by Anna Zaires
Finally, it was five o’clock. Although Mia typically stayed later in the lab, she decided to make an exception today, since nothing much was going on. Leaving the lab, she headed home.
Arriving at the house, she wasn’t surprised to find that Korum wasn’t there yet. His schedule was far more grueling than hers, although it helped that he didn’t need to sleep more than a couple of hours a night. He actually got a lot of work done at night or early in the morning when Mia was sound asleep.
Making herself comfortable on the long floating plank in the living room, Mia decided to use the time to call Jessie. They hadn’t spoken since before Mia’s trip to Florida, and she really missed hearing her friend’s bubbly voice.
“Call Jessie,” Mia told her wristwatch-bracelet device, and heard the familiar dial tones as the call connected.
“Mia?” Jessie’s voice sounded cautious.
“Yep, it’s me,” Mia said, grinning. She knew that the call would show up on Jessie’s phone as coming from an unknown number. “How’s it going? I haven’t talked to you in over a week!”
“Oh, I’m good,” Jessie said, sounding a little distracted. “How’s your family? Did they already meet Korum?”
“They sure did,” Mia said. “Believe it or not, they loved him. But hey, listen, are you busy right now? I can call back another time –”
“What? Oh, no, hold on, let me just go into another room . . .” A short silence, then, “Okay, I’m good now. Sorry about that. I was just hanging out with Edgar and Peter. Do you remember Peter?”
“Of course,” Mia said. Peter was the guy she’d met at the club – the one Korum had almost killed for dancing with her. Mia still shuddered when she remembered that terrifying night, when she’d thought Korum had found out about her deception and was going to kill her. In hindsight, she’d been an idiot; she should’ve known even then that he would never harm her. But at the time, Korum had still been a stranger to her, a member of the mysterious and dangerous Krinar race that had invaded Earth five years ago.
“He still asks about you,” Jessie said – a bit wistfully, Mia thought. “Edgar tells me he’s really worried –”
“That’s nice of him, but there’s really no reason to worry,” Mia interrupted, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking. “Seriously, I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life . . .”
Jessie fell silent for a second, and then Mia heard her sigh. “So that’s it, huh?” she said softly. “You’re in love with the K?”
“I am,” Mia said, a big smile breaking out on her face. “And he loves me too. Oh, Jessie, you don’t even know how happy he makes me. I could’ve never imagined it could be like this. It’s like a dream come true –”
“Mia . . .” She could hear Jessie sighing again. “I’m happy for you, I really am . . . But, tell me, do you think you’ll come back to New York?”
Mia hesitated for a moment. “I think so . . .” She was far less certain now than before. With each day that passed, college and all that it implied seemed less and less important. What use was a degree from a human university if she were to continue living and working in Lenkarda? She learned more in a day at the lab than she could in a month at NYU. Did it really make sense to spend another nine months writing papers and taking tests just for the sake of saying she got her diploma? And, more importantly, would Saret let her return to the lab after such a long absence? Given the rapid pace of research there, coming back after nine months would be almost like starting over.
“You don’t sound sure,” Jessie said, and there was a sad note in her voice.
“Yeah, I guess I’m not sure,” Mia admitted. “Korum is fine with it, but I just don’t know if I’ll be able to return to my internship if I leave for so long . . .”
“So you like it there? At the K Center, I mean?”
“I do,” Mia said. “Jessie, it’s so nice here . . . I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome some of their inventions are. Korum has a zero-gravity chamber in his house. Can you imagine that? And he’s got a floor that massages your feet as you walk on it.” Not to mention the fact that Mia was now pretty much immortal – but that was something she was not allowed to talk about outside of Lenkarda.
“Really? A floor that massages your feet?” Jessie sounded jealous now.
“Yep, and a bed that does the same thing to your whole body. All their technology is amazing, Jessie. Believe me when I tell you this: it’s not a hardship to be here at all.”
“Yeah, sounds like it,” Jessie said, and Mia heard the resignation in her voice. “I guess I just miss you, that’s all.”
“I miss you too,” Mia said. “Maybe I’ll swing by for a visit in a couple of weeks. Let me talk to Korum about that, and we’ll figure something out.”
“Oh, that would be so nice!” Jessie sounded much more excited now.
“We’ll make it happen,” Mia promised, smiling. “I’ll let you know when we’re coming over. But, anyways, enough about that . . . Tell me about you and Edgar. How are things going on that front?”
And for the next ten minutes, Mia learned all about Jessie’s new boyfriend, his latest acting gig, and the stuffed panda he’d won for Jessie at an amusement park. It seemed like the two of them were becoming increasingly close, and Mia was glad he made Jessie so happy. If anyone deserved to have a cute, caring guy, it was her former roommate.
Finally, Jessie had to go to dinner, so Mia said goodbye and went to change before Korum got home. He’d mentioned taking a post-dinner walk on the beach, and Mia wanted to make sure she had her swimsuit ready.
* * *
“So when do you think the Council will finally decide about the Keiths?” Mia asked, taking a bite of sweet pepper stuffed with mushroom-flavored rice. “Are they still doing the investigation?”
