Liquid Lies

by Hanna Martine

  “Hey,” Reed said to him. “Water’s going right through me. Mind if we stop?”

  It was all Gwen could do to keep from launching herself into the front seat and kissing Reed in gratitude.

  Xavier eyed Reed sideways. “Aren’t we almost there?”

  Reed shook his head. “At least another half hour. There’s an old general store just around the next bend. Secluded. I’ll park where no one driving by can see us. The doors lock from the inside. You stay with Gwen. I’ll just run in.”

  Gwen stared at Xavier. He glanced over his shoulder at her. Reed continued to dance in his seat.

  Xavier waved an annoyed hand. “Fine, I guess.”

  The familiar gravel lot of Myrna’s General Store appeared around the curve.

  Reed’s left hand dropped nonchalantly from the steering wheel and slid between his seat and door. He tapped there twice, silently. She shoved the paper into the slot, her heart throwing itself against her rib cage. Everything about the world felt heightened, exaggerated. And every single pair of eyes was focused on her.

  The gravel under the Range Rover wheels crunched loud as gunshots. Reed killed the engine and pocketed the keys so he could lock Xavier and her inside. As he slid out of the seat, he smoothly shoved the paper scrap into his jeans’ pocket.

  “Won’t be a moment.” He nodded to Xavier, then limped up to the store to keep up the charade that he had to pee.

  Through the store’s dusty front window she watched the guy behind the counter direct Reed to someplace out of sight. Xavier would think it was the bathroom. Gwen prayed it was a phone.

  Xavier hooked a long piece of his blond hair behind his ear and turned in the seat, the leather of his jacket creaking. “Is Muscle as dumb as he looks?”

  Oh, the effort to keep a straight face. “Haven’t we already covered this? I wouldn’t know.” Then, because she couldn’t resist, “I’ll bet he’s not nearly as dumb as you think.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What did he say to make you try to take off last night? Don’t say ‘nothing.’ I saw you two talking in the garden.”

  She held his stare. To look away would be telling. She’d learned that much from Reed. “I was upset about Nora’s choices. I took it out on him. He pissed me off. So I ran.”

  “Uh-huh.” His suspicion hung between them as translucent and hazardous as toxic smoke.

  He watched her for a moment. When his face wasn’t marred by a scowl, she imagined that the softness in his gunmetal eyes and his pale, European-style beauty might have assuaged some of the women he’d been forced to lie with. Maybe they’d reached for him. Maybe he’d been gentle with them.

  “Will you miss Earth?” she asked, trying to get his mind away from Reed and her. “The parts of it you’ve seen, I mean. The beautiful parts. No one knows what Tedra looks like anyway. No one but Nora, and that was a hundred and fifty years ago when there was a war on.”

  He arched his neck to gaze up through the moonroof, at the harsh bursts of sunlight stabbing their way through the shifting tree branches. “I wish I could answer that. I don’t know what’s beautiful in this world and what’s not,” he said.

  With a hard pang, she realized she didn’t hate him.

  She wanted to. Stars, she tried to. He was too astute and he was ruining everything. He was making things worse for himself and his people, and he wouldn’t listen to any reasons why. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to blame him, given all that he’d been through—was still going through. Her people hadn’t just bred Tedrans in the Circle; they’d bred sorrow and bitterness, and Xavier was one of their finest accomplishments.

  Gwen’s presence fed his fire. When he walked into Genesai’s with her and discovered she’d been lying, it would just be another load of wood and a generous squirt of lighter fluid on the flames.

  The store door creaked open. Reed bounded down the steps. Such a short time inside. A good or bad sign?

  Reed climbed behind the wheel, the car lurching under his weight. “Thanks, man,” he said to Xavier, ignoring her.

  Give me a sign. What just happened in there? What did you do?

  He started the car and threw it into reverse. With a thick arm stretched behind the passenger seat headrest, he backed out of the lot and onto the road. And completely avoided her eyes.

  She stared at the space between the seat and the door where she’d stuffed Griffin’s number. No finger taps. No new note.

