by Pamela Fryer
“You are lucky it has already fed.”
She crawled to the narrow walk and Jager helped her to a sitting position on its edge. She braced herself for his anger, but he didn’t shout at her. Surprising, considering she’d just zapped him.
“It was hiding up there.” She pointed to an access tunnel like the one they’d come down. A highway access? Or another building? She had no idea how far underground they’d traveled.
“It is storing food for its offspring. The girl was laid there as a trap to snare you. The Tetra is a cunning creature.”
“Jesus.” Brooke dragged a strand of wet hair off her face. She winced as Jager reached up with a finger and did the same to her other cheek. The fingertip that traced across her skin was gentle, and he was looking into her eyes like a man about to begin a seduction.
She guessed it was okay that he touch her now. He deserved an apology, not an attack. But in light of all that had happened, one was hard to muster.
“Okay, Company Man. Time for you to come clean.”
“We are both very dirty.”
Was that a subtle innuendo, or another of his odd, literal statements? “I wasn’t born yesterday. I have four years on the Portland PD behind me, and I’ve seen and heard it all. Don’t try to feed me anything but the truth. What. Is. That. Thing?”
He rocked back on his heels. “I have told you the truth.”
She held up a hand. “You are not from outer space.”
His lips tightened into a straight line.
“Okay, let me tell you what I think. You’re either FBI or CIA, or something even more secret, and you’re trying to clean up some nasty mess the U-S-of-A has gotten itself into. That creature is an aberration of nature that somehow found its way to Oregon, and you’ve got to kill it before any of the general population finds out about it.”
He smiled. His face warmed and his eyes twinkled. Brooke’s insides quaked. They’d done well, hiring this man. He could charm the habit off a nun.
“Yes, no, and yes.”
“Was that so hard?”
The creature’s screech carried down the pipe. Chills rolled over Brooke’s flesh.
“You have made it angry.”
Wonderful. She looked into the darkness in the direction it had fled. “Is all that true, about its nest?”
Jager’s smile faded. “Yes, it is.”
“Shit.” She pushed to her feet. When she wobbled, he caught her elbow with a strong hand. Brooke pulled away quickly.
Focus. Find Sara Brown. Nothing else matters.
She walked through the stream toward the girl. Brooke was soaked to the skin; there was no reason to cling to the walk now.
“Is this your Sara Brown?” He followed close, illuminating the tunnel with his super flashlight.
“No.” Two down, one to go. She didn’t like the idea Jager had planted in her mind. It is storing food.
“It is odd the Tetra would risk this prey for a trap. Perhaps it is wounded.”
“You’ve grazed it twice,” Brooke said. “It’s missing a front leg.”
“The leg will grow back. I believe it is something else.”
“By the way, you could have killed it just now. It almost seemed like you tried to miss.”
He stepped in front of her and knelt beside the unconscious girl. “I could not risk hitting you. A strike from the Xinotype will kill you instantly.”
“Oh.” Brooke swallowed. So it was her fault a second time that the creature had gotten away. Oops.
He had that Palm Pilot out and was pointing it at the girl, scanning her à la Dr. McCoy. Brooke peered over his shoulder to get a better look at the apparatus. She couldn’t make out any of the symbols flashing across the screen but noted they were weird, like the ornament he wore around his neck.
“She is diseased. The Tetra discarded her.” He glanced back at her. “That is why it wanted you.”
“Lovely.”
“It can identify us by our scent. It knows we are in the tube, hunting it.”
“So it laid a trap for me.”
“For us both.”
Small consolation.
He touched the screen, as if programming commands into it. “I am a threat. You are food.”
Come on, alarm clock, time to buzz. Wake me up so I can have some beautiful coffee and a big, sugary donut just perfect for chasing away any residual nightmare jitters.
“We must leave. You are correct; it is not safe here. I will carry her.”
“Wait. She might know where Sara is.” Brooke moved around him and gripped the girl by the shoulders. She moaned and grimaced, in a state of semi-consciousness.
“Wake up.” Brooke slapped her.
“She is infected. She needs medical attention.”
“And we’ll get it for her. But the creature went that way, and it might have Sara.”
“If the Tetra has her, it will lead us away from her. It will not risk its nest.”
She frowned at him. That was not what she wanted to hear.
“I must see a schematic of these tubes. It is pointless to travel blindly.”
She shook the girl. “Come on, honey.”
His Palm Pilot, which she was severely starting to doubt was a Palm Pilot, beeped in his hand. He looked at it. “First we must destroy the creature, then we must find its clutch. We have less than twenty-four hours before the eggs hatch.”
“Do you have any good news?”
“I am sorry, Brooke Weaver. I do not.”
“It’s just Brooke, okay?” Her patience was wearing thin. She looked at her watch. It was broken.
The girl wouldn’t rouse. Jager folded up his gizmo and put it back into a pocket that she still couldn’t see how he opened. He lifted the girl as if she were weightless and heaved her over his shoulder.
Damn. He had a tight ass to go with the rest of the hunky package.
Brooke experienced a totally inappropriate surge of arousal, mixed with a twinge of jealousy. There was something sexy and medieval about a man who could so easily throw a woman over his shoulder and carry her off.
