From the Depths

by S. J. Sanders

  She shook of her aching head, careful not to jostle herself. “No, a cold is a very common viral infection. Humans get them a couple times every year. It’s nothing.”

  The alien’s features crumpled when she said virus. “This is not nothing. You should have told me,” he said very softly. “What do humans do to cure such an illness?”

  “There’s not really a cure. We just have to let our bodies fight it off. Lots of rest, drink plenty of water to keep hydrated and take medications that dull the worst of the symptoms.”

  His coloring paled to a sickly yellow-gray. “How horrifically primitive. Will this affect Sweetie’s developing fetuses? She doesn’t wish for her young to become infected.”

  “They’re kittens, and no, human illnesses don’t transmit to other species.”

  His features hardened. “Apparently that’s not accurate. You have infected me.”

  She winced at the anger in his tone. “Do you think I did it on purpose?” She felt the hot fingertips of his frustration and fear through the empathy link.

  Jaw clamped tightly, Wharkuz turned away from her. “No. Of course not. Apologies. I am concerned for the…kittens. And for you.”

  But not for himself.

  Her heart squeezed. She longed to throw her arms around his shoulders and kiss him soundly. He was amazing in so many ways and she’d managed to infect him.

  He remained focused on the floating monitor. Silently he began pressing options that flashed across the screen and then motioned for her to come forward. “If you don’t mind. I will run the same test on you.”

  Obediently she followed the directions of the calm automated system and waited. “Galaxy quadrant 189-23. Earth. Human. Warning, prohibited species. Warning, unknown pathogens detected. Abnormal readings. Overwrite authorization approved. Systems adjusted. Please continue,” said the disembodied voice in time with Wharkuz’s fingers tapping.

  Another shimmering surface flickered up beside him. This one had a full-body image of a very attractive woman with dark brown hair and electric-blue eyes. Darcy wondered if the woman realized there was a nude rendering of her recorded in the database.

  For science, of course.

  Standing with her finger still pressed to the glowing indicator, she watched her alien work in a precise, methodical manner, comparing the rapid scroll of information on either screen. It seemed to take hours and she imagined she could see the darkness around his eyes spreading and hoped it was just her avid imagination.

  Please, find a way to help him, she whispered internally. Darcy didn’t know what she would do if she caused lasting harming him.

  “Running diagnostic comparison. Analytical data available. Run simulator? Running.” For a little while he watched the text running wildly across the screen and then pressed another button. “Creating specified catalyst. Do you wish to take another sample?”

  He motioned for her to step back and picked up Sweetie and held her paw up to the display. “Galaxy quadrant 189-23. Earth. Feline. Pregnant. Warning, prohibited species.” A happy bell sounded from the device. “No pathogens detected. Six embryo felines detected. All fetuses viable. Hormone levels stable.”

  At least Darcy wasn’t wrong about the feline’s health.

  “Do you wish to take another sample?”

  Wharkuz pressed another series and the bell chimed. “Testing complete. Please read full report for more information. Thank you.”

  He didn’t look at the report but waved his hand and the various screens dissolved.

  Carefully setting Sweetie on the floor he finally turned to her. Two of his long strides carried him to her.

  “Do not ever do this to me again,” he whispered in a husky rasp and cupped her face in his hands.

  He looked terrible.

  The effort to focus on the work had wrung the last of his energy from him. The darkness around his eyes had now formed a black band across the bridge of his nose. It gave him the appearance of wearing a mask.

  When she lifted her hand to stroke a finger between his fever-bright eyes both inner and outer sets of his lids shuttered closed.

  “Please. In the future you must tell me when you are not well. I could have done something sooner for you.” Again, he didn’t express concern about himself despite his pained expression. After a small hesitation, he pressed his forehead to hers.

  It was more intimate than a kiss. That connection, brow to brow, made her whole body melt toward him. The curve of his small, twisted horns bracketed her temples and the bases of them were feverishly hot. This wasn’t a moment to get lost in her attraction.

