The Alien Uncovers (Uoria Mates IV Book 3)

by Ruth Anne Scott

  The door to the control room opened and Rain tensed for a moment before realizing it was Lynx who stepped inside the room with her. Relief washed over her and she rushed toward him to gather him in an embrace.

  “Are you alright?” she asked, stepping back away from him to make sure he hadn’t been injured in the battle.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “What are you doing in here?”

  “I couldn’t stand by the window and watch you fight,” she told him. “It was already bad enough that you had made us all stay here in the shuttle when you went back to the quarry to help Kyven. I wasn’t about to just stand by again. I thought maybe if I could figure out how to operate the shuttle, I would be able to use it to go to Uoria for the others, but the technology is too hard. I can’t figure it out.”

  “Why haven’t you asked Avery?” Lynx asked.

  “I did,” Rain said, trying not to let the question offend her. “My first thought was that he could either bring some of us to Uoria or he could teach me how to do it.”

  “What did he say?” Lynx asked.

  “Apparently when the shuttle came to Penthos it was damaged. Just like with our ship when we were redirected from here to Uoria, this ship was sabotaged and directed here. The main controls had been deactivated so even if Avery had tried to steer the ship rather than going and hiding in the panic room, he wouldn’t have been able to.”

  “So the shuttle won’t work?” Lynx asked.

  “Not right now,” Rain said. “But that can’t just be it. There has to be something that I’m missing. When the StarCity crashed into Uoria, it was far more violent than the crash here. The ship itself started to fall apart. The weapons that the Valdicians had thrown into the ship and attached to the outside actually started to destroy it once they disabled the communication and navigation systems and led the ship to Uoria. Once we were over the planet, the ship started to come apart and we actually felt it crashing. That’s not how it was with this ship.”

  “I’m not following you,” Lynx said.

  “We didn’t crash here,” Rain said. “The ship was redirected here, but then we landed. It was fairly controlled and nothing seemed to break off of the shuttle when it happened. The main controls, though, are no longer working. That means that there were measures put into place to deactivate the control system and override any navigation once we were at a particular point in the journey. Now that we’re here, those measures are still in place, which means that the navigation system still isn’t working.”

  “But the ship itself isn’t damaged.”

  “It doesn’t appear to be,” Rain confirmed.

  “So if you could just find whatever the Valdicians did to the controls and remove it…”

  “I should be able to get the shuttle moving again.” She took a breath as she examined another cluster of buttons on the wall. “I wonder if that thought even crossed Etan’s mind,” she said, more to herself than to Lynx.

  “What?” Lynx asked

  She looked at him for a moment and then took a step toward him.

  “It still doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Why did Etan kill himself?”

  “He knew that the ship was going to crash,” Lynx said. “You already told us that. It was in his journal.”

  “I know that his journal said that he knew the Valdician plans, but that doesn’t explain why he decided to kill himself rather than trying to reclaim the shuttle. As the pilot, he knew how to operate the StarCity like nobody else did. I could have taken over if I had to, but my knowledge of the technology was basic compared to his. I know that we tried to reconnect the communication systems and tried basic navigation, but I don’t remember him going to any further lengths to try to defeat the sabotage and take the ship back. Why?”

  “Maybe he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to and was worried that if he tried, he would cause something even worse to happen and none of you would have a chance to survive.”

  Rain shook her head, moving on to another set of switches and buttons.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she repeated. “The information that he had about the Valdicians. It wasn’t much. A couple of pages that he snatched from an office on Penthos. It wasn’t enough to justify what he said in his journal. He knew too much. There was something going on that we still don’t know, and it made him kill himself before we landed. I want to know why.” She pushed another handle and an empty drawer opened. “But first, I need to know what happened to this ship and how I can fix it so that Athan and I can get back to Uoria.”

  “Why Athan?” Lynx asked.

  “Maxim and Kyven are needed here, but we need the weapons and the army that is building there. Athan is our connection to the Mikana and to everything that Maxim and Kyven’s father left behind.”

