Chapter 2: The Interruption
Albert's hand hovered over the glass, frozen mid-motion, when the shadow fell across our table.
It was vast and wrong, blocking out the sickly neon glow like an eclipse. The smell hit me before the sound—a reek of cheap fermented something, acrid and sour, mixed with the musk of an unwashed exoskeleton. I looked up, and my bioluminescence stuttered.
The creature was massive. Seven feet if it was an inch, with a chitinous plating that gleamed wetly under the bar's shifting lights. Four eyes, unevenly spaced across a broad, angular face, blinked at us with the kind of drunken malice that made my skin crawl. Its limbs—too many of them, jointed in all the wrong places—ended in digits that looked like they could crush bone without effort.
"Voss," it said, the name rolling out of its throat like gravel. "Albert Voss."
Albert's hand pulled back from the glass. His shoulders tensed, but his voice stayed level. "Do I know you?"
The alien laughed, a sound like grinding metal. "I know you. Everyone knows you." It gestured broadly with one of its upper limbs, sweeping across the bar. "The sad little human who comes here every week to stare at a drink he never drinks. The man whose wife left him for a walking hormone with bigger muscles." It leaned in, and I could see the individual facets of its eyes, each one gleaming with cruel amusement. "We got a betting pool going, you know. On how long before you finally give up and swallow that glass."
My own reaction was automatic. The bioluminescence along my arms flared violet, sharp and warning. A spike of protective anger so hot it burned. "Hey," I said, my voice cutting through the creature's grating laugh. "Back off."
The alien's head swiveled toward me, and I felt the weight of those four eyes land on my skin like a physical pressure. It studied me for a long moment, and then its mouth split into something that might have been a grin on a less horrifying face.
"And who's this?" It reached out with one of its lower appendages, and before I could move, a slick, slimy appendage wrapped around my upper arm. The grip was cold and damp, and I felt a wave of revulsion so strong it nearly made me gag. "You picked up a little glow-worm, Voss? Didn't think you had it in you."
I tried to pull away, but its grip was like iron. My bioluminescence flared brighter, pulsing with the fear and anger churning in my chest. The bar had gone quiet around us, the clatter of glasses and the low thrum of the band fading into a distant hum. I could feel the weight of every eye on our table, the collective attention pressing down like a hand on the back of my neck.
"Let go of her."
Albert's voice was low. Flat. The kind of calm that comes before a storm.
The alien turned back to him, still holding my arm, and its grin widened. "Or what, old man? You going to make me?"
Albert rose from his seat.
I'd seen the slump of his shoulders when I'd first approached him, the weary, exhausted way he'd held himself like a man carrying a weight he'd long stopped trying to shake. But now, as he stood, something shifted. His spine straightened. His chin lifted. And his blue eyes, which had been so clouded with melancholy a moment ago, snapped into focus with a clarity that made my breath catch.
He wasn't the same man. He was someone else entirely.
"I said," Albert repeated, taking a step forward, "let her go."
The alien's laugh faltered. Just slightly, just for a second, but I felt it. I felt its confusion, its uncertainty, bleeding through the thick shell of its drunken bravado. It wasn't afraid of Albert. It didn't have a reason to be. But something about the way he moved, the way he spoke, didn't match the picture it had built in its head.
"Or what?" the alien tried again, but the words had lost their edge. "You'll hurt me? You, the sad little—"
Albert's hand shot out. Fast, faster than I'd thought a man his age could move, and closed around the alien's wrist. The creature's grip on my arm loosened instantly, and I pulled free, stumbling backward. My bioluminescence flickered, settling back to a steady rose as I watched the scene unfold.
Albert didn't let go.
His fingers dug into the chitinous plating, and I could see the strain in his arm, the way the muscles bunched and flexed beneath his flannel sleeve. He was strong, deceptively so, and the alien seemed to realize it at the same moment I did. The creature's four eyes widened, its joints clicking as it tried to pull away.
"You're right," Albert said, his voice still quiet, still level. "I'm not going to hurt you."
The alien blinked, its confusion deepening.
"But I want you to understand something." Albert's grip tightened, and I saw the plating beneath his fingers begin to dent. "This bar. This drink I never touch. This life I've been dragging around like a dead weight." He leaned in close, his face inches from the alien's. "That's mine. My grief. My choice. And you don't get to make it a joke."
The alien's mouth opened, but no sound came out.
