Page 41 of Treasured By the Hunter

Interacting with Mina made all my maternal instincts flare up. Stupid annoying instincts. Didn’t they know that children weren’t in the cards for me?

And it wasn’t for lack of trying. My ex-husband and I had tried and tried, even after the diagnosis.

I took a deep breath and focused on Harb’k and his tour instead.

He showed me the rest of the upper level, which consisted mostly of offices converted into bedrooms and Heather’s clinic. Some had the door closed, but most were left open. They must trust everyone in here.

They also had a small library with a collection of books, including one shelf that was clearly labeledOn Loan from Tooth.I asked about it, and Harb’k explained that New New Franklin had a squirrel mascot named Tooth who loved to chew the corners of books. There was a running joke that all the books in the compound belonged to him.

“Why is it New New Franklin?” I asked. He and Mary had called it New Franklin before.

“The town was Franklin before the scourge. The human survivors called themselves New Franklin. And when they joined forces with the hunters there, it was renamed again after some civil unrest. It is officially New New Franklin.”

There was also a room full of bins labeled with room numbers. They had dirty laundry in them. On the opposite side of the room were the same bins, presumably for clean laundry. There was a screened-off area with what looked like a B-movie stasis pod. I’d noticed one on Harb’k’s shuttle but hadn’t seen him use it.

“It’s a decontamination chamber. But the humans prefer water showers.” He gestured to the row of showers that must not have been here originally. There was a drain in the middle of the blue-tiled floor.

“They work?” I asked, my eyes wide.

“They do.”

This base wasn’t large, but they had running water! And electricity, and all the creature comforts.

Sanctuary and Vegas had electricity too, but both settlements shut the power off after curfew. And I doubted either location had enough water for showers. Sponge baths, maybe. Perhaps not even that after such a dry winter.

“The cistern on the roof is directly above this room, so this is where all the washing gets done. We collect the used water for our fields.”

That was one thing I noticed when I first met people here: everyone was clean. It smelled fresh. But surely these people were dealing with the drought, too. I wondered how they managed it.

Maybe I could ask for a shower or even a small basin of water for a sponge bath. But that would have to wait until after this tour.

Harb’k led me back downstairs and continued my tour of the shopping plaza. The last store on this side had been a hardware store. Now it was an indoor food production area complete with a chicken coop, an indoor chicken run, and a bunch of raised garden beds with grow lights, which were so bright I winced.

“Wow! Talk about the power of the sun.”

“The lights are powered by the energy converter from an old shuttle. The humans here are extremely resourceful. They prove that even waste has value. Literally. This bed of vegetables is fed by the fish waste in the tanks below. Our Tech Wizards set it up, even though they claim they’ve never created anything like it before.”

“I have a question. Why don’t Xarc’n hunters take the Tech Wizard role? When I was talking to Sam, she made it sound like they are mostly humans, even though it’s a Xarc’n military role.”

“Because we do not understand how our technology works. We have only one job: fight.”

“I guess you’ve been fighting these bugs your whole life.” I kind of felt sad for him. What type of life was that?

“It is the only reason we exist. Or, it was.” He looked pensive as we walked back the way we came and passed the lobby with the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. “Mina is a daily reminder to me that there is more to life now. Before Earth and humans, we were unable to procreate. We are the last of our kind. Genetically modified soldiers cloned from genetically modified soldiers. Mina is proof that we have a future.”

We paused before the doorway that would lead us back into the room where the movie was playing.

“Thank you for trusting me with this wonderful secret. I promise I will never do anything to harm Mina. She is adorable and a miracle.”

I, of all people, knew exactly what a miracle she was. I’d wanted children so badly; I’d wanted to be a mother. The process of trying and failing, again and again, had soured the love between me and my ex-husband. He’d made excuses and got angry every time I suggested talking to a doctor, like somehow that was admitting we were deficient. By the time we finally went to the doctor and I was diagnosed with endometriosis, he’d already knocked up the neighbor.

Years ago, I would’ve balked at the thought of a family with an alien. But seeing Mary with her protective warrior and little Mina, I was envious of what she had.

I would never have what they had. Not with my broken and flawed body. I knew I wasn’t supposed to think of it like that, but it was hard not to. And for the first time in a long time, I wondered what would have happened if I’d postponed the surgery.

We tiptoed through the war room where the movie was still playing and stepped into what used to be a supermarket. They’d cleared all the shelves and only kept a few against the wall for storage. At the center was a large open area with a circle and several lines painted on the floor. There were also racks of melee weapons just outside the circle. Next to it, and aiming toward the back wall, was an indoor archery range with bales of hay behind the targets painted with red and yellow.

“This is where we train for combat,” Harb’k said. “And that is where Sam works on our ships if they need repairs.” He pointedto a corner with a large hanging sign that still readProduce.The area had been turned into a garage. There was the typical equipment I recognized but also strange ones I did not.

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