  That her own sick body responded spoke volumes of her desire for him.

  She cupped his face in her hands, mirroring his gesture and leaned into his body. “I promise I will in the future. What did you discover? Are you going to be okay?”

  “The inoculations are being coded now and should be ready shortly. I am assuming this will work for both of us. If I haven’t blundered something, this should guard us both against this and similar viruses. It needs to be adjusted to work on the Ossiran physiology.” He sighed out a raspy breath and leaned against her. It was a full-body sag of someone who had pushed themselves to the limit of their physical endurance.

  “Wharkuz? You should sit down.”

  He uttered a low groan. “I need to wait for the processing and I must send this report to Thadysseus Tycou, and Lord General W’sta Lannin. If their humans are carrying any similar bacterial or viral pathogens they need to know now and begin more thorough testing. The ones we previously established are clearly not enough. I should have done this when the first human set foot in this laboratory. I should not have been so lax. I should—”

  She pressed a finger to his lips and smoothed it across the plump flesh. His eyes cracked open and she started at the vivid red of his irises. They had not returned to their usual pale amber. “You can’t fix that now. Don’t you give me that smoldering look. You’re sick. We’re both sick. Put in your report and explain to me what to do and how to send the thing. I’m worried you’re going to pass out on me and I can’t read any of your language.”

  He searched her eyes, giving her the sort of look that made the hairs along the nape of her neck stand on end.

  Predatory.

  Once, when scuba diving north of Monterey, she’d had an encounter with a great white shark. The enormous apex predator had swept above her and circled once as it considered her before continuing on.

  This was the same feeling. The primitive response of a prey animal to a predator. Her whole body coursed with adrenaline as her instincts demanded she flee or fight. Strangely, the thrill was stronger than her fear. As with the shark, she knew she wasn’t in danger.

  Sexual.

  As though he wanted to consume her body and soul. Suck the marrow from her bones. Drink the essence of her spirit from her shuddering, yearning heart.

  She’d never seen that sort of expression on him or anyone before.

  Darcy was not prepared mentally, emotionally or physically for the onslaught of sensations that swept through her mind, either.

  Primal. Explicit.

  Holy hell!

  But as powerfully as those emotions crashed into her, they receded back like the swift draw of an ocean wave. As though her fevered brain had only imagined it. The emotions that replaced it terrified her.

  He was in real pain, confused, and guilty for scaring her.

  Wharkuz bowed forward with a cry of agony and gripped her shoulders with a bruising force. When she bit back her shocked cry of pain he released her and grabbed onto the counter for support instead. He mumbled an incoherent apology in his language before seeming to realize he wasn’t speaking English. “I’m sorry, my Darcy.”

  Her hands shook violently from the effects of the adrenaline surging through her but she reached for him. “I’m here with you, Wharkuz. We’ll get you through this. You’re just sick. You probably haven’t ever been sick before. Right?”

&
nbsp; Gritting his teeth, he nodded. “Never.”

  “Help me to get you somewhere you can rest. You’re overexerting yourself when you’re sick and it’s only making things worse. How do I administer the medication when it’s ready, in case you’re unable to?”

  He explained the steps through tightly clamped jaws. It was difficult to understand him, but she got the gist of the instructions. He needed to be put into one of the tanks in case his body gave out on him. The machine would help manage the pain and keep him stabilized while the medication finished mixing, or whatever the computer was going.

  “Make sure that you take the inoculation as well. I do not want you to suffer more than you must,” he said.

  Her heart squeezed at his kindness. She’d do anything to make sure he was all right.

  He showed her how to activate the tank and a panel opened, allowing an oval-shaped basin to extend from the wall. It was deeper than a bathtub and contained a translucent liquid. She helped him into it, struggling with his weight as he grew weaker and required her support.

