“—is Caeorleian vessel, Captain Fieo. We are responding to a distress call from two abducted citizens of our planet. If you are receiving this message, please respond.”
“Is this one speaking the trustworthy ones you one speak of?”
I sagged in relief. “Yes.”
Yaseke had said that the Collectors could be trusted, and even though I was leery, we didn’t have many options. I shook Yaseke’s shoulder.
“Hey, tziu, wake up.”
“Huh?” Yaseke sat up and rubbed his eyes. “What?”
“The Collector leader says a Caeorleian ship is orbiting the planet above us. It said it can get us aboard somehow. I heard the recording from the ship. Fieo’s the captain. I think it’s safe.”
Yaseke’s eyes widened. “They’re here? Really?”
I nodded.
“Oh thank God!” He lunged at me, and I caught him. He shook in my arms. I shushed him and stroked his back, hugging him close.
“Dade?” Maerit’s voice was uncertain.
“Hey, little man. It’s okay.”
He’d pushed himself up and was looking at us, his bottom lip clenched tight in his teeth. I held out one arm, waiting for him to decide what he wanted to do. He hesitated for a minute but then scrambled up and into our laps.
“Guess what? We’re going home,” Yaseke told him.
“Will our family be there?”
Yaseke closed his eyes for a minute, and I rocked them both. He took a deep breath and then opened his eyes, staring right into the pale amber eyes that looked way too big and serious in Maerit’s small face. “I’m sorry, Maerit, but your parents are gone. But… if you want, you can stay with us.”
We’d talked about it during some of the rest breaks while the children slept. Yaseke had been isolated from most of his family. He didn’t know if there would be anyone to take Maerit and Pira once we got back. I’d never expected to have a family, but they needed somewhere to go and for someone to want them.
Yaseke wanted them, and I wanted my tziu happy. Besides, they’d grown on me too. Pira was so sweet, and Maerit was stronger than any boy his age I’d ever met—myself included.
“Really?” Maerit looked up at me.
“Yes, really,” I said.
Maerit squirmed off our laps. “Pira, Pira! Wake up! We’re going home with Yaseke and Dade. They just said so.” He shook her arm. “Wake up, Pira!”
The little girl rolled over. Her poor little lips were cracked, and she still looked exhausted, but she smiled. “Good.” She closed her eyes again.
Yaseke frowned. “We need to get her to the ship and under a bio net so she can get better.”
The aliens had been silent while we talked, but the leader finally interrupted us. “These ones can lead you ones to the transportation chamber now if you ones are ready to go.”
I gathered Pira in my arms and stood. Maerit took his place between Yaseke and me, holding Yaseke’s hand.
“We’re ready,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
There’s a lot I’d seen and done in my years… but I’d never been hit with a pink light, dissolved, and been projected onto a tiny spaceship soaring through the vastness of space—and lived.
“Oh fuck,” I groaned. Maerit gagged over and over. My stomach roiled in sympathy, but we didn’t have enough fluid left in our parched bodies to vomit. It’d feel better if we could. Yaseke held Pira in his arms. His isitziu were so pale they were barely visible against the pallor of his body. Pira’s head lolled back over his arm, and she whimpered.
“Freeze.” A guard in one of those combat suits held a weapon on us where we knelt together. I snarled at him, turning sideways to cover Maerit and block the man’s aim at Yaseke and Pira.
“Get that weapon off my tziu and these children, right now!” I demanded over the vibrating alarm. The flashing strobe light in the room wasn’t helping my nausea, either. Yaseke groaned. I wished our weapons had been able to transfer along with us, but our guide had explained nothing but our bodies would travel their way.
We were naked as the day we were born, and I felt just as vulnerable. There was no way I’d ever get used to being around other people this way.