  Chapter Nine

  Ciyrs stood in the center of the room, surrounded by the women and hybrids, listening to the rhythm of their breathing and hoping that the worst was over for them. Eden came to his side and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders to give her a brief hug. The fact that through saving her life he had manipulated her DNA to make her Denynso and linked their minds in a way that was usually reserved only for mates made them closer than the others in the clan, and he was glad for the few quiet moments that he was getting with her beside him. It was comforting to have her with him, even though he could feel the emotion radiating off of her and knew that she was suffering with each moment that she stood in the laboratory building. Deep within her, Ciyrs knew that Eden blamed herself for what was happening. If only she had made a different choice when she worked with Ryan before coming to Uoria. If she had given in only once to his advances or gone another direction and revealed to the governing bodies of the University what Ryan was doing to her, or what he had asked her to do on her journey to Uoria, he might have been stopped.

  “You can’t think that way,” Ciyrs said.

  Eden glanced up at him, but didn’t question what he meant by the statement. Even though Ciyrs rarely communicated with her through their thoughts, she knew that he could still read her face and knew her well enough to anticipate what she was thinking.

  “But, maybe I could have stopped him,” she said. “If I had done something different. If I had been nice to him, maybe he would have told me what was happening and I could have stopped it, or if I had told the University what I knew that he was doing, they could have investigated.”

  Ciyrs turned toward Eden and leaned forward slightly to look at her intently.

  “Eden, listen to me. There is nothing that you could have done. If you had been nice to him, you would have been swept up into this and probably would have become a part of the experiments. You wouldn’t have had the opportunity to stop him or to tell anyone what was happening. If you had told someone, they wouldn’t have believed you. Even if they did, they wouldn’t have had anything on him other than the way that he was treating you and asking you to get Pyra’s blood. They wouldn’t have been able to do much to him, and if they did, what would have happened to these people? Besides, if you had done anything differently, you wouldn’t have ended up on Uoria. You wouldn’t have met Pyra, and you wouldn’t have had Lysander. We never would have found the human settlement or connected with the Mikana. You’re right, you could have done something different and it wouldn’t have ended up like this, but that wouldn’t have been a good thing. It would have been a tragedy.”

  “I just feel so helpless,” Eden said. “I wish that there was more than I could do for them.”

  “I know,” Ciyrs said. “So do I. For now, we’ve done what we can. We’ll keep watching them and I’ll perform healings as needed. They seem to be responding well and that’s all we can hope for right now.”

  Behind him Ciyrs heard the door open and turned to see Pyra come inside. His eyes scanned the room and Ciyrs saw the warriors’ leader’s jaw twitch. He stalked toward them and wrapped an arm protectively around Eden.

  “What kind of leader could do this to his followers?” P
yra growled.

  “He’s not a leader,” Eden said. “Ryan is an owner and a dictator. He doesn’t see any of these people as living beings.”

  “Are these women all pregnant?” Pyra asked.

  Ciyrs nodded.

  “Yes. They’re all in different stages.”

  “What are we going to do for them?” Eden asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ciyrs said. “I’m not familiar enough with human pregnancies to really help them, but I will do everything that I can for them.”

  “Ciyrs, have you noticed Jacob?” Pyra asked.

  Ciyrs glanced across the room toward where Jacob sat on the floor beside one of the women they had rescued from the breeding facility. He recognized her as the first woman that Jacob spoke to in the room and the one that he took from the room first. The human man was leaning toward the woman, speaking to her quietly and occasionally touching her gently. It was far more familiar and intimate than the way any of them were speaking to the other women, and it struck the healer as strange.

  “Does he know her?” Ciyrs asked.

  “It would certainly look that way,” Pyra replied. “How do you think he knows her?”

  Ciyrs shook his head.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me anything about her.”

