Iced Read online

  To confirm my suspicions, I moved on to the next alcove only to find another male, with as impressive a body, and the same type of swelling. The following two showed slightly more signs of sickness, one of them with the beginnings of a rash.

  They were rejecting their implants when they got iced.

  I repressed my instinctive impulse to find a way to thaw the ice and tend to these people. There had to be a reason whoever put them in stasis hadn’t removed the implants and had left them in this state. Until I knew more, I wouldn’t jeopardize their welfare with reckless actions. Anyway, I didn’t have anything to treat them with.

  Between the fifth and sixth alcoves, a small doorway gave access to a square room. My chest tightened as I peered at the fifteen to twenty more iced valos held within, displaying more advanced symptoms of metal poisoning, from hives to blistered skin. I couldn’t begin to imagine what kind of constant, excruciating pain they’d endured before being put in stasis. A pedestal in the center of the room held their heartstones.

  While exploring the rest of the cave, I found four more such square rooms containing the most severely affected valos. The forty or so valos in the main area were clearly the healthiest of the bunch.

  Failed experiments. Like me.

  As much as my heart ached for them, I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on the horrors they and I had faced at the hands of our respective tormentors. I refused to believe they could be all that remained of these people. On our way here, Mishal and Pel had told Amber and me that the Northern Valos had supplied the Creators in other cities, as well as the Creators’ homeworld, with rare metals and gems. My companions had come north with me for that very reason. They hoped the Northern Valos possessed the gems required to repair the heartstones of the dormant Fire Valos. I had come here to make it my new home. While not much of a social butterfly, the prospect of spending the rest of my days alone in this cold wasteland didn’t appeal to me.

  Even if I reunited with the others, I couldn’t go back to Caldera. It would kill me. After the experiments performed on me on the space penitentiary, I had all but become a creature of ice. The 22°C that people found so comfortable felt like sitting in an overheated sauna for me, and I could only stand it for short periods of time. My comfort zone sat around -3°C. The cooler, the better—within reason. Despite her efforts, Dr. Sobin had failed to regulate my default body temperature and blamed me for it. My inability to function in ‘normal’ temperatures made me useless. She eventually gave up on me and moved on to her human torch project with another inmate.

  The dark cloud of despair loomed over me, but I refused to give up. There was a real chance that the valos in the main chamber were all that remained of the healthiest among them, but until I found the city itself, I would cling to the hope their people still thrived.

  But why haven’t they helped the ones trapped here?

  I had to believe they didn’t know of their existence or had no idea how to help them.

  At the opposite end of the room, three steps led up to a large platform. More intricate patterns covered certain sections of the back wall, as well as the side walls. Once again, a clueless individual would have assumed them to be mere ornaments, but I believed they hid more secret rooms. Starting with the right side wall, also the narrowest one, it took me seconds to find the switch. It opened into an empty room the size of a large broom closet.

  A squeal of delight tore out from my throat as I immediately recognized what it was: a bathroom! I rubbed my hand over the glow stone by the door, and the dim light increased to fully light up the room. Having made regular use of the hygiene facilities in Caldera, I instinctively found the switches which opened panels to reveal the toilet as well as the sink and mirror. Hoisting myself up to use the overly-high toilet sucked the big one, but it beat crouching in the bushes wondering if some alien critter would seize the opportunity to take a bite out of my rear end.

  The sink was so high, it might as well have been a boob rest—and I was barely exaggerating.

  I washed my hands and face, then ran my fingers through my hair to give it a semblance of order. Despite my recent tribulations, I looked healthier than I had in a while. The cold agreed with me. Ironic, seeing how I used to seek the sun at every opportunity—under a ridiculous amount of sunscreen. People used to call me vampire or ghost for my unnaturally pale skin and white hair. My hazel eyes no longer looked red and glazed-over like they had in the suffocating heat of Caldera. Even my cheeks had a healthy, rosy tinge to them.

  Ice Queen would be the perfect title now if not for my garb. But even with their best efforts, the Fire Valos couldn’t have made me more elegant with the garish fabrics their Creator, Sheenika, had loved wearing. No female—alien or otherwise—should have such gaudy fashion tastes. Lifting my tunic, I stood on my tippy toes to get a mirror view of the damage I’d done to myself while going down that slope. Thankfully, the scrapes didn’t look too serious. I grabbed a towel on the shelf by the sink and cleansed my wounds the best I could. After letting the water run for a while—just in case—I drank some. It tasted fresh and ice cold; my favorite.

  I walked out of the bathroom and stopped by the first section of the back wall, covered with patterns. It took me a moment to find the switch. It revealed some kind of storage room, with various devices and contraptions that defied any logic. One of the shelves contained a few racks with empty casings eerily similar to the ones inside the iced valos’ chests.

  The next room probably served as a staff room with a small kitchen, a dining table with chairs slightly higher than your standard bar stool, and a long bench covered with a plush cushion. Its length and width would be perfect for me to take a nap on.

  I smiled in anticipation.

  Although the first signs of hunger had begun manifesting themselves, I left the room, not bothering to look for food in the cupboards. Even if there had been any, you couldn’t pay me enough to touch anything that had sat there for a thousand years, alien-preserved or not.

