Jess
I couldn’t fly the spaceship that I stole and my impulsive decision to stab my nurse with her own instrument and flee was starting to seem particularly foolish. When I saw the moon from the view screen, and then earth, I began to relax. I could just land in Alaska. How hard could it be? Right?
That was when the red flashing lights started.
I’d managed to wrestle the ship this far, but I couldn’t stay up in the air when those lights went off. I was beyond unconscious throughout. The ship ran out of oxygen and at first I slipped into a deep sleep where I dreamed of my two children and held their hands and made them promise me that they’d forgive me for leaving us here and then I closed my eyes, slipping into a dark sleep.
I woke up, a rush of oxygen filling my lungs. Where was I? I couldn’t have awakened on the moon where there was no breathable air. I had to be somewhere else. But it was too dark for me to find out. I tried to stand. I wore no shoes. The ground was cold. My hair had come unbraided and sat in tangled mats against my head. My stomach protruded and I realized that I was indoors somewhere.
A tiny voice hissed.
“Jessssssssssssss.”
I screamed.
A pair of eyes flickered open in the pitch black. A creature. A humanoid.
“Jessssss.”
I screamed and yelled, “Stand back!”
“Human, Jesssssss.”
“WHO ARE YOU?”
“We are the creaturessssss on the dark sssssssside of the moon…”
The eyes staring back at me were blue.
“Can I get a light on in here?”
“Jesssss, light hurts us.”
“How did I get here? Where is this?”
“You are underground, in a bunker with a telepathic dampening field.”
“I can’t be stuck in here. I need to get out.”
Not even creatures on the moon could surprise me anymore. Since I’d met Kronos, I came to expect anything.
“I’m afraid we cannot do that. You are in danger, Jess. The enemy ships have surrounded Earth. The Devorans fight but they may not win. We cannot give up our location.”
“How do you know that? Who are you?”
The creatures eyes came closer to me. I hadn’t feared Kronos, so I wouldn’t fear this creature, I told myself. Whatever it was. The creature touched my arm and then I understood, all at once. They were telepaths. And as our skin touched, I saw a species that evolved from the same stardust as humans, except when their primordial soup was jettisoned to an abandoned orb, they’d landed here — on the moon.
They were smaller than humans, with grey skin and fragile bones. They called themselves the Fengari and our moon, Fengar. They looked like people except the crystals embedded in their skulls, their third eyes. The creature who spoke to me was a woman… Fryx.
She was a medic, and they’d rescued me when I’d come falling out of the sky. They lived underground and their telepathic abilities were strong, more potent than anything I’d experienced with the Devorans.
When she let go of me, she whispered, “Welcome, ssssissster Jessssss.””
“Fryx,” I whispered her name.
“Yes,” she smiled, “You understand.
Yeah. I understood. But I still needed to find a way out. A way back to Kronos. A way to let him know I was alive before he traveled too far away from me.
If there was a telepathic dampening field, and I could only experience the connection through touch, he’d have no way of tracking me that I could think of.
There was no way to find me, and no way for me to find him.
<<I need you to help me, Fryx,>> I thought.
Even if it was too dark to see her, I sensed the creature nodding in the darkness.
