Max’s eyes shot open and he looked around. He was dazed and felt that his head was spinning, but soon everything that had happened sunk back in. He shot up only to realize that his hands and feet were restrained and that he was lying on his side. His vision was still blurred but he could make out several Ayra figures and a bright fire nearby.
Soon he noticed one of the Ayra moving towards him. He recognized her as the Ayra from before who asked him for help and got him in this mess in the first place.
"How are you?" she started to say but stopped when she looked at his face and stared at him awkwardly, her brown hair was in a ponytail draped over her right shoulder.
Max ignored her look and started talking himself, “How am I. How am I? Oh that’s right, I’m tied up!”
She pulled some kind of cloth out of a pocket on her belt and began to reach for his face. Max instinctively pulled away at first but realized that there was no way for him to resist so he gave in.
She rubbed the cloth against his right cheek and he winced as the damp cloth touched the large gash from where the one Ayra had hit him.
“You’re a very stupid Human…”
“Risky,” he corrected.
She looked at him and cocked her head.
“I’m risky, not stupid.”
“Risky, stupid. They’re the same thing. Traveling alone in a world like this is both risky and stupid.”
Max thought back to when he was separated from his squad a few days ago. He hadn’t chosen to travel alone they had just run into trouble on the way to the evac zone.
He shook his head, “so many things went wrong.”
The Ayra stopped cleaning the wound, “what?”
“Sometimes things don’t happen as planned,” Max said thinking about how his battle buddy and right hand man was killed just the other day. “Especially in this world, one small mistake and everything is jeopardized.”
The Ayra looked at him intently.
“After that mistake, risks have to be taken. You can’t hesitate or all can be lost.”
There was a pause as the Ayra studied him. He shifted in his restraints and found that he could sit up.
Without saying a word, the Ayra reached into a different pocket and produced an adhesive strip of cloth. Reaching towards Max again, she placed the bandage over his cut.
Max looked at the other Ayra in the room. The room was well lit by the fire they stood around. He could see the smoke drifting up to the ceiling twelve feet above. A hole in the ceiling acted as a vent, letting the smoke out to who knows where.
Max looked back at the Ayra who had bandaged him, “if the Ayra hate Humans so much, why keep me alive?”
She laughed, “don’t worry, we’ll find something for you to do.”
This Ayra didn’t seem to hate humans at all; in fact she seemed almost, “you know you don’t seem to hate me, you seem kind of friendly. Aren’t you mad that I killed some of your friends back there?”
He had no time to react as her hand flew through the air and slapped him across the face. She was surprisingly strong and Max’s cheek felt as if it were on fire.
Looking up, Max expected to see an angry face but to his surprise she didn’t look mad at all, she looked unusually calm.
“You may be stupid but you’re not unwise. We made a mistake. We were sent out to get supplies,” she looked down at her knees, “but it was raining so we thought there was no harm in trying to wait it out. Those weren’t my friends you killed, I hardly knew them. They were just part of the selected scout party. they’re from the lower levels of the building where the Na’li Ayra live. They despise Humans. I was just one of the lucky ones to get chosen for the scout party. ”
“How many of you are there?”
“There’s a whole colony of us surviving here. The Na’li has a couple hundred who live in the lower levels of the building and we have, maybe, a hundred of us who live up here in the upper levels.”
“And what are you?” asked, his eyes wide with amazement; he had no idea there were so many Ayra in one place.
She laughed again, “We’re the Myrx. We don’t hate the humans. After all the Ayra and the Humans are virtually identical to each other.”
Max studied her in the dull light and saw she was right. He had never really noticed it so much before but she could pass off as a Human.
“So if the Myrx don’t hate me, why am I tied up?” Max asked confused.
“I still haven’t been able to work something out with Jaq,” she said.
“Who’s…”
“Jaq is a Na’li and sort of like the leader of our colony. I mean we have different groups in the colony, but everything that goes on in our safe house has to be brought up with him first.”
The Ayra paused, her face stiffened as if she were thinking really hard and then her face light up with excitement.
She got up abruptly and began running towards a door, “I’ll be right back.”
“Wait! Hey wait!”
“You can call me Aeila,” she called back right before she went through the door.
“Aeila,” Max whispered to himself. “Hey, Aeila wait!”
It was too late, she had gone, Max looked at the other Myrx in the room. One walked over to him and handed him a plate of food, “Here eat something.”
He stared at the food for a second and without answering he dug into the food, he was starving.
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Max sat there for what seemed like hours listening to a few the Myrx conversations which he actually found quite interesting. But something caught his attention and he look up at the door. He...
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Max sat there for what seemed like hours listening to a few the Myrx conversations which he actually found quite interesting. But something caught his attention and he look up at the door. He saw the Ayra who had knocked him cold earlier.
The Ayra's face wore a look of disappointment and disgust. "I didn't want to have to do this..." He said.
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