Synnr's Hope

by Kate Rudolph

  In the next mission, she and Solan were the final two survivors in a crashing spaceship. There was no way to save the ship, but they had to prevent it from crashing into the heart of Osais. Most of the controls were shot, and neither she nor Solan were trained pilots. They didn’t have much time. If they didn’t change the ship’s trajectory at a high altitude, it would be too late. But they hadn’t yet broken through the atmosphere, and Lena remembered exactly how destructive the atmosphere on Earth could be to a ship. She hoped the same would be true for Aorsa.

  They completed the mission, but they paid the ultimate price, burning up with the spacecraft.

  That night, their lovemaking was slow and worshipful. They couldn’t stop kissing and touching each other. It was an affirmation that they were still alive, even if it felt like they had sacrificed everything. Solan entered her slowly and took his time, dragging in and out of her in agonizingly patient strokes. They came together, and when they were done they didn’t let go. They couldn’t.

  Compared to the falling ship, rescuing a diplomat from a burning building was easy. Lena had more control over her wings now and was able to use them to pump smoke away from the diplomat and shield them all from the flames. Of course, the stairs they’d used to get up to the third floor where the diplomat was lying unconscious had broken down, and they had to go out one of the windows.

  But by that point, Lena was learning to expect the tricks the house threw at them, and she didn’t even pause to get frustrated. The diplomat needed medical attention, and smoke burned in her own lungs, but the mission was a success. And when the simulation was over her lungs were as good as new.

  She and Solan didn’t make it to their bed after that one. She trapped him with her arms in the hallway and dug her hand into his pants, wrapping her fingers around his thick cock and stroking. She remembered just how much he had tortured her with his lips, and she returned the favor with her fingers, bringing him to the edge, teasing his head and his stimulator, before loosening her grip and running her fingers lightly over his balls. By the time he was pumping into her hand, his teeth were scraping over her neck just the way she liked it and he was crying out in release.

  And then they were in another Apsyn facility, infiltrating it and retrieving a document from an interior room. This was the most common task they were given. The details changed a little each time. First it was a research facility. Then it was a spaceship. Now it was some kind of office. But they always had to infiltrate and retrieve something. At this point, Lena was pretty sure she could do it in her sleep. The computer lady had to see they were getting better at this. Any day now they could be sent home.

  What would that mean for their relationship?

  Lena and Solan had given up on separate beds after their first night sleeping together, and after the last drill she was curled up next to him, one arm draped possessively over his stomach. She trailed kisses along his shoulder and tried not to imagine the bad things that could happen when they returned to reality. Would Solan suddenly have a problem with her? He had wanted to keep her secret from his family when they’d first started this thing. Would she still be his secret? She understood him better now, but that didn’t mean that her own fears had disappeared.

  She sent a lick of her spark whispering through him and was relieved when he sent a bit of power back. She wanted the reminder that they were bound together on a deeper level. She wanted him to remember that he was hers. And when they made love that night she put her entire heart into it. There was no holding back when it came to what she felt for her Match.

  No matter what happened in the coming days, she was going to fight for him.

  THE COMFORTING GREEN light over the kitchen door told Solan he had enough time to make breakfast for himself and Lena. He took full advantage, using the stove to grill up some meat and chopping up some vegetables that she was sure to enjoy. Lena was in the shower, but she would join him in a few minutes. He felt good, confident. They were beginning to mesh as a unit and he hoped their scores reflected that. They would get to leave the facility any day now. He hoped. He wanted to be with Lena in the field, wanted to do real work. He didn’t want to spend his days obsessing over a red or green light above the door.

  They were a strong unit. If they were trusted, they wouldn’t screw up again.

  And he wanted to bring his relationship with Lena into the open. He had been a fool to stipulate that they had to keep it secret. He couldn’t pretend that every hang up he had about his father and Matching had disappeared over the last two weeks, but he had come far, and things grew better by the day. He liked Lena, he respected her, she was his Match. He wanted all of Osais to know that.

  He realized there was a weight in his pocket that shouldn’t have been there. He reached in and clasped the necklace he’d purchased on their day in town. Maybe it was time to give it to Lena. He wanted to see it around her neck. He wanted to shower her in jewels and finery. Though nothing about the woman he had come to know said that was what her heart desired. Perhaps he could still spoil her just a little.

  The feel of the necklace in his hand triggered a memory. The man in the village with the scar on his lip. He had seen him before. At the Apsyn research facility on Kilrym where Lena and her friends had been held. He’d been one of the guards there. His team hadn’t killed everyone. That hadn’t been the mission objective.

  What was an Apsyn guard doing in a backwater Synnr village?

  He turned away from the pan on the stove. “Computer, can you pull up surveillance footage from the town café from one week ago?” The town was heavily surveilled, though they didn’t know it. They were too close to the training facility to leave anything to chance.

  “That information requires a security clearance of level three or higher,” the computer informed him.

