Back To Krypton

Chapter 18

Alex paces at the foot of the bed, ignoring the group all bunched together atop of it. "I have a bad feeling about this."

"We all do, Alex." Kara flops back on the bed in a half-reclined position, her head falling onto Lena's lap where lithe fingers eagerly burrow into her soft blonde tresses, not scratching nor combing, simply resting in the golden locks like each fingertip is being tucked into bed.

The air is thick with apprehension, it's suffocating. Not a single person in that room has anything but every possibility for what Astra's people may require of them running through their head and not a single person can fathom of a single way to express their thoughts in a coherent way.

Sometimes, there is no coherent way.

Somehow, little Esme is the only one to have the courage to state the obvious. "They aren't good people, are they?"

Kelly holds her daughter tight, keeping her arms wrapped around her as tight as she can, unwilling to ever let her daughter go because she fears that if she does, it could be the last time, as rational or irrational as that is.

"We're still figuring that out." Kara offers when nobody else speaks. "But I'm going to go find some answers."

Everybody jumps when Kara sits up, wincing as she does so because Lena's fingers instinctually latched on and pulled her hair slightly with the motion.

Alex pauses her pacing. "Now? You're planning on going out there now?"

"We've been waiting in here for hours now, waiting for my aunt to come up with some plan or talk to some people we know nothing about. We don't know what she's planning, and I need to know. I'm going to talk to her and then I'm coming right back, I promise." Kara grabs hold of the door handle, holding a hand facing outwards towards Alex when she tries to step closer, probably to try and stop her.

Nobody gets the chance to say anything else then because Kara is already out of the door, not sticking around to hear the others try and probably succeed in telling her that they should all stick together.

That may be true, but some things are better off done alone, it tends to get messy when they go in as a group. Wires get crossed and they won't get all of their questions answered, there's too much potential for something to go wrong.

She barely makes it to the end of the hallway back to the living room when a guard steps out in front of her, blocking her path and preventing her from leaving the hallway.

It takes no time for her to recognize the guard as the same one that was in the dining room with Astra, Lena and herself the night they were first brought back here.

"Zin-Ra? That's your name, right?"

A brisk head nod tells her that she's right, but it takes no genius to see that the snap of his neck holds anger and distrust. He definitely doesn't like her.

"I need to speak to General Astra In-Ze."

Words are spat at her then. "Rrip si ehwor i kehp dhid ukep. Rrip ehwor vahdhan taiium." (You should speak your own tongue here. You speak like a foreigner.)

"Now that's the kind of hatred towards diversity that I'd expect from the council. Perhaps you should be trying to raise yourself above their primitive values instead of agreeing with them." Kara retorts, tone hardened into that which she usually reserves for when she's wearing her cape.

Zin-Ra steps forward into her space, challenging her to back down, which Kara will never do, her pride will never let her.

The second he realizes that she isn't intimidated by him, Zin-Ra strikes, setting a firm jab into her ribs and knocking the air out of her lungs. Kara stumbles back from the force of it, caught off guard by it and the audacity of the man to just punch her out of nowhere just to prove his intelligence-lacking point.