Nayantara

Chapter Six: Suspicion

While Sam begins to start her day in India, on my side of the world, I'm getting ready to sleep. We video chat on the phone, giving each other updates about what's going on in our lives. Her sister is still in the hospital even after a month has passed. Sam won't come back until her sister is back in stable condition. I can't imagine what she's going through. I wish I could fly over there and do everything I can to ease her stress, but my job has booked five major surgeries. Plus, the threat of Shendour and Rayan's stupid plant monsters is keeping me here in the country.

"It's worse than we imagined," I say to Sam as I'm on the verge of falling asleep.

"How so?" Sam says. She props her phone against something so she can do her makeup. "Did something extremely terrible happen?"

"Terrible?" I say, thinking about the fight with the roided Cada man. "No," I say, shaking my head. "The truth about everything." Sam looks at me on the phone. I nod and say, "Yeah." I briefly yet quickly summarize everything about where my power comes from, who Asteria's real name is, my training with Eddie, and the strange fight with the Cada monster.

"Now I'm really worried. I think I should come home."

"Stay with your family."

"Nikki," she says softly to me. "I miss you and you're going through a lot." My heart melts. My eyes fill with tears and my nose starts to somewhat run. I keep everything as I try to tell her I feel the same way.

"Maybe I should fly over there."

"Are you taking a plane or yourself," she says while snickering. I laugh at how silly the question is. I can indeed fly but only for a limited amount of time. Flights there are not cheap. They're over one thousand dollars. I can afford several flights back to back thanks to Eddie and Egnima for the contracts.

"Plane, of course."

"I know," she chuckles then sighs out her nose. Even though she doesn't say, I can see she really misses me. Her reassuring smile is baked with sadness. "I'll let you go. Goodnight, babe."

"Goodbye."

I end the video call after we kiss a wave goodbye. Now I'm back to being lonely in an empty, quiet apartment. I pass out and wake up from my alarm. I'm too lazy to walk into the kitchen so I fly in there to make myself some coffee. While I wait for the machine to fire up its doohicky to make ten ounces of sweat-delicious chocolate coffee, I think about where the hell in the galaxy Shar'I comes from. A simple search of the closest Earth-like planets gives me too much of a broad result. I don't have the patience to comb through every planet astronomers have found over the years. I need someone to explain to me like I'm a child about the best likelihood of life where an advanced civilization can come here.

I wonder if Professor Cox might have the answers I'm looking for.

Professor Cox is one of the biggest nerds of astronomy that I know. His knowledge and compassion to understand the universe outside our little world might be helpful. I just need to figure out how I can not leak information about the fact there are three aliens. Since it's still early in the morning, I'm positive he'll be teaching. I have to wait until the afternoon for his office hours. Unless his hours are different now then I'm fucked. Hopefully, he still runs on the same schedule.

While I'm waiting for time to pass before heading out, I kneel near my bathroom tub to safely play around with my fire and ice powers with my hands. After each attempt, I dunk my hands in the water to make sure the temps are back to normal. I have my phone recording across the room from the sink through a thermal reader app.

"That should be enough," I say. I watch the recording while heading to the bedroom. My cold temps reach below freezing. The lowest it goes is negative fifty degrees. When my hands are on fire, the highest number reaches one thousand six hundred. Both temps stay contained around my hands. They never flare out. "None of this shit makes sense. How the hell am I doing this?" My powers continue to amaze me even after having them for several months. I feel like I'm witnessing just the tip of the iceberg of what I'm capable of.