by Marie Dry
They went inside a shuttle that looked much like Zanr’s except she saw more buttons flashing on the wall. Rose desperately wanted to be outside where it was open and she could breathe, but she needed the little killer machines out of her body. Now. Or she needed the doctor to tell her there was nothing in her blood. Please let there be nothing in her blood.
As usual Viglar didn’t greet her or address her, but he spent considerable time using various, silver, boxlike instruments that she assumed were scanners. He held them away from her body, but scanned every inch of her. On the fourth thorough scan, he grunted and turned to Zanr, and the two of them stood grunting at each other.
Rose put her hands on her hips and tapped her toe. Zanr abruptly stopped talking and turned to face her. “Do not tap a foot at me in front of other warriors.”
“Never mind your own importance, what did he find? It’s my life at stake here.”
“He found the nanites. The codes to deactivate them may be in the equipment we confiscated from the building.”
Rose nearly sagged with relief, but then Zanr’s serious tone registered in her mind. She had the strong sense that he was still worried. That there was something he hadn’t told her yet. “What’s the bad news?”
***
Zanr felt horror worse than what he’d felt the day he’d realized his blood was going to abandon him in the desert. “The cure is on its way to home world,” he told his breeder who looked ready to fall unconscious.
He’d assisted with the loading of the crates they’d taken from the lab. He’d laughed with Larz that day, enjoyed the assignment he’d been given. Like the bloodless warrior he was, he’d killed his own breeder.
“Can they send it back?” Her big, beautiful brown eyes looked haunted, but also as if she wanted him to reassure her. “How long do I have?”
He hesitated, then said, “A month at most.” He’d almost hit Viglar when he told him, but it wasn’t the doctor’s fault.
She rubbed the back of her neck. “And how long for the antidote to be sent back?”
“A year.” He didn’t tell her that even if it would’ve been faster, it wasn’t that easy for a spaceship to turn around and return to Earth unplanned.
Her eyes became big and she whimpered, and then her legs collapsed beneath her; he caught her before she hit the floor.
She was so small and still too thin, he barely felt her weight. He felt Viglar’s eyes on him, but kept his focus on Rose—the breeder he never dreamed he’d have. If she was taken from him, he didn’t want to be in the universe anymore.
Chapter Fourteen
Zanr held Rose against his chest and laid her down on the bench in Viglar’s shuttle. He turned to Viglar, battling the need to pick a fight, to destroy something; he needed a battle to be himself again. How could he be a person without Rose?
“I will liaise with the ship and our scientists on home world about the shutdown codes.” His lip curled. “It is hard to believe that these humans, even in their Golden Age, could create codes we cannot break.”
“I hope you are right.”
“In the meantime, you complete your mission,” Viglar said.
“I do not care about the mission now.” Zacar could discipline him as much as he wanted. His priority was Rose. If he only had a month left, he’d spend every moment with her. The horror of that thought choked him.
Viglar fiddled with his equipment. “I did not agree with this modern idea of sending a breeder on a mission.”
Zanr snorted. “I extended my claws to Zacar when he told me to use my breeder like this.”
Viglar nodded. “Understandable. But it will be good for her to focus on something else. Finish your assignment. I will monitor your breeder remotely,” Viglar said.
Zanr wanted to grab Rose and put her in their dwelling where she’d be safe. But without the antidote, there was no safe place for her. And Viglar was right, it would be better if her mind was occupied with their mission. “You will keep me informed?”
“Yes, I will work on an antidote or a way to deprogram the nanites.”
Hope surged. If anyone could do it, Viglar could. He was considered the best scientist in the empire. Rumor was the Parenadorz wanted him for his own personal physician. “Do you think it can be deprogrammed if we cannot get the codes?”
The doctor nodded. “They are basically machines and machines can be hacked, to use the human term.”
Zanr didn’t know what hacking was, but he had never hoped so hard for something to work. “I want to know what is happening every moment.”
“Of course. I have to leave. Zacar needs me for an assignment in Denver. I will continue to work on the deactivation codes for the nanites,” Viglar said.
Zanr left the doctor’s shuttle, and cradling Rose, returned to his own shuttle. Inside he carefully laid her down on the bench. She looked small and alone, and he scooped her up, and pulling her against him, sat down on the bench, holding her close on his lap. He needed to feel her against him, hear her heartbeat, feel her breath going in and out of her body.
***
Rose rubbed a hand over her head, then clenched her hand and held it to her chest. “I can’t breathe.” The thought of little machines swimming gleefully in her blood, killing her, made her want to be sick. The air felt as stifled as when she was in that testing box. Sweat broke out on her skin.
His arms tightened around her. “I will take you outside.” He suited action to words and set her carefully down on her feet. “Stay here.”
Rose nodded and looked up at the stars. She’d heard there was a time when the sky was so clear, you could see many stars. She was vaguely aware of Zanr disappearing into the shuttle and reappearing. If she could find a star, maybe she could make a wish. She shuddered. She’d found a star when she was eight, had wished upon it, and her wish had come true. Her mother had come for her. Clutching her arms around herself, she looked at Zanr.
