Baaul: A Change of Heart

Chapter 19: Surveying the Ship

Renee had managed to figure out how to work the tub. The water fell from the ceiling like a waterfall to the center of the divet on the floor. It would fill up until about an inch or so from the edge and that was it. How it managed to not overfill from the pouring fall, she didn’t know because she couldn’t seem to find a drain of any kind.

The water had come out cold, but she had been able to find a computer system in the wall that she manipulated into warming the waters. Apparently, Baaul showered in the frigid temps. Hell, no.

After her shower, she redressed, cursing Baaul for this damn attire and went to the door that he had exited from. She pressed her hand against the panel to open it, like he had, but nothing happened. She frowned. Was it a biometric scanner? Welp, she’d just have to bypass that, wouldn’t she?

She returned to the wall that had shot out her clothes and mimicked the action Baaul had done. A keyboard flipped out of the wall, and she read that it was system generator of fabrics. Though, since it was linked to the ship itself, she knew that there would be a back door that she could enter.

The system wasn’t like a human computer though. It was more like it had a life of its own. She eventually recognized that it was built like a model of DNA. She almost wondered how that was possible, but then scolded herself for even remotely being surprised. She was on an alien space ship after being fucked to glorious heavens by its owner after all.

It took her close to an hour of prodding, searching, learning, before she found what she was looking for, though she couldn’t have been positive if she hadn’t found a clock within the system. This room didn’t exactly have windows and it was in a cave anyway. The chase of figuring the system out had been entirely too much fun for her.

She forced the system to open the door for her and she beamed when the large barrier did exactly that. “Awwww yeah!”

Renee dashed through the door, because she wasn’t sure how long the door would stay open nor if she would have to go through the trouble of opening it again. The hallway was more of the same. Black sleek metal that stretched out far on either direction. She was almost positive that they had come in from the left, so she went right. She had no intention of leaving the ship.

The wide hall was large enough for three of Baaul’s kind to walk side by side comfortably, so she felt rather small and exposed. Unlike a human residence or vehicle, there was absolutely nothing of a personal touch here. She frowned, wondering if Baaul’s kind were minimalists. If so, it was ironic considering how grand this damn ship was.
Finally, she came upon a large circular, dome of a room. Her jaw dropped, instantly recognizing it for the trophy room that it was. The walls were covered with an innumerable amount of different kinds of skulls. None of them belonged to anything on Earth. There were thousands of them! Some of them were so large that when it had been alive, it could have swallowed her in a single snap of its jaws.

Had Baaul…killed all of them?

The thought made her knees weak. He was even more fierce than she gave him credit for. She had lived with hunters before. One of her foster families had been a rich redneck family out in the mountains of Colorado. The father had a trophy room too that held dozens of taxidermy trophies of his hunts. That room had been his life’s work and it still paled in comparison to Baaul’s collection. A flurry of questions came to her.

Just how many planets had life on them? Was Baaul sneaking onto all of them like he had Earth? Had any of these creatures stood a chance? Was he always alone, like he was now? Fuck…if he had company…was it with other males of his own kind? The thought of Baaul being intimately involved with someone else hurt her heart so much that she had to press her hand into her chest.

She bit her lip, trying to fight the tears back while scolding herself for hurting her own damn feelings. It wasn’t like she had been a virgin before him, and the whole purity bullshit before being with your one and only was just a sexist scam to make women feel bad about owning their sexuality. Still…the idea felt wrong. She would have to ask him his intentions once he got back. The whirlwind of him, his existence, and the drama he was involved in had simply been too fast paced for her to have a level head.

She knew what SHE wanted. Without a doubt, she would abandon Earth to travel the galaxies with him. Nothing else mattered to her. But she needed to know what he wanted. It wasn’t like she could force him to do anything and even if she could, she wouldn’t want to. Where did they stand though? She needed to know.

With that solid plan of action in mind, Renee turned and continued through the trophy room, determined to explore more.