Captivate (Alien Cadets Book 2) Page 13

  Well. Claire brought her knees up on the bed and hugged her legs. These people were a real bag of mixed signals, and she should get out of here as soon as she could.

  Claire waited and waited. There was no clock and she had no idea how much time was passing. Her eyes felt painfully heavy, but she told herself that it must be psychosomatic, she had no reason to be that tired. The light never changed and the others alternately napped, whispered in low voices, and fiddled with their few things.

  Claire realized she’d fallen asleep when she heard her name whispered nearby. Her head was pillowed uncomfortably on her raised knees, and her eyes were still closed, so she held the pose, pretending to be asleep.

  “The human needs to go. If she fears us, perhaps she’ll do our work for us and be gone before nightfall. So don’t be friendly.”

  “I know, I know,” Sage whispered. “But Claire's human... she’s interesting.”

  “Don’t be interested. She shouldn’t be here.”

  Oddly, what discomposed Claire the most was hearing Sage use her name. How long had it been since anyone used her name? To the zookeeper and Faal she’d been the human, to those on Final Say she’d been another anonymous bruck. No one had said her name in years and it made her eyes sting.

  But her name wasn’t the point. It sounded like Old Twin wanted to be rid of her, which she'd made no secret of, and she was warning Sage not to be friendly. Strange, but not surprising...

  “She’s awake,” Diva said softly.

  Claire’s eyes flew open. Diva's face was an inch away from hers.

  “I knew because your breathing changed,” Diva whispered. Claire could see flecks of green in her blue eyes.

  Just then the door opened and the cop was back with a hard look on his face.

  CHAPTER 15

  Basher entered the room and his partner stayed by the door with an energy weapon in his hand. Claire had been sleeping a moment ago, and she still looked drowsy. Basher squelched the impulse to give her a hand as she scooted off the lower bunk. Whatever he did, he was not going to touch this girl until he was sure she was human.

  She followed him out the door.

  “Wait there,” Basher said. “You have to be handcuffed when you’re not in the cell.”

  She obediently stood still, but the muscles in her neck jerked with tension when his Spo partner held her wrists to secure the handcuffs.

  Basher took a deep breath. For some reason everything to do with this girl grated on him, where was his thick skin?

  The usual procedure was to have the fake walk in front of them down the hall to the medical quarters, but Basher felt guilty making her do it. She glanced over her shoulder once, looking uneasy. She clearly appreciated how vulnerable it was to walk with a Spo at your back.

  In the medical room were two cot-like hospital beds, the standard blood pressure cuff on the wall, and syringes on the counter. A large EKG machine lurked in the back, part of a failed experiment to find another way to tell fakes from humans.

  “It’s all so... earthly,” Claire said. “I thought this was a Spo facility.”

  “We deal with a lot of Rik,” Basher said. “We’ve imported standard hospital supplies.” He hesitated by the door, while his partner had Claire sit on a cot.

  “First, you will be fingerprinted,” the Spo told her. He removed an electronic pad from the cabinet and hit a couple things. “Right thumb," he said.

  Claire pressed her thumb to the screen, and it gave slightly. The swirls of her print showed briefly orange against the black background, then it was gone.

  “Right pointer. Left thumb. Left pointer. That is all.”

  He held the device in one clawed hand while entering a few more things on the screen.

  “Full name?”

  “Claire Elizabeth Kindler.”

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-one. The Spo took me four years ago, during my junior year of high school.”

  Basher swallowed. That fit with the data Sam and Nat had found.

  “Birthday?”

  “June 11.”

  Basher didn't realize he was lost in thought, until his partner repeated, “Basher, are you going to finish the questions?”

  He startled. "Of course."

  “Basher,” Claire said. "That's an odd name."

  "From Bashar," he said shortly. “It’s a nickname.”

  Claire blurted out. “How can I prove I’m not an alien? Can’t you look for a slit in my neck or parasite in my stomach or something? That must be what all this is for.” She gestured to the EKG.