  “Do you think that we’re going to be ready to leave tonight?” Pyra asked, apparently pushing the questions about the man who had arrived with Jem away.

  Ciyrs looked around the room and shook his head adamantly.

  “No,” he said. “Even the wounded from the battle will need more time to heal and get stronger before we can think about trying to leave. The surviving hybrids and the women might need even longer.”

  “We don’t have the time to keep waiting. We need to get to the shuttles and to Penthos. The longer that we wait here, the higher the chances that more of the hybrids or Valdicians will find us, and the more danger the others are in. We need to move.”

  “They are not strong enough,” Ciyrs insisted. “If we try to leave too soon, they will not make it. Moving too quickly is going to be more dangerous than waiting. We must stay here. For at least one more day. Maybe more. I already told you that.”

  Pyra looked frustrated, but Ciyrs wasn’t going to back down. He had already told the warrior leader that those in the infirmary needed more time, and the need was even more pressing now that they had the hybrid survivors and the women to care for.

  “You’re probably right,” Pyra said, “but I am going to tell those who aren’t injured to start collecting supplies. The more prepared we are when the wounded are ready, the better.”

  Pyra turned sharply and left the room with Eden close behind him. Ciyrs scanned the room a final time to make sure that no one there needed additional help. When he was satisfied that they were resting comfortably, at least for the moment, he decided it was time that he take a break and get something to eat. He didn’t know how long it had been since he had rested or eaten, but he was starting to feel hazy with fatigue. As he stepped into the first chamber, Elianna rushed up to him and he gathered her in his arms.

  “Have you rested or had anything to eat?” he asked her, worried that she was doing the same thing that he was and neglecting herself as she cared for the injured.

  Elianna nodded.

  “Some,” she said. “I’ve been in the infirmary most of the time. What is going on in that other chamber?”

  Ciyrs hesitated. He wanted to be able to tell his mate what was happening. He wasn’t accustomed to having to hide things from her. Usually she was his greatest source of comfort and his confidante. He shared everything with her and let her support and guide him when he didn’t know what to do. This time, though, he was under orders from Pyra not to talk about the surviving hybrids or the breeding facility. They didn’t want to frighten any of the group or give them anything else to worry about until they knew what was to be done with these people.

  “I can’t tell you right now,” Ciyrs said. “I’ll let you know as soon as I can. Don’t worry. I’m safe. You just take care of yourself and keep doing what you can for the men in the infirmary.”

  Ciyrs felt himself sway slightly and Elianna grasped him by the arm.

  “You need to sit down,” she said. “Have you even slept since we got here?”

  “I don’t remember,” Ciyrs said.

  Elianna started guiding him toward the corner of the room next to a set of shelves. He settled onto a mat and she handed him a box of rations and a bottle of water.

  “Eat,” she told him. “Whatever’s going on can wait. Everyone will need our healer no matter what happens next.”

  Ciyrs accepted to food and eagerly began to eat, feeling hungrier as the food touched his tongue. He had finished the rations that Elianna brought him and was downing the water when something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. Placing water back on the shelf beside him, Ciyrs turned toward the glimmer of reflection he had seen. Aegeus was standing in front of a piece of reflective metal, staring into the hazy image of himself. The healer watched as the man lifted one skeletal hand and touched it to the side of his pale, slimy face.

  There was a time when Ciyrs would have felt nothing but disgust looking at this man. He was Klimnu, his appearance exactly like the countless other creatures that had proved themselves the most lingering of enemies of the Denynso. They had been the grisly and vicious enemies of the Denynso king Creia, and had continued to engage in violent conflict with the clan until they finally defeated them the day that Jem disappeared, taking the last two of the army with him as he dropped off of the reflected branch into the sky. It wasn’t until they saw Maxim’s skin begin to dissolve away and mimic the appearance of the skin that they had all become horribly familiar that they learned the Klimnu were gruesomely mutated Mikana. They had been originally changed from the beautiful, intelligent species into the disgusting beings by a toxin on Uoria, but it was the greed, arrogance, and violence of a small group of them that had sealed their fate, effectively dividing the species into two.

