Good idea. Her head buzzed, and the feeling of the brunet’s presence grew in her mind until it was as if he was standing inside her head. Hold still, Beno counseled her.
She heard Rodriguez again. “When will you be here?”
Another voice, filtered through Rodriguez’s consciousness and into hers and Beno’s, replied. “I will be there soon. The American Air Force is joining us with their Apache helicopters, and we should be ready for anything the aliens send our way.”
She didn’t know the other speaker.
“So the Americans will help us?” Rodriguez said. “Even though she’s their citizen?”
She clutched the blanket more tightly. “Yes. They agree that their strategic interests and Mexico’s are the same in this case.”
Rodriguez chuckled sourly. “Don’t tell their President that.”
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Besides, he doesn’t really have control. His advisor does, and his advisor is on our side.”
“They’ll want to take them.”
The other speaker laughed, his tone unkind. “When we’re done getting what we want from them, they’ll be welcome to their bodies.”
If Rodriguez and his unknown partner were talking about bodies and the military, they were clearly planning something that she didn’t want to experience.
The three-way bond shivered with anxiety and a strange floating feeling. She could see flashes of images, but they passed too quickly for her to identify anything. Theyn shuddered, and fear flooded them all.
Get out of there, he said, his tone urgent. Hurry.
She didn’t need to be told twice. She headed out through the kitchen and onto the porch.
Beno was standing at the open driver’s side door of Rodriguez’s car, and Theyn was waiting for her at the bottom of the steps. He took her hand and led her away at a trot.
“Can you operate this vehicle?” Beno asked her.
“Of course.”
“We need you to do so,” Theyn said. “We have to leave before his allies arrive.”
She pushed the blankets and pillows into Theyn’s arms. “Wait here.”
Sera hurried back into the house, and Beno followed her. They went to their shared room and gathered their few belongings. She texted Joely a quick message - ‘gotta jet’ - and left her cell phone on the bed. Beno slid on his glove, the one he had used to disable the medical devices in Theyn’s hospital room.
“Let’s go.”
They left as quickly and as quietly as they could, hoping not to attract attention. Sera found the keys to the rental car that Joely had driven from Mexico, and she clutched them as they raced out of the house.
They loaded their things into the car, then Beno went into the barn. Theyn opened his partner’s backpack and removed a small object made of white metal. Beno returned, a carry all slung over his shoulder and his hands overflowing with rectangular chips made of metal and white crystals. He handed the chips to Theyn, who pressed them to the object in his hand. The chips were absorbed into the unit, and a tiny light on the corner flipped from red to green.
Sera got behind the wheel while the two Ylians climbed into passenger seats. She fired up the engine and drove away from the house.
“Where are we going?”
“Anywhere but here,” Beno answered. “Theyn had a vision.”
She drove out onto the highway, at a loss. She had no idea where they were or what direction to take. “A vision?”
“Rodriguez was bringing death,” he said. “I saw it.”
“He has premonitions.”
Theyn nodded. “Not often, but when I do, they’re never wrong.”
He turned his attention to the white object in his hand. A press of a button caused a low hum, and then a three-dimensional image of a starfield appeared in the air, hovering over his hand. He spun the image and tapped it once. A keypad appeared, and he typed rapidly. Numbers and arcing lines appeared, spreading out from a central point in all directions.
She activated the GPS system and requested directions to the nearest gas station. They could purchase a map, she hoped, and figure out where they were going from there. She glanced at the image that Theyn was manipulating.
“What is that?”
“A predictive model using the data the Taluans had on hand. I’m trying to see where our people might have gone. These points and lines all follow individual launches that the Taluans noted when they were busy stripping our world.”
He adjusted the resolution and magnification, and a familiar blue planet appeared. Several of the arcing lines touched the image of Earth, scattered all around the globe. She gaped and nearly ran off the road.
“Does that mean what I think it does?”
Beno nodded. “Many of our people may have come to Earth.”
“Do you think they’re in hibernation, like you were?”
Theyn adjusted the image again, looking more closely at the Taluan data. “Some might be. Others may have been in craft that didn’t come equipped with hibernation units.”
He looked thoughtful, and he and Beno had a silent conversation for a long moment. Sera felt a little irritated to be excluded, but she decided to let it go. They weren’t obligated to share every thought with her.
“When we get to a good stopping place, Sera,” Theyn said, “would you allow me to take a drop of your blood for analysis?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Blood? Why?”
“I want to test a hypothesis.”
He thinks that our people may have interbred with humans. Given your response to the stun, it may be that you have Ylian blood in your veins, Beno explained.
“That’s crazy.”
“But possible,” Theyn shrugged.
“Just a drop?”
He smiled. “Just one drop.”
She nodded. “All right, then. You can take it right now.”
She held her hand out to him. Beno retrieved what looked like a medical kit from his bag and handed it to Theyn. He opened it and took out a tiny probe, barely longer than a toothpick and just as slender. It was made of a material that she couldn’t identify, and it had a tiny pressure pad on the side. He put the probe against her fingertip and pressed the pad, and a single drop of blood oozed from her skin. There was no pain and no injury, no pinprick or cut. The blood just exuded on command, filling the tip of the probe.
