Chapter 6

I know I shouldn't trust just anyone, but humans have to try to stick together.

"Please, don’t tell Unob that I asked you for help, he’s weird, he looks human, but I don’t think he is," she whispers, as if she's uncovered a conspiracy, moving closer to me, and I can smell her.

I think this poor girl hasn’t bathed in days.

"He’s not human, he’s ywatx, he just likes to look human," I explain, surprised she doesn’t know about the skins they sell around here. "But now, breathe and tell me where you’re from. Are you from a ship nearby?"

If she's from the same quadrant as this ship, maybe I can get her a ride with a friend today and find a way to report Unob. I think I might finally be able to send that cockroach to prison, since taking almost everything his employees earn isn’t a crime in space.

"Ship?" She makes a face, and I don't really understand why. "I’m not from any ship, I was born in Brazil, Melissa. I live in São Paulo, but anywhere on Earth works for me," she whispers, hugging her own body.

"Brazil?"

Is she having some kind of breakdown?

My biological mother was part Brazilian, so I researched a lot about the country, even though I wasn’t raised with her. Helena didn’t want to stay with me and gave me up for adoption inside the huge ship where I was born, and there, a poor woman raised me until she could.

"I live in São Paulo, and I’m in the middle of my civil engineering degree, but I think Unob thinks I’m a ‘ship engineer,’ or at least that’s what I understood him saying in English." Diana gets more and more confused, and my heart races. "Are you from Brazil too?"

She’s a human from Earth! I’ve never met one of these before!

"No, I was born in one of the many human colonies outside Earth!" I even speak louder than I should, completely shocked. "So someone abducted you from Brazil, then?" I ask, now whispering too, because abduction is a serious matter.

"One day, I accepted a really good job offer, packed my bags, a-a-and I waited for the company driver to come pick me up. But he didn’t show up, I went to sleep, and when I woke up, I was in a cell being mistreated with a bunch of other women," she explains, almost tripping over her words from how fast she’s speaking. She gestures with her hands as she talks, but I don’t focus on them because I’m too sleepy. "For a while, I thought it was a dream, but it’s not. I was really abducted!"

Tears slide down her cheek, but she doesn’t sound sad. Diana sounds hysterical, her eyes are wide open, and the sour smell from her gets worse as she moves her arms around. This woman probably hasn’t bathed since her abduction.

"Did Unob kidnap you? How did he do that?"

"No, he saw me on the ship I arrived on, and in English worse than mine, he said he would give me a job as a ship engineer. But I’m not a ship engineer, and I think he doesn’t know that," she whispers, her bottom lip trembling. She really can’t stop looking around. "I need to go back to my planet, I-I don’t even understand how this space stuff works. They’re all weird, Melissa."

My heart aches hearing the fear and desperation in her voice, and I feel so guilty because I have some really bad news for this human here. So I take a deep breath and prepare for the big shock she’s about to get.

"Diana… you can’t go back to Earth once you leave," I explain, and I wait for her breakdown to get bigger.

"What do you mean you can’t?!" She looks at me as if I were a monster and pulls away.

"Earth is a planet in the second sector, and it’s prohibited to land there. To go back, you’d have to pay a lot, and even then, there’s a risk of dying."

Besides that, inside every ship, there's a kind of "fake oxygen," it adapts to each species’ lungs because it comes with microparticles from something I don’t remember the name of. But decades ago, it was discovered that every human who came into contact with this air develops a mutation that causes their death as soon as they breathe Earth's oxygen again.

But I think I’ll leave that part out, so I don’t scare her even more.

"What are you talking about? We need to leave! This is space, Melissa, can’t you see? We’re all going to die!" She gets up from the bench, and as expected, starts freaking out, walking back and forth, pulling at her hair.

"Altogether, there are six sectors, and Earth is part of the second sector, which means its inhabitants have technology, but it’s very underdeveloped," I explain calmly, keeping my voice steady to help her stay less nervous, deciding not to mention the virus, using the old explanation that came before the discovery of the mutation. "It’s bad, but this system helps us not to be invaded and enslaved."

"I… I don’t understand," I can see in her eyes that her mind is a mess right now.

"Any planet from the first and second sectors has several restrictions, and one of them is that you can’t expose new species to them, and that’s why, even though you’re human, once you leave, you can’t go back, because you would tell others everything you saw," I explain, trying to stay calm to help her understand.

"B-but I won’t tell anyone, and this is a huge mess! I have to go back now! My stuff is on Earth! My life is there!" Her screams echo through the small cafeteria, and I feel so distressed.

Seeing her like this reminds me of myself in my teenage years. I used to watch Earth movies, see the lush nature, and wonder why I couldn’t have that, why I would never know what it’s like to wake up with the sun and sleep with the moon or what fresh orange juice tastes like, even though it belongs to my species.

The aliens brought us into space over 200 years ago, they ripped us from our planet, we reproduced and survived, and we have no rights, not even the right to go back to where we were taken from.

"Calm down, Diana!" I grab her arm and stop her in place, before her panic attack worsens. "You can try to report what happened to you to a human colony. They won’t help you go back, but they’ll give you temporary work, just don’t trust them too much, and for a while, pretend you’re an engineer here on the ship."

I know it would help her more if I lied even further and pretended everything would be fine. But it usually isn’t. Usually, things go wrong, and someone deceives you along the way, and you end up as a slave or the main course. That’s why I stuck with Unob. He warns every time he messes up and still gives room for negotiation because, unlike the other aliens, he doesn’t hate humans.

"How come?" she asks, now sniffing, sobbing, and shaking instead of screaming.

"Everyone here is trying to screw you over, so don’t trust too much and pretend to be a ship engineer until the next stop, where you’ll escape. Afterward, you need to report what happened to you, open an account to get the little help from Org..."

"Time to go, Kitty!" Suddenly, Unob walks through the door, which makes me stop talking immediately and give Diana a "be careful" look.