Invaded

by Melissa Landers

  Yes, he wanted Cara—alone on their colony, free from the worries of alliances and assassinations and probes. “No. Already ate.”

  David started to speak, but the phone rang from his pocket, and he stepped back to answer it. At once, the smile fell from his face and he reflexively touched his arm. As the seconds passed, it became clear that the caller had delivered unpleasant news, and Aelyx suspected it had to do with David’s medical condition. He wondered if his friend had confessed his health problems to Syrine. He made a mental note to talk with David later.

  “I’ve got to take this,” David said, covering the mouthpiece. “Be right back.”

  After a brief kiss, David left Syrine to continue the call from his room. From the way she gazed longingly at his retreating form, you’d think they were parting for eternity instead of five minutes.

  “You love him,” Aelyx said.

  Syrine didn’t argue.

  “Will you invite him to the colony?” Until now, he thought he’d known the answer. But perhaps he’d underestimated her level of attachment for the young man.

  She shook her head and lost an inch as she sank into her chair. “No.”

  “Why not?” Aelyx asked. “He’s not like other humans.”

  “Yes, he is,” she said. “And this feeling”—she pressed a palm to her chest—“won’t last for him. I know how humans love. Their passion burns like a lump of sugar—quick and hot. And when the fire dies, they seek a new flame. They chase sparks instead of collecting the warmth of old embers.”

  Aelyx understood her concern. He’d once read a study claiming the average American had seven mates during a lifetime. But there were always exceptions. Cara’s parents, for example. They’d married young and had never parted. And if their constant kisses and touches were any indication, their flame burned more like a centennial bulb than a sugar cube.

  “You barely know him,” Aelyx said. “Why not keep an open mind?”

  “I’ll keep a clear mind and enjoy the time we have left.”

  Aelyx had once shared the same opinion—that pairing with a human would never last—but now he couldn’t imagine his future without Cara in it.

  “I’m back, so quit talking about me.” David rejoined them and took the seat next to Syrine. He attempted a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Because that’s what I always think when you’re speaking L’eihr.”

  “He’s onto us,” Aelyx said in English, sliding Syrine a mock-serious look.

  Syrine grinned at her new boyfriend. “Then I suppose he’s not as stupid as I thought.”

  David didn’t laugh at her joke, instead choosing to lead her to the sofa, where they gazed soulfully at each other.

  Bleeding gods. It truly was going to be an awkward month.

  David’s cell phone rang again. When he sat back against the cushions and tapped his screen to answer the call, Syrine nestled against him, draping an arm across his chest as if it were the most natural thing in the world. In response, he rested his cheek atop her head and pulled her tightly against him. Aelyx was no relationship expert, but they looked like a perfectly mated pair. Syrine was delusional if she thought she could enjoy the next four weeks and then simply cut ties and return home.

  “Private Sharpe,” David said into the phone, followed by some indeterminate uh-huhs and mmm-hmmms. He ended the call with an abrupt, “Okay, then,” and tapped the screen.

  “That was quick,” Syrine said.

  “Our food’s here, but the sergeant won’t bring it to us. Something about not leaving his post. Maybe one of the guys at the door will run down and grab it.”

  “I’ll ask them.” Aelyx opened the front door, expecting to find two armed soldiers flanking the entrance, but the only thing greeting him was a half-full Starbucks cup sitting by the floor mat. That was unusual. He’d never seen the men away from their station. He peered for them in both directions but the hallway appeared empty.

  “Nobody’s out here,” he called to David.

  “Probably a shift change,” came the reply. “Let’s just wait a minute.”

  “I’ll check the stairwell,” Aelyx said. “There’s always someone posted in there.”

  The front door was set to lock automatically, so Aelyx left it propped open when he stepped into the hall. As he strode down the corridor in his socks, he made a mental note to change into a clean pair when he returned to the penthouse. The sidewalks of Los Angeles were littered with contaminants, and though the carpeted hallway appeared freshly vacuumed, he knew the residents and guests tracked in all manner of filth on the bottoms of their shoes. Which was disgusting. He’d never had to worry about this on L’eihr.

