11

  Bianca finished her last final, grinning as she passed her professor a completed test booklet, and then she practically skipped out of the class. There was nothing more freeing than knowing she had no more tests to take. Her cell phone vibrated, and she paused outside the building to check it. It was Soren. Mike and Scott trailed behind her, but they were far enough away that she was able to read the message without them seeing.

  Soren: Have to cancel tonight. Attending state dinner in DC. Plan to talk to your father.

  She texted back as she resumed walking.

  Bianca: Good luck with Dad. Finals went well. Miss you.

  His reply came back a second later.

  Soren: Of course they did. You are brilliant. I expected nothing less.

  She grinned. That was why she loved him. She halted in the middle of the sidewalk. Bianca absorbed the surprise of that revelation. I love Soren. Truly love him.

  “Ms. Wells?” Mike asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  She shoved the phone into her purse and smiled back at him.

  “I’m okay.” For the first time in ages, she felt that restless need she had to prove her worth to the world diminish. Being in love made her feel stronger, more determined than ever to do what she dreamed to do, yet she didn’t feel as stressed as she used to about it. She almost texted him, but declarations of love were something to be done face-to-face.

  She headed back to the dormitories as dusk lengthened the shadows of the old trees across the lawn. The world felt different tonight, probably because she’d realized she was in love, real love for the first time in her life.

  Bianca waved good night to Mike and Scott and headed into her dorm. When she opened the door to her room and flicked on the lights, she gasped. Claudia lay on the floor, blood trickling from her mouth. She wasn’t moving ,but she was still breathing.

  “Claudia!” She rushed toward her friend, but before she could reach her, someone grabbed her from behind. She tried to scream, but a hand covered her mouth and a cloth smothered her nose. She was too panicked not to inhale the sickly-sweet scent. Her vision blurred at the edges like a watercolor painting as she tried to hold her breath. She tried to reach for the panic button on her wrist, but it was covered by her assailant’s other hand. Bianca went limp and tried not to breathe, hoping to fool him into thinking she was already unconscious. But he held on to her still, waiting, until she couldn’t hold her breath any longer. The world dwindled into terrifying darkness as she at last inhaled.

  When she came to, she was on a cold concrete floor. Her hands were bound with rope, too tight for her to move. She tried but couldn’t reach the groove on her stealth cuff. A pulsing pain beat behind her eyes, and her stomach cramped with nausea. She’d been dosed with chloroform. Mike and Scott had trained her to recognize the different effects of drugs that might be used on her if she were ever abducted. She curled in on herself, unable to stop a moan from escaping. The dark concrete walls reverberated with the noise, the echoing sound mocking her.

  “Looks like she’s awake. Make the call,” a woman said. The muffled sound came from behind the solitary door.

  Bianca lifted her head and squinted through the gloom. The large metal door had a sliding peephole. A man’s face was partially visible, watching her.

  She knew better than to engage with this man. It wouldn’t do her any good until she had a sense of the reason she was being held and who her captors might be. The latch slid closed, hiding her from view, and she struggled to sit up. The nest of old rags and threadbare blankets beneath her smelled of vomit and mildew.

  Bianca gagged as she brushed the blankets away. She studied the cell, looking for weak spots the way she’d been trained. Water dripped down part of one wall, pooling in a corner. The drip–drip–drip was a steady beat inside her head, making her headache that much worse. A tiny window too high up for her to reach allowed light to pierce the gloom, but the window glass was stained with years of grime. She closed her eyes. She could hear the faint sound of wind through the metal door and saw the light dancing under its edge as two people stood just outside.

  “Mr. President, I assume you’re standing next to Ambassador Soren. If you want your daughter to live, you’ll put him on the phone. Now.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then the man spoke again.

  “This is the Anti-K Resistance, Ambassador Soren. We have your human pet. If you want her, she’ll be at this address—271 Meadow Lawn Drive, the old tire factory in Princeton.” There was silence, and then “What do you think we want? For you Ks to leave our planet and never return.”

  Bianca listened harder. Whatever Soren said made the man furious. “I will kill her.” The metal door swung open, and a man in a ski mask entered. He pointed a gun straight at her head. “Beg me for your life, traitor,” he demanded. Bianca stared at the gun and looked back up to him.

  “Go to hell!” The words came out fainter than she wanted because her head was still foggy. She scrambled to her feet and tried to back away, but she hit the corner.

