Tarkken

by Annabelle Rex

  “There’s no ‘only’ about it, Dad,” Marta said, a little choked up herself. “And I’d be so proud of you.”

  She drew him into a hug, leaning in to it this time, rather than just tolerating it for his sake. And it felt nice. It felt like maybe, just maybe, he’d turned a corner.

  “Not interrupting, are we?” a voice drawled from the doorway.

  A voice with a distinctive Irish lilt.

  Marta’s spine stiffened, but Piotr was all casual confusion as he released her, looking past her to the intruder.

  “Who are you and why are you in my room?” he said, affable, but with a hint of edge.

  Marta tried to school her expression blank as she turned to see Nick Gillespie standing in her father’s room. He glanced at her, but didn’t seem to be interested, returning his attention to Piotr. Ethan stood behind him, grinning. His gaze did fix on Marta, travelling up and down her body in a way that made her feel dirty, as if the stink of him could be transferred to her, just by the lust in his eyes.

  Marta sneered at him. She couldn’t help herself.

  “I’m the friend that Ethan here wanted to introduce you to,” Nick said, his tone calm, almost jolly, even as his eyes flashed hard, bright annoyance. “You didn’t come to my little get together last night, Piotr, I was wondering why that was?”

  Piotr shrugged, either completely unaware of who Nick was, or unconcerned about the danger he presented. “I have already been arrested with Ethan once. I’d like not to be arrested with him again. I think perhaps I don’t want to be his friend any more.”

  He looked to Marta as he said it, smiling. She would have been happy, proud of him, if she hadn’t been so busy being terrified.

  Nick cast a glance between them. Marta didn’t know how much he’d heard of their conversation before announcing his presence, but hoped it was enough to know Piotr was being sincere.

  “And who is this, your daughter?” Nick said.

  “Yes.”

  “Pretty girl,” Nick said with a creeper smile. “You must be very proud of her.”

  Marta felt rather than saw her father relaxing, panic making her throat tight. He thought the conversation was done, any danger gone.

  “She’s a good girl,” Piotr said. “Looks after her old man.”

  “And you look after her, too?” Nick said, eyes like flint. “You’d do anything for your little girl?”

  “Yes,” Piotr said.

  “Then do this for her, Piotr. Forget Ethan, forget me, and forget your invitation to my club. You’ve never met me, you’ve never heard of the Starbright Lounge. Is that quite clear, Piotr? Because the thing is, if I catch wind that you’ve been talking to anyone, especially anyone in the police, then I’m going to find your daughter here and cut her face until she isn’t quite so pretty any more. Do you understand me?”

  Silence held between them all for a long, painful moment.

  “I don’t know who you are,” Piotr said. “I don’t think it will be hard to forget you.”

  Marta winced, fearing he’d been too glib, too casual. But Nick nodded, apparently satisfied.

  “Good,” he said. “Glad we have an understanding.”

  And maybe things might have ended there. He might have carried on walking as he turned towards the door, left the house and gone on his way.

  If Marta’s phone hadn’t chosen that moment to ring.

  Her phone, where she’d put it on the chest of drawers right by where Nick was standing. An irritating buzzing noise cutting through the quiet and drawing everyone’s attention.

  Marta’s heart dropped as Nick turned to the device, picking it up.

  “Phone’s ringing,” he said, a dark look coming into his eyes as he turned and stared at her. “I think it’s for you.”

  Maybe, maybe if at any point in the past six months, she had changed his contact to his actual name, she might have got away with it. Sure Tarkken didn’t sound like an English name, but maybe Nick might have dismissed it as Eastern European, maybe it wouldn’t have caught his attention. So many little things that might have saved her.

  But Marta hadn’t changed his contact, so when Nick turned the screen towards her, she knew already what the words on it would be, and that they had doomed her.