  Thank god he was only an inch or so taller than her. He was muscular but built more like a runner and while he was solid, it wasn’t an impossible task. She was strong and never shied away from physical labor. If she could lift two-hundred-plus-pounds Mastiffs and Great Danes onto lab tables at the clinic on the regular, she could support her alien this short distance.

  She wouldn’t fail him.

  Water splashed over her chest and stomach as he half fell, half slipped into the tank. A ragged sigh tore through him before he fully submerged into the faintly glowing liquid. She slumped against the side of the device.

  The soothing voice of the systems told her that everything was working fine despite the introduction of the bacterial pathogen into the aquatic system.

  She was literally a plague.

  He lay in the tank, chest rising and falling, gills along his neck flexing open and closed. She sensed an easing of his pain almost instantly and sank to her knees beside the device, tears trickling down her cheeks.

  Swiping away her tears, she scrambled back to her feet and hurried to one of the consoles and ran through the instructions he’d explained to her and then started pressing buttons, praying that she did the correct ones in the appropriate order. She knew she was doing the right steps when the computer announced that all reporting had been sent. Thadysseus Tycou, and Lord General W’sta Lannin, whoever they were, would receive the update shortly.

  “Please wait for receipt of transmission,” the computer stated.

  Then she waited for the medication to finish processing.

  She toyed with the apparatus that administered the drug. It was made of some transparent material that was more like an art piece than a medical device.

  The bell chime of the processing unit made her jump. She ran to the dispenser as two clear cylinders clinked into the output receptacle. Thankfully it was easy to insert it into the slot in the hand-held device. It operated much like a gun. Load it up, point, and use the trigger to shoot.

  Careful not to drop the unit, she returned to the tank and reached into the water and grasped his wrist, drawing it out of the fluid. She frowned at his fingers. Instead of the rich green coloring, they were dark red from the tips up to his last knuckles. Even the webbing was darker.

  It was so odd that such a common virus for her could be doing such damage to him. Was he somehow loosing circulation in his extremities? Looking at his feet, she noticed they also looked darker. All she could do was administer the medication and hope that it worked fast and that it would reverse whatever was happening to him.

  Pressing the tip of the device to his wrist, she pulled the trigger.

  She wanted to weep in relief when it finally administered the drug.

  He hadn’t said how long it would take for the effect to show.

  She wanted him to sit up instantly like with a shot of adrenaline in a movie.

  Instead he lay as still as before. For a long time she stood there, stroking each of his knuckles and petting the delicate webbing between each of his fingers.

  “Please wake up. Please, Whar,” she whispered and pressed her cheek to the back of his hand. “I promise I won’t pressure you into anything again. I would be happy to be your friend. I just want to be a part of your life. However you’ll have me. You’re interesting and intelligent and clever and fun. You can’t really blame me for being attracted to you. I love you. My untouchable one.”

  She’d said it.

  She’d confessed her feelings for him aloud.

  She loved him.

  Sure, he wasn’t awake or aware to hear it, but she felt better putting her emotions into words. “Unrequited love really sucks, but you’re worth it. Just come back to me.”

  Remembering her own dose, she slid the second vial home and administered it. There was hardly even a sting as the clear liquid shot through the device and into her arm.

  She didn’t feel any better right away, either. It would just take a little time to run through their systems.

  He’d told her that he would wake when the medication went into effect.

  She pulled the blanket around herself and lay down on one of the beds. It was small and not very comfortable, but hopefully it wouldn’t take long for the cure to work.

  He would wake her in a few hours and they would laugh about this whole thing.

  He did not wake.

  A female voice did.

  Her words echoed from some micro speaker or other device in the room. She had a rich, sultry tone but wasn’t speaking English. As Darcy roused from her restless sleep, she thought she was still dreaming. None of the words made sense and as wakefulness slowly descended, she realized it must be an alien trying to contact Wharkuz because the only thing that made any sort of sense to her was, “Whar-Whar?”