“Fancy,” she said, at a loss for anything else to say but driven to speak.
He put the probe against an instrument from the medical kit, and it clicked once. A three-dimensional display like the star map was projected above the tool, and a double helix slowly rotated in the image it showed. Along the strand, individual proteins glowed bright blue while others were a more muted yellow. A smaller DNA strand floated near the larger one, and this one had more blue than any other color. It shone in the darkness of the car, casting blue light onto their faces.
Beno’s voice was rough. “Are you sure?”
Theyn nodded. “This is 99% accurate. There is some small room for doubt, but not much. Not with an imprint this bright.”
Sera felt a jolt of nervousness and excitement from both men, and it made her stomach flutter. “What are you talking about?”
The blond pointed to the larger DNA strand. “This is your genetic material. The blue glowing parts are Ylian in origin. You are a hybrid.”
She slammed on the brakes and turned to face him. “I’m part Ylian? For real?”
“For real.” He smiled, but with a twitch at the corner of his mouth, as if he was trying to keep from grinning like a fool. “There’s more.”
She parked the car. “I can hardly wait for this.”
Beno and Theyn exchanged a look, and then Theyn said, “The smaller DNA strand belongs to an entity other than yourself.”
“Why would another entity’s DNA be in my bloodstream?” she asked.
“Some people would call it a parasite, but it’s not as negative as all that,” the blond explained. H
e licked his lips and turned his glowing blue eyes onto her face. “That DNA belongs to your baby...our baby.”
Sera gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles went white. Her head swam. “What?” she asked weakly, although she had heard him loud and clear. “I’m…”
“Pregnant.”
She gaped at him, a million emotions coursing through her, ranging from horror to shock to excited happiness. She started driving again, but her heart was pounding so hard that the thudding in her ears was nearly obliterating all other sound. She didn’t know what to say, or what to think.
Pregnant.
Chapter Twelve
They were less than two miles away from the house when a military helicopter streaked past overhead, low to the ground and shining its floodlights.
“Jesus, they’re going to find that probe,” Sera fussed.
“Let them. It’ll keep them busy while we get out of here,” Theyn said. “And since the sun hasn’t risen yet, they’ll find the Taluan, and they can enjoy that for a while, too.”
Beno looked at his partner, then he looked at Sera through the rear-view mirror. “I took absolutely everything in that probe that could give them any information. The only thing I didn’t take was the propulsion unit and the cooling system.”
“What about rations?” Theyn asked.
The two Ylians shared an uneasy moment until Beno advised, “I left those, too.”
Sera’s hands were sweating. “Where the hell are we going, guys? I don’t know this area, and the only thing I can think of is to take you to my place, but that’s stupid as hell, because if anybody is looking for me, they’d come right there, and oh my God, what do you mean I’m pregnant?”
“Breathe,” Theyn coached, putting his hand on her knee.
“How can I be Ylian?”
“Our people came and inter -”
“Okay, I know how, but how? I mean, wouldn’t I know?”
Beno shook his head. “Not if it was far enough back in your family history. Your response to the stunner was so typical for an Ylian female that it makes sense to me… and obviously our species are compatible.”
“Pregnant,” she repeated, shocked. She put her hand on her lower abdomen, but of course there was nothing to feel and nothing to show. “I never thought… I mean, I never… I knew it could…”
They let her babble her fragmented phrases, patiently waiting while she wrapped her head around the idea. It took a long while. By the time she had gotten herself settled down, the sun was beginning to rise and they were near the outskirts of San Antonio.
Theyn yawned cavernously and Beno suggested, “Why don’t we stop for a few hours? We all need sleep and something to eat.”
“Good idea.” She nodded. “I don’t know how much money I have on me, and they’re going to be tracking my credit card. We’ve got to live on cash.”
Beno nodded. “All right, then. Take me to a…ATM, I think you call them. Where the money is made.”
Sera had to smile. “It’s not actually made there, but it’s sort of stored there. Are you planning on robbing the bank?”
“I heard that your financial institutions are insured for any losses. We need the cash more than they do.”
“You’re going to rob a bank.” She stared at him in the mirror. “Oh my God.”
“We’re already fugitives,” he reasoned. “What’s one more reason to chase us?”
“I -” A hundred reasons to protest and stop him ran through her mind, along with a few very good reasons to allow it. She shook her head. “All right, then. ATM it is.”
She drove until she found a bank with a drive-through cash machine. She pulled up close to the ATM and rolled down her window.
“Is there surveillance?” Theyn asked.
“Yeah. Probably set into the ATM itself, so it’s getting a nice shot of my face,” she said.
Beno pulled on his electronics-disrupting glove and slid out of the backseat. Sera fidgeted, looking for flashing lights or slow-moving police cars. Theyn sat calmly, his hands folded in his lap, and he smiled for her.
“It’s all right,” he assured her. “This is necessary.”
On the other side of the machine, Beno stroked his glove against the plastic housing, and something inside whined in protest. The ATM let out a short puff of air, almost as if it were coughing, and then all of the lights in its touch screen face went out.
