Starsnatcher - Trapped In An Alien World [COMPLETE]

Chapter 7.3

"Sup, Lucas baby, how have you been?" she asked me.

I took a few steps back. Iris wasn't a terrible person, but someone to keep at an arm's length given her ... weirdness.

Helix inspected our new friend. They glanced at and behind her, checking if there might not be hidden weapons she brought along.

"Will you bother explaining who that is?" Helix transmitted.

I spoke and transmitted the same message for Iris to hear. "Helix, Tesla, this is Iris Giles, a former co-worker of mine at Burger Bob. She is, um, the reason I'm here at all."

"Yeah, sorry for that," she said and rubbed the back of her helmet with her hand.

"She introduced me to the concept of singularity stones," I elaborated. "She claimed she had spoken to aliens, though it must have been Ay in disguise. Anyway, those 'aliens' told her there were more of them in the nearby forest. She said if I found one there, I could become rich."

"Well, you did find one, didn't you?" she said, twiddling with her fingers.

"What does her singularity stone do, precisely?" Helix asked.

I hated those sudden switches between audio and radio wave communication.

"She told me it can read minds," I transmitted. "I'm not sure if she's telling the truth though. When I thought of numbers, she couldn't tell them only when I wrote them down. Maybe she used a trick."

"Better verify whether this is true or whether she messed with you," Helix transmitted. "Would be pretty scary if she told the truth."

I looked at her. Had I been better at face-reading, I might have known if she understood our conversation or if she wondered about the sudden pause.

"You can't really read minds, can you?" I asked.

"You know, I play my pranks on Mr. Graves and I play my pranks on others, too. Claiming I can read minds always scares their pants off." She grinned sheepishly. "In reality, I'm a linguist. I read computer codes and I read body language."

"So, that's how you knew all these numbers I wrote on paper?"

"Yeah, I read your pencil movements. I couldn't read your mind when you weren't writing, remember?"

Suspected something like this. I shared the content of her message with Helix and Tesla.

"You're here for a reason, aren't you?" Iris asked.

"Right. Ay told us that there is some translator device here that lets us communicate with aliens in a nearby neutron star. Did he tell you where it is?"

Iris jumped as if this had been what she was waiting for. "Of course he did!" She took out a terminal. "Just follow my map!"

Our journey began. At my request, Iris agreed to take Helix, thus distributing our burden more equally. I already held onto Tesla and  the nanofactory. Iris made jumps so high and wide that I struggled to keep up. It was as if she couldn't wait to finally get us to the locality. This planet didn't have a wide horizon. The poor range of our flashlights didn't help matters either. No idea how long it took until the building she mentioned would pop out of the endless black before us.

Funny how much my life felt like a video game where the landscape darkened the closer you came to the final boss fight. At first, we had the vibrant planet of Eden, then a space station full of abandoned factories, and now an all-black death world.

"So, why did Ay want you for?" I asked during our long jumps.

"Oh, just the usual IT support," Iris said. "You know, like what I did at Burger Bob. Decoded some alien languages so that he could talk and use their tech."