Shaauri. Shaaurin—that was what you called one of them. And this shaaurin had just shot Agent Teklys.
“Boy?” the creature said. He grated out the word with effort, as if he couldn’t quite make his mouth form the right shape. “What…” He flattened his ears and hissed out a stream of sounds the boy didn’t understand.
“Why are you here?” the boy demanded, clenching his fists. “You aren’t my father’s friend. You hurt Agent Teklys.”
The shaaurin’s ears twitched back and forth, back and forth. He glanced down at Teklys.
“Not… dead,” he rasped. “Sleep.”
There was no reason to take the alien’s word, even though Papa had told him that most shaauri didn’t lie in the same way humans did. The boy dropped to his knees beside Teklys and put his ear against her chest. He could hear her heart beating, the air going in and out of her lungs.
She was still alive. The shaaurin had only stunned her. The boy sat up and rubbed his eyes with his hands.
“Why did you come here?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “Where are my mother and father?”
A rush of emotion pushed inside the boy’s head. It wasn’t anything like what he felt from the crew, or Mama, or Papa, or his uncles. But it was just like what he’d seen on the alien’s face: anger, uncertainty, confusion.
The shaaurin held out his hand with its bare-skinned palm and curved, claw-like nails. “Boy,” he said, “come.”
Come. Come where? “Get to the escape pod.” That was what he had to do, and that meant getting past the shaaurin with his big weapon and his claws.
The boy stared at the small space between the shaaurin and the frame of the door. He had to move very, very fast. He met the reddish-gold eyes of the alien and lifted his hand. As the alien reached to take it, he darted sideways and dove through the gap.
In all the boy’s life he had never run as hard as he did then. He caught a glimpse of other crew members lying in the corridor, heard bangs and loud voices behind him. But though he ran with everything that was in him, it was not enough. The shaaurin caught him. Nails hooked in his jacket and hauled him up like a sack of rockroots. He dangled there, terrified, and swung his fist at the face centimeters from his own.
The shaaurin shifted his grip, but not before the boy’s fist connected with the alien’s nose. The creature gave a grunt of surprise, just like a man. His long teeth bared in a grimace of rage.
Then something strange happened. One moment the boy hung between the shaaurin’s powerful hands, and the next he was on the deck, free, and the alien was just standing there as if he had been shot.
But there was no one else in the corridor. And the boy’s head pounded and rang like the great bells of Hestia at the Harvest Feast. The shaaurin was inside him, with a thousand thoughts and feelings the boy could hardly begin to understand. He stared out of someone else’s eyes from a dizzying height—down at himself, sprawled motionless on the deck.
You can do it, his father’s voice seemed to urge.
He pushed up on his arms and tried to stand. Everything was wrong with his body—the shape, the size, the way it felt when he moved. But he took one step, and then another, and the shaaurin didn’t follow. Slowly the alien mind inside his began to fade away. His arms and legs belonged to him again, and he was able to run without stumbling.
He did not look back. No one caught up with him or stopped him. He hid when he heard alien voices. He reached out for his parents with his mind, but they were gone—gone, as if a great wall had fallen between him and them.
Tears blinded him, but still he ran, along corridors and companionways, until he reached the nearest pod berth. All the pods were still in place, their lights glowing a steady green.
Papa had explained exactly what he had to do. He tapped out a sequence of numbers on the grid above the hatch. The hatch cycled open.