Page 80 of Tribute
The place felt strange now that he’d been out of the program for a cycle. He’d thought he was free from the horror of it all—thought Anna was too, but fucking Palk had interfered again. Palk had always had a thing for him, and an unholy fascination with Anna.
Unsettled by the silence, he grumbled at Kai. “If Aled Price did blab about the human DNA, I’m going to kill him.”
Kai squared off with him, his green eyes blazing. “You are fucking not going to touch him. He’s mine. We either do this together and get them both out, or we don’t do it at all.”
He met Kai’s determined gaze. “All bloody right.”
“Palk didn’t say where he’d gotten the information from. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d already known and had specifically hooked Aled into the programbecauseof his DNA.”
“Still trying to protect your lover’s ass?”
To his annoyance, Kai grinned. “It’s a damn fine ass. But think about it, Rehz. Two Tributes with human DNA in two consecutive cycles? That’s one hell of a coincidence when we’ve all been told that planet is a myth.”
“That reminds me: let’s access the medical records first.”
Kai started moving again, his gaze alert and his attention on the silent, empty, gleaming halls ahead of them. It was downright eerie. Rehz shook off his sense of unease and followed.
The antiseptic smell of the medical treatment room made him shudder with too many bad memories. As a Tribute—and later as a trainer—he’d spent too many hours there being patched up or watching trainees be pieced back together.
Kai placed his weapon on the table and imprinted his thumb on the pad beside the screen, which immediately came to life. “What do you want first?”
“Anna’s records.”
“Specifically?”
“Her last medical after she returned from theUngrich.”
“Hold on.”
He kept his gaze on the open doorway as Kai clicked away at the keyboard.
“Here you go.” Kai hesitated. “Maybe you’d better read it.”
“No, go ahead.”
“Looks like she was dehydrated, had lost weight, and her nervous system was firing too fast—all pretty common aftereffects of being submerged in alien goo. Her heart and lungs were okay.”
“Keep going.” He lovingly fingered his weapon and imagined not wasting a shot on Palk but using the weight to slowly and painfully smash Palk’s skull to a pulp. He wished he’d choked him to death in that hospital bed.
“Her ovaries . . .” Kai paused. “Significant decrease in stored eggs. One ovary completely cleaned out.”
He let that settle over him and realized his hands were shaking. “She asked me to find out if that had happened. And I didn’t fucking get around to it. I fucking let her down.”
“You didn’t know it was going to be important, Rehz. It was only when Aled told me about the male-female thing theUngrichwere interested in that it made any sense.”
He didn’t bother to answer. He knew he was at fault. He was fucking cursed . . .
“I’m accessing Aled’s files now. There’s not so much here, just a note about his genetic differences.” Kai shut down the files and erased the link. “What do you want to do now?”
“Find a way intoUngrichspace.”
“What about Palk?”
Rehz picked up his weapon. “We’ll talk to him again when we get back.”
Aled tried again.“Why am I here?”The tentacles wrapped around his torso tightened like ahrelsnake, and he fought back the urge to struggle.“Why? What do you want from me that I didn’t give you freely last time?”
“Female.”
