Kiru has fangs, which I have to admit freaks me out a little.
Honestly, there's not much about Kiru that doesn't freak me out, which is probably why the IASA gave me the job of spying on her. Or, as they say, Òensuring she doesn't spy on us.Ó
Ridiculous.
She thinks I'm her friend Ð rather, she claims she thinks I'm her friend. I tell IASA the same thing, and I think they believe it. I don't. Kiru's too bright for that. Someone tried to assassinate her once, and she took them out before I even realized they were there. Flipped a mirror out of her pocket and reflected their laser fire with perfect accuracy, not killing them but hurting them bad enough that no one's tried to kill her since, all without batting an eye.
We eat lunch together almost every day, me pretending to be her friend and her pretending she believes it, and every day those fangs creep me out. I think she may purposely go to great lengths to eat foods which involve heavy use of her fangs, simply because she wants to provoke me a bit. Like now. Those pretty little fangs stabbing into that poor, innocent orange, and her long, delicately pointed tongue lapping up the juice as it runs down the fruit. I swear she's a vampire Ð a vegetarian vampire.
I once asked her if she was a vegetarian, because I'd never seen her eat meat. She laughed and said of course she eats meat, she just likes it fresher than what's available here. I was too scared to ask just how fresh she likes her meat. She's taller and stronger than me, and I know if I have to I can take out a small animal on my own. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Kiru could single-handedly kill a deer, skin it with her teeth and then rip out its flesh and eat it raw.
Not saying she would do thatÉ just saying she could. Like I said, those fangs freak me out, and I've seen Kiru do some incredible things.
The more time I spend watching her, the more nervous I get. I don't know what to tell IASA anymore. Kiru's dangerous, I know that much. I keep telling myself that although she has the potential to do serious damage to an entire starship, she wouldn't. She may be an alien, but that doesn't mean she's some psycho like we see in all those old movies about Martians. She's quiet and sweet, most of the time.
I have to tell the IASA about her potential, though. What if she's just pretending to be sweet and innocent, to lull us into a false sense of security? What if homesickness gets to her, and she gets so miserable that she just snaps? How could I live with myself, knowing I could have prevented my government from being destroyed, and didn't?
I realize Kiru's been talking for a few minutes, with me barely listening. She laughs about something one of our coworkers did earlier today, and says how much she thinks her daughter would like to hear about that, because that's just the sort of thing her daughter would do.
I nod and laugh along, cursing myself inwardly because I'd managed to forget, while focusing on those fangs, that Kiru had a family. A husband and a daughter.
Today, I don't think I'll tell the IASA everything. Not today. I know what they'll do to Kiru if they know how dangerous she is, and I don't want that to happen, not today. Maybe tomorrow.
Moms can be dangerous, too. Somehow, though, I don't want Kiru's little girl to know that one of her mother's friends turned her over to a corrupt government. I'll wait until tomorrow to tell the IASA.
And tomorrow, after staring at those fangs some more, I'll change my mind again, and decide to wait until the day after that...
I've already done this for three hundred twelve days in a row.