  He was still grumbling to himself about the city’s poor sanitation when he pushed open the stairwell door and came face-to-face with a uniformed soldier.

  Only the man wasn’t a guard.

  Aelyx recognized the pink keloid scar that bisected the male’s forehead, his familiar brown eyes widened in surprise. Aelyx knew this man. When someone fired a gun at your chest, you committed that face to memory.

  L’eihrs were quicker than humans, but not fast enough to outrun a bullet. There was no way Aelyx could make it back to the room in time, and the soldier stood too close for him to shut the stairwell door and call for help. Luckily, the man seemed just as unprepared for this meeting as Aelyx, something he intended to use to his advantage.

  While the soldier fumbled for his gun, Aelyx charged him, doing his best to build momentum as his socked feet skidded against the smooth concrete floor. When the man realized Aelyx’s plan was to knock him backward down the stairs, he released the butt of his pistol and braced for impact.

  Their bodies collided with a hollow smack that told Aelyx his enemy wore a Kevlar vest—another detail that gave him an edge. The leaden vests were heavy and bulky—great for stopping a bullet, but not the best choice for hand-to-hand combat. Aelyx balled his fist and struck the sensitive area above the man’s groin, eliciting a grunt of pain. He pushed with all his strength, but his slippery socks afforded him no traction.

  To keep from falling, the man gripped the metal stair rail, and Aelyx did the same. With his newly gained leverage, Aelyx drew back his head and butted the soldier’s face. He couldn’t see what he’d struck, but the crunch of bone indicated he’d broken the man’s nose. That was a good start, but the soldier didn’t need his nose to fire a gun. Aelyx had to disable him long enough to get back to the suite.

  He struck the soldier inside his elbow, slackening the man’s grip on the handrail and sending him stumbling down a few stairs. Aelyx saw a way to use their sudden height difference to his advantage. Gripping both handrails, he lifted his legs and kicked the man squarely in the chest, sending him careening backward down a flight of concrete steps. Without hesitating, Aelyx turned and threw open the stairwell door, then sprinted down the hallway and back to the room.

  Heart hammering against his ribs, he darted inside and slammed the suite door. He bolted the lock and shouted, “Call the guards!” to David in the next room. When Syrine came running into the foyer, Aelyx grabbed her around the waist and towed her back into the living area. “Stay away from the door.” He locked eyes with David while trying to catch his breath. “The shooter from Christmas—he’s in the stairwell. I fought him off, but he’s still armed.”

  David dialed a number and tossed his cell phone to Aelyx. “When my CO picks up, tell him what you told me.” He drew his pistol. “Stay here with Aelyx,” he told Syrine. “Don’t open the door for anyone unless they say the password.”

  Syrine held tightly to Aelyx’s arm. “What’s the password?”

  “Pear.”

  Before Aelyx could try talking him out of it, David disappeared into the hall.

  They knew the gunman’s identity by midnight, but not because anyone had apprehended him. The ex-infantryman—Anthony Grimes, if the military reports were correct—had once again disappeared like smoke on the breeze. By the time David had searched the
stairwell, all he’d found were the bodies of three guardsmen.

  No one was sure how Grimes had managed to infiltrate the building, but he appeared to have killed the stairwell guard first, then ambushed the penthouse guards during their shift change. Grimes had just dragged the bodies into the stairwell when Aelyx had surprised him. Five minutes later, and the man might have gained entry to the penthouse.

  A chilling thought.

  Aelyx had summoned a mental image of the gunman’s countenance and shared it with Syrine. Together, they’d composed a sketch for Colonel Rutter to scan into the facial recognition system. The search yielded a few dozen possible matches, and Aelyx had easily singled out Grimes by his jagged scar—which had resulted from the same drunk driving incident that earned the man a dishonorable discharge three years earlier.

  But what Aelyx found most interesting was that Grimes wasn’t affiliated with HALO. He began to wonder if Isaac Richards had told the truth when he’d denied responsibility for the attacks.

  But if the Patriots of Earth didn’t want Aelyx dead, then who did?