Korum nodded, picking up a piece of mushroom with the tong-like utensil the Krinar used in place of forks. “Loris is being difficult, as you’d expect. He’s got a couple of Councilors on his side, and he’s claiming there’s no way Saur could’ve erased the Keiths’ memories. Supposedly, someone from the Fiji lab told him that apprentices don’t have access to that kind of equipment.”
“Really? So, what, he’s still saying that you and Saret are responsible for this?”
“I think he gave up on the idea of framing Saret,” Korum said, a mocking smile appearing on his lips. “He’s now seeking evidence to come after me.”
Mia stared at him, concerned about this development. The black-garbed Krinar she’d seen at the trial didn’t seem like someone who could be trifled with – and he truly hated Korum. “Do you think there’s any chance he could cause trouble for you?”
“No, don’t worry, my sweet,” Korum said reassuringly, though his eyes glittered with something that looked like anticipation. “He’s just trying to delay the inevitable. He failed as the Protector, and he knows it. Once his son and the rest of those traitors are sentenced, he’ll lose all of his standing – and his position on the Council along with it.”
“And you don’t mind that in the least, right?” Mia asked, regarding him with a wry smile. For better or for worse, her lover tended to be quite ruthless with his opponents – a personality trait that made her glad she was now on his good side.
Korum shrugged. “It was Loris’s choice to risk everything for his son. Now he’ll pay the price. And if I have fewer people who stand in my way as a result, then all the better.”
Mia nodded and concentrated on finishing the rest of her stuffed pepper dish. Despite everything, she couldn’t help feeling just a tiny bit sympathetic toward the Protector. After all, the K was only defending his son. She imagined she’d do the same for her child – not that she had to worry about that anymore, she reminded herself. Pushing away the unpleasant thought, Mia looked at Korum instead, studying him covertly as he finished his meal.
Sometimes it was still difficult for her to believe they were so happy together. By Krinar law, she belonged to Korum �
� a fact that still made her very uncomfortable. As a charl, her legal standing in K society was murky, to say the least. If she didn’t love him so much – and if he didn’t treat her as well as he did – her life could’ve easily been miserable.
But she did love him. And he loved her back, with all the intensity in his nature. As a result, he seemed to be trying to suppress his inborn arrogance, knowing that it was important for her to be regarded as an equal. There was still a long way to go, of course – the gap of age and experience was too wide to be bridged easily – but he was definitely making an effort in that direction.
After they were both done with the meal, Korum stood up and offered her his hand. “Up for a walk, my sweet?” he asked, giving her a warm smile.
Mia grinned. “Sure.” She loved these after-dinner walks on the beach. They’d done them almost every night when they were in Florida, and she’d learned a great deal about Korum during those quiet times.
Taking his hand, she let him lead her outside.
They walked for a couple of minutes in silence, enjoying the soft evening breeze. The sun was just setting behind the trees, and an orange glow lit the sky, reflecting off the water shimmering in the distance.
“You know,” Mia said, thinking about their first meeting in New York, “I still don’t know your full name. You said I wouldn’t be able to pronounce it if you told me, but I’ve never heard anyone call you anything but Korum.”
He grinned. “Our full names are generally only used at birth and at death. Do you still want to hear it?”
“Of course.” She imagined something totally unpronounceable. “What is it?”
“Nathrandokorum.”
“Oh, that sounds kind of nice,” Mia said, surprised. “Why don’t you use it more?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s just the way it’s been with us for a long time. Full names have become nothing more than a formality. I doubt that anyone besides my parents knows that I’m called Nathrandokorum.”
Mia smiled, shaking her head. Some parts of the Krinar culture were strange indeed.
They walked some more, and then Mia remembered her recent conversation with her former roommate. “Do you think we might have a chance to visit New York soon?” she asked. “I was talking to Jessie, and it would be really nice to see her . . .”
Korum smiled, looking down at her. “Of course. If you want, we can go the next time you have a day off. Unless you want to go for longer?”
“No, a day would be perfect. I guess sometimes I still forget that we can just pop on over there whenever we want.”
His smile widened. “We definitely can – especially now that most of the Resistance has been captured.”
“Where’s Leslie?” Mia asked, remembering the girl who had attacked her in Florida. “Is she here, in Lenkarda?”
Korum shook his head. “No, she’s in our Arizona Center.”
“Is she . . . all right?” Mia was almost afraid to know the answer. The Resistance fighter had teamed up with Saur – the former apprentice from Saret’s lab – to try to kill Korum in Florida. Now she was in K custody, about to be ‘rehabilitated.’ From what Mia understood about the process, the end goal was to change that part of Leslie’s personality that made her a danger to society (or to the Krinar, as the matter may be). Rehabilitation – or mind tampering – was the most advanced branch of Krinar neuroscience, and Mia was just starting to learn about it at the lab.
“I assume so,” Korum said, his expression cooling. He obviously hadn’t forgotten the fact that the girl had pointed a gun at Mia and almost gotten her killed by Saur.
