The Alien Uncovers (Uoria Mates IV Book 3)

by Ruth Anne Scott

  “But we know that those species are real, that they do exist.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” Ryan snapped. “Why don’t you stop speaking in riddles and just tell me what it is about this man?”

  “If the recognition references for my contact are correct, this is a species that hasn’t been alive for many, many years. It is a kind that you searched for, for many years, but never thought that you would never find. One with no name.”

  Ryan’s eyes widened and the anger that he had felt drained away.

  “No name,” he said.

  The Valdician nodded.

  “If it’s true…”

  Ryan smiled, no longer caring that the battle had been lost or even that Eden had uncovered the facility. If what the Valdician contact still at the laboratory said was accurate, it changed everything. He had hungered for that species ever since he taken up the legacy of his great-grandfather, but no matter how extensively he had researched, no matter how far he sent the missions out into the galaxy to search, he was never able to find any of them. Over the years, he had relented to the fact that this species was gone, eliminated from existence generations before. He would never find them. Now, though, there was suddenly a chance that everything he had put into his searches, all of the time and energy and resources that he had devoted to uncovering this species was not in vain. He could be close to capturing a species of unimaginable power, one that carried potential for his hybrids that none could fathom.

  “Should we prepare to go back to the laboratory, Sir?” the Valdician that had been working on his injuries asked. “We could stop them.”

  Ryan thought for only a moment before he shook his head.

  “No,” he said, then turned away, returning to his chair. “No. We’ll keep going as planned. I’ll orchestrate the war on Penthos from here and allow the hybrids to continue their duty at the laboratory. The Valdicians there have my instructions and can regroup.”

  “What about the breeding facility?” the Valdician asked. “What about what Eden and the others uncovered? Aren’t you concerned that she will reveal you?”

  “Eden?” Ryan asked with a scoff. “No. She thinks she is far more intelligent than she truly is. She might have found the facility and they could have defeated the first wave of hybrids, but they won’t get out.”

  “And if they do?”

  “Eden fancies herself a Denynso now,” Ryan said. “She isn’t thinking about the Earth authorities or what it would mean for them if she did reveal what I was doing. All she cares about is Uoria and the creatures that she has aligned herself with. There’s nothing that she can do. No matter what they think that they have found, they will never be able to break down the entire program. They have only uncovered one small piece. What I have accomplished goes far beyond anything that they know now or will ever know.”

  Ryan settled back down into his chair and looked around him at the aftermath of his violent reaction to Eden’s discovery. Laughter started bubbling up in his throat and tickling the backs of his lips. It escaped and poured out into the room, reverberating off the walls as the two servants began to move slowly around the space, cleaning up the wreckage and returning the room to the way it had been. Soon it would be like it had never happened. Soon his mind could restructure the minutes that had passed, manipulating them into what he wanted them to be so that when he looked back he could tell himself the story that he wanted to tell, just like with everything else.

  Chapter Six

  “Have you seen Jonah?” Ty asked Oro.

  The warrior looked at him and shook his head.

  “Not since the battle. What’s wrong?”

  “I just need to talk to him.”

  “I’ll let him know if I see him.”

  Ty walked back out of the room and shook his head at Samira, who stood in the hallway holding the files that they had found in the smaller room.

  “Try the other chamber,” she told him.

  Ty walked into the first of the three rooms and scanned everyone crowded into the space until he found Jonah. He crossed to him and touched his back to get his attention.

  “Can you come with me for a minute?” he asked.

  Jonah looked at him strangely as if he was unsure of whether he should go along with the Denynso. After a few seconds, he relented and followed Ty out of the chamber and back to Samira.

  “What is it?” Jonah asked.

  “There’s something we need to show you,” Samira said.

  She took a few steps backward in the hallway that led away from the emergency chambers and Ty followed, holding his lightstick so that Jonah could see what she was holding in her arms.

  “We found these,” Ty said, picking up one of the files and holding it out toward Jonah. “It looks like the file that you found in the examination room.”

  Jonah took the file from Ty’s hand and examined it. Ty could see his eyes grow wider as he read the name on the front. He reached for another of the files and read its name before lifting his eyes to Ty and Samira.

  “Where did you find these?” he asked.

  “I’ll show you,” Ty said.

  He started down the hallway and guided Jonah into the room where he had brought Samira when they first left the battle. He had craved her so intensely when they got back down into the basement that all thoughts of the battle and the dire situation that surrounded him had disappeared into the passion that he felt for his new wife. There was a sense of guilt, as though his need for her was just a confirmation that he wasn’t made to be a warrior. Now that they had these files, though, he knew that he couldn’t think of that guilt any longer. Whatever the reason they had been in that room, it had enabled them to find these files and bring them to Jonah. Ty didn’t know why, but these files were important. They had something to do with the one that had Jonah’s name on it that they found in the examination room above them, and Ty couldn’t rid his mind of the suspicion that there was a strong link between them and what had been happening to them even before they left Uoria for Earth.

