by Christy,Dena
“Miranda, just what the hell do you think you are doing here?”
* * *
Miranda’s heart slammed against her ribs, and her body went cold. Dr. Avery’s grip punished her arm as she stood there trembling. His hand bit into her flesh, down to the bone. The hold he had on her now hurt ten times as much as when he’d pulled her from this very lab yesterday.
She’d failed. They’d been caught before she’d even got him out of the lab. If she hadn’t spent so much time talking to him, staring at him, they might have had a chance. She should have insisted on removing the pad after they got out of the building. He could have been away by now.
How could she have been so foolish? The sneer on Dr. Avery’s tight white face said it all. How could she have thought that she could do something as big as rescue the alien? Hadn’t her life on Nova Earth shown her how powerless she was? Wrongs were committed against people every day, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it from happening. The best she could do now was try to sooth Dr. Avery and hope it mollified him enough to keep him holding on to his temper.
“Dr. Avery.” She licked her lips. What could she say that would explain the she was with the alien after hours? There was no lie that he would believe at this point.
A low rumbled came from her right, and she looked over at the alien as he took a step toward Dr. Avery. His eyes were rimmed in electric blue as they bored into Dr. Avery. His body seems to swell in front of her, but that was impossible. Perhaps he seemed bigger because he was standing near Dr. Avery’s much shorter, slighter frame.
“Let the woman go.” His voice differed from when he’d spoken to her. It was deeper, throatier as he drew himself up to his full impressive height. The threat he presented was unmistakable, but to his credit, Dr. Avery didn’t cringe or cower. He maintained his tight grip and remained in the spot he was standing. She turned her head toward the alien to see what he would do to end the stalemate they were in.
He changed before her eyes and became less human looking with each passing second. His skin changed to a grey color that swept over his entire body. The parts of him that were in the light shone like an opal, and the iridescence of his skin was fascinating.
His skin wasn’t the only thing that changed. His features sharpened, his cheekbones became more pronounced and two boney ridges came up on his forehead, running from the arch in his eyebrows into his hair line.
“You get back.” Dr. Avery lifted the small black remote that Neil had shown her yesterday. His hand shook, and she could not hear the normal commanding tone in his voice. The alien didn’t obey and took a step closer.
Click, click, click. Dr. Avery pushed the button on the remote repeatedly, and his eyes widened when it did nothing. The grip on her arm loosened, but it wasn’t enough for her to pull free. And the alien kept coming.
Dr. Avery shoved her aside, and her heel skidded out from under her. She lost her footing and tumbled to the floor. Pain went through her side as she crashed on it, and a cry escaped her. Shock went through her when she looked at Dr. Avery. How could he have thrown her around like that?
The alien roared and lunged at Dr. Avery. He moved faster than she’d seen anyone move before, and he was on Dr. Avery before he could take two steps away from where he stood.
“Stay away from me.” That was all Dr. Avery got out before the alien wrapped his hands around Dr. Avery’s throat and lifted him off the ground. Dr. Avery made a strangled croak, and that was it. As much as she didn’t like him, she couldn’t watch the alien kill him. She’d come here tonight to save a life, not end one.
She slowly got up off the floor and held her side as she limped over to the alien. The heel had broken off her shoe so her gait was uneven on the industrial floor, but she made it to his side. She put her hand on his arm, and he looked down at her, his eyes glowing with the electric fire of his rage, and his features remained razor sharp. Despite the changes that had taken place in him, she wasn’t frightened by him. She knew he was doing this because he’d seen the threat to her and had acted. She would savor the novelty of someone standing up for her later, once this was over.
“Please don’t kill him.” She stroked her hand up and down his arm in a soothing motion. Dr. Avery made a choking sound that had the ring of disgust and she ignored him. What mattered was removing the alien’s anger, and Dr. Avery didn’t know what was good for him. It was just as well that he couldn’t speak, since if he said anything insulting, she didn’t know if she could save him. And depending on what he said if she would want to.
“He’ll hurt you if he gets the chance.” The alien’s voice was still dark and thick, and he still needed to be soothed. “He would have had no qualms about killing me.”
“I know, but please, I can’t be part of murder. Don’t hurt him. Do it for me.” The anger slowly leached from him at her words. The boney protrusions in his forehead ebbed away, his features lost their sharpness and the grey left this skin. If she hadn’t seen the transformation for herself, there was no way she could tell that he was anything other than a human.
He lowered Dr. Avery to the floor, but did not remove his hand from the other man’s throat. He must have loosened his grip because Dr. Avery’s breath rasped in and out as he pulled air in and out of his lungs.
“You’ll regret this.” He turned his head to look at her, a sneer replacing the fear that had been stamped across his face. “Your life is over. Whore yourself for this abomination, but you won’t—”
His words cut off. The alien must have tightened his hand again. For a smart man, Dr. Avery was acting like a moron. She was trying to save his life, and he seemed just as determined to end it. He had the nerve to call her a whore.
