Mutual Trust

by Lea Linnett

  But Bree didn’t quite believe it, and it must have shown on her face because he then took the muzzle of the camera in hand. With a twist and a metallic crunch, he yanked it free of its socket. The camera sparked, the light flickering, and when he pulled away, the whole device hung at a wrong angle, its wires exposed.

  “Now, it is disabled,” he said, smiling lopsidedly at her, and Bree’s heartbeat quickened. She stared, speechless, as the alien took his seat again. “Other things can I help with?”

  His mangling of her language aside, Bree’s stomach fluttered at the words, said in that deep, honey-like voice. The alien spoke with a familiarity that she only ever expected from Noe and Luis these days. He was almost… friendly.

  But Bree wasn’t sure she wanted to be friends just yet.

  Squashing the strange, butterfly-like feeling in her stomach down, Bree sat down in her seat with a huff. Even with the forcefield distorting his image, the levekk still looked incomprehensibly alien as he smiled and said, “My name is Marek.”

  He watched her expectantly, and Bree bristled. “I’m not telling you my name.”

  “Names are secret among your people?”

  “No, I just don’t want you to know it,” she snapped. Marek looked down, clearly fighting back a smile that made her anger flare again. How dare he laugh at her? How dare he belittle the one choice she’d been allowed to make since being captured? “So, get to the point. What did you want to speak to me about?”

  “It is your choice,” he said.

  “Okay. Why are you keeping me here?” she asked, not missing a beat, and watched as his eyes flickered. “Why am I imprisoned in this place? And I want the real answer this time, not this ‘curiosity’ bullshit.”

  “Bullshit…” Marek repeated, testing the word as if it were new to him. “Interesting.”

  “Answer me.”

  “We are curious,” he said, shrugging in a way that was entirely too human. “I am curious. You are… very rare.”

  “How can I be rare?” Bree asked. “You invaded our planet hundreds of years ago. You have humans among you—I saw one out there!”

  “They are different. They know levekk. You do not.”

  Bree frowned. How different could they be? Sure, the human she’d seen spoke a different language and wore different clothes, but according to her elders’ histories, that had once been common before the levekk invaded. “So, what? You wanna know how we make our clothes? What we feed our dogs? Yeah, right.”

  The alien held her gaze, his expression intense. “I do wish to know these things. It is a great interest for me.”

  “Why?”

  “…Because I am karanaan—a scientist,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “You know this word?”

  It was familiar to Bree, but only vaguely so. It conjured up fuzzy images from her elders’ texts of old men with white hair and even whiter coats.

  Men that looked nothing like Marek. He wore black, for one thing, and the material strained around his broad shoulders and muscular arms. He looked more like the soldiers in the Barracks than any scientist she’d seen, and as he waited for her answer, his blue-violet gaze pinned her like a hawk’s.

  “We don’t have scientists anymore,” she said quietly.

  “I am sorry for that,” Marek murmured. “A karanaan is… a learning person. They watch, ask questions, test ideas. They record their world.”

  That sounded… kind of like her mom. She’d always been fascinated by the aliens on their doorstep, and spent most of Bree’s childhood watching them. Bree still remembered the stories her mom would tell her about the things she’d seen. She remembered the fascination in her voice—a fascination that still tugged at Bree after all these years.

  Suddenly, Bree’s situation really hit her. She was sitting in an alien room full of alien technology, with an alien sitting directly across from her. What would her mom have to say about that?

  “Karanaan improve their people,” Marek added. “You have no one like this?”

  “We did before your people stole our planet and burned our histories.”

  To her surprise, the levekk ducked his head at that. “We do not all agree with this. I spended many years to study ancient humans. I learned the dead languages from records, from moving pictures they called films, even from paper and ink books.”

  “You spent many years studying it,” she corrected absentmindedly, and Marek’s eyes lit up.

  “Still, I make mistakes, even after I practiced all night. Is practiced correct?”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  He cocked his head, his golden-yellow lips pulling up at the corner in that amiable smile. “You will teach me your language? I wish to learn it.”

  “I’m not a teacher,” Bree said. “I wouldn’t know how.”

  “Speak to me. Tell me about your life. I think I am lucky you are here.”

  He leaned forward, his gaze locked on hers, and for a moment it felt as if they were just two strangers meeting for the first time. There was an easiness about Marek that put her off guard, his interest in her life appearing so genuine.

  Bree pushed her chair back, the heavy metal scraping across the floor as she put some distance between them. “You think you can trick me into giving you what you want?” she asked. “You never did tell me exactly what the asshole wanted.”

  The levekk’s face fell. “It is not a trick. I wish to know—”

  “I don’t care what you want. I care what he wants.”

  “We—”

  “Don’t lie to me,” she said sharply.

  Marek leaned back in his chair. The forcefield rippled over him, rendering his expression unreadable, and he considered her for so long that she was sure he wasn’t going to answer at all.

  Then, he said, “We wish to see your people, to learn about them scale to scale.”

  “‘Scale to scale?’”

  “Like this,” he explained, gesturing between them, and she understood. They wanted to meet her people in person.

