Chapter 6 Backdoor

"Thought you'd gotten away from us, didn't you?"

She blinked her heavy eyelids. The bright light caused her to wince. Was she seeing things? Above her stood a man in dark blue leather... but was his skin blue as well? Yes, it was! His skin was completely blue! His face was crisscrossed by scars including a large one that sliced down his lips. His hair was pure white. Half of it was chopped short while the other part was a few inches longer, though not at all long, and had a few decorative braids. He grinned at her, showing off large canines that were at least twice as wide as a normal human's. She could see a belt of knives that hung across his chest and a -- well, it looked like a two-pronged harpoon - on his back.

She tried to push herself up, to scramble away, but she couldn't. She could barely even move. She fell back down, lying with her face flat in the dirt. "Just kill me now and get it over with," she mumbled.

"So, the Korsuch touched you. That'll make this easier." He turned and called out, "I've found it! Let's hurry, I don't think it's got much longer."

She limply allowed them to pick her up. "Bona Serat Corsar! I think it's a female!" One of them said.

"Really?" He stepped up and looked her over, she could practically feel his eyes on her breasts. She's slap him if she had the energy. "I think you're right. Donil will be excited."

"You want to eat me while I'm still alive, don't you?" she said bitterly as her head swam. She fought to keep conscious. "Suck the blood out of my still beating heart... Sacrifice me to your god, Donil..."

The scarred lips parted in a laugh as she lost consciousness.

Lindsay blinked as a bright light shined in her eyes. She sat up looking around at the clean white walls of a small, empty room with sun streaming in through the window onto her bed. Where was she? Was she still in The Hollow and that had been a nightmare? Or had it all been a nightmare and she was still in Reno?

It looked like she was in some kind of nurse's office from her high school days - not as nice as a doctor's office, but definitely medical. Maybe a first aid station at one of the casinos? Her fingers brushed a woven mat beneath her mattress. Scanning the room, it definitely had a Tiki bar feel, even the window wasn't a normal one but had long wooden slats on it instead of a glass pane. Maybe it was a Hawaiian theme? But she couldn't remember going to a Tiki casino. Then again, depending on what had happened, she might not. Maybe she'd been knocked out?

She looked down and saw she was wearing some sort of light green medical dress. At least it was cloth and not those cheap papery medical gowns. She winced. "Oh, my head!" she said, gingerly touching it. Everything felt stiff. She searched for a call button by the bed, but found none. It was definitely a first aid station. She stood up and made her way to the slightly ajar door.

"Hello?" she called, not wanting to open it too far, just enough to peek into the hall. "Hello? Is anybody there?"

The blue face of a stunningly beautiful woman popped out from another room. "Oh good," she said. "The Bona Serat Corsar said he thought you'd been touched by the Korsuch. We know that for certain, now."

The woman hurried over to the room and opened the door. She was completely blue from her head to her toes, except for her hair, which was pure white, matching her very unusual outfit. She was wearing a white dress - at least the bottom part was kind of a dress... It covered the front of her legs from her hips to her knees but had a high slit on both sides so her shapely blue thighs were completely visible. The dress was belted with single thong of leather tied in the front. From that came two pieces of white cloth that were tied around her neck and just covered her breasts. It didn't leave much to the imagination and also Lindsay absolutely wanted one for the pool. Perhaps they sold them in the gift shop?

"So, is this like some Avatar themed place and you're supposed to be a budget Na'avi?" she said, still clinging to the hope that this was all just Nevada.

The woman's plum colored mouth twitched down and she shrugged. "I don't understand what a Na'avi is, so maybe." The woman guided her to the bed. "You should sit down, you're still recovering; we wouldn't want you to faint. You lost a lot of blood in the woods. You were lucky the Bona Serat Corsar found you in time."