In his own twisted version of the world he thought a woman would only help a man if she wanted to spread her legs for him. While she would admit she felt an attraction of the alien, it was not why she’d saved him. She would have saved him if there had been no attraction at all. Dr. Avery may not see that what he intended to do to the alien was murder, but she did.
“I don’t want you to kill him, but could you shut him up somehow?”
The alien reached up with his free hand and placed it where Dr. Avery’s trapezius muscle met his neck. After a moment Dr. Avery sagged in the aliens grip, and when he let him go, the doctor fell to the floor in a heap.
“I’m sorry you had to see what I become in the grip of intense emotion. I hope I didn’t scare you. Know that I will not hurt you.” He reached out and touched her face. His words were unnecessary, but she enjoyed feeling his fingers on her skin.
“I know. If you wanted to hurt me, you would have done it by now. We don’t have a lot of time. Carl is bound to figure out that something is going on. Dr. Avery’s presence here will buy us some time, but it still doesn’t solve the problem of getting you out of here.”
The alien looked down at Dr. Avery’s prone body, and a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.
“I have a way to get past the guard and out the front door without raising suspicion. Can you open the door to the other room please?”
What could he possibly do that would get him out of the building undetected? He looked at her expectantly as if waiting for her to say something. She didn’t know what he expected her to say as she moved toward the door to the observation room. There was something she wanted from him, and now seemed like a good time to ask for it, after all they’d been through so far. From the moment she’d learned what he was, she’d referred to him as the alien in her head, and he no longer seemed as foreign or strange as the concept suggested. Surely it was time she learned his name.
“You never answered me the first time I saw you.” She opened the door and leaned against it to keep it open. “You never told me your name.”
“It’s Synn.” He walked by her with Dr. Avery’s body slung over his shoulder. He went past her and put Dr. Avery on the metal table in the middle of the room.
She blinked her eyes several times as
she looked at him. It almost looked like he was shrinking, but that couldn’t be right. The muscles in his face churned and his hair changed color. In a matter of moments while she stared at him, he turned himself into an exact copy of Dr. Avery.
Her mouth went dry and if she hadn’t been leaning against the door her legs would have sagged under her weight.
“I should have warned you that I would go through a change, but how does one explain something like this? It’s a special talent that my species has, but just remember that I’m still Synn underneath this disguise.”
Her mouth hung open, and she could do nothing but stare at him as her heart pounded. He was right about one thing, there was nothing he could have said that would prepare her for this. He looked exactly like Dr. Avery, and no wonder he’d said that he had a way to get past Carl and the cameras without raising suspicion. If she hadn’t seen him change with her own eyes, she would never have believe him capable of something like this.
“Remember I’m still me. I’m still Synn under this shell.”
He spoke with Dr. Avery’s voice, but used a tone she’d never heard come out of the scientist’s mouth. There was a gentleness that Dr. Avery never used, and suddenly she could see past the surface details, and her body relaxed. As far as disguises went, he could not have picked a better one. He looked like the one person who could go anywhere in the lab without question, and no one would stop him from walking right out the front door.
Chapter Nine
Once Synn was assured that Miranda wouldn’t go into shock over what she’d seen him do, he quickly and efficiently stripped off the clothes Dr. Avery wore. Touching him, and morphing into him exposed him to more of Dr. Avery’s thought process, and he didn’t like what he’d been privy too. His movements became less careful as he looked over at Miranda leaning against the door. Did she know what the scientist had planned for her?
“Did you know he plans to marry you?” Synn put aside Dr. Avery’s lab coat and loosened his tie. He yanked it over the scientist’s head and placed it on top of the coat. The buttons came next.
“What?” The pale shade of her skin told him the she had no idea what he was talking about. “He wants to marry me?”
“Not wants to, plans to.” He propped Dr. Avery into a sitting position and tugged his shirt down one arm then the other. Dr. Avery’s head lolled to the front, and when Synn let him back down, it hit the steel tabletop with a thunk.
His pants came next, followed by his shoes and socks. He didn’t want to tell her what else lurked in the dark recesses of the older man’s mind. How his obsession for her was causing him to lose control, and how he fondled himself at the thought of forcing himself upon her. If he’d known that while he still held his hand around the man’s throat, she would not have been able to stop him from killing him despite that she’d asked him not to.
“I knew there was something about him that made me feel uneasy. He’d look at me intensely sometimes, but I never suspected that he planned to marry me.” She gave a small shudder as she stared at Dr. Avery’s prone form.
Synn didn’t know how a man could force a woman into a union without her consent, and he didn’t have time to get into it. He quickly took off the clothes they’d given him, which now hung on him like a child in playing dress up in his father’s clothes. He pulled on the clothes Dr. Avery had worn. The tie stymied him, and he balled it up and tossed it to the side.
He turned and walked over to the door and was out of the room with Miranda behind him.
“Take me to the engineering lab, I need to see if my pod is there.” She rushed ahead of him to the door at the other end of the room.
The sensor above it detected her and the lock clicked and she pulled the door open. She paused for a moment, pulled off her shoes, and held them in her hands. He could see one was missing the heel, and he wished he’d been a little rougher with Dr. Avery after he’d so carelessly shoved her aside when Synn had confronted him.
