Believer

They kept it a secret for as long as they could. Though it was an agony enduring Thamar's daily torture and their body's were both in a constant state of agony they remained strong. Every time it ended they sat together in the locker room, sometimes perched together on a bench and other times coiled beneath the running showers. Sharing in each others misery was just about the only thing that kept either women from breaking down some days. Though Victoria could not stand everything that had been done to her whenever she thought of telling someone the truth of Andrea's state she would think of everything the woman had told her. It was understandable that a woman with a questionable past would resent the prospect of children. Just as Andrea herself had proclaimed; everything that went wrong would instantly become her fault through no other means than her past. Such are the lingering scars of a life of taboo. As cruel as they seemed to be.

Victoria spent her days just trying to survive the nightmare. It never got easier although the routine itself became more predictable. She still fell a rush of terror whenever she heard Thamar's voice and he sight of the glass encased room brought her to tears even at times when nothing was happening however.

Revaz was always there every night when she fell asleep. He stayed with her through the nightmares and the random fits of hysteria that occurred sometimes in the morning. When she woke up in a fit of tears one night and could not stop trembling he was right beside her, hushing her gently and rubbing her back until the wretched feelings passed and she drifted back into a deep slumber once again.

Victoria's emotional trauma was easy to comfort. He knew what was wrong without being told, and understood how she wanted him to behave during every situation. There were times when it still bothered her. Although the “mind reading” aspect of her supposed 'husband' was not anything new to Victoria by now there were still moments when her heart would thump loudly with alarm and she would feel surprised when he responded to something she was thinking about.

The secret did not last very long. After only a few months Andrea could no longer contain the hybrid that was growing within her. Slowly her breasts grew larger and her nasty case of a “stomach flu” became more violent than it had before. Her waistline expanded every passing and there was nothing that she could do to mask the round shape that her belly was starting to take.

Thamar was utterly pleased by the news of course. More than pleased he was ecstatic to hear about it and could not keep these feelings to himself. “It is good to see progress after so many months of failure.” He exclaimed as his eyes lingered on Victoria for a moment, silently scorning her for reasons she could not comprehend. “We shall monitor her as closely as possible now. I want to make sure that the specimens development is carefully examined. It is fortunate that she is still within the early stages of her gestation as it will allow us to more closely observe the fetal development.”

The last that Victoria saw her friend was on that day. They stood together, pale faced and horrified to discover their secret had been uncovered. When Thamar was done his little speech she was beckoned away like a pesky child, shooed from the room with the evidence made clear that she was no longer needed. Revaz said nothing in her defence. He stood by the door like a marble statue, refusing to look at her as she scurried past him. Andrea was the only one to show sorrow in watching her go and as the door closed softly behind her an impending doom sunk inside of her stomach like a lead weight.

Less than a day later she was placed back into her former duty of sorting mail. The rule of forcing her to have her hands chained together was forgotten in the bustle over the first successful hybrid. Those who had once given her mild content or overlooked her were now so consumed by their work that they paid no attention to Victoria. She was shoved aside in busy hallways. Her cart was tipped over by individuals in a hurry. Mail was knocked out of her arms, and most of all she was treated as if her presence was no longer valid.

The more time that passed by the more she started to imagine herself as some sort of ghost. A spirit haunting the mail and carrying it from place to place. A phantom that nobody cared enough about to even acknowledge. Andrea on the other hand was put under close watch in one of the labs that Victoria was not allowed to enter. She was talked about constantly. Her name was murmur frequently by the staff in and around the hospital. She was a casual subject, an exciting tidbit of news, or sometimes an enthralling piece of gossip. Through the grapevine Victoria kept track of her pregnancy, learning that the child growing inside of her was developing just fine and showed no signs of medical illness.