  Alarm bells rang out in Bree’s head. She’d read the texts her elders kept, snippets from throughout humanity’s history before and during the Invasion. And she knew exactly how the levekk had destroyed her people so soundly. At first, they had arrived in secret, making peaceful first contact with isolated peoples. They had played at wanting to connect with humans and learn their culture. Then, when humanity’s guard was down, they had struck, obliterating their cities and taking the humans who’d trusted them as slaves.

  Bree wouldn’t let that happen to her people.

  “You want to know where my people are so you can attack,” she surmised, watching the alien’s cat-like eyes narrow. “I saw how the asshole looked at me. He hates us.”

  Marek’s lips thinned. “Urek will not let you leave if you do not speak.”

  “Well, then he’s shit out of luck,” Bree snapped.

  They stared at each other in silence, the forcefield buzzing between them. It was hard to tell through the surging atoms, but Marek didn’t seem angry at her outburst. His shoulders sagged, his clawless fingers gripping the edge of the table, and his voice was resigned when he finally said, “I cannot convince you?”

  “Not a chance,” she said.

  The levekk let out a sigh. “It will be more easy for you if you speak. You cannot stop Urek.”

  That old rage, the one that brewed in every one of her people from birth, bubbled up inside her, turning her words vicious as she said, “So, now you’re threatening me? Will you torture me, or use me as bait, huh?”

  Marek’s eyes flashed. “Levekk do not torture.”

  “No? You just talk your enemies into submission?”

  “I will talk. I will compromise. I will talk for you, if you wish. But I will not harm you,” he insisted. “I will not allow Urek to harm you. I promise this.”

  “But you won’t help me escape.”

  The levekk didn’t reply, but he didn’t need to. His answer was obvious.

  An
d yet, something he’d said made Bree pause to consider him.

  Marek seemed… different from the others, and not just in his physical form. While they looked at her like she was a wild animal, Marek spoke to her like an equal. He also seemed to dislike Urek and the female as much as she did, if the way he’d disabled that camera and argued with Urek the day before were any indication.

  When he said he wouldn’t harm her, she found herself believing him.

  She couldn’t trust him, though. No matter how friendly he appeared, he was still the enemy, and it made sense for him to want her to feel comfortable. Once she warmed to him, let her guard down, she had no doubt that he would strike.

  But there was a kernel of sincerity to Marek, and maybe, just maybe, she could use that to her advantage. She wasn’t going to get out of here by sitting on her hands, after all. She needed an ally, even an unknowing one.

  And maybe she could find out what happened to her mom, too.

  “Maybe…” she began, biting her lip. “Maybe I can teach you my language if you do something for me.”

  Marek’s gaze sharpened. “You will compromise?”

  “I want to know what happened to my bow—my weapon,” she said, staring him down. “And I want information about something else. A human who went missing here.”

  The levekk’s brow dipped in confusion. “A human? One of your people?”

  “Yeah. My mother.”

  “This happen when?” he asked, and his gaze had become so piercing that Bree leaned back despite herself.

  “Around twenty years ago. She visited the mine by herself and never came back. All we found was blood.”

  “An animal—”

  “She’s not dead,” Bree interrupted. “I know she isn’t. She was taken by your people, and I won’t say anything else unless you help me prove it.”

  It took all her nerve to hold the alien’s gaze as he stared at her, his eyes wide. His reaction was strange, almost as if he was shocked, and the intensity put her on edge. She didn’t know if bluffing an alien was a good idea, but she had to try.

  Abruptly, Marek nodded and rose from his chair. “I will find these things. Then, we will speak again.”

  Bree bit back a sound of disbelief. He was… going to do it? Just like that?

  This alien just kept surprising her. But as he headed for the door, a lump formed in her throat.

  “Thank you!” she blurted, immediately regretting the words as he turned, his lips parting. He inclined his head and slipped from the room, leaving Bree alone.

  Her heart pounded in the silence, drowning out the buzzing forcefield. Just a day earlier she’d been sitting on that ridge as she always did, desperately searching for any clue concerning her mother’s whereabouts. Now, she was trapped in an alien world, and so much had happened already. She might just have secured the information she’d been chasing for years.

  But what had she gotten herself into in exchange?

  5

  It had been months since Marek was last allowed to walk through these corridors, and yet he still couldn’t get the scent of mud and earth out of his nose.

  He ignored the looks he received as he headed towards Urek’s office. They came almost exclusively from the levekk karanaan—the scientists who spent their days gazing out the windows, never setting foot on the land they’d conquered, and certainly never going beneath it to the mines the sub-species had dug.

  A small group of them fell silent as they passed him, their eyes wide as they openly stared, but that didn’t bother him. What did bother him, still, even after all these years, were the white uniforms they wore, which glowed brightly against the dark walls. He’d worn white once, at the university. That felt like a lifetime ago already.

  He hesitated outside Urek’s door, dreading the idea of going inside. Years ago, when he wasn’t studying rare materials for his seshaan, he’d had access to data banks full of histories and records for his personal projects. Now, he had to seek Urek’s permission just to look through the records for a mine balancing on the edge of civilization.

