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APSYN. SYNNR. ZULIR. It was all alien nonsense as far as Emily was concerned. But her mind latched onto Oz’s words and rearranged them until they were clear in human terms.
Once upon a time the Zulir lived in peace as one group. They followed their monarch and built up their civilization, happy and whole. Sure, there were fights, disagreements, but nothing that could shake them to their foundations.
Until contact came.
For the longest time they were alone in the universe. Some scientists and philosophers pondered the stars, but the Zulir didn’t know about what might be out there. (And Emily could feel sympathy on that count, but she kept quiet.) Contact came and the Zulir changed. Not because of anything the first aliens did to them. In fact, the first aliens were one-celled beings on a distant planet that their probes picked up, nothing like what was to come.
When sentient contact came, the Zulir split. The aliens they met wanted to share the universe with them, wanted to teach them everything.
The Synnrs wanted to learn. They wanted to grow and join with the stars and discover all of the skies’ secrets.
The Apsyns wanted the aliens gone. The Zulir had flourished for a long time with no help from the outside. And they would not lower themselves to communing with beasts.
Then came war.
Apsyn versus Synnr, families split, friendships turned to ash. At the end the king lay dead and the planet was on the verge of collapse. The war had lasted decades. Then came unsteady peace. Synnrs took the moon, Apsyns the planet. One kingdom became two.
Twenty years of peace. Of regrowth.
And now this.
The Synnr queen lay in a coma in her palace. The Apsyns claimed no knowledge, but they were the only possible culprits. And war was coming once again.
It was a fascinating story, one Emily might have let herself get wrapped up in, but...
“What does this have to do with us?” Zac asked the question for her.
The four humans were huddled together in their blankets, sitting along one cold wall while Oz sat against the other. This little store room looked more like a cell than anything the aliens—the Apsyns—had held her in, but she was pretty sure that he’d let them go if she insisted.
Not 100% positive, but as close as she could get these days.
“Which one are you?” she added to Zac’s question. Apparently they were on the planet, Kilrym, and in the city of Vanen, but Oz wasn’t acting like the people that had held them prisoner. Maybe if she was in a more forgiving mood she’d think about how factions worked on Earth. Sure, she was an American, but that didn’t mean she agreed with everything her country did. Maybe it was the same here.
Maybe.
Oz glanced at the open door and hesitated.
Why would he hesitate?
Unless he wasn’t one of the Apsyns.
“Do Synnrs keep human slaves?” she demanded. “Is that why you wanted to buy me?”
“What?” It ripped out of Luci and Emily had to put a hand on her leg to keep her from launching herself at Oz. The girl seemed fragile at times, but she had an inner fire of her own. She wouldn’t have survived this long without it.
“No!” Oz’s eyes widened. He shook his head and waved his hands around as if he could ward off the accusation. “I know it was a stupid move, I get that now. I was a complete ynstit. I only wanted to get you out of there.”
She almost believed him, which was probably stupid on her part. “Answer Zac’s question. And mine.”
“We’re Synnrs. And it’s a secret,” Oz stared at them, trying to impress the importance upon them. “Things are in play...”
“The upcoming war?” Joel asked.
Oz nodded.
“So why did the Apysns want us? What were all those experiments about? I thought they wanted nothing to do with ‘aliens.’” It was hard to think of herself as an alien, but she was the one on a foreign planet right now, so that might have been technically the case.
“Did they tell you about Matching?” Oz asked.
And Emily was getting even more frustrated. “They told us nothing. At all. Assume we’re a bunch of ignorant humans who didn’t know aliens existed until a few months ago. We just want to get off this planet and go home.”
A strange look crossed Oz’s face and he opened his mouth before a shadow fell across the door. Solan.
“How’s Lena?” she asked the other alien. Synnr. Zulir.
Whatever.
“Resting,” he said. “She took a real beating and needs medical attention. I’ve done the best I could.”
Emily’s heart sank. She couldn’t lose Lena. Not after all they’d been through together. She couldn’t. “Can we help? Is there a way to get a doctor here?”
Solan gave her a sad look. “Not... here. There may be...” He seemed to have a second thought about what he was going to say. “We’ll do our best.”
“Your best had better be good enough.” These were aliens who could travel across the galaxy. They should be able to fix Lena. They had to.
“We should let the humans use our beds,” Oz said. “We can sleep on the floor. They’ve had a rough time of it.”
Solan nodded. “Good idea.”
Emily didn’t want to be split up, and there was still more for Oz to explain. “What did you say about matches or whatever?”
Luci groaned. “I am tired. Can we please just sleep, Em? They can tell us in the morning.” Both Joel and Zac nodded along with her.
Emily wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to sleep again. But she was outnumbered. “Show us to the rooms, then?”
