by Marie Dry
She held up a hand. “Let’s agree to call each other by name. Things would be much simpler for you if you stopped calling me breeder.” It might prevent her from killing him in his sleep. “How would you like it if I just called you by another name?”
He perked up. “You wish to give me a special name like human women do for males they care for?”
Rose rolled her eyes and changed the subject. “Why?”
“Why what, my breeder?”
She fisted her hands, her nails digging into her palms. Her fever dreams came back to her. “Tell me why you allowed me to escape, Komodo?” she said through clenched teeth. They didn’t just allow her to escape; they’d tried to scare her into it.
“There are weapons out there that can destroy your people and mine.” He cocked his head. “Komodo is not an appropriate special name.”
“Tough. Wait a minute. You want me to help you find weapons that can destroy you?” She almost laughed in his face.
“Do you know what nuclear and biological warfare are? Chemical?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“The scientists who stole the golden-era weapons from the basement lab could do a lot of damage to humans. They have threatened to do that if we do not leave Earth.”
“Good for them.”
“They will not succeed.” He looked her over, a blatant possessive gaze. “You are my breeder. No bomb, no human will ever change that.”
“You don’t own me, Komodo.” Arguing with him was strangely exhilarating.
“You are mine, breeder.”
She held up a hand. “This will get us nowhere. What did you hope to achieve by letting me escape? I don’t know anything about weapons and explosives.”
He leaned toward her, suddenly looking more alien, dangerous. “You know more than you realize. And you should accept that we will never leave Earth. Those weapons will not harm us. Can you say the same for humans?”
Rose sat next to the fire, but suddenly none of its heat reached her. Only the chill morning wind. If those scientists did what they threatened, only a chill winter landscape would remain. “We have a right to defend ourselves,” she said. But even to her own ears she sounded weak.
“You knew where to get weapons and explosives. You also know what the scientists look like and where they would escape to. Tell me what the symbols on the rock at the building meant?”
“You saw that?”
“I have superior Zyrgin eyesight.”
“Are you serious?” She was tempted to stick her knife in his superior eyesight.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know where they might keep biological or nuclear weapons.” She’d never been in the inner circle, never been trusted with any important information.
“You were in the labs. You may have heard or seen something that can help us. And you understood the symbols on the rock.”
“I wasn’t allowed in the labs.”
“When they took you out of that hole, they put you in the labs before you were taken to your sleeping place.”
“Oh.” Rose thought about it. She wasn’t about to help their conquerors do anything, but this might be an opportunity. “I will help you if you release Mr. Parnell.”
“Why are you so interested in this human?” he growled. “He is an ugly human with no honor.”
“He was helping me.”
“How?”
“He tested me, put me in the box. It made me stronger.” Saying it out loud somehow made it sound crazy. Maybe she had been a little crazy to want to be buried alive. Would it really have proved anything? Or had she been punishing herself for that day when she’d destroyed her family? She shied away from that thought.
“You do not have to prove yourself to him.” He stilled, his eyes narrowed. “That is why you were in that hole. You thought you were proving something?”
He wouldn’t understand. His lizard mommy and daddy probably loved him unconditionally. “I want him freed.”
“Parnell is not the human you think him. He will never be freed.”
“Don’t you dare insult him. You’re not fit to lick his boots.”
He pulled his lips back from his teeth, snarled like a dog. “I do not wish to lick his boots.”
“Why did your people capture Mr. Parnell? Did you want to destroy him before he could oppose you?”
He pulled his lips back from his teeth in an expression so vicious, she jerked back. “He created the raider camps. Put the Parenadorz’s breeder in the camps.”
Shock and then anger made her body rock back again. He was lying. He had to be lying. “I don’t believe you.”
Could it be true? Could Mr. Parnell have done that? He put you in a hole that nearly killed you, a small voice in her mind taunted. She pushed that thought away. This alien would never convince her that Parnell could have created those hellish camps.
“It is true. Our Parenadorz’s breeder suffered greatly.”
She stared at him. “What is Paradorz?”
“Parenadorz is what you would call an emperor.”
“Did this Parenadorz come to Earth? Did his wife come with him?” She couldn’t imagine how this woman could’ve ended up in the camps.
“His breeder is human.”
“Not much of an emperor, is he, letting her get captured and put into raider camps?”
He was on her before she could blink, his palm held gently over her mouth. “Never speak such things. The Parenadorz see and hear everything.”
Rose nodded. She had her doubts about the emperor seeing and hearing everything, but she’d err on the side of caution.
“The breeder of the Parenadorz was taken to the camps before the Zyrgin were aware of her existence. If she were in his care, Parnell and his woumbers would never have been able to capture her.”
Rose sighed. “I tell you, Mr. Parnell is not involved with the raiders. If you found evidence that he was, it was because he was under cover.”
He didn’t answer, as if he knew it would be useless to argue with her about this.
