“I’m ready,” was her only response. She feared if she opened her mouth any further, she might end up vomiting. As the water from her decontamination shower sunk into her skin, she tried to wrap her mind around the enormity of the task before her. Analienwaited for her on the other side of that door. Vertigo rocked her world.
“Good.” He nodded at her, a sign that she took to be of confidence rather than of farewell, before walking away and shouting to the soldiers manning the door’s massive external locking mechanism, “Open ’er up!”
Katharine refused to flinch at the deafening grind of metal against metal; with single-minded focus and an emotionless blanch to her skin, she stared into the frozen darkness of the former airplane shed.
Once inside the hangar with the mechanized doors bolted closed behind them, rows of ceiling lights illuminated the once grand B-17 storage facility. Light flooded her world. Katharine blinked rapidly to return her sight, taking in every detail of the room around her. Room was not generous enough a description. Roughly the size of two football fields stretched end-to-end, Hangar 8 once held the same bombing and ferrying planes that carried Katharine around the world. Had someone dropped her here without any context, she still could have told him exactly what it was. Even two years after the war, the smell of tobacco and fuselage paint burned the hairs on the inside of her nose.
However, where Katharine used to enter buildings like this and see their floors lined with spare parts and oil cans, nudie magazines and discarded copies ofStars and Stripes, men with oil black cheeks and cramped hands contorted around wrenches, now there was nothing but a table raised on a stone platform in the center of the vast, empty space. From her vantage point, she could see a form atop of it, but she couldn’t get a good look at the subject, only the table upon which it lay prone.
In her briefing, when they said the subject would be restrained, she’d assumed they meant handcuffs, something that would at least give the creature some movement. The chains wrapping their way around the metal table, stretching from the four corners of the long rectangle, did nothing to inspire confidence in this situation. How would this creature react to being bound? Could she communicate with something so defeated? Would it lash out at her for being a part of the capturing force or welcome her help if it meant that she would release it from its bonds? Uncertainty sent shivers down Katharine’s spine even in the stuffy heat.
Following the marching crowd, she took her first step to approach the subject. She had no time to measure her own response because at that very moment, the air rattled with the shaking of heaving chains and a low, animalistic groan.
“It’s awake! Settle him down, boys.”
The men broke the formation of their perfect circle around the scientist, leaving her behind to point their weapons at the source of the noise. Gathering herself, Katharine pursued them.
“Ready at arms!”
Everything happened so fast, the details blurred in a high-speed haze. A creature roared. A tranquilizer dart ricocheted off of a metal table. The men laughed and shouted, calling out curses and crude jokes to each other as their prisoner yawped and cried, struggled and tore against his chains. The sport made her sick.
“Stop! Stop it! Stop this now!” She screamed.
But there was no stopping them. Katharine reached for the nearest man, yanking on the sleeve of his black uniform, only to get roughly shoved in the dirt so he could return to taking lazy, cheap shots at the captive. She knew there was no way these men would shoot at the scientist; the only way to save him would be to shield him herself. Picking herself up, she tore across the hail, her thick legs pushing until she leapt upon the creature, shielding his body with hers.
A ceasefire ensued. An eerie quiet hummed through the hangar. The creature beneath her, the alien that she had not yet gotten a good look at, whimpered, his body shaking beneath hers. The vibrations massaged her skin; his warmth seeped in through her clothes. In spite of everything going on around her, Katharine couldn’t help a twinge of—was it lust?—when she realized he was almost completely naked beneath her. His bare chest pressed against her clothed one. They breathed in time with one another. Lieutenant Miller stepped forward, stretching a cautious hand out to the woman before him.
“Ma’am... Get back.”
“No!” She bellowed with an authority she did not possess. “Is this how you ‘contain’ it? No wonder we haven’t made any progress. Get out. All of you, I order you to get out.”
She had no rank to make such a decision, but there would be no stopping her.
“That isn’t your call,” Miller said.