  He breathed out a sigh, steeling himself. It was worth it, if it meant that this human would trust him. It was worth it, for what Urek had promised him if he succeeded.

  So he swiped his palm across the door panel with as much determination as he could manage. He heard the faint buzz from inside as it alerted its occupant, and then the door slid back.

  “Where are they?” Urek asked immediately. He sat behind his desk in the center of the room, the low, orange glow of a heat lamp illuminating his face.

  Marek rolled his eyes without thinking, and then remembered how human the gesture was. Their guest was already rubbing off on him. “She refuses to say.”

  Urek scowled. “I thought I told you to make her speak.”

  “And I thought I said I wouldn’t force her. The human is already alone and imprisoned. It will not take much to convince her to speak.”

  “Convince her? We do not have time for convincing. Her kind could be preparing to attack us at this very moment.”

  “And what good will they do with the storm raging outside?” Marek asked. “Even the solayans have been relieved of their surface duties. Any human that approaches the mine will be blown away.”

  Urek scoffed, his claws gleaming as he threw up his hands in defeat. “If you haven’t made any progress, why are you here, Marek?”

  “I want access to the records room,” he said, and his brother’s eyes narrowed.

  “Why?”

  “Because the human wants—”

  “The human wants?” Urek spat. “I may have housed her above the surface, but she is not a guest here. She does not get to make demands of us.”

  “But you can demand information from her?”

  “Yes. That is how our world works, little brother. I thought you of all people would understand that.”

  Marek clenched his clawless hand into a fist and looked away. He knew better than anyone how the relationship between levekk and sub-species worked, but he didn’t need Urek reminding him of that at every opportunity.

  “And what about the surveillance camera that you destroyed?” Urek went on. “You thought I would just ignore that? You’re supposed to be monitored.”

  “She would not speak with it in the room,” Marek said. “It was the only way to—”

  Urek erupted from his chair, his sharp claws digging into the surface of his desk. “The human is not the one in control here!”

  “We need her to trust us, Urek. The human is tough. She cannot be frightened into submission like the sub-species you are used to.”

  “You’re finding plenty of ways to compliment her, brother.” Urek’s voice softened dangerously. “It’s almost as if you sympathize with her.”

  Marek’s jaw tightened. Of course he sympathized with her. He even respected her. The human had been thrust into an alien world and treated like something lesser, but she still stood tall. Instead of cowering in fear, she had carved out what little power she could, and he admired that.

  But that wasn’t why he’d destroyed that camera, and it wasn’t why he was here now. The human held the key to getting his old life back, and the only way to get it from her was to bargain. Helping her was a means to an end, that was all.

  “If I didn’t sympathize with her, this plan would not succeed,” he said carefully. “I will get results, Urek. They will just take time, and some finesse.”

  Urek was silent for long enough that Marek’s scales tightened under his burning gaze. Although it was a struggle, Marek willed himself to relax. It would not do to show his anger. His brother had always delighted in using such emotions against him.

  “Peris will be present for your sessions from now on,” Urek finally murmured, “since I doubt you will allow me to replace the camera.”

  Marek stood his ground. “With Peris in the room, the human will never speak. I promise you that. They see each other as enemies—”

  “We are enemies.”<
br />
  “But we cannot appear to be,” Marek said, fighting to keep his tone respectful. “Please, Urek. It is a delicate situation. You must trust me to handle it.”

  Urek groaned with frustration, slamming back in his chair. “Fine! I will defer to your scientific expertise. You are the authority on humans, after all,” he said. Then, he leaned forward, his eyes flashing in warning. “Just be sure you don’t allow that sympathy to cloud your judgment.”

  Marek’s jaw tightened. “It won’t. I know what’s at stake.”

  “I hope you do.” His brother turned to the desk behind him, fishing a flat, gray card from its depths. “This will give you access. Enjoy yourself in there.”

  Marek had to force himself not to snatch the card from Urek’s clawed hand. “Thank you,” he managed, the words like acid on his tongue. “The human also wants her bow. The wooden tool she had with her.”

  “The weapon?” Urek sneered. “She can have it. It’s useless, anyway.”

  “What does that mean?” Marek asked, confused.

  His brother smiled unpleasantly. “Why don’t you drop by Peris’ office and find out?”

  6

  Marek was already seated at one of the tables when Peris dumped Bree in the observation room the next day. The forcefield was gone, making the room look larger, and Bree’s gaze caught on the levekk’s glinting scales as he glanced over his shoulder at her. His shirt was sleeveless today, and the scales shone pure gold without the forcefield blocking them. For a moment, it was almost as if he lit up the room rather than the glowing walls.

  “Hello,” he said mildly.

  Bree sniffed, ignoring the errant thoughts that had raced through her mind. “Hello.”

  A small box sat on the table before the levekk, and she peered at it curiously as he gestured for her to sit.

  Although she thought about resisting, her curiosity soon won her over, and she strode past Marek with a confidence she didn’t quite feel and threw herself into the chair. Up in the corner, the ‘camera’ was still hanging limply by its wires. That was… surprising.