JESSIE

I started to feel the nerves creep up on me when I was out of Luc's sight, the two guards were behind me, ushering me deeper into the cave — the walls were reinforced with steel, and the ceiling of the artificial tunnel had a row of florescence lights that lit it up.

"Stop," one man said, and I halted in my tracks immediately. I heard him come up behind me, and I didn't protest when a black cloth was used to cover my eyes. The knot was a little tight but manageable, and I followed along when the man took hold of my arm with a gloved hand and continued to push me along.

He halted, not moving, and then I heard beeping, followed by the sound of a lever, and then the loud clanking noise of metal moving. We didn't start walking again until the clanking noise stopped. The sound of my footsteps shifted — echoing as the sand under my feet shifted to a leveled metal surface. I started to hear other people walking past us. The sound of muttering and whispering only dulled when I was a door was closed behind me. The cloth was lifted from my eyes, and soon I was staring down at a seated woman who had her hands clasped over the table. She was augmented — one of her hands being robotic and a section of her face plated with metal with wiring that wrapped down her neckline, disappearing into her shirt.

Military grade. I thought to myself, taking a seat when one guard ushered me towards the one across from her. I dropped my backpack on the floor, shifting nervously as I looked about the room and then back at who I assumed was Petrova. A person was sitting to her right. It was an Asian man who hadn't looked up once from the papers he was flipping through to look at me.

"Jessie English?" the woman asked when the door shut behind the two guards.

I nodded. "Petrova Aronov?"

She smiled a bit, nodding as well. "You said you had a black box."

I nodded immediately, reaching for my bag. I unzipped it, pulling out the device before putting it at the center of the table. Petrova eyed the thing, letting her blue eyes inspect it as she reached out to grasp its side. She pulled it closer to her, tuning the recording to the last few minutes like I had. The recording I'd heard maybe over fifty times now played in the small room. The Asian man didn't look up until the part with the navigation team arguing with onboard officers. They both winced at the coalition sound, their features going grim as we listened to the sounds of screaming and horror together. The tape jammed just where it had done for me, and now Petrova was staring at the error message, too.

This..." she started, biting down on her bottom lip. "This is..."

"This explains things," the Asian man said, cutting Petrova off. "They caused the crash — not on purpose, but it's their fault."

Petrova turned to the man. "John is right." She pushed back a strand of her blond hair, pulling a small communications device beside her even closer. "Can you get Ola and Darin in here please," she said into the device's microphone before looking back at me.

"And you said you found this on the ship?" she asked.

I nodded.

"I was skeptical because we've tried to go back, too. There's no entranceway. The walls of the ship are the lengths of sky scrappers, and the edge is smooth. There was no climbing into that," she said.

"Luc — my friend helped me," I said, unsure of how much I should relay. "He flew me overhead and got us both through a hole in the roof."

"Right," John said. "Your Avian friend."

His tone sounded off. I suspected he didn't trust my version of events.

"About that," Petrova said. "John is here because he has questions—"

"I need answers," he clarified, resting back in his seat. "I'm a doctor to some, and an investigator to many. We don't really have departments here. We just do what's needed when needed."

I raised a brow at him, unsure of where this line of questioning was going. "You need answers to what?"

"About a year ago, people started going missing. Maybe a person a month maybe, but then suddenly it was a few people a week. We reached out to the settlements we're friendly with, and they reported the same — a lot of their scouts were gone, but one of them mentioned an Avian just diving from the sky and swooping someone off the floor. We retracted most scouting duties and filled the ones left with people who have combat training. We haven't lost a person in four months," John said, folding his hands. "But we still don't know why they're doing this in the first place. We were able to acquire an Avian, but it doesn't talk to us. It's a bit friendly with Luke... He's a lab tech here, but that's about it."

My eyes went wide. "You kidnapped one of them?"

"I wouldn't say kidnapping," Petrova chimed in. "It's small. Probably a child. It looked like it was abandoned. It didn't fight us much. It kicked a scout square in the stomach and just curled up in a ball afterward and screamed."

"So, you didn't only kidnap an Avian, you kidnapped a child?" I asked, making sure I understood what was going on.

Petrova frowned. "They have a lot of ours. If they want the kid back, they can make a trade. We're not torturing it. We just want it to talk."

"Your Avian friend... A report from Prime-1 we acquired said you can talk to it," John said. "Anyone who's been in the watch rotation at the entrance when you made your visits here also said it looked like you talk to it. Is that true?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "We've been working on some English," I mumbled. "their language... I can't make any of the sounds, so we use English."

"Fascinating," John said. "How did you meet them? Were you... kidnapped?"

The question actually made me laugh, but when John and Petrova stared at me in confusion, I coughed into my hand.

"Sorry," I sighed, "I haven't had to think about what happened in a while."

"So you were kidnapped?" Petrova asked, looking at me to clarify.