He threw a piece of silver metal in the air that opened up into a large dome. It drifted down onto the roof and she could hear it anchor itself into the cement.
Rose stared at the large tent that filled almost all the space on the roof of the building. Maybe she didn’t need a star. If he could make something like this, surely their doctor would find a way to deprogram the nanos swimming inside her blood.
Zanr grunted and the wall of the tent slid open, the way his house and shuttle did. “You will be able to breathe in here.”
Rose walked inside and turned around. “I can’t believe it, it’s really a tent.” The wind up here was strong, but like in the shuttle, she couldn’t hear it and the sides of the tent remained steady, as if the wind wasn’t driving into it. She had space and she could breathe without the foul smells from the flooded city and the river polluting her nose.
She turned to Zanr and stepped into his arms. “Thank you.” It was becoming impossible to see him as the enemy.
“Look up, my breeder.” She looked up and she could see the stars.
“That’s amazing, you’re amazing,” she breathed.
“Of course, I am a Zyrgin warrior.”
Rose laughed and stepped back from him. A large bed stood toward the back and in the center was a couch.
Zanr went to the kitchen area—how did he do all this—and grunted at the wall. The aroma of food made her stomach growl. She sat down on the couch. “I’m so hungry I can eat a cow,” she told him. Weird saying—who in their right mind would want to eat a cow?
He came over and placed two bowls on a coffee table that appeared out of a piece of silver he threw down on the floor in front of the couch. Rose frowned down at the two bowls. One had soup, what looked like vegetable soup, but the other bowl had his pink slop in it. “You want to eat that again.” In all this time she hadn’t seen him eat anything else.
“Yes. There is more food if the soup is not enough.”
She watched, disbelieving, as he picked up the bowl with the pink slop. “What is that?” She’d never though
t to ask before. But she hadn’t been desperate to think about anything else.
“It is what you would call a balanced meal. Everything I need is in here.”
“Can I taste it?”
He scooped some onto his finger and held it to her lips. Rose stared at his finger. The moment was unbearably intimate with his eyes fixed on her lips. She opened her mouth and carefully sucked the pink slop off that finger with its sharp claw. The pink stuff slid onto her tongue and Rose gagged. She spat most of it out, not caring where it landed, but some of it she swallowed involuntarily and it settled uneasily in her stomach.
“How on earth can you eat that, it’s awful.” It was bitter and the texture was slimy on her tongue. She gagged again and rinsed her mouth. “Water,” she gasped.
He got up and brought her back a glass of water and cleaned up the stuff she’d spat all over him. “That is disgusting. How can you eat it?” She greedily swallowed the water.
He shrugged. “It’s field rations. It’s not supposed to taste good; it keeps up my strength.”
She shuddered and picked up the spoon he’d laid on the coffee table. Food was the last thing she wanted, but she needed to focus on something. She dipped the spoon she found next to the bowl into the soup. “Would you like some of my soup?”
His lip curled ever so slightly. “It will not give me the nutritional value I need.” And based on his reaction, wouldn’t taste good to him either.
Sometime during these last few days, she’d stopped thinking of him as an alien. His features didn’t differ much when he was human. But she’d gotten used to his Zyrgin features. Now the differences between them was hammered home again. She shrugged. “Your loss, it’s really good.”
“I have what I need.” He finished his pink stuff, and she suppressed a shudder at the remembered feel of it on her tongue. He sat back. “Some warriors feed their breeders.”
“Why?” He’d tried to feed her coffee, when she was still recovering.
“Our Parenadorz lost his first breeder because she refused to eat. He lost his honor.”
“She starved herself to death?” She couldn’t imagine anyone could do that. Their Parenadorz must be a monster.
“I know only rumors. But it is believed that she starved herself so that she would be weak enough to die when she killed herself.”
Rose frowned at him. “Why would she have to starve herself to be able to die? If she put a pistol to her head or cut an artery, she’d die anyway.”
“She…had a strong constitution. She could recover from almost anything.” There was something he wasn’t telling her here.
“That’s horrible. Was he bad to her? Did he hurt her?”
He looked around as if he expected his emperor to appear at any moment. “Never say such a thing again. The Parenadorz would never hurt a female. Definitely not his breeder.”
“I see.” She had her doubts about that, but she’d keep that little fact to herself. Why would that woman kill herself when there was so much to live for? Rose would give anything for the nanos in her blood to be gone. Every minute she could be alive would be a gift.
“How did you become one of Parnell’s agents?” Zanr asked.
Rose thought about it, but she couldn’t see the harm in telling him the truth. He knew most of it anyway. “Since you know where my family lives, I assume you know they own a pharmaceutical company?”
“Yes.”
“After the big medical crash six decades ago, many abandoned warehouses had drugs and supplies in them, and my grandfather seized many of the warehouses and their content and started a pharmaceutical company.” She smiled ruefully. “No one stopped him.”
“An enterprising human.”
