Ruth's Bonded (Ruth & Gron Book 1) (6 page)

The second day in the cell progressed
identically to the first. More food was thrown in, the same as before. Ruth
made sure to note the time. If it was the same time every day, that would
provide some kind of structure to the day. She would know when it was safe to
finish the last of what was left over from the day before. She would know when
there were aliens on the floor above them. She didn’t know how it was she could
never hear them, but if they were going to escape, it would be useful to know
their schedule.

She tried to engage Gron in more
conversation, or get him to play a game, or just
anything
, but while he didn’t
mind now when she came to sit near him, he kept it clear that he didn’t want
her too close, or to be touched by her. He would watch her and sometimes
respond with words she didn’t know when she sat in front of him and rambled on
about anything she could think of. She asked him questions about their
situation, told him about her life, asked him about his planet. Told him jokes.
It helped to speak, even if he couldn’t understand, and to his credit he never
seemed to grow bored or annoyed by it. He watched her attentively as if he was
actually listening.

On the third day, she saw the aliens
who had abducted her for the first time. And it was not fun.

She was talking to Gron again, her
voice getting hoarse and her topics thin from holding a one-sided conversation
for so long, when suddenly Gron stiffened and glared at the hatch. She looked
too, but she couldn’t see anything. He must be able to hear or smell things she
couldn’t. It could only be one thing disturbing him. The other aliens must be
up there, when he clearly didn’t want them to be. Ruth looked at her watch, it
was coming up to the time they had dropped the food yesterday, but Gron hadn’t
reacted this way when they brought food. Something was different, and she was
going to hold true to her promise and trust him after the hatch incident.

A thin growl vibrated from him and he
looked puffed up somehow. She wanted to ask him what it was, but she stopped
herself, knowing he could neither understand her nor reply, so she decided
silence was better and to let him listen.

Without looking at her, he gave her a
shove to the side and pointed to the corner of the room. It was alright for
him
to touch
her
apparently. She went to where he pointed and he followed
close behind, using his body to shut her into the corner. He hardly gave her
the room she needed to stand, positioning himself between her and the rest of
the cell. His tail hung between her legs and the fur down his spine tickled her
nose. One of his hands was on her hip, as if keeping her in place, not that she
could have gone anywhere.  She tried not to move, as she considered just how
much bigger than her he was. Her head barely reached his shoulder blades. She
resisted the urge to trace the lines of muscle that flowed down his back.

She was scared. For him to be doing
this, something bad must be about to happen. He’d been here longer than she
had. He might know why they were here, why she had been taken. He might have
already had to go through the experiments or gladiator fights already. But why was
he protecting her like this, putting himself between her and danger? He’d
probably noticed that she was a total weakling compared to him, but so what?
That just made her a liability to him, a dead weight. If they were going to be
made to fight to the death or something, if his survival was at stake, he
shouldn’t be protecting her. He didn’t even
like
her, as far as she
could tell! They were strangers, she meant nothing to him.

“Gron...” she whimpered. He spared a
glance back at her and rumbled quietly, probably something reassuring, and she
found that it did help a little.

She heard voices from upstairs. At
least, she thought they were voices. She thought she could detect... emotions,
on some level. They didn’t sound excited. The language itself though sounded
like a set of keys in a mason jar falling down a flight of stairs. Gron’s fur
stiffened even more, puffing up like a cat’s until it was almost standing on
end. His tail thrashed against her legs, surprisingly strong, and she tried to
shuffle back to give it more space.

Gron snarled viciously, apparently in
reaction to the voices, and she wondered if he could understand them. She knew
if she were them, she’d back off right now, if she’d heard that sound coming
from a dark hole in the ground. He was trying to warn them off without leaving
her. He wouldn’t be able to fight them like that though, if that was what he
wanted to do. If he stayed with her, he would be a sitting duck. If he left
her, she would be defenceless. She held back a whimper and desperately wanted
to touch him, just to put her hand on his back or hold his waist, anchor
herself somehow. Ask him not to leave her. She didn’t do either of those
things, because no matter what she wanted, now was not the time to piss him
off.

She heard more voices from upstairs.
She couldn’t see anything except Gron’s broad back.  Ruth heard the bolt on the
hatch draw back and the clang of it being flipped up quickly, and then a series
of thuds as a number of aliens presumably dropped into the cell.

Gron roared, shifting forward into
half a crouch, still trying to shield her. She wondered if he was scared, and
if he was, whether he was more scared for himself or for her. She didn’t think
of herself as fragile, in fact she’d often considered herself to be pretty
resilient, but she knew there was any number of things an alien species could
do to her that would break her. They probably had things she couldn’t even
conceive of. They wouldn’t give her the same basic respect they gave their own
species, after all. If they kept her in a cell like this, they probably
considered her an animal. They were clearly far more technologically advanced
than humans if they had space-travel.

Then the fight broke out for real.
She imagined one of them had gotten too close, because Gron was suddenly not
caging her in anymore, but driving some kind of long black stick into the neck
of someone on the floor. She could see their attackers now. They were much shorter
than her, between three and four feet tall. Gron looked like Godzilla levelling
Tokyo as he cut a swath through them, but they’d clearly come prepared. Ruth
couldn’t see much of what they actually looked like, because they were all
wearing what looked like improvised padded armour. They’d strapped fabrics that
looked like a cross between roof insulation and a futon to their bodies,
reinforced with odd bits of metal. They were all wearing helmets or faceguards,
but what she could see of flashes of skin was green. They were all carrying the
same long black sticks that were almost longer than they were tall, with a
small prong on the end. They’d clearly come loaded for bear, but not with any
official or mass-produced armour, which made her wonder. She didn’t think they
could be military, or even a large company. It struck her that what they most
resembled was pirates.

