Page 34 of Invasive Species (Outcasts of Oloria #2)

TWENTY-FOUR

ARABELLA

When I wake, my eyes are crusted over like I slept in paint again. The paint smells like licorice mixed with floral scents, nothing familiar. Are those birds singing right in the same room as me? Something's tweeting away.

I sit up, or try to, but my midsection is fucked like I’ve done a million sit ups.

Have I been coughing, or throwing up? Maybe I got really stupid drunk at movie night.

I wait with trepidation for memories to come flooding back of me dancing on the table to Taylor Swift like the last time I got absolutely hammered.

The last thing I remember is Gara. Gara’s green eyes close to mine. His breath warm against my cheek. Gara… at the party, yes, worried about me. But that's it.

How fucked did I get last night?

“Gara,” I call out, trying my hardest to open my eyes.

Hopefully he’ll be close by. My fingers twitch.

I want his thick chest right next to me, smelling of eucalyptus and helping me breathe, and I want his serious face in kissing distance.

Even though my skin tingles unpleasantly, I know with one rub of his hands he’ll make it all go away. “Gara? ”

Light cracks through my eyelids, and I squint against it as I slowly prise them open. My head feels foggy, thick, like I’ve been sleeping for days. Weeks, maybe.

The first thing I notice is the bed I'm lying in—huge, soft, and a day-glow orange. I drag my gaze around the room, blinking against dizziness. The walls and ceiling are pure white with sleek, clean lines curving gracefully across them.

But it’s the glowing that gets me—the walls are shifting, almost like they’re alive, strobing between blues and purples and swirling like the northern lights. It’s soothing.

And alien as fuck.

“What the devil?” My voice cracks, throat dusty and unused. Where are the colors coming from? Is it like LED whatsits or are they… living? I crane my neck to see. The tweeting of the birds is actually beeping from the walls, colors swirling into little peaks and valleys. Wait, is that my heartbeat?

A balcony stands across from me, framed by floor-to-ceiling glass, an inviting burst of greenery set against the red horizon. Maybe I can figure out where I am from there, although I am definitely not in Bristol anymore, Toto.

I manage to swing my legs over the side of the bed, but the moment my feet hit the ground, my knees almost buckle under me.

Good grief, it’s like I haven’t used my legs in weeks.

My thighs wobble as I stagger upright, gripping the end of the bed for balance.

The floor beneath me is warm glass, hundreds of tiny circuits flashing with bright colors zipping by under my feet. I’m walking on a futuristic rainbow.

“Oooh.” I want to get to my hands and knees to see, but each step is a challenge, like my limbs don’t quite remember how to work. What was I doing? Oh, yeah, balcony. And Gara. Where'd he go?

“Gara?” I try again, raising my voice.

Nothing .

I hobble toward the window, keeping my hands in front of me to avoid walking straight into what I assume is a glass wall. I step closer, my hands hitting nothing. There’s no glass. Just a wide, clear view straight out across a desert.

“A desert. Where the fuck is the nearest desert? Africa somewhere, the Sahara… rah rah.” A breeze hits me the moment I step out, fresh and lush, bursting with the scent of greenery that shouldn’t belong in a desert.

But here it is. I blink again. All around me, balconies spill over with plants—vines, flowers, little waterfalls cascading down from level to level.

This building is mad. I crane my neck, looking up.

The architecture swoops in organic curves, featuring balconies just like mine.

Explosion of colors from the plants mark each balcony, reds as fiery as a setting sun, cool lavenders, sunny yellows, and sharp, piercing blues.

They're all mismatched, like they grew organically.

Like they were grown.

I glance down, instantly regretting it as vertigo slams into me.

We’re super high up. Very super high up.

The balconies recede below like an endless illusion.

My grip on the railing tightens as the world spins for a second, but I force myself to focus on the flowers, the greenery—anything to stop the ground from dropping out beneath me.

What is this place? I call, “Gara, come on out now.”

A voice rumbles behind me. Turning, head spinning, I look up into Gara’s concerned face.

Or, what looks like Gara.

I know his little tells, the subtle movements of his expression, how his scales play along his face and arms. Most of all, I know the glow that lights in his eyes when I meet his gaze.

And it's not there. This guy doesn't recognize me at all.

“The… fuck?”

The other Gara—a Selthiastock, that's what Gara said his clone type was called—utters something in a guttural foreign language I can’t understand.

Peering up at him with a frown, it's like I’m playing spot the difference: his eyes are more lined, mouth locked in a grimace, and his hair is much longer. And his scales harden like Gara's used to, as if to protect himself from me.

He gets onto his knees and presses his forehead repeatedly against the shiny floor. Slowly he gets up, not looking at my face, and hands me a set of what look like silver headphones.

My memory pings; Ellen mentioned headphones to understand what people were saying on Oloria. And, yeah, I'm slow on the uptake but not that slow. Looking at the desert outside and the fuck-off great big building, not to mention the exotic plants, I can tell I'm definitely not in Bristol anymore.