  Basher narrowed his eyes. Even if she was human, wouldn’t she know how the Rik turned people? It was a combination of nanotechnology, inserted into the spine like an epidural, and electro-patterning. The only visible mark was the injection site on the back, and the Rik had quickly learned to erase that tiny mark.

  Basher finally came further into the room, taking the tablet reluctantly from his partner. While he switched to his note-taking app, his partner had Claire turn around and raised her shirt to examine her lower back.

  "No obvious scar," he said, and Basher dutifully recorded it. “Some bruising of the mid-section,” his partner added.

  Basher’s eyes snapped up and he saw the discoloration on her side.

  “What happened there?”

  She pulled her shirt down and turned around defiantly. “I bumped into an alien and it knocked me down and kicked me. I think it thought I was Rik, also.”

  "You are malnourished," the Spo said. "We will give you a vitamin injection."

  This was part of their script, and it jolted Basher back to his duties. Several Spo scientists had developed a new blood test to prove whether a person was Rik or not, but the standard procedure was to tell the subject that it was merely a vitamin injection.

  "It should improve your health in the next few days," his partner continued.

  When Basher and his partner first tried this blood test, they'd made the mistake of explaining it. He and his partner had to endure hours of Rik fakes pretending to be deathly ill. A few had even managed to work themselves into a fever. It had been clear they were fakes, but the resulting red tape to prove the results weren't accurate had taken forever.

  Now they simply told the fakes it was a vitamin shot to avoid the whole mess. Like he told Sam and Nat, the serum was a chemical cocktail that was neutralized by traces of nanotechnology in the blood stream. Theoretically, it could also indicate how long someone had been a Rik. A more recent Rik would neutralize the serum faster than someone who’d been a Rik for several years. Theoretically.

  Basher noticed the girl rub her thumb nail, and noted that it was rippled oddly. She probably was somewhat malnourished, a lack of Vitamin K would do that to her fingernails.

  He cleared his throat. It was standard to also ask a series of questions that Rik usually got wildly wrong. "Where were you born?"

  “Pensacola, Florida.”

  “How much land did your parents own?”

  “Um.” Claire watched the Spo fill the syringe. “We just lived in a regular neighborhood. It was a two bedroom house with a big back yard.”

  “How did you get to school?”

  “Mostly my dad took me on his way to work. I took the bus home. My dad worked for the forestry service, so he took me out in his boat on the lakes sometimes too.”

  Basher filled in her answers quickly. Was it just him, or was his partner moving in slow motion with that syringe?

  “How did you get off Earth?”

  “I told you, the Spo took me for their cadet program. I was there for nearly a year and then my mentor sold me to the Merith you met today, Faal. Actually, there were two of us, sort of. The other girl died.”

  The Spo tapped the syringe.

  “What’s your favorite book?”

  “For heaven’s sake, does that matter?” she snapped.

  “Just answer the question.”

  “I wasn’t much of a reader. I liked romances sometime
s, a few mysteries.”

  The Spo brought the syringe to her and stuck it in her arm without preamble.

  “Ow. Are you sure you got a vein?” she asked him.

  “Reasonably.”

  “Favorite food,” Basher said.

  Claire tore her eyes away from the needle and looked at Basher.

  “What are you trying to get at? Do the aliens not know this stuff, or are you just curious? Because I can tell you anything you want to know. When I was little my favorite food was macaroni and cheese, in middle school I loved tacos, and in high school I loved my dad's shrimp gumbo.”

  Claire watched the Spo remove the needle and press a bandage over the red dot. “Every year on my birthday my parents would take me to Disneyworld in Orlando and we’d stay with my grandparents there. My grandma would make tapioca pudding which I also loved. When my mentor sold me, I had just eaten something that tasted like onions and I had a bad taste in my mouth for weeks because I had no toothbrush.”

  The blood bloomed into the bandage, making a darker and darker mark. “I guess you did hit a vein," she added.

