My Human

Chapter 3

"G7P3...", the man sighed, looking on at my world as it drifted into oblivion.

I looked at him puzzled. "G7P3?"

He turned back to me. "I believe your people call it 'Earth'".

I nodded as we both turned back to it and watched as more eruptions and quakes shook it apart. "What do you remember?" he asked.

Being asked made me painfully aware of how fuzzy my mind was. I remembered waking up in the street under a block of cement. The image of fire and explosions was still vivid as I stumbled down the street. The observation tower crumbling under rough waters still shook me. But before that... why couldn't I remember?

I shook my head. "S-something is wrong with me...I can't remember anything..."

"I see...," he replied. "Perhaps it's the trauma. Do you at least remember your identification?"

My name. What was my name? I focused hard, but nothing came to. Again I shook my head.

His eyes drew down to my waist and he reached toward me, forcing a rush of anxiety through me. He unclipped what seemed to be an ID badge from the waist of my black skirt.

"Aeris Ardell," he read aloud, flashing an ID card towards me with my picture on it.

I took it in my hand and stared at it. Below my name and picture, it read "InTeque Enterprises".

Those words meant nothing to me and I sighed. What had happened?

"I'm sure it will come back eventually," he urged.

I nodded. "What is your name?" I asked.

"Xan," he answered simply as he reached for small red box from beneath the pilot's seat.

"Don't you have a last name?" I asked and he only laughed.

"My people aren't quite as fixated on lineage like your people are."

From the box, he pulled out a contraption that looked like two thin silver pipes. He drew the pipes apart and a virtual screen appeared. He held it over my leg and it showed an X-Ray of my bones. He scanned over my leg and the device revealed a break in my tibia. That explained the pain.

"Does it hurt anywhere else?" he asked and I shook my head.

He reached into the box again and pulled out a drawstring bag. He dumped it into his hand and several small quarter-sized disks fell into his palm.

"Don't be alarmed," he urged as he placed the disks along the length of my tibia. "This will create a structure to supply you support while also providing healing enzymes."

"O-okay," I agreed hesitantly.

He aligned 5 disks total along my leg. Once he positioned them, he tapped the top of each one, causing a blue light to activate in center of each one. Suddenly, a silver gel-like substance oozed out of each disk and covered my entire lower leg. It squeezed my leg and I cried out with the agony. After it settled, I could feel a warmth that seemed to soothe the pain.

"Why are you helping me?" I asked. "I stowed away on your ship. You could have kicked me out... let me die..."

"Every creature deserves to live," he answered quickly. "You are no exception."

I looked at him closer now. He looked just like me; human. But I had never seen silver eyes before. Was he actually human?

"What are you?" I asked. "Are you human? Or an alien?"

He smirked. "I think at this point, with you now being a foreign creature, you would technically be the alien."

I bit my lip at the thought. Was I now all alone? Was I really all that was left of my kind? In that case...he would be right. I was the alien.