"So it's attempted murder now, Mr. Smith?"
She had gone upstairs, painfully, and found the mess Jar-hidda's room now was; the shattered cages, the dead body, the stench of meat and blood easily overpowering the musk that had built up. She found Smaug under the bed, and the tarantula had not moved far from her tank. But Kali and the pygmy chameleon were nowhere to be found.
"Not sure what my death would have ensured Mr. Smith, I told you that it was gone, killing me wasn't going to bring it back. My silence? Who the fuck's going to believe me up here?"
She had moved the bodies outside to the dead pile. She felt slightly bad about leaving two people out in the cold to be chewed on by scavengers, but she forced herself to turn her back and limp to the house. Jar-hidda had kept Butch's skull. It disturbed her.
"All I want is to be left alone. Stop sending people here, they're just going to keep dying. That's just more deaths that you'll need to hide away from their children, but you're all good at that."
Jar-hidda wasted no time with letting her recover. He pushed her to get dressed, which she did so stiffly, in as many layers as she could bear to put on. He was armored up and armed, his bloody new trophy on his belt. He was taking no chances. Neither was she, pocketing her cheetah and taking her rifle.
"I swear, if you try to pull something like this again, there'll be more blood, and maybe I will go to the press."
It had been a risky move. Sometimes threatening the predator incited it to attack rather than flee. It was something she thought about up the mountain. Each step kicked up a bunch of powder, scattering it against the otherwise immaculate blanket of white. The pain was great, as she worked damaged muscles scaling up the mountain. She paused often, gasping for breath, but Jar-hidda simply would put his hand against her back, letting her rest for literally two seconds, before pushing her on.
The one time that she fell waist-deep into the snow, feeling like she couldn't take another step, the alien lifted her effortlessly by the back of her parka, set her on her feet and pushed her forward. She wanted to turn around, fight back, tell him to back off, but she didn't, pushing on, fighting him wasn't going to solve anything. He was never forceful, the pushes never hard enough to knock her off balance, but he sure was persistent. She could understand really, the sooner they got to his ship, the sooner he could fix it and leave.
She wasn't so sure, now, that life would go back to the way it used to be.
"Don't you… an… obviously… technologically advanced… alien… have something like… GPS to find your own… god-damned shit?" She got no answer. Admittedly, he probably understood two-percent of what she said.
Finally, they made it. Bad timing. Maybe day or night didn't mean anything to Jar-hidda, but the setting sun made her heart sink. Getting down in the dark was going to be hell. Jar-hidda did not pause, walking past her, not needing her to guide him up the final ten feet to the mouth of the cave. He recognized this area, even through the fresh blanket of snow.
Hannah heaved two cloudy breaths before making her way up to where the ground leveled out slightly. She looked inside the cave where Jar-hidda entered. He paused at the mouth, opened up his wrist device and pressed buttons. A bright red image flashed above it, a bright red spot somewhere in the image, which was difficult to make out where she was, then it vanished. She wondered how it was he saw something like that if he only saw in heat, then figured that the image itself was probably made of varying degrees of heat… somehow.
The pitch of a few more buttons echoed in the cave, and then crackling. Lightning-bolt-like waves leapt over a large empty expanse, and where they moved, a large ship was revealed. It was the same kind of cloaking device that Jar-hidda used on himself.
A door opened and a ramp lowered for him to enter. Hannah marveled at its size, but could understand how it fit only one person, and the things he would require for a hunting trip. She watched him ascend into the ship, expecting the ramp to retract but it didn't. She sighed and turned, sitting down on the ground, back to the cave, facing the rest of the world, her rifle resting in her lap.
The wind was blowing steadily over the mountain, picking up the lighter flakes of snow and whisking it away in swirling sheets that hissed and glimmered. Before her was a large expanse of dark green trees, the tops reaching to skewer the multi-colored sky. Golden light beamed down through the clouds on the wild lands, scarred by the road down below.