Sliding them on, what he's saying suddenly comes to me as if I had started focusing on his words.

“—Great female, my apologies again. It is best that you rest in bed and allow the nutrient waters to support you. Without them, you will collapse again.”

“Where's Gara?” I demand.

He shakes his head, still not looking me in the eyes. “I do not understand you yet, although I hope you understand me. Please, if you wish me to communicate with you, speak more and my nanites will adjust to your variation of trade standard.”

That was how it’d worked when the guys crash landed on Ellen's farm, not able to understand each other for a few hours until the tiny things in their brains started translating.

So, I guess I have to talk. “Okay, so, I wake up after, what, weeks asleep, and I'm on Oloria, another freaking planet, and this room is pretty but where the hell am I? And I really want Gara back now please, he can speak my language, not to mention my blood is on fire just thinking about him.” TMI perhaps, but this guy can't understand me yet.

He gestures to the bed. “Please, female, I must beg you to return. The nutrient pad is the only thing supporting your unique physiology while we try to isolate the pathogen causing you distress.”

That all sounds bad, but I don't know if I can trust this alien who looks like Gara but isn't. I mean, Gara told me he was a clone, but seeing a literal copy and paste is disorienting, like I’m in a dream.

But I should just roll with it for now, as my legs are shaking like they ran a marathon and need a rest. Maneuvering myself over to the bed, I put my hands either side of the mattress ready to lift myself up and sit on it.

“Eurgh.” My hands sink in like it's thick jello, but when I pull them back out, there's no goop on my hands.

“The nutrient bed is necessary, female,” the guy says, getting onto his knees again like I’m going to yell at him. Or worse. “I am sorry, but if you cannot get on yourself, I will assist you. I live to serve you.”

Those words in Gara’s dour, serious face would normally make me giggle like he'd said another quotable Planet of the Pirate Prince line, but this is too weird, even for me. Gara’s the only one I want to hear that kind of thing from, not a stranger with his face.

“I… I got it.” I hop onto the jello bed, which doesn't rock as I feared it might, but does collapse under me a little so my butt is covered and my arms and legs are half engulfed in goo.

It's warm at least, and the pressure on my spine and lower back eases.

Suspended, all I can do is stare up at the colored lights stroking across the ceiling in slow spirals.

“This humble one thanks you.” The Selthiastock gets up, comes over and… sniffs. He actually scents the air above me, mouth half open like he's sampling a wine.

“Um. What are you doing?”

“I regret, female, I still can't understand you. Please, speak more.” He taps at the wall behind me, which lights up into a whole complicated flat screen panel filled with scrolling information, charts and what even I recognize as my heartbeat, thumping away.

The latter is not a simple pattern as I'd expected, some lines going way up higher than the others. The alien frowns at the information, but when he faces me again his face is bland, not friendly but not forbidding either.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Your… life beat. It is irregular. Is that common for your species?”

Clearly he can understand me a lot better at last, hooray. “I don't think so. Look, Gara will know, please go get him.”

“Gara? I know not what this is.”

I screw my fingers into the squishy bed. “Gara is another one of you guys, a clone, he looks like you.”

“A Selthiastock, I see.” He cocks his head. “Do you know his batch number and designation?”

“N… no, all I know is he's called Gara.” Why am I getting so nervous?

I just know Gara wouldn't be too far away from me. He’s clearly brought me to Oloria, probably because of my illness.

Ellen said it took her two weeks to reach Oloria, so I must have slept through the entire flight, because I can't remember a thing about space travel.

But Gara must have come with me, so he has to be here somewhere nearby.

Right?

Inclining his head, the alien says, “I will ask questions of others, female, so I can better serve.”

He heads to a wall, steps measured like he’s trying his best not to make any sound whatsoever. When he gets close, the wall slides away to reveal a dimly lit corridor outside, and he heads out without a backward glance.

Without anything else to occupy me, I go back to staring at the ceiling, mind looping. Gara would be close if he had any say in the matter, I know he would be .

Shit. He said he’d been thrown away. What does that mean here? My fists clench inside the jello bed, squeezing a warm paste out between my fingers. Maybe he's in a pickle, or perhaps some trouble. Maybe jail. I'll get out of here as soon as possible and find him straight away.

The door slides open, the clone approaching with a downcast face. “Female, you do not need to worry about the Selthiastock you call Gara.”

Relief buoys my chest, so much so I let out a little laugh. “I don't? Okay, great. Where is he?”

He shakes his head once, eyes not meeting mine. “The Selthiastock who delivered you here to us was reported as an exile. He had broken our laws to return. It is likely he has been apprehended by the Parthiastocks?—”

I wince. Fuck, he’s in a prison or some shit.

“—and euthanized.”

The word doesn't compute for several seconds, and then, suddenly, horribly, it does.