by Naomi Lucas
“You… don’t know how long you’ve been here?” I say instead.
“It takes effort to count the seasons when there are so many of them.” Zaku goes to the side of the mirror, where it ends in the corner, and hooks his fingers behind it. I hear a snap and the mirror opens inward. On the other side is an ascending staircase. It’s not like the others in the house. It’s a cement staircase more appropriate in a government building or… Facility?
I freeze.
A cold draft hits me as small lights upon the walls flicker on, brightening up the gloom. The air is fresher, like it’s coming from a breeze off of the mountain.
“Has this always been unlocked?”
“It is hidden. It does not need a lock if it’s hidden,” Zaku says as he pushes the mirror against the wall within, opening the passage up for both of us.
“I suppose that’s logical,” I grumble. “So I was never trapped in your room to begin with?”
“As I said, it is hidden, and there’s no escape this way, only old things, and a sharp descent and death.”
“Is this...where the robots go?”
“Yesss.”
I study the staircase curiously. “Where does it lead?”
“Come. Maybe you can answer questions I haven’t been able to. I have not been up here since…” he trails off.
I look at him. “Since?”
“Your ship came out of the sky and your male leader demanded to know the secrets of this land.” Zaku slides forward but stops before the stairs and turns to me. When I join him, he offers me his hand.
I stutter, “L-Lurker tech?” I recall the picture in the closet, the frightening alien in the shadows. A picture I wish I had never seen. A picture I destroyed. A ghost that isn’t mine and I refuse to let haunt me.
“I don’t know.”
As if my curiosity couldn’t get worse, it does. I don’t care about alien technology. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because the good pilots—the obedient ones, the less emotional ones—are all on the front lines or in active duty.
But the Lurker tech brought Zaku and I together, and if he has it, knowing about it might save us in the future, when others arrive. I take Zaku’s hand and we climb the stairs, and for a time there’s nothing but our ascent to fill the silence. The stairs wrap around and continue. Zaku carries me when my legs shake. There are no doors, nothing to break the bleak passageway. I get lightheaded after a few minutes.
Eventually, we come to a room when the stairs end. Ahead of us are double doors, but one is cracked open, letting in wind. Sunlight streaks through the gloom, filling my vision with dust motes. There are two more doors, one on either side.
Zaku sets me down. Saving the open door for last, I go to the right one first. The handle is crushed, and I wonder why it hasn’t been repaired. Peering inside, I find a cavernous room filled with dormant house robots. Several are milling about, repairing their broken comrades. There are crates upon crates stacked in rows at the back. A warehouse.
Well… Now I know where the house robots go. I hum. Except there are so many of them, it gives me pause. Hundreds, maybe thousands. Why are there so many of them?
I head for the left door where I find the handle also destroyed. Inside is machinery I have no idea what’s for.
When I look for Zaku to ask what it is, he’s at the open door waiting for me. I close the one behind me and go to him. He swings it the rest of the way open, and I step out.
The sky greets me. Wind whips my clothes, and I shiver from the cold. We’ve climbed above Zaku’s house, and higher still. But my attention doesn’t stay on the sky, it goes to the ground.
“It’s flat,” I say. It’s also partially cracked. Taking a few steps away, it appears to me like a landing pad. Ahead of me and to the left is a circular railing in the center, covered in rust. There are strange grooves on the ground. “What’s this?”
“The relay.”
“Relay two,” I mumble. “The house mentioned it. That you were its new master. What does it do?”
“It controls the power in this area. There are others, though I don’t know where they are located. Vagan knows where one is.”
At the mention of Vagan, my heart drops.
“The power?” I ask, moving the subject away from him. “What power?”
“Do not move,” Zaku warns suddenly and moves back toward the doors. Beside it is another door, another space I completely missed. He goes in it and the ground trembles. I catch the railing.
“What’s happening?” I shout.
Inside the railing the mountain opens up, dropping and shifting into the rocks. Buzzing floods my ears and a big machine rises from the ground, streaked in brilliant lights of red and blue. The air heats around me. And with the machine are turrets, dozens of turrets. They aim their guns at me.
Hitching, I stop breathing. I don’t dare.
“Zaku?” I whisper for him.
The turrets turn away. My shoulders sag and I back up.
When the machine fully emerges, the buzzing stops and Zaku is back at my side. Still, it takes a moment for my muscles to ease.
“This keeps the tech running across the land,” he says as if the active turrets aren’t worrisome. “This machine feeds it information. It stores it, moves it, collects it, and keeps the power on—electricity, humans call it? I think it is magic.”
My lips part. “Science, not magic. Perhaps a battery of some sort, a server?”
“I don’t know,” Zaku rasps, coiling his tail around my legs. “All the information I have on it is within the room I was just within.”
“And the house robots?”
“Keep their secrets to themselves.”
Stepping out of Zaku’s tail, I walk around the railing, and as I do, something zips by my head. It comes to a stop beside the relay and hovers. An orb. Like the one Vagan had. More of them appear, flying from every direction to hover around the relay. And not just orbs, other things too. Other machines I don’t recognize.
