Purple Haze (Aliens in New York Book 2)

by Kelly Jensen

  When no one answered his apology, Lang glanced up. Rather than appear ready to order Lang punished, Vagnan simply looked sad.

  Lang scrambled back to his knees. Put his hand to the floor, preparing to stand, and then simply pressed his palms into the cool surface. Dillon wasn’t here. He didn’t know how he knew, except… he did. The touch to his shoulder, the sadness of Vagnan’s expression.

  Then Vagnan confirmed it. “I regret your journey has led you to more sorrow. Dillon was transported to Herrera Station early this morning.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  It didn’t take Dillon long to figure out they were tracking him through the smartwatch strapped to his wrist. His first mad dash to the other end of the medical corridor had been made on impulse. But when he made it to the end and found a lift tube ready to take him elsewhere, hope bubbled up in his chest. The light-headed feeling could also be a lack of oxygen. He hadn’t exactly been keeping in shape.

  Between pants and gasps, he directed Ecero to take him to the next level, and had to stifle a giggle as his imagination went in several directions at once. After three seconds of feeling as if he’d gone nowhere, the doors slid back over another corridor. Dillon stalked the length, trying various doors, and stopped as Obele stepped out of the lift tube at the other end.

  “Shit.”

  Dillon fled back the way he’d come, praying the lift would be waiting for him. It was. But the same thing happened at the next level, wherever that was. Either Obele was tracking the lift tube or—

  “This level is restricted,” Ecero said, the voice coming directly from the watch. Dillon unfastened the strap and dropped the smartwatch to the floor. “Then take me back to the other level. The medical one.” He hadn’t tried the doors there. “Are there stairs or only these lifts?”

  “There are stairs connecting every level of the station, from the subbasement to the roof.”

  “Roof? Can you take me to the roof?”

  “Access to the roof is restricted.”

  Of course it was.

  The lift door opened onto another bland corridor. “Medical level,” Ecero announced from the floor and walls simultaneously. Dillon stepped out. “Your temperature has dropped ten degrees since the last measurement. Is your bracelet fastened correctly?” This time, the voice came from the floor.

  Dillon ran. He thought about asking where the stairs were, but figured using his voice would alert the station AI to his whereabouts—if they didn’t have cameras or floor sensors, or some sort of super wide, invisible alien net that told everyone where he was at all times. But he suspected that had been one of the functions of the watch. Pausing for breath, Dillon tried a door. Well, a seam. He’d been on the station long enough to recognize the outline of something that might open, or extrude from the wall in some way.

  Nothing gave to his touch until he got to the room housing Beclan. Dillon tried the door and huffed in surprise as it opened. Beclan reclined in an apparatus similar to the medical bay aboard Upero, only roomier, and with more overhead thingies that could swing in and out. The temptation to visit with her called strongly as he circled the bed, looking for seams to press. Maybe there was a washroom or closet or something he could hide in. This would be the last place they’d check, right?

  He found nothing.

  Growling in frustration, Dillon circled the perimeter again, patting the walls. A soft gasp sounded behind him, and he turned to find Beclan’s eyes open and tracking. Shit. Dillon dithered in place, wasting precious seconds as his hands flew up and down and his thoughts whirled. Then he did what he apparently did best. He ran. From the room, back down the corridor, unsure whether he was running toward or away from the lift that had left him there.

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  And his hands wouldn’t stop flapping.

  And the lift tube door wasn’t opening. But… that seam to the side… could that be a—yep, a door. Dillon had found the stairs.

  Lang sat with his head between his knees, his fingers pressed to his temples. He could feel the pulse of his blood, and if he shifted his fingers slightly, the slight prominence of a vein near his hairline. Or maybe that was his imagination.

  Beside him, Arayu fidgeted, which was disturbing. Elders did not fidget.

  Vagnan had left, rather abruptly, but he’d delivered his message and a single addendum. Lang was welcome to stay until he’d taken his refreshment. Then he had to go back to New York.

