Guard (A Sci-Fi Alien Romance)

Copyright 2015 Zara Harris

All rights reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters appearing in this work are entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

I was standing in the kitchen of my tiny house when I heard it. Adrenaline shot through me. I turned off the gas cooking stove and tiptoed to my bedroom. I knew who it was. Of course I did. Everyone knew what happened when you came of age. I’d lost track of the months but I had always known at the back of my mind that my eighteenth birthday was approaching. And that was when they came for you.

I rummaged underneath my tiny bed until I found the filthy box I’d hidden there. The knocking grew louder. Quickly, I lifted the lid and pulled out the huge steel-cap boots I’d been storing for months. I’d known this day would come. I’d been preparing for it as much as I could without raising suspicion. They weren’t going to take me without a fight.

I pulled my cotton dress over my head and slipped into the jeans and sweater I kept neatly folded at the end of my bed. I sat and tied the laces of my boots, cursing my slow, shaking fingers. The banging was louder than ever now. I wondered why they never just broke the door down at takings. It seems like such a weird double standard. The Erostrians were happy to take girls on their eighteenth birthday, yet they respected our property?

I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror. I sure as hell didn’t envy the Erostrian who was expecting to claim me as his mate. My full lips were twisted into a scowl. My dull, black clothing did a good job of hiding the curves that no amount of secret midnight workouts had blunted. I balled my hands into fists and glanced at the door. I knew I only had seconds before they issued a non-compliance order and threw me into prison camp for the rest of my life.

My stomach clenched with nerves. I walked to the door, pausing at the broken hall table to grab my papers. I glanced at the photo. Even though it had only been taken two years before, I looked like a completely different person. Sweet. Innocent. Not hardened like I am now. I glanced at the card as I shuffled into my oversized leather jacket. Clementine Harding. Hair: blond. Eyes: blue. Height: 5’6”. Weight: 120lb. Sector: 7B23. Race: Human.

Human, I laughed to myself as I took a deep breath and unlatched the front door. I wasn’t sure about that anymore. I threw the door open and blinked as my eyes adjusted to the daylight. It was time for my taking, ready or not.

It was hard to believe that only two years had passed since the Erostrians took over. I would say invaded, but the saddest thing was that they never had to invade. They’d been here all along, living among us. All they’d had to do was rise up and take over. Which they’d done with spectacular success.

It helped that the Erostrians could easily pass for humans, albeit stronger and more intelligent. They’d been arriving from Eros in secret for decades. Even now, no one knew for sure how they had gotten here. We didn’t have time to sit and ponder it, and there were no TV shows to explain it to us. One day, everything was normal. The next, it was not.

The world had changed literally overnight. I woke up on that first morning and got ready for high school as normal. We were sitting in first period when the sirens started. Nobody had any idea where they were coming from. We had hurried out of the school building and looked around in bewilderment. We weren’t the only ones. All around us, people were flooding out of buildings and staring at the sky in terror. Because it seemed like that was where the noise was coming from. Of course, we later learned that their superior technology had enabled them to hijack the power lines as a means of communication. But that made the memory no less powerful. That half hour of confusion had been the moment when our lives feel apart; when life as we knew it ceased to exist.

When panic was almost at fever pitch, the Erostrian leader, Yaru, had spoken. I will never forget those life-changing words, delivered with such deceptive calm as if he was asking us to empty the dishwasher. Not hand over control over our lives.

Please be calm, people. The important thing to understand is that nothing in your power can change this new world order. Stay calm and you’ll live in peace. Your leaders will meet you soon and give you your duties.

When he stopped talking, everyone had looked around in bewilderment. We had looked to our teachers for guidance but it was clear from their faces that they were as shocked and uncomprehending as us kids. The deputy head had stood in the front doorway and bravely tried to get our attention and help us to understand, but there was no time. Moments later, three tall, strong men dressed head-to-toe in black had broken away from a group of hundreds and entered our school gates.

Seeing them together like that was the first sign that we were dealing with extra-terrestrials. The sirens and announcement could be explained away with technology, but not this. These guys, just like the others marching through the neighborhood, were at least six foot five in height. All had the same shade of amber brown eyes. But the strangest thing was their hair. The shade varied from strawberry blond to auburn, but there wasn’t one man in the large group who wasn’t a redhead. Those of us who were taking advanced biology had looked at each other in alarm. There was no way it could be a genetic coincidence. We knew that something huge was about to happen.

And we were right. The three men, who we learned were to be our sector leaders, told us little that day. No one tried to challenge them. Not after what they’d done to our gym teacher, Mr. Morris, when he asked them why the hell he should follow them to the baseball stadium like they ordered.

We had walked out of the school yard in terror and joined the throng of other people walking toward the baseball stadium. No one spoke. When we reached the stadium, it was already packed full of thousands of people. My classmates were restless, desperately scanning the stadium for their families. I was slightly calmer. I had no one to look for – I had been living alone ever since I ran away from my foster parents six months earlier.

