Alien in the Family

hurt him, and you had no reason to do it other than pure viciousness. On this world, we have an old saying: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. My father’s people wrote that, millennia ago. It’s still apt. I’m going to make sure you suffer like you made me and my friends suffer. Only worse.”
    She swallowed. “You won’t succeed.”
    “Sure I will. I’ll bet you’ve missed check-in time with your mate. She’ll be looking for you, realize we’ve got you. There’re only a few places we’d take you. She’ll be here, soon. And I’ll be ready.”
    I dug into my purse and pulled my phone out. “Chuckie.”
    “Yeah. Why are you calling me?” I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw him walk away from the window. I went farther away from Moira, so she couldn’t hear him, at least, I hoped.
    “I want all manner of security put on the Center. Make them evil, make them nasty. Do your worst, and do a lot of it. Space Bitch’s girlfriend’s going to be coming to save her, and I want our little friend here to see her gal suffer and die. Got that?”
    “Um, yeah. I assume this is all for show? Since Reader’s alive and going to be well, I mean.”
    “You got it. Make it vicious. Oh, and I want Space Bitch here to be drugged out of her man-hating mind. So she can’t do anything. Oh! Quick thought. Do we still have all that truth serum?”
    Chuckie started to laugh. “God, you crack me up.”
    “Great! Bring it. I want her full of it. No, I don’t care if it’ll cause her brain to stop functioning if we give her too much. Good. Yeah, of course we’ll toss her to the troops once we’re done with her. Right. Of course to rape her in all possible ways. Why would you even need to ask? Maybe we’ll let her mate live long enough to watch.”
    “Martini is indicating that our prisoner is starting to cry. Wow, you’re nasty.”
    “Yes, I know. She’s a threat to our world security, and her partner will be more of one. I want them both treated like the animals they are.”
    “You know, I was a lot nicer than this.”
    “I’ll bet. Yeah, that sounds great. I want the one who’s still loose to suffer. A lot. Yeah, of course you can break, shoot, or cut off things that aren’t necessary to survival.”
    “Okay. I think she’s broken, or at least close to. Should I put on security for real, however?”
    “Yes, make it so.”
    “Oh, over and out, Captain Not Quite Picard.”
    We hung up, and I turned back to Moira. “You could have cooperated. Pity for you, nice for me. I’ll have some men along shortly to drug you and do horrible things you’ll hate to you. You won’t be able to fight back. I may film it, just for the pure entertainment.”
    She was really crying. “Why would you do that? The men I can understand. But you, you should be joining us.”
    “You attacked my best friend and tried to kill him. You were proud of yourself for attacking an innocent person whose only goal for the past few years has been to protect other people on this planet from harm. I would never join someone like you. You stand for everything I despise.”
    “You don’t understand . . . they have to die.” Moira was still crying.
    “Why? You give me a reason I can believe in.”
    She shook her head. “They’re men. Men are evil by nature; they can never become good. They’re the reason our world was locked away and kept from the stars, because of the men. We destroyed ours, and we must destroy all the others, to purify the universe.”
    My father had given me a lifetime course in comparative religions. He’d spent a lot of time focused on how to spot a fanatic and how little you were likely to be able to do to alter said fanatic’s viewpoint. Logic didn’t work on most in-the-bone fanatics; neither did kindness or any rational idea. The best you could do was understand how their minds worked, then stop them from harming others, as humanely as possible. Sometimes, however, you couldn’t be humane.
    I had a fanatic in front of me and probably a more intense fanatic out there, since Moira’s mate was probably older if I took the term more experienced at face value. And I had no way of knowing if they were the only ones here or if more were coming.
    A part of me felt pity for Moira. To hate half of the population of most worlds so much, with so little reason. To have dedicated her life to what she saw as right and I saw as pure evil. But she was evil, just as ACE had said. Not evil because of who or