  The next room was a state-of-the-art laboratory and a sterile environment, including a decontamination chamber. Whatever research had been held there, our governments and military would be all too happy to get their hands on it. While the nurse in me was curious about what medical advances they had achieved, I knew better than to tamper with potential foreign bacterial or viral agents.

  I walked out.

  Only the left wall remained, its width larger than the opposite right wall that had hidden the bathroom. The intricate pattern covered a large part of its surface but, strangely, didn’t go down to the floor as per usual. After almost ten minutes of searching in vain for a switch, I reached the conclusion that maybe this wall was merely decorative. Feeling bummed out, I turned around to move to the last ornate section that certainly hid an exit door, seeing there was a motion detector.

  As I approached it, I realized there were, in fact, two motion detectors. Surprised, I waved my hand in front of the first one on the right. With a clicking sound, the large pattern I’d been examining without success slid upwards, revealing a huge window. Mouth gaping, I moved in front of it. The window looked out into the rough, uneven walls of a natural cave. No glow stones lit the large space, but the fading daylight allowed me to see swirls of hail and snow falling halfway into the cave.

  The blizzard still hadn’t let up. According to Mishal, it could last for a couple of days. That possibility sucked the big one. The Fire Valos, gentlemen that they were—if such a term could be applied to bioengineered aliens—had carried our food supplies, change of clothes, and other creature comforts they’d brought for Amber and me. The prospect of starving for the next couple of days didn’t appeal to me one bit. Unlike the endless forest we traveled through on our way here, there were no berries to forage in the vicinity, and forget about me hunting. I only prayed I wouldn’t grow too weak to continue the journey to E’Lek if I couldn’t find the others.

  At least I had water.

  I stretched my neck, peerin
g around the poorly lit cave in the unlikely hope that Amber and her two valos boyfriends had found refuge here. During the five-day trip, their constant flirting, cooing, and googly eyes had driven me bonkers. I didn’t mind the whole dating-an-alien thing, and I’d seen enough during my time on the Concord to have grown immune to being shocked by anything anymore, including the whole ménage thing. As long as everyone involved was a consenting adult, I didn’t care what they did in private. But witnessing excessive public displays of affection while traipsing around an alien planet where everything wanted a piece of you, all while dying of excessive heat, had started to seriously grate on my nerves.

  Wherever they are, they’ll keep her warm.

  Dating a set of walking bonfires had its upsides after all. Well, except when walking in the cold. For such big and strong guys, they sure could whine and complain like little babies when it came to the cold. Even in my agonizing misery in Caldera I hadn’t whined half as much. It proved that males with a booboo were all the same, human or alien. For all that, I just hoped that none of them had come to harm from that beast and that they’d found a safe place to hunker down.

  Movement at the edge of my vision startled me. I turned my head to the right and squinted at the darkest area of the cave. Seconds passed and nothing happened. Just as I was beginning to think my eyes had played a trick on me, something like a small, glowing light hovered in the darkness. I kept staring at it, trying to make out what it could be, when it suddenly shifted and doubled.

  Not lights, eyes.

  I screeched and jumped back, my hand flying to my chest. The glowing eyes stared straight at me through the window. My flight reflex screamed for me to run and hide, but my mind understood that whatever or whoever they belonged to, was outside.

  But what if it can come in?

  My eyes flicked toward the second motion detector—which I didn’t doubt for a moment opened a door into that cave—before returning to the lurker. But the glowing eyes no longer looked in my direction. Heart pounding, I tried to identify the shape of the creature they belonged to.

  Then the creature moved, stepping out of the shadows as a second pair of glowing eyes appeared, looking at the owner of the first pair.

  “Oh, God!”

  Not a creature: a Northern Valo. Awake. I watched in awe as his muscular body, naked but for his loincloth, entered my field of view. He was bigger than the other valos I had seen below. Wrestler or gymnast came to mind. The dim light prevented me from noticing any swelling around his casing. But unlike the dormant valos, his heartstone pulsed in his chest.

  As he moved forward, I cast a panicked look at the motion detector again. Could he get in? Would that be a bad thing? What if they weren’t as friendly as the Fire Valos remembered them to be? By Pel’s admission, since the departure of the Creators a thousand years ago, the different valos cities had lost contact with each other. People changed, and a millennia was a heck of a lot of time to do so.

  You wanted to come live with them....

  I did. Still wanted to. I wouldn’t survive long in this place with water as sole sustenance. Now, I only needed to work up the courage to reveal myself and pray they didn’t pummel me into human paste.

  The valo didn’t come towards the door. Instead, he headed for the cave’s entrance, apparently untroubled by the gusting wind and hail. His companion approached him, giving me a good look at his also very sexy body. This one was even bigger than his ‘wrestler’ buddy and reminded me of a bodybuilder.

  Neither of them appeared to see me as they walked past the window, even though I stood right in the middle of it. It struck me, then, that this had to be some type of one-way glass.

