ZER

THREE

"Welcome to Tzar! My name is Tra G'mlashtikam, but you can call me Tra, for short." The Tzarian host flashes his perfectly square teeth, I guess they don't have any fangs?

"Hello, my name is Kate, nice to meet you." I smile back at him.

"You're dismissed," he nods to the guard. "Now, shall I show you your room? Well, you only be sleeping in it for tonight, so I guess there is no need for you to unpacked all of your stuff." I walk along with him, climbing some stairs.

"What time will the event begin?" I ask him.

He looks at me and smiled. "Are you nervous? Don't be. We are very grateful for your presence here. You're the first of your kind so I understand there will be a lot of confusion about how are things going on here. Humans are the first race we discovered since the last discovery, and that was before my grandfather was born." He pushes open a smaller door and clasps his hands.

"Bed, table, wardrobe," He said pointing at them one by one as if mentally ticking off a list. "Bathroom is behind that door, you can drink the water from the tap."

"So is it true then, that you haven't had any baby born here for the last 50 years?"

Is it true then, that your kind is desperate enough to reproduce, you risk some of your men's lives to look for another race in the hope to find a compatible woman to carry the next Tzarian genes?

He looks at me before he nods slowly.

"Not sure what have we done to deserves this, Tzarian are known to be just to other races, we treat nature as our God and respect every living thing inside and outside our planet." He looks at me briefly and smiles . "Maybe your kind can give us insight on how to fixed our problems, I heard statistically every family has four to five children on Earth?"

Wrong.

"I hope I can help." I gave him a small smile.

"For you to agree to join tomorrow's event is already a big step. I will leave you now, if you need anything please don't hesitate to say so. I will be somewhere downstairs assisting other females, if you can't find me just yell." He closes my door softly and left me in peace.

Or not.

Now I'm alone and have no distraction, my mind flies in lightning speed. I sit on the cold marble floor and pressed my forehead to my knees.

I left Earth.

To start over.

To leave all things that hurt me behind.

To be free from all the chains and whips and nightmares.

But everywhere I go, I still can feel them on me, in me.

I rub my eyes with the palm of my hands. It feels like running in a circle. I don't regret a single thing, leaving Earth, coming here. I'm me, at last. But why do I still feel like I'm trapped?

After a while, I got the hang on how to operate the shower. Everything is a touch screen. Unlike on earth, the water doesn't come down pouring like the rain, here it's more like a mist coming down from the walls. The soap and shampoo they have are more like powder instead of liquid, surprisingly, when the mist cleaned my body, I left with squeaky-clean feeling.

I decide to go downstairs and look at what other females up to. It doesn't take a lot for me to find what looks like the common room. It has several single chairs and comfortable sofas, in the middle there are two coffee tables with plenty of what looks like fruits.

What strange looking fruits.

I looked closer and they look almost like... beating.

"What are you?" A voice greets me.