My Choice

**Shaira's POV**

The sergeant had already unzipped his pants, and no matter how hard I tried, I only exhausted myself as I struggled to free my arms from the grip of the two men holding me. The doctor lay on the floor, unconscious after the sergeant had struck him with the handle of his ion pistol.
Never in my life would I have imagined that man would try to defend me, but his effort was in vain, just as mine was turning out to be. I had one last option, a desperate move to try and free myself from what was now inevitable.

“I am the sub-lieutenant!” I screamed in desperation. “I am the missing officer!”
Although I hadn’t regained my memory, all the clues from the past day pointed in that direction. Assu and I had realized I had military training when I handled the knife he’d given me to defend myself. I recognized the cooking machine the doctor had shown me, I had an implant in my head that allowed me to speak the Opranchi language fluently, even with their accent, yet I knew the Eteri language as if it were my native tongue. Omawit had found a helmet that, when I saw it, triggered flashes of memory in which I saw myself interacting with military personnel, whose ranks I easily recognized.
There was no doubt.
Even though I hadn’t fully regained my memory, I had to be that twenty-year-old sub-lieutenant who went missing after the transport ship crash.

“I am the sub-lieutenant!” I screamed again, even more desperately. “I am the missing officer!”
The three men froze but didn’t release me.
“No, it can’t be,” the sergeant said, his pants already on the floor. “This is another one of her tricks, this spy.”
“What if she is, sir?” one of the soldiers asked, more frightened by my revelation than the others. “We’d be... you know. I don’t want to face a military tribunal.”
“She’s not!” the sergeant shouted, angry at his subordinates’ doubts. “Don’t you see this is another…?”
The sergeant didn’t finish his sentence before we all, shocked and horrified, saw a massive knife embed itself in his neck after shattering the glass window.
The sergeant grabbed his throat, gurgling. There was nothing he could do. He was dead before he hit the floor.
The men holding my arms let go and instinctively reached for their guns, but before their fingers could even touch their pistols, two more large knives struck them in their backs, forcing them to collapse face-first to the ground.
I got up in an instant.
“Arrrggg…” the men who had held me groaned at my feet, now writhing in pain. I felt no pity for them. They were dying in spasms of agony, the least they deserved for what they were about to do to me.
“Shaira!” I heard Angro call as he spotted me. I turned and saw him standing outside the house, holding another hunting knife, ready to throw it. “Where’s the other one?”
Before I could answer, I recognized Zania as she entered the house, kicking the door down with a powerful strike.
“The doctor is unconscious,” I said, pointing to the body.
“That makes things easier,” Zania exclaimed as she lunged at the fallen doctor. The knife she held gleamed as it caught the sunlight.
“No, wait!” I screamed. “He tried to stop these bastards from assaulting me.”
Zania was already over the doctor, her knife a mere inch from his throat.
“You don’t want me to kill him? Even after everything he did to you?”
“He... didn’t do anything to me,” I said, surprising even myself.
It was true.
The man might have been a manipulative coward, trying to cheat me into working longer for him, but aside from being a despicable miser and a liar, he hadn’t done anything to warrant losing his life.
“As you wish,” Zania replied, standing up.
Angro entered the house and took in the scene.
“Is this the scumbag who made you work for him?” Angro asked when he saw the doctor, still unconscious, unaware of how close he had come to taking his final nap.
“It’s him, but I have to speak in his defense,” I said to Angro. “He’s in this state because he tried to intervene when these men were about to assault me.”
The sergeant was long dead, killed by the first knife Angro had thrown, but the other two, the corporal and the soldier, were still alive, writhing in pain with massive knives embedded in their backs, right along their spines. They were paralyzed and clearly wouldn’t ever stand again, even if they somehow survived. That’s how deadly Angro’s throws had been.
“I’ll finish off these squealing pigs,” Zania said.
I didn’t feel the need to stop her.
“I heard what you said,” Angro said after checking to make sure I was okay, while Zania mercifully ended the suffering of the wounded men. “Have you regained your memory?”
I shook my head.
“Not yet, but these men were talking about the incident that happened a few days ago, about a ship crash.”
“A ship?” Angro asked, confused.
“The ‘bird,’” I clarified. “They mentioned that one of the crew members, a twenty-year-old sub-lieutenant, went missing. I think the rest is obvious. I must be that sub-lieutenant.”
Zania and Angro’s gazes locked onto mine.
“Then you are an Eteri... a warrior from the stars,” Angro said, his voice barely hiding his sadness. “It’s settled then. You can go back to your people now.”
Angro turned and Zania stood up.
That’s it?
Was Angro just going to leave without even saying goodbye?
“Angro, wait...”
I noticed he pretended not to hear me and kept walking out of the house.
“Angro!” I shouted.
He had no choice but to turn around.
“What is it, Shaira?” he asked with a hint of frustration.
“You’re just leaving, just like that?”
“What else do you want me to do? You’re safe now, and you know who you are. I’m sure you’ll regain your memory thanks to your people’s advanced technology. I just hope we never meet again under circumstances where we have to kill each other.”
“Kill each other? What are you talking about?”
I noticed Zania backing away, giving us space but keeping an eye on us. Angro also glanced at her before approaching me.
“Let’s not lie to ourselves, Shaira. Our peoples are enemies, or at least they’re about to be, and we’re both warriors, fighting on different sides. There’s no future for us.”
“‘Us’? What are you talking about?”
Angro seemed to realize the word he’d used only after hearing it echoed back from my lips.
“I mean you coming with me, or you returning to Zuwua. That’s what I mean.”
I knew he was lying, hiding what had truly slipped from his heart when he spoke about ‘us.’
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” I said.
“Now you’re the one speaking in riddles.”
“We don’t have to be enemies, Angro. I have no... no reason to return to where everyone says I belong. I...” The words stuck in my throat, held back by an overwhelming sense of logic telling me what was right, but deep inside, my heart pushed for me to say what I truly wanted. “I don’t want to be your enemy, Angro. I don’t want us ever to have to face each other.”
“That’s something you can’t control. You’re a soldier, an officer who’ll be ordered one day to shoot at us, at me, and you won’t be able to refuse. Just like I won’t be able to disobey the order to throw my knife at you.”
“That’s not true,” I protested. “I can choose now, Angro, and I choose not to be your enemy, now or ever.”
“You have to go back, Shaira. You have to return.”
“No. I choose not to return. I choose, right now, not to go back. What I choose is to stay. I’m going to start forging my true story, Angro—the story of an Eteri who became an Opranchi.”