  “I hate to say this.” David shifted forward in his seat, resting both forearms on his knees. “But I think Grimes has someone on the inside. How else would he know the shift change schedule?”

  “Maybe it was a coincidence that he showed up when he did,” Aelyx said. “Sheer luck.”

  David shook his head. “I don’t believe in luck.”

  “Okay then,” Aelyx countered. “Call it chance. Regardless, it’s the reason I’m alive.” Because if he’d stepped out of the penthouse any later, Grimes would’ve met him in the hallway with his weapon at the ready.

  “I don’t know…” David rubbed his jaw, eyes trained on the floor. “It’s fishy how that soldier wouldn’t bring up our food.”

  Syrine looped an arm through David’s and clung to him. This latest attack hadn’t shaken her as badly as the letter bomb, but she’d still needed to retreat to her room for an hour of K’imsha after dinner. “I agree,” she said. “It’s like he wanted us to come out.”

  Aelyx had found that suspicious from the beginning. “What’s the man’s name?”

  “No clue. All I caught was Sergeant. He mumbled the rest.”

  If there were a “mole in the ranks,” as the saying went, Aelyx had an idea to draw out Grimes and finally capture him. “Let’s have Colonel Rutter feed false information to the unit—tell them I’m going someplace easily accessible to Grimes.”

  “And have a trap waiting for him,” Syrine finished. “I like that.”

  “Me, too,” David said. “I’ll talk to the colonel about it in the morning.” He checked his watch. “Which is technically now, since it’s past midnight. Guess we should turn in.” Then he and Syrine rose in unison from their seats.

  Aelyx had a feeling somebody’s bedroom would be vacant tonight. “Be careful,” he warned. The ambassador had returned from his meeting, and he wouldn’t approve of their bodyguard mixing business with pleasure. “It won’t help if you get reassigned.”

  Syrine stood on tiptoe to glance toward the ambassador’s bedroom, then lowered her voice to a whisper and produced a tiny key from her pocket. “I locked my room from the inside, just in case he decides to check on me.”

  “And I’m up hours before he is, anyway,” David said. “If you need anything, text me or knock twice on my door.”

  As the pair strode hand-in-hand to David’s room, a familiar surge of envy churned inside Aelyx’s stomach. He did his best to tame the sensation, but it wasn’t easy. Maybe talking to Cara would help. He couldn’t share his fear that Grimes would eventually succeed in killing him, not without worrying her. But simply hearing her voice would make it easier to sleep tonight. He returned to his room, hoping to catch her between classes.

  But when he summoned her, she didn’t answer—a fitting end to a terrible day. Aelyx slumped on his bed and tossed aside his com-sphere. He missed Cara more than ever, and the thought of spending another month apart made his insides feel raw.

  He wondered what she was doing right now. Was she thinking of him, too?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cara paced the waiting area to Alona’s private-audience chamber, wishing more than anything that Aelyx were here. He’d know what to do. He’d remind her of the eleventy dozen rules for proper behavior during a hearing with an Elder—when to sit and stand, whether to pick up the speaker’s baton for a one-on-one meeting, how to ask sensitive questions like, You’re not going to execute me for this, are you? Aelyx would demonstrate the slight nuance in pressure and timing that marked the difference between a greeting and a grope when touching the left side of the throat. And more importantly, he’d hold her close and kiss the sweet spot behind her ear and whisper, Don’t worry, Elire. You can do this.

  Cara wasn’t sure she could do this.

  She’d only been here fifteen minutes, and already she’d stained the front of her tunic with her sweaty palms. The Aegis guard was inside with Alona right now, no doubt filling her head with tales of Cara’s sociopathic hijinks. Silent Speech could save Cara, but what if she opened her mind and all her secrets came flooding out? She’d harbored some traitorous thoughts against The Way, especially about Jaxen and Aisly. Cara hoped Alona wouldn’t punish her for that, but she didn’t know what to expect.

  The chamber door whispered open.

  “Come,” the Aegis guard said, waving Cara inside the small, dim chamber. He narrowed his eyes and touched the iphal holstered at his side.

