Page 65 of Fathom

We didn't even go into the apartment to change.

As soon as the family driver left, we were in another car, heading to the spaceport.

"How are we going to find a ride?" I asked him when we passed yet another ship that was loading up, getting ready toleave. I would have gone to the first one and just asked to buy a ticket out of here. If his family was notified that we got married, there was a chance they'd be notified that we went to the spaceport.

"We need to find someone who looks like they're leaving the system," he said. "Most of these traders only go back and forth between the planets in this solar system. We have to get out of here completely if we're going to be able to find your home planet."

I appreciated that he focused on the goal of finding my home, rather than just escaping his family. What we would do when we found Earth was another matter. I wasn't under the impression that Earth was particularly friendly to aliens, given that our government refused to disclose any information on their dealings with them. I'd seen the reports of military officials or astronauts or scientists, all reputable people getting up and publicly swearing before a court of law that the US government had deals with aliens, but there was never anyone in the government who came forward to say what those deals actually were. They just said that the truth behind it all was too horrible for the public to handle.

That was a bunch of bullshit.

Whenever I heard that, I knew what they were really saying: that the truth would make the officials culpable of crimes against humanity, and they didn't want to come forward because they would be drawn and quartered in the court of public opinion. Perhaps that was what had happened to me. Had I been packaged up and sold to aliens by my own government?

I couldn't find the answers by staying here.

"Tell me what we are looking for," I said as we passed what looked strikingly like a human-designed MECH suit carrying alarge box up into the hold of a shuttle that matched most of the others we had seen so far, a smaller robot trundling along behind it with another box.

"I'm not actually sure," Eun said, worry in his tone as we continued past it. "Everything I've seen so far looks like it was made in this system. I haven't seen anything that looks alien to me yet. Other than that odd-looking robot back there. But it was loading up a standard short-range shuttle, not a ship."

"You mean the MECH suit?" I asked.

"What is a MECH suit?" he asked.

A familiar chuckling sound caused us both to look over. A group of hyena aliens was standing there in the opening of a ship's ramp, all looking at us. One of them set down the box it had been holding, slowly, never taking its eyes off of us.

"Come on," Eun said, pulling me further into the crowd.

"They're following us," I hissed as I spotted one trailing behind us.

"I know," Eun said in a tense voice. "They won't attack us here, not with me with you and all these people around, but we don't want to risk it. If we have to fight, station security will hold us and contact my parents."

A pair of lumbering elephant aliens trundled towards us, and we slipped around them with the squish of the crowd. As it grew denser around us, we took a turn, ducking down a walkway between two ships. On the other end of the alley was another main pedestrian walkway. As we got halfway down, one of the hyena aliens appeared at the other end, chuckling to himself. We turned, and the others were behind us. Our escape had been cut off.

Eun pushed me behind him, my back facing one of the ships as the hyena aliens formed a semicircle around us.

"That alien belongs to us," one of the hyenas said.

"I belong to no one!" I said.

The hyena alien focused all four of its eyes on me, its lips pulling back to reveal that the deep yellow of its teeth was framed with blackened rot near its gums. It was out of the reach of Eun's tail, but I could still smell its breath, fetid and foul.

"You were an icicle treat, sold by another of your kind, dangerous female," it said. "We bought three in a fair trade. You belong to us."

He bought three? There were two other humans on this planet?

Hope surged in my chest only to be replaced in an instant by horror at his next words.

"First two were delicious," he said, his tongue snaking out to lick the edges of his maw.

"Didn't we kill you already?" I spat out, fury rising as I thought back to the sight of Eun hunched over dead bodies, the massacre, the second time he had saved me from a group of these fiends.

All of the hyenas let out a snarl, their bodies tensing.

"Their kind work in small packs that meet together to coordinate in a larger city-wide group that runs a large portion of the blood market," Eun said.

"It's hard to tell them apart when they all look so ugly," I said. It was a cheap insult, but these aliens were psychotic murderers who intended to eat me.

"You're the one who killed many of the pack," the hyena spokesperson said, his eyes focusing on Eun. Suddenly his head lifted, and he took a step back, all four of his hands going out to the sides, palms facing us. "I know you. You belong to the Wolf group. We will buy her from you."