  Grumpy Security Alien Calling

  Chapter 13

  THE PHONE STOPPED RINGING, SWITCHING TO the lock screen, a little message announcing the missed call. Behind it, her second doom - a picture of her and Asha together.

  “Your daughter keeps interesting company,” Nick said.

  Marta stood before Piotr could say anything.

  “Leave him out of it, he doesn’t know anything,” she said.

  Ethan looked confused, but Nick just raised his eyebrows.

  “And where is your little friend right now? I’ve not seen or heard anything for a few days.”

  “A long way away from you,” Marta said, grateful for that, at least.

  Nick smirked. “But she’ll come back. Not done trying to convert the masses to their little program. How much is she getting paid, by the way, to pretend to be all loved up with an alien?”

  He’d taken a step closer to her. Marta tried to keep her back straight, her head high. If this was how she was going out, she at least wanted to be able to say she kept her head held high.

  “You know what your problem is, Nicky?” she said, daring to look him straight in the eye. “You’re one of those guys who’s so loved up on himself, you can’t even conceive that a woman might willingly choose someone of another species over a guy like you.”

  The blow came so fast, she didn’t have any time to brace for it, striking her across the face with enough force to knock her to the floor. The pain didn’t start immediately, blooming across her cheek a moment later, building and building until her whole face throbbed with it.

  Hands on her shoulders, drawing her up. Her father. Yelling. She wanted to tell him to shut up and back off, to not get dragged down with her, but her brain was too rattled to form words.

  And then there were more hands on her, hauling her up and out of the house. Past a surprised Lukas, who rushed after them, making protesting sounds that Marta couldn’t quite resolve into words, but he grabbed her arm and tried to pull her back.

  A click, and suddenly, everything sharpened into clarity. Focused by the sight of the gun in Nick’s hand. A gun she knew would be loaded.

  “Breathe a word of any of this to anyone, and I’ll come back and shoot you,” Nick said to Lukas. “Now let her go.”

  He did. Marta tried to catch his eye, to tell him that it was okay. She didn’t blame him. But before she could, she was forced into the back of a car, her father after her, the doors locking as soon as they closed. Marta raised a hand to her face, fingers brushing over tender skin. It would bruise, she thought, badly.

  If she lived long enough.

  By the time they pulled up by the Starbright Lounge, the pain in Marta’s cheek had settled to a low, ignorable throb. As Nick pulled her from the car, she made a great show of staggering, casting her eyes around, looking in all directions. Tarkken had mentioned that the police were going to put cameras up, though she didn’t know where. She just hoped she’d given someone a really good look at her face.

  Nick yanked her forwards, taking her down into the club. With the lights on, the place looked far more miserable than it had the night before - the filth obvious, the wear and tear of the furniture, the decorations, the floors, everything laid bare. It was a depressing, dirt room without the music and the darkness to hide it.

  And you are going to die here.

  Marta tried not to linger on that thought. It wasn’t a very glamorous end.

  Nick marched them straight to the secret door, and for a beautiful moment, Marta’s mind flashed back to Tarkken. Pressing her lips against his for the first time. The abandon with which he’d responded.

  As he brought them in to one of the back rooms - his meeting room, she suspected, for it h
ad a few chairs scattered around a small table - her phone rang again, vibrating in Nick’s hand. He watched the screen, amusement and rage warring on his face.

  “If I don’t answer that, he’s going to start wondering what’s going on,” Marta said, sitting in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the room to him before her legs gave out.

  “If I let you answer it, you’re going to tell him where we are,” Nick said, lowering himself into a chair and setting her phone on the table in front of him, before reaching round the back of his trousers to pull out the gun and set that down beside it.

  “I don’t know where we are,” Marta said, allowing her panic and fear into her voice, hoping it covered the lie. “And even if I did, do you think I’d want to bring him anywhere near you?”

  She looked at the gun on the table. Nick ran his fingers along it like a caress.

  “Let my daughter go,” Piotr said. “You can have me, let her go.”