  “You first, K-loving bitch.”

  Bang!

  Pain exploded in her leg, and she screamed. The man put his gun away and turned the cell phone camera at her. She reached for her shin, crying out as she stared at the wound in her leg.

  “You see that? Get your alien ass here and you can have her, but only after we see you guys getting in your ships and leaving. Try anything dumb, and you can have what’s left of her.”

  The agony started to fade to something more tolerable, and she slumped onto her side, her body starting to twitch. She was in shock. The thought tumbled in her head as her blood dripped on the cement in time with the water leak next to her.

  Someone laughed. The sound was cold and cruel. But it wasn’t the man who’d shot her.

  Glassy-eyed with pain, Bianca stared up at a woman who was looking down at her through the open doorway.

  “You guys don’t mess around,” the woman said to the man who’d shot her.

  She wasn’t wearing a ski mask. Bianca tried to focus on her, memorizing details—her frizzy hair and cruel eyes framed by overlarge glasses. There was something familiar about her. It suddenly clicked.

  “You…the crazy tabloid owner…” Bianca remembered her from the news. Unable to find any real dirt on her father, she’d printed fabricated stories about him, stirring up outrage and controversy, all so she could sell a few more papers.

  “I’m not crazy!” The woman tried to grab the gun from the man in the ski mask. He yanked it out of her reach and shoved her hard enough that she stumbled back a step.

  “Just let me shoot her!” she yelled.

  “Not yet.” The man tilted his head, staring down at Bianca with cold, dark eyes. “We have a plan, remember?”

  “Yes, well…as long as you kill her and the K bastard when he comes for her,” the woman muttered. “I don’t think they will actually leave, but we can at least get one killed and find a way to pin the blame on them. It will be perfect. Even the K-lovers will turn on them.”

  “And then we have a real revolution.” The man’s smile, just visible through the ski mask opening, was cruel as he continued to gaze at Bianca in a way that made her skin crawl. “You should leave, Tarah. I’m going to set the fuses to the building. We’ll monitor the scene from a safe distance. Once the K enters the building, we’ll level the place.”

  “Good. It will make for a perfect K terrorist story. Soren’s own people had them both killed to keep them apart. Everyone will be furious on both sides.”

  Bianca had to find a way to warn Soren. She bit back a cry of pain as she crawled toward the door that they had left partially open. She wasn’t going to go down without a fight. But the second she reached the door, it slammed shut in her face, and the bolt slid into the lock.

  She was trapped.

  Ten minutes earlier…

  Soren was bored. These silly political state dinners were never as entertaining as they pretended to be. Only politicians and their spouses came. Soren desperately wished the scientists, poets, dreamers, and “doers” of this world were in this room instead. Earth’s best and brightest—like Bianca. Those were the people who should be meeting and talking. They would share ideas, build bridges, change the world. Not this back-patting nonsense.

  He glanced toward President Wells, who looked just as bored as he was. That wasn’t shocking. Wells was a “doer,” and he didn’t like this any more than Soren did. Once upon a time, they’d been great allies—before he’d taken Bianca as his charl. Guilt ate at him for destroying an important diplomatic friendship.

  Wells scanned the room, caught sight of Soren, and scowled.

  “You are lucky that he agreed to let you come,” Arus said, sidling up next to Soren.

  “I know.” Soren didn’t like to feel leashed, but he had to speak with Wells, and this was his best opportunity. He had to try to make the man understand what he could offer Bianca—immortality and love. She would never want for anything.

  “Arus, do you think you can get me an audience with him?” He hated asking, but he was not going to start this battle. He would treat Wells with respect, even if he had to take Bianca away without the man’s blessing.

  “That was always my intention. You built too much together for me to allow that relationship to end without a fight.” Arus walked through the crowd to meet with Wells, speaking to him. Wells shot Soren another look and then nodded, and Arus waved him over. The three of them left the banquet hall and stepped into a small parlor.

  “Soren,” Wells said coldly.

  “President Wells.”

  For a second neither man spoke, but Soren drew in a breath and tried to relax. “Mr. President, we have worked together for five years to safely and peacefully integrate the Krinar and humans into one society. You and I have both sacrificed much to achieve positive outcomes. There is so much to gain from a continued and growing bond between our peoples.”

  The president nodded slowly. “