“Could you find out for me, please?” For some reason, Mia felt responsible for what happened to Leslie, even though the girl had attacked her. Still, she couldn’t help remembering the terror on Leslie’s face as she was led away by the K guardians. However misguided the fighter’s intentions were, she didn’t deserve to be mistreated, and Mia sincerely hoped she didn’t get hurt during her rehabilitation.
Korum hesitated, then nodded curtly. “All right, I will.” His jaw tightened, however, and Mia could see that he was thinking about the beach incident again.
To distract him, she squeezed his hand and gave him a big smile. “Thank you,” she said. “I really appreciate it.”
“Of course, my darling,” he said, his expression visibly softening. “Anything to make you happy – you know that.” And bending down, he brushed his lips against her mouth in a brief kiss.
“So what are the guardians, anyway?” Mia asked when they started walking again. “Are they like your police?”
“Something like that,” Korum said. “They’re a cross between soldiers, police, and one of your intelligence agencies. They enforce our laws, catch criminals, and deal with any kind of threat from humans. Our society is so homogenized at this point that we no longer have war on Krina, the way you do here on Earth. There are still some regional rivalries, of course, and there are always a few crazies who disagree with the way things are done by the government, but we don’t have the kind of conflict that would require a standing army.”
“So you guys managed to invade our planet without an army?”
Korum laughed. “If you want to think about it that way. Most Krinar males who came to Earth received military-style training because we were expecting some resistance. But no, we didn’t need a big army to control Earth; all we needed was our technology.”
“Of course.” Mia tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Loving Korum the way she did made it easy to forget that she was doing the equivalent of sleeping with the enemy – even if the enemy didn’t actually intend her planet any harm. It was only during these types of conversations that Mia was unpleasantly reminded of the fact that the Krinar forcefully took over her planet . . . and that the man who loved her did not necessarily have humankind’s best interests at heart.
“Trust me, Mia, it was better this way,” Korum said, as though reading her mind. “Your government had no choice but to accept the inevitable, and that helped minimize the bloodshed. It would’ve been far worse if there had been a full-out war between our people.”
Mia’s mouth tightened, but she nodded, knowing he was right. There was no point in resenting the Krinar’s technological superiority; in a way, it did make their invasion as painless as possible. The fact that they invaded at all was a different matter, of course – but Mia didn’t have the energy or the inclination to fight that particular battle. Working with the Resistance once was enough.
“Can I ask you something?” Mia said, thinking back to those crazy days when she was spying on Korum. “I don’t get one thing about the Keiths’ plans. Even if they were successful in getting all the Krinar to leave Earth, wouldn’t your people have come back with reinforcements? I know you said they were going to kill you, but what about all the others? Are you the only one with the means to go back and forth between Earth and Krina?”
Korum shot her an amused glance. “No, of course not. My company has the most advanced ship designs, but the Krinar have traveled to and from Earth long before I was even born. I think the Keiths were hoping to control the protective field.”
“The protective field?”
He nodded. “Up until a dozen years ago, space travel was largely unregulated. Anyone could go anywhere, as long as they had a ship to take them there. Now, however, we have a shield in place to protect Earth from unauthorized travel – the same kind of shield we recently put around Krina.”
“There is a shield around Earth?” Mia looked up at him in surprise.
“It’s actually a shield around the solar system,” Korum explained. “Not like a barrier, but more of a disruptor field. When activated, it messes with our ships’ faster-than-light capabilities.”
“Why would you want something that can mess with your ships?”
“For security purposes, we want to make sure the Council is informed of – and authorizes – any travel between Earth and Krina. Also, if there h
appen to be any other intelligent life forms out there, and they use technology comparable to ours, the shields will afford us some protection from them.”
Mia gave him an ironic look. “So they can’t do to you what you did to us?”
“Exactly.” He grinned at her, looking so unrepentant that Mia couldn’t help but laugh.
“Okay,” she said, returning to her original question, “so what were the Keiths going to do? Use the protective field to keep the rest of the Krinar out?”
“Probably,” Korum said, still smiling. “That’s what I would’ve done in their place.”
They walked for a few more minutes before they reached the ocean. As usual, this section of the beach was completely deserted. With only five thousand Ks in the Costa Rican settlement, there was plenty of space for everyone and most Krinar tended to keep out of each other’s ‘territories’ – as informal as those were in modern times. Since Korum liked to take evening walks on this particular stretch of sand, the other Ks respectfully stayed clear of it.
“Do you want to go for a swim?” Mia asked, letting go of his hand and kicking off her shoes to test the water temperature with her toe. It was perfect – just cool enough to be refreshing.
Instead of answering, Korum pulled off his shirt, revealing a bronzed, muscular torso. “Absolutely,” he said, his eyes turning more golden by the second.
Smiling, Mia took a few steps back and slowly took off her dress, loving the way his gaze was glued to her every move. She could see the erection growing in his shorts, and her nipples hardened in response, her body affected by his desire. The fact that she could do this to him by simply stripping down to her swimsuit was exhilarating – and incredibly flattering.