  I don’t want to go back. Not to his cozy apartment, not to his work, his friends, his life. To Dillon’s mother. If asked, in that moment, what he truly wanted, it would be to simply cease to exist.

  “Dillon may not have left the station yet.”

  Lang jerked his head up. “What?”

  Upero spoke again, its voice a hushed whisper from Lang’s wrist. “According to Ecero, Dillon was here fifteen minutes ago.”

  “So he’s only just left?” Lang stood. “Or they might be getting him ready for transport?” When would the clan elders stop hiding truths from him?

  “There is no record of a recent transport to Herrera Station, but one is scheduled to depart in one hour.”

  “I don’t understand.” Lang turned to Arayu, who continued to fidget.

  She had her eyes closed but opened them to meet his gaze, her expression grim and serene at the same time. She stood. “Dillon is here.”

  “You mean—”

  “I can sense him. He is six levels below us… five. He is ascending rapidly, but not smoothly. He is not using a lift tube.”

  “Stairs. He’s climbing stairs.”

  “Yes.” Arayu nodded and pressed her lips together.

  “Can you tell me where to go?” Lang asked, knowing she probably couldn’t. She probably shouldn’t have told him Dillon was still here, either.

  The struggle played out over her face, mouth forming an ever-straighter line as her eyes flickered through cycles of thought and emotion Lang hadn’t thought possible. Surely the Wren did not have to wrestle with their emotions. They were above and beyond, were they not?

  Arayu lifted her chin and opened her mouth. Started to say something, and then apparently changed her mind. She gestured toward the door. “This way.”

  Lang thought he understood what she couldn’t say, and as he moved to thank her, found he faced the same struggle. Words were not adequate. They were defying generations of programming, both genetic and hierarchical. How else to respond, but touch his fingers to her arm in passing.

  Lang jogged to the end of the corridor and pressed a palm to the panel he suspected hid the stairwell. The door opened, and he stepped through, pausing only to allow Arayu to follow him before resealing the entryway. Then he listened for footsteps—and heard them, a rhythmic pounding coming their way. A flash from New Year’s Eve caught him—a brief memory of him standing on the dance floor, trying to find the beat.

  Legs trembling, Lang moved to peer over the rail. He gripped it with both hands and leaned forward. The approaching footfalls grew louder, his heart beat harder, and his head seemed intent on preparing him for a drop through gravity.

  A hand appeared on the rail below. Left it. The footsteps thundered closer. A wrist and arm swung into view, a shoulder. The approaching figure rounded the flight just below and swung halfway into view. Purple hair, a black T-shirt, faded denim jeans.

  “Dillon!”

  Dillon grabbed the rail and looked up. “Lang? Oh my God, Lang!”

  He resumed his climb, and Lang ran to meet him, his feet miraculously finding steps without sending him in a headlong rush to injury. They met in the middle, smashing together in a tangle of arms and thighs, faces and hair. Dillon’s hands became sticky pads, clinging to him. Lang wrapped his arms around Dillon close to sixteen times. He kissed Dillon’s face and hair. Laughed and cried.

  Dillon was doing much the same. “I can’t believe you’re here!”

  “I had to come.”

  “How, though? God, how long has it been? Are
you okay? They won’t tell me anything. But I figured out where I am.”

  “Antarctica.”

  “Yes! Did you know?”

  “No.” Lang shook his head.

  “Lang only learned your location a short while ago,” Arayu said.

  Dillon shrank away from Lang, one hand darting out to grip the stair rail. “What is she doing here?”

  Ignoring Dillon’s reaction, Arayu said, “Obele approaches.”

  Lang grabbed Dillon’s hand. “She’s with us. It’s okay. Which way?” he asked Arayu. “How do we get out of here?”

  Hesitation twitched across Arayu’s face again, a smaller play than before.

  “You should stay here,” Lang said. “I could—”

  “They will know I helped you, if only because I will tell them.” Arayu jerked her chin upward. “We should ascend. If they lock the door to the transport level, we will try for the roof. I will call my ship.”

