At the sound of Bjorn's voice, they both turned at the same time to look. Karen was breathless; Dylan was immediately spellbound.
"Oh, wow," he thought to himself.
"What the hell?" She muttered, trying to disguise her shock.
Both were equally astonished at the sight of the beautiful woman with slightly green skin and bewitching violet eyes, nothing like the classic alien with big daunting black eyes, zero hair and scary sharp face they had imagined.
"Sopeha is my fellow scientist and a seasoned astronaut," Bjorn continued proudly.
"Hello, please excuse my attire, I came straight from a mission and didn't have time to change into something more… casual," Sopeha explained, with a voice like the one from a computer speaker, only sweeter and nicely modulated.
"Oh, I'm fine with that outfit, it suits you perfectly," Bjorn replied to the point. Karen and Dylan continued to be frozen. "Well, aren't you going to say something?" Bjorn urged them.
Dylan woke up. "Sure, sorry. Nice to meet you, Sopeha. I'm Dylan Shen, at your service," he replied.
"At your service?" Karen thought, annoyed with Dylan's excessive politeness.
"Nice to meet you too, Dylan. Bjorn has told me a lot about you," Sopeha replied, her intense violet eyes twinkling like stars.
"Good things, I hope," Dylan replied.
"Certainly," she smiled.
Dylan couldn't take his eyes off her, he seemed literally mesmerized; Sopeha looked impressed with him as well.
"Really, Dylan?", Karen thought to herself. At that point she remembered what Juliette had told her about Robin: that there was something in his eyes, a kind of magical power that captivated her, was this 'power' an alien trait? Well, if it was, she wouldn't let Dylan fall prey to it.
She counted to ten, stepped forward and cleared her throat loudly; Dylan woke up from his momentary fascination.
"Oh, I'm sorry, this is Karen, my wife," he rectified.
Sopeha turned to Karen with her deep purple eyes. Karen took a deep breath. It was hard for her to define what the space visitor awakened in her: fear, admiration, jealousy, or plain antipathy?
"Nice to meet you, Karen." Sopeha replied in her peculiar, semi-robotic, but soft voice. Bjorn and Dylan held their breath, Karen thought for a second before replying. What was she going to say, 'nice to meet you too"? That would have been a lie, so she just stammered out what she considered the only possible response.
"Hello, Sophia," she mispronounced.
"It's Sopeha," the alien woman corrected her politely.
"Yeah well, whatever," Karen grumbled, no longer trying to disguise her displeasure, which at this point had become evident to the others, especially to Sopeha.
Dylan started to get nervous: Bjorn just rolled his eyes.
Before either of the two men could say anything, Karen continued:
"You said earlier that you were coming from a 'mission'; did you mean an abduction?" She fired.
"Excuse me?" Sopeha asked, losing her smile.
"Karen, please", Dylan begged.
"Ahem, okay," Bjorn interjected. "Since you've already introduced yourselves, why don't we sit down and talk about the plan?"
"I'm fine standing," Karen said, looking Sopeha straight in the eye.
"So am I," Sopeha countered, holding her gaze.
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