Page 45 of Alien Rescue

Viglar fiddled with his equipment. “I did not agree with this modern idea of sending a breeder on a mission.”

Zanr snorted. “I extended my claws to Zacar when he told me to use my breeder like this.”

Viglar nodded. “Understandable. But it will be good for her to focus on something else. Finish your assignment. I will monitor your breeder remotely,” Viglar said.

Zanr wanted to grab Rose and put her in their dwelling where she’d be safe. But without the antidote, there was no safe place for her. And Viglar was right, it would be better if her mind was occupied with their mission. “You will keep me informed?”

“Yes, I will work on an antidote or a way to deprogram the nanites.”

Hope surged. If anyone could do it, Viglar could. He was considered the best scientist in the empire. Rumor was the Parenadorz wanted him for his own personal physician. “Do you think it can be deprogrammed if we cannot get the codes?”

The doctor nodded. “They are basically machines and machines can be hacked, to use the human term.”

Zanr didn’t know what hacking was, but he had never hoped so hard for something to work. “I want to know what is happening every moment.”

“Of course. I have to leave. Zacar needs me for an assignment in Denver. I will continue to work on the deactivation codes for the nanites,” Viglar said.

Zanr left the doctor’s shuttle, and cradling Rose, returned to his own shuttle. Inside he carefully laid her down on the bench. She looked small and alone, and he scooped her up, and pulling her against him, sat down on the bench, holding her close on his lap. He needed to feel her against him, hear her heartbeat, feel her breath going in and out of her body.

***

Rose rubbed a hand over her head, then clenched her hand and held it to her chest. “I can’t breathe.” The thought of little machines swimming gleefully in her blood, killing her, made her want to be sick. The air felt as stifled as when she was in that testing box. Sweat broke out on her skin.

His arms tightened around her. “I will take you outside.” He suited action to words and set her carefully down on her feet. “Stay here.”

Rose nodded and looked up at the stars. She’d heard there was a time when the sky was so clear, you could see many stars. She was vaguely aware of Zanr disappearing into the shuttle and reappearing. If she could find a star, maybe she could make a wish. She shuddered. She’d found a star when she was eight, had wished upon it, and her wish had come true. Her mother had come for her. Clutching her arms around herself, she looked at Zanr.

He threw a piece of silver metal in the air that opened up into a large dome. It drifted down onto the roof and she could hear it anchor itself into the cement.

Rose stared at the large tent that filled almost all the space on the roof of the building. Maybe she didn’t need a star. If he could make something like this, surely their doctor would find a way to deprogram the nanos swimming inside her blood.

Zanr grunted and the wall of the tent slid open, the way his house and shuttle did. “You will be able to breathe in here.”

Rose walked inside and turned around. “I can’t believe it, it’s really a tent.” The wind up here was strong, but like in the shuttle, she couldn’t hear it and the sides of the tent remained steady, as if the wind wasn’t driving into it. She had space and she could breathe without the foul smells from the flooded city and the river polluting her nose.

She turned to Zanr and stepped into his arms. “Thank you.” It was becoming impossible to see him as the enemy.

“Look up, my breeder.” She looked up and she could see the stars.

“That’s amazing, you’re amazing,” she breathed.

“Of course, I am a Zyrgin warrior.”

Rose laughed and stepped back from him. A large bed stood toward the back and in the center was a couch.

Zanr went to the kitchen area—how did he do all this—and grunted at the wall. The aroma of food made her stomach growl. She sat down on the couch. “I’m so hungry I can eat a cow,” she told him. Weird saying—who in their right mind would want to eat a cow?

He came over and placed two bowls on a coffee table that appeared out of a piece of silver he threw down on the floor in front of the couch. Rose frowned down at the two bowls. One had soup, what looked like vegetable soup, but the other bowl had his pink slop in it. “You want to eat that again.” In all this time she hadn’t seen him eat anything else.

“Yes. There is more food if the soup is not enough.”

She watched, disbelieving, as he picked up the bowl with the pink slop. “What is that?” She’d never thought to ask before. But she hadn’t been desperate to think about anything else.

“It is what you would call a balanced meal. Everything I need is in here.”

“Can I taste it?”

He scooped some onto his finger and held it to her lips. Rose stared at his finger. The moment was unbearably intimate with his eyes fixed on her lips. She opened her mouth and carefully sucked the pink slop off that finger with its sharp claw. The pink stuff slid onto her tongue and Rose gagged. She spat most of it out, not caring where it landed, but some of it she swallowed involuntarily and it settled uneasily in her stomach.

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