by Marie Dry
Rose took the dress from him, battling not to laugh. Who knew she’d find the idea of wearing such a hideous dress amusing? She went to the bathroom and took a nice, long, hot shower. She emerged from the shower stall clean and feeling much better. Hoping no one she knew ever saw her in this monstrosity, she put on the dress. The sleeves were so puffed out, it came to the top of her head. Her body appeared to have no shape with the many frills flouncing on the dress.
“How do I wash the uniform?”
He turned to look at her, and though his skin wasn’t pliable enough to show emotion like a human’s, she could see his eyes lit up. “You are beautiful.”
“Thank you, so how do I wash the uniform?”
“Unlike human clothes, it is self-cleaning.”
Her kind of clothes. Still she rolled her eyes at his dig at humans and hung the uniform over the shower cubicle.
They had dinner and watched an episode of The Space Ranger, and Rose fell asleep in the middle of it.
Once again she woke on the floor of the shuttle, covered with a silver blanket. Some of the frills dug into her skin. She sat up and saw Zanr at the controls again, doing who knows what.
Without a word, she went to the tiny bathroom, wondering if she dared leave the door open. She showered, and wrapping a towel around her, grabbed the uniform and sniffed it. It certainly smelled clean. She wouldn’t mind a closet full of self-cleaning clothes. Self-cleaning clothes without any frills, bows, or beads, she wordlessly corrected herself. God help her if that alien discovered sequins.
They went back to the bar, and Rose settled down on the uncomfortable bar stool with a sigh. The barman kept giving her suspicious looks but didn’t say anything. Someone came and sat next to her. Rose hid her excitement and nodded at Morgan. He looked her up and down and sneered. “Don’t you own any more of those frilly dresses?”
She’d forgotten he saw her in one of them. “Several.” She smiled at the thought of the dresses Zanr bought for her. At the admiration shining in those unholy eyes when he saw her in them.
Morgan snorted his disbelief. “So where’s your trucker?”
Rose resisted the urge to look behind her, to see if Zanr had noticed Morgan joining her. That alien missed nothing. “I ditched him once I got here. And never mind him. What happened to our building?”
He lifted his hand, and the barman nodded and placed a glass with amber fluid in front of him. She noticed he didn’t ask if she wanted another drink. Zanr would have seen to her needs first. That thought set off other ideas and she felt her cheeks heat, and her nerve endings tingled.
“You don’t know?” Morgan said.
“No, I woke up, captured by the aliens.”
He stared at her. Hard. “If you were captured by them, how come you are here?”
She shrugged. “I escaped. They thought I was small and harmless.” It was mostly true.
“I see.” He didn’t believe her and didn’t make any effort to hide it.
“How is it that you escaped, but the Director was captured?”
He shrugged. “I was out on a job the day the aliens destroyed the building.”
Somehow, she doubted that. “Why didn’t you come and talk to me when I went to the building? Why leave such a cryptic message?”
“I thought the trucker might be a problem. And let’s face it, I don’t need you to rescue the Director.”
She leaned toward him. “You know where he is?” She was vaguely aware of the man with the leather coat grunting.
He shrugged. “I figure they have him at their mountain stronghold.”
She stared at him. “You know where their stronghold is and you haven’t tried to free him?” She should’ve tried harder to find out where they kept the Director. What if she’d run right past the house where they kept him?
“Have you watched any news at all since you escaped?”
“Not really.”
He snorted. “Figures.”
“What’s your problem with me?” She should’ve asked him this years ago.
His blue eyes chilled but he smiled, and she realized that it wasn’t only aliens that could look ugly when they showed that many teeth. “No problem.”
“No, you’ve hated me from day one. Why?”
He sneered at her and he didn’t try anymore to hide the hatred. “You want to be a big shot agent, figure it out.”
“Why did you leave that image for me if you didn’t want me here?” He was senior to her. Technically he could’ve ordered her to New York.
He got up, but then turned back to her. Smirked at her. “You’re asking the wrong questions. You should ask what Abel injected you with before your pathetic attempt to prove yourself.” He turned and disappeared into the crowd.
Rose sat stunned. Ice tinkled in the glass of the man sitting at the bar next to her. Like the ice in that glass, the blood in her veins slowly stalled. Became petrified.
Chapter Thirteen
Rose didn’t wait for Zanr. She ran after Morgan when her limbs would move again. Outside, the cold and wind hit her in the face like a slap, but between her fear and the protection of the alien gadget, she barely felt it. She looked up and down the street, but couldn’t see him.
“Idiot,” she called herself under her breath. Instead of standing there like an idiot, she should’ve followed him immediately.
Zanr appeared next to her and took her arm in his. “I heard. I can track him.”
They got on the hoverbike and he started slowly twisting and turning down streets. If she wasn’t infected with who knows what, she would’ve loved the experience—the wind in her face and hair, so different from the stifling building she’d worked in for so many years. After being buried alive every few weeks for almost a year. At her own insistence.
Her mind struggled to accept what had been done to her. She’d thought she would be given a big case to solve this time when she came out of that hellhole, but instead she’d woken to a changed world where aliens ruled.