“The camera is off now,” Theyn told them.
“Maybe it’s not on the same circuit as the screen,” Sera said, unconvinced.
“I can’t hear it anymore, so I don’t think it’s functioning,” he explained.
Beno clearly didn’t care if there were cameras around or not. He grabbed the shoulder bag that he had used to empty out the Taluan probe and brought it around to the front of the machine. He pressed against it with his glove again, and there was another soft whine-thump sound, and then the front of the ATM fell off, exposing the stacks of cash inside. He filled the bag with money, emptying the drawers at the bottom of the machine and stripping the chutes. When he had taken it all, he climbed back into the car.
“Let’s go,” he said.
In the distance, Sera could hear a police siren, and she gunned the accelerator, chanting all the way, “Oh my God oh my God oh my God…. we’re dead we’re dead we’re dead….”
Theyn put a hand on her knee again. “Calm yourself. There’s no danger.” He smiled encouragingly. “Slow down so you don’t attract attention.”
In the back seat, Beno was calmly counting his ill-gotten gains. Sera glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. The growing light of dawn made his scales glow softly, and his brilliant green eyes were points of illumination in the back of the car.
“They probably saw us all really clearly,” she fretted. “And our license plate. I’ll bet they got the license plate. We’re going to have to get a new car.”
The blond Ylian’s forehead puckered in confusion, a look that she caused him to wear quite a bit, it seemed. “Why not just get a new license?”
“They’ll be looking for this car.” She felt tears of anxiety stinging her eyes. “Good God… what did I just let you guys do?”
Beno put a stack of cash back into the bag and picked up another. “You let us obtain the material currency we will need to keep ourselves fed and housed until the child is born. That is our biggest concern.”
She turned onto a wide highway and wished there was more traffic. If there had been more cars, she would have been more confident that they’d be able to lose any pursuers.
Theyn heard her thoughts. Sera, there are no pursuers. Calm down.
Her hands were shaking, and the fatigue and worry of the last twenty-four hours rose around her like a blanket. She sniffed, trying not to cry. Stupid hormones.
They’re a necessary evil, Beno teased. Aloud, he said, “We have twenty-two thousand dollars here. That should be enough to last for a while.”
She took a deep, steadying breath. “Now we just have to get out of San Antonio… but not until I sleep, guys. I’m not going to be able to keep driving. I’m bushed.”
“Then let’s find a hotel and stop for a while,” Beno suggested. “I will see to the license plate issue while you rest.”
“Don’t you want to sleep?” she asked him.
He smiled tightly. “More than almost anything in the world.”
“Then we will sleep first,” Theyn said. The more she saw of him, the more she saw his propensity for giving gentle orders. If she hadn’t already known that he was royalty, she would have begun to suspect something of the sort.
She found a run-down but not entirely seedy strip motel on the outskirts of town. The sign had a neon cowboy with an oversized Stetson on his cartoon head, and the name of the hotel was The Okay Corral. She groaned at the pun, but it was this place or a chain, and chains had records that were too searchable.
They parked the car with the license plate toward the building, and then Sera checked in a
nd got them their keys. The Ylians stayed with their belongings, keeping to the shadows and trying not to show their true natures. She came back just a few minutes later and led them to their room.
Once they were safely inside, they all collapsed onto the nearest bed, not even bothering to remove their shoes. Before the sun had finished rising, they were all fast asleep.
***
Asa sat at his kitchen table with his wrists cuffed behind him. On the other chairs were Joely, similarly trussed up, and Rodriguez, who had been cuffed to the chair by his good arm. The fourth chair at the table was grabbed and spun around, and a man in a military uniform straddled the back, leaning his arms on it and giving them all a friendly enough look.
“So who here wants to tell me what that thing is out in the barn?” he asked.
Joely crossed her long legs, squirming in her jean shorts, trying to find a comfortable position. “That thing fell out of the sky last night. We were going to call the authorities, but we weren’t sure who to call, and we were afraid that people would think we were lying.”
The man smiled wider. “That’s a lie, Miss Thompson.”
“If you say so.”
“Now, hold up, there,” Asa objected. “Don’t you go callin’ this lady a liar. That ain’t right. And just who the heck are you supposed to be, anyway?”
“I’m Major Steven Grace, United States Air Force,” he said. “And the gentleman who is searching your upstairs rooms is Colonel Remigio Vasquez of Mexican Special Forces.”
Asa scowled. “Seems he’s a bit out of his jurisdiction, don’t it?”
Grace chuckled. “I know you’re a PhD candidate at the University of Austin, Mr. Brunner, so you can lose the good ol’ boy schtick.” His amicable demeanor melted. “I also know that you had Cooper and the aliens in this house, and I mean to find them.”
Vasquez and two Mexican scientists descended the steps. One of the scientists was carrying an evidence bag containing shreds of fabric. The major and the colonel stepped out into the driveway, too far away for prying ears to hear what they were saying.
“You all right, Joely?”
She nodded. “Yeah. You?”
Asa shrugged. “Considering I’m trussed up like a roasting chicken in my grandma’s house, I’m doin’ just fine. Never better.”
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