by Anna Zaires
“It is the whole story,” Emily said wearily. “Yes, I knew the invasion was coming—that’s why I called the embassy—but that’s it. I don’t know anything else about their plans. I haven’t kept in touch with Zaron. The moment he released me, I went back home. I don’t know anything about their weapons, and I already described to you what I saw of their technology—which wasn’t much, as all of it was inside a residential house.”
“Yet this Zaron brought you back from the brink of death with medical technology he had inside that house,” Agent Janson said, his double chin quivering with each word. “Healed your broken spine, you said?”
“Yes.” Emily regretted telling them about that, but when they’d first begun questioning her, she’d been too intimidated to come up with a plausible lie. As soon as she’d opened her door, they’d marched her downstairs, stuffed her into a black car, and brought her to this rundown warehouse in Queens—or rather, the facility that was in the basement of said warehouse. Emily had barely had time to grab her wallet, keys, and phone—items they’d confiscated before putting her in this room and questioning her as though she were a terrorist.
At least she’d had the presence of mind not to say anything about the sexual nature of her relationship with Zaron and her suspicions about the Krinar being a vampiric species. The latter omission was because she still wasn’t sure she was right, and because she feared what would happen if those types of rumors began circulating. Would the panic on the streets and the guerrilla attacks on the Krinar get worse? Could an actual war break out?
She couldn’t bear it if she were somehow responsible for more violence. This “peaceful” invasion was already far too bloody.
“Miss Ross…” Agent Wolfe leaned in. “You’re not helping your case by being evasive. It’s obvious that you know more than you’re letting on. You’ve spent two and a half weeks with one of them. You need to tell us everything you’ve seen and heard—every detail, no matter how small. You might not think it’s significant, but it will help us form a more complete picture of the enemy.”
“The enemy? I thought we were at peace,” Emily said, too tired to conceal her sarcasm. “Isn’t that what the Coexistence Treaty is all about?”
Janson folded his arms, resting them on the mountainous mound of his stomach. “Don’t be naïve, Miss Ross. The Krinar are not our friends, nor will they ever be while we know next to nothing about them. Why are they here? What do they want from us? We don’t know, and we won’t until they deign to tell us. But you may know something, and if you do, it’s your duty as an American citizen—as a human citizen—to tell us.”
“I don’t know anything more than what I’ve already told you,” Emily said for the fifteenth time. The walls seemed to be creeping closer with each second, and she was finding it hard to breathe. If they didn’t let her out of this room soon, she’d go insane. “You have the whole story.”
“No,” Wolfe said. “We don’t. But if you’d rather not talk to us tonight, that’s fine. We’ll continue this tomorrow. In the meantime, we’ll see if we can’t get answers some other way.” He got up and turned to the other agent. “Janson, please take Miss Ross to Medical. Let’s see if this alien healing left any traces.”
“Wait, no. You can’t do that,” Emily said, drawing back when Janson stood up and stepped toward her. Her heart was pounding so fast she thought she might be sick. “I’m not consenting to this. I want a lawyer.”
But Janson just wrapped his thick fingers around her arm and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go,” he said, his palm damp and clammy on her skin. “It’s time we learned more about your ordeal.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“You want me to find a human girl?” Korum frowned, his unusual golden-colored eyes narrowed. The Councilor seemed equal parts puzzled and displeased by Zaron’s request. “Why?”
“Because she’s mine, and I want her back,” Zaron said. There was no time to play games and pretend his request was anything other than a personal favor. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was terribly wrong. Every second that he couldn’t locate Emily felt like an hour, the fear inside him growing uncontrollably. “I saved her when she got hurt, and she stayed with me for a while,” he explained. “However, I made the mistake of letting her go back to New York, and something’s happened to her. I can’t find her anywhere.”
Korum’s frown deepened. “So how do you expect me to find her?”
“Through the nanocytes in her body,” Zaron said. The idea had come to him early in the morning, and he’d instantly requested an in-person meeting with the Councilor. “I learned that your company designed the jansha device I used to heal her. I don’t have the code to activate the tracking feature on the nanocytes, but I know there is such a feature. Isn’t there?”
“There is,” Korum confirmed. “All nanocytes have a unique signature that can be detected. But I’d need to see the jansha to figure out which specific batch of nanocytes was used on her.”
“Here it is.” Zaron extended his hand and opened his palm to show the small, tubular healing device. “I figured you might need it.”
“All right,” Korum said, taking the device from Zaron. “I’ll look into this for you. It might take a few days, so—”
“No,” Zaron said sharply, his muscles tensing with a surge of fury. “I don’t have a few days.”
“Excuse me?” Korum’s gaze hardened.
“It’s important,” Zaron said, forcing himself to moderate his tone. He couldn’t afford to antagonize the one person who could help him. “She’s important.”
“More important than my duties on the Council and the designs I’m working on?” Korum’s nostrils flared. “I understand that you want your human pet back, but—”
“She’s my charl.” Zaron held Korum’s icy gaze, refusing to back down. The notoriously ruthless Councilor wasn’t someone to be crossed, but there was nothing Zaron wouldn’t do to get Emily back.
