“What’s wrong?” Pyra asked as she tugged hard on the door with the hand that wasn’t supporting Lysander.
“It won’t open,” she said.
George stepped up beside her and repeated the process that she had gone through. The light remained red and he glanced down at Eden questioningly before pressing his finger more insistently into the reader and imputing his personal code slowly as if to make sure that the machine was getting each of the numbers accurately.
“The lock isn’t releasing,” George said. “The authorized access system has been overridden.”
“What does that mean?” Ty asked.
“It means that we can’t open the door,” Eden said.
“What?” Pyra asked, stepping forward and slamming his hand on the door. “You can’t be serious.”
Jonah stepped up beside Pyra and reached for the handle, shaking it briefly before pounding the keys on the number pad in random combinations.
“It wasn’t locked when we got here,” he said, repeating what Oro had said. “We were able to get right through.”
“How did you find us?” Eden asked, a sudden sense of concern building in her mind.
“What do you mean?” Oro asked.
“How did you find us? How did you get here?”
“We told you,” Jonah said. “The vehicle that we used has a built-in tracking system that allowed us to zero in on the shuttles that had traveled between the planets so that we were able to use the same path to get here.”
“No,” Eden said, her voice getting louder and more insistent. “Here. How did you get here? How did you find us in the laboratory? The vehicle brought you to the university, but none of you have ever been inside the laboratory buildings before. Once you were inside, how did you know where to find us?”
Oro and Jonah exchanged glances, and then looked over at Azrael and the lovely but silent winged woman who had been standing close to them since they appeared at the doorway of the lab. They all held expressions that looked as though none of them had really considered what she was asking. Oro looked back at her.
“The other doors were locked,” he said.
Eden’s heart started beating harder as she realized what was happening. She heard a low thud in the recesses of the building and some of the group turned toward it.
“The doors were locked?” Pyra asked.
“Yes,” Oro said. “We came into the building and just started trying doors. Most of them were locked, but we found some that were open. We just kept going through the open doors.”
There was another low thud, closer this time, and Eden felt prickly heat on the back of her neck.
“You didn’t think that was strange?” she asked.
Jonah shook his head.
“We weren’t thinking about it,” he said.
“All we cared about was getting to all of you,” Azrael said. “Like you said, none of us have ever been in this building. We didn’t know anything about it. We thought that maybe the doors were always locked.”
“They are,” Eden said. There was another thud and Eden reached for Pyra’s arm. “We need to go,” she said. “Now.”
She turned and started back down the hallway toward a short offshoot that she knew contained another access to the stairs that would lead them down to the main entrance of the building.
“What’s going on, Eden?” Pyra demanded.
There was another thud, so close this time that she could nearly feel it shaking through her body.
“The doors are always locked,” she said. “That’s why I had to use my access code and fingerprint to get to the lab when we got there.”
She tried the door to the stairwell and found it also locked.
“Then why were the others able to get through those doors?” Pyra asked.
“Ryan unlocked them,” Eden said. “You said that there were only a few doors unlocked,” she said, looking back at Oro. “Which ones were they?”
“The stairwells that led up,” Jonah told her. “Every other floor we were able to get onto the floor and we would go down the hallway until we found another door that was open and follow that stairwell. We kept doing it until we heard your voices and then we just went toward them.”
Eden handed Lysander to Pyra and pushed through the rest of the group so that she could run down the hallway toward another door.
“Why does it matter?” Gyyx asked.
“The laboratory was designed so that there are limited paths to each location within it. You can’t just go from one place to another. You have to know which doors lead to which areas of the building. They created it that way to protect the labs and the research going on in them. The original building was much simpler, but scientists and their assistants were breaking into each other’s labs and stealing research or sabotaging experiments. They redesigned the entire building and ensured that each person only has access to specific areas of the building.”
Eden pulled on another door and it finally opened. Behind her she could hear another of the low thuds. She knew that it was the sound of the locking mechanisms within the doors somewhere in the building opening and that the only reason that that would be happening was that someone was coming through them.
Chapter Two
Pyra followed Eden through the doorway and down the narrow stairs that led into near darkness beneath them. He could hear the fear in her voice when she was talking about the doors and the fact that she had handed him their son made him worry that there was something seriously wrong that she hadn’t yet told them.
“But how were they open when Oro and the others got here, but they are locked now?” he asked.
Eden shook her head as she approached a door and pulled on it only to find that like the others it was locked.
“Ryan must have gained access to the master controls of the locks. He left the specific path of doors that would lead to his lab unlocked so that they would find us.”
“But why?” George asked. “He already had Lysander and Zsilvia and me. You already knew how to get to the lab and would get there with your personal codes. He admitted that he wanted Lysander and to have us as a backup breeding couple. Wouldn’t he want to prevent others from getting to us?”
“Not if he wanted to make sure that we were all vulnerable,” Eden said.