Oz did. Emily and Luci were in Solan’s room while Zac and Joel took Oz’s. There wasn’t much character to the rooms. They walls were a light blue and a window looked out onto the twinkling lights of the city in the distance. Emily could almost believe she was just in a hotel room in an unfamiliar city. She could pretend that her nerves were just pre-competition jitters and that when she woke up she’d be ready for practice, ready to impress her coaches and the judges.
But then some little piece of alien tech would catch her eye and she’d be reminded that this wasn’t home. That she didn’t belong here.
It sucked.
She and Luci lay down, Luci slinging an arm around her and succumbing to sleep almost immediately, lucky girl. Emily couldn’t. She squeezed her eyes closed and counted two hundred and seventy-three sheep before giving up on that. Luci turned over, her arm falling off of Emily as she sighed in her sleep.
If Emily stayed in bed another minute she was going to suffocate.
It was strange sitting up. The mattress was harder than she was used to back home, and the bed was low to the ground. She practically fell to her knees before standing, but made it. Oz and Solan had offered different clothes to sleep in, but Emily had opted to stay in her own, even her shoes. She didn’t know if they’d be running anytime soon and she didn’t want to get caught off guard.
Oz hadn’t told them they couldn’t go anywhere in the apartment, but Emily wasn’t in an exploring mood. She ended up in the little room where they were treating Lena and sat on the stool by her bed. Lena looked younger in unconsciousness, the tightness of her face slack with rest. But she’d lost color and there was a certain vitality missing.
“You’ve got to get better,” she told her friend. “I’ll never forgive you if you die.” A shadow fell over her and she somehow knew who it was. “How bad is it, really?” she asked Oz.
He sighed and remained in the doorway behind her. “She’s in stasis. It can hold for weeks, if need be. But she won’t heal until we get her medical attention.”
“A coma?” She didn’t need fancy alien words. She wanted home.
“Not quite, but close.” Oz finally stepped inside and sat on a second stool. They were beside each other and she watched him out of the corner of her eye.
He didn’t look alien, and yet he did. If she’d seen him back on Earth, she never would have guessed. The small differences might have been passed off as body modifications. His ears were more pointed than round, and his skin seemed to shimmer; it wasn’t that different. But when he opened his mouth wide enough she spotted the fangs, those had her pausing to think. Just how sharp were they?
How was any of this possible?
“We’re not sure how the similarities came about,” he said.
“For god’s sake, please tell me you can’t read my mind.” She slumped forward. No one said anything about mind powers.
He smiled and huffed out a laugh, and she couldn’t look away from his fangs. She might have gone through a brief vampire obsession as a child. Brief. “Nothing like that,” he promised. “But you were looking at me.”
“No I wasn’t.” It rushed out and Emily felt her cheeks heat. Thank god for the dim light. He couldn’t see. She hoped. Unless he had super sight.
Ugh.
He kept smiling his stupid smile at her and Emily’s stomach flipped over. No. Stupid. No. Not happening. He’d tried to buy her as property. And he was an alien! She’d barely been able to get attracted to guys back on Earth, and between gymnastics and then college and law school hadn’t managed to keep a boyfriend for more than a week or two. She wasn’t suddenly going to get hot for a freaking alien.
Yeah, her body was having none of that. It liked what it saw in Oz.
Ugh!
His smile faded. “I really am sorry. About trying to buy you. Our captain is focused on our mission, and that doesn’t include... well, I didn’t see another way.”
She shouldn’t believe him. He had every reason to lie. Right?
So why did she?
No, she didn’t want to deal with this now.
“What was that matching thing you were talking about? Why do you think they wanted us?” She could tell the others in the morning, but she didn’t want to wait another minute to know. Her mind was too wired to sleep, so she might as well do something with the energy.
Oz sighed. “I don’t know all of it. But we’ve made some guesses. And there’s some that I can’t tell you. Not now.”
“Then tell me what you can.” She didn’t like being in the dark.
The look he gave her burned her down to her toes. Emily told her body to get under control. Her body ignored her.
She hoped he couldn’t tell.
“You’ve seen our wings, right?”
She nodded. “Can I see yours?” Then her eyes got wide. “That’s not offensive or anything, is it? It’s not like I asked you to show me your—” she cut herself off at the last second.
Oz leaned in and she caught a hint of his scent, clean with a hint of something smoky under the surface. She didn’t breathe deeper. She wasn’t going to go around and sniff someone. “My what?” he asked.
Oh, he knew.
They might have been from different ends of the galaxy. They might have been different species. But he knew what she’d almost said.
An awareness sparked between them and Emily would have given almost anything to make it go away. She couldn’t do this. Not now. Not with him. “What about your wings?” she asked.