  Lang’s jaw unhinged. “You’ll—”

  “Go, go!” Arayu waved him up the stairs. “You can express your confusion later.”

  Dillon couldn’t believe Lang was here. He kept pinching the skin on his forearm, hoping it wasn’t all a dream.

  “This is the transport level.”

  Dillon jerked at the sound of Upero’s voice. “You have Upero with you?”

  Lang held up his wrist. “Right here.”

  Arayu pushed past them to put her palm to the panel by the door.

  “While there is a satellite in range, I am at full function.” Upero reported, and Dillon caught the distinction between Lang’s AI and the station AI. Inflection. Upero sounded proud of its ability to remain with them and eager to be of assistance. Any minute now, Lang’s smartwatch would be telling him his cortisol levels were elevated.

  “We’re in,” Arayu indicated the opening seam of the doorway. She waved them through. “Quickly. I want to seal the door after us.”

  Another long corridor stretched away from them, one wall smooth and featureless, the other marked with several open doorways. Noise bounced from every surface—voices, mechanical whirs and screeches, and a rhythmic, echoing boom. Lang started down the hall, ignoring the open doors. Dillon glanced in each one, drawn by the buzz of activity. He’d had a vague sense Vagnan and his small cadre of guards and test subjects weren’t alone here, but had had no idea there were this many people. It stung to think he’d been kept in some sort of isolation. Did Vagnan truly consider him that dangerous? Or had he been hiding Dillon away?

  Some of the rooms were large and full of machinery. Others resembled convergence rooms. One had the appearance of a canteen. As they passed each one, though, another facet of Dillon’s ability became apparent. He could feel the presence of people before they got to each door. Felt the waning of their being as he, Lang, and Arayu passed. He experienced a slight lull between doorways, and then picked up the clot of thought and quiet emotion as they approached the next. Was this proximity sense? He glanced at Arayu but gained no hint of answer from her serenely determined expression.

  Also, how did someone appear both at peace and ready to tear a hole in space at the same time?

  Arayu pulled ahead and gestured toward the upcoming doorway, this one wider than most. “In here. My ship is docked in the far column.” Smoothing the sleeve of her robe away from her wrist, she activated a bracelet that obviously served as her version of a smartwatch. “Prepare for departure.”

  A soft voice answered her. “Understood.” A beat later, the voice spoke up again. “I am unable to obtain airlock clearance.”

  “Keep trying.” Arayu dropped her wrist and nodded toward the short hallway leading away from the open doors. “We should keep going.” Then she stopped. “Obele is behind the stairwell door.”

  How long until she managed to unseal Arayu’s lock? Had Obele brought friends? Dillon couldn’t sense the guard from this distance, not the way Arayu obviously could, but he could feel something else, suddenly and with great weight: the futility of their flight.

  Even if they made it to Arayu’s ship and her AI convinced the station AI to give them clearance, they wouldn’t truly be free. The clan would always know where to find them, because this wasn’t a damn movie. He and Lang weren’t going to go back to New York, tell everyone they loved them, pack a bag, and disappear into the sunset. Real life didn’t work that way. And Dillon was not going to leave his mom behind. Not again.

  “Wait.” He stopped running.

  Lang jogged back to him.

  Arayu stopped and turned around. “Whatever you are thinking, Dillon Rothkel Jord’Wren, now is not a good time.”

  “It’s never going to be a good time, Arayu. We can’t run. Even if we do, they’ll just come after us. We can’t hide. They’ll find us. And I don’t know why you’re risking your skin for us, but it’s not going to count for anything, is it?”

  Arayu’s face darkened. “I am cousin to the clan chief.”

  “And Vagnan’s his damn brother. I’m not sure how it works for you all, but that seems like a step higher to me.” Also, Vagnan was an asshole.

  Then again, he used to think that about Arayu.

  Lang pulled on his arm. “We can talk it through later. If we don’t leave now, you may end up on a transport to Herrera Station. We have to delay that long enough to—”

  “Where is Herrera Station?” Did the clan have another facility on Earth? Maybe that one was at the North Pole. Or under the Sahara desert. Or a forgotten island somewhere on the other side of the world.