“I don’t understand,” Pyra said. “We got out. We got him in the tank and we got away.”
“We got away from the lab itself, yes,” Eden said, pulling on another door until it opened. “But we haven’t been able to get out of the building. Ryan said that the others are on Penthos and then Oro and the others came here and told us the same thing.”
“He knew that they would come,” Pyra said.
Eden stepped through the door and he followed her to the top of a stairwell leading further down into the building.
“At least he thought that they might. He knew that if there was going to be some way that they knew that we were here and in danger, however that was going to be, at least some of them would come for us. He made sure that those doors were left unlocked and that the rest weren’t so that anyone who did come would be able to find us easily.”
The next door that she tried opened out onto a hallway and she rushed down it. Some of the warriors followed behind while others went in the other direction, running down the opposite side of the darkened hallway pulling on the doors as they went to get them through the process more quickly. Gyyx called out to them from nearly the end of the hallway and they rushed toward him.
“Does anyone have a lightstick?” Pyra asked.
One of the warriors handed a lightstick to Pyra and he activated it. Holding it over his head to cast the light through the open doorway now in front of them, he saw that they were standing at the base of a staircase leading up.
“We just went down two flights,” Gyyx said. “Why are we going up now?”
Eden shook her head and they started up the stairs.
“But we captured him,” Ty pointed out
. “I still don’t understand the doors being unlocked and then then being locked again. And I thought that your personal code and fingerprint would unlock the doors that you were authorized to access. Why aren’t they working now?”
“Ryan must have overridden the system,” Eden told him. “Like I said, he planned for this. He planned for others to come. Remember that in the end what he really wants is Maxim and Kyven. The more people that he could get away from Penthos and then the more of us that he could eliminate before we had the opportunity to get back to the planet, the less of a chance there would be that we would be able to protect them from him. He might be completely deranged, but Ryan is not dumb. He knows that the Denynso are fiercely protective and that any allies that they build are going to be just as determined and driven. That is the primary reason he wanted to use them as the basis for his soldiers.”
“He wants to offer up my sons to the slaughter,” Aegeus said.
The sound of the Klimnu voice still made Pyra’s skin crawl, but he fought to withhold the reaction. He knew that this man wasn’t like the other creatures that he had encountered during the years of battle or that had nearly taken his mate from him so soon after he found her. Though his skin was grisly white and his body skeletal and misshapen, Aegeus was not the enemy that the Denynso had always perceived the Klimnu to be. In truth, he was as much a victim of the horror of the Klimnu as the Denynso. The creatures had threatened and attacked the Denynso kind, tearing their bodies and in some cases claiming their lives. At the end of the battles, though, they were able to return to their compound. They could walk away from the attacks and put them behind them, living the moments of their lives between the encounters with the creatures without the feeling of their breath on their skin or their eyes burning into theirs.
Aegeus didn’t have that luxury. He was victimized in a way that Pyra couldn’t even begin to imagine. The man, once a warrior so strong and powerful that even Creia respected his name, had been reduced to nothing more than a vessel. He could never escape the grotesque reality of the Klimnu. Their breath was the breath that filled his lungs and their gaze burned from his eyes. He could never walk away or put the clash with the Klimnu behind him. They had claimed his body and torn into his soul. Ryan had tried to claim his life in a way even more gruesome and horrifying than the deaths that some of the Denynso had faced. It was Aegeus, though, who had found victory over them. His body had changed, but his mind and heart had persevered.
Pyra saw Eden slow on the steps and look over her shoulder at Aegeus. Her eyes were filled with emotion as she nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “If we can’t make our way back to Penthos to help them and they can’t get to the others on Uoria, that is exactly what is going to happen.”
“But Ryan is in the tank,” George said. “He’s chained there.”
Eden got to the top of the stairs and Pyra saw her rest her hand on the handle, hesitating for a moment as if she wasn’t fully prepared to open the door and see what was waiting just beyond it. Finally, she opened it, revealing a small storage room. She rushed into it and he followed her through it back into the lab where they had faced Ryan. The warriors streamed inside and they immediately turned their attention to the tank where they had chained Ryan. It was empty.
“He’s gone,” Eden said, sounding desperate.
“He released the chains,” Loralia said from behind Pyra, her voice weak. “I thought that they would hold him.”
Pyra turned to see Bannack’s arms wrapped around his mate, trying to comfort her.
“It’s alright, Loralia,” Eden said. “It’s alright.”
“He’s gone!” Loralia shouted. “We don’t know where he is.”
The warriors suddenly erupted in shouts, and Pyra held out his hand to silence them.
“Be quiet!” he yelled. “You are doing exactly what he wants. He wants us to go against each other so that we are more vulnerable. We have to stay together and stay strong.”
