by Elsa Jade
He stared into her dark eyes. The reflected glint of the red heat lamp made him think of his last glimpse of space before the ship crashed—the void and the flames whirling around him. If not for that one mistake, he’d have been activated on some other world, subjugated to some purpose he hadn’t chosen, yoked to whichever keyholder had claimed his matrix. Since no one purchased a transgalactically outlawed unit of genetically and cybernetically enhanced slayers for their gardening needs, likely he’d have been destroyed in some heinous attack by now, along with his matrix-kin.
Strangely, the thought was almost…soothing. For so long, he’d castigated himself for losing his matrix in the crash. But they’d have died anyway, at someone else’s bidding. He hadn’t been able to destroy the egg just to save himself, not when that would’ve made him like the keyholder he’d inadvertently escaped.
The realization seemed to unmoor him, leave him drifting. Or maybe he was just actually tired, the nanites refusing to process the coffee when there wasn’t any war to be waged.
Slowly, he smiled at Lun-mei.
Her eyes widened, and he almost recoiled at her shocked look. He’d thought maybe he’d finally figured out the smiling thing…
She rolled to her hands and knees and crawled toward him, her expression shifting to excitement and anticipation. Oh. Maybe he’d gotten too good at smiling…
But then he realized she was looking past him, at the egg.
“Crack,” she squeaked. “It’s happening.”
He pivoted next to her, and they both knelt beside the tub, rubbing shoulders even though there was plenty of room.
Not quite touching, she traced one finger above the crack that had appeared running the entire length of the shell from the first pip to the blunt bottom. As they watched, a second striation appeared exactly ninety degrees opposite the first. “The cracks are perfectly straight,” she marveled. “That’s…impossible.”
Not impossible if the egg was genetically, mechanically, and electrically modified. And he couldn’t explain that.
She frowned anyway. “The shell is going to fracture all at once. Oh, I hope the chick is completely separated from the blood vessels inside. There’s not going to be any gentle, slow introduction to the world for this one.”
No, that had never been an option, not for beings like him. A Beta could’ve eased the shock of transition somewhat, but even so, what was the point of a gentle birth when they’d been destined for death?
He swallowed hard. “Lun-mei, I’m sorry.”
She turned her head toward him though it took another moment for her to wrench her eyes off the widening crack. “For what?”
“That I can’t tell you everything.” Sorry for the poor hatchling. And sorry for himself.
She sniffed in derision. “Shuh. Like I didn’t know that? You think you are so mysterious, Mach Halley, but I get you.”
He blinked. “You do?”
“Maybe someone hurt you once?” She peered at him, and even though he steeled himself not to react, she nodded. “Yeah, someone, sometime. Maybe awhile ago? That’s it. But you’ve been out here so long you’ve gone half feral. Like a good dog dropped on the side of the road in the country to take care of itself.”
“Hey,” he protested.
“Not that you’d do that. But someone did it to you. And now you’re reluctant to trust. You’ve survived because you’re big and tough, but you weren’t made to be on your own.”
He froze, feeling disturbingly like the egg next to them, cracking apart. You weren’t made. But he had been made: made to kill, made worse than Cross would ever be.
“But here’s the thing, Mach. I get you because I’ve saved dogs like you. I’ve brought them in from the cold, picked the burrs out of their coats, fed them right—okay, given them some donuts even—showed them a warm corner with a soft bed.”
A warm, soft bed. The cracks in him flared hot, like the desolate stone of a seemingly dead world fracturing from the pressure of churning lava underneath.
“All you need to do now,” she murmured, “is not run away again.”
His nanites whipped through him, and he realized he was breathing too hard, as if he were already running. Or wanted to.
Not to escape her, but to save her. From himself.
They were so close together he couldn’t help but breathe the scent of her—coffee and chocolate and some sort of sweetness, a flower he didn’t know. Plus the scent of her—the unique medley of biochemistry and electricity that was hers alone. And still he wasn’t sure that was all of her. She was more than the sum of the components he could see or smell. Or touch.
