Page 3 of Owning His Pet
“Thank you!” I say as he sets me down. “Thank you so much, I swear to god I was about to die. That ship was…”
“I heard you screaming on the way past,” he says.
“I was screaming? I don’t remember screaming,” I say. “I thought I was staying very calm.”
“You were calm enough,” he says. I know he’s indulging me, but I let him.
“You were amazing. Let me buy you lunch,” I say.
Thank god all my banking information is engraved on my retina caps. It would be the worst if I relied on anything that had to be physically stored.
I am wearing a neck-to-toe pink jumpsuit with pockets at the hips, thighs, knees, and ankles. I am still dripping wet from the knees down, but the fabric is designed to repel biologicalmaterial and it doesn’t get much more biological than water, so I think I’ll be dry soon.
“I am hungry,” he says.
I don’t know if I am hungry too, but it doesn’t much matter.
He picks me up and uses me to scan my face to pay for both a big bowl of noodles and two burgers replete with fries. Ancient human food. The best of the best. These recipes have been handed down for generations, and have become so popular you can get them almost anywhere.
We sit down at a table in the food court and the two of us dig into our meals. My rescuer eats like he is starving. I eat like I never thought I’d get to eat again.
“I should probably get your name,” I say.
“Freak,” he says. “That’s what they call me. Pretty sure I had another name before that, but Freak is what sticks in my head now. The rest will come back later, once my energy returns.”
I frown slightly. I didn’t notice it before, because we were in motion high above the ground and I was as scared of gravity as I had been of water right before, but now I look at him more closely, I see that in addition to scars that look like they probably came from rough living or combat, there are some that look medical. They are surgical in their precision and they are straight where the others are rough or angular.
“Uhm, what kind of being are you? I’m human,” I say.
“Psyon,” he says, his handsome cheek flexing with amusement because he obviously thinks I should know what he is.
“I’ve heard about Psyons before!” I say. “Never met one, though. They say you guys can control time and space and you don’t live on a real planet, but you have a special realm that can only be accessed by your kind.”
“Most of that is true in various ways,” he says, smiling a little. “Thank you for reminding me.”
“You forgot?”
He shakes his head. His blue hair waves with the motion. I want to touch it, but I don’t because that would be weird. “Can’t remember a lot of things right now. They’ve been experimenting on me for months. Maybe years. Time doesn’t run in the usual way for creatures of our kind.”
“That’s fucked up.”
He eats another big bite of burger and nods.
“Yeah,” he says when he’s swallowed. “It is.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“Me too,” he says. “Why were you about to drown?”
“My best guess is the fluid tank punctured internally, fried the door locks and capsule electrics. Then the water dispensers somehow got jammed on and kept producing H2O.”
“Series of unlikely and unfortunate events. Sounds more like sabotage than accident,” he frowns.
“I don’t know who would do that. I don’t know anyone here.”
“Where are you from?”
“Genesis Prime.”
