Page 20 of Heart’s Prisoner

Xerus tilted his head in a sort of shrug. "It is given to warrior castes when they are at war."

Lana's eyes widened. "So you are a warrior?"

"For now..."

Lana tapped her fingers against her workpad. "And what will you be after this...war?"

Xerus' mouth widened. "That is more than one question."

Damn, but she was so close. Finally she was gaining some traction. But she had to play fair.

"Let's play again." Lana refreshed the board.

This time the game took longer and Xerus won.

"The first thing I want is the lights changed. It's giving me head pain."

Surprised, Lana brought up the controls for the light but hesitated before changing them. "I'll have to verify it's alright with the others first."

Lana called Cole from the lab. He discussed it over with others then agreed to let her change the lights but only from red to a mild orange. The orange light made Xerus shake his head and blink several times revealing a second set of white transparent lids that covered his eyes briefly, opening and closing from his outer eye to his inner. Lana jotted down a few notes on her pad while he adjusted.

"Better?" she asked.

"A little," he said.

They played two more games. The first Lana won (and again only barely) and the second went to Xerus.

"What will be your position after the war?" Lana asked again.

Xerus locked eyes with hers. "If we win and I go through my Rite. I will become aPredomis."

"What is a..." Lana cut herself off when Xerus' eyes narrowed at her. Right, too many questions.

"My next request is I wish to not be recorded," Xerus said abruptly.

Lana stiffened. "How do you know we are–"

Xerus growled loudly, making Lana jump. "If I give you any more answers while we play your games they will be between you and me."

Lana sat back in her chair, her heart doing a quick little flip as Xerus' anger rose to the surface.

"Alright," Lana said softly. "I will...see what I can do."

Chapter Six

It took a great deal of time and convincing to get Cole to allow her to stop the recordings at any given interval. Lana implored Cole to see that if they were going to get any information from Asset X they needed to gain his trust. Eventually, they agreed that for five minutes only Lana was allowed to shut off the recorder. Any information she gathered was to be put into a report. The video feed, however, would not stop. Under any circumstances.

Lana was slowly beginning to find out that getting through to Cole with anything was a challenge in itself. Despite his polite and calm demeanor, he really could be a hardass at the worst times. Any sort of negotiating was hardly that, making her feel more like a little girl trying to beg her stubborn father for a toy.

"You're learning quickly on how things roll here," Dahlia, one of the biologists, told her. "If you wanna get anything outta the big man you'll need at least half the staff on your side. And even then good luck."

If there was anyone he seemed to listen to more it was the engineers and Officer Torrence for some unfathomable reason.

Obtaining certain information was also equally frustrating. If it didn't pertain to her work, Cole seemed to think she didn't need to know. He would put his hands in his pockets and give her that irritating smile and tell her with the most indifferent air possible that she just needed to focus on her work and not worry about the rest. And when it did pertain to her work, it wasn't serious. When she finally confronted him about contacting the previous behaviorists, he merely shrugged, saying there was no point in finding and talking with them and that all the information she had was what they kept.

His aloofness and disregard for her interests were infuriating and, quite frankly, offensive.

The more time she spent in the facility and fought him the more she was beginning to realize that her level of importance wasn't as high as she thought. And the way Cole ran the place and his methods for dealing with the specimens within, made her deeply suspicious that his goals may not be aligned with her own. The aliens were subjects and experiments to him and he regarded them as such just like Torrence regarded them as merely animals and nothing more. If she didn't know any better she would have believed that their mission to have Xerus or any of the other aliens converted into their society was just some kind of front. Level twelve wanted to learn about these beings but they didn't seem particularly interested in actually understanding them. With this depressing prospect, Lana began to feel very much alone, wondering why they had her there in the first place.

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