But that meant…what was she seeing in him? A freakish thing too large for her world, scarred. Surely she sensed his abnormality with the same empathy that she offered those lost dogs.
And yet she didn’t pull away. A burgeoning sense of wonder, fragile as the membrane inside the shell, swelled in him. She wasn’t afraid of him any more than she was afraid of the unknown hatchling or a biting dog. At least he wouldn’t bite her—not if she didn’t want him to.
That courage made his nanites whirl, not on his behalf this time, but hers. Her bravery was a side effect of innocence. Once she knew the truth, saw how vast and uncaring the universe was…
He brought the nanites under control with a slow breath. She’d never find out. She’d never lose that compassion that was as pure as the gold he’d once torn from her Earth. He’d make sure of it. That would be his personal programming, his own private battle, no matter what else happened.
The silence between them seethed with the promise he could never say aloud.
Her short, dark lashes fluttered, her eyes half closing, and he remembered how vulnerable she was without sleep and nourishment.
“I won’t run away,” he said finally. Even if his ship hadn’t been ripped to shards except for the pieces in the maintenance shed, he wouldn’t leave.
The curve of her lips dragged his focus downward. “Good. Because you’re about to have a chick who needs you.”
The hatchling, right.
Side by side, they watched the cracks widening, revealing the milky membrane before it too tore. Through the opening, still only as wide as his thumb, an oily darkness squirmed.
Lun-mei hissed softly under her breath. “I can’t believe how thick the shell and inner lining are. And look how those silver threads were holding it together. It’s not like anything…” She shook her head. “Anyway, I’m not seeing any hint of pinfeathers or down, so it’s probably an altricial species. It’ll be naked and blind—much more vulnerable than a precocial species like a chicken or ostrich that can get around on its own within a few hours. I hope you’re ready.”
He hoped she was, but she couldn’t be. Still, he knew she’d do whatever the hatchling needed to thrive.
The crack expanded again, as wide as three of his fingers. The hatchling’s neck and shoulder pushed against the breach, and in the red glow of the heat lamp, the scales gleamed like wet, black marble.
Bracing herself on the edge of the tub, Lun-mei leaned forward, her brow furrowed. “That’s… Okay, I’m not sure—”
He took her hand, which trembled just a little in his, just as her voice had quavered. “It’s an animal, like any other,” he reassured her. “You still know more than me.”
But her poise was obviously shaken. “I should’ve gone back to the office. Maybe Graham would be able to—”
Mach laced his fingers more tightly through hers. “You’re here,” he said. “You got this.”
Diverted from her momentary lack of conviction, she looked down at their joined hands. “Got—”
The hatchling burst from its egg, and the fragments of shell shattered against the walls of the tub with a chime like glass. Instantly, the coal-black hatchling uncoiled three times as large as its round prison. It had shoved out of the shell with its back to them, but at Lun-mei’s horrified gasp, it snaked its long neck around to stare at them through huge, facet
ed eyes that caught and amplified the red light.
Opening its narrow jaws, the hatchling let out a piercing shriek. Outside, Chip and Pickle howled. Tilting its triangular head, the hatchling modulated its cry to ululate over the dogs—almost a song.
Then it unfurled its wings. One leathery pinion knocked over the lamp. Its other claw tore through the tub spigot, and water sprayed everywhere. Rising to its haunches, it spread its wings all the way and uncoiled its neck, smacking its head on the ceiling. It bugled in outrage.
Next to him, Lun-mei screamed.
Smoothly, Mach yanked her back as the hatchling lunged down. He should’ve guessed that the extra hundred-plus years in its shell would’ve meant the hatchling had already matured beyond its neonate stage even while in the egg. They were engineered to hatch out fast and grow quickly to full size, and the stasis field on this one had failed days ago.
Lun-mei scrambled to one side, but he didn’t let her go as he blocked the hatchling with his shoulder. Its teeth, though not yet completely hardened, sank into his flesh and grated on his implants. Blood and nanites spurted.
He propelled Lun-mei toward the door, getting her out into the hall before slamming the barricade between them and the furious hatchling.