  She stared into the rearview mirror, positioning herself so the rectangular glass perfectly framed Reed’s blue eyes. They shifted left and right as he drove, but never up. Never up to meet hers.

  Look at me! Tell me.

  Why wasn’t he giving her a sign? What was he waiting for? She’d told him everything there was to know about Genesai. He could deduce what was about to happen once Xavier and she went inside. Before she went in there, she needed to know where she stood.

  Oh, God.

  Reed’s nonreaction was the sign. The worst one possible.

  He hadn’t reached Griffin. Or maybe he had, and Griffin hadn’t believed him. Or Griffin had run to her father. Any way you read it, she’d lost.

  She sank deep into her seat and closed her eyes. Only when she sensed the car stop did she open them, and even that much was a chore. They parked near the iron grill at the top of the cliff above the cabin. Reed jumped out and opened her door. It took a few seconds for her legs to find their gear. When she finally got out, Reed didn’t look at her, but then she didn’t expect him to. His silence said enough.

  She would have to watch Xavier now. If Nora got wind of anything going down with the Plant, she’d contact Xavier first.

  Xavier took her by the elbow and turned to Reed.

  “I know the drill,” Reed said, shoving his hands into his pockets and squinting into the trees.

  Xavier’s heavy gaze shifted between her and Reed, then his fingers tightened and he steered her down the steep path. Her feet dragged. She stumbled more than once.

  Xavier pounded on Genesai’s door without any sort of greeting. There was no time for Gwen to gather herself, no time to prepare.

  The door flew open. A trapezoid of daylight tumbled into the shack and Genesai jumped away from it, a forearm shading his eyes. He was naked from the waist up again, his flour white skin covered in goose bumps. He didn’t seem to notice he was shivering.

  “Gwen!” he cried. “You came back! Will you take me to her now?”

  It didn’t matter which language was spoken, her name would always sound the same. She wore her defeat like handcuffs and leg irons: debilitating and obvious.

  “I knew it!” Xavier roared. His fingers bit hard into her arm as he spun her around and shoved her inside.

  Just before the door slammed shut, she glimpsed Reed up on the rise. He leaned against the Range Rover, pretending not to look at her. By the clench of his fists, though, he was. She’d never wished herself back in that San Francisco alley before, but just then she really needed the Reed that had appeared to her that dawn. She wanted him to charge down the hill and get her out of this.

  He didn’t.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Inside the cabin, Gwen coughed on clouds of dust. Xavier rounded on her.

  “You lied to me, Gwen. You lied to Nora.” Behind his fury lay the shadow of a deep, cutting hurt.

  Denying it was pointless. The willpower to fight was starting to deflate, especially after Reed’s nonverbal cues. If Griffin wasn’t coming, if her father found out where she was, if Nora was readying her arsenal of photographic weapons…what was the point?

  “You know what? You caught me.”

  “Why?” Xavier prowled closer. “Why lie when so many lives are dependent on you?”

  “Gwen?” Genesai squeaked behind her. She could hear his breath quickening, sense his fear rising.

  “I’m all right,” she told Genesai as calmly as possible. Then, to Xavier, “I told you and Nora that there are other ways to end this. Other ways that don’t end in
death, or more slavery. I was buying myself time. Trying to figure out a way to help everyone.”

  “There is no time!”

  “Gwennnnnn…” Genesai began to stamp his feet and pull at his hair. Mistrustful eyes bulged at Xavier.

  She planted herself between the two men and took Genesai’s shoulders. “Genesai. Genesai, look at me, not at him. Everything is all right. Please stay calm.”

  He vibrated in her grip. “He is hurting you.”

  “What the hell is wrong with him?” Xavier demanded.

  “You are,” she snapped over her shoulder. “You’ve upset him. He gets worked up and passes out sometimes. If that happens, who knows when he’ll wake up. Then we’re all screwed.”

  She gently took Genesai’s face in her hands. “He isn’t hurting me. We’re just arguing.”

  A deep, shuddering breath rattled his bones. “What does that mean?”

  “It means nothing. We’re just sorting some things out.”

  Genesai pointed a finger as white and knobby as bone. “Who is he? Why is he here?”