In all rights Victoria should have been very happy that Andrea was expecting. The pregnancy that had made her friend the centre of obsession for two species could have easily been her own. After all of her complaints about being too young, for all of her tantrums and spiteful remarks of feeling like a brood mare to Revaz to be relieved of her duty should have been a great sigh of relief. But it wasn't.

It made her miserable instead. As the months dwindled by she found herself becoming increasingly bitter towards the figures that were closest to her. Victoria began to burn with jealously over Andrea; envy of the attention that she now received. It did not help very much that neither Revaz nor Tariel acknowledged her very much anymore. Like the rest of the staff they came and went without speaking to her. To spite him she denied Revaz when they were at home, locking herself away in her bedroom and refusing to speak to him as the anger and jealously boiled within her.

“I know that you are developing a hostile relationship towards your current situation.” He told her once as they were heading home at the end of the day. Victoria refused to speak but she found herself rather alarmed that he had noticed. At this point her thoughts felt as if they had become her own once again. The anger, the envy, and the malice were all overlooked by Revaz when he passed by her during the day. “It is not healthy Victoria. Andrea has done nothing to inspire the bitter feelings that you now express towards her.”

“But she has your undivided attention doesn't she?” She hissed, reluctantly turning away from him as the sensations of guilt began to wash over her. “It must be wonderful being adored like that. She will become the “Eve” of both the Azrac and the Belderi. The “saviour” and heroine to your grief and woes. And all that bitch had to do was get herself pregnant!” Tears streamed down her cheeks as she banished the voices that angrily reminded her of her friendship with Andrea, of everything they had been through, and the lies she was convincing herself in her jealous state. After all; hadn't they both expressed the same reluctance towards childbirth from the beginning?

“Love” was another thing that seemed to fall apart as Andrea's pregnancy advanced. Between Revaz and Victoria it was damage. It crumbled slowly beneath their feet under the stress of the other things that were happening. Revaz started to work later as the months progressed. Sometimes so late that by the time he was finished she had fallen asleep at her desk waiting for him. Eventually Victoria stopped waiting for him. With nowhere else to go she walked home by herself, memorizing the pathways leading back to the house by heart and braving whatever dangers might have waited her. To hell with the giant spiders and other creatures lurking in the dark. She would have gladly embraced an attack from one now if it would permit her a few moments of feeling something else other than misery.

Then she stopped speaking to him altogether, choosing to deliberately isolate herself as the weeks passed by. The one thing that occupied her time was studying in the library. The last words she exchanged with Revaz involved a desire to learn to read in Azrac. He had no time to instruct her himself but he wrote down a clear alphabet and numeric she that she used to practice and study. Andrea was nearly 7 months along when she figured out how to read basic sentences. But then Victoria hardly bothered showing up for work in the mornings. Nobody noticed she wasn't there and Revaz was being ushered around like a trained pony by Thamar. Every morning he was forced to wake up hours before her and never came home before she had gone to sleep. On the days that he did have off she rejected any attempts that he made to reach out to her, as cruel as the behaviour was.

“You know I am not ignoring you deliberately. Why do you resent me this way?” He asked once from the doorway of their room as she was attempting to translate a book she'd found.

“Because I'm jealous of Andrea.” Victoria replied very matter-of-fact as she licked the end of her finger and used it to turn the page. “I'm aware that I'm acting like a child by the way. But I also know that you and the rest of your kind are spineless bastards who don't have the guts to just admit you're 'yes men' to the Belderi and you only give a flying fuck about that mutant swimming around inside of Andreas stomach. This was never about love or seeing if our species could co-exist, it was an insemination mission. Nothing more. I'm just the broodmare that failed.”

“That is not true Victoria.” He answered while watching her movement as she climbed off the bed and slowly made her way to the opposite end of the room. “Had my mission been simply a reproductive one I would have selected another female to bring back to my home planet. Certainly reproduction played a large part in our initial interactions following the completion of the bonding ritual but it was not the primary goal.”

