Alone

Chapter 7

I don’t know what time it is when my eyes open again. Actually, I don’t know what time it ever is here.

         Jenna is already awake next to me. Trying to be friendly, I write on the glass.

Did you sleep well?

         Her eyes are tired, even when she’s been awake for who-knows-how-long. She lifts her finger after breathing on the glass weakly.

No. I had strange dreams

         I tilt my head. The first part could be interpreted, but this second sen-tence I never expected.

What about?

         I hope she doesn’t think I’m being rude or nosy by asking. She doesn’t show any sign of that, though, when she writes her response.

You

         A sharp pain hits me in the chest and I’m scared I’m falling apart. Those three letters… what do they mean?

What did I do?

         She seems to sniff once before writing back, though I can’t be sure since I can’t hear it.

You left me here. And then you became one of them. You laughed at me.

         A sharper pain hits me in the chest and I wonder if these invisible blows might kill me. I wouldn’t mind. Anything to escape this.

         Could she know? Could she know that I was planning to leave her here?

         Jenna looks solemn as I stare at nothing. When she fogs up the glass on her side again, erasing her deadly words, she writes.

One’s coming

         I turn to see what she means. Coming toward my capsule is an alien. Disgusting like the others, it presses a button on the outside of the glass that makes a beeping noise ring through the tube. This surprises me and I flinch without thinking.

         “Come,” the alien says in an even worse English accent than the other one used yesterday.

         The glass rises and the alien steps aside in a welcoming gesture. Confused, I follow, trying to make sense of all of this.

         The alien leads me down to the other side of the capsule room to the elevator. We both step in in silence, waiting with the whirring of the elevator.

         Soon the elevator stops at floor 104. It’s the top floor.

         This floor is very different from the others. It isn’t miles and miles long. From what it looks like, it’s the control room. There are gadgets and gizmos everywhere – all over the walls, even some on the ceiling. Some are blinking lights. Others are buttons. Some are levers.

         There’s also a steering wheel. It’s oddly shaped – based off a circle but carved as if to fit hands. Alien hands, of course.

         And at this wheel, controlling the ship, is an alien.

         The alien, actually, that spoke the bad English to me first. The one that named me Girl. The alien boss.

         “Hello,” it says in its horrible accent. “Please follow me.”

         I don’t move until the alien that led me here shoves me and I stumble forward to catch myself.

         The alien boss wraps a slick hand around my arm, its thin, bony, long fingers cold. It pulls me along through a doorway where we sit in a plain room with grey walls. There is a chair in the middle.