Karak Invasion: An Alien Menage Sci-Fi Romance (Alien Shapeshifters Book 3)

by Ruby Ryan

  My face must have gone white as a ghost, because he suddenly smacked himself.

  "You're the temp we brought in while I was gone, aren't you? Shit. I called you ditsy, didn't I? Shit. Shit."

  "I'm Jessica, yes. And it's fine," I said curtly. "Ditsy was probably Mrs. Arnold's description."

  "Actually, it was!" he seized on the excuse. "But seriously. Did you really redo the entire database schema?"

  I stared straight ahead, and then said in a small voice, "Maybe."

  "Whelp. I know what I'm doing today. And tonight. And tomorrow."

  I wanted to apologize, but the weight in my chest wouldn't let me.

  3

  ETHAN

  Mrs. Arnold stood in my office, a scowl on her face so deep I wondered if it were stuck there.

  "You should have left more explicit instructions."

  Part of me wanted to throw all the blame on the temp. Jessica. I hadn't expected some worker drone to come in here and redo the entire database schema. If I had to leave instructions to not do something like that, I might as well have included instructions not to burn the building down while I was at it.

  But I felt a pang of sympathy for the poor woman. She was clearly more technical than I'd expected, if she was able to redo the schema all by herself. And she'd done it properly, even if it was the wrong thing to do. That was impressive by itself at a new company.

  "It's entirely my fault," I agreed. "Next time my instructions will be more clear."

  "There won't be a next time," Mrs. Arnold growled, "because I'm never letting you take a vacation day again." She narrowed her eyes at me. "Or a sick day. Blow your nose and get to work. All of this needs to be fixed by tomorrow so we can resume normal software deployments. If I have to explain to the Legal department why we can't run software inventories, I'll lose my job too."

  She left in a huff.

  Did I really look that bad? I certainly felt like shit, an aching in my joints and an exhaustion so deep it was like I'd run a marathon. Which was weird, because me and the guys didn't drink much last night. I'd woken up early for my flight, but that still meant a solid seven hours of sleep.

  So why the hell did I feel this way? Maybe I was sick.

  The couch in my office suddenly looked like the most comfortable place in the world. A ten minute nap would do me good. I could lock the door, close the blinds, and pretend I wasn't here.

  I remembered the object in my pocket, bulky yet too precious to toss in my carry-on bag. I removed the little figurine and admired it as I'd done every hour since finding it, running a thumb along the smooth body, then along the ridges of the feathery wings.

  And that gem.

  I'd assumed it was fake the moment I saw it deep in that cave, but now? I wasn't so sure. It felt real beneath my thumb, dense with value instead of just plastic or glass. In its green depths I could see faint tangles of imperfection, the kind of thing that could only be present in a real gem. It was a wonder I got through customs with it.

  I frowned. Was the emerald glowing brighter than before? The light coming from it was more than just a reflection of the ceiling lights; it had a luminosity all its own. Like it was calling me. Begging me to do something.

  It might make you feel better, a thought drifted across my mind. And in that strange moment the logic made sense. If I surrendered to the figurine, I would instantly be imbued with new energy. If I let it take over everything would be better.

  My thumb traced the outside of the gem, pulsing like it had its own heartbeat.

  "Mr. Masterson?"

  The pulsing cut off as the temp--Jessica--stuck her head in my office. I shoved the figurine back into my pocket and turned around.

  Had she seen it? I don't think so; my body blocked her view. I don't know why that was important to me, but it was.

  "Call me Ethan."

  She stepped all the way into the office. "I wanted to apologize again for... the database. What I did."

  "It's fine," I said. I felt an intense pang of annoyance at her intrusion. I wanted to tell Jessica to leave, then pull the figurine back out and resume admiring it.

  But that would have to wait. "How can I help you, Jessica?"

  4

  JESSICA

  "How can I help you Jessica?"

  I felt like I was intruding on something private, which made no sense since Ethan was alone in his office. Still, annoyance flashed across Ethan's green eyes as if I'd interrupted something precious.