“What do you think Abel injected me with? Surely I’d be dead if it was poison?” She said it in his ear and didn’t have to shout. Whatever shield he had around them, it allowed her to feel the wind tugging at her braid, without having to shout to be heard.
“I do not know, my breeder, but we will find out.” He suddenly turned and backtracked until they came to a small alley. He drove into it without hesitation. On her own, Rose would’ve avoided it like the plague. The smell of refuse and other unpleasant things hung in the air. “If it was something serious, Viglar would’ve found it.” If that was the case, why did he sound so worried?
“With your superior technology,” she said, but the joke fell flat.
Enormous rats scurried around beneath them. One paused and looked up at them, and she could’ve sworn there was a hungry glint in its eyes.
“Please go higher,” she squeaked.
“The rats cannot reach us,” he said calmly, and she wanted to kick him.
“They’d better not bite me; they carry disease. Do you even know where you are going, my Komodo?”
He flashed that awful grin at her and then abruptly stopped. If she didn’t hold on so tight, her momentum would’ve carried her forward. Not Zanr—he sat as if he didn’t stop the bike between one moment and the next. “He is up there.”
She narrowed her eyes at the one window where light spilled through beige curtains. This was not the kind of place she expected Morgan to stay in. His tastes ran to the finer things in life. “Let me go in alone.”
He didn’t even stop to think it over. Just said, “No.”
“Hear me out. If I go in alone, he might tell me stuff he won’t with you present.”
He got off the bike and helped her down. “I can assure you, he will talk with me present.”
She looked around them, saw beady eyes, but the rats kept their distance. “He might tell you a few things out of fear, but I think he’d like to brag to me, and he might let slip things he’d otherwise not sa
y.” She looked him up and down. “It’s a pity you can’t turn invisible like the hoverbike.”
He cocked his head and something about his body language alerted her. She felt her eyes widen. “You can?”
“Of course, I have superior Zyrgin technology.”
For once she didn’t roll her eyes at that. “Cool. I’ll go in, and you turn invisible and come in with me. Then if—”
He lifted her with his hands under her arms. “I am the warrior and you are the breeder.”
It was hard to act nonchalant while your feet were swinging a foot off the ground, a large alien glaring at you, but she managed to lift a brow. “So?”
“So, I tell you what we are doing. You do not instruct your warrior.”
Yeah, he’s got a surprise coming. “Well, excuse me.”
“You are excused,” he said gravely, as if he was royalty pardoning a peasant. Rose was tempted to kick his knees real hard. With utmost care, he set her back down on her feet.
“Well, what do you want us to do?” she asked with heavy sarcasm. When she knew what they’d injected her with and had dealt with it, she’d teach this alien not to pick her up like a doll and try to intimidate her.
“You will go in and I will be with you, but camouflaged.”
Rose rolled her eyes and opened the outside door to the twenty-story building and crossed the grubby lobby to the cement stairs. She started up the stairs, then hesitated.
“Third floor,” Zanr whispered in her ear, his breath warm on her skin. She shivered. “Room 1001.”
She went to the third floor and knocked on the door, then moved so that he couldn’t see her through the peephole. Morgan opened the door, a pistol in his hand. He glared at her. “How did you find me?”
She shrugged. “Skills.”
His lips turned down in that disgusted smirk he’d had for her from the first time they’d met. “As if.”
She wasn’t about to debate her skills with him. She aimed a smirk of her own to hide her bone-deep fear. She had an alien and she wasn’t afraid to use him. “What did Abel inject me with?”
His gaze sharpened at her calm question. As if he expected her to be intimidated by his attitude. He stood back and motioned her inside. “Something that’s going to kill you eventually,” he said with such satisfaction in his voice, she shivered. Why would he enjoy the idea of her dying so much?
“Why? The Director would never do that to me.”
“You were the experiment. He wanted to see exactly how someone injected with the nanos would react.”
It hit her then—the betrayal, the same rejection she’d received from her father. Her body physically ached at the emotional blow from that realization. Parnell—she’d never call him Mr. or Director again—had used her and had tried to kill her. Nausea threatened.
To take her mind off that horrible reality, she did a quick scan of the apartment. It had to be rented. Tired furniture, covered with brown upholstery and beige curtains, that had seen better days, was not Morgan’s speed. He seemed to be alone, but she knew Zanr would make sure there were no surprises lurking. “You really hate me. What I want to know is why?”
He leaned toward her and she flinched, not out of fear of him, but from the hatred burning behind his eyes. It was as if it was consuming him alive. “All you need to know is that I hate you, and I am going to enjoy every endlessly long second of your agonising death.”
Rose clutched her arms around her middle. “But why? It doesn’t make sense. I’ve never done anything to you. Why would you want me to suffer? You were Parnell’s favorite.”
“That doesn’t matter—nothing matters but that you die.”
This was getting her nowhere. “What did Abel inject me with? Why did they do it?” She couldn’t quite take the plaintive note out of her voice. How could anyone inject a fellow human being with who knows what? Simply to see what would happen to that person?