Jager winced and wobbled unsteadily. She placed a hand on his back. He was solid as a rock. Tendons flexed under her palm, igniting those strange twittery sensations again. He held the girl on his shoulder with one hand and aimed his strange flashlight ahead with the other.
They’d only made one turn on the way, so finding their way out wasn’t difficult, but once in the main tube, Brooke wasn’t aware they’d walked so far. It seemed like they hiked out for hours, and she started to worry they’d missed the access pipe they’d come down.
“Is that really true about the eggs?” She glanced back over her shoulder, half expecting the creature to come racing out of the darkness like so many horror movies. “One of those spiders will lay a clutch every thirty-six hours?”
“During the reproduction cycle,” he answered simply.
She would bet he wasn’t telling her he had destroyed a clutch that was only four hours old, and recently. “Doesn’t the queen need a male to fertilize the eggs?”
“Each nest possesses one queen; the rest will be males. One of them will fertilize the eggs she carries. After that, she will have no need of a male again.”
Yikes. “Never?”
“Never.”
“How many...never mind.” She decided it was better not to have the answer to that question. So instead she asked, “Why is it immune to bullets?”
“To kill it, you must stop its heart and sever its head from its body before it begins beating again.”
Nice. A giant tick with a self-restarting heart. And don’t forget the severed legs that grow back.
He’d said he didn’t have any good news, so Brooke figured the simplest way to stop the bad news was to stop asking questions.
He finally stopped at a set of metal rungs.
“Are you sure this is the right access?” she asked him.
“Are you not?”
She shrugged. “S
orry. I’m not much of a sewer guide.”
“Hold the Xinotype.” He handed her his flashlight. “If the creature reappears, aim at it and press this button.” His gaze rose to hers. “Please do not shoot me.”
“I won’t.” Heat crawled up her neck. “I promise.”
He started up the rungs as easily as if he didn’t have a girl slung over his shoulder. She aimed the light up and waited until he reached the top. Only then did she realize he’d given her his weapon so she would be safe.
It was a strange gizmo, shaped sort of like a futuristic movie prop. The handle was molded with finger grooves and the oval barrel had tiny, plastic-covered windows. It was smooth, dull silver, and surprisingly light considering its size. She held it easily in two fingers as she climbed the rungs.
A din of hard rain smacked the building’s roof and the inside of the plant was pitch dark, but eerie light reflecting from the cloudy sky glowed outside. Brooke repressed a shudder of unease. She didn’t like dark, dead places.
Without asking where she’d left her car, Jager kicked open the wood covering the plant’s main doorway and stalked through the front building. She had to jog to keep up with his long strides as he hiked down the road. In minutes, she was soaked and shivering, but the rain helped clean off some of the sludge from the sewer.
“There’s an urgent care center in town. We can leave her there for the FBI after she regains consciousness and I ask her about Sara. Hey, would you wait up?”
“I am in much pain. Two of my ribs are broken.”
“Oh.” Her guilt increased. “I didn’t do that, did I?”
“No.”
She trailed a few paces behind, feeling like a heel anyway.
Once they arrived at the fallen trees, Jager veered off the road as though to go under them, as she had done on her way up. But once over the edge of the road, he continued into the forest down the charred scar.
“Where are you going?” Brooke demanded.
The rain had washed away much of the black soot and the cinders had stopped smoking. Or maybe it was just the darkness swallowing it. She wasn’t sure. Fatigue pulled at her comprehension, and she wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t anymore. She wished she knew what time it was. Somehow it would be easier to deal with all that had happened if she knew how much time had passed. She hadn’t slept since Tuesday. Or was it Monday?
She stopped and planted her hands on her hips. Jager kept right on going. He became rippled, like she was looking at him through glass trickling with rainwater. She blinked several times.
He then disappeared altogether.
No way.
Jager’s form slowly took shape again, mixed with the trees and pine. “Please hurry, Just Brooke.”
She took a few steps forward, and then stopped.
“Do not be afraid. You are in no danger.”
“Yeah, right,” she muttered.
The bad feeling was back with a vengeance.
Chapter Five
Jager winced against the fiery lances slicing through his side. He’d endured worse, many times before. His thoughts went back three years to Ursus Hi, where his team had quelled a rebellion in an Yrathian mining prison. For more than six hours he’d engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a broken ulna. They hadn’t been able to use weapons; a misplaced pulse could have sent the entire facility up in flames. After putting the prisoners back in order, he’d braved yet another day waiting for the asteroid belt to shift so the rescue ships could land.
He could tolerate a little pain in order to introduce Just Brooke to his ship gently, rather than risk makathia, a state where her synapses began breaking down due to shock. In worst-case scenarios, makathia could cause psychosis to set in. While he didn’t think that would happen to Just Brooke—she exhibited strength and higher than average intelligence—still he worried about the shock she would experience seeing his technology.
He waited at the edge of the cloak, second-guessing his choice to bring her with him. To reveal himself was a violation of several articles that protected foreign planets outside the Interplanetary Alliance, as well as posing a high security risk.