They sat in silence for a while. Rose formulated and rejected several plans to rid Earth of the aliens. In all the scenarios, Zanr mysteriously manage to escape. Only to find her later and make hot, passionate love to her. Obviously her repeated attempts to prove herself, and being captured by the aliens, had messed with her mind. She needed to find her colleagues and if there was any kind of resistance, she needed to make contact with them.
They ate in silence for a while. “Tell me how you became an agent,” he said.
“On my nineteenth birthday, Parnell was there. He is a friend of my father’s. My family didn’t want me around.” Her father had sent her to boarding school after the kidnapping and refused to see her for the next nine years. “ I decided to go with Parnell and become one of his agents.” She shrugged. “And that’s what happened.” She didn’t tell him that Parnell had been a close friend of her father’s. That she’d met him when he came to visit, and he’d suggested she came to work for him when he saw how unhappy she’d been. Parnell had told her he’d show her how to become strong. To prove herself and to get back her family’s love and respect. He’d told her he’d show her how to become a strong, successful woman that her father would welcome back with open arms.
“You are angry that your family did not want you?”
“I’ve been angry for a very long time,” she said. “Even before my nineteenth birthday, I clashed with my family.” She’d been a nightmare to live with. Her father might have been out of her reach, but her brother had suffered the brunt of her anger and frustration. She finished the last of her food and sat back. “So how did you become a warrior?” she asked, curious, but also wanting to change the subject.
“I was born a warrior.” Like the time he’d told her about killing the bear animal, something in his voice hinted at more.
“So, you don’t train or apply to become one?”
“No, mostly warriors are born from warriors.” He sw
allowed some coffee and seemed to think it over. “Sometimes the Parenadorz can make a warrior.”
“So, you have a caste system?” This Parenadorz of theirs had worrying powers. How did you fight someone like that? Zacar had already scared the pants off her.
“No, we do not. Warriors are superior to citizens. We are stronger and faster than citizens.”
“Isn’t that a two-caste system?”
“No, we are all Zyrgins.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “But warriors are superior?”
“Of course.”
If he didn’t see it as a caste system, she wasn’t going to argue with him further. “What makes a warrior different?”
“We go through three changes which allows us to become fully grown within five human years.” There was something strange in his voice, like a discordant tone in a song.
It took a moment for the implication to hit her. “Oh wow, an instant army in no time.” Dismay filled her. This was really bad news for the human race. Ten years from now, they could overrun Earth with sheer numbers. She thought uneasily about Zacar’s threat of fifty babies. It made a lot more sense now. Did he really say that just to scare her, or had there been some truth in his words?
“Yes.”
“What happens if a warrior doesn’t want to be a warrior? Can you do another job if you want?”
“No warrior would want to be a citizen,” he said with pure disdain, then, “Sometimes the Parenadorz can demote a warrior to citizen for a while. But they are still superior to normal citizens.” She had the feeling he spoke from personal experience. Did his emperor demote him?
“So, the warriors are the elite and citizens have less prestige in your society?” And she had no doubt that women were at the bottom of the pile.
“Yes.”
“Well, okay then.” They needed someone to shake them up. It sounded like they were doing all the right things to breed revolutionaries into their culture.
They both sat staring into the fire until the alien suddenly said, “I was born small and weak, my hands deformed.” He spread out his hands. Apart from the fact that they looked more like claws than a human hand, they didn’t look deformed to her.
“Your hands look fine to me.”
He made a strange grimace. “I grew out of it.”
“Did your parents try to get help? You seem to have pretty advanced medicine.” Though they could do with doctors with better bedside manners.
He glanced at her and then at the fire, sat brooding for a time. “It was our custom in older times to abandon small ones, who are born weak, in the desert. Sometimes small warriors were given the chance to become strong after their second change. But if they were still weak, they were left in the desert without food or water. It is frowned upon and discouraged by the Parenadorz but it still happens.”
Her stomach turned at the thought of a little baby left in the desert to die a horrible, cruel death. She was getting a bad vibe from this story. Her mind didn’t want to comprehend the horror of what he was saying. “Tell me more about these changes you go through. Does it hurt?”
“We go through three changes. After our third change we are warriors.”
“You mean like snakes, shedding your skin and everything?”
“No, we shed our skin once, but we are warriors—nothing we do is like Earth snakes.”
Okay, time to move on. She didn’t see how they are different, but she wasn’t going to argue about it. “Do all people on your planet go through these changes?”
“Citizens go through one change after birth. Only warriors go through three changes.”
“Why only warriors?” It gave them a huge advantage.
He didn’t answer.
“So, does it hurt?” Shedding your skin had to hurt. She’d never thought about it before. Even when she watched docu’s about snakes.
He stared into the fire, and just when she thought he wouldn’t say anymore, he said, “The third change hurt the most.” He said it as if admitting to experiencing pain was a sin.
They sat in silence for a while, and then the horrific reason he was telling her this hit her like a punch in her gut.