She could see the smoke from her home, and far off in the distance, the lights in the houses of Troy were beginning to ignite, one by one. She heaved out another sigh, the cloud of vapor floating to the north, catching the orange light of the sunset.
"Hannah," came Jar-hidda's voice as the sun's light began to fade behind the horizon. She turned, watching him advance towards her, the ramp of his ship closing. He had his med-kit in one hand, and a bronze-looking giant pill in the other. He tucked the kit under one arm, taking the pill in both hands, turned both sides opposite directions and pulled them apart. Each end which had been the center sported many long points that glowed purple.
"What the hell is that?" She asked, looking from it to him.
"Your coat," he said and she looked down at her coat, "your shirt… rise them."
She blinked, "but it's freezing."
He laughed, then indicated for her to move it. She groaned as she lifted her shirt, wincing with the movement, exposing her stomach and the angry red wound to the cold. He moved one end of the cylinder and she had a split second to mentally prepare before he stabbed it right into her gut. She grunted painfully, stuttered profanities as she tightly closed her eyes.
She gasped when he withdrew the cylinder and eased her eyes open. The many points were no longer glowing, and no longer purple. Whatever it was had been injected into her, and it had been about as painful as being shot. She was convinced that there was no such thing as 'soft' 'gentle' or 'easy' to him or his race. There probably weren't even words for it. Everything had to be rough and painful, otherwise it wasn't worth it, maybe?
He seemed pleased, for whatever reason, and closed up the cylinder, then put it in his med-kit, which was now fully restocked, even the syringe was now full with a blue liquid that seemed more appropriate as mouthwash rather than… whatever it was used for in a syringe. If she had to guess, she would think it was some kind of anesthetic, but she didn't ask, and he closed up the kit and replaced it on his back.
She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth, looking around then at him. It hurt, but the pain was swiftly dulling. Maybe the glowing stuff was the pain killer? She didn't know, but she was feeling better.
"Thank you," she said, and he looked at her sharply, grunting and tilting his head. She sighed, trying to think of how to explain gratitude.
"You're welcome," he growled, looking away from her and down the mountain. The last bit of light was gleaming off his mask. He stood unmoving in the snow as the wind was picking up. Funny, for one who loved the heat and loathed the cold, he never showed it.
She looked over at the lights of the city below, thinking quietly to herself before asking, "do you see that, down there?"
Jar-hidda turned towards where she was pointing, tilted his head, then gave it a single shake.
"Do you see anything right now?"
"You."
"Besides me."
He gave another shake of his head, "cold… all is… dark."
Hannah hummed in thought, filing away the information for later, "how do you say 'cold' in your language?"
"Sbec."
Made sense to her that the word for cold sounded like a curse. She shuddered and he looked at her apathetically.
"Let's go," she said, making her way back down the mountain.
"We will… travel here again tomorrow?"
"Yeah, we'll come back tomorrow," she assured, not stopping in her descent. She was starting to freeze, and the trek down was going to be even colder, and darker.
She paused often to get her bearings, or to let her eyes adjust to the moonlight. The moon was waning, but still nearly full, it provided her with more light than she thought she would have, and she realized coolly that of the two of them, she was not the one who was blind. This gave her the advantage, and she entertained herself with probable scenarios of combat with the alien, but often told herself that they would probably all end the same way.
They finally made it back to the house, and the two of them seemed to share a simultaneous sigh of relief. Hannah tried to shut the door behind them but felt cold air leak through. The damaged frame was letting air leak through. She cursed and got right to work, as Jar-Hidda disarmed himself and sat cross-legged in front of the fire.
He looked over his shoulder at the human as she continued to test close the door and get to work nailing in some slivers of wood from near the fire.
"Hannah," he growled and she looked up at him, three nails sticking out of her mouth.
"Mhm?" talking with her mouth full would only cause greater confusion to Jar-hidda she figured.
He pulled on her shoulder and she leaned away from the doorframe, looking up at him. He gave her a quick once over, before turning away from her and going upstairs.