“Clementine Harding,” the tallest man said. It was difficult, even after two years, to think of them as anything other than human.

They looked so much like us it was disconcerting. If they’d dyed their hair they would have fit right in. they could have used it as a way to infiltrate any dissenters. But that was the point – there was no dissent. They didn’t need to change themselves to fit in with us. It was clear who the rulers were.

I nodded slowly, assessing my soon-to-be captors.

There were five of them on my doorstep. Despite the camouflage my thick sweater and jacket offered, they were leering unashamedly at my body. They were the only people on my street, which made sense. People usually tried to avoid seeing the takings if they possibly could. All of the guards were huge. Their faces were blank except for the one with the lightest hair. He seemed to be looking at me with pity or compassion. I glanced back at him again. His face was as blank as the others’. I scolded myself for expecting human reactions. That was foolish. That was how they held us subservient.

I brushed my fingers against the knife hidden near my heart. My pulse skyrocketed. I tried to stay focused on my plan. Most people avoided watching the takings. Except for me. Six months beforehand I had forced myself to pay attention to them, when every instinct told me to run away and not look. I knew it was the only chance I had to change my fate. And I had lucked out: for an advanced, hyper-intelligent race like the Erostrians, their taking ceremonies were remarkably traditional and routine.

They always began with the leader of the guards reading the doomed girl’s full name and then formally announcing she was to be taken as the mate of one of the Erostrians.

“Yes,” I said, forcing myself to stay calm. It was my only hope.

“Clementine Harding of Sector 7B23. It is your eighteenth birthday. I have orders to take you to your mate, Kefi, immediately. Do you have anything to say?”

I shook my head. I knew that nothing I could say would change what was about to happen. At one of the takings I had overheard, the girl had insisted that she wasn’t eighteen yet, that there was some mistake. The Erostrian guard’s face had remained blank as he produced a copy of her documents. She continued to protest that it was a mistake until they arrested her for treason. See, in our new society, one of the highest crimes was to deny mating. To do so was an insult to the Erostrian race.

The guard slipped the red taking sash over my shoulders. It stood out against my dull, black clothing. Two of the others stepped forward to flank me as we set off down the street. I ignored the lewd gestures they made as we walked. I tried to focus on my escape.

It didn’t matter that I had no idea where Kefi lived. Erostrian life was based around order and hierarchy. And takings were treated no differently.  The girl was always taken to the administration building to be photographed and weighed, and have her record updated. They used administration and procedures to control us.

Right at the start, we’d believed they were imprisoning us in the baseball stadium. But that hadn’t been their intention. They had taken us there to wait while they processed us. I assumed the same thing had happened in every town and city across the country. It was impossible to know for sure as they had been in control of the communications networks since that day. Somehow they had found our birth certificates and drivers licenses; every little piece of paperwork relating to us. To this, they added our height and weight, iris scans, fingerprints, DNA, dental records. Once they had you in their system, it was next to impossible to escape them.

I’d find out how impossible soon. The procedure was for the Erostrian guards to stay outside the administration building once they had delivered the girl to the examiners inside. My plan had been concrete in my mind ever since I’d started watching the administration building and seen the examiners. They looked different to the Erostrians who patrolled our streets and supervised our work. They were older, frailer. They were my only chance of escape.

My heart thumped against my ribs as we marched through the silent streets. We were only a block from the building now. Every instinct told me to make a run for it but I knew there was no point. Even though they weren’t restraining me, there was no way I could outrun my guards. I looked around. It was early morning and the city was beginning to wake up. Every person we passed put their heads down to avoid my eyes. I didn’t blame them.

I must have slowed my pace because one of the guards behind me pushed me with such force that I almost stumbled over.

“Hurry up, slut,” he hissed in slightly accented English.

It still took my breath away sometimes, how similar they were to us. They even used our slang, although sometimes they got it out of context. Little wonder then that they had managed to fit into our world so easily. I turned around and narrowed my eyes at the tall, crude guard.

He laughed humorless. “You think that’s bad? You’ve got no idea what’s in store for you,
Zeepa
.”

Despite my best efforts to stay calm, I opened my mouth to respond and raised my hand to strike him.

“That’s enough.” The guard with the almost-blond hair grabbed the other’s shoulder. “Leave her.”

I stared back at him, wondering why he had intervened on my behalf. A strange look flickered through his light amber eyes, though when I glanced back it was gone.

“Move it,” the other guard said, pushing me roughly again.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the leader – the tall one who had addressed me – watching me carefully. I started walking. All I wanted to do was look back at the blond guard but I didn’t dare to risk it. The administration building was right in front of us now; we’d be there in seconds. He’d stuck up for me - so what? I knew there was only one person I could rely on in this world: myself.

We marched up the steps in silence – the leader in front, one guard on either side of me, and the other two behind. As the huge double doors opened for us, my breath caught in my throat. This was the bit that was unknown to me, the part that I hadn’t seen.