  His handsome, insanely green eyes.

  "I was hoping you could explain the proper database schema to me," I said, taking a tentative step toward his desk. "I know it's too late to undo everything I've done, but if you show me the methodology you've been using I can start doing it the right way on the new reports I run."

  "You're still here?" he asked. "I thought you were just a temp."

  "My contract's through the end of next week. Plenty of work to do until then, and I'm not the kind of person who just phones it in."

  The annoyance softened, and he jerked his head in a nod. "Come here."

  I rounded his desk, and almost laughed to see that he was still wearing his khaki shorts and the tight-fitting T-shirt. But his face was even more devoid of color now--seriously, he had to be sick--so I didn't poke fun of him for his dress.

  He alt-tabbed over to the System Center management console, and pulled up the hierarchy schema.

  "We can't rely on the AD imports because of the issue I already mentioned," I explained slowly. "So we do it by individual IP subnets."

  I whistled between my teeth. "Seriously?"

  "Mmm hmm. Every single subnet across every single branch in our company. It's not ideal, and we miss some in the cracks, but it's the best we've got. At least, it was the best we had, before it was all messed up."

  I took the mouse from him--brushing his hand for a moment--and scrolled down the list of boundaries. All of them were grey now, overwritten by the other work I'd done. "It would have been nice to see this earlier."

  "Your account probably doesn't have full admin rights to see the existing schema," he muttered.

  I turned to him in anger. "No, I mean it would have been nice for this to be included in the environment documentation. Then I wouldn't have had to guess."

  He seemed surprised for a moment, then the fire returned to his eyes. "And it would have been nice for you to run a database backup before making changes in production. Then we could just restore the whole damn thing instead of redoing the boundaries from scratch."

  "I ran a backup!"

  Ethan crossed his arms over his muscled chest while I switched over to the database storage drive. I immediately flinched.

  "Well?" he gestured at the screen patronizingly. "Where's the backup?"

  I must have blushed a dozen shades of crimson, because my cheeks felt on fire.

  "That's what I thought." He looked in another direction. Somewhere not at me. "I've got a lot of work to do, so unless there's anything else...?"

  I strode from his office, furious and embarrassed and miserable all at the same time.

  *

  Okay, so I'd fucked up.

  I stirred Easy-Mac into a pot in my tiny Dallas apartment while twirling my hair clip in my other hand, replaying the events of the day in my head. Because that's what I did; I made mistakes, and then I wallowed in them like a keyboard-tapping pig.

  I'd fucked up, sure. But that fuck-up wouldn't have happened if not for Ethan's piss-poor documentation. The sheet I'd reviewed when I started two weeks ago was the standard text copy-and-pasted from Microsoft's website. If Ethan had properly documented his environment, the boundaries created for each individual branch subnet, I would have immediately known what was going on.

  It was his fault, not mine.

  And it didn't help that he was so good looking. I could still feel his emerald gaze, the surprise he'd shown when I walked into his office. Nevermind the argument that had ensued, and the fact that he'd closed his do
or as soon as I left and hadn't opened it the rest of the day. All I could think about were his eyes, and the way his shirt fit tightly over his chest.

  This was why we had office dress codes.

  Not that it mattered. I had a week left as a temp, and now I'd pissed off the two people who had power over whether or not I was hired at the end of the contract. Fat chance, now.

  I drained the pasta, poured the processed cheese powder into the pot with some milk, and wished I had a glass of wine.

  I was halfway done with my meager supper when I had an idea.

  The office felt eerily quiet with the lights off, the glows of periodic computer monitors like strange square lanterns in the night. Ethan's door was still ominously closed, but the light was off underneath the door. I made a fresh pot of coffee in the break room, carried the whole damn thing over to my desk, and got to work.

