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Out of a corner and into the light stalked a tall alien of a species Maxwell had never seen or heard of. He was a biped with the long and slender build of a qesh but with none of that species’ willowy softness. Black plates like the material of the ship outside studded the man’s exposed skin—along his shoulders, upper arms, the tops of his forearms, and the back of his hands. Wherever else the plates might be on his body, Maxwell couldn’t see since he wore black clothing over his chest and legs.
But he did have plates over the tops of his cheeks and over his skull like a helmet, and out of the helmet along the top front of his head sprouted two long antennae that lay back over his head like hair. The clicking he had announced himself with, Maxwell saw now, came from the vicious-looking mandibles that curved out around his jaw that he continued to clack in an obvious show of irritation.
At his lead, at least ten more of the same aliens stepped out of the shadows with their own mandibles snapping, and Maxwell realized they had what looked like rifles slung across their backs.
“What the fuck?” Kurt pulled Maxwell tighter to his body—whether to protect him or use him as a shield, Maxwell wasn’t sure even Kurt knew.
“Alright, alright, easy with that.” Devin held up a half-placating and half-threatening hand to the seething aliens, and the man in front just gnashed his mandibles again.
“We were never supposed to even come to this planet.” The man curled his hands—hands just like anyone else’s other than the small plates over them—into fists. “You were supposed to bring the uranium to us.”
“Plans change.” Devin beckoned over one of his pirates and pointed him at Maxwell, then crossed his arms at the insectoid aliens. “We’ll open this door for you, but you have to load it up yourself. We won’t risk getting caught in another one of those storms.”
The pirate Devin had waved over—a big, girthy klah’eel with the tip of one of his tusks snapped off—grabbed Maxwell away from Kurt. Maxwell glanced wildly at Kurt as he was dragged away, but Kurt just let him go, and Maxwell clenched his jaw as he stumbled. Kurt wasn’t going to save him or protect him. Of course he wasn’t. Maxwell was a tool to him and always had been. He just hadn’t been able to see it.
As Maxwell was dragged to the stockpile door, another strange alien stepped up next to the leader and hissed in a higher-pitched voice. “Their weak little minds can’t take it.”
“Save your insults for someone who cares, lady.” Devin scoffed, then looked over as the klah’eel threw Maxwell against the heavy stockpile door. With his numb hands still tied behind his back, Maxwell caught himself on his cheek. “Plug him in.”
“What?” Maxwell’s eyes went wide as he suddenly understood, and he tried to throw himself to the side. The klah’eel caught the back of his skull and pressed his face into the heavy metal door, and Maxwell twisted uselessly. “Stop, wait, wait!”
But the man didn’t wait.
Searing pain stabbed up into the back of Maxwell’s skull, and then something pushed and pushed and pushed and pressed, and Maxwell ground his forehead against the hard metal and yelled as it threatened to overwhelm him.
The physical pain lasted barely an instant—a small pinch, he would have called it if he’d been preparing a patient—but that wasn’t what he fought with. Something was here was him. Something was poking and prodding and grabbing at him and trying to get in. Maxwell wrestled it away from himself, throwing up all the mental walls he could muster. He buried himself somewhere deep and far away, but it followed as though attached to him. It chased him, and he ran.
A sharp, physical pain snapping across his cheek pulled him from his mental battle, and Maxwell opened his eyes to see Devin with his hand raised and his eyes cold. “Open the door.”
Maxwell shook his head as he trembled, that presence in his mind still pushing on him. “I can’t.”
“The fuck you can’t.” Devin pulled his hand back again, but before he could strike Maxwell, Kurt grabbed his wrist with a white-knuckled grip.
“You don’t touch him.” Kurt threw Devin’s hand away from him and stepped close to Maxwell.
Devin raised his hands in peace but still pointed at Maxwell with a threat in his face. “Then you better get him in line.”
“He’ll do what he’s told.” Kurt turned to Maxwell and then cupped his face in his palms. “Open the door, sweetheart.”
Maxwell tried to pull away, but his body was weak with the effort of holding back the thing in his mind. “I can’t.”
“Don’t tell me you can’t,” Kurt growled without a trace of sympathy, and Maxwell didn’t try to fool himself into thinking the hands on his face were about anything other than control. “Just do it.”
Maxwell squeezed his eyes shut.
He had to get away. Mentally, emotionally, he had to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
But no, not anywhere else. In his clinic. At the side of a gurney, clearing up the used tools and depositing them in a sink filled with warm soapy water where big, calloused hands were already washing them. In his clinic, resting against the counter as Garrett threw him a dimpled smile and a ration bar because he knew Maxwell hadn’t eaten in hours and he didn’t mind being the one to feed him. And he didn’t mind that Maxwell had spent hours on other people; he just appreciated the hours Maxwell gave to him, no matter how many or what they did.
Maxwell curled into the fantasy of memories, trying to drown himself in Garrett’s honey-colored eyes and sweet rural drawl.
And as he leaned there against the counter with his thigh pressed up against Garrett’s, he realized that the thing in his mind wasn’t pushing on him. It was just…there. Waiting and patient, and it knew him somehow.
Maxwell tentatively brushed his mind against it.
Maybe it hadn’t been pushing at him at all. Maybe it had just been approaching him and trying to be near him, and in his panic, Maxwell had run and lashed out. It certainly didn’t feel aggressive now.
A familiar voice in a familiar accent suddenly sounded in Maxwell’s mind, and Maxwell started. His imagination wasn’t that good. That voice hadn’t been the makeshift memory of Garrett in his mind. It had been very, very real.