I looked at Yaseke when he groaned again. His eyes were huge, his amber irises dulled and surrounded by white, fear warring with the utter exhaustion I could see dragging him down. He swallowed repeatedly. “Close your eyes. Maybe that will help with the disorientation,” I said. If that guard didn’t lower his weapon, he was going to see how little dizziness would stop me from taking him down. I glared at him. “Where’s Fieo?”
Running footsteps echoed down the metal corridor behind him. Fieo and two other guards came rushing up behind the one still holding his weapon out.
“Dade? Yaseke?” Fieo gaped at us.
“Yes. Now could you get this idiot to stop pointing his gun at us? We’re holding children!”
“Sumpen!” The guard snapped his gaze to Fieo. “Lower your weapon, now.” He was reluctant to listen but finally lowered the barrel and pointed it at the ground.
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically. Exhaustion made my movements sluggish, but I slowly hefted Maerit into my arms.
“How did you get here? Where did you come from? We thought you crashed on the planet.” Fieo looked around the hanger bay we were in. “I didn’t clear any shuttle landing, nor do I see any that’s not ours.”
“That’s because there isn’t any.”
Fieo’s eyebrows drew down and he frowned. “Then how—”
“We need to get these guys to your medical bay, now. The children are dehydrated and exhausted. Pira really needs help.”
“Of course.” He gestured for the two guards with him to come forward. “Let us help you up.”
They went to Yaseke, and Fieo leaned down and put his hand around my bicep. Strong curiosity and a burning need distracted me.
I jerked back. “Whoa!”
The burst of emotion that slammed into me from Fieo’s touch shocked me. It had only been a few days, but somehow I’d forgotten about my problem with touch. Yaseke and the children didn’t affect me like that.
It was a struggle to control my breathing and stand up, but I managed, only staggering a little as I got my balance. “I’m fine. Just… let me do it. I can carry him.” Fieo had stepped forward to take Maerit, but I wasn’t going to let anyone else take him. I certainly didn’t want Fieo trying to help me again.
By the time we reached the other side of the ship, I was about to admit defeat, though it would mean prying Maerit’s small arms from around my neck. My legs felt like rubber, and my arms shook. I hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time in days. My tongue was thick in my mouth, and the slight coolness of the ship felt downright freezing on my sunburned skin. I hadn’t been this exhausted in a very long time.
“Put him there,” the doctor said. He was already working, tapping on a screen over the bed where Yaseke had put Pira down. The shimmer of a bio net shone over her.
I laid Maerit down, and he looked up at me. “Don’t go,” he whispered. He bit his lip, showing one small fang. “Please. You said we could stay with you.”
His begging just about broke my heart. I could tell he was scared. “You’re safe. I need to talk to that man over there, but I won’t leave, okay? I promise, when we get back to Caeorleia, you can go with Yaseke and me back to our quarters. For now, you need to let this doctor take a look at you and make you feel better.” The doctor was walking toward us.
“Promise?”
“Yes, I promise.” I felt bad—the young boy, who shouldn’t be afraid of being abandoned at his age, was clearly scared even though he was with his own people. Anger shot through me, but I hid it. It would only confuse Maerit if I seemed angry, and it wasn’t his fault that he’d been betrayed by people who should’ve protected him.
Buphet had a lot to answer for when he was found—before I gutted him like the worm he was.
Yaseke was wobbling on h
is feet. I went over to him and cupped his cheek. “You need to get on a table and let the doctor check you out too. You’re exhausted, and we’re all dehydrated.” I stroked the dark blue bruises under his eyes and along his nose. “And you need to have this fixed. I hate seeing you hurt.”
He reached up and grabbed my hands, turning them over and exposing my palms. “I’m not the only one hurt.” The cuts on my palms were filthy and raw.
“I’ve had worse.”
“Still….”
“If it makes you feel better, I’m just going to talk to Fieo for a few minutes. You guys need help first, and then I’ll let the doctors look at me.” I didn’t want to. It was actually the last thing I wanted. I still didn’t like doctors or trust them.