Grimacing at the sounds of clattering claws on marble, he slanted a wary glance at her.
“What? Is? That? Thing?!” She grabbed his shirt.
He thought she was going to shake him, but instead she spun him to one side. In his surprise, he let her push him half a step around, then twisted his head to watch her probing at his shoulder through the shreds of his shirt.
It would already be sealing over, he knew. “It’s a yurk.”
“That’s not a yak! I know what yaks look like. Like a cow. But hairier. And they don’t come out of eggs, ever. That. Is. Not. A. Yak!”
“Yurk,” he repeated.
“It’s…it’s a dragon!” Apparently satisfying herself that he hadn’t been shredded, this time she did shake him by his shirt. “There’s a dragon in your bathtub!”
“Yurk.” He put both his hands on her shoulders, holding her in place. He stared down into her wild eyes. “Doctor Chien. That animal is called a yurk. It is a rare, highly specialized working animal like…” He squinted thoughtfully. “Like a search and rescue dog.”
“SAR dogs do searching,” she cried. “And rescuing. They don’t try to eat their vets!”
Yeah, he’d figured—wrongly—he’d be waiting a couple hours before the hatchling had rested enough to eat. “I left the extra donuts in there. It’ll be okay for awhile. Listen: it quieted right down.” For a few minutes anyway. He really needed to butcher something.
Before the hatchling did it for him.
Lun-mei wasn’t listening. She was staring. At him. Suspiciously. “You knew what it was,” she said, her voice soft again, but flat this time. “You lied to me.”
“I…” He clenched his jaw, then started again. “Yes. I knew what it was. I didn’t know it would be this dangerous so soon.”
“So soon…” She jerked her hands off his shirt. “But it is dangerous.”
Again, he hesitated. “It was made to be that way.”
She took a step back. “You lied about working with Tanner Cross too.”
“No.” He took a step toward her, covering the ground she ceded with his much longer stride, bringing the toes of his boots right up against hers. “I took the yurk from its owner because I didn’t want it to be dangerous. I didn’t want it be in danger, even though that’s what it was meant to do.”
He stared down into her narrowed eyes, willing her to believe him even if he couldn’t tell her everything. She didn’t retreat, only tipped her head farther back so she could glare at him more effectively.
But to his surprise, her tone was calm. “It’s some sort of genetically modified mutant.”
That was the least of its modifications, but close enough for her understanding. Warily, he nodded.
“No!” She spun away from him. “I mean, yes, there are gliding lizards. But they’re less than a foot long—with their tails! Even the saltwater crocodile isn’t close to the size of that…thing in there. Okay, maybe with artificially triggered gigantism…” Standing in profile to him, she frowned, and for a moment, he was enthralled to watch her mind at work. But she shook her head hard, making her silky hair fling around her face. “It’s impossible. Nothing on Earth is so…”
Slowly, she turned her head to look at him, her dark eyes narrowing.
And he saw the moment she figured it out.
Chapter 6
That monster wasn’t from Earth.
For a heartbeat, Lun-mei wasn’t sure if the monster she was thinking of was the thing locked in the bathroom.
Or the thing in the hallway with her.
The freakish size. The strange silvery markings. The lies.
The lies she’d been telling herself. From the first, she’d known something was off about Mach. But exhaustion and excitement and really good coffee had distracted her.
She still wasn’t thinking straight. Maybe because a goddamn dragon had tried to eat her.
Her pulse hammered painfully in her veins. If she took a blood pressure reading now, she’d have to give herself a stern lecture on over-caffeination.
Which at least was a more believable explanation than aliens.
She took a sidling step back, and this time Mach didn’t follow her.
How could he be an alien? The other ranchers knew him, even if they didn’t approve of him. He had a file in the vet office and was notated in the three-ring binder of maps. He had a truck, not a spaceship. He had a Stetson…
She swallowed, her throat scratchy from screaming before and wanting to scream again.