“Did your family abandon you after your second change?” Even before she asked the question, she knew the answer. He wouldn’t be this worked up if his parents decided to keep him. He tried to hide his agitation, but his shoulders were tense, his hands clenched. If that wasn’t a big enough giveaway, those blazing red eyes told their own story.
“No.”
Relief made her shoulders sag. Somehow, she couldn’t stomach the thought of him abandoned as a child. She’d been prepared for some terrible revelation, but if they’d abandoned him in a desert, he wouldn’t be here now.
“They abandoned me a few hours after I was birthed,” he said with absolutely no emotion, but the warrior, who always met her gaze straight-on, stared into the fire. He tried to look unconcerned, but in that moment, he wasn’t the alien conqueror threatening her country. Instead she saw a man with a wound on his soul, inflicted by his parents when they abandoned him.
“That’s terrible, how did you survive?” She’d like to spend a few hours with his mother and father.
His lips pulled back from his teeth; his eyes flashed that savage red. “I killed and ate anything smaller than me.”
A shiver crept down her spine and cold settled around her throat like a noose. She should never forget that he was capable of savagery. “How big were you? Our babies couldn’t do that.”
“I have seen human babies; all they do is make noise and soil many diapers.” He flashed his teeth. “A warrior once offered to pay me to change his small human’s diaper.”
“And did you?” she asked, fascinated at this glimpse of their daily lives.
“No, I enjoyed his terror and left laughing.”
He went back to staring into the fire. “I would have been as tall as your knees,” he said at last.
“And you survived?” She couldn’t imagine the kind of emotional anguish he must suffer from knowing his family left him for dead. Her mother at least had come for her, when she desperately needed help, even if no one else in the family had. It had led to tragedy, but she didn’t have to live with the knowledge that her mother had rejected her at birth, the way Zanr had to.
“They left you in a desert? But you said you found food.” This just got worse and worse. If she ever met them, she’d have a few things to say to the people who abandoned him.
“You have to know what to look for.” Again, he spoke with absolutely no emotion, but his voice sounded like dark thunder with a sad song woven through the claps.
“But you said your hands were deformed.”
“I still had teeth,” he said, matter-of-fact.
“Wow, you must’ve been a strong child to be able to overcome that. I admire that.” Her heart ached at the thought of a baby Zanr having to kill some animal with his teeth so that he could survive.
He looked up at her at last, and those pitch-black-and-red eyes, that she always thought opaque, showed so much grief it felt like a punch in her gut. She had to concentrate not to jerk back. “I am a warrior. It allowed me to show my strength.”
“How did you get back with your people?”
“The Parenadorz found out and came to the desert to get me. He took me to the warrior camp to be trained.”
At least someone had cared about him. Had realized it was wrong to abandon a baby. “Were your parents punished?”
“No.”
Indignation stole her ability to speak. She jumped up, her clenched fists on her hips. “That’s unbelievable. They should be in jail,” she sputtered.
“Our customs are different.”
“I’ll say.” Feeling foolish, she sat down again.
“I do not wish to speak on this subject anymore. We need to find the scientists before they detonate the bombs. We believe they joined the human resistance.”
“There’s a human resistan
ce?” Her heart beat overtime. And she felt pride for her fellow man for getting organized against their enemy this fast. Did the resistance know about the alien nest in the mountain? Maybe she could help them put the bomb there. Everything inside her rebelled at that idea. Thinking back, the way the warriors had pretended to be shot had been almost playful. They’d been careful not to touch her. Her stomach turned at the thought of harming Zanr and those warriors. But if she didn’t fight them, what would that say about her loyalty to Earth?
“Yes, they will detonate the bomb in Portland. Millions will die.”
Horror grabbed her by the throat.
Her family lived in Portland.
Chapter Ten
Everything, every feeling, any ability for movement stopped inside her. Around her, nature paused, as if holding its breath to see if she’d move. The sound of the fire that wasn’t a fire crackled loud in the early predawn. His words echoed in her ears. Her family might not consider her theirs anymore, but they’d always be her family. They hadn’t left her in a desert to die; instead, she’d been sent to one of the few good boarding schools, at least.
This changed everything. What was that old saying? The enemy of my enemy? “If I agree to help you, I want your promise that you will go after the weapons and not the scientists or the members of the resistance.” They should be dealt with by human forces.
He cocked his head to the left and grunted for a few seconds. The grunting was a little disturbing. He focused on her. “I agree.”
She stared at him. She had the oddest feeling there was something she missed. Did he just talk to someone? That grunting had been awfully long and oddly pitched. “I have no idea where to start,” she admitted.
“You can start by telling me why we are going to New York.”
Rose forced herself to calm down. To think, for the sake of her family.
“At the rubble, my colleague, Morgan, left the symbol for New York. Unfortunately I have no idea where in New York he wanted me to go.” She wouldn’t put it past Morgan to make her search for days, before he revealed himself. And in the meantime her family was running out of time.
