by Lea Linnett
Contents
Copyright
Other Books by Lea Linnett
Title Page
1
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40
Epilogue
Author's Note
Copyright © 2018 Lea Linnett
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. All names, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner.
Cover Design by Melody Simmons.
Other Books by Lea Linnett
The Levekk Invaders Series
Her Cold-Blooded Protector
Her Cold-Blooded Master
Her Cold-Blooded Master
—
Lea Linnett
1
Ellie bunched her fingers in her dress as she stared up at Kaan Tower. She craned her neck up, trying to catch a glimpse of the tower’s peak, but was quickly overcome by a sense of vertigo, almost stumbling back a pace.
The building was made entirely of glass—or some reflective levekk material that looked like glass, at least—and it was almost invisible as it loomed against the electric blue sky. The wintry sky was thick with cloud, like a blanket protecting them from the oncoming winter, and Ellie knew that back home, it would be roiling with dark grays and pure whites. But here, the only thing reflected was the cerulean blue sheen of the climate-control dome that lay overhead, cutting the city center off from the Earth’s atmosphere above.
The bubble-like construction still intrigued Ellie, and she quailed at seeing it from the inside rather than the outside for only the second time in her life.
But her awe soon slipped away into a tangle of nerves, the looming figure of Kaan Tower demanding all of her focus. Hovering before its huge double-doors, she felt like a bird staring down the gaping maw of a cage.
All she needed was to take three more steps, and she’d be in. Three measly steps. But now that she’d arrived, those steps were proving to be far larger an obstacle than she’d anticipated.
Why was she so nervous? She’d been preparing for this moment for months. She’d defended this opportunity to Augusta, to Lena—to everyone that doubted it. It was her chance to make it into the Senekkar, the center of the city, and help other humans make it there, too. That morning, she couldn’t walk to the public transport stop fast enough.
But after missing her transport due to a construction detour, and after the transport she had managed to catch blew a fuse and had to be swapped out, she’d slowly grown more and more nervous until she was not only late for her appointment, but about to become even later thanks to all this stalling. It was as if the world didn’t want her to make it, and that sliver of doubt threatened to usher in all of Augusta’s warnings all over again.
Her guardian hadn’t wanted her to come here. She’d questioned the motives of the levekk senator who Ellie would be working for. She’d warned her that she’d end up like Lena, her sister, used by some alien invader, conveniently ignoring the fact that she was the one who’d thrown Lena out of the house only a few weeks earlier. And that Lena had hardly been ‘used’.
Lena had fallen in love. She’d broken out of prison with one of the levekk—the very species that now ruled their planet—and she’d fallen for him. Ellie thought it was one of the most romantic things she’d ever heard, but Augusta didn’t agree. When she discovered them together, only a day after Lena had returned to them, she banished them from the house. Ellie had barely been able to say goodbye.
For a moment, she imagined that Lena was with her, standing strong at her side like always, but she knew deep down that Lena wouldn’t have supported her either, even if she hadn’t already left Earth—or CL-32 as it was now known. Lena would never have let her come to the Senekkar alone; she was always too scared of letting Ellie do anything alone.
Ellie squared her shoulders, repositioning her satchel with a determined sigh. Lena and Augusta weren’t here. And if she didn’t enter that building right now, she could kiss this job goodbye. She couldn’t afford to do that. This was her last chance—her only chance—at a better life. She couldn’t let it slip through her fingers.
So she stepped forward, and in three paces she was through the sliding doors and staring wide-eyed up at a huge, high-ceilinged atrium. She glanced around. There was a row of desks off to the left filled with a small collection of cicarians, whose blue- and red-toned skin looked blotchy in the cool lighting. To the right was a set of sofas, minimalist and covered in a shiny, black material, and straight ahead was the tall, square facade of the reception area, a line of straight-backed receptionists, from a variety of species, sitting behind it.
With a gulp, Ellie crept towards the front desk, realizing once she arrived that she could barely see over it. It wasn’t built to welcome her species.
The cicarian behind the desk was wearing what looked like a pair of eyeglasses, which on closer inspection had no physical lenses. They were throwing up a holographic display, and the receptionist seemed content to stare at whatever she was receiving rather than acknowledge Ellie’s presence. There was a bright spot on the alien’s domed head where the light from the overhead fluorescents bounced off it, and Ellie had to shake herself to stop staring.
“Um…” She cleared her throat. “Excuse me, I’m here to meet Roia Xikpel? I’m supposed to be starting a job today.”
The cicarian blinked slowly, her large green eyes refocusing as she looked past the holograms at Ellie. Her eyes widened when she realized what she was looking at. “You’re here to see Roia Xikpel?” she said, her scratchy voice turning high-pitched with disbelief. “I think you’ve got the wrong person. Roia works with Helik Kaan himself.”