But he couldn’t very well treat the infected female and return her to her society like a sport fisherman might return a redargo to the sea; the girl might need further assistance he was not in a position to provide. He knew next to nothing about this planet’s laws.
And as much as he told himself it would be better if Just Brooke chose to turn now and go her own way, he couldn’t deny a twinge of disappointment at the thought of her doing so. This Earth female had a specialness about her he couldn’t exactly pinpoint, but could feel deep in his heart. It wasn’t merely her beauty, her strength, her courage, or her crisp tongue, but a combination of all of those things that made her unlike anyone else he’d ever met. It would be a privilege to learn more about her, and a pleasure to get to know her.
The female soldiers he’d fought alongside were rigid, humorless women bound by the same laws he was: forbidden from marriage and prohibited from unregulated intercourse. He’d never desired one of his fellow soldiers before, yet until now he’d never questioned why.
In Just Brooke’s company, he finally understood the allure. No female, not the Sulvarien noble he’d served or even the pushy Rashee who flaunted their for-hire sexuality, had ever brought alive these curious feelings.
He remembered her hands moving over him. His body turned warm, and the pain of his broken ribs diminished.
Jager pushed those thoughts out of his mind. She was forbidden to him, and he would be wise to remember that. But even as he told himself this, he felt a flush of desire at the sight of her walking toward him. As she came into view, rippled and then clear through the cloak’s bluish edge, he could not deny the strange pleasure he experienced simply from looking at her.
* * * * *
Brooke took cautious steps forward. She felt nothing as she stepped into the blue haze, but as she approached Jager, a vessel came into focus, as though it materialized out of thin air. The forest around her remained unchanged.
The vehicle looked like a modified Winnebago, except that it didn’t have wheels. It jutted out of the earth at an odd angle, as if it had planted its front end deep in a crash. Crash-landed.
Not possible.
She turned to look back. The rest of the forest was visible, but a shimmery halo surrounded them which looked like a thin film of blue Jell-O. Rotating rainbow-colored slivers emanated from a point in a nearby tree.
He’s bending light to conceal his vehicle. Ingenious and highly advanced, but not completely Martian. Her mind still refused to wrap around the news this was a craft from another world.
That Jager was a man from another world.
Not only couldn’t she believe it, she didn’t want to believe it.
Lord, I need sleep. Or I am asleep, and I just can’t wake up.
Behind her, Jager’s footsteps made hollow thumps. She turned back to see him walking up a ramp extending from the base of a door that had materialized in the vehicle’s side. No, not materialized; that was ludicrous. She simply hadn’t noticed it on first glance.
His voice carried from inside. “Lights on.” Cool white light spilled out of the doorway. Voice commands. More advanced technology, but not unheard of.
Brooke didn’t think she’d ever taken such a risk as she did now, following a strange man into an even stranger-looking craft.
Wasn’t this how Ted Bundy had lured his victims? “My arm is broken and I can’t get this chair into my van. Could you help me?”
On the other hand, if he really was from outer space, Jager probably had the means to take her by force if she resisted.
If he really is from outer space, life as I know it is pretty much over anyway.
She took a deep breath and followed him up the ramp.
The inside of the vehicle looked like the set of a sci-fi movie, and she half expected a television crew to jump out and yell, “Surprise!”
The interior looked like a scientific lab that had been through an earthquake. The walls, ceiling, and floor were white and comprised almost entirely of mechanical consoles, switches, knobs and gears, and electronic screens. Nothing homey, like a dinner table or couches. No curtains, pillows, or any of the luxury you’d find in an RV.
“Omags silent,” Jager said cryptically. He crossed the slanted floor carefully. “Open Medical One.”
A tall, person-sized tube of clear white plastic swiveled around to reveal an open section. Beside it were cabinets and counters, scattered with what looked like medical equipment.
Jager eased the girl over his shoulder and into the cylinder. When her feet touched the floor it lit up and a hum arose, though it was more like pressure inside Brooke’s ears than a sound filling the chamber. The girl’s hair floated as though statically charged.
A surge of brilliant fear heated Brooke’s flesh. She glanced back at the door. It had closed without a sound.
Oh no.
Jager stepped back, and the girl remained prone, still unconscious. She didn’t seem any worse for wear. Brooke held her breath, worried he would expect she hop in there next. She had no desire to become a specimen in a giant test tube.
Packaged human, freeze-dried and ready to eat. She clamped a hand over her mouth to hold back the panicked sound fighting to break free.
She scanned the bright-white cabin and her gaze fell on a figure slumped over in a command chair positioned in front of a large monitor. She blinked. The figure definitely wasn’t moving.
“He died in the crash.”
She turned to find Jager staring at her. His brows knit. “I did not have time to cremate his body.”
“Like Emily.” Her racing heart kicked into overdrive. She hadn’t seen a dead body in five years; now she’d seen two in as many hours.
Panic took firm hold as sanity started slipping away. She glanced around the craft. Where did that door go? Would it respond to her voice command if she told it to open?
She’d tumbled back in time to that night in Portland, only this time she’d been captured. Brooke forced herself to take a deep calming breath, and then a second and third.