"Now." Albert released his grip and stepped back, his hands dropping to his sides. "You're going to walk away. And you're going to forget that lady's name, and what she looked like, and that you ever saw her with me. Because if I see you near her again, I won't be talking."
He said it without anger. Without heat. Just a statement of fact, delivered with the kind of certainty that made my skin prickle.
The alien stared at him for a long moment. Its four eyes flicked between Albert's face and the dented plating on its wrist, and I felt the war inside it—the rage, the humiliation, the drunken urge to lash out. But underneath all that, I felt something else. Fear. Real, genuine fear, the kind that cuts through every layer of bravado and leaves nothing but a raw nerve.
It backed away. Slowly at first, then faster, its joints clicking in a frantic rhythm as it retreated toward the other side of the bar. The silence followed it, heavy and expectant, until the bartender let out a loud, pointed cough and the hum of conversation slowly resumed.
Albert stood there for a moment, his chest rising and falling, his eyes fixed on the spot where the alien had disappeared. Then he turned to me, and the armor cracked again. His shoulders sagged, his jaw unclenched, and he was just a tired man in a flannel shirt again, standing in the middle of a dive bar with a haunted look in his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he said, and his voice was rough, almost shaky. "I didn't mean to—I just—"
"You just what?" I asked. My own voice was unsteady, but not from fear. Not anymore.
"I just couldn't stand the idea of it touching you." He ran a hand through his dirty blond hair, and I saw the faint tremor in his fingers. "That sounds insane, doesn't it? You're a stranger. I don't even know your last name."
"Vance," I said. "Elona Vance."
"Elona Vance," he repeated, as if the words were something precious. "I don't know you. And yet I couldn't—" He stopped, shook his head. "You should probably leave. I'm not... I'm not good company."
I looked at him standing there, all that buried fierceness still simmering beneath his quiet exhaustion. I felt the lingering echo of his protectiveness in my chest, warm and steady. He thought he'd scared me off. He thought I'd want to run.
Instead, I walked back to the table and sat down.
Albert stared at me, the surprise flickering across his face, and he gave a shaky, disbelieving laugh. He shook his head slowly, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and then he looked at the untouched glass of whiskey on the table. He held it up, winked—actually winked—and poured it onto the sticky floor.
The amber liquid splashed against the grimy floor, a small rebellion that seemed to echo louder than the synth-jazz bleeding through the bar's speakers. I watched it pool between the cracks in the tiles, and something in my chest loosened. This man, this quiet, wounded man, had just poured out eleven years of sobriety like it was nothing.
"That's a bold move," I said, nodding at the empty glass.
He set it down with a soft clink. "I've been bold all night. Figured I might as well keep the streak going."
The ghost of a smile played at the corner of his mouth, and I felt the warmth of it spread through me. Not sympathy, not pity, but something rarer. Recognition.
"So," I said, leaning forward, "you come here often?"
He let out a dry laugh. "Every week for the past eight months. Same table, same drink, same ritual." He gestured at the spilled whiskey. "Never actually drank it, though."
"Why?"
"Because the day I do is the day I've given up." His eyes met mine, blue and tired and honest. "And I'm not ready to give up yet."
The weight of that statement settled between us, and I felt the truth of it resonate in my bones. I opened my mouth to respond, to say something that might matter—
And then the shadow fell across the table again.
The creature was back, its four eyes burning with a fury I could feel like heat radiating off a furnace. The dent in its chitinous plating was still visible, a reminder of the humiliation Albert had dealt it, and that wound had festered into something worse. Something darker.
"You should have let it go," the alien hissed, its voice a grating shriek that cut through the bar's ambient noise. "You should have just—"
It moved faster than I could track. One of its upper appendages lashed out, and I saw the glint of something metallic in its grip. A bottle. Heavy. Thick-bottomed.
"Albert!" The name tore from my throat, too late.
The bottle connected with the back of his skull. The sound was wet and sickening, a crack that seemed to hang in the air for an eternity. Albert's body went rigid, his eyes widening with shock, and then he crumpled. He hit the floor with a heavy, graceless thud, his head bouncing once against the grimy tiles.
The bar erupted.
I was on my feet before I knew I'd moved, my bioluminescence flaring a violent, warning violet. But I wasn't the one who moved first. The patrons who had been watching, who had been silent during Albert's confrontation, surged forward like a tide. The alien tried to retreat, its limbs scrambling for purchase, but there was nowhere to go.