"Mut ta he!?" she growled through the nails but waved a hand at his back, not caring. She had to get the door fixed, otherwise the furnace was never going to shut off, and that would mean needing to go back to Troy for more gas.
It took her a few hours, hammering in slivers of wood until the door shut with a satisfying sound, and no cold came in. She tossed the hammer and remaining nails onto the table by the window and sat in front of the fire, sighing in relief and relaxing, finally. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was well past midnight.
"Merry Christmas Hannah," she sighed and shrugged out of her coat. She would be up in a few hours to take Jar-hidda up the mountain again, and not just for supplies. He was going to work on fixing his ship, not that she'd make him, but that he knew the dangers if Weyland were to come and find it themselves. His ship needed to be repaired, and him gone, before they returned.
But what would happen to her after that? One didn't just kill employees of a big corporation like Weyland and get away with it. The fact that they sent their two big boys out here proved that, probably thinking that she would be alone, and easy to deal with.
Then there was the fear that his ship couldn't be fixed. She frowned as she thought of that outcome. What would she do? As she thought about it, she knew that she couldn't stay here, Weyland wouldn't leave her alone, and Jar-hidda probably wouldn't want to stay here if there was nothing tying him there. But would she go with him, given the choice? Would he let her?
She thought about Butch's skull attached to Jar-hidda's belt, he had not come out of his ship with it, which meant that he had left it there. But what was disturbing was that he was keeping it. It was a trophy to him; an animal, successfully hunted and worth preserving.
It was possible… no, likely, that Butch had not been the first human trophy Jar-hidda had taken. That scared her.
She shook off her thoughts. She couldn't let things like that get in the way of helping. Once Jar-hidda was gone, it would be the best for everyone involved. Except Weyland, in which case it was all the more better for her.
Having sufficiently warmed up, she stood, stretched and moved towards the stairs. She found Jar-hidda sitting in front of the fire as he had been downstairs.
"You should sleep Jolly, we'll be up again in a few hours, bright and early to get your ship fixed," she moved to the dresser and gathered her pajamas, entertaining the thought of saving a bit of time and just changing in the room, since it seemed that Jar-hidda didn't care, but then decided to keep the habit and change in the workroom.
"Fixed?" he repeated?
"Repaired?" she tried instead, since it seemed that sometimes he knew the synonym of a word rather than the word itself.
"Good," he grunted and stood up. She watched him as he moved towards and then out the door. She blinked once, then looked at the clothes in her hand. She shrugged, dressed, and got into her bed. Jar-hidda could do whatever he wanted with his time.
It did not take her long to get to sleep. She didn't dream, something she figured was a side-effect of the drugs he had given her, or she was just that tired. When she awoke, Jar-hidda was not in the room. She furrowed her brow and threw her blankets off of her. Something shuffled and she looked over, on the bed was a net, upon closer inspection it was a net suit like Jar-hidda's. It was her size.
She picked it up, the cool metal feeling strange in her hands. Flexible as cloth. She wondered what sort of metal it was, probably nothing found on this planet. She looked to the open door and strained to listen, but heard nothing. Slowly, hesitantly, she put on the suit, half-expecting Jar-hidda to come rushing in retaliating but he didn't.
She dressed over the net and went downstairs, finding Jar-hidda tinkering with something by the fire.
"I can't find the snake," he said as she approached.
"I'm not too worried," it was one thing to have her in the cage, in the house she'd go find the warmest spot, and would give them warning if they got too close. Kali was not high on her priorities.
"Thank you," she said and he looked at her with an expression that was hard to place. Skepticism maybe? It was like he was saying 'are you sure?'
She lifted the sleeve of her shirt to show the net, and he snatched her wrist faster than she could react. He snapped something onto it and a sudden heath washed over her body.
"Whoa," she looked at the new device on her wrist, recognizing one of the circular metal plates that was on his wrist device, attached to some kind of… dial that was flashing a strange red symbol. It looked a lot like a watch.
"Good," was all the alien said as he stood up and put on his mask, "let's go."