Ellie grimaced, steeling herself. “That’s who I’m here to see.”
The cicarian’s eyes bugged, and her hand crept towards the comm on her desk. “I’m sorry, but I really think you’re in the wrong place. The humans involved in Senator Kaan’s program were delivered earlier today. He may be known for his campaigns on sub-species rights, but that doesn’t mean you can just… walk in off the street. If you’d like to thank him for his work, you can do so through your local—”
“Ellie?”
The cicarian’s mouth snapped shut, her translucent wings snapping out behind her as her gaze flew to the xylidian now bustling across the atrium from the elevators. No matter how many xylidians Ellie encountered, she never got used to their frightening appearance. Shiny, black, armor-like skin, blood-red eyes and teeth to match; xylidians looked like they’d stepped fresh out of a nightmare, and it took all of Ellie’s effort not to back up a step upon seeing her.
“We were expecting you an hour ago,” the xylidian said sharply. “You were delayed?”
Ellie snapped to attention, her arms at her sides. “Yes, ma’am. I know I’m late, I’m really—”
“Doesn’t matter. Come with me. Thank you for looking after her, Cirra,” she said to the receptionist, as sweetly as was possible with the metallic, grating voice of her species. The receptionist looked suitably chastised, unable to even muster a smile as Ellie was led away.
“I’m Roia Xikpel, personal assistant to Senator Helik Kaan,” the xylidian said as she ushered Ellie into one of the elevators. “We need to get you to the redressers as soon as possible.” She looked Ellie up and down, her gaze stern and unfathomable as she took in her plain white dress and ropy sandals. “We need to get you camera-ready.”
Ellie frowned; she’d made this dress herself. “C-cameras? I’m sorry, I thought I was here for—”
“I’ll take you over to the Kaan residence to go over the particulars of your day-to-day duties later. Right now, we have a press conference to attend, and you and the other humans need to be dressed appropriately. Do you think you’d be comfortable with answering a few questions?” She barked this last query, making Ellie jump.
“Questions?”
Roia blinked, short and sharp like an insect. “Yes. You can think of them as expressions intended to garner information from you,” she added dryly.
“Why would they want to ask me questions?” Ellie pressed, tightening her grip on her backpack.
Roia paused, looking her up and down again. “Because I think you’ll brush up pretty well once you’re made a little more… palatable to levekk tastes. Because you’re going to be working for Senator Kaan, the founder of this program.” Her lips parted, red teeth flashing in an expression of disdain. “And because you’re from Manufacturing. You’re the best rags to riches candidate we have. They’ll eat it up.”
She shrank back from the alien, her gaze falling to the floor. If Lena were here, Ellie would have to pry her off Roia like you would an angry dog. It was true that the Manufacturing District was one of the least glamorous districts in New Chicago, a fact that had always bothered Lena more than Ellie. But now, she had to admit, it didn’t overjoy her to have it pointed out so bluntly.
“Is that all your luggage?” Roia asked, sounding perplexed.
Ellie nodded to the satchel still slung over her shoulder. “Yeah…” She didn’t have much to bring in the first place other than clothes and some mementos.
“Well, you can leave it in my office. The commencement conference is happening on the twenty-ninth floor.”
The conference floor turned out to be the noisiest place in the city yet. Ellie could hear the excited clamoring of the reporters in the main hall, and caught a glimpse of a small crowd of uncomfortable-looking humans as she passed by a smaller room. They were gone in a flash, however, as Ellie was whisked away into a storm of make-up artists and stylists. It was almost enough to make her head spin.
The redressers got to her first. They pushed her behind a screen, confiscating her human-style dress and thrusting a sleek, slate-gray replacement into her arms. The new ensemble was tight, hugging the few curves she had and cinching in new ones. It was more of a bodysuit than a dress, fitting like a second skin to each arm and leg and ending at the elbows and knees respectively. There was a skirt-like attachment at the hip that was entirely decorative, and the high neck felt like it would cut off her breathing if she leaned the wrong way.
Next was her hair, and her messy blond curls were soon wrangled into something sleeker. She wasn’t sure what the make-up artists were putting on her face, but by the time she was dumped in front of a mirror, she barely recognized herself. The rosiness of her skin was now absent, her eyelids covered in a white pigment that stretched back to her temples. She’d seen a few pictures of levekk in zines or on billboards, and none of them looked like this. Was this what aliens in the Senekkar thought humans should look like?
She was jerked out of the room before she could ponder the strangeness any further, and before she knew it, she’d been deposited in front of Roia again, her blood-red eyes raking over Ellie like she was a specimen in a lab.