There was a sudden loud crash and Pyra looked up to see the door of the laboratory standing open. Four figures stepped in, each cloaked in the long black robes of the Valdicians. By their varying size and shape, however, Pyra guessed that these were not actually more of the creatures that had captured Creia on Uoria, but a few of the hybrids that Ryan had created. The lead warrior carefully handed his tiny son down to Eden and guided her back behind him without taking his eyes off the creatures that were slowly approaching them across the lab. Pyra could feel the other men around him tightening as they took hold of their weapons and prepared themselves for the conflict about to happen.
“Where do we go?” the winged woman who had come along with Oro and Jonah asked softly.
The group stepped in closer together as the Denynso warriors, Azrael, Aegeus, and Jonah moved up to the front to position the women behind them. Pyra glanced over his shoulder and saw Eden reach for one of the lab coats hanging beside her. She wrapped it tightly around her body, tying it so that it acted as a sling to hold Lysander against her and free her hands. When he turned back toward the creatures that were coming their way, he could see that each held a weapon in its hand. The hoods that they wore concealed their faces, but somehow that made them more infuriating to look at. There was no fear as he faced them down. Instead he felt only anger and the unquenchable drive to protect his family and his friends.
The clash was fierce and immediate. All at once all the men in the group surged forward and smashed into the wall created by the hybrid bodies. Pyra fought blindly. He barely knew what he was doing as his hands thrashed against them. He could feel his body coming into contact with theirs and the warmth of blood washing over his skin. The sound of screams and grunts filled the small lab around them. It was the intensity and horror of the battles that he had encountered countless times in his life condensed down into this small space and these few moments. Soon the bodies of the creatures lay battered and broken on the floor at their feet. Pyra could hear the labored breathing of the men around them and the strain in their voices told him that some were suffering injuries from the encounter.
“Pyra!”
He turned toward Eden’s voice and Pyra saw worry in his mate’s eyes.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You’re hurt!”
Pyra glanced down and saw a narrow trickle of blood making its way down his skin, along the curve of the muscles of his forearm. He looked to Ciyrs, who was examining a deep gash in Ty’s leg. The healer looked to his leader sternly.
“We need to get somewhere safe,” he said. “I have to tend to these wounds.”
Eden looked back at the door where they had come through from the stairwell and George started toward it.
“No,” she said, reaching out to take hold of his arm. “We can’t go back through there.”
“Why?” Zsilvia asked.
The Denynso woman looked smaller and weaker than Pyra had ever seen her, as if the fear and strain of the day that they had just experienced had taken away all her energy. As soon as that thought went through his mind Pyra realized that he had completely lost track of time since they had been inside the laboratory building. He had no idea how long it had been since they had gotten there or how long they had fought the hybrids. It was a strange sensation and one that reminded him just how foreign Earth was to him and the rest of those who came from Uoria. When they were on their home planet they lived their lives based on the movement of the sun and the habits that they followed from day to day. Now that they were on Earth, though, he felt strangely bound by the arbitrary passage of time that they used to structure each of their daily activities. Kept away from the sun and stars inside massive, complex buildings, Pyra felt almost imprisoned by the unknown minutes and hours that passed them by.
“Ryan left those doors unlocked for a reason,” she said. “He designed that path for us, knowing that eventually we would find our way back into this lab so that we could encounter those hybrids.”
“But we defeated them,”
Pyra said.
“Those, yes,” Eden said. “But I heard more than one door open. I know that Ryan would not only send a few of his creatures to confront us. There are others and he has positioned them throughout the building to ensure that we encounter them as we are trying to get out. Remember how conniving and vicious he is. He even had a contingency plan for if the Denynso killed me when I first arrived on Uoria. He wouldn’t automatically assume that he was going to be successful, or that his hybrids would be able to defeat us that easily.” She shook her head and looked around at the hazy lab, the memories starting to become more obvious in her eyes. “No. He’s ready. He planned for all of this. If we step back out into that stairwell, we are walking to our slaughter.”
“So, what do we do?” Pyra asked. “Do we go back out the other door?”
“Yes,” Eden said, nodding.
“And then what?” George asked.
She looked at him and Pyra could see an expression in her gaze that was guiding, forceful, almost as if she didn’t want to say something but expected that it would occur to George if he thought about it.
“And then we go down.”
Chapter Three
Jem checked through his bag again and then glanced around to give one final look to the cave that had been his home. He didn’t know how long it had been since he had left Uoria, but in the time that he had spent on this new planet he had become accustomed to it and to the lifestyle that it had afforded him. Especially since Angela had come to be with him, even before they had completed their bond and she had become his mate, he had become comfortable and settled into his existence in the peaceful and virtually uninhabited space. Though he was excited about the possibility of returning home to Uoria and seeing his clan again, Jem still felt a pang at the thought of not ever seeing this place again.
He walked away from the cave and found Angela and Jacob standing near the creek. They both turned to watch him approach, optimistic but cautious expressions on their faces.
The Alien's Return (Uoria Mates IV Book 1) Page 2