  Of course it did. “Override code Zadra. Entering biometrics.” There was a scanner on the wall that took an imprint of his hand and his eye. His military rank was high enough for the information, and his family name opened doors that he otherwise wouldn’t be able to go through. “Bring up surveillance footage from the café in town one week ago. Early evening. Scan Zulir male, aged twenty-five to forty, distinctive feature is a scar on his face.”

  “Scanning.” A holographic display appeared in front of the wall, scanning through all the footage that Solan had requested.

  A foul, burning smell assaulted his nose, and Lena came in with a curse. “What the fuck? Get that off the stove.” She removed the pan before he could turn around.

  “Braz.” Solan waved his hands around, hoping that would help disperse the smoke. At least they weren’t being judged outside of the missions. No one was paying him to cook.

  “Holy shit, I know that guy. He was one of the people holding us.” Lena approached the hologram and stared at it, keeping a couple feet back as if she was afraid he could reach out and grab her through the projection.

  The computer had frozen on the image of the man that Solan had seen in the village. “He was in the café a week ago.” This was bad. This was very, very bad.

  “Any chance that’s his good twin?” Lena asked with a grimace.

  “Not likely. There’s no reason for an Apsyn to be in this village. Not a good one. The nearest Apsyn settlement is on the other side of the moon. I need to report this.” While Aorsa was mostly populated by Synnrs, there were a few Apsyn settlements scattered across the land. The same went for Kilrym, which was mostly the home of Apsyns with the exception of a few Synnr villages. “Computer, call central command.” Solan wanted to rush into the village and find this man, find out what he was doing, but they needed to let someone in charge know what was going on.

  A second hologram appeared, this one of Major Ozar. “Is there a reason you’re using your override code on city surveillance?” she asked instead of a greeting.

  “Yes, ma’am. I recognized a person in town from my last mission on Kilrym. Lena can confirm. He has no reason to be on Aorsa.” Solan had the
computer relay the surveillance data.

  “One moment.” The major looked away from them, and while he could see her lips moving, he couldn’t hear anything. She had put herself on privacy mode.

  He wanted to volunteer to go investigate with Lena. He wanted to jump right in. But they had to wait for the order. It chafed. But they were in remedial training for a reason, and if he ignored the rules they were bound to be drummed out of the military. He really hoped the major let them go.

  “It will be a couple of days before I can get a team out there,” she said once she was done reading his report. “Your scores have improved greatly since you began your training. I’m trusting you with this. There is no backup coming. Go into town. Find this man. Confirm his identity. And keep it quiet. We don’t want to tip the Apsyns off.” She spoke quickly, rattling off the orders and giving Solan and Lena a real chance to prove themselves.

  “We won’t disappoint.” They couldn’t.

  “I know,” she replied.

  Lena was standing beside him, rocking on the balls of her feet.

  He grinned. “Ready to go hunt an Apsyn spy?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THERE WAS A VEHICLE in the storage shed out back that Lena and Solan took into the village. It was supposed to be used only during emergencies and official business, and this was definitely official business. They parked in the central parking lot and decided to split up. Lena would go west, Solan would go east, and they’d circle around to meet back in the middle. She was uncomfortably reminded of the simulation they had run where they had to protect the diplomat from an Apsyn infiltrator. She had failed terribly, mostly because of her insistence on splitting up. But this time splitting up was Solan’s suggestion, and he didn’t hesitate for a moment before making it. He believed in her. She needed to believe in herself.

  While they were going through the village on foot, the computer was going through all available surveillance information. The cameras from the shops and café, the credit information from every business, and the guest records from the only hotel in the area.

  Lena was grateful for the AI. She had spent months and months back on Earth combing through piles of credit statements and surveillance footage. No computer had the capability to do what the Zulir computers could.

  As Lena walked down the street, she had a bad feeling. She’d been on jobs that went wrong with the DEA, and this was starting to feel like that. Would the Apsyn know they were coming? What kind of firepower would he have? Were she and Solan enough to take him on?

  They had to be. No backup was coming.

  She passed by the park where they’d played with the children a week ago, and it was quiet. There were no children playing, no one walking; she didn’t even see any animals. Where was everyone?

  As she entered town, everything seemed deserted. No one walked up and down the street and when she peered into the nearest shop, she didn’t see anyone, not even a worker. The café looked equally empty. Had something happened? Had the Apsyns done something? Shouldn’t she and Solan have known if the town was in danger?

  Her shoulders sagged in relief when she saw two Zulir walking on the other side of the road. She couldn’t be certain they were Synnrs rather than Apsyns, but they offered her polite smiles as they passed. She was human and they were being polite. Synnrs.

  Was something going on that was keeping everyone off the streets? Was this normal? It didn’t feel normal.

  There was no sign of the Apsyn anywhere that Lena looked, and when she and Solan met up back at their vehicle, he was also empty handed.

  “Something feels off. Where is everyone? Do you think the Apsyns did something?” She leaned against their vehicle and looked up and down the street in front of them. There was another person walking. That made three.

