Page 6 of Border Control

I busy myself, double checking my diary. Wow. I’ve got three hours before my next two hour conference this afternoon. Plus, it's a remote meeting. I can get to Ellen’s and back in time.

“I'll bring lunch,” I say, and hang up. I open a delivery app with shaking fingers and place an order for pick up on autopilot. My head swims. Ellen’s gone, and Arabella didn't want to tell me. She sounded okay, but I need to see her for myself. Smack her over the head, maybe, albeit gently.

Do they think my… issue is coming back?

My stomach clenches. Regardless, if those extraterrestrials have so much as looked at her the wrong way, even once, I won’t need the army. I'll blast the fuckers back into space myself.

TWO

DOM

My scales crawlwith sweat as I heft a heavy stone block up and onto my shoulder. Settling under the weight, I check the sensations I’m sharing up the bond connecting me to my wave brothers. I don’t want to send them the ache of my muscles, but I’ll pull Arik’s weariness into myself so he feels better.

And he does, sighing next to me.‘Deep gratitude,’his mental voice implants into my conscious thoughts. Arik’s emotions vibrate with excitement, tinged with a yellow as bright as the flowers blooming around El-len’s farm.

‘Of course,’I reply. Arik and I are the Bases grounding our Apex, Nevare. He’s as oblivious as always, humming to himself while he moves the blocks. I’m steadily taking his exhaustion too, flexing my muscles to check it’s not too much for me. It won’t be.

His mind is a swirl of impressions exploring the miles around us, riding in the clouds with a flying lesser life form, before listening intently to the wavelengths of light the humans use to send out primitive comms. I can only skim the surface before my head hurts; I'm not much of a psychic, except when Nevare helps me.

My Apex straightens up, the block of stone he holds carelessly slipping out of his fingers. I drop my own load and lunge for his, but I’m too late.

It slams onto his foot.

I divert the actual physical damage from him to me, and my foot throbs with a flash of agony.

“Drok na,”I mutter.

‘Hm?’Nevare is still distracted.

‘Nothing,’I send to him, limping to the wall so I can lean against it and inspect the damage.

The adjusted force crushed some of the small bones at the top of my foot, but the healing nanites crawling around my circulatory system are already making their way toward it to fix them. They don’t give out much psychic energy, but I track them as they pulse in my body, collecting together to travel down my calf to the break.

While I’m still, I catalogue how many uneven blocks we have left. Gara will need to produce more using the plascrete laser in the craft we landed in. Correction: crashed to this planet in. Meant to deliver us to our exile and then return, the shuttle has advanced manufactory technology not found on this world. It allows us to ‘print’, as Arra-bellah says, the materials that we need to build this barn to the female’s specifications, a mission I am dedicating myself to.

But once we’re done, what then? The pain lessens in my foot, and I wish it wouldn’t. Having it focuses me on the present.

‘Arra-bellah.’Nevare sends us a picture of the tiny red-headed human, along with an impression of her thoughts, too fast to follow and nauseating to sit in for long.‘Coming.’

My chest tightens. Women are the reason for our existence, they're our rightful leaders and task-setters.

They’ll know what to do.

Nevare hums. ‘Thoughts of green Gara at the top.’

Oh, no. When a female’s contemplations turn to one of us, that’s only bad news for the clone in question. Arra-bellah told us—no, shouted at us—that things were different on Earth, but how different? The uncertainty on the exact nature of relationships between females and males on this planet makes me feel I’m walking on shifting sands instead of solid, plascrete ground. Being in a place I don’t understand, with no position, causes my emotions to churn, distracting me.

If I can’t stay alert and calm, I won’t be able to balance out Nevare when he needs me most. Arik and I could lose control of him.

‘Nevare going nova is not a certainty,’Arik rebukes me quietly.

Drok na, I was broadcasting my secret fears.

‘Deep apologies,’I send to him before snapping up my mental walls between us.

He shoots me a look, eyes as sad as the day we were banished. “Dom, don’t pull away from me.”

“I’m not,” I reply with a grunt. I’m protecting him. The weak link in our trio is me, and I need to find mental equilibrium in myself so I don't risk destabilizing my wave brothers.