  Rebuilding the schema from scratch was an arduous task, but thankfully it was fresh in my mind since I'd done it (wrongly) a few days ago. The really tedious work was creating new boundaries based on the branch subnets. We had 2,000 locations across the country, so each one of those had to be created, matched with their IP subnet, and then saved. It wasn't hard: create the boundary name, copy-and-paste the subnet from the network scan, check a few boxes, and bam, it was done. But there was a 5 second pause between each step, and about 10 seconds of cursor-spinning while it saved at the very end.

  And, you know, the fact that I had to do it 2,000 times.

  Well, technically 1,958. It looked like Ethan had recreated 42 of them before leaving the office.

  But I wanted this fucking job. And the first step was fixing my mistake, even if the mistake wasn't my fault to begin with.

  I guzzled coffee like it was cheap beer at a frat party and my goal was to get blackout drunk. My eyes ached as I stared at the screen, strained beyond what any sane person would do in a single day. I'd pulled all-nighters in college, but they were few and far between. And I was usually stimulated intellectually during them. This, on the other hand, was mind-numbingly boring.

  But I clicked the mouse, and typed on my keyboard, and slowly the console filled with new boundaries.

  My cell phone vibrated on the desk, jolting me out of my groove. Clenching my teeth, I hit the power button to send it to voicemail without looking at the caller. At this time of night, I knew exactly who it was. It'd been this way for the past two weeks.

  But it rang again, and then a third time, and I was too annoyed to focus on my work.

  "What do you want, Mark?"

  Static crackled on the other end, the sound of wind and coughing. He seemed surprised that I'd answered, and when he finally spoke his voice was slurred.

  "Jess? You there?"

  "I'm here. What do you want, Mark?"

  He paused, and I could feel the weight of our four months together in the silence.

  "I miss you."

  I sighed and snapped, "I don't have time for this."

  "Let me come over," he insisted. "I'm on my way now, two blocks away. I took the light DART rail."

  "No, Mark."

  "Just for a minute! Just to talk."

  "I'm not there, Mark."

  This time the silence held a different tone.

  "Oh," he said. "You're out with someone."

  "I'm at work."

  His laugh held no mirth. "Not at this time of night. You're fucking someone..."

  "Mark..."

  "...and you're keeping it from me."

  "What I do is my own damn business," I said, the same thing I'd told him the last time he got drunk and dialed me late at night. "But I'm honestly at work right now."

  "You're a fucken liar," he spat, then hung up.

  I put the phone down on the desk and stared at it for a long while. Thankfully he didn't call back. I imagined him outside my apartment, banging on the door and screaming for me while my neighbors called the cops. Aly next door had been close to doing that last time.

  It's not my problem. Not now, not tonight. I had too much other shit to deal with.

  I poured another cup of coffee, switched my phone to Do Not Disturb, and dove back into the work with renewed energy.

  It took all night, all damn night, but I finished the final branch as the glow of the sun began to illuminate the morning sky out the windows of the office. I leaned back in my chair and surveyed my work, a neat collection of pixels on the screen.

  It didn't feel very satisfying, but I knew it would when I told Ethan and Mrs. Arnold.

  But I wasn't done yet. The boundaries were created, but I still needed to apply them to the environment. And this time I wanted to make sure I ran that damn database backup first.

  I switched over to my SQL console, right-clicked on the database, and selected the BACKUP option.

  The cursor spun like it was doing work, but the storage drive itself didn't populate with the backup file. I gave it a good minute or two (sweet Jesus did it feel good to let me arms rest) before pulling up the log files on the server.

  It was immediately obvious what had happened: a big fat permissions error showed in the log file, highlighted in red. My account didn't have permissions.

  At least that explained why the other backup hadn't run, either. I knew I'd kicked it off.

  If my account couldn't run a backup, then I'd need to wait for Ethan. I shook my head in annoyance; I didn't want to wait for him! I wanted to run the backup and apply the boundaries now, to feel the sweet satisfaction of a job done well. And more than that, I realized, I wanted to surprise Ethan himself. A big show of I.T. blood and sweat to convince him to hire me after my contract.