  Message received. He didn’t trust her alone with the head Elder, which kind of stung. Cara had never hurt anyone. Well, except that one time she busted Marcus Johnson’s knee with a baseball bat, but that didn’t count. He’d aimed his rifle at Aelyx’s chest, and she’d had to skew his shot. Besides, he’d used that same rifle to smash her face. Under normal circumstances, Cara wouldn’t even bait a fishing hook because she found it cruel to the worm.

  “It’s all right,” Alona’s droning voice called from inside. “Come and be heard.”

  Cara crept into the chamber, flinching when the door shut behind her. Unlike the vast hearing room aboard the transport, this enclosure wouldn’t accommodate all ten members of The Way. Only two seats stood on the beige-carpeted floor: a plush ottoman Alona occupied and a simple stool about five paces from her. A slender skylight provided the only illumination, casting a beam over Alona as if she were a deity. Which she was, in a way. No one on L’eihr wielded more power than this graying slip of a woman.

  “Sit,” she instructed, and Cara obeyed. The warmth—for lack of a better word—Cara had detected in Alona’s gaze on Sh’ovah day was gone, replaced by cold indifference. It seemed the guard had succeeded in blackening Cara’s name. With a hurry up motion, Alona ordered, “State your grievance.”

  Cara swallowed a lump of fear. “I’m here to defend myself from false accusations. Someone at the Aegis has committed a series of crimes and made me look like the guilty party.”

  “The evidence against you is damning,” Alona said. “How do you refute it?”

  This was it. Time to bust out the big guns.

  But Cara had never used Silent Speech from so far away. She wasn’t sure she could project from her seat to Alona’s. She lifted her stool and scooted nearer, practically giving the guard a stroke in the process. He gasped aloud and moved to draw his iphal. Alona seemed startled, too, stiffening in her seat.

  “It’s okay,” Cara assured Alona with raised palms. “I just want to look you in the eyes.”

  Alona regained her composure, but her voice darkened with irritation. “My vision is unimpaired. I can see you quite well from here.”

  Cara nodded and latched her gaze on to Alona’s faded chrome irises. She isolated the region in her brain she’d discovered that morning and told the Elder, I’m innocent, then closed the connection between them and waited for a reaction.

  Alona’s response didn’t disappoint. Slowly, her eyes widened in perfect conjunction with h
er mouth. If the lighting were better, Cara could’ve performed a dental exam. Alona flicked a glance at the guard and ordered, “Leave us.”

  The man drew a breath and hesitated a beat, but he didn’t argue. Within moments, he was gone, and Cara reopened her mind to the head Elder.

  How did you do that? Alona asked, her feelings of shock and amazement bleeding into Cara’s mind.

  Aelyx taught me what he could, Cara said. And Elyx’a has been helping me practice. No one else knows, and I’d like to keep it that way. She tried her best to focus on words alone, but an image of Jaxen and Aisly materialized in Cara’s head, along with a fear that they’d try other methods of brainwashing if they knew their memory control hadn’t worked on her.

  Alona fell silent awhile before claiming, “Mind control is impossible, Cah-ra.”

  It didn’t escape Cara’s notice that Alona had spoken aloud instead of using Silent Speech. Apparently, they both had secrets to keep.

  “But,” Alona continued, “I’m intrigued that your human brain can process mental dialogue. This lends credence to the theory that we share a common lineage.”

  Ancestry was the last thing on Cara’s mind. “I’m just glad I was able to convince you I’m innocent. A few weeks ago, someone stole an instructor’s tablet and hid it in my room, and then they poisoned Dahla’s breakfast. I thought she was doing it, but I was wrong. Whoever it is wants me expelled.”

  Or executed.

  It occurred to Cara that the criminal could have simply killed her, which would be easier than framing her for a capital crime. Maybe her death wasn’t the only goal.

  “Allow me to apologize on behalf of the guilty party.” The slight inflection in Alona’s tone might not have seemed significant to the average human, but it told Cara the Elder was majorly pissed. “Rooting out the culprit will be simple. I’ll order the guards to perform a mental interview with every clone in your Aegis until the individual is found.” With a nod, she added, “And then neutralized.”