  Xavier shuffled behind her. “What’s he saying? Why is he pointing at me?”

  “Enough.” She shoved a hand in Xavier’s face. “If you want what we came here for, keep your mouth shut and stand back unless I ask for you.”

  Xavier may have been desperate, angry, and uncouth, but he wasn’t dumb. He nodded and backed up a step.

  “This is Xavier. He’s a…friend,” she told Genesai, hoping he wouldn’t pick up on the pause before that last word. “Remember what I told you about the Tedrans being held in captivity by the Ofarians?”

  Genesai’s face darkened. “Yes.”

  “Xavier was one of those slaves. He escaped. Now he’s trying to help the others. He needs you.”

  Genesai gazed at Xavier with new, clear eyes, his wariness dissolving into compassion. “If he is Tedran, then he hurts like I do.”

  Well said. Almost too much so, because the pressure in her chest hindered her ability to talk. “Yes. Very much so.”

  Genesai’s arms dropped to his sides, serenity erasing the shaking of his limbs, a dramatic and sudden shift from agitated to sympathetic.

  “You told him who I am?” Xavier murmured.

  She nodded.

  “I am pleased to meet you, Genesai,” he said, and Gwen translated, her heart warming unexpectedly at Xavier’s gentle tone.

  “I will be honored to help you,” Genesai replied.

  She fell into the easy rhythm of interpretation, one language flowing into her ears, another streaming from her lips.

  Xavier cleared his throat, ventured closer. “Will the ship fly even if it’s been underwater for a century and a half?”

  Genesai chose his words carefully. “I have always believed she would fly for me in any condition, on any world, in any circumstance. But now I will need to make sure before I say such a thing. Water is unpredictable.”

  He wasn’t accusing her of anything—he didn’t even know what she was—but Gwen sensed the tension in his words and the hatred for the element associated with his altered form and his greatest enemy: her people.

  Beside her, Xavier sank to his knees. The way he looked up at Genesai, glassy eyes alighting upon a savior, knocked the breath from her chest.

  “We’re so close,” whispered the Tedran. He raised his palms as though asking for some sort of benediction. “And if it doesn’t work…if the ship won’t run…if he can’t take us back to Tedra…”

  Would Nora give her another chance? If Reed’s contact attempt had failed and her people were not, indeed, coming for her, would they let Gwen go back to the Board on her own terms? Could this really end in everyone’s favor?

  Genesai’s train of thought was far different from hers. Like a person’s name, the name of a planet sounded the same in any language.

  “Tedra?” Genesai narrowed his eyes. “Why does he mention Tedra?”

  “Because…because…” A cold sweat broke out over her skin, stealing her words. Genesai’s head tilted like a dog’s. She stepped closer. “We are asking you to return the enslaved Tedrans to their homeworld.”

  Genesai stumbled backward, knocking aside a chair, until his back struck the wall. “No, no, no. We will not go back there.”

  “He says—”

  “He doesn’t want to go back to Tedra. Yeah, I think I got that.” Xavier rocked to his feet and looked down at her, incredulous and disgusted. “You didn’t tell him that before?”

  “War on Tedra,” Genesai mumbled. “Ofarian invaders. Ofarian thieves. Ofarian slavers.”

  Each mention of her people’s name, spewed in that repulsed tone, was a punch in her gut. She couldn’t move, couldn’t find any more words in Genesai’s tongue.

  Xavier came to her side, spoke low. “And you didn’t tell him what you are, did you?”

  Razors cut her throat as she swallowed. “No. He won’t do it if he knows. Don’t say anything or you’ll be stuck here.”

  Xavier walked past her, his steps light and nonthreatening, straight for Genesai. Xavier placed a hand on his own chest. “Tell him,” he said, “that there are no more Ofarians on Tedra. Tell him that if he helps us, all he has to do is set down, let us go, and then he and his ship can go anywhere they like. No one will harm him.”

  “Xavier, you don’t know if that’s true. No one has any clue what’s happened on Tedra since we left.”

  “You left. We were taken.”

  She looked away, thinking how incredibly difficult it would be to convince her whole race to adjust their knowledge about history.