While I talked to my tziu, I’d stayed angled so I could keep an eye on the doctor working on the screen next to Maerit’s bed. For Yaseke I would do it. Besides, if I was going to help hunt Buphet down, I needed to be healthy.
Leading Yaseke over to the third couch, I urged him up and helped him lie back. He groaned. “I’m so tired.”
“Close your eyes and sleep, tziu. You’re safe here.”
I waited until his eyes slid shut before I left to go talk to Fieo. He was standing back by the door, his arms folded over his wide chest.
“Question away.”
He indicated a chair. “How about you sit down before you fall down.”
Fieo had a point. I barely kept myself from collapsing when I sat down. The chair was a lot lower than it looked. The impact shot up my spine, and I grunted.
“You look rough, Dade. What happened?”
“Buphet.” I spat his name out as if it tasted as rotten as the man was himself. It certainly left a bad taste in my mouth. “Vlrsessiums captured us and took us off-planet in one of their ships. We overcame them, through some luck and their own stupidity”—I wasn’t going to mention my changes or the way I’d killed the Vlrsessiums—“but the ship crashed on that planet.”
“But how did you get here? We were going to send a shuttle down, once we’d scanned the planet, but we found no life signs.”
“The planet is inhabited.”
Fieo looked skeptical. “How is that possible? Even with the bio net in place, scanners register life on Caeorleia. That planet appeared completely barren.”
“How were we on the planet, but you couldn’t find us? They must have some way to make it seem like there is no one there.”
“You’re not making much sense.” Fieo shook his head. “Who?”
“We met the Collectors.”
Fieo jerked back. “The Collectors?” His voice dropped to a whispery hum. “Really?”
“They were there. In agreement for answering their questions about what the humans did to me, they said they’d help get us back to Caeorleia. They shared your message with us so we could hear you were looking for us, asked a ton of questions, and then took us to a chamber where they sent us here. Via a cloud of pink light.”
Fieo sank back in his chair. “I’ve never heard of anyone who actually met the Collectors. No one real, anyway.”
“They exist. They are… strange, but the things we glimpsed on our way to the chamber where they sent us here were just like any other people—eating, working, playing.” I shook my head. “The technology they have is beyond anything I’ve ever seen. They could easily have hidden their presence on the planet, if I understood even half of the technology they had. That’s why no one can ever find them if they don’t want to be found.
“All I know is that we were sent here, somehow. It was like a bright pink cloud that surrounded us, then I couldn’t feel or hear anything. There was a sudden wrenching feeling and we were on the ship.”
“Excuse me.”
The doctor’s approach startled me. I was more exhausted than I’d expected, if I’d lost track of him. I’d kept an eye on him while he had stood over Yaseke, but then he’d moved away, and I’d gotten distracted talking to Fieo.
He reached for my arm, and I jerked out of my chair. “Don’t touch me.”
“I need to treat your injuries.”
“Without touching me.”
The doctor, a small man with a thin mouth and dark eyes, glared at me. “You want me to treat you—without touching you?”
I nodded.
“Whatever you say. I don’t have another bed for you. A portable unit will manage the nutrition issues and cuts on your hands, if you’ll sit in the chair and let me do my job.”
Wary, I reluctantly took my seat.
Fieo stood up. “I’m going to com Seral and tell him we’re on our way back. It should take a day or so to travel. The children….”
I watched the doctor as he arranged the portable machine on a table. “Are coming with us. Their parents are dead, Fieo. Until I can be sure they have people to protect them, they’ll stay near Yaseke and me. Buphet tried to sell them into slavery. Children!” Those kids were completely helpless, but they’d trusted me to keep them safe. I’d already grown attached to them. “I won’t let anyone hurt them again.”
“There’s a lot we don’t know about what he was doing. We thought when you went missing that you were Buphet’s target, not Yaseke.” Fieo sighed. “I’ll ask Seral to look into his family.”
The portable bio net shimmered over the table. I knew it was time to let the doctor fix me up. My skin crawled as I prepared myself.