“Much better,” the xylidian grunted, and Ellie’s stomach twisted in a strange mix of elation and offense. “Helik wants to speak with you before the conference starts. Try not to…” Roia paused, and the worried look on her face was the most emotion Ellie had seen from her all day. “Don’t be too… human.”
Ellie didn’t have time to ask what she meant by that, as the alien took her elbow in her claw-like hand and ushered her over to a small annex.
“Wait in here, he’ll be along in a moment.”
With that, Roia disappeared, and Ellie sat herself down on the dark sofa, her hands clenched on her knees. She looked around the room, but it was devoid of much decoration, just like everything else she’d encountered so far in this building. She knew life out in the Outer Districts would be different from the Senekkar, but she didn’t realize just how… alien everything would look. She’d visited the city center only once as a child—when her parents were still alive—and she didn’t remember all that much of it apart from the massive blue domes that covered the sky.
Now, sitting in the middle of a pale room and seeing the oversaturated tint of the sky through the domes, she realized how different her life was about to become.
She was going to work for a levekk, the alien overlords who had come to CL-32—Earth—two hundred years ago and promptly taken complete control of the planet. According to Augusta, the levekk ravaged Earth, taking away everything that made it human—even its name—and turning it into nothing more than the 32nd Colony in its Constellation. Now, humans were just another sub-species like xylidians and cicarians, destined to be ruled over by the levekk.
And they were at the bottom of the pile. Humans didn’t get to become doctors, or trade with other planets. Even after two centuries, they hadn’t found their place in CL-32’s new society. They weren’t trusted. They didn’t get to come and live in the Senekkar like other species did.
Like Ellie was now.
This was the biggest opportunity that she would ever be offered. It would change her life. And she was about to meet the levekk senator who’d provided it for her.
She was determined not to fuck it up.
Augusta had always said the levekk were to be reviled, that they were more horrific than xylidians, pindar or whatever other species came crawling from the farthest reaches of the Constellation.
But Ellie had met the levekk that her sister had fallen in love with—and ran away with—and he hadn’t seemed so terrifying.
She bit her lip. What would Helik Kaan be like?
The sound of the door swinging open jarred her from her thoughts, and her focus narrowed down to the soft thud of a great weight on the plastic floor, followed by the click of a claw. Her eyes flew to the doorway, and her breath caught in her throat.
Because before her stood a levekk, and he was as large and intimidating as the tower she’d fretted in front of this morning.
And he was staring at her with the darkest expression she had ever seen.
---
Helik rubbed at his shoulder through the thick fabric of his formal attire, already tiring of the networking. The conference hadn’t even started yet, and he felt like he’d exhausted his sociability for the day.
But things were going well, and if the entire program turned out like today, then it was shaping up to be a success. One that Helik sorely needed. Elections for the New Chicago Senate were scheduled to begin in ten months’ time, and the Human Integration Program would spearhead his campaign for them.
The key to success was to be noticed, but not reviled. He had to push the populace out of their comfort zone just enough to make them feel like they were achieving something, but not so much that their way of life became threatened. That’s what this program should accomplish, if everything went to plan.
Helik Kaan would go down as the senator who helped assimilate humans just that little bit better into mainstream Constellation society, creating jobs and opportunities for them that no other politician was willing to make. He
would bring humans into levekk households—through the safe avenue of a cleaning position—and encourage greater diversity within the Senekkar. When humans joined the Constellation, they generously offered up their planet and gave everyone now residing here a place to call home, and they deserved to have the same access to opportunities in this new society as their fellow sub-species.
Humans weren’t something to fear; they were an important part of the Constellation.
That was the pitch.
And leading by example was how Helik would execute the plan.
If he pulled this off, he was guaranteed another elected term. Everyone liked the trailblazer who looked out for minorities without threatening the status quo too badly.
So far, everything was going well. The humans were here, they’d been polished up a bit, and the reporters were being buttered up with free food and drink and some choice rumor-mongering amongst the waitstaff. The only thing missing was the very human he was supposed to be working with.
He rubbed at his shoulder again, unable to work out the kink of discomfort that had taken root there. If this girl didn’t show, he would lose the spearhead for his program. They’d been very careful; they were looking for the most put-together, demure human they could find to work with Helik directly. She needed to look good for the cameras, do her job well enough to get by, and preferably have a sob story to go along with it.
Ellie from the Manufacturing District ticked every single box. People of all species would love the idea of a human girl from the Outer Districts—from one of the poorest of them all, in fact—being given the opportunity to work for a forward-thinking young senator. She would prove to sub-species that it was possible to rise up from nothing, and she would show other levekk that humans could be trusted in the Senekkar, just as any other sub-species was.
But none of that could happen if she never showed up.
He caught Roia’s eye as she clicked along the side corridor towards the spot he’d chosen to take a breather in, her ink-black skin gleaming.