I shook my head. "No. No, I was not kidnapped. Um, actually, he saved my life," I said, watching as John's skeptical look reappeared. "I fell into a sinkhole," I said, deciding no one needed to know what actually happened in that part. "I think I drowned... it's fuzzy from there. I remember waking up on a cliff, and he's sort of taken care of me ever since."

John and Petrova shared a look before both turning to face me.

"Does your friend know anything about the kidnapping?" Petrova asked.

I shrugged. "I don't think so... actually, that was the question I needed answered. The special ops I mentioned in my recording? The one on my file? They mentioned the kidnappings too—"

"I don't understand," John intersected. "Why didn't you just ask the bird yourself?"

"Luc."

"What?"

"The Avian, his name is Luc," I said, and John blinked, his lips parting but closing right after. "They also call themselves Helli... Well, that's the only way to say it without giving yourself a stroke trying to make those sounds they do."

"Okay, sorry," John said. "Why didn't you ask Luc about the kidnapping?"

I rested my weight on one hand, rubbing my temple. "Luc and I talk, but... it's not complete. There are a lot of words for food and time, and how we're feeling. He doesn't understand English enough to understand a question asking him if his people are kidnappers."

"Did you read the notes at the back from JSR001?" Petrova asked.

I nodded. "Josephine and I weren't that close, but I recognized her writing. Glad she's still doing the linguist anthropology stuff even after being relegated to an administration role."

"Do you think any of it could help you talk to Luc better?" Petrova.

"I don't know, but I can try," I said. "Writing English words in their alphabet is mostly just going to be gibberish to them."

"Okay, understood," Petrova said.

The room went silent for a bit before I coughed into my hand. "I... Err... I actually had one more question."

"Shoot," the lady said, smiling a little at me.

"What are you going to do with the black box recording?"

"It's pretty incriminating. So lots of things," she started, drumming her fingers on the table. "We'll get one of the technicians here to see if they can fix the corrupted data, but what's already playing is enough to get a few things rolling. We can seed it in Prime-1 and help the shadow organization there trying to get the military off their power trip. Then, we could use it to batter for a share of the initial resources that came with Gallic-3 that the defector settlements never received. We could also work on a treaty if they're feeling generous. There's been a lot of problems with forced extractions, and I know you have first-hand experience with that."

I nodded, shivering as I remembered how the corpse had fallen from the sky. "Okay, that's all I wanted to know." Hearing her speak about helping the colonists was enough for me.

"Is that really all you wanted?" John asked. "No other questions? No requests?"

"Yes," I said, picking up the bag I'd put on the floor. "I just needed someone who could actually use the information I found. If I could get a place to stay until morning, I'd appreciate it. I asked Luc to come back in the morning."

John looked from me to Petrova.

"One more thing... We had an additional request," she said, frowning as she struggled to find the words for her request. "We wanted to see if you'd like to work here. We have a couple of doctors, but there's always room for more. Ola supervises the Avian study at the lab with Luke. You might be able to help with getting the Avian to talk—"

"You can have your Avian talk to it, maybe?" John said, cutting Petrova off. He really seemed to have a bad habit of that.

"I can ask Luc, but I don't know..." I trailed. "I don't know how he would deal with so many humans, and how do I explain that you have a kid locked up? I don't want him to freak out... not here," I said, gesturing to the base.

"Spend a couple of days then," Petrova said. "A week... a month maybe. Don't you miss hot water and an actual bed?"

I laughed. "Yeah..." I trailed, dragging the word out. But I also missed Luc — A lot. I hoped he would show up tomorrow. I didn't say that, though. Instead, I shrugged, saying, "I've kinda grown used to sleeping in a human-sized nest."

John's jaw tightened. "You hear all this about people getting kidnapped, and you just shrug shoulders and wait for one of the things doing it to come pick you up?"

"Luc didn't do anything—"

"It picked you up when you were unconscious—"

"He saved my life," I said with a deadpan. "I would be dead, in the bottom of a 300 feet deep sinkhole, if he didn't save me. You're not gaslighting me into thinking that's a bad thing."

"I think John's just a bit frustrated..." Petrova said. "We'll get you a room and some access codes. You don't have to live here full time or even bring the Avian in if you don't want to. I'm okay with an open-door policy. Just help up."

I sucked on my bottom lip.

"Please," she added, and I sighed, nodding my head.

There was a knock on the door right after that. I couldn't tell if it was a coincidence or if the person behind the door had been waiting for the conversation to end.

"Ola and Darin here.... You called?" a feminine voice said from the other end of the door.

"Come in," Petrova said, and the door creaked open. A dark-skinned woman with locks walked in, followed by a tall man. He couldn't be anything less than six foot two.

"That's Ola, she works in the lab if you remember, and that's Darin who's head of the scouting team, and currently doubling as security chief," Petrova introduced. Ola waved, and Darin's eyes locked on me as he smiled. I smiled back, nodding my head to acknowledge his greeting.

"We'll bring them up to speed and we'll get someone to show you around, and get you settled, if that's okay with you..." Petrova asked, and I nodded. Watching her smile in thanks before she started reiterating the minutes of our discussion.