Between one blink and the next they filled the room, glorious electric things made of blue and red and purple. It was magical and she wanted to reach out and touch them. But she’d felt the brush of electric wings and it had singed her to the bone. She didn’t want to get burned again.
“They’re amazing,” she breathed.
He was careful not to touch anything with them and after another moment he pulled them back into himself and it was like they’d never been there at all. “All Zulir have them. Along with an... affinity for electricity.”
“I figured that part out.” It came out bitter, and Emily didn’t even try to disguise it. Not when she’d dealt with the tortures that came with their powers.
Oz seemed ready to respond, but instead he pressed on. “We can’t quite fly, but the wings allow us to stay airborne for a time and glide. I was...” He shook his head.
“You were what?” She soaked up this information and needed more. Anything he could give her.
“It’s what drew me to you, the way you flew without wings. Fearless.” He leaned closer, but didn’t touch.
“I’m afraid of plenty of things.” Spiders, super murky water, dying alone. But she wasn’t about to share all that. “You say you can’t fly, but what you can do sounds so cool. I wish I could do it.” There was freedom in soaring through her routine and she could just imagine what it would be like if she didn’t have to worry about coming down hard.
Their gazes locked and that awareness came back. She wanted to close those inches between them and taste him. She yanked herself back. “So what do wings have to do with anything?”
Oz sat up straighter. “Nothing, I suppose. Or not much. I just wanted... it’s not important.”
“Were you showing off?” She laughed, she couldn’t help it. And she wouldn’t admit it, but those wings were impressive.
She didn’t know if aliens—Zulir—could blush, and if they could the dim light of the room hid it. But he did duck his head. “Anyway,” he cleared his throat. “Matching. We all have a spark, as I said. That’s what we call the lightning inside of us. But it’s nothing compared to that of a Matched unit. Usually two people, though there are rare cases of larger groups, who fit. They’re bound together and can amplify their powers. I’ve heard legends say that there were Matched units who could take out warships. Usually the Matched are both Zulir, but we’ve found other... compatible species. Humans, for one. But the Apsyns are opposed to such Matches, despite the fact that a bond should be sacred. It’s not outlawed outright, even they wouldn’t go that far, but in the extremely rare circumstance that a human or other alien is mated to an Apsyn, the alien is treated like a pet, not a person. I can’t imagine how it works. It’s an abomination. The treatment,” he was quick to add. “Not the Match.”
Emily thought of the times she’d been strapped down, when other aliens were brought in and used their powers against her. And an idea began to form. “They wanted to amp up their powers, didn’t they? That’s what they were doing.”
Oz nodded. “That’s what we suspect. And if they succeed... Matches are rare. It goes beyond any regular sense of compatibility until everything fits. Thoughts, feelings, molecules. If the Apsyns can harness that power without a need for Matches, we’re finished. And if it takes humans for them to do it, I can’t begin to imagine how many they’d be willing to sacrifice.”
***
OZ LEFT EMILY TO WATCH over her friend after that. He could see she had a lot to think about and he didn’t want to crowd her thoughts. He’d done enough damage already.
But he wished he could stay there beside her. He’d answer any question she had, talk about anything just to snatch one more second with her. He wanted her. He’d wanted her from the first, but this went deeper. Something in her called to him. Settled him. It made him wonder if he’d finally found something he hadn’t even realized he’d been looking for.
They were still deep in enemy territory and he couldn’t get hung up on that.
Solan was sitting in the main room and fiddling with a small device. When Oz took a seat next to him, he sat it on the table and it gave off a faint orange glow. “Privacy mode,” Solan explained. “The humans won’t hear us.”
Good. He would tell Emily anything, but that didn’t mean she was ready to hear what he and Solan had to say. And he suspected the call they were going to have to make wouldn’t go well. “She said she just wants to go home.” It had been eating at him for hours. Emily hadn’t brought up the desire again, but it hadn’t needed to be stated.
“Wouldn’t you want the same thing?” Solan asked.
“I would if it weren’t impossible.” He pushed himself up from his seat and paced, careful to stay in range of the privacy device. “She thinks that it’s been months since she and the others were taken.”
“To her it has been. Humans are barely capable of space travel. They have no idea about all the universe has to offer. Why would she know just what it took to bring her here?” Solan said it all so calmly. He had no emotional connection to the humans, not beyond compassion for their wounded friend. And Oz should have been the same. Maybe he would have been capable of that if Emily weren’t there. But she was, and he didn’t want to take this last thing from her. “There’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s just call Cru. He needs this update. And this is going to force the asset to move. Things are falling into place. We’ll be off planet soon enough.”
Soon enough. But the humans would still be stuck far from home with no hope of going back. “What do we tell them?” he asked.