  Basher cleared his throat and looked away. “If you are human, I’ll apologize for not believing you in the morning.”

  “In the morning?”

  The Spo put the syringe into a plastic bag on the counter. “Figure of speech," he said, with a curious glance at Basher, obviously wondering why he'd almost told her the truth.

  Shoot, he shouldn't have said that. What was wrong with him? Basher tried to regain his footing. "On the other hand, Faal may have gotten approval to arrest you by morning. If you did steal that animal from him, he has a clear case.”

  Claire paled. "But on the ship you said he couldn’t have me until you were sure!"

  Basher shrugged. He felt bad threatening her, but squashed his impulse to take it back. He needed to distract her from his slip of the tongue about tomorrow morning.

  It worked. She couldn’t seem to breathe right after he mentioned Faal.

  "Can I at least have another room while you make up your mind about me?" she finally said. "The Rik don’t want me in their cell. They know I’m human and they... They were talking about me while I was sleeping. One of them said something about not having me in there tonight. I don’t know why, but I really don’t want to find out. See, I'm telling you the truth. I'm on your side."

  “There are no other empty containment rooms,” Basher said. “Or I would consider it.”

  “Well, who’s in the other ones? I’ve shared cages before, just not with people who might kill me," Claire said.

  They walked her back down the hall, and Basher paused at the first set of containment rooms. “This cell contains normal Spo criminals who are under arrest for everything from petty theft to assault. I wouldn’t go in there if I was you.”

  Spo skin changed colors like a chameleon, showing their emotion; and this room was a watercolor of frustration and barely controlled aggression. No way would he put her in there.

  The other room looked empty.

  “How about that one?” she said.

  “Look at the ceiling.”

  “Are those... sentient?” Claire gasped. “They look like giant wasps.”

  “Not sentient. They’re native to the Spo planet, and we aren’t sure how they got here. Perhaps they stowed away in a cargo hold, like rats on a ship. We’ve been rounding them up, but we didn’t have a large enough cage for them.”

  “Why don’t you just kill them? I would.”

  “Just between us, I would too –” Basher caught himself on the expression, and he gestured curtly for her to keep walking. “They’re endangered on Spo. We’re not allowed to kill them.”

  In the next section, there were also two rooms – the one with the Rik she’d been with, and another room with Rik.

  Basher watched her look back and forth, a guarded expression on her face.

  “I don’t care what you do," he said, untruthfully, "but I’d suggest your previous cell. They’re crazy, no doubt, but I’ve never seen them fighting. I can’t say the same for these.” He jerked a thumb at a military-looking crew of Rik in the other room.

  Claire sighed. “Will you at least check on me tonight? Or, I mean, maybe not you... But could you have someone come by and make sure they haven’t killed me in my sleep?”

  "I'll tell the night guard to keep an eyestalk out for you."

  Claire half smiled and raised her hand as if to touch his arm, just as she’d done before. Basher took two steps back and opened the door to her cell.

  He was actually beginning to wonder if she might be human, but he would know for sure in the morning. In the meantime, Basher would not allow himself to feel or do anything based on that possibility.

  CHAPTER 16

  Claire felt a rush of air as Basher slammed the door behind her and she wrapped her arms around herself.

  “Welcome back,” Young Twin said. “They’re about to bring us dinner. Are you hungry?”

  Claire nodded, then shook her head. “I don’t know.” All she knew was that Basher still didn’t believe her, and she had no way of knowing if he ever would. She’d almost felt that he might be considering it... but then he’d changed his mind. She didn’t know why it was so important that she make a connection to him, but it was.

  These Rik, some of them anyway, were being friendly to her, and she felt the danger of succumbing to it. She’d told Basher she was afraid that they’d kill her in her sleep, but her greater fear was that she’d connect with them. She’d felt Young Twin’s fingers on her cheek and she’d desperately wanted to counteract that with someone real. She’d felt, even if it was just her fingertips, that the contact would help her remember who to trust. Basher had refused, and now she felt herself slipping down the slope.