  And if he grinned like an excited kid, well, that would be a bonus.

  In my sleep-deprived brain, I decided that maybe--just maybe--Ethan had written down the root database account and password on a piece of paper somewhere. I rose from my chair like a zombie and marched across the room to his office, found it unlocked, and strode inside.

  I stopped.

  Ethan was sprawled out on his couch like a dead body, one arm hanging off the side limply and the other resting against his bare chest. He still wore the same khaki shorts from when I'd picked him up at the airport, and a blanket was bunched up by his feet.

  His chest rose, I saw with relief. It was stupid, but for a moment I'd thought he was dead!

  But as I approached him, it didn't seem so stupid an assumption. His face was deathly pale, and he was trembling so subtly I didn't notice until I got up close. I put the back of my hand to his head, and recoiled from the heat.

  "Just a hangover," I muttered. "You're just another dumb boy."

  His eyes flickered, just on the edge of waking. I could leave him in here, but somehow I doubted Mrs. Arnold would be as sympathetic. I'd heard her berating him yesterday. If I left him here for her to find I didn't know what would happen.

  Maybe she'll fire him and hire me instead.

  I immediately pushed the thought from my head. One, it was stupid: I was fairly certain Mrs. Arnold wouldn't hire me even if all the other Systems Administrators in the world suddenly keeled over. Two, him getting in trouble would diminish all the work I'd done. I wanted him happy and excited and eager to hire me.

  And three, most important of all: it wasn't who I was. I couldn't leave him here for his boss to find, regardless of any other factors. If it were me, I'd want someone to have my back.

  "Get up," I said, shaking him gently. "Hey. Ethan. Wake up."

  I shoved him progressively harder until his eyes opened all the way.

  "Ethan? It's me, Jessica. The ditsy temp. Did you seriously sleep here all night?"

  He stared without really seeing. "Huh?"

  "Do... do you know you slept here all night?" I asked instead. He made a groaning noise and pointed to his desk, where an empty bottle of NyQuil lay on its side.

  Well that explained his grogginess. I sighed and checked my watch. I had enough time to get him home and return for my normal work hours. It
was going to be a long day.

  With some coaxing and mean words, I helped him to his feet and tried to avoid staring at the muscles of his chest and core. I wasn't used to seeing I.T. nerds with bodies like this. He was able to stand on his own--which was good, since I never would have been able to keep him up by myself--and I helped pull his T-shirt over his chest.

  Like a nurse carrying a wounded man from the battlefield, I helped him out of the office, down the elevator, and into my car.

  "I knew I should have taken you home yesterday," I muttered. "Too damn sick to be in the office. Where do you live, anyways?"

  He pulled out his phone, but held it in front of him like a zombie.

  Thankfully, he had his home address saved in Google Maps. 10 minutes away. I typed the address into my own phone and started the car.

  "Do you have anyone who can take care of you while you're sick?" I asked as we drove down the highway. "A roommate? Or girlfriend?"

  "No... girlfriend," he mumbled.

  "No, you have a girlfriend?" I clarified. "Or no, you don't have a girlfriend?"

  He shook his head, and I decided that meant the latter.

  "I really ought to just drop you off at an urgent care," I muttered. "You promised you weren't gunna give me the Spanish flu. The longer I'm breathing the same air as you, the more likely that becomes."

  The drive to his apartment in Uptown Dallas was quick, the roads not yet congested from rush hour. I parked in front of his place and helped him out the passenger side, then up the elevator to his floor. If I hurried, I could beat the rush hour back into the city and still be on time. It wasn't likely, but I still had hope.

  "Keys?" I asked at the door. He didn't respond.

  Any other time, I would have stopped right there. But in my sleep deprivation I didn't care that I was violating all the workplace harassment codes, so I shoved my hand in his pocket and tried to avoid brushing against anything sensitive.

  There was something huge in his pocket--and no, not that. Something smooth like an egg, but cool to the touch. Then my fingers touched metal, and I came out with the ring of keys.