I continue walking around the railing, watching them gather.
One by one, they fly away.
When I approach Zaku, he pulls me against his side. “If I turn it off… the machines die. They fall from the sky, they halt in their tracks, they stop. Everything stops.”
“What do you mean stops?”
“The power leaves them, and when that happens the Earth begins to die.”
My spine straightens at his words. How simple they are. And yet… how many answers it gives. I think of Central Command and Shelby, Gemma, and the nagas. Peter and the others. “Let’s make sure it stays on then,” I whisper.
Zaku leads me back to the doors and enters the side area. The relay drops back into the ground, and any remaining machines floating around it zip away.
Zaku’s home isn’t a home after all. It’s a front.
A military one.
Why...
Waiting for him to emerge, I look out over the landscape, saying another useless wish. Leave us alone. My stomach churns and vertigo hits. Walking to the edge, I peer down and see the entrance to Zaku’s home below. Recoiling, I back away. Something strange catches my attention, and my brow furrows.
To my left, past the lake and beyond the smaller mountain next to us, in the same direction as the facility, there’s smoke. Wispy and rising into the sky, it’s undeniably smoke. My stomach sinks recalling the trembling glass the other day while in Zaku’s nest.
“Zaku!” I shout, dread and nausea rushing through me. “Something’s wrong!” I curl my arms over my stomach as it upends.
He’s at my side the next second, trapping me in his limbs. “Daisy?”
Shaking, I lift my arm and point in the direction. “Look. The facility,” I rasp, feeling another wave of nausea hit. “Something’s… wrong. There’s smoke.”
The roiling in my belly gets worse. Swallowing thickly, I taste bile in my throat.
“Daisy?”
“The smoke, Zaku, something’
s happened,” I burst out, ignoring the nausea. I glance at him but he’s not looking at the smoke, he’s looking at me.
“We have to do something,” I say, my breath hitching, the pain in my belly worsening. I go to look back and he captures my chin, forcing my gaze to remain on him. I furrow my brow.
“You have gone white,” he growls.
“I’m...fine. The...smoke—” I don’t get a chance to finish. I drop to the ground and vomit.
Zaku catches me in his arms, hissing furiously. My world grows dizzy. I try to speak but cough and hack and cough some more instead, vomiting between breaths.
He roars my name, lifting me in his arms. My world spins.
I cry out in pain as he rushes me down below.
Thirty-Four
Expansion
Zaku
I can’t get to the pod fast enough. Barreling through my den, each door, each room is a barrier I crash through. Wood, stone, and other materials go flying as I curl around Daisy’s shaking form as I make my way to the main floor.
“Zaku,” she groans, straining in my arms. “There’s—there’s something wrong! My stomach!” She screams.
I curse the enormity of my den.
The red door flies off the wall as I plow through it, bouncing down the hallway. I crush it under my tail as I slide into the room with the pod. I lay Daisy within it and immediately the machine goes to work.
She rolls over onto her side and curls into a fetal position. Sweat beads her brow and I wipe it off with the back of my fingers as the pod’s shield rises over her. Her watery eye finds mine as I draw my hand back and it finishes closing her in.
“Zaku,” she moans, burying her face in her hands.
“I will fix this, little mate,” I say.
Her whole body trembles.
My hands open and close, clenching and unfurling, uncertain what to do, what to say. The pod scans her and one of the arms comes out to grasp her arm, pinning it from her body so it can take a sample of her blood. She presses her knees into her chest harder.
The pod releases another arm to take another one of her limbs and she fights it.
“Let it help you,” I say, keeping my voice as calm as possible. It’s a feat. “Let it help.”
Daisy cries out.
My tail coils tight under me. I lean atop the glass and cover her as best I can. “Let it help, Daisy,” I plead. “Look at me.”
She quivers and slowly lets the pod take her limbs. The pod straightens her out and shifts her clothes.
“Look at me.”
Daisy squeezes her eye closed briefly but then opens it. She blinks rapidly, meeting my gaze. “God I hate when you say that,” she moans
“Good,” I encourage her.
“Administering relaxant,” the pod says.
I keep Daisy trapped with my gaze. She winces when the pod sticks her with an IV. Tears bead her lashes and I can see the worry cross her features, deep, concerning worry. The scales along my spine rise.
She begins to relax as the drugs enter her system. My claws streak the glass on either side of my head, trying to reach her through it to comfort her. I do it to stop from lashing out and breaking something. I don’t see a wound on her body. There’s no blood, no smell of infection, nothing.
Which means she’s sick on the inside…
Have I mated her too roughly? Did we not wait long enough after her recovery?
“I cannot lose you, I will not lose you.” Not again. Not so soon.
The pain etched over her vanishes and she inhales deeply. My thundering heart doesn’t join her as she relaxes. I’m not sure if it ever will.
“Scanning for infections.”
“I’m feeling better—” she gasps, jerking, pressing her hand to her stomach. I jerk with her.
