Page 35 of Invasive Species (Outcasts of Oloria #2)

TWENTY-FIVE

ARABELLA

It’s all a blur. A suffocating, dark blur that presses in from all sides, a blur I don’t want to bring into focus because of what it means.

He's dead.

He died, trying to get me here.

The Selthiastock tries his best. He’s careful, considerate, but it doesn’t matter. My chest feels like I've been hollowed out.

Gara knew he’d be killed if he came back here, and he did it anyway—for me.

He’s gone. Forever.

The clone—this alien that looks like him but isn’t him—keeps trying to interact with me.

He’s gentle, moving me, helping me sit up, carefully arranging my arms and legs, bringing me food I can’t stomach.

He wipes my forehead with warm, sweet-smelling cloths, doing everything right in a clinical, detached way. But I'm too numb to respond.

Then, he hands me my old e-reader. The moment my fingers brush the worn, battered surface, something inside me breaks, and the dam finally bursts.

My grief, my fury, my despair—all of it comes out in a storm of screams and sobs.

I throw the e-reader across the room, letting out a guttural howl at the unfairness, the cruelty of it all.

How can his kind heart be gone, just like that?

The rage is red-hot, scouring through me, burning every nerve raw. I cry and scream until my throat is shredded and my voice cracks.

The clone just stands there, his head bowed, his face expressionless as he watches. He doesn’t stop me. He doesn’t say a word, just stands silent witness to the hurricane inside me.

When it’s over, I collapse back into the jelly bed, utterly spent. My chest heaves as I struggle to breathe, my body trembling. I'm still sick, and I find it hard to care.

The clone moves closer on silent steps. For the first time, I force myself to look at him. His face is the same as Gara’s, features that are at once so familiar but there’s nothing the same about his eyes. There’s no warmth there for me.

He passes me a set of earphones, and I put them on so I can understand him.

“What’s your name?” I ask, my voice cracking.

“This one’s designation is E27AH,” he replies, his voice perfectly even.

I trace the letters on the cover of the bed with trembling fingers. “Ezla,” I murmur. “Is that it?”

He tilts his head slightly, as if considering. “If that is what you prefer to call me.”

“But… do you mind?”

He frowns, clearly struggling to understand. “Mind? That is difficult to translate… It does not make sense, female. Whatever you desire is what I want.”

I thump back into the warm jelly. “I want Gara.”

The words hang in the air. No one can bring him back, I know that.