He’d challenge Korum to the Arena if he had to.
“Your charl?” Some of the cold anger left Korum’s voice. “Like Arus’s Delia?”
“Yes.” Zaron didn’t see the need to explain that Emily wasn’t his charl yet. She would become one as soon as he found her; he’d decided that last night. She’d chosen to come back to him—that was what that half-finished ticket purchase was about—but even if she still had some reservations about belonging to him, Zaron would overcome them.
Once he had Emily, he would never let her go again.
“I see.” A tinge of amusement appeared in Korum’s gaze. “I didn’t realize you and Arus had so much in common. I’ll never understand a charl’s appeal, but if you want a human, I guess it’s your choice.”
Zaron did his best to conceal his relief. “So you’ll help me? Today?”
“Yes, I will,” Korum said. “Come back in two hours. I should have her location by then.”
* * *
The two hours crawled by at a glacial pace. To distract himself, Zaron went to the lake and swam fifty laps, then ran twenty miles through the jungle. Despite not sleeping at all last night, he felt wired, his body buzzing with violent energy.
If he came across any human guerrilla fighters, they’d be in trouble.
But Zaron didn’t come across anyone, and exactly two hours after the conversation, he was back at the Council meeting hall in Lenkarda.
Korum was waiting for him in front of a three-dimensional floating image.
“She’s in there,” he said without preliminaries, pointing at a crumbling warehouse on a trash-littered street. “It’s a building in a semi-abandoned industrial area of Queens, one of the New York City boroughs. I did some digging on it for you. It turns out the building is owned by the US government. They used several shell corporations to conceal that fact, which makes me think it’s not one of their official locations.”
“A government building?” Zaron frowned at the image. “Why would she be there?”
“I don’t know,” Korum said. “Maybe she decided to talk to them about you, tell them what she’s learned during her time with you. How long did you keep her?”
“About two and a half weeks. But she’s only seen our most basic home technology, so I doubt she can tell them anything useful.”
“You shouldn’t have shown her even that,” Korum said, and the image winked out of existence. “The non-disclosure mandate is no longer in place, but we’re still bound by the non-interference mandate. We can’t give or show them anything that would alter the course of their natural technological development. In general, it’s a problem that the government has her. The nanocytes are inactive, but she still has them in her body, and that’s not a technology we’re going to be sharing with the humans any time soon.”
“Don’t worry. It won’t be a problem for long,” Zaron said. “I’m going to get her back.” He doubted the humans had sufficiently advanced technology to do anything with the nanocytes, but he didn’t argue.
He had Emily’s location, and that was all that mattered.
Korum gave him a hard look. “You know you can’t just show up and drag her out of there. They might have security measures in place that aren’t apparent from the outside. If this really is some kind of government facility, you could cause a major interplanetary incident if you storm in and get hurt.”
“So what do you suggest?” Zaron asked, suppressing a flare of impatience. Now that he knew where Emily was, he couldn’t wait to get to her.
“Arus can put in a request for you through the proper diplomatic channels,” Korum said. “It’ll probably take some time, but—”
“No.” Zaron’s rejection was instinctive, a gut feeling born of his need to have Emily back that very instant, but when he saw Korum’s expression, he knew he’d have to provide a reasonable explanation. “If we ask for her, they’ll think she’s important,” he said. “They might deny that they have her or delay returning her to me so they could question her. It would be much easier if I went there by myself and retrieved her. If I break in like a human burglar, they’ll never know that a Krinar was involved, so—”
“No.” It was Korum’s turn to interrupt. “That’s not the way to handle it. If this Emily of yours told them everything, they might expect us to come for her. You can’t go in unarmed and unprepared. If you really can’t wait, I’ll help you. I have a couple of designs I’ve been itching to test out.”
The Councilor explained the plan, his golden eyes gleaming, and as he spoke, Zaron felt the knot of tension in his chest start to loosen.
One way or another, he was going to get Emily back.
It was time for his angel to come home.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Her heart thudding in an erratic rhythm, Emily stared at the white-haired nurse who was getting ready to stick yet another needle into Emily’s arm. The older woman had a kind face that reminded Emily of the actress Betty White, but so far, she’d ignored all of Emily’s entreaties to stop and let her call a lawyer.
The initial round of tests had consisted of them taking several vials of Emily’s blood, X-rays of every part of her body, a CT scan, and an MRI. Afterwards, they’d let Emily pass out for a few hours on a hard cot in a tiny gray room, and she’d woken up feeling like she was suffocating. She’d needed fresh air, needed it so badly she’d felt like she was dying, but instead of letting her out, they’d given her a sedative to keep her calm. She’d floated in a drugged haze for a while, dreaming of Zaron coming to save her, but the drug was starting to wear off and the claustrophobia was back, along with nausea from the sedative and a churning sensation in her empty stomach. Emily had thrown up the coffee and donuts they’d given her a half hour ago, and the hunger intensified the headache throbbing in her temples.