  “I’m not interested in you, Piotr. So sit down and shut up.”

  “Dad,” Marta said, not taking her eyes off Nick or the gun. “Do what he says.”

  Nick smiled. “Good girl.”

  Her phone, which had stopped ringing, started again. Nick glanced at it.

  “He is persistent. Perhaps you’re right. Tell him to go home. Tell him you’ll call him back later. You tell him anything else and I’ll shoot your father. Understood?”

  “Yes,” Marta said, trying not to wince as Nick sat beside her and held the phone to her ear.

  “Hey, everything going alright with your Dad?” Tarkken asked, and Marta could have sobbed for the sound of his voice.

  “Yeah, fine. Sorry, we were busy doing one of the applications. Didn’t hear my phone ring the first time.”

  “He’s actually going for it, then? That’s great. I’ve got an update for you, too.”

  “I think we’re going to be a while here,” Marta said, interrupting him before he could say anything else. She didn’t think anyone in the room had a translator besides her, but she wasn’t going to risk it. “Sorry, I know we said we’d get pizza, but I really want to keep going here while we’ve got some momentum.”

  “Marta?” Tarkken said. “What’s…”

  “Can we rain check for tomorrow? You should head back to the Station before the drivers finish for the day. Oh, and before you leave mine, would you mind feeding Muffin for me? The cat food is in the cupboard over the sink.”

  Tarkken was quiet for a moment. “I take from the fact that you’re not making any sense, that you’re in some sort of trouble?”

  He kept his voice low enough that she didn’t think even Nick would have been able to hear.

  “Yes, that’s right. One of the wet food pouches. Thank you so much. I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye.”

  Nick took the phone away from her ear, ending the call.

  “Muffin?” he said.

  She nodded at her phone. “My cat.”

  Nick turned the phone over in his hands, rolling his eyes.

  He sat for a moment, then leaned forwards, waving the phone at her. For a horrible moment, Marta thought he might demand she unlocked it and start scrolling through her pictures, where the images of him picking up a box of bullets would be waiting for him to find, but he didn’t, just slipped it in to his pocket.

  “I’m going to have a think about this,” he said. “And when I’m good and ready, you will be calling him back for me. Just as soon as we’ve set up a nice little trap.”

  They didn’t tie them up, for that Marta could be grateful. But they were moved from the meeting room to a dingy little store cupboard, the door locked behind them, barely enough light creeping through the narrow strip of glass in it to see by. There wasn’t anyone left guarding the door, but people walked past often enough that Marta knew there wouldn’t be time to try escaping between them.

  If she could even get the door unlocked from the inside.

  Frustration and fear threatened to overwhelm her. She could hack her way through security systems in her sleep, but present her with a locked door and she was useless.

  “Marta,” her father said, his voice soft, worried. “Are you badly hurt?”

  She’d been expecting a question about what the hell was going on. The fact that his first thought was for her welfare made tears pool in her eyes.

  “I’m okay, Dad,” she said. “Stings like a bitch, but I don’t think he broke anything.”

  “My darling girl,” he said, pulling her into an embrace.

  “I’m sorry, Dad, I screwed up,” she said.

  “No, no. That man was at my house because of me. But… how do you know him? You don’t mix with his type?”

  “I don’t know him. I know his face. He tried to hurt some friends of mine.”

  “Alien friends?”

  “Yeah.”

  He remained silent for a moment. “Your policeman?”

  “Is not a policeman.”

  “But he is an alien?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  He drew back from her, taking in her words, sitting with them a moment. Then he nodded.

  “You think he will come for you?” he said, keeping his voice low. “You warned him. Before. On the phone.”

  Surprise filled her. “How did you…”

  “You don’t have a cat called Muffin,” he said. “When you were a little girl, you always said you would call your cat Mouse.”

  Sometimes, his recall of these details surprised her. But sometimes she thought she was trapped in his memory, forever a little girl of eight. A little girl who used to draw pictures of her imaginary pets and tell him their names.