Gron was fighting and refusing to go
down, but he’d already been stabbed several times with the sticks that left
large red welts on him, which must be the source of the bruises she noticed
before. He was being drawn further and further away from her, and her fear
mounted. She didn’t know what they wanted, but she guessed they wanted to take
at least one of them away from the cell. Ruth watched as Gron knocked one of
them to the ground them seized another and bit down hard on his shoulder. The
creature screamed like a frog choking over several loud pops as presumably
every bone in his shoulder collapsed. She didn’t think Gron’s teeth could penetrate
the padding, but the crushing force of his jaws must be incredible, and if
those canines hooked in, he’d be unmoveable. One of the aliens jabbed him hard
in the back with the stick, digging it in until he howled and released the
alien he was holding to turn and retaliate.

Ruth looked at the one closest to
her. Gron had stabbed it pretty efficiently in the neck, but it wasn’t dead. It
looked like the stick hadn’t penetrated the skin, but it was clearly
struggling. It hadn’t managed to get up yet but was rolling from side to side
weakly. Maybe it had a crushed windpipe or a chipped spine or something. Could
she leave the safety of her corner to grab the stick that was still lying next
to it? It occurred to her that this could be their chance to escape, the hatch
was still open. And could she still respect herself if she let Gron be stabbed
and attacked while she stood in the corner? What if her actions made the
difference between them being stuck here or going home?

With that in mind, she took her first
tentative step out of the corner. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself,
but once she was armed... Ruth approached the prone figure, which was making
progress towards getting up. She crept up to it. The stick was on the other
side, she would have to lean over it to pick it up, or go around. She saw the
alien reach for it and lunged, snatching it off the floor and backing away in a
hurry. The alien’s faceguard turned to her in surprise? Fear? She liked to
think so.

“That’s right, bitch!” she
challenged.

Now what though? She checked on Gron,
and was dismayed to see him on one knee now, his movements noticeably slower
and wilder. The creatures were all screeching to each other and it was clear
that almost all of them were injured in some way. One of them was dragging his
fallen comrade back toward the hatch.

What should she do? Should she help,
or would that just make it worse? Would she get in the way? Distract him? Ruth
saw that while the others were circling Gron, landing more and more hits, one
of them had split from the pack and was making its way towards her.

“Oh no you don’t, buddy,” she said,
gripping her stick tighter. Her burnt hand twinged but tough shit. She didn’t
have time for that now. She levelled the stick at the alien. It was a funny
angle for her, but she definitely had the size advantage. The alien held out
his own stick, pronged end first. Shit, why hadn’t she taken fencing lessons?

A seemingly endless stream of
possible strategies flooded into her mind, all good as far as she could tell,
but she knew she had no training at all and nothing to base her decisions on,
and seconds to act. Words like
parry
and
block
and
jiu-jitsu
came to her, unhelpfully, as she tried to read the alien’s body language to
predict what it would do. Not easy, given that it was a heavily-padded alien.
This whole situation struck her as incredibly unfair. She was quite smart if
she was given time to prepare. She’d always tested well in school.

The alien made a few testing stabs at
her and she scooted back, but she didn’t have a lot of room to work in. She
heard a noise from Gron which didn’t sound good, but she couldn’t afford to
look. She would rescue him after dealing with this thing.

She lunged her stick forward,
knocking her opponent’s aside, but she didn’t have the range to land the hit on
its body, and it danced back from her. She saw in her peripheral vision another
shape separate from the group. She couldn’t take her eyes off the one in front
of her but she knew the other one must be coming.
Shit, shit, shit...
Her fight-or-flight instinct was going crazy. She dodged forward suddenly,
heading for the group in the middle, her only thought to charge through the
little aliens, knocking them down like bowling pins and kicking a few in the
face as she went. If she got to Gron, they could fight back to back. She
wouldn’t be alone.

She barely it made it three steps
before a sharp, seizing, biting pain hit her in the side, sending her
sprawling. She cried out in shock and pain, but she didn’t let go of her stick.
She knew she was down now. She could see at least four of the other ones
holding Gron down by keeping the prongs of their sticks embedded in his body
while he panted and snarled when he could. He saw her with desperate eyes, and
tried to make a renewed effort, but the little demons around him started
kicking him and one of them climbed up to stand on his back and keep him down.
He wanted to save her but they were just outnumbered. She hoped he understood
she didn’t blame him.

She was stabbed another couple of
times, and each time was worse than the last. She grunted and twisted on the
floor, her body seizing but still trying to escape the prongs. It felt as if
every muscle in her body had tensed to its limit. She couldn’t move. Her nerves
were misfiring and wouldn’t carry her brain’s commands. She was helpless as her
attackers set on her with tiny hands, and she felt the cool sharp edge of
blades slide along her skin, making tears come to her eyes in fear. She heard
tearing fabric. Oh God. What were they doing? Were they going to rape her?
Right in front of Gron? Why would they do that? Why risk the fight just for
that?

Quickly her clothes were cut and torn
off her. She tried to fight them, pushing weakly at them, but they shook her
off with ease. When she was totally naked, they scampered away and leapt out
through the hatch in one bound. The others watched until they were out then
bolted after them, clearly not keen to remain long after their job was done.

For a minute they both just struggled
on the floor. Gron rumbled something weakly but she couldn’t look at him. She
was too busy trying to curl up into a ball, cover herself somehow. Their
abductors had even taken the scraps of her clothing away. She heard Gron call her
name, but she ignored him. She was recovering faster than he was, since she’d
only been hit with the prongs three times, and he’d probably been hit thirty.
It was impressive that he was still conscious. As soon as could, she
half-crawled, half-dragged herself away from him to huddle in the far corner.
He called her again but she just wrapped her arms around herself and shivered,
trying to process what had just happened.