Dustin was frozen. He was torn between his fear of bugs, the immense size of this damn thing, and wanting to save Olivia. He had memories of her from before all this craziness started. Giving himself a shake, he started forward.

  It turned and stared at him with its multitude of beady eyes, and he jerked to a stop. Ignoring Olivia, it darted towards him. With a very unmanly squeak, he went to dart away, but stopped himself, when he realized this thing shouldn’t be able to hurt him. Turning back, he saw that it was almost on him, and he braced himself.

  The giant spider pounced, exposing a long needle stinger, dripping with poison. He waited until it was just above him, almost on top of him, before shooting out his tongues, and slapping the underside of the spider with all of the venom needles on them.

  The spider landed heavily, collapsing to the side and started spasming. Leaping away from it, he sprinted over to Olivia, who was hopelessly tangled in the web. Her look was guarded as she watched him tear the webbing away.

  “Please, I don’t mean to hurt you! If you will climb on my back, so we can get away from this dangerous area, I will explain everything I know.”

  She scowled, but climbed onto his back. After getting used to the feel of her, he turned in the direction of the station and took off again.

  “You said you would explain everything!” she hissed, ducking down to keep the wind out of her face.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked, giving her a chance to ask questions while he tried to arrange his thoughts on what to tell her.

  “Did you really kill that woman?”

  “No! It never happened! The murder was fabricated and turned into a memory dream. I had a roommate that was actually an alien, who died. I was tried for murder to placate the aliens.”

  “I saw the murder scene! How could you say that wasn’t real?”

  “Look, I don’t know what memories they gave you, but I can tell you that the longer you stay here, the more they will break down, and bits and pieces of your real memories will surface.”

  “And how long have you been here?” she asked, sarcastically.

  "I don’t know, a week?” he wasn’t sure how long he had been in that cave with her before, and how long he had stayed in that underground room with the prince.

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  “Oh,” she seemed to deflate. “Where are we going?”

  “To the shuttle port station. This planet is a Josagn hunting planet. If we did manage to survive the creatures, they put down here, then we have them with powerful weapons to worry about. I’ve seen ray guns and sonic guns. There’s no telling what other goodies they have in store for us.”

  “Oh God! This is a Josagn hunting planet?? There’s no way we’ll get off this planet!”

  “We’ll just fight our way to one of the shuttles and then once we get to the space port in orbit, we’ll fight our way to a space faring ship. Then we’re good to go.”

  “But their shuttles have fail-safes! If you fly one too high, it will self-destruct. Only a Josagn can fly one safely off planet.”

  He was quiet as he thought about that for a moment. He had managed to reverse engineer tons of different alien tech, what was one shuttle? He just had to fly it somewhere where he could work on it. If there was one thing he knew, it was how to work under pressure, thanks to his boss from before. But where could he fly it?

  “How high do you have to fly before it self-destructs?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said hesitantly.

  Thinking again, he dodged around a pack of huge glowing green squids with legs. Their backs were covered in large pulsing boils that emitted the green glow. Their tentacles were nasty looking, and he wanted nothing to do with them.

  “Does everything on this planet want to kill you?” she asked, as he dodged past another creature, this time one of the flying rugs that flew down and tried to attack in a clearing.

  “Pretty much, there’s a few things that don’t but I think they’re native.”

  “Wait, what do you mean by native?”

  “Most of the things on this planet were seeded by the Josagn to make their hunts more fun.”

  “Makes sense for a Josagn hunting world. How the hell did I get put down here?”

  “I think our government handed us over to them as punishment for something we did for our government against them.”

  “That sounds messed up.”

  “Pretty much. I’m still working on getting my memories back, but I remember being friends with you, which is why I’m trying to save you too.”

  “What do you mean by save me? I only have to find somewhere to hide until my year is up. The Josagn don’t like water, so I might find a cave somewhere I can fish from.”

  “That will never work. The government doesn’t care if our time is up or not. As soon as you got that genetic material to be able to breath, you no longer registered as Olivia from earth. You’re something not human.”

  She opened her mouth to refute his claims, but she shut it instead.

  Jumping over a log, he skidded to a halt as a huge white head lifted up over the trees ahead of him. It was another one of those giant snakes. This time it had thicker scales, that shimmered in the last light of the setting sun. He wasn’t sure he could dodge it and get away with her on his back. If he failed, she would get hurt or killed.

  “Hold on, this is going to get pretty wild!”

  She nodded, unable to even scream in her fear.

  “PED, grow scale plates over her, as a type of shield. I don’t want her getting knocked off or hurt.”

  (INITIALIZING EVOLUTION)

  “What the hell?” she cried, as scaled plates began to form over her legs.

  “I’m trying to protect you. This things venom can kill you if it lands on your skin.”

  “Oh God!” she ducked under the plates as they closed over the top of her head.

  (EVOLUTION COMPLETE)

  He had to move fast so that she didn’t run out of air!