  “Yes, I warned him. And yes, he’ll come for me,” she said, unsure where her conviction had come from. “So all we have to do is stay quiet, and not give them any trouble, and when the cavalry arrives, try not to get ourselves killed.”

  It was maybe an hour before Marta heard the first shouts and bangs. Which meant Tarkken had moved fast.

  Marta felt a glimmer of hope. There was no way in an hour that Nick Gillespie and his cronies could have organised anything concrete, especially as they had no idea anyone was coming.

  She could hear them now, frantic footsteps as people ran past their little cupboard, shouting and cursing. She kept low, not going near the sliver of glass in the door, not wanting to remind anyone that she and Piotr were there.

  He took her hand and squeezed it, but didn’t make any move, apparently of the same mind.

  Then the door banged open, and Marta looked up into the barrel of a gun.

  “Get up,” Nick said, jerking the gun.

  Marta swallowed hard and got to her feet, Piotr rising beside her.

  “Out. Now.” Nick’s face twisted with rage, blinded by anger.

  They stepped into the corridor, both of them keeping their eyes on the gun. Nick just stared at them for a long moment, and Marta wondered if he had thought further ahead than coming for them.

  From the way he stared blankly at them both, as if not even sure why they were there, she didn’t think he had. And that terrified her.

  “Move,” he said, gesturing for her to start walking.

  Marta did not want to turn her back on him, but he also appeared to only be speaking to her, her father forgotten in the haze of his rage. She flicked her eyes in Piotr’s direction, imploring him to stay where he was, to not follow after them, to keep himself safe. But as soon as Marta turned and started walking, she heard two sets of footsteps follow behind her.

  “How did they know you were here?” Nick demanded, pressing the gun to her bruised cheek. “It’s the translator, isn’t it? It’s a tracking device. They track your whereabouts through that device they’ve been injecting in our heads.”

  You’re mad, she thought. Completely raving mad.

  Perhaps he always had been, or perhaps losing his wife had pushed him over a precipice he’d been dangerously close to. Either way, Marta allowed him to steer her through the corridors, out
into the body of the club, too terrified to try to resist him as long as the cold touch of the gun barrel remained against her cheek.

  The dance floor was full of armed response officers, bulky black body armour and helmets making them look anonymous, robotic. Their guns all angled in her direction, but pointed to the floor the moment they saw Marta in Nick’s arms. Marta’s gaze tracked past them to the Intergalactic Security Team, also arrayed against Nick, as unlike the armed response officers as they were each other. And in the middle of them, reading all her terror, was Tarkken, looking stricken as Nick manoeuvred her into the centre of the room.

  “You’re going to let me go,” Nick said. “Or I’ll blow her face off.”

  A negotiator launched into a discussion with him, but Marta didn’t hear any of it, her eyes locked on Tarkken.

  She never got attached to people. Never wanted more than a night from them. But the thought that she wouldn’t get to spend another moment in Tarkken’s arms hit her with far more force than Nick Gillespie’s fist.

  And then Tarkken stepped forwards, brushing a finger over the back of his ear to switch off his translator, shaking off the officer who tried to grab him and pull him back. He stepped forwards out into the no man’s land between Nick and the gathered troops and said, quiet, calm:

  “I’m the one you want.”

  Marta could have sworn her heart stopped beating for a full minute, but in truth, adrenaline and terror probably stretched out the seconds that passed between Tarkken’s words and Nick’s response.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “My name is Tarkken H’Arran. I’m the head of Station security. I’m also responsible for administering the Match program.”

  Marta didn’t think that was true. She knew he had some involvement - ran the security checks on any Humans who got Matched, made sure there weren’t any issues - but that was as far as it went. His words had an instant effect on Nick Gillespie, though. Marta felt his muscles tense, the arm pinning her to him tightening, his breath coming in faster, shorter bursts.