“Don’t do this, please,” Emily begged again as the Betty White lookalike approached her with the syringe. Her tongue felt thick and unwieldy inside her dry mouth. “Please. I’m a US citizen. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
The nurse ignored her, her kindly face set in stoic lines. Emily tried to jerk her arm away from the syringe, but the padded handcuff around her wrist kept it in place. Two male nurses had cuffed her to a metal chair after she’d tried to resist the second round of tests, and the restraints had worsened her claustrophobia, making her pulse beat sickeningly fast. She was strapped down as securely as in a mental asylum, unable to get up or get away. Emily had never been a fan of needles, going so far as to avoid getting flu shots, but there was no avoiding this.
She was a prisoner, and there was no escape.
The nurse gripped Emily’s arm to hold it still, and the needle went into her skin, piercing the vein on the inside of her elbow.
“Stop,” Emily moaned, bile rising in her throat as her blood flowed into the vial attached to the syringe. “I’m going to be sick.”
Holding the syringe in place with one hand, the nurse reached for a nearby plastic tray. “Here,” she said, thrusting the empty tray under Emily’s chin. “You can vomit into this if you need to.”
Emily was shaking, her skin covered with cold sweat, but she managed not to throw up. Seeing that the tray was not needed, the nurse put it back. Removing the needle from Emily’s arm, she put a cotton ball on the wound and taped a Band-Aid over it.
“All done for now,” she said. “Sit back and relax. Agent Wolfe and Agent Janson will be in to see you shortly.”
She exited the room without unlocking Emily’s cuffs, and two minutes later, Wolfe and Janson walked into the room. Neither agent batted an eye at seeing Emily restrained in a chair, and she realized that to them, she wasn’t a person.
She was the enemy, and they’d go to any lengths to break her.
“Please take these cuffs off,” she said. It took all her strength to keep her voice steady. She was dizzy, and it felt like all oxygen was leaving the room. “I’m not going to attack you.”
Wolfe gave her a thin-lipped smile. “I’m sure you won’t, but the nurses might need to run a few more tests, so it’s more efficient if we keep them on for now. I’m sure you understand.”
“No, I don’t understand,” Emily said, unable to contain her anger and desperation. “I haven’t committed a crime, but even if I had, there is due process in this country. If you’re going to hold me like this, I demand to see a lawyer, and—”
“Miss Ross, please.” Janson sat down on a chair across from her, his fleshy jowls quivering with the movement. “You’re a smart young woman. I’m sure you know that the Patriot Act gives us a lot of leeway when it comes to threats to national security. You must also know that the Krinar are the biggest threat we’ve ever faced. Since you’re refusing to cooperate with us—”
“I’m cooperating with you!”
“—we have no choice but to keep you here,” Janson continued as if Emily hadn’t spoken. “The preliminary tests show that you were indeed healed by a technology that far exceeds anything we know. Your dental records, for instance…” He droned on, listing everything they’d discovered so far, but Emily was no longer listening.
A humming sound—something resembling the distant buzzing of a beehive—had caught her attention.
Suddenly, the lights flickered and went out, and the buzzing sound intensified.
“Fuck,” Wolfe said, pulling out his phone and using it as a flashlight. “Janson, you all right?”
But Janson wasn’t paying attention to him. He’d fallen silent and was holding his phone above his head, shining its light straight up at the ceiling.
“What is that?” Wolfe asked, tipping his head back, and Emily followed his gaze.
The ceiling looked like it was shimmering—no, like it was melting.
Wolfe jumped to his feet, pulling his gun out, but it was too late.
A large portion of the ceiling disintegrated, the thick layer of concrete evaporating as if it were made of smoke. Sunlight poured through the opening, blinding Emily for a moment, but then she saw it.
&n
bsp; A tall, broad-shouldered figure of a man standing on the edge of the opening.
The bright sunlight from above cast his face into shadows, but there was no mistaking the catlike grace with which he moved.
Stunned, Emily stared at Zaron, fierce elation sweeping through her.
Her alien captor had come for her.
He wanted her back.
“Stop right there!” Janson shouted, raising his gun, but Zaron was already jumping down into the room.
The deafening pop-pop-pop of gunshots filled the air, and Emily stopped breathing, her heart plunging in icy terror. She knew the Krinar were fast and strong, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be hurt or killed. If something happened to Zaron… Before the fear could choke her, she saw that he’d landed on his feet, unharmed.
The seconds that followed were a blur. Zaron moved like a deadly tornado. In what seemed like a blink of an eye, both agents were on the floor, screaming in pain, and Emily watched in paralyzed shock as Zaron lifted Janson by his throat, holding him up with one hand as if the three-hundred-pound man weighed nothing. Janson’s right arm was hanging at an odd angle at his side, but his left hand clawed at Zaron’s fingers in frantic terror, his feet flailing in the air with desperation.
Zaron was literally choking the agent to death.
“Stop!” Emily yelled, horrified. “Zaron, please, stop!”
Her lover froze, and she saw a shudder ripple through his powerful body. His face was turned away, so all she could see was the taut line of his jaw, but she could feel his barely restrained rage. Violence thrummed in the air, dark and toxic, and Emily knew that if she didn’t do something, Zaron would murder these two men.
Like the K in those videos, he’d rip them into pieces.
“Zaron, please.” Swallowing her panic, Emily softened her voice, making it gently cajoling. “Put him down.”