“Keep telling yourself that if it'll make you feel better.” She snubbed him, flaring with anger at the way that his words seemed to emotionally rattle her. “But every day you spend fawning over precious little Andrea and the useless blob in her belly it just disproves every god damned word!”

He was watching her. She could feel it even though her back was turned to him. His eyes bore into her like a hawks, steadily observing her movements like he was waiting for the right time to strike. “You are not unwanted because of a lack of conception Victoria, though you may seem to believe that right now. With child or without my feelings towards you have not altered.” With that she heard him slowly turn and walk away, unaware of the fact that his words had brought warm salty tears to her eyes.

He was telling the truth. He always just like a good Azrac would be. Everything that came from his lips was exactly what his felt. Whenever he came near her she would feel her chest tighten up like something was crushing her to death. Some instances it hurt to breathe, other times her heart would race so rapidly that she feared it might burst right out of her chest. What little time that he did have to spend with her was never spend unkindly. There were no excuses to be made. No mindless bickering to endure. No aura of suspicion and secrecy to haunt her thoughts. She was not angry with Revaz it seemed, although that way the work consumed most of his time deeply frustrated her. He helped her when she showed interest in learning the Azrac language, naive to her true nature and devoted to the cause of instructing her. “I never imagined you taking an interest in the linguistics of my species.” He commented one evening while she was flipping through a book that he had brought from the hospital for her to learn from.

She shrugged her shoulders, forcing herself to remain indifferent to the question while her eyes locked on the faded yellow pages. “I need to do something to entertain myself while your busy with “Eve” and her baby.” She chided as a knot of pain coiled up in her stomach. She hated the feeling that she got whenever she was unkind towards him. Every time that she did it her insides would ache for hours and she would find herself cowering on the bathroom floor with one hand draped across her stomach, pitifully wishing that it would expand so that this jealous nightmare of hers would end and she could stop feeling as if she had both failed Revaz and betrayed him.

She could not help it when she first started to think about home again. It was so much more comforting than thinking of a lifetime of being snubbed as the 'failure' of the Belderi and Azrac experiments. She remembered how it felt to just lounge all day in her living room while her fathers friends played cards and laughed together in the kitchen. She recalled laughingly of how she had scorned them all for their silly ufo obsession and wondered whether they were all back on earth chuckling at the irony of her fate.”Home.” she mumbled as tears stung the corners of her eyes. No matter how hard she tried to shake the thoughts, earth was home to her. And it was the only place in the Universe where she had represented something more than a fertility experiment.

Victoria found herself loosing sleep over the following weeks as she contemplated over her situation and what she was planning to do. Revaz sought her out in the middle of the night and would often find her pouring over books to pass the time. Sometimes he would just sit there beside her without saying a word and just his presence would be enough to make the insomnia weaken. Other times he was less innocent. It had been months since they had slept together. Ages it seemed, since it was a consensual joining that had not stemmed from the horrendous drugs that Thamar had injected into him. Her body would feel as if it were aching when he reached out and touched her, beckoning her to accept him. She would feel the intense tingling between her thighs and a fresh hue of red embarrassment would creep over her face. But Victoria could not allow anything to happen between them now. There was too much of a risk, and she would not stand for anything getting in the way of her 'plan'.

It had come to her when she first decided to learn the Azrac language and had clung to her stubbornly like a nettle. She was careful not to allow it to cross over her thoughts when Revaz was around but it still fuelled many of the choices that she made. Day by day she poured over those books, studying the language, practicing every letter and every word that she could and trying to act as inconspicuous as possible. Andrea was only weeks away from her due date. Revaz was gone away to work when she looked over herself briefly in a mirror and decided that the time had come; she was ready. And there would be no turning back from now on.