  Which location provided the best opportunity for a survivable escape?

  The island. Definitely the island.

  “Jord, Dillon.” The way Lang said “Jord,” it almost sounded like a curse.

  “As in your home planet?”

  “Yes, and if they take you there, I will never see you again.”

  Dillon’s legs started without him. Hopelessness followed close on his heels, but fresh determination added the speed he needed to catch up to Arayu. Maybe they could find a corner of Earth remote enough to hide in. A different island. Maybe the hardest part of getting away would be convincing his mom to come with him. Or possibly telling her goodbye.

  Either way, he was going to see his family before dealing with this fresh round of clan bullshit.

  “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The transport deck spread endlessly in every direction, the handful of visible ships absurdly dwarfed by the cavernous space. There was room for perhaps a hundred personal craft and several larger transports. Lang could only see a couple of each, however, and all of the noise and activity centered around one. A larger transport, roughly the size of a human cruise ship. Personal craft clung to the hull in a honeycomb pattern, leaving only the front and rear portions of the ship visible. The underside crawled with uniformed mechanics and techs.

  The transport to Herrera.

  Lang grabbed Dillon’s wrist and put on a fresh burst of speed. Arayu had said her ship was in the far column, which made little sense unless someone, someday, expected this vast hangar to be filled with ships and wanted the elder’s personal craft stored out of the way. Lang glanced up at the cross-beamed ceiling, high overhead, checking for the telltale seams of individual doorways that would give each and every ship fast access to the sky. Darkness hid much of the detail, even from his enhanced eyes.

  “Over here!” Arayu called out, pointing out a slim, bullet-shaped craft positioned far behind the huge transport.

  “Stop them!” a voice yelled from behind.

  Several of the mechanics glanced up, then at Lang and his companions. Risking a glance over his shoulder, Lang counted six, no, seven guards closing the gap. Obele was with them, and she was pulling something short and black from her robes.

  Stars, no.

  Lang stopped running and spread his arms, positioning himself between Dillon and the approaching guards. He couldn’t save Dillon, not if the guards used
force, but the gesture felt necessary, if only to show his objections.

  Obele slowed to a walk, and the other guards fell in beside her. She didn’t speak, though, only continued on, one foot in front of the other, shock baton alternately revealed and hidden by her robes. She stopped a short distance away.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Lang said. Dillon crowded in with a gasp and began to duck around him. Turning slightly, Lang attempted to restrain him. “Stay back.”

  “And let you take the brunt of whatever this is? Uh, no.”

  The bustle around the transport ship had fallen silent, and a new pattern of footsteps broke into the lull. Someone else running across the transport deck. Lang guessed it was Vagnan even before the elder rushed past the line of guards and stopped right in front of Obele.

  Vagnan raised his hands in the attitude of someone trying to project calm. “I would advise you not to do anything imprudent, but it seems you have little regard for the authority I hold, Steilang.”

  Arms held out to either side, Lang took a single step forward. “You give me little choice.”

  Vagnan lowered his hands. “I have been lenient. I have been patient. I have overlooked insult and irrational behavior. But this is too much. This, I cannot put aside.”

  “This? I have shared nothing but my truths with you, Elder. Which is less than I can say for you.”

  “I do not owe you any truths. You are not Wren!”

  With a quiet swish of robing, Arayu appeared at Lang’s side. “But I am, and so is Dillon. Steilang acts on our behalf.”

  Vagnan directed his gaze toward Arayu. “You, I will speak to later.”

  “Or not. My ship is ready for departure.”

  “You cannot leave Earth with passengers.”

  “No, but I can take them away from here.”

  Obele stirred, lifting her shock baton, and Dillon stepped out from Lang’s other side. “You should just let us go. I’ve cooperated up until now, but you know what? I’m done. You even think about taking me away from Earth, and I’ll shut myself down. I don’t want to be what you want me to be.”