“Don’t move,” I order. It’s as much for me as it is for her.
“Zaku! Something is happening, what’s happening!” She tries to peer down at her belly. The pod’s arms grab her and pin her flat. “It hurts!”
“Please remain still.”
I hiss wildly, wanting to tear my heart out of my chest with my claws. “What’s wrong with her!?” I bellow at the machine.
Daisy’s body strains.
The pod’s glass lights up with color. It beeps and sticks Daisy with another needle. She fights harder against her bonds.
“Administering a higher dose of relaxants and calmers.”
I tear away from the pod before I break it.
“Zaku!” she screams.
Grazing my claws down my face, I draw blood, trying to hold in the fear spreading through me. Venom leaks from my fangs and I swallow it, slicing them across my tongue. I have only had Daisy for a short time. Too short. I can’t lose her.
I can’t! I roar, striking my tail against the wall, unable to keep calm any longer.
When the pod beeps again, I turn to it, ready to destroy it.
“Scanning done.”
I rush to Daisy’s side and she’s no longer fighting her restraints. She’s breathing rapidly but the furrows on her face are gone. She’s slumped, staring at the scans on the glass shield within the pod. Her lips part and she inhales once very hard. She stops shuddering. Her whole demeanor changes and some of my fear lifts.
The pod’s restraints release her and her hands go to her belly.
“Daisy?” I ask, leaning back over her. “What’s happening?” I don’t look at her scans, unable to take my eyes off of her.
Her gaze meets mine.
“I’m pregnant.” She brings her hands to her face and beams. “I’m pregnant!”
Stilling, unsure if I heard her correctly. “What?”
“Zaku!” She leans up on her elbows and the glass pulls back. She winces once but her smile quickly returns. “I’m going to be a mother!”
Epilogue
Zaku
A ping sounds, and my body goes stiff. Tilting my head, I look at the entryway door.
“What was that?” Daisy asks.
I turn to her as she lifts her head from the book about advanced robotics she’s reading.
She’s fretting. She’d told me about this ship called Mercy. A ship where many humans have recently died. That is was the ship her father once commanded, and that she once lived on.
She told me of these...Ketts and how they are killing her people in droves. Females and children included. I flick my tail and hiss. They are the reason she’s even on Earth right now. Humans are searching for an answer to a grave problem. They think the answers are here.
I’m not sure how I feel about this information. More humans means more females for the other nagas in search of a nestmate, but it also breeds uncertainty. Who will rule?
Daisy fears they will come. I am not so sure. No one has come before her. We have jewels, power, and knowledge, she says. This is all stuff her humans want and want badly. This, I understand. They will trade precious females for it.
She’s nervous about the smoke. She fears for the human female called Shelby and her safety.
Above all, she’s worried and excited about gestating. My queen wants to do something, anything, but I am against it. Over the last day, Daisy’s spent a great deal of time in the robot room up in the mountain. She’s decided it’s her job to learn how they work and to reconfigure them before our litter comes.
She wants to use them as guards. Our personal army. She also wants to add a room called a nursery. She’d determined to get the robots to use their stored materials to build one for us.
First, the book on robotics, then I’ll decide if she’s capable for more than that in her current state. The pod says she’s in her second trimester. Daisy is gestating quickly for a female human. Worry and excitement battle inside me as well.
Her stress is becoming my own. And so is her happiness.
I puff out my chest. Whatever happens, whatever comes, they’ll have to go through me to get to Daisy and our litter. She has nothing to fear.
I always win.
My den is camouflaged in the mountain and the pathways to this ancient place have long been overgrown with trees and bushes. I reassure her that she does not have to worry. Only the winding walkways along the mountainside are ever used.
Still… We have a litter to worry about now.
“A visitor?” Her face lights up. “Maybe it’s Gemma. Maybe…” The color drains from her face. Her hands go to her stomach.
The ping chimes again, several times in rapid succession. Daisy stands, and I slice forward to stop her. “We don’t know that. I will go first.”
She nods.
Since her time in the pod yesterday, I have been edgy. I refuse to leave her side even for a second, fearful she will fall again. There are two in her litter, and as far as we both know, a human-naga child has never been born. We have decided to nest upstairs so she may be near the machine at all times. They are growing rapidly.
Already, she is showing.
The ping goes off again and again, rapidly, frantically. Daisy is right up on my tail, and I can sense her nervous energy. Each day, I am getting better at reading her, caring for her, loving her—as she calls it. I like it. It’s a human thing, and I like it even more because of that.
I never told Daisy about the book of reptiles I once found, about the king cobra snakes within it, and how I resemble them. I’m not sure I ever will. I do not want her to see me as an animal...not with the family we are about to create.
A family.
I don’t think I will believe it’s happening until our litter is birthed, despite the proof. How fast things change.
“Do you think it has something to do with the explosion? The facility?” she asks. “I’m worried.”
“It is not your problem anymore.”
“I can’t help it. You know I can’t.”
I turn to face her, cupping her shoulders, stopping her in the hallway. “You have to for the litter.”