  The two men—males—stood side-by-side, talking while looking out into the raging blizzard. Both bald, they each had that same single braid I had partially seen on their sleeping kin. It hung down to the middle of their shoulder blades, pointing toward their nicely rounded behinds. My face heated with shame at catching myself leering at the unsuspecting aliens.

  Technically, you’re the alien. They’re the locals.

  Right. Still, my eyes had grown particularly fond of Wrestler’s tush and couldn’t seem to stop ogling it.

  Bodybuilder took another step towards the exit, and my heart lurched in my chest.

  Are they talking about leaving?

  I couldn’t risk them hitting the road without me. With the raging storm, they’d disappear from sight within seconds as I couldn’t see more than a couple of feet in front of me. If they left me here, my odds of survival would take a major nose dive. Without giving it further thought, I rushed to the second motion detector and waved my hand in front of it.

  The wall parted with a hiss-clank, followed by a soft swishing sound as the door quickly slid open. Startled by the sound, the two valos’ heads jerked towards me. Shock slowly morphed into horror on their faces as they turned to face me. The cool gust of wind that struck me didn’t trigger the shiver that ran down my spine; their now snarling expressions did.

  “Rakheeja!” Bodybuilder whispered with dread, like one would invoke the name of the boogeyman.

  A threatening growl rose from both their throats, turning my blood to ice. Their heartstones flared while their bodies grew in height and mass, with cracking and popping sounds. Like a deer in headlights, I stood transfixed, hypnotized by their transformation and the intensifying glow of their eyes—or more precisely, of Wrestler’s eyes. Crystal-shaped ice shards of varying sizes protruded from their skin like spikes, and thick, armor-like ice plates covered their bodies and heartstones. I’d seen the Fire Valos morph enough times to recognize this as the Northern Valos’ battle form.

  Except, this time, I was the target they intended to pounce upon.

  Snapping out of my paralysis, I raised both hands before me in surrender and shook my head.

  “I’m unarmed! I’m not a threat! Peace!”

  “Rakheeja!” Bodybuilder shouted, this time like a war-cry.

  “No! No!” I pleaded.

  Shaking my head even more frantically, I took a step back, ready to activate the motion sensor again. Despite his terrifying new form, Wrestler’s face remained recognizable, and something akin to hesitation crossed his features. A storm of anxiety twisted my innards as I clung to the hope I could reason with him.

  “Friend,” I said, spreading my arms wider, and bowing my head in what I hoped would pass for a submissive stance. “I come in peace.”

  Wrestler gave me a troubled look, some of his aggression bleeding out. However, Bodybuilder raised his fist—bigger than my head in his battle form—and extended it into a long, sharp, ice spike... sword... something that would hurt like hell if I was impaled on it, and charged towards me with a savage roar. Wrestler tried to hold his friend back, but his hand caught air.

  With a scream, I threw myself at the motion detector, and the door closed, barely a second before a loud bang resonated as the valo crashed against it. In my eagerness to back away from the door, I tripped and landed on my butt with a heavy thump. Pain radiated down my legs and up my spine from my poor behind, already tenderized by my initial fall down the rabbit hole, but I was too freaked out to worry about it just this instant.

  I screamed at another loud bang, then scrambled back to my feet, wincing. Casting a panicked look around the room, I wondered where to hide if they broke through. Breathing heavily, just this side of hyperventilating, my hands clutched at my tunic, my nails digging into my palms through the fabric.

  What could I use as a weapon?

  Not that it would do me any good against them if they were even half as badass as the Fire Valos. My frazzled brain then registered the absence of a third bang.

  Are they looking for the switch?

  I plastered myself against the window to look outside. To my surprise, the valos weren’t fiddling with the door but having an animated discussion. Wrestler appeared to be trying to calm Bodybuilder. Another flare of hope surged within me.

  As their
conversation continued, Bodybuilder glanced in the general direction of the door a couple of times before finally seeming to acquiesce to whatever Wrestler had been saying. They both shed their battle forms, and I could have wept from relief.

  A short-lived sentiment...

  With a raised palm, Wrestler gestured for Bodybuilder to stay put before giving the cave wall an assessing once-over. With determined steps, he marched toward the door. Moving to the far edge of the window, I pressed my face ever harder against it in an effort to see what he was up to. It didn’t help, of course, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Although I couldn’t see his fingers, the deliberate way in which his arm moved, and the general height of his hand, confirmed he was looking for a switch.

  The urge to flee and hide came roaring back. It would be pointless, though. If they knew how to find the switch here, they would find all the others within. Wrestler had calmed his buddy down, surely he could be reasoned with, right? In the two-and-a-half seconds it took me to ask myself that question, the click-hiss of the door opening took away all my options.

  I took a couple of steps back as the imposing frame of Wrestler entered the room. Once again, I raised my hands in surrender, my eyes pleading. He stopped a couple of feet in front of the door, back straight, his arms hanging loosely along his sides. He gave me an assessing glance before casting a look around the room.

  “Akshiba!” Wrestler exclaimed, shocked at the sight of the lab and his frozen people. “Zaktaul!” he called out to his buddy, still outside.

  Bodybuilder barged into the room, his gaze following the finger Wrestler pointed at the cryogenic alcoves.