  “These are all members of Nyx 23,” Jonah said.

  Ty nodded.

  “I thought so,” he said. “I recognized Rain and a couple of other names. What are these?”

  “They’re just like mine,” Jonah said, pulling a few more of the files from Samira’s arms into his hands and reading their names. “They’re medical files. These are the records the doctors kept for everyone involved in departments that involved intergalactic travel. Especially then, when there was far less known about traveling such far distances from Earth for long periods of interaction with the different environments and the effects that it might have on the human body, anyone who was involved in research, exploratory, or humanitarian efforts had to be kept to very strict health regulations. Before and after every mission we underwent examinations and tests to ensure that we were healthy enough to travel, and then that we hadn’t suffered any serious effects from the trip.”

  “Why would your files be down here? Wouldn’t they store them with the rest of the patient files for the doctor?” Samira asked.

  Jonah shook his head.

  “There was a specific doctor who worked with the Nyx 23 crew. Like I said, it was a clandestine mission. The entirety of the department wasn’t involved and there was a possibility that what we were doing wasn’t entirely legal.”

  “What do you mean?” Ty asked.

  “Since we were technically affiliated with the University even though we weren’t an academic department, we had to have approval of the larger department head any time that we were going to do a mission, especially when it would require experimental technology. When we first uncovered the uninhabited planet and started suspecting that there was an illegal prison colony, it was not a popular idea.”

  “Not everybody believed it?” Samira asked.

  Jonah shook his head.

  “No. Some of the original team thought that we were overreacting and seeing things tha
t just didn’t exist.”

  “How did you find the planet in the first place?” Ty asked. “You said that it was uninhabited. What brought your attention to it?”

  Jonah paused as if thinking about the question.

  “I don’t really remember,” he said. “I know that someone brought it up, pointing out that it was a decent-sized planet that hadn’t been properly classified.”

  “Classified?” Ty asked. “What does that mean?”

  “There was an initiative for a while that aimed to identify all of the planets in this galaxy and classify them based on a variety of different criteria,” Samira explained.

  “Why?” Ty asked.

  “The goal was to establish better security protocols throughout the galaxy and prevent things like the prison colony from happening,” Jonah said. “The intergalactic cooperation agreements were still fairly new and some of the governing bodies decided that it would be easier to control the movements of anyone living or visiting in the galaxy if there was a compendium of information about each of the planets. That way if there was suspicious activity near any of the planets, there would be greater justifiable cause to control movement and bring sanctions.”

  “How did they classify Uoria?” Ty asked.

  Jonah shook his head.

  “We didn’t even know that Uoria existed,” Jonah said.

  “Nobody on Earth was aware of Uoria until 50 years after the Nyx 23 mission disappeared,” Samira said.

  In the back of his mind Ty remembered that Rain had mentioned that, but it seemed so strange to him that only a little more than one hundred years before, the people of Earth had no idea that his planet existed and now they were building alliances and fighting to preserve the safety and security of both planets. Even as the thought moved through his mind, something occurred to Ty. He shook his head.

  “Yes, they did,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Samira asked. “I can show you in the history books where they describe the discovery of Uoria by the human teams.”

  “Uoria didn’t need to be discovered,” Ty told her, feeling slightly defensive. “Look at the number of species that came here from Uoria. All of our kinds have existed on Uoria for far longer than 50 years. The people of Earth discovered nothing. They might have realized that the planet was there, but them becoming aware of it didn’t change anything for Uoria, except for introducing humans. And I would have very little faith in what your history books would say.”

  “Why is that?” Jonah asked.

  “Because if I did, I would assume that you were dead.”

  Jonah looked struck and he fell silent, obviously unsure of how to respond.

  “Why did you say that the people of Earth did know about Uoria before they…became aware of it?” Samira asked.

  “The first hybrids,” Ty said. “The picture that Eden said she remembered from Ryan’s office. Think about it. Those were Denynso. When the Nyx 23 team disappeared and the Earth military went to Penthos, they said that they freed the prisoners, but Ryan told us that his great-grandfather was the Valdician general and that he aligned with a rogue military leader to start the breeding program to create weaponized hybrids. They didn’t free the prisoners, they brought them back to Earth with them. The military knew that they had members of a species that they had never known before.”

  “At least some of them did,” Samira said, her voice telling Ty that the same realizations were gradually becoming clear in her mind. “Whoever aligned with Odan had to trust some of the members of the team. He couldn’t pull off transferring all of the Denynso prisoners to Earth on his own. At some point those people had to question who these people were and where they came from. Somebody had to know.”

  “They also had to know what the Valdicians had done to us,” Jonah said. “The military only went to Penthos because of us. Odan would have told them that they had sabotaged our ship. They knew all along.”

  “What if they knew before?” Ty asked.