Lindsay fell back on the bed. It was real. It was all real. She pulled up the sleeve on her gown and sure enough, there was her forearm with a chunk of muscle taken out of it; but now it was closed by a piece of something vaguely paper-like stitched over it. The woman poured a pitcher of water into a bowl and proceeded to wash her hands. "You'll have to excuse me, we haven't gotten the water running yet." She pulled out a metal rod. "Let me check your side. Just lift your gown."

Lindsay did as she was told, lifting the gown. She looked. There was a long line of fine stitches with another paper-thing stitched onto the wound. "It looks like it's healing nicely. Don't worry, the second skin will fall off when it heals. I wanted to do a skin transplant so your arm would be a little neater, but I was afraid if I used ours it wouldn't take." She stared at Lindsay's torso. "I love your body. It's so exotic!" she gushed.

Lindsay wasn't sure what to say to that. "Thank you..."

The woman lifted her head, staring at her with gold flecked indigo blue irises. "Are you really a female of your race?"

"Yes... last time I checked."

"It's really wonderful! We had wondered. I always thought those other ones were males."'

Lindsay perked up. "Are you saying there are others here like me?"

"No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get your hopes up." She took out something that looked a bit like a stethoscope but with a strange triangular cup at the end. "I'm going to pull up your gown at the back now and check your breathing. Now, breathe deeply. Good." She moved the cup around. "Your breathing sounds good." She hung the instrument around her neck. "I meant the others I dissected."

"Dissected!"

"Oh! Sorry! That would sound alarming. They were already dead. Well, we did manage to get one here alive but he died not long after. But I got to see how you breathe, which was good. It's so strange you only have one heart."

"I don't see what's so strange about that," Lindsay said, defensively.

"Well it's very... efficient. But I think our two work better and they take far less space. Here, you can feel them." She took Lindsay's hands and placed them on either side of her chest. Lindsay felt a faint beating under her fingers.

She withdrew her hands, trying not to blush, wanting to change the subject to something, anything other than comparing their different physiologies by touch. "What happened to them? The others?"

"They were killed by the Nobillo, as you almost were. You're very lucky, most of them don't even realize they're about to die until the Nobillo slices them open. The ceremony is a really horrible thing. I saw it once, from a distance. Some of them manage to make it to the woods, but often die of their wounds or are eaten by sheerlacs before we can find them."

Lindsay thought for a moment recalling her own escape. "Why didn't the... the Nobillo... follow me into the woods?"

"With their wings they can't move around very well, if one of our patrols catches them they won't be able to escape. Perhaps, a few years ago, they might have thought it worth the risk, but now that they have a steady stream of you- What do you call yourselves anyway?"

"Humans."

"Yoo-mans, well now that they have a steady stream of yoo-mans from the gate, they don't feel that risking the life of a Nobillo is worth the life of a human. I mean, if you're too damaged for the ceremony the only purpose you serve is to be eaten."

"They were going to eat me?!" Lindsay shuddered.

"Oh yes, well either way they would have, as I said, a horrible thing to watch. But they would have kept your heart. And a few other parts, but I'm not sure what those do."

Lindsay sat silently a minute as the blue woman poked and prodded at her. Then a thought occurred to her. "Wait... how do you know English?"

"Ingish? No. I don't know it. Here, look at your arm." She picked up Lindsay's arm and showed an area that looked as though it had been stabbed with a dozen needles. "That is where the Korsuch touched you. When they do they insert nanobots into your skin. They go to your brain and translate the words you say so you speak and understand our language."

Lindsay was incredulous. "So, you're saying they have nanobots and you don't even have running water?"

"We used to all have technology like that but... it's a long story and I'm sure Sirix would rather be the one to tell it. He knows it a lot better than me. His grandfather was Bona Serat Corsar when the Citadel fell."

Lindsay looked confused. "Who is Sirix?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. He's the Bona Serat Corsar of the Bonat." Lindsay guessed this meant he was some kind of king. "He's the one who found you."

"The one with the scars?" Lindsay wasn't sure she was remembering correctly.

"Yes, he's fought bravely against the Nobillo many times. Without him, the Bonat would be no more."