She had plotted everything out in secrecy, mindful to keep everything bound under lock and key in the presence of a Belderi or Azrac. Andrea's method's of hiding her pregnancy provided an ideal tool for Victoria although there were instances in which she felt as if her use of it was spiteful in nature. Andrea had only hidden her innermost thoughts to spare herself a few sane moments in which she was not the pressured 'ray of hope' towards two advanced civilizations. Victoria however; was not using the technique so innocently. Though plagued by mysterious pain and troubled by doubt she did not wait or bother to do any silent pondering the morning that she set out to place her “idea” in motion. In fact as she scaled past the empty, hollow skyscrapers of the city she did not think about anything other than the basic mechanics of what she was about to do.

Revaz had not been there when she woke up and got dressed. He was gone once again. Gone to work, or perhaps just to spend time in a place where he was wanted. Irrationally she told herself that he did not care; that he did not feel the hostile resentment that she had been feeding him in the previous weeks and that somehow he had earned this act of malice. “He deserves it.” She mumbled bitterly as she clenched her tiny hands into fists. “He's the one that started all of this.” It helped at little at first, but with every footstep she could feel a sinking feeling that would not seem to go away.

There was nobody around when she arrived; shaken and disheveled in spite of only walking a half-hour to get there. Surprisingly her memory had allowed her to find the landing pad with very little difficultly in spite of having only seen it once since her arrival to this bizarre world. It was a strange and mechanical looking place, just as she remembered it, although the ship that had first brought her there was now long gone and had been replaced by similar looking crafts. They lined up the steel flooring like an assortment of airplanes; motionless and cold as she wandered amongst them trying to decide which one looked the most like the craft that Revaz had been using. Eventually she picked the one on the far left, which had it's door left wide open and filled her with familiar vibes. It was not the same ship that Revaz had abducted her with, but when she approached it she could see that it was dangerously close in it's resemblance, and wasn't that just as good?

Not a living soul was around to see that young woman as she struggled to figure out the buttons that would force the door hatch to open. Even though Victoria fought with the device for over ten minutes she never heard any footsteps or angry voices that might had announced the presence of another being. A bitter feeling settled in her stomach, forcing her to acknowledge that in some small way she had been hoping for someone to be there to foil her plan. When the door open and she started up the loading ramp like a cow into a slaughterhouse the feeling intensified and her legs started to numbly clank across the floor. She took even longer to get the door closed again and when it hissed shut she found herself spitefully imagining that perhaps there was someone out there but they were too busy lost in their own thoughts to even realize what was going on. They did not suspect her, she thought as she licked her dry lips and scooted towards the control room. To them she was insignificant. A human being; no different from a rat scampering across a junk yard. “The Gaian who isn't pregnant.” She thought as a sarcastic smile form in the corners of her mouth.

The controls were not nearly as simple as she had imagined. As far as her memory could tell her Revaz had made the notion of controlling a ship seem like it was easy. Victoria however was completely puzzled by the device and felt like she had attempted to perform open heart brain surgery when she looked down at all those blinking lights and brightly coloured buttons. There was a book hidden in an old dusty drawer off the one side of the room but it took a great deal of time for her to comprehend what was written in it. Translating was a slow process for her still, one that caused another hour to tick by before she had finally gathered how the basic controls worked and two more to figure out the page on mapping a destination.

There was a gnawing pain in her chest as she felt the ship slowly rise up above the ground, soaring into the air slowly and carrying the girl inside of it gradually away from the planet. There were no windows for her to look out. Even if there had been Victoria would have avoided them as she imagined they would only made her stomach tighten up the same way it had when she first started out that morning. Everything happened smoothly when the ship got started, but for some reason she felt as if she was stuck in slow motion. Seconds had become hours to her, and by the time that she was officially in 'space' she felt as if an entire year had passed by. Earth was easy to map out on the controls. Besides the Belderi planet it was the only other primary location in the ships database. Numbly she set the ships course for earth, searching vainly for a few moments until she had pin pointed the general location of her “home”. No sense in being sloppy in the final stages, she thought to herself. God knows; she could end up on the other side of the planet if she was too careless.