  Was that a pet name?

  Darcy did not like the ugly emotion that crawled up her throat. She was not going to get all jealous that some female was cooing at Wharkuz using a sexy pet name.

  The woman tittered a delightful giggling on the other end of the speaker. Great, she sounded sexy, sultry, cheerful and cute, too? It just wasn’t fair when she felt like the floor of a movie theater—stinky and stinky with fever sweat. She was in no condition to deal with this level of cute.

  “Whar-Whar?” the voice purred and then fell silent before demanding, “Wharie!”

  “All right, Wharkuz, stop playing with the samples and pay attention to me.” The woman laughed in delight and hummed into the microphone. “I know you’re there, you just sent a report like a minute ago. It’s your Jess-Jess. Come tell me how badly I messed up my pronunciations. I thought you wou—”

  Darcy sat up, rubbing her eyes, and saw the monitor floating above the console she’d used to send the report. Apparently she was now in view of a camera, because the woman’s voice had cut off mid-word.

  They stared at each other in the glow of the screen. Darcy expected to see a beautifully exotic alien who looked like Wharkuz, but a human woman sat there, mouth agape, much as hers must be. She looked to be in her mid twenties at the most, with long, straight brown hair and vibrant blue eyes.

  Oh god!

  It was the woman in the display.

  Well, this was uncomfortable. She knew what Jess-Jess’s breasts looked like and that the carpet matched the drapes, so to speak. And that she went for the Bermuda Triangle waxing style.

  Awkward.

  Jess-Jess’s cheerful smile faded. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  All thoughts of seeing the woman naked only a few hours earlier evaporated. Better to just focus on the facts at hand.

  A second woman came into the screen. She was a mirror image of the first woman. They were not only twins but they had styled their hair the same way. Even their makeup was hardly distinguishable. It was really weird. Darcy’s dirty mind considered they might have the same waxing fashion.

  What was wrong with her?

  “Who is t
hat?” the twin demanded in the same tone and level of hostility. “Where’s our Wharie?”

  Her chest tightened and she couldn’t draw air into her lungs. Their Wharie? Theirs? The depth of the possessiveness from both of them made her jerk back from the console.

  Jess-Jess lunged forward, her face taking up the full screen, teeth bared, brows lowered and eyes furious. “If you’ve done anything to him, I swear to god, we will be down there so fast you—”

  “He’s sick,” she explained, cutting her off, afraid she might start foaming at the mouth in her tirade.

  “Sick? How is he sick? Why is he sick?” Twin number two asked, pushing Jess-Jess back so she could peer into the camera. There as a disturbing amount of disbelief and accusation in her sharp tone. “You’re not with the Enforcement, are you?”

  Hopefully they wouldn’t change places. She’d never be able to tell them apart. “Just like I said, he got sick. I don’t know what the enforcement is, so no, I’m not part of that.” Though a cold chill ran through her as the memory of the men in suits who had beat her up. The whole reason she was here in the lab. She wasn’t going to share that information with these women, though. Not with their attitude toward her. “Didn’t you get the report? I sent it awhile go.” Stupid place, not having any sort of time measuring devices. It had to be over an hour.

  “No idea. I’m a lover, not a scientist,” Jess-Jess said as she pulled her sister back. With a little twist of her lips, she looked Darcy up and down. “We need to see our little Wharie. Wake him up and get his ass in here,” Jess-Jess demanded and snapped her fingers. “Quick and in a hurry.”

  If Darcy could switch off the connection, she would. “You’re not hearing me. I told you he’s sick.”

  “And you’re not getting it that we don’t believe you.”

  It was twin two who put a hand out to stop Jess-Jess from saying anything more. She’d stopped giving Darcy the death-stare and was looking at her searchingly. “Wait a second. I know you.” She tugged at her sister’s sleeve. “Don’t you see who it is? It’s Jeffrey Huntaur’s cousin. What’s-her-name.”