I had to calm down. I couldn’t let anyone know how the memories were eating at me.
Darion turned back and realized I’d stopped walking. “Hey. It’s okay.” He turned back and put an arm around me, steering me over to the nearest fallen tree. “Sit down. Take some slow, deep breaths. You’ll be okay.”
I did as he said, leaning against his side once he’d settled next to me. I closed my eyes and centred my thoughts.
It’s okay. I’m okay. Turak isn’t here. He can’t hurt me.
I pushed thoughts of what Turak almost did to me aside and concentrated on my breathing while Darion whispered that I’d be alright and rubbed my back. Once my heartbeats slowed, my thoughts turned back to our mission. We had no time for this. We needed to find Janssen.
Darion looked down at me. “Feeling better now?”
“Kind of.”
He leaned down and softly pressed his lips to mine, making my body come alive and leaving me wanting more. “How about now?”
I nodded, feeling a little flushed, with a helping of guilt. We were holding up the team. I needed to be strong right now.
“Then why the frown?”
“I… I just don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to be weak. I want to help find Janssen and be a productive member of the team and not a burden.”
“You are not weak. This is the first time that you’ve been back out here. We knew it would be difficult.”
I nodded again. “You’re right.”
I took a calming breath. I can do this.
“Yes, you can!” He’d picked up my thoughts easily as I wasn’t shielding my mind from him. It was reassuring to hear him say it and to hear his voice in my mind.
I smiled at him. I just needed to think rationally.
I sighed. “Okay. I’m good. Let’s get on with this.”
Darion looked into my eyes and smiled.
“Andiyar,” Commander Kozienko barked. “Is this gonna be an issue?”
“No, Sir,” Darion assured him. “It is her first time back in the jungle, but she’s okay now.”
The commander grunted in reply. “Alright, let’s get moving.”
We stood up and started off into the jungle again, moving along the river’s edge. I looked back and saw the shuttle disappear as its cloaking device was activated. The pilot would stay with the ship until we returned, unseen by any natives or animals that might happen to pass by. As long as they didn’t bump into it…
We had a couple of trackers in the group — Commander Kozienko, who used the old-fashioned method of tracking footprints and looking for clues, and Corporal Lazuli Idrial, who used his psychic ability to ‘find’ people and objects. His rating was only a T6, but he was good at his job. He’d been sick recently, which had slowed down our search for Janssen, and we were hopeful that this mission would be successful now that he was back on the team.
We were also hoping that if Janssen was still alive, he would still be wearing his boots. That would separate his footprints from any others. The natives were usually barefoot or wore boots made of animal hide.
The natives were unaware that there were people in their midst from the other side of the universe studying them from an underground base. We were wearing clothing that looked like it was made from animal hide to try to blend in. Well, except for mine. Mine were genuine jungle cat. They were given to me by one of the natives to replace my damaged wetsuit. It had been cut through from top to bottom by a being who was half-man, half-beast. I shuddered at the memory.
As we meandered along next to the river, I tried to push any negative thoughts aside and enjoy the scenery. Plants were tangled around each other while the larger trees stretched high up into the canopy and blocked out most of the sun’s rays. It was slow-going as we had to duck under low-hanging branches and vines and climb over roots, rocks, and fallen trees. Just about everything was covered in a bright green moss and the leaf mulch was thick on the ground.
I tried to ignore the creepy crawlies we passed, but it was difficult. Spiders and beetles and large ants and some seriously weird-looking hairy caterpillars with spikes and a colour pattern on their backs that looked like a big eye.
The humidity was extreme. I watched Kozienko pull out a handkerchief and mop his forehead and noticed that Nykolar was panting and I sympathised with them. Nykolar was the only other person besides Darion and I that wasn’t a soldier and he clearly wasn’t as fit as the rest of us. He worked with electronics in Security. I wondered what he was doing out here. I thought it was odd that he would volunteer to be on the search team.
After about five minutes, my breathing and heart rates were back to normal. The sights and sounds of the jungle stopped making me jumpy and I started to feel more confident. I could do this.
I was able to think about the job at hand. It wasn’t going to be easy to find Janssen; the jungle was so huge and so dense that it was probably like the proverbial needle in a haystack. But we were hopeful. I’d survived, even though I’d been poisoned by a plant that made me hallucinate and had been captured and sold by slave traders. I was hoping that Janssen, being a tall, well-muscled male — who had some experience with hiking and camping according to his files — would be able to do a better job than I had. A lot of people could’ve done a better job than me. I was born and raised in a city back on Earth and was totally clueless. Which was why I’d been doing some self-defence classes since I’d recovered from being attacked by Dr Starrick, the scientist who had captured my crew and I in the jungle and experimented on us.
The thought that he’d only grabbed us because he needed some test subjects to play with still sickened me and I was glad he was dead.
Movement caught my eye. One of the men was trying to squeeze past a small tree covered in flowers and fruit and my stomach dropped to my feet. “No! Don’t!”
He turned to me with a questioning look.
“Keep away from the flowers!” I yelled. “They’re dangerous!”
He rolled his eyes and continued on.
I was running towards him before I realized it. “No! Stop! It will—”20Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQr6yKkup3G
20Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEGTesDL4uQ
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
Author's Note: If you’re loving this story, please comment and let me know what you thought of it. Also, you can read up to Chapter 4 for free to see if you like it, and if you'd like to keep reading, you can choose to pay for the entire story, pay by chapter (the story is 55 chapters and is complete), or you can subscribe to support me. Subscribers get access to all my paid content.
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
ns216.73.216.154da2
