Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8
It felt like the blood in her veins had instantly turned into ice. The breath of the man behind her was aggravating warm and made the tiny hairs on her neck stand up. You’re a Ceph, echoed his words through Nora-Cephs head. Ceph. He had said Ceph, not Cephi like the whole time before when they had been talking. She couldn’t remember the last time she had heard a human call them Ceph.
Maybe he was one too?
Nora-Ceph turned around, slowly, to look the man in his ice-blue eyes. Did she see a spark of non-human intelligence there? Technically, it shouldn’t be possible to recognize if a human serves as a host, just by looking in their eyes. But maybe …
”You’re not going to find anything”, the man said, ”I am not a Ceph.” There went her hope of this day ending in a pleasant way. She tried to move away from the man, but he was between her and the exit, only leaving the walls with paintings to her sides. And she couldn’t move too close to those without setting off an alarm.
She was trapped.
A part of her expected the man to move in closer, which caused her to mentally prepare to attack him. She didn’t know how to fight and Nora didn’t have any experience either, but if it was a choice between just accepting her death and fighting to avoid it? She’d give everything.
To her surprise, the man made a step back, giving her some breathing space.
”I’m not going to hurt you”, he said. ”Although I’m not sure if you believe me when I say that.”
”You’re right”, Nora-Ceph said, her voice several octaves higher than intended. Annoyed, she cleared her throat. ”You’re right”, she repeated, with her normal voice now. ”I have no reason to trust you.”
The man nodded.
”I still have to insist that you come with me though”, he said. ”So if you would please accompany me? I don’t want to use force, but I will if I have to.” @suesa
What a great way to gain someone’s trust, Nora-Ceph thought to herself. First, tell them you’re not dangerous, then force them to come with you. This human had obviously some issues. But what choice did she have? He had threatened violence, and she didn’t know if he was maybe carrying a weapon. If she’d just go with him, there might be a better time to escape …
”I will come with you, but only because you leave me no other choice”, she told the man.
”I can live with that”, he answered and smiled. Interestingly, the smile didn’t make Nora-Ceph even half as uncomfortable as the smiles Michael had used to give her. She filed that observation under interesting, but not important right now. Then she followed the man out of the museum and into a car.
The drive wasn’t too long, maybe 12 minutes, but they were already on the outskirts of the city. Individual houses had replaced the giant office buildings and community housings. This was the neighborhood of the rich, those who had come to Luna 3 because they wanted to, not because they had to. With every passing moment, Nora-Ceph wondered even more about who it was that had abducted her.
In front of a two-story home with a small lawn in front of it, the car stopped. They go out and walked up to the front door. Nora-Ceph looked around to see if there was a good way to escape, but there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. She wasn’t even 100% sure in which direction she’d need to go to get back to the city.
The man had arrived at the front door and unlocked it, just to turn around to Nora-Ceph and gesture for her to enter.
Never enter a stranger’s home! No matter what they promise you! The memory of Nora’s mother echoed in Nora-Ceph’s head. It wasn’t particularly helpful and only made her more scared. When even humans tell each other to watch out when it comes to strangers, how could a Ceph be safe?
Her feet carried her inside without her even really noticing. And then the door closed behind her.
This was it, Nora-Ceph thought. This was how she was going to die.
Her thoughts wandered to Quelz, who had given his whole body up to spread himself between nine hosts in total. Would he feel it when she died? The connection had technically been separated, but … would the other parts feel the loss of her? Would they miss her? Or would they just forget her?
She stumbled over something and almost hit the floor, hadn’t the man grabbed her arm in time to hold her up. As soon as she regained her balance, she looked back at what had been in her way.
It was a painting.
A painting of a Ceph.
”What … You’re the artist?” Nora-Ceph asked in confusion. Why would a human draw Cephs?
”Me? Oh, no. I told you that the art was drawn by a Ceph. I didn’t lie about that. Would you please follow me into the living room now?”
She did. And almost fell over again, this time out of surprise. In the middle of the living room, sitting comfortably on the couch while reading a book and having a cup of tea was … a Ceph.
Not a human host with a Ceph instead of a brain, not something like her, no. A living, eight armed, healthy-looking Ceph.
When she entered the room, he put down his cup of tea and changed to a friendly shade of a soft reddish-orange.
”Welcome to my home”, he greeted her. ”I’m Pekok.”
The cover art today was created by the wonderful Georgia Dunn, who gave me permission to use it on here! If you want to see more from her, check out her website, buy some prints on Etsy or read her blog and Twitter