And I'd be a flying freak's dinner, Lindsay thought to herself. "So his name is Sirix. What's your name?"

"Oh! I'm sorry, I was so excited I forget to tell you. My name is Donil. I'm a healer. Well, you could say I'm the chief healer of this settlement."

Okay, now Lindsay could see why he laughed. Though Donil did certainly look like a goddess, she was more likely to chat her to death than demand a blood sacrifice. She extended her hand with a smile. "My name is Lindsay."

"Indsayee?" Donil tried to repeat, ignoring the hand entirely.

"No, Lindsay with a Li."

"Ih... ih..." Donil tried. "I'm sorry, I'm not sure how to say it."

"It's like when you said English... Wait... say English again."

"Ingish."

"Now humans."

"Yoomans."

"That's weird. Why are the nanobots able to translate everything but names?"

"It might be because of the databases, they don't recognize proper names as words and so they default to my pronunciation. I wonder if it could be done for other words. If I could learn to speak Ingish." Donil seemed far too excited, in Lindsay's opinion, for something as boring as learning another language. She had two years of Spanish and she could barely ask where the bathroom was.

Donil smiled, putting away her stethoscope-thing. "I wish I could talk to you for hours, but you should rest. I'll tell Sirix you're awake. He's been checking on you every day."

Lindsay started. "Every day? How long was I out?"

"Six days. You were very lucky. I wasn't sure you'd make it. Yooman females must be very resilient. I was especially worried when you started bleeding from between your legs that you had some sort of internal injury, but I couldn't find anything. Fortunately, it stopped on its own after a few days, but you may want to be careful, just in case."

Lindsay turned bright red. Going off her birth control suddenly, combined with the stress and the injuries, must have triggered her period while she was out. "No... That's normal," she said shyly. "It happens to human females every month."

"Really? Is there a reason for it or does it just happen?"

She absolutely did not want to talk about periods and human reproduction with a weird blue alien she'd just met. "I'm feeling a bit tired. Do you mind if I rest?"

"Oh, of course. I'll go speak to Sirix. I need to see him anyway." She seemed to unconsciously touch her belly as she said it. "I'll leave you alone. Come get me if you need anything. The toilet is over there." She walked out of the room.

The toilet was just a bowl in the corner of the room attached to a piece of wooden pipe, but once Donil mentioned it, Lindsay realized the painful pressure in her bladder. She walked over to it, lifting the lid. Ugh! That smell! It was like the lid was the only thing keeping it from stinking up the room. She held her nose.

Then again, looking at it, she could see grass at the other end of the pipe. Grass and the something she could guess was making that smell covered in iridescent bug-like creatures. "What kind of place is this?" she said in disgust as she quickly used the toilet and slammed the lid shut.

She rinsed her hands in the water bowl and lay back down on the bed, staring at the wood panels on the ceiling. They looked like they'd been used and reused dozens of times and they barely fit together anymore. It didn't look like a nurse's office, she realized, it looked like some sort of Doctors Without Borders hospital, like a mobile military hospital.

She pulled herself up to look out the window. She could see blue aliens, most dressed in brown cloth and leather clothing with green stripes across their bodies and carrying those double pronged harpoon-like weapons on their backs, walking to and from a few large buildings. One was a huge tent-like structure covered in branches. Another was built from something like bamboo, it was longer than it was wide and half hidden in the trees. Like the large tent, it was covered in tree branches as well. Water flowed from one corner of it, cutting a small stream along the edge of the camp.

Lindsay cursed, falling back on the bed. She wasn't in some odd alien town; she was in a military encampment! Which meant she'd ended up in the middle of a war and, from the looks of things, she wasn't on the winning side.

She had to get back home! Even being captured by the Spook Force suddenly seemed like a great option - everything was better than being eaten alive by psychotic bird people with spears! Maybe, if she cooperated, the Spook Force would treat her well - at the very least they wouldn't eat her heart while she watched.

That is, if there was a way home.

Despite her mind being full of an avalanche of terrible thoughts, sleep quickly overtook her.