Page 119 of Stripped By the Alien

There's a wide, echoing bay stacked floor to ceiling with cells no larger than cargo boxes, hundreds of them. Behind the fogged panels of the ones I pass close enough to see clearly, I spot shapes that flinch away from the light.

There's a corridor lined with transparent doors, restraints built into the walls themselves, waiting. A room, glimpsed only for a heartbeat through a doorway that doesn't survive my passing through it. It's full of tables and instruments laid out with the calm, patient precision of something done often, something routine. I see several such rooms, each adding to my fury.

Something in me that has spent a lifetime believing the Brood's right to take whatever it wants goes very quiet, and something else, colder and older and entirely mine, wakes up in its place.

I have never in my life wanted so badly to absolutely destroy everything I see. I don't even want to Harvest this. I just want it gone.

Masses of guards and robots come at me, wielding weapons. I fight them, the anger making me feel invincible. Blades hack at my carapace and limbs, projectiles hit my wings, and my head takes a blow that makes me black out for a short moment. But still I go on, never slowing down.

The charge in my chest sharpens to something almost unbearable, close now, close enough that I don't need Lucius or luck or anything at all to tell me which wall to go through.

So I go through it.

The wall gives way in a shriek of tearing metal, dust and debris. The wailing of alarms fills the room beyond, and through the settling chaos I see it all at once: a table, a restrained shape, a robed Gzet figure already turning toward the breach with an instrument still raised in one clawed hand.

I don't notice crossing the room. I only notice the surgeon's instrument shattering against the far wall, and the wet, final sound of the Gzet beneath my hands ceasing to be a threat to anyone ever again, and then nothing at all in front of me except her.

Nora.

She's staring up at me from the table, restraints still closing around her wrists, her face streaked with dust and tears and something that might be disbelief, might be relief, might be both at once. Something in my chest that has no name in any language I know simply comes undone.

I tear the restraints apart with my bare hands and pull her up against me, and the moment her skin touches mine, lightning arcs between us. Just one hard bolt, with a loud crack, gone as fast as it comes, like something remembering where it belongs.

"You came," she says, and her voice breaks entirely on the second word.

I get her Kast flower out of a pouch and gently place it where it belongs, behind her ear. "I found that without you, I might own the galaxy, and still own nothing worth having."

For the first time since I left the Nest, I understand that it was never really a choice at all.

38

- Nora -

For a moment none of us move. Krix'vorr's arms are still around me, and I can feel his great heart hammering hard enough that it resonates through his carapace.

I'm not sure if I should feel relief yet. We're in the middle of enemy territory, and Sophia may be in grave danger.

“I didn’t end the fight, the way you said I must.” My voice is raspy.

“But I did,” the Space Locust rumbles. “Because you made it possible.”

My hands are getting wet. When I look, they're full of blood. “Krix'vorr! You're injured!”

He looks down on himself as if surprised. His carapace is cracked and dripping with dark red blood. “I feel fine. Just some bruises.”

“Your head,” I gasp and touch a discolored spot radiating spiderweb cracks. “You're hurt all over!”

“The guards did their best. Fair punishment for being so slow to understand how deeply I love you. And for not coming on your rescue mission.”

“But…” My face scrunches up. “But I didn't want you to kill yourself for me!”

He looks around, impatient. “Very good, because I didn't. Though I'm perfectly willing to. This will all rinse off. Ah, there's the machine.” He picks Lucius off the floor and hands him to me.

"Lucius," I sniffle, cradling him against my chest. "Are you⁠—"

"Damaged," comes the whisper. "But present, Captain. I would like to stop being carried like luggage as soon as that's feasible. Not right now, I imagine."

A dry, surprised laugh through tears escapes me, entirely against my will. Krix'vorr's arms tighten around both of us for one more second before he finally lets go.