... only in a uniform that was decades out-of-date. The pixilated camouflage was worn and faded into gray blobs on his jacket and pants, and his boots were held on with frayed laces and tape. As she stared at the strange contrast of an alien in human clothes, she realized that she had seen this jacket somewhere before. It was the same person that she had seen exit the room when she had been hidden in the entrance hall. At least, she had thought he was a human. Now she saw he was anything but.

The alien returned her glare with a stoniness that revealed nothing about its thoughts. Instead, it reached into a pocket and pulled out a small slip of paper. His brown eyes moved from the paper to her face, scrutinizing both as if this was some sort of strange security check.

"This is her," the alien said, speaking now to the robot that held Bo's wrist in its clamps. "Take her upstairs to the-"

Before it could finish speaking, Bo shifted her weight and brought her leg up for a sweep kick to his shin. She yelled as she delivered the blow, both from the pain of her bad leg now holding her entire weight, and also from the searing anger that threatened to explode from her chest. As the heel of her boot met his skin, the alien barked out in surprise and stumbled a few steps backward.

"I'd rather die a million deaths than be held captive by a rotting piece of trash like you," Bo snarled, her anger shaking all her limbs.

The alien regained his ground, his own anger flashing across his face. The glow that pulsed beneath his skin dimmed as he clenched his fists and slowly revealed two canine teeth that were longer than any human's. These had been the death of many humans during the war, Bo was sure.

"She wishes to die? Perhaps we can arrange that. Madame, throw her in a cell. We'll see how brave she is when she knows what it's like to be completely forgotten."

"Of course, Master," the robot chirruped, its light flashing green. It moved toward a cell a few removed from her father, though Bo made sure that it had to struggle to do it. Even the unforgiving metal pressing against the bones in her wrist was worth seeing the little robot whirring and stuttering in the air to haul her to her doom.

The alien didn't even watch the show. He stared at the wall as if Bo still stood there. Bo didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was terrified enough of him to not let him out of her sight, but she couldn't tear her eyes away. Vague memories surfaced of similar creatures, only they had been dressed in the draping clothes of their people and were glowing different colors. She remembered their hands, gripping her hair, choking off her breath....

She shook her head, ripping her eyes from the alien before the memories could come flooding back. She'd worked hard to erase them, and she didn't need this creature undoing all that.