Page 44 of Alien Rescue

He carefully pulled her into his arms and she snuggled closer. “I have called Viglar. He will find the nanos and remove them.”

“I still don’t understand how Parnell can do that to me?” He’d been like a father to her. If Morgan was telling the truth, the betrayal would be more than she could bear. It was already more than she could bear.

“He enjoyed making you doubt yourself.”

“He betrayed me. I trusted him and he betrayed me.” Just like her father had betrayed her. Parents should love unconditionally, should be there for you during the hard times.

Zanr watched her, so calm she wanted to kick and scream at him. “I told you he was a bad human.”

She stiffened and drew out of his arms. “I don’t need you to tell me ‘I told you so.’”

He took her cup, made it disappear, and took her back into his arms. “That is confusing.”

Rose glared up at him and was about to blast him when something changed in the atmosphere. The other time she’d felt it, the doctor had landed his shuttle. She didn’t hear anything but felt the breeze from what she assumed was another shuttle, and Zanr suddenly seemed more alert.

The doctor stepped out of the shuttle, but with it invisible, it looked as if he stepped out of a vacuum. For once, she didn’t marvel at the technology. He and Zanr grunted at each other, and then Zanr led her to the doctor’s cloaked shuttle. “He has better medical equipment in his shuttle.”

They went inside a shuttle that looked much like Zanr’s except she saw more buttons flashing on the wall. Rose desperately wanted to be outside where it was open and she could breathe, but she needed the little killer machines out of her body. Now. Or she needed the doctor to tell her there was nothing in her blood. Please let there be nothing in her blood.

As usual Viglar didn’t greet her or address her, but he spent considerable time using various, silver, boxlike instruments that she assumed were scanners. He held them away from her body, but scanned every inch of her. On the fourth thorough scan, he grunted and turned to Zanr, and the two of them stood grunting at each other.

Rose put her hands on her hips and tapped her toe. Zanr abruptly stopped talking and turned to face her. “Do not tap a foot at me in front of other warriors.”

“Never mind your own importance, what did he find? It’s my life at stake here.”

“He found the nanites. The codes to deactivate them may be in the equipment we confiscated from the building.”

Rose nearly sagged with relief, but then Zanr’s serious tone registered in her mind. She had the strong sense that he was still worried. That there was something he hadn’t told her yet. “What’s the bad news?”

***

Zanr felt horror worse than what he’d felt the day he’d realized his blood was going to abandon him in the desert. “The cure is on its way to home world,” he told his breeder who looked ready to fall unconscious.

He’d assisted with the loading of the crates they’d taken from the lab. He’d laughed with Larz that day, enjoyed the assignment he’d been given. Like the bloodless warrior he was, he’d killed his own breeder.

“Can they send it back?” Her big, beautiful brown eyes looked haunted, but also as if she wanted him to reassure her. “How long do I have?”

He hesitated, then said, “A month at most.” He’d almost hit Viglar when he told him, but it wasn’t the doctor’s fault.

She rubbed the back of her neck. “And how long for the antidote to be sent back?”

“A year.” He didn’t tell her that even if it would’ve been faster, it wasn’t that easy for a spaceship to turn around and return to Earth unplanned.

Her eyes became big and she whimpered, and then her legs collapsed beneath her; he caught her before she hit the floor.

She was so small and still too thin, he barely felt her weight. He felt Viglar’s eyes on him, but kept his focus on Rose—the breeder he never dreamed he’d have. If she was taken from him, he didn’t want to be in the universe anymore.

Chapter Fourteen

Zanr held Rose against his chest and laid her down on the bench in Viglar’s shuttle. He turned to Viglar, battling the need to pick a fight, to destroy something; he needed a battle to be himself again. How could he be a person without Rose?

“I will liaise with the ship and our scientists on home world about the shutdown codes.” His lip curled. “It is hard to believe that these humans, even in their Golden Age, could create codes we cannot break.”

“I hope you are right.”

“In the meantime, you complete your mission,” Viglar said.

“I do not care about the mission now.” Zacar could discipline him as much as he wanted. His priority was Rose. If he only had a month left, he’d spend every moment with her. The horror of that thought choked him.

---