Princess of the Void

Two more shifts pass.

He brings in more things for Batty. He brings her a map of Earth. She examines it with her head cocked.

“This is Earth. Uh, Home.” He taps the paper. “Earth.”

“Erf.”

“What about you?” He points at her. “Batty home?”

“Taiikari.”

He tries to pronounce it. She giggles at him. “Taiii karr eeee.” She sounds it out.

“Taiikari,” he says.

She nods. Her eyes flash. “Grantyde Batty home Taiikari.”

“No, I’m Earth. Grantyde home Earth.” He points at the floor.

She stares at him until he breaks eye contact with her. He isn’t sure how to interpret her expression.

The next night, he brings her some crayons and paper that he slips through the two-way drawer. He draws her poorly. She draws him worse.

“I keep misremembering and thinking you have horns,” he says.

She quirks an eyebrow. “Missermembering?”

“Being wrong. Uh, about horns.” He mimics them with two fingers.

Her eyes widen and she shakes her head vigorously, covering her scalp. “No no no no.” He taught her no and it’s become one of her favorite words. “No horns.”

He plays more music for her, but the first is still her favorite, the one she asks for at the end of every night. “Lonesome. Lonesome.” She taps on the glass in time to her chanting demand. She’s started singing along to it in her own language.

The fourteenth night of their friendship—if that’s what this is—she demands an encore (via her preferred method of chanting). He plays again, standing up this time and kicking the beat quicker and jauntier, grooving like he’s on stage. She laughs and dances with him on the other side of the glass.

He’s out of breath by the time he’s done. “All right, all right. I really do gotta go now.” He shrugs the guitar strap off and unzips his gig bag. “Need to switch off the loop before anyone checks in.”

“Grantyde.”

He glances up from his instrument. His fingers halt on the zipper.

She’s cupping one of her breasts as she looks at him. Her other hand lays flat on her stomach, its fingers kneading little divots into the softness of her lower tummy. The roof of his mouth immediately dries.

She hums the tune. Sings a gentle verse of it, replacing the words with the flowing syllables of her language.

“Lonesome,” she murmurs.

Her fingers fan out against the glass.

He places his hand right over hers. They gaze at one another through the wall of her prison.

She does have horns. She definitely has horns. Maybe they come and go, but they’re here right now. She sees where he’s looking and color rushes to her cheeks. “No horns,” she insists.

Her skin ripples, and she vanishes.

“Did you do this job before me?” he asks Drake. They’re idling at the vending machine while they wait for the elevator, which is taking forever.

Drake pops the tab on his coke. “Nah,” he says. “I’ve done day shift a few times, or come in on assignment. But night shift, last guy bounced out for the same thing you talked about in the interview. Just couldn’t hack the hours.”

“Did he ever see B-31?”

Drake shakes his head. “Never did. You're the only night shift guy who has. Never thought I'd have to brief you on her.”

“Why’d I see her, do you think?”

“It.”

“Sorry.”

Drake shrugs. “I wonder that, too. Wonder if you have any ideas.”

Grant’s grin dies when Drake’s fails to appear. “I couldn’t tell you.”

“Well,” Drake says. “Long as it doesn’t get in the way, you’re fine. You seen it again since?”

Grant thinks about Batty’s straying fingers. The cushiony y-shape her thighs form when they press together. The delicate tuft of downy pubic hair nestling in it.

“Nope,” he says.

The elevator dings.

Grant downloads a VPN and a private browser, and then chickens out.

He goes to the library and, feeling like the mother of all dunces, googles “how to whistleblow.” A bunch of .gov sites and legal landing pages. Archer West works with the government. He doesn’t think that’ll work.

He goes down a rabbit hole of UFO and UAP sites. There’s a lot of wingnut stuff on them. He thinks maybe he’s got a hit on a story about itty-bitty invisible women with horns and tails, but the library firewall blocks it for suspected pornographic content. Fair enough.

It’s past noon and the fatigue is hitting pretty hard. He heads home, back to his apartment. The cardboard from the unpacked shelves is still all over his floor. He still hasn’t gotten around to bundling that. It just doesn’t seem that important.

He draws in his blackout curtains and pops his earmuffs on. He puts his phone on do not disturb and places it on the nightstand.

He picks it back up.

He pulls up the photos of Batty and scrolls through them. He doesn’t touch himself. He won’t do that to pictures of a prisoner. He just stares at her. At her eyes. At the hope in them when she was looking at him.

He shuts the phone off and goes to bed.

Batty’s taken to waking up around 3 AM. He lets her sleep while he practices a Robert Johnson tune in his office.

He gets a coke from the vending machine and remembers the conversation he had yesterday with Drake. Talking about the day shift.

How far back does the rewind function go, he wonders?

No need for curiosity, kid. Job’ll go smoother without it.

He returns to his console and rewinds. He winds the clock all the way back to the daytime, watching for movement. He pauses when he sees it—Batty on the jungle gym—then keeps going. Figures zipping around in there. Human-sized.

He finds the beginning. His stomach’s hollowing out as he presses play.

A man in full hazmat gear enters Batty’s chamber. There’s a submachine gun in his hands. Behind him are two more suits, these unarmed, wheeling an empty gurney into the room, its surface festooned with straps.

Batty drops into visibility, snarling and backing away from them, huddling in the far end of the chamber like a cornered beast. Her teeth are bared. A pair of horns has clearly sprouted from the top of her head. She’s totally different from the woman he knows, on her knuckles like a primate, growling and feral.

The guy with the gun points it across the room. The voices are muffled. Is that Drake? He can’t tell.

A shimmer in the air within the cell. They’re pumping something in. Batty’s hissing, shrieking. She curls into a ball, shaking violently. She’s in pain.

Her shaking slows down and stops.

One of the unarmed suits steps to the door of the cell and pulls a magnetic keyring from their belt. The gurney’s guide bar is in their other hand.

The scene skips. The security guy is entering the room again. The timestamp continues. They’ve looped the footage here. Grant fast-forwards. A few dozen more loops and suddenly Batty is back in her cell, sitting atop her jungle gym. She’s staring out into the chamber, her face so full of rage and hatred it freezes Grant’s blood.

She slips down between the monkey bars and starts a set of dips. Her triceps stand out under her blue skin.

Grant stops the footage. He feels his breath stick to his ribs, feels a sting behind his eyes.

What does this loop cover?

He can’t be a silent party to this. To whatever they’re doing. He won’t be. Fuck whistleblowing.

He’s getting her out.