I hated doctors.
“Let me know what Seral says about Buphet and Yaseke’s family.” I fought back a yawn.
“Hands out, please.” The doctor pushed the table toward me as Fieo left.
Reluctantly I extended my arms into the bio net, letting them rest on the table. I felt the bio net lock down and hold me in place. The muscles in my shoulders bunched and I struggled not to panic and hyperventilate.
“It won’t take long.”
Cold infused my hands and spread up my arms. My whole body tensed as the feeling spread like a thin coat of ice over every inch of me from the inside out. The doctor watched my reaction warily, tapping at the screen at the end of the table.
The power of the Caeorleian medical technology was healing me, not hurting me. I could see the cuts on my palms shrinking, pink skin taking the place of raw wounds. The pain I’d been suppressing for days faded, and my exhaustion grew as the need to maintain the block against it disappeared.
My eyelids sank down, heavier than I’d ever felt them. I struggled against it, my instincts driven to watch the doctor and make sure he kept his distance.
“Done.”
I fell out of my chair when the bio net shut off. “Damn it.” I groaned.
“Your tziu’s injuries were not severe. The bio net over him has already completed the repairs he needed and shut down. You can rest there.” The doctor’s voice wasn’t unkind, and he’d lost some of his brusque manner. “It will take a few days before you are fully better, unless you’re willing to allow a full bio-net repair.”
I shook my head. “No.” I knew it would put me out.
“You were dehydrated even more than the female young. I have no idea how you were able to remain standing, much less still be conscious.”
“Someone had to protect them. I’m stronger than they are. I was a soldier. I could take it.”
The doctor pushed the table back over to the counter and slotted it into an empty spot until it locked into a groove holding it to the wall. “You are a worthy male to protect those who are not your own. I never thought a human could be so selfless.”
“Not my own being Caeorleians, you mean? You cannot see beyond your own narrow thinking if you believe I’m just a human like the ones who attacked your planet.” I held out my hands, exposing the isitziu on my palm, now free of the cuts that had been marring it. “This mark says that I am Caeorleian, no matter what else I might be.” I pointed at Yaseke. “My mark on his chest says I’m his and he’s mine. Those children are his blood, and to me, that makes them nearly as precious as he is.”
<
br /> The doctor bowed his head, his blue isitziu paling. “I’m sorry.”
Shaking my head, I stood up on legs barely steadier than they had been before he used the bio net on me. “Apology accepted. I’m sorry I snapped at you. I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything.”
“You were right, though. I made some assumptions that were clearly false,” the doctor said thoughtfully. “I shall return in a few hours to check on the young.”
A guard stepped into the room after the doctor left. “Fieo asked me to tell you that I would be outside, if you need anything.”
“Thank you.”
When the guard left, I slid into the bed, making sure I faced the door, keeping Yaseke and the couches with the children in them at my back.
Sleep claimed me quickly.
Dade was lying next to him on the bed, he was sure of it. He had a unique scent, spicy with a hint of musk. Without a chance to bathe they were all dirty, but Yaseke still thought Dade smelled good. His body radiated warmth too, heating the left side of Yaseke’s body.
Someone walked into the room and that warmth disappeared. Yaseke opened his eyes and rolled onto his side. Dade was standing in front of him facing the guard, who jerked back a step.
“What?” Dade demanded.
“We’ve landed.”
“We’re already back at Caeorleia? Really?” Yaseke asked. He’d been asleep so long. He sat up, stretching. He felt good but grimy. He looked at the other two beds, but the young had been moved into a single bed. Maerit and Pira were curled together, still asleep.
“Yes, sir. Fieo asked me to get you. The Toleral has requested your presence.”
“I suppose showering first is out of the question.” Dade stood up straight. “How about some wraps?”
Yaseke hadn’t even thought about their nudity since they’d come aboard, but he knew his isit wasn’t comfortable standing naked in front of males.
Adverse Effects Page 19