  Jonah’s eyes snapped up from the file in his hand and met Ty’s orange gaze. The nurturer’s words felt like they were ricocheting through his brain, bouncing off of each other until they were a buzzing blend of sound in his ears. What if they knew before?

  “What is it, Jonah?” Samira asked, obviously noticing the expression on Jonah’s face.

  He couldn’t answer. He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t come up anything. He didn’t think that he could take the thoughts that were trying to form in his mind and turn them into words that would properly express what he was feeling and wondering. Leaning forward, Jonah gathered up all of the files that Ty and Samira had found. Not knowing if they would follow, and not knowing if he even cared if they did, he headed out of the small room and toward the stairwell that would lead him up to the abandoned medical floors above.

  Jonah hadn’t taken his own lightstick out of his bag before leaving the room and by the time he stepped into the stairwell he was engulfed in total darkness, but it barely slowed him down. Though he had been in this building countless times before, when he was with the others, traveling in the glow of the lightsticks and focusing on trying to understand what was happening with each step, he hadn’t felt the familiarity. Now that he was in the darkness, unable to depend on anything else, the memories of the space were flooding his mind. He was no longer navigating an abandoned, outdated structure entombed within the newer building. As he moved through the blackness, the time fell away and he was walking through the space again just as he had before he left. The air around him no longer felt stagnant and forgotten, but was again filled with the energy of the days when it was the medical center of the University.

  He let his feet climb the stairs as quickly as they would go, his hand running across the wall to feel for the doors as he reached each landing. He counted as he went until he knew that he was back at the floor that contained the old examination rooms. The door slammed behind him as he stepped out into the hallway and for a brief moment he wondered if there were other hybrids around that could have heard the sound and were now coming at him through the darkness. The compulsion to get into the examination room where he had found his file overrode any hesitation that he felt and he continued down the hallway, pacing his footsteps until he knew that he had gotten back to the room.

  Even though they had broken the door to get inside, they had closed it again as much as they could when they left the room to go further down into the building and for a brief moment he wondered if he had imagined the pristine examination room. Maybe his imagination had taken over and he hadn’t truly seen the room as it had been, but a memory becoming real before his eyes. He felt for the door and pushed it open. Just as he had so many years before, he stepped into the room and walked toward the bed. When he felt the edge of the bed on the front of his thighs, he lowered the files he carried to it and reached into his bag for one of the lightsticks he had packed before they left Uoria. That day felt a lifetime behind him and as he activated the stick, surrounding him with the light, the reappearance of the untouched examination room pulled it even further away.

  Chapter Seven

  “Everybody out,” Ciyrs demanded as he stalked into the center emergency chamber. “Go into the other chamber. Find another room. Out.”

  Rilex watched as those who had gathered in the chamber exchanged confused glances, but started out of the room toward the other spaces in the basement. They streamed into the first of the emergency chambers and then into some of the other small rooms along the hallway that led away from the first. He knew why the healer was doing it, he didn’t want them to know about the hybrids or the women that they had found, but watching the group fracture and disperse throughout the huge basement was uncomfortable. The closer they were together, the safer they were going to be. Even though they hadn’t seen any Valdicians or hybrids in the basement, he knew that they could never be completely positive that there weren’t others creeping closer to them through the honeycomb of rooms, alcoves, and hallways t
hat made up the basement.

  When everyone had left the chamber Ciyrs ran out again and Rilex followed him back down the stairs toward the hidden torture chamber that they had discovered. He could hear the groans of the surviving hybrids and had to fight the emotion building within him. In that moment it didn’t matter to him that these creatures had been the ones raging against them in the hallway. They were still alive, still individual living beings that were being tormented just beneath the feet of their own wounded. It was obvious that they didn’t have any compulsion within them to fight. They didn’t feel any hatred against the Denynso or any that were with them. They were fighting because they had no other option. They didn’t deserve disdain. They deserved rescue.

  “Take the most alert first,” Ciyrs ordered. “They have the best chances for survival. Bring them up to the emergency chamber and make sure that you shut the door. We can’t have anyone seeing them. Not yet.”

  Rilex stepped into the room and saw that the woman who had pled with Eden for help was struggling to sit up. He came to her side and placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t,” he said soothingly. “Don’t try to move. We’re here to help you.”

  “What about the others?” she asked, sounding as though just forming the words was taking every bit of energy that she had within her.

  Rilex moved a matted piece of hair away from her forehead and looked down into her face.

  “We found them,” he reassured her. “We found them and we’ve gotten them out of their cages.”

  “Will they be alright?” she asked.

  “Our healer will do everything that he can, and I will help him as much as I can. Jacob will as well. Right now I want to help you.”

  “There’s no reason,” she said, her body seeming to weaken as she laid back.

  “Of course there is,” Rilex said, feeling worry building up inside him. “Of course there’s a reason to help you. You’ll be alright.”