The pain in her chest had increased. With every passing moment it seemed to grow stronger. Victoria tried her best to grit through it, dismissing it as her minds way of dealing with all of the guilted and mixed feelings that she was having. She told herself that it was nothing, and for a moment that made it better. She set the ships coordinates for earth and watched as the computer carefully calculated it's route. Just as she had anticipated it gave her a route that would take exactly two weeks. Slightly shorter than the trip Revaz had taken her on to get away from the planet however a part of her suspected that this was mostly due in part to him 'meddling' with the ship to prolong to the trip. Perhaps at the time he felt she needed some more time before she was brought onto a strange new world. “As if a few more days actually made that much of a difference in the long run.” She murmured, noting that her mouth was beginning to tremble.

The ships engines started. She felt a lurching motion as the entire vessel suddenly swept into the atmosphere, heading in the direction of earth as fast as it could possibly go. An intense pain shot through Victoria's abdomen. Filling her with a white hot sensation as if she had been electrocuted or shot point blank range. It was intense and overwhelming; unlike anything she had ever felt before, and before she even had time to react her eyes began to close and she collapsed into a heap on the cold metal floor beneath her.

In her sleep she was fitful and frightened. She dreamed of running down a long dark hallway. For some reason without even looking back to see she knew that something was chasing her but no matter how fast she ran it simply would not leave her alone. When she opened her eyes again she imagined that she had only been unconscious for an hour or two. The pain was completely gone by then although she still felt the emotional despair in the very core of her being as she stood up and made her way back towards the control panel. However according to the ships coordinates and how much distance had been made to get to earth she had actually been passed out for an entire day. Her growling stomach seemed to confirm this as she watched the blinking screens and wondered whether or not Revaz had noticed her absence yet.

'Of course he has you fool!' An angry voice snarled in the back of her mind as she turned away from the screen, desperately searching for something else to do with herself. 'He knew you were gone the second this ship started up.'

Time did not pass as swiftly as she had hoped that it would sadly. By the time the first week had passed it felt as if she had been stuck on that blasted ship for a lifetime. The food that she found stored in it was tasteless and unappetizing; like slime or gruel. She ate only when it was an uttermost need to avoid to revolting sensation and passed time by reading over the control panels constantly and 'double checking' the ships coordinates almost a thousand separate times. All the while the voice constantly nagged her, telling her how wretched she was for even imagining that she could slip away unnoticed and guilting her with the steady reminders of everything Revaz had told her about the special 'bond' they shared.

What happened when two people who were mates separated from one another like this? Were their lives manageable still? If they weren't then it might have explained the dull ache that gathered in her stomach again by the middle of the second week. She recognized it as a very distinct type of pain; the same type she used to feel as a girl when she listened to her friends brag about their dates and the boys that liked them. It was the pain of emotional despair. Her father used to tell her that it was her soul's way of telling her that it was still there. When it bothered her as a young teenager he would comfort her by reminding her that the feeling would not last. Eventually it would go away and she would feel better again, and hopefully someday she would never have to experience it again. Or at least at the time that is what he claimed.

The ship flew smoothly through the course she had mapped out for it. Like a ship sailing over calm waters she scarcely felt the movement of it journeying through space and only when she went and glanced at the main computer would she receive any indication that it was still in motion. By the time the final day of travel arrived she was so distraught by being encased in such a limited area that she felt like she was going to be completely mad. The ship did not journey fast enough for her liking. And what she finally did reach her destination she was so overwhelmed by the knot of anxiety coiling up in the pit of her stomach that she could scarcely stand it. After all this time she was home! It took pinching herself to ensure that it wasn't just some miraculous dream.