Her feet made a soft slapping noise on the floor as she hustled ahead of him. Although he was wearing Dr. Avery’s skin, he needed to pay attention to what he was doing. She followed the natural path of the corridor as they came to a sharp bend at the end, and there was a door on their right.
She pressed the small piece of plastic that she used to get in the doors, and the panel beside it blinked from red to blue. She pushed open the door, and he went in the room ahead of her, his eyes sweeping the interior for any threats. The room was silent, and in the dim light he could see his pod sitting in the middle of the room. It’s here. His shoulder’s sagged at the sight and he strode over to it.
The pod had seen better days, and the entire back end of it was crumpled like a giant hand had crushed it. It didn’t matter what it looked like, as long as what he needed in the small, hidden interior compartment was still intact. The door of the pod had been taken off, and he slid inside and pushed the hand shaped depression on the under side of the console. It made a clicking noise and he pulled the rectangular panel that popped out a fraction of an inch. He slid out the paper thin tablet that fit in the palm of his hand and handed it to Miranda.
“What is it?” She looked down at it and turned it over in her hand.
“It’s the way I’m going to find my friends. Now, I think we’ve spent enough time in this place don’t you? Let’s get out of here.” He pulled himself out of the pod. She handed the tablet back to him and he slid it into his pocket. They hurried to the door and left the room.
It took only moments to get back to the outside of the observation lab, and he had to trust her to lead the way since he didn’t know where he was going.
“Dr. Avery?”
She gasped and grab his arm as the sound of footstep approaching followed the voice down the hall.
“What is it?”
“That’s Carl. I’m not supposed to be here, I told him that I came back for something and that I needed to find it. If he sees me here, he might be suspicious.”
“Dr. Avery,” Carl called again. “Did you find Citizen Reynaud? I checked by her desk and she’s not there.”
She cursed under her breath, and her hand tightened on his arm.
“Relax.” Synn put his hand over hers and rubbed her skin, trying to sooth the nerves he could feel in her tight grip. “I look like Dr. Avery, and you’re with me.”
“I know, but he won’t believe that Dr. Avery would allow my poking around back here without a very good reason. He’ll be suspicious and he might report it, if only to cover his own ass.”
Synn heard the guard getting closer, and she’d done so much to help him already that he couldn’t cause her any more difficulty. He drew her to him, and he didn’t know if what he was about to do was for her sake, or if it was something that had been coming from the moment she’d walked into his room only the day before.
“So let’s give him a reason for you to be back here.” He pulled her against his chest and lowered his mouth to hers. She stiffened in his arms for a moment. Whether it was because she was startled by his advance or because he looked like her boss he didn’t know. She must have caught on to what he was doing because she put her arms around her neck and hooked her leg around his calf. He forgot this was supposed to be for show and turned her so she was pressed against the wall.
“Dr. Avery—”
Synn pulled away and looked at Carl as he came up behind them. The guard’s eyes darted back and forth between them, and Synn stepped away from Miranda, putting her behind him as if protecting her from the guard’s eyes. “Oh.”
There was a knowing note in Carl’s voice, and he gave Synn a look that spoke volumes.
“I trust that this will go no further than between us, Carl.” He used a stern voice and Miranda snorted behind him. He reached behind him and took her forearm, giving it a little squeeze. She needed to hold it together for just a few seconds longer.
“Yes sir,” The smirk he was wearing dropped from his face. He seemed to remember who he was talking t
o. “I’ll be back at my desk if you need anything.”
The guard turned on his heel and walked back down the corridor. Behind him, Miranda’s hands came up to either side of his waist and her forehead came down to rest at the base of his neck.
“Are you okay?” He turned, and she lifted her head. Her hands dropped away from him as she moved away.
“Yes, but can we please get out of here? I want to go now.” Her face was pale and tense, and he could see the strain this evening had taken on her.
He nodded his head, and they turned and walked down the corridor, and she jumped slightly when he put his hand on the small of her back. He only sought to support her.
“If you don’t want me to touch you, please tell me. I don’t want to do anything to make you uncomfortable.” He wasn’t sure if touching her was intended to comfort her, or himself. He was in a strange world, away from his companions, away from everything familiar, and she’d become a lifeline for him, something for him to draw comfort from, if only for a short time.
“To be honest, I find it a little weird.”
He immediately dropped his hand away and stared straight ahead.
She wouldn’t welcome his touch. He was an alien to her, and no matter how he blended in, seeing him the way he truly looked when he’d confronted Dr. Avery must have repulsed her.
They came to the end of the hall and she stopped at a desk that was outside an office. She reached into her pocket and pulled the access card she’d used to get in and out of his room and placed it in the middle.
“Why are you doing that?”
“I stole it from someone’s desk, and he’ll need it back. I have no other way to give it to him since once I walk out the front door I won’t be back.” She went around the desk and dropped the shoes she was still holding into a metal basket beside the desk. They landed with a thunk, and she came back around. “Let’s go.”
“Won’t you need shoes?”