  Solan glanced up. “I sneaked a look at the weather report and things are supposed to turn dreary later. Could be people are just staying inside. But you’re right. Something feels weird.”

  His communicator beeped as the computer from the house sent a report their way. Solan pulled it up and read quickly, relaying the information to Lena. “There’s an old science academy outside of town. It was decommissioned years ago, but the town has been planning to turn it into a school for a long time. That’s why it was never torn down. There have been anomalies in surveillance over the past few weeks. No one should be out there except a groundskeeper. No confirmation it’s our guy, but with nothing in town...” he trailed off.

  Lena knew exactly what he was suggesting. “We need to check it out.”

  They got into the vehicle and headed out of town. A creepy abandoned building. Sounded fun.

  SOLAN PULLED OFF THE road well before they made it to the academy. If there was an Apsyn inside, they didn’t want to tip him off. The far side of the property was overgrown, with trees and bushes leading all the way up to the building. It provided decent cover for Lena and Solan, and that was what they wanted.

  He used his override code on the electric lock on the back door, and the hinges didn’t creak at all as it slid open. It wasn’t confirmation of an Apsyn presence, but someone had used this door recently.

  They moved quietly. This time they stuck together. Footsteps in the dust of the hallway were another sign that someone had been using the building. It could have been kids in the village looking to have a little fun, but Solan wasn’t optimistic. Especially when he heard banging coming from deeper inside the building. ‘Academy’ might have been overstating it. The building was only one story tall and had maybe ten classrooms. There were offices somewhere, but they hadn’t had a lot of time to study the schematics.

  Lena and Solan rushed towards the banging sound. It reminded him of the infiltration drills the computer had been throwing at them nearly every day. Except this time they couldn’t predict what tricks the computer had at the ready.

  For a crazy moment he wondered if this was another simulation. Were he and Lena actually in the basement of the house? Was this whole thing a trick to see if they were ready for something real? But no. The simulations the house threw at them were good. They were very believable. But something about this building and everything around them felt more real than any simulation he and Lena had been through in the past two weeks. This was no tricky computer. There was a real Apsyn threat. And if he and Lena failed, if they got hurt, if something worse happened, they wouldn’t be able to brush it off.

  Lena held up a fist and stopped walking. She did that sometimes, and he was pretty sure it was a remnant of her training on Earth. But he got the idea and stopped. She pointed at an object on the wall. Solan looked. At first he thought it was a small window, but he didn’t see anything outside.

  “Camera?” she asked quietly.

  “It could be.” And if it was, they had already lost the element of surprise. Disappointing, but there was nothing they could do about that.

  They kept moving, faster now as the sounds of destruction were getting louder. They passed a handful of empty classrooms, but a flickering light was coming from one in the center of the hallway. A flickering, hot light. Fire.

  They burst in, and an Apsyn was there chucking a pile of documents into the flame and laughing triumphantly when he caught sight of them. “It’s too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Lena demanded. Her wings flashed out and she sent her spark at the Apsyn without a hint of hesitation.

  Solan was proud, but they didn’t have time to celebrate. They were in an interior classroom. The only way out was through the door that he and Lena were now blocking. But they wouldn’t last long if the fire got out of control. Solan called on a large burst of power and sent it towards the fire, smothering it and depriving it of oxygen. That knocked the smile off the Apsyn’s face. He kept his mouth shut, but his eyes darted around wildly, looking for another exit. When one didn’t magically appear, he shoved the rest of the papers to the side and ran straight at Lena and Solan, hoping the sudden movement would surprise them enough to let him go
.

  It didn’t work.

  Lena shocked him with her spark again and he went down. Solan latched onto his arm and called on his own spark, sending a constant stream toward the Apsyn. If he kept it up, it would prevent the Apsyn from calling on his spark and using his powers against Solan. “Too late for what?” Solan asked Lena’s question again.

  The Apsyn pressed his lips together and jerked his head from side to side, refusing to answer.

  Lena stalked into the room and looked at the papers he’d been trying to destroy. There were also wires and other pieces of gear on the table. Solan didn’t know if they were left over and scavenged from the academy, or if the Apsyn had brought them in himself.

  “How long have you been in town?” Solan asked.

  The Apsyn didn’t say anything.

  “What is your purpose here?”

  Still the Apsyn was quiet.

  Solan was tempted to send even more of his spark at the Apsyn, but if he didn’t keep the power stable, it might give the Apsyn a chance to pull on his own spark and fight Solan off.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lena freeze. She picked up the paper and held it close to her face, reading it several times before bringing it over to him. “He didn’t burn everything,” she said as she offered the paper to Solan. “Does this look like what I think it looks like?”

  He scanned the document. “Do you think it looks like a bomb?” He was no engineer, but he could recognize destructive power when he saw it.

  The Apsyn laughed. Solan would take that as confirmation.

  “Where is it? What did you do with it?” The Apsyns had already planted a bomb in Osais a few months before and killed dozens of people at a military installation. Was this one bigger? Would it target civilians? How long did they have? Were they too late?