Chapter 19: Chapter 18: Embrace of Death

For a brief moment, fear gripped Alex just as Jenna shook him awake.

“The bear is back! It’s outside again,” she hissed.

Sure enough, he felt the bear before he heard it. The pod shuddered as the creature rammed the door with its head, causing the metal to groan with the stress.

It was at that moment that Alex realized the doors would never hold. One way or another, that bear was going to make it inside out of sheer will alone.

“Get back over there in the storage cabinet,” he said to Jenna as he pushed to his feet and grabbed his pulse pistol. “If that thing gets in here, then I’m going to take it down.”

The pod shuddered again as it was rammed and this time Alex heard the sound of claws on the outside of the door, desperately trying to pry open the door.

Jenna looked petrified as she took up position in the cabinet, her hand shaking as she tried to close the door. Alex felt helpless even asking her to get inside in the first place, knowing that if the beast outside could get through the metal doors, there was nothing stopping him from getting through the simple wooden one of the cabinet.

One way or another, there was a high likelihood that they weren’t even going to make it a full day on Vesta.

The next scraping showed the beginning of claws as they wrapped around the edge of one of the doors. Alex grabbed his pistol tightly, waiting for the right moment to shoot. Sweat soaked his brow as the creature grunted in frustration, trying to yank the door open to reach the prey within.

The worst thing about the entire experience was that the door failed mere moments after the creature got its claws around the door. The pressure against the sliding hinges must have been too great, and they sprung open suddenly, giving Alex his first glimpse of a Vestan bear.

And it was a terrifying look at that.

It was immediately obvious why the colonists called them bears. The head on the creature was eerily similar, having coarse, black fur and a long snout of a nose. Its mouth was open, showing off several rows of deadly-looking teeth, where saliva was already dripping onto the rest of its fur. The eyes were dull and yellow and they were already locked onto the juicy target right in front of it.

If the head was bad enough, the rest of the body was even worse. The creature was bipedal with a powerful, furry body that Alex estimated was at least a couple hundred kilograms. It had a powerful chest with large arms and thick legs. Each hand and foot of the monster was covered in claws for every digit, which were long enough to evoke a sense of complete fear from Alex.

But the worst part of the encounter was the speed with which the bear moved. No sooner had it ripped open the door did it grab Alex by the ankle and yank him from the pod, tossing him into the Vestan night.

“Alex!” shrieked Jenna, her head already poking out of the hiding space.

At that point, it became nothing more than a matter of survival. Alex rolled as soon as he crashed into the dirt outside the pod, trying to regain his footing but the bear was too fast for him. The creature was on him quicker than he could possibly imagine, batting him around like a cat would a half-dead mouse.

It was as Alex was thrown to the ground for a third time that he managed to roll to his back, bringing his arm up to center the pistol on the beast. He fired one shot before the bear swatted the pistol from his hand. The bear then grabbed his legs and lifted him up before slamming him back down on the ground.

In the process, one of his legs became free, and Alex used it to kick back into the beast’s snout, buying him some time. He kicked with all the power in his body, hearing the bear roar as he pummeled its nose.

The temporary distraction bought him the time that he needed. Alex grabbed the pistol from the dirt and fired off several shots. Three of them slammed into the bear’s chest, mortally wounding it but not killing it immediately. The last two shots were placed right into the beast’s head, which finally caused it to topple forward, slamming into the dirt near Alex’s feet.

Just like that, the bear was dead.

Not content to see it merely unmoving on the ground, Alex stood up and fired two more shots into its head just to be safe.

Despite the fight seeming longer than it was, it was only less than a minute of actual action. In that minute, Alex’s body had been slammed against the ground so many times that his shoulders and back now ached. He had a nasty cut alongside one shoulder where the bear’s claws had made contact. Blood was now oozing from the wound, staining the gray-green colony suit that had been his clothing on the Racine.

At least he’d managed to kill the damn thing, which was a hard thing to do according to the training modules they had back on the ship. Information about the bears was still tight-lipped on the Racine but Alex knew they were becoming an increasingly-difficult problem to deal with for the Vestans.

Now he knew they could be defeated.

By the time that Alex staggered back to the pod, he found Jenna right near the entrance, having come out of the cabinet. She was giving him a strange look as he approached her, which surprised him to a certain degree.

He thought she’d be more relieved but if anything, her eyes seemed to be full of confusion.

“I’ve never seen anyone move that fast,” she whispered once he was close.

Alex turned to look at the dead bear. “I didn’t think they could move that fast either. Almost as soon as the door failed, the bastard has his paws around my legs and he was pulling me out—”

Jenna interrupted him by waving her hand. “I didn’t mean the bear. I was talking about you, Alex.”

“Me? Really?”

She nodded. “Alex, I’ve never seen a person move as fast as you just moved right now. That bear should have gotten you several times but you moved away before it had a chance to react. That’s not natural, Alex. Even one time back on Earth, I was able to see the third day of the Global Olympic Games, when the sprinters were due to race, and I swear you were faster even than them.”