  Aegeus had never intended to be Klimnu. A Mikana warrior who had been a part of the mysterious Order and fought vehemently against the corruption within his kind that bred the Klimnu, Aegeus was a casualty of Ryan in many ways. His family had thought him dead for many years, with his sons Maxim and Kyven suffering throughout life with all of the questions that came from never knowing what had happened to their father. In reality, he had been captured by Ryan’s servants and brought back to Earth where Ryan forcibly transformed him into the creature that he loathed so deeply. For years he had been keeping Aegeus prisoner, strengthening his aggression and using him in his experiments with the ever-present threat that Ryan would destroy his family and then eliminate his kind in his quest to control the galaxy.

  Where there had always been disdain and hatred toward these creatures, Ciyrs now felt compassion. He could see the agony in Aegeus’s eyes as he saw his fully mutated self for what might have been the first time in the years that he had been held captive. Putting the empty rations box aside, Ciyrs stood and crossed the room to Aegeus. The man tensed as Ciyrs approached, still hesitant to trust anyone after his years of torture. The healer could see the compulsion to fight in Aegeus’s eyes. He was struggling not to lash out against Ciyrs and the other Denynso that surrounded him.

  “I can help you,” Ciyrs said.

  Aegeus looked up at him through the reflection in the mirror. His expression was difficult to decipher due to the mutation of his face, but Ciyrs knew that he was thinking about what the healer had said, unsure of whether he could believe or trust him.

  “Why would you do that?” Aegeus asked.

  “You aren’t Klimnu,” Ciyrs said. “This isn’t who you are. You are a Mikana warrior, the father of two men. What happened to you isn’t your fault.”

  “You can really reverse it?” Aegeus asked.

  His voice crawled across Ciyrs’s skin, reminding him of all the times that he had heard the crea
tures taunting them in battle. This time, however, it wasn’t disgust at the voice itself, but at what made that voice come out of Aegeus’s mouth. He nodded.

  “I can,” he said. “I have to warn you. It will take time and may be very painful.”

  “I don’t care,” Aegeus said. “It can’t take nearly as long or be nearly as painful as what I’ve been through here. I will suffer anything for the chance to not be this way.”

  “You’re sure?” Ciyrs asked.

  “There is no reason to live if I have to be what I hate the most and stay separated from my family. Please. Help me.”

  Ciyrs nodded and looked around the room.

  “We shouldn’t do it here,” he said. “The last thing we need is so many people swarmed around you.”

  “I heard one of the men talk about other rooms down here,” Aegeus said. “Would one of them work?”

  Ciyrs nodded.

  “I don’t need anything but a place for you to lie down and space for me to put my supplies. We’ll bring blankets from here and I can get my bag from the infirmary. Are you ready?”

  “I don’t want to wait any longer,” Aegeus said. “I want to be back to myself as soon as possible.”

  “I can’t guarantee that you will be by the time that we leave here. You have been fully transformed for so long now that it will take extensive treatments to return you to your normal state. It might take several days of treatments.”

  “I will endure whatever you need me to.”

  “Alright,” Ciyrs said. “Let’s go then.”

  They gathered the supplies that Ciyrs needed and met in the hallway in front of the emergency chambers. Together they started down the dark hallway leading further into the basement. Ciyrs stopped when he reached the far end of the hallway and found another set of emergency chambers much like those that they had taken over on the other side of the basement. He briefly considered telling the others about the rooms, but then changed his mind, acknowledging that keeping as many of them as close together as possible was going to keep them safest. Having privacy was also going to be important for Aegeus as he went through the challenge of his treatment. It would be better to let everyone stay together, at least for now. If they had to stay in the laboratory building for much longer than they intended, they might spread out into these chambers, but until then it would be beneficial for everyone not to disrupt them any further.