“What we need to. We keep them safe and do our job. What else can we do? Now, are you going to snap at Cru?” Solan looked at him in challenge.
Oz shrugged. He couldn’t promise how this conversation would go. Especially when Cru learned how Oz had almost screwed everything up.
“Let’s get this over with.”
It was clear they’d caught Cru by surprise. His uniform looked a little ruffled and the rest of the crew wasn’t with him. “What’s this about?” he demanded. It was loud enough that it would have woken the humans if not for the privacy shield.
“News,” Solan said. He was the one that talked during these things. Most of the time. He handled Cru better. Came from having the same aristo blood running through his veins.
“What happened?” He glanced at Oz but didn’t say anything. Oz stayed silent.
Solan relayed the events, for the most part. Grace brought the humans to them. One was injured. They needed medical treatment and safe haven.
He didn’t reveal what Oz had almost done.
Cru furrowed his brow for several seconds, thinking over what Solan had said. “This can change nothing. Dump the humans. Finish the mission. We—ru...we... fe...pu—” the feed cut off.
“Did you do that?” Oz asked. He leaned forward and waved his hand over the holoprojector, but it didn’t do anything.
“No.” Solan looked concerned. He stood up and went to the window, looking out into the night. “Nothing’s lit up. Not that we know where the ship is, but doesn’t look like any fighters have been deployed. Apsyns might just be amping up their security. Scrambling signals. Or there was a flare somewhere. Plenty of reason for comms to cut out.” His communicator beeped and he pulled it out of his pocket, looking relieved as he read the message. “Ax confirms it was a signal scrambler. The ship is fine, but they need to reroute some relays before we can speak again.”
“Any worry the message was intercepted?” They were using the highest level encryption the Synnr techs had to offer, but mistakes could be made. Accidents happened.
“Not from Ax.” Solan put his comm away but didn’t disengage the privacy screen.
And now that one crisis was averted, anger flowed in Oz’s veins. “How can we just dump them?” he demanded. “They’re people! And they need help.” He couldn’t fail Emily again, not when he’d already done it once before.
Solan was thoughtful. “He didn’t say where we should dump them.”
“What?” Oz was too angry to think straight. He wanted to hop onto a shuttle and go throttle Cru for even suggesting it.
“It’s possible that he meant to get the humans out of the way so that they’re safe,” Solan proposed, testing out the theory.
They both knew Cru too well to think that was his meaning. But the call had cut off before he could clarify his order. “What are you thinking? There’s no place on Kilrym that will be safe for long.”
“That’s why we don’t leave them on Kilrym.”
“And where do you suggest they go? They can’t exactly board a public shuttle.” Oz had racked his brain trying to think of an easy way to get Emily off the planet without making her pose as his property. Nothing obvious had presented itself.
“We take them to our ship.”
He said it so simply with a clever little smile that Oz wanted to punch off his face.
“Where they will be at Cru’s mercy?” Maybe that was unfair, but Oz could still remember the captain’s cruelty when they were boys. And he knew Cru was barely better than an Apsyn when it came to non-Zulirs. Could he really trust him with Emily?
Solan glared. “He’s not the best man for the job, perhaps, but don’t make him out to be a monster. If we can get them to the ship, he’ll keep them safe. And we can take them to Osais. At least back home they’ll have a chance at a life.”
Solan had a point. There was nothing for the humans here, and any other path they took would have them abandoning their duties. They couldn’t do that. They weren’t deserters. “He’ll punish us for going against orders.”
His companion shook his head. “I can handle the captain.”
“What about the rest of the humans?” Emily and her friends weren’t even half of who they knew was being held by the Apsyns.
Solan frowned and looked away. “We can’t. Going back for them will compromise everything. And it could get the asset killed. Do you want to be the one to tell her parents that?”
He very much did not. But that wasn’t reason enough to sacrifice those lives. What else could they do, though? “I don’t want to just leave them there.”
“We’ll do what we can. Let’s worry about these humans first. We can’t take them all at once, not with the size of our shuttle. And we can’t leave whoever is left unguarded.” What Solan wasn’t saying was that whoever got left on the ground might be forbidden from joining the other humans on the ship. There would be no dropped connections when Cru met them in person. And his orders would be final.
“Let’s figure out the logistics. We can’t be gone with the asset needs us. And I’m ready to go home.”
What would Emily think of it? Would it be enough to make up for all that she had lost?
Would she be willing to look at him a second time? To see him for who he really was and not the role he’d been playing?
He shouldn’t get caught up in hopes. They’d only hurt when they came crashing to the ground. But his heart beat faster at the thought of showing her his world.
She’d be safe. And if that was all he could give her, he hoped it would be enough.