“We became rich and powerful overnight.” Sometimes she wondered what her life would be like if they weren’t rich. If she’d be welcomed by her family. In her darkest moments she wondered if the grandmother, who’d left her a trust, had lived longer, if she still would’ve left Rose the money.
“From selling drugs.”
“Legal drugs, yes.” Though they sold a lot of the drugs and were invested in research, they didn’t make even close to the amount of money pharmaceuticals made in the Golden Age. Then, everyone had been entitled to medical aid and the companies selling the medication assured of their profits.
“When did your blood stop speaking to you?”
She frowned at him. “My blood? Oh, you mean my family. When I was eight, after I was kidnapped.” Rose bit her lip. Why did she say that? She never talked about those dark days, when very bad men had held her captive.
A low rumbling came from the alien. She could feel his big body become rock hard where he sat next to her. “These kidnappers have been caught and tortured?”
“No.” Lately, along with her doubts about Parnell, she’d been thinking about the kidnapping. She’d put together the pieces she remembered and looked at it with grown-up eyes, and the reason the kidnappers got away was disturbing.
“Why not?”
“They got away and disappeared, and the police seemed unable to find them.”
Zanr gave a disbelieving snort. “Incompetent humans. You will give me their information. Now tell me what happened when you were kidnapped?”
“I really don’t want to talk about it.” She had to live with the memories; she didn’t want to talk about it, as well.
“Tell me what happened?” he said again.
Why couldn’t he just leave it alone? “They killed my mother and it was my fault,” she screamed the words at him. She bit her lip, pulled her legs up, and hugged them. She used the pain on her lip to anchor herself. To calm down.
“I do not believe that. Tell my why you think it is your fault.”
“My mother made the drop-off―”
“Drop-off?”
She lifted a hand to push through her hair and remembered he’d braided it. “It is a human term. It means a person brings the money the kidnappers demand.”
“What happened when your…mother made the drop-off?”
“I saw my mother and wanted to go to her, but they wouldn’t let me, and I panicked and jerked loose from the kidnapper holding me. It just got so crazy then. Everyone started shooting and my mom got killed. It was my fault.” She’d never forget seeing the surprise on her mother’s face. The red stain that spread over her middle. The way she fell like a broken doll.
She kicked the coffee table. “So now you know—happy now?”
“Not when you are so sad. Did these kidnappers run away after they killed your mother?”
“Yes, they grabbed the money and ran.” The kidnappers had disappeared, and she still had nightmares about them finding her and locking her in that suitcase.
Her father had been livid. She touched her cheek. He’d slapped her and told her she was unworthy of belonging to her family. Had said she’d caused the death of her mother. Was that why she allowed Parnell to manipulate her? Guilt? She still didn’t want to accept that he had betrayed her, but she’d hidden from the truth long enough. Sometimes—she swallowed—sometimes you never get to go home again.
Restless, she got up and paced up and down inside the tent and then stormed outside to pace on the roof. The foul odor that hit her nostrils was a welcome reminder of where she was. She screamed to the heavens—all her anger and frustration and fear. Zanr appeared next to her.
“I can’t stop thinking about Parnell betraying me.” Of how her father rejected her. She would never again think of Parnell as the respected Director. And one day, she’d accept that she’d lost both her mother and father on that dirt road when she was eight. She’d lost her everything.
Zanr stood quietly watching her, his face expressionless as always. Behind those mysterious eyes, swirling with red, she could see him thinking and plotting. The kidnappers were long gone, but if they were still alive, if she was them, she’d go into hiding.
She held out her hand. “Let’s go inside. I can’t stand the smell anymore.”
The red in his eyes disappeared to be replaced by a deep, endless black. “Of course.”
“Ever played poker before?” She made sure to sound only mildly interested.
“I studied the game,” he said.
“Fancy a game? We could make a small wager,” she said and it was difficult to hide her glee. It felt good to focus on winning, on showing him her skill. She didn’t want to think about the past anymore. Or the fact that she might not have a future.
He grunted and instead of spitting out food, a deck of cards appeared out of the wall of the tent.
She bounced on her toes. “How did you do that?” What kind of database did he have if he could tell it to produce a pack of cards to play poker with? At least, she assumed that was what he’d grunted.
“Superior Zyrgin technology,” he said and handed her the cards he’d caught with smooth dexterity. “Teach me.”
Rose took the cards out of the colorful packaging and shuffled them. She’d show him superior. She made sure to fumble a little while she shuffled, and she could see him cataloguing each move.
“This is how it works.” She dealt the cards and explained the rules to him. “There are fifty-two cards in a pack. See the numbers and letters at the corners of the card.” She held up the different cards for him to see. “It is ranked from high to low. You have an ace, a king, a queen, and a jack, and then cards from two to ten. Then you have four suits: spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs.” She explained the game and finished with, “And the highest hand wins.”
They played a few test games. He was a quick study. But not quick enough—she had learned poker from one of her nannies when she could barely talk. They’d spend hours playing. It was the one game her father had played with her before her mother died. Until she’d lost to him twice. When she couldn’t prove herself a competent player, he’d lost interest.
