Perdition's Child

Chapter 13

He didn't remember afterwards how they smuggled him into their car without anyone calling the cops. It couldn't have looked good, a bunch of alien thugs dragging a beaten and half-dead lellian into their vehicle, but they managed it somehow. Apparently Gestalt was even rougher than the Lequin terminator.

He slept the whole trip, waking only briefly when they tried to pull him into an apartment. He panicked, his confused and sleep-addled mind thinking it was the Shitara den and they were dragging him back to that sink to finish the job. They let him sleep in the car with the windows down instead of risking the attention his panicked yowling would draw.

He dreamt of his desert, and napping in the soft sand while someone annoying tried to convince him to get up and do something more interesting.

Mehk woke up after eight hours starving, thirsty, and fuzzy-headed. He was also cuffed loosely to the door. It was dark again and he had a bad moment when he thought he was in Ritcha's car. Adrenaline surged and he thrashed desperately, but he was secured too well to squirm free. Quara's brother, Teska, flicked on the overhead light, stretched sleepily, and yawned, drawing Mehk from his panicked fury. "I thought you guys normally only slept for a few hours at a time?"

"Normally we don't spend twenty hours straight awake and trying to avoid getting murdered." He snapped and tried to stretch as best he could, "I need to get up."

The skithtiri looked at him with one antenna cocked. "I didn't hear a please in there, did you want to try again? You aren't the most popular person around here right now."

Rested now and still shaking with leftover fear, Mehk dared to take his anger out on Quaras' brother. Since the entire damn world seemed to want a piece of him, he laid his ears back defensively and growled. "Oh, I'm sorry. Would you tell me whether you'd prefer I piss on that seat there or the floor, please?"

Teska rolled his eyes, but appearances aside he was the most laid back out of the whole group. Mehk swallowed his irritation as best he could and decided to wait for a better target.

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the car, I see. You don't want to do that, this thing mostly belongs to my sister." He let that threat hang in the air while unlocking the cuffs. "Are you going to be okay going into the apartment? You screamed bloody murder when we tried to get you in there before. You sounded like Quaras' cat when we try to give it a bath, actually."

Mehk rolled his shoulders to get the kinks out and made his way towards the light he assumed was the door. He stumbled once, unable to see the raised step, but Teska didn't comment. "It's fine now," he said, not wanting to admit to any weakness.

The inside was much bigger than he expected, with a door on the other wall actually nested inside a much larger one. The entrance hall was a good fifteen feet wide and had a high ceiling, but the building reminded him of their ship. Not poorly made, exactly, just built for utilitarian purposes rather than for looks or comfort. Bland gray floors and off-white walls. It lacked the graffiti, and Mehk couldn't decide if that was good or bad.

He ignored the cool looks he got from the mercenaries sitting on scattered furniture hugging the walls of the communal living room and locked the restroom door behind him since it didn't have stalls. Teska thumped against the door as if to suggest he hurry up.