Getting back down to earth was no simple task either. Though Revaz had never explained it to her she had interpreted from reading and translating the various books on spaceships that she had found in his home that in order for her to get back onto the planet safely without actually landing the ship was to use the manual transportation device. It would transport her to a mapped out location on the planet while leaving the ship in orbit around the earth like a makeshift satellite. It would eventually be noticed, but not anytime soon she imagined. The governments of the world would find some way of hiding it from the public the way they always did with strange conspiracies and she would slink away unnoticed. It seemed like a spineless way to return home, but it was certainly much better than being totted out by an invading race of aliens. She shuddered as she carefully searched for the generic location of her home town, hoping that she had read everything correctly and did not end up transporting herself to the opposite side of the planet.

The fact that she had made it so far made Victoria slightly uneasy as she set about in the final stages of her plan. For a girl who had only received average grades in high school and whom had scoffed at the UFO claims of the people in her home town managing a spaceship and actually learning how it worked seemed like an impossible feat. But Victoria had been fuelled by spite and rage. In such a state she imagined she could have done just about anything.

When she was finished a blinding light surrounded her. She closed her eyes to suppress the pain but she heard a low humming noise all around her. Her skin felt like it was tingling and she wanted to scream but the sound just wouldn't come out. Then she heard something that she had not heard in a very long time; birds. Chirping birds just above her head. When she opened her eyes she saw two bluejays perched in the low hanging branches of a tree. She was standing right underneath it, sheltered by the branches and unseen by any passing cars on the road that was on the opposite side of it. “It worked.” She whispered numbly as she took in the sights and the smells all around her. It was distinctively warm out today. She could smell burnt rubber and oil. A passing car must have been speeding. When she looked over at the road she saw black marks on the grey pavement to indicate this and a smile flooded her expression. “I'm home.” She whispered happily feeling her heart flutter anxiously as she stepped towards the centre of the road and looked as far down on end of it as she possibly could. There was a sign perched beside a cornfield less than a few yards away from it. It displayed the name of her home town quite clearly and she laughed as she paced towards it, pressing her hand against the cool painted metal just to reassure herself it was real.

She hitched a ride from a passing truck. The man who was driving it kept giving her strange looks and asking about her attire but Victoria found that all she could do was smile and stare out the window. The house that her father lived in was still there. The old barn where her problems had first started was still as old and rickety looking as ever. The grass in the field still grew uncontrollably and the road leading up to the house still consisted of dirt and dust that flew about and got into everything. It was exactly as she remembered and while she quietly thanked the driver and climbed out of the truck which had brought her there Victoria could not help but feel as if she was stepping through an invisible fog. There were two cars in the driveway as she numbly made her way towards the house; one that distinctly belonged to her fathers and another that she did not recognize.

Her footsteps echoed softly against the wooden porch. It creaked and groaned beneath her the way that it always had during the dry summer months and somewhere inside the house she heard the shrill voice of her father yelling and the pound of footsteps rushing towards the door. “Vicky!” He shouted as he swung the front door open and lunged towards her. “Oh my god Vicky! It is you? Is it really you? Please tell me it's you!!”

She felt his arms wrap around her, pulling her into a hug that made her ribs ache and her face burn from the lack of oxygen. “D-dad?”

“Vicky.” She heard her father whisper as he loosened his grip on her. “I thought I was never going to see you again. When I saw that thing carry you away that day I was convinced you had been killed. I'm so sorry that I didn't do anything more. I tried going to the press and the police but nobody believed my story. They called me crazy!” She closed her eyes, knowing by the strain in his voice that he had begun to cry. Her father, her sweet loving father, who hadn't given up on her when she was taken away. Why hadn't she appreciated this before Revaz had taken her away?

“Oh stop it you crazy old fool! Stop smothering her like that!” An angry voice hissed from behind them and Victoria felt her jaw tighten up. When she opened her eyes again her father had backed away and she could see that it was her mother standing behind him. She had her hands firmly planted on her hips and was looking at her daughter with such a furious express that it made Victoria's bottom lip quiver. “So the runaway has made her dramatic return has she?”