  “I believe we were about to win our freedom,” Xavier said quietly. “I believe that my people were winning the war, which is why the Ofarians fled. There are no more Ofarians there. We are free. Tell him. Please.”

  She told Genesai what Xavier wanted him to hear. Not because she was forced to, but because, for once, there was no malice in Xavier’s tone. Just heartbreak. And hope.

  Hundreds of lives rode on that hope.

  Genesai believed her, a rotten-toothy grin providing proof. It ripped her in half.

  Part of her didn’t want him to believe. That same part told her to tell him what she was. No matter what had happened with Reed in the general store, this whole situation wasn’t in her favor. It never really had been, but at least, for a few moments, she’d had a chance. What had she to lose if she tripped up Nora’s plan right here and now? She was back to square one anyway. Maybe, if Genesai knew the truth, he’d stall, giving her more time to figure something else out on her own.

  Then she caught sight of Genesai, his head slowly moving back and forth, up and down to take in the fluttering wallpaper of drawings he’d made of his ship. Such love in his eyes. Such longing. Seeing that, she knew what she had to do.

  Maybe, just maybe, someone could have a happy ending in this mess.

  Wearily, she turned to Xavier. “What now?”

  He looked at his watch as if their success came down to minutes, not days. Perhaps it did.

  The thing hadn’t gone off while they’d been in the cabin. The Secondaries’ secrets were still their own.

  Xavier nodded at Genesai. “We take him to Nora. And then to his ship. We have to know if it’ll fly.”

  She resisted correcting Xavier. It was not the ship, but Genesai’s ship. It was not an it, but a her.

  Xavier flung open the door. Sunlight and cold mountain air streamed inside. Genesai jumped back, staring with terror at the dust motes swirling inside the sunbeam.

  “It’s time to go.” She touched Genesai’s shoulder. “It’s time to finally see her.”

  He took a tentative step forward then a giant leap back. Every time she tried to steer him toward the door, he eluded her. He started to sob, snot running into his mouth.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked soothingly. “Don’t you want to see her?”

  His sharp face jerked to the corners of the shack. “I’ve been here, in this room, for so long.
The world outside scares me. It scared me when we first flew over it so long ago. It scared me when I was forced to land here. It’s filled with people who look like you.” He gazed down at his pasty body as if seeing it for the first time. “And like me. I feel stuffed into skin that is too small.” One leg started to kick repeatedly out to the side.

  “No one will know who you are,” she assured him. “No one on Earth knows about the Tedrans and Ofarians.”

  But they will, regardless of what I do.

  Xavier came forward. “You’re safe with us.”

  The dual reassurances seemed to pacify Genesai for a moment, but when his toe pierced a sunbeam, he jolted as if burned.

  “We prefer the dark,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “We like the black and the stars.”

  He spoke as though he were already reunited with his ship, and it hardened Gwen’s resolve to make that come true.

  She went to the bed and retrieved his scratchy, holey blanket. She shook it out, adding more dust to the light, and draped it over his head. Instantly he relaxed. Putting her arm around his shoulders, she nudged him into the daylight.

  “You’re in the sun now,” she told him. “How do you feel?”

  She heard the smile in his voice. “The light coming through the blanket looks like stars.”

  Xavier stopped next to them, his face turned up the cliff side toward Reed. Examining. Thinking.

  Even though Reed leaned against the car, the false disinterest plastered on his face and evident in his posture, Xavier frowned and asked her in Tedranish, “What does the Primary know?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You lied to us about Genesai. Which makes me think you lied to me about him.”

  Oh no. “He has nothing to do with this.”

  She guided Genesai up the steep path before Xavier could ask any more. At the top, Reed took in the sight of a blanketed Genesai in stride and twirled the key ring on a finger. “We all set?”

  “Gwen,” Xavier ordered. “Get in the car.”

  She couldn’t protest, couldn’t resist, without revealing her hand. So she pressed Genesai into the backseat and stared out the windshield. Inside, Genesai could not sit still, every limb shooting out to test its limits. Outside, her lover and her jailer each had a hand on the Range Rover’s hood. She could hear their conversation.