Hands—human hands, alien hands, hands of every shape and color—grabbed at it. The creature's shriek of protest was swallowed by the roar of the crowd. I caught glimpses of the chaos—a chitinous limb bending at an unnatural angle, a spray of dark ichor arcing through the neon light, the wet, rhythmic thuds of fists meeting armored flesh. The alien went down, and the crowd closed over it like water over a stone.
I didn't wait to see what happened next.
I dropped to my knees beside Albert, my hands hovering over him, afraid to touch. He was still breathing, thank every star in the sky, but there was blood. Dark and viscous, seeping from a gash above his temple, staining his dirty blond hair a deep, alarming crimson.
"Albert," I said, my voice cracking. "Albert, can you hear me?"
No response. His eyes were closed, his face slack.
The bar was still in chaos around me, the sounds of the beating fading into a dull roar as a new urgency took hold. I looked up, scanning the crowd, and spotted the bartender—a squat, multi-eyed creature with a surprisingly kind face—watching the scene with something like approval.
"Help me," I said, and my voice carried more authority than I'd expected. "I need to get him out of here. I need to get him to my shuttle."
The bartender blinked three of its four eyes, then nodded. It shouted something in a language I didn't recognize, and two figures broke from the crowd. Large, heavily muscled, their faces blank. They lifted Albert with surprising gentleness, one supporting his shoulders, the other his legs. He looked small in their grip, fragile in a way that made my chest ache.
"Adronia," I said, my voice steadying. "My shuttle's docked at the long-distance bay. Can you—"
The bartender nodded again, already gesturing toward the back exit. "Go through the kitchen. It's faster. I'll make sure no one follows."
I grabbed Albert's hand as we moved. It was warm, still warm, and I clung to that warmth like a lifeline.
The kitchen was cramped and greasy, but we moved through it quickly, the two strangers carrying Albert with practiced ease. The back door opened onto an alley that stank of rot and synthetic chemicals, and beyond it, the vast, star-dusted sprawl of the port. The shuttle bay gleamed in the distance, a silver monolith against the purple-black sky.
We made it. We actually made it.
The stranger deposited Albert in the passenger seat of my shuttle, and I thanked them. They nodded, their expressions unreadable. Then they were gone, swallowed by the night.
I slid into the driver's seat and looked at Albert. His head lolled against the headrest, blood still seeping from the gash, staining the grey upholstery. His chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm. Alive. Still alive.
I reached out and brushed a strand of hair from his forehead. My fingers came away wet and red.
The moment I touched him, the barriers in his mind collapsed entirely.
It wasn't like the flashes from before—those brief, sharp glimpses into his interior world. This was a flood. A torrent. A deluge that swept me under and held me there, drowning in the raw, unfiltered contents of his psyche.
The memory slammed into me with a violent, erotic clarity. I saw a bedroom, warm and familiar. Saw a woman with tired eyes and a measuring tape. Saw her hands, gold-ringed, stretching the tape along the length of him. Heard her voice, thick with disbelief, counting the inches. Nine and a half. Nine and a half. I felt the ghost of that thickness in my palms, the impossible scale of him, the weight of his flesh against my skin. The slight inward curve that promised to hit every spot, to reach places no one had ever reached before.
My bioluminescence didn't just flare. It detonated. A deep, shameful crimson washed across my skin like a blush born in my blood, staining the air around us a burning red. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't do anything but feel the echo of that memory, his ex-wife's shock, his own quiet pleasure, the intimacy of being measured and found wanting—found more—found impossible.
Beneath my clothes, my clitoris throbbed with a rhythmic, demanding heat. A phantom response to a memory that wasn't even mine. My body didn't care. It pressed against the insides of my thighs, aching, swollen, responding to a ghost of a man who was unconscious in the seat beside me.
I was shaking. My hands trembled as I pulled them back, away from his skin. Away from the flood.
He was still bleeding. Still breathing. Still completely unaware of the intimate violation I'd just experienced.
I stared at him, caught between an urge to protect and a sudden, primal hunger I hadn't felt in years. The man who had, inexplicably, bled for me. Was still bleeding for me.
I reached for the ignition, and my hands were steady. My voice, when I spoke aloud to no one, was barely a whisper.
"Adronia."
The shuttle hummed to life. The stars stretched out before us. And Albert Voss, with his impossible secrets and his quiet, wounded courage, was coming home with me.