In a galaxy far, far away...
queen Portia sat at her table made of the bones of a mammoth, and stared at the First.
The First was not an impressive specimen in any way, with her limp, thin blond hair, skinny build, bad posture, and short height--5"2. She was only eighteen, and Queen Portia was seventy-three and still in prime condition. Being a Shakespearean, she lived longer than the pathetic Earthling's kind.
Queen Portia was tall and muscular, with swamp-green skin and blood-red hair. Her eyes were a dull brownish color. She sat perfectly upright, the embodiment of authority.
"Speak to me," she ordered, yelling.
"I don't know anything!" the girl sobbed for the third time.
"Perhaps you need encouragement." Portia snapped her fingers and her assistants run forward to put the girl under the laser ray again. The laser ray was a form of excruciating torture that burned your skin but didn't wound it. If you underwent the laser torture, no one could tell. It left no trace but the memory of pain, always fresh in your mind.
A lovely form of encouragement.
Portia pressed a button on the wall, and a soundproof divider separated herself from the Earthling's screams of agony.
She picked up one of the small desserts and chewed it daintily. When she was finished with the girl, she took away the divider and then looked at her again.
"I will ask you for the last time. How did you do it? You are the first person to survive past your eighteenth birthday since the meteor we sent five years ago. And you are not Marked like the others. Did you take some sort of medicine? Did you find a cure for our virus?"
"No!" she said. "I think somehow... I'm immune to it. I don't know how. I think it's tied to the lack of... Marks, you call them? on my face."
"Interesting." Queen Portia snapped her fingers again, and addressed Commander Ophelia, the second most powerful person on Shakespeare, a small planet in the Andromeda Galaxy--"take your army to Earth. If you see any Unmarked people like First here, take them captive and inspect them, their blood, genes, and so on. Find out what's different about them. They could be a threat."
"A threat to what?" the First asked.
"A threat to us taking over Earth." Queen Portia said.
"You want to take over the world?" She raised her eyebrows, incredulous.
"Yes. Earth has a valuable substance in its core. We believe it can make one immortal. And have incredible strength and speed and so on."
"Really?" Her eyes widened. "Why are you telling me this, anyway?"
Queen Portia smiled. But it wasn't a warm or kind or happy or amused smile. It was a smile of pure malice. "But before you go, Commander--fetch me my mammoth tooth knife, will you? I'd like the pleasure of killing the girl myself. And then you can take her body and inspect her."
Commander Ophelia nodded, her full lips spreading into an attractive smile. She walked out of the room.
A moment later she returned with a long white knife. She handed it to Queen Portia and murmured something that made her laugh. Then Portia faced the terrified girl.
"The first of your kind to live, and the first to die," she said. Then she threw the knife like a javelin, and it struck the First directly in the heart.
Portia smiled.
✶✶✶
Exactly when the knife hit that one girl's chest, far away, another girl shot an alien soldier through the heart...
YOU ARE READING
The Unaffected
Science FictionTEN YEARS AGO every human eighteen years and older died. It was from a virus, caused by the meteor sent down to earth by alien forces. And now, almost all of the solely child survivors are inflicted with the same virus. Some children, however, are n...