She was still looking at him with a mixture of awe and apprehension, and it were these feelings that prompted the last question.

“What are you?” she asked, looking deep into his eyes. “Are you even human?”

The question came out more humorously than it was meant, and it was at this moment that she finally showed relief at his survival, but it was the reminder of Doctor Barnes and his tests that caused Alex to hesitate.

“I guess I’ve always just had fast reflexes,” said Alex finally, shrugging off the question. “I used to fight in the Orbital Wars and even back then, I had a reputation for being fast. There have been countless operations where I was the point man simply because I could infiltrate a position quickly and leave just as fast.”

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Jenna certainly bought the explanation as she nodded soon after but her questions sparked another round of existential doubt for Alex.

Was Doctor Barnes really onto something?

Was he really different from everyone else?

And if that was the case, just what was he?

He was startled out of his thoughts by Jenna running her hand against his shoulder.

“Alex, you’re hurt again,” she said, touching the wound with her fingers. “We need to get you fixed up.”

“First things first, let me figure out a way to secure this door, at least for the rest of the night,” he said, stepping back into the pod. “I don’t want any further visitors while we’re still here.”

It took him nearly fifteen minutes to come up with a suitable solution to the pod’s entrance. He managed to pull the old doors closed again but the thin metal had been dented and clawed at, leaving enough of a foothold for another bear to get in even easier than the first one. It was then that Alex had the idea of blocking it with something else, and he ripped out the cabinet that Jenna had hid in and used it to block off the entrance.

It was barely functional but it would have to do until morning.

Jenna bulked again when she saw him move the heavy cabinet on his own with ease.

“Jesus, Alex,” she muttered, her eyes glued to his rippling muscles. “Have you always been this . . . strong?”

Once he was done securing the door, he sat down next to her so she could treat his wound. “I’ve always been on the big side. Even as a kid, my mom always used to complain about how much food I ate. Looking back, I was always hungry, especially as a teenager. I think I put quite the strain on her grocery bill. It’s a small miracle I didn’t turn out to be a walking blueberry.”

Jenna laughed at the joke, her eyes immediately going to his midsection. “I think all those calories went to the right place. You don’t have a stitch of fat on you, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen a man with a more impressive physique before.”

Alex’s eyes moved to hers as her face started to flush. He couldn’t help but smile at her small indiscretion.

She was able to get him patched up fairly easily but his suit was nearly ruined. Thankfully, the pod had excess clothing that he was able to change into. It didn’t escape his eyes that Jenna seemed to be trying to not watch him as he changed, and he caught her several times drifting into his direction.

Once everything was settled, it was time to go back to sleep.

“You go ahead and sleep some more,” said Alex as he positioned himself closer to the door. “I don’t think I’ll be able to fall asleep anytime soon after what happened tonight. I’ll take watch and make sure that we get no more intrusions tonight.”

Jenna nodded and grabbed one of the blankets, wrapping it around her body. She didn’t return to her previous sleeping spot, which had been on the opposite row of chairs from his current position.

Instead, she placed herself close enough to him that he could have reached over to caress her face if he wanted to.

Alex turned down the lights and took up position, listening for any threats in the Vestan night. It wasn’t long before he heard the soft mutterings of his companion though.

“Thank you, Alex,” she whispered, her hand grazing his thigh. “I’m starting to lose track of how many times you’ve saved my life since I met you. Tonight was another example. I don’t know how you can be as fast as you are but I’m very grateful that I have you and no one else.”

Alex smiled and looked down at her. “Sure you still don’t want to be reassigned to anyone else? Will I do for now?”

Jenna giggled and met his eyes. “Yeah, you’ll do all right. I’m pretty happy that I’m your companion.”

He reached over and placed his hand on her shoulder. Jenna stiffened for the briefest of moments, a reminder of the trouble in her past, before she allowed herself to relax.

“For what it’s worth, I’m grateful that you’re with me too,” he said.

“Why is that?” she asked, her expression changing. “I feel like I’ve done nothing to help you since we met. You even said yourself that I was a goddamn princess back on the ship.”

“Words that I said in anger, and that I now regret. I know this hasn’t turned out the way you pictured it exactly but I think we’ve come a long way since the first time we met. Don’t you?”

She nodded. “The fact that you don’t hate me after what I said to you is amazing. I’m not used to getting so many chances with . . . men. I haven’t had a lot of good experiences in that department.”

“It almost sounds like there’s a long story to tell there,” said Alex.

“There is. It’s just a very painful chapter of my life. And one that has led to this journey. It’s just going to take me a little time to want to revisit it.”

“Well, I’m here whenever you do,” said Alex. “I don’t know what you’ve been through but when you need an ear to listen whenever you want to talk about it, I’ll be there.”

He was rewarded by a heart-stopping smile from her. “Thank you, Alex.”

“No problem, Jenna.”

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