“Lun-mei,” he said softly. “Please. You said you got me. Lost dog, remember? Left on the side of the road. You were right about that. I got lost here, with the yurk, and I can’t go home.” Bracing his back against the wall, he slowly slid to the floor. “I don’t want to leave here.”
She stared at the smudge of blood he’d left on the wall above him. It was gray with a metallic sheen. More slowly than he’d moved, she let her gaze drift down to settle on his bent head. No Stetson at the moment, just the thick brown hair that had made him seem very pet-able before.
But he was like that monster in the egg—not at all what he seemed behind the smooth, blank surface of his lies.
“You’re not from Earth,” she said, because she needed to hear him say it. Although she wasn’t sure why she’d believe him now.
“I’m not,” he said simply. When she staggered sideway, steadying herself with one hand on the same wall where he’d left the smudge of blood, he lifted his head but didn’t try to rise. “I’m…not from anywhere, I guess. I’m like the yurk. I was bred and born to be a service animal.”
That he stayed on the floor, minimizing his size, probably wasn’t the reassurance he meant it to be since even while sitting he was huge. But somehow her racing heartbeat slowed. Maybe because she was running out of adrenaline. “What are you?” No, that wasn’t quite right. “What were you made to be?”
He hesitated so long she wasn’t sure if he was trying to come up with a lie or palatable way of telling her the truth. Finally, he said only, “A killer.”
She stared at the blood on the wall. “To kill what?”
“Whatever I was told, whenever I was told.” He cupped his knees, knuckles arching up, as if that were the only thing he had to hold on to. “But my specialized programming was never activated. Our ship crashed on the way to our first assignment and we’ve been here ever since. Just…surviving.” His hands slid down his thighs to curl upward in his lap, holding nothing, empty.
“We?” Her brain jumped ahead. “The Halley brothers.”
He nodded once. “The ship broke apart catastrophically in the atmosphere, and almost everyone died. Only one of the Deltas—that’s the closest translation in your language to our designations—su
rvived, plus one other, and me.” He glanced up at her, the corner of his mouth tilting wryly. “And the yurk, of course.”
She stared at him, not smiling, just in case he thought she was forgiving him for being a lying alien. “And you’ve been here ever since, you said. How long is that? Why didn’t NASA or the NSA or the Army or someone see your spaceship?” She shook her head hard. “Spaceship…” she muttered.
He let out a sigh. “Montana wasn’t a state yet,” he confessed. “From what I’ve read since, you would call it the Wild West years.”
She put one hand over her mouth, not sure if she was going to break out in a wild giggle or another scream. She dropped her hand to her side into fists. “Wild West,” she said flatly. “That was like two hundred years ago.”
“Well before the age of radar or video to capture the crash.”
“But you survived the crash and two hundred years…” She knew she was sputtering, but she didn’t feel too guilty about it.
He dipped his head back against the wall, staring upward. “I was implanted with microscopic robotic nanotechnology that makes constant repairs at the cellular level. While I cannot access all of my programming because I was not activated, I won’t age in the traditional sense.” His mouth turned downward in a pained grimace. “We usually die long before we can get old.”
She watched him, her emotions zigzagging as she tried to figure out what to feel. Was she crazy? Was he? Was the whole world?
She shook her head, forcing down her confusion the same way she focused during her organic chemistry tests. Figure it out. Despite her best intentions to remain calm, her voice sharpened when she asked, “And yet somehow, even though you are a Wild West alien from a crashed spaceship who won’t ever age—which admittedly wouldn’t have occurred to me—you thought I wouldn’t notice there was a giant dragon creature hatching in that ugly bathroom?”
He rolled his eyes toward her. “Is the bathroom really ugly?”
She growled low under her breath.
With a sigh, he closed his eyes again. “Yurks don’t usually hatch so big. I thought… I really thought I could pass it off as an oversized ostrich.” When she snorted, he lifted his head to look at her. “No, really. You’d be surprised how often most beings decide not to notice the obvious and the odd.” He swept one hand up over his knee and shoulder, a brusque gesture at his face. “It’s the only way I’ve survived looking like this.”