Beneath her, she felt the creature’s breath hitch. Did he understand English? Moving slowly so as not to disturb the subject, she rose to her feet, standing at her full height. The extra two feet allowed by the raised platform let her to look down her nose at the soldier. She was a medical scientist with a Harvard degree, an Air Evacuation nurse with four letters of commendation and a Bronze Star with three years of wartime experience under her belt, and a nurse at Walker Air Force Base since the end of the war. She understood the importance of keeping a patient safe, and she would do it now. Even if her knees were weak from their contact and the man standing below her looked as if he had half a mind to slug her.
“You want him to send a message to his space pals about leveling this place? You don’t know what kind of technology they could have, what they could inflict on us. If you want answers, I’m the only one who can get them, and I say that makes me outrank you.”
There was no evidence that she was the only one who could get the answers. There was no evidence that she would be able to make any more progress with this creature than anyone else that came before her. But she figured if she said it loud enough and kept her shoulders perfectly square, she might be able to pull the lie off.
For an unbearably long moment, Miller considered her and the options before him. Then, he took a step back, waving to those under his command.
“Stand down.” He ignored the look of disbelief from the men around him. “Fall out.”
A minute later, the small army disappeared and the mechanized door locked behind him. Katharine was alone. Alone with an extraterrestrial. She gulped. Dropping her pack to the floor, she collected and stitched together every piece of her courage.Breathe in. Breathe out,she encouraged, rubbing her hands on her skirt to stop them shaking.You’re a scientist, dammit. You can handle anything.When she finally ordered her muscles to turn and face the subject, nothing could have prepared her for what she saw.
Rummaging in her pack without ever breaking her gaze from his still form, she reached for her notebook and pencil, scribbling every thought that popped into her head.Seven foot, four or five inches. Humanoid with pronounced jawbone, ridges on nose. Dark skin. Blue, luminescent tattoos (Are they birthmarks?) crossing most of his visible body. Do they cover his...entire body? More muscular than any human male. Scarification around the body looks incidental. A soldier? Impact from bullets and tranquilizers have left no obvious bodily impact except for some minor flesh wounds—superior healing? Do the tranquilizers affect him whatsoever?
But it was more than that. More than the...scientific. Try as she might, there was no escaping the animal that purred inside her at the sight of him. There was no halting her eyes as they shifted from the cold, cataloging gaze of a nurse to the searching eyes of a woman. She knew it was wrong. He was a captive. A subject. Yet, she couldn’t help but see him as more than that. He was coiled sex. His muscular form, bound to the metal table, was open and ready to receive anything. Katharine shivered, the muscles deep in her stomach twitching as she thought of all the dirty things she could do to that body. His hips demanded to be straddled. His chest called out for her to lick... And his manhood was covered only with the thin leather of a baltea, leaving him exposed to her touch. If she wanted, she could just reach out...
Tentatively, she dragged her pack to the elevated platform around his bed for a closer look, only to realize that the creature’s blue eyes were wide open, staring at her.
“Ah!” She jumped in fright, then giggled at her own fearful leaping, collecting herself. After all, the creature was in chains. What could he possibly do to her?
“Hello,” Katharine looked into his eyes, assessing their every property. What were they trying to tell her? She compared their color, their shape, their emotion, with everything in her fragile, human memory, and could come up with only one solution, only one reason why he fought against the chains when he heard the boots of the soldiers but sat totally still when she approached.He trusts me.She lost herself in his eyes, wondering if he could see in hers the filthy daydreams that penetrated her professional gaze. Another step, and she was as close as she could be without touching him. Oh... How she wanted to touch him.
He was... She swallowed, hard.Handsome. Breathtaking.The young scientist’s mouth dried as she tried to focus on his eyes. Even in the damp overhead lights, he shined like perfect sea-glass; his chiseled features and half-exposed body demanded attention.She cleared her throat, swallowing to try and regain some of her composure.He’s a subject. A scientific discovery waiting to happen. Not something for you to get soft-hearted over.