His smile was fierce, the hatred in his eyes alive as if it was its own sentience. “It was nanos, you bitch—nothing can save you now. Not even the alien technology. As for why?” He shrugged. “Parnell didn’t find your pathetic attempts to prove yourself amusing anymore; he wanted to see what the effect of the nanos were.”
She took a step back before she could stop herself. His lip curled with satisfaction. “You’re lying,” she whispered.
“Am I?” He was playing with her. But she could see in his mean eyes that he was telling the truth.
She watched the TC, knew what nanos were, and the thought of small robots in her bloodstream made her want to puke. “Is there an antidote?”
Morgan threw back his head and laughed. ‘There was, but it exploded with the building.”
Rose stared at him for a long time and then went to the door. If she lingered too long, Zanr was going to kill Morgan, and they might need to get more information out of him. “Why do you hate me?” She didn’t expect him to answer.
“Your family took everything from me. I will take everything from them,” he spat, spittle flying out of his mouth.
Rose froze. “What did they take? Tell me.”
He went to stand at the window, his back to her. “Figure it out, bitch. I’m not going to make it easy for you.” In spite of the vitriol in his voice, he sounded weary. Sad. She almost felt sorry for him.
She walked through the door, but then turned back to face him. “If you harm my family, I will hurt you in ways you cannot imagine.” They might have rejected her, but she would always love and protect them.
His laugh was bitter. “You can try, little failure. You asked so many questions, but you never asked me about the Director.” He turned to face her. “You were the resident joke and he laughed at you. All the other stupid bitches had to be forced into that hole, but you volunteered to go in.”
Rose turned and walked away. She couldn’t listen to his hatred anymore.
“He kept you isolated for nine months, putting you in that hole time after time, and you allowed it like the pathetic excuse for a woman that you are,” he screamed after her.
Rose and Zanr were silent as they walked down the stairs. Rose felt numb, her brain refusing to acknowledge that she could be dying. She couldn’t focus on what Parnell had done now. She only had the strength to deal with one issue. She stopped and glared at Zanr. “How come your doctor didn’t find the nanos? He drew my blood and examined me with his superior technology?”
“Viglar and I will cross swords if he was negligent,” he said with such grim intent she regretted asking. He seemed to think it over. “Viglar would never be negligent or lie about results.”
They reached the bottom of the steps and he stepped in front of her, shielding her from the two men who entered the building. He was in his human disguise and they barely looked at him as they passed them on the steps. “I do not know much about nanos, but I do know they can be programmed to be dormant until a certain time,” he said.
Rose didn’t want to hear it, but she couldn’t run away from this. The more she knew, the better she’d fight the little monsters in her body.
When the men were out of sight, they descended the last few steps and left the building. Zanr helped her onto the bike and got on before her. Rose put her arms around his welcoming warm body, and putting her cheek against his back, she held on for dear life. They rode back to where he’d parked the shuttle in silence. Once, Zanr reached behind him and hugged her, and she blinked away tears.
They landed and Rose got off and rushed to the shuttle. Once there, she didn’t know what to do with herself. She wanted to scratch the little robots out of her skin, but all she’d do was injure herself.
Zanr came in and went to the machine that made the coffee and food.
“It’s too stuffy in here,” she gasped and stumbled outside. She took deep breaths of the foul-smelling air, but it was better than being cooped up in the shuttle. What if something went wrong with the door and they were trapped in there forever? Rose took a deep breath and forced h
erself to calm down. Getting hysterical wouldn’t get the nanos out of her blood.
Zanr came out, as well, and she smelled the coffee before he handed her a cup. He hadn’t caught on to the fact that coffee kept you awake, and she wasn’t about to inform him.
“I trusted him.”
“Parnell?”
“Yes. He buried me alive, and now I have to wonder if it was for some sick reason. Not to mention tiny robots swimming around in my body.” She slapped the hand not holding the cup against his chest. “I want to beat the stuffing out of Abel and Parnell, but I don’t know where they are. How can they try to kill me for no reason?”
He carefully pulled her into his arms and she snuggled closer. “I have called Viglar. He will find the nanos and remove them.”
“I still don’t understand how Parnell can do that to me?” He’d been like a father to her. If Morgan was telling the truth, the betrayal would be more than she could bear. It was already more than she could bear.
“He enjoyed making you doubt yourself.”
“He betrayed me. I trusted him and he betrayed me.” Just like her father had betrayed her. Parents should love unconditionally, should be there for you during the hard times.
Zanr watched her, so calm she wanted to kick and scream at him. “I told you he was a bad human.”
She stiffened and drew out of his arms. “I don’t need you to tell me ‘I told you so.’”
He took her cup, made it disappear, and took her back into his arms. “That is confusing.”
Rose glared up at him and was about to blast him when something changed in the atmosphere. The other time she’d felt it, the doctor had landed his shuttle. She didn’t hear anything but felt the breeze from what she assumed was another shuttle, and Zanr suddenly seemed more alert.
The doctor stepped out of the shuttle, but with it invisible, it looked as if he stepped out of a vacuum. For once, she didn’t marvel at the technology. He and Zanr grunted at each other, and then Zanr led her to the doctor’s cloaked shuttle. “He has better medical equipment in his shuttle.”