  “I know some of you don’t want me in your cell tonight, but you’re just going to have to deal with it," Claire blurted out. "And I told Basher, and he’s going to make sure the night guards keep an eye on me. So you shouldn’t try anything.”

  This wasn’t exactly the truth, but she felt the need to distance herself from them.

  They started doing that eye gaze thing again, and Claire snapped, “Stop that! I can see what you’re doing, you know. It’s not subtle.”

  There was shocked silence.

  “It isn’t?” Diva said. “How disappointing.”

  “Basher was right. You are all crazy.”

  “Not crazy,” Diva said, and sighed. “Just, not human.”

  “Not human,” they all muttered, like a too-often repeated prayer.

  Claire stared at them, they stared at her.

  “You can’t stand there all night,” Young Twin finally said, gently. “You might as well lie down. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  Claire rubbed the crook of her elbow where she'd gotten the shot. It was going to be a very long night.

  An hour later they were fed dinner, and the Rik gathered together to eat.

  Sage, Diva, and Athlete sat next to each other on Diva’s bed, and the twins sat across from them. Their knees bumped in the narrow walkway between bunk beds.

  Claire sat further away, and awkwardly held a small food box in her lap. Sage had passed it to her with a slight smile when it was delivered.

  When she cracked the lid, Claire smelled something amazing. She stuck the spork in it and pulled out some kind of pasta with tomato sauce. Human food! It looked like a recently frozen meal, probably shipped here in bulk, and Claire was thrilled.

  How she missed real food. Faal had fed her the occasional human “delicacy” he’d imported, like canned corn or crackers, but generally she ate an oatmeal-like mush that was appropriate for carbon/water species like her. On the Diarena’s ship she’d eaten better, but it wasn’t human food.

  Claire took another bite with the spork provided. It was wonderful. She closed her eyes and savored the taste. It reminded her of a Tuesday night dinner with her mom in front of a movie. It was leftover lunch after mass bef
ore a lazy Sunday afternoon. Tears filled her eyes.

  “That’s incredible,” Diva said. "So sincere.”

  “The neocortex handles the sensory input, but also connects to the emotional center of the brain,” Sage explained.

  Claire opened her eyes, her nostalgic moment ruined. “Are you talking about me?”

  Clearly they were. They all sat there with their food boxes untouched on their laps, watching her cry over her food.

  “We’ve had very little chance to observe humans in natural settings,” Sage explained. “What with one thing and another.”

  “Well, don’t observe me,” Claire said. “It’s annoying and I’m not here for your amusement.”

  Sage looked hurt and Claire told herself she didn’t care as she sat back on her bed, putting her back to them as best she could.

  She took another bite, without tears. The aliens were still quiet.

  Then Diva said in her melodic voice, “Thank you for this food and bless it to our bodies. Amen.”

  “Amen,” they all repeated.

  Claire choked. She hacked for a moment, and coughed to clear her throat, and then realized Sage was offering her a bottle of water. A long drink helped, but they were all staring at her again.

  “Okay, I have to ask. What’s that about?” Claire said. “Who were you praying to?”

  “The food,” Athlete said.

  “A spirit,” Diva said at the same time.

  “Our cells,” Sage said.

  “Nobody,” Old Twin said.

  They all looked at each other.

  “Hmm. Clearly we’ve never discussed it before,” Sage said. “I just assumed we agreed...”

  “Why would you pray at all, though?” Claire asked. “Who taught you?”

  “No one taught us," Sage explained. "We watched observational videos taken by Rik field agents. The ones already on Earth, you see. This is the human custom before meals, yes? An imprecation to remember the value of sustenance in a tertiary society removed from the primary role of food production...”

  “Oh, stop him,” Young Twin said. “He’ll go on and on about human psychology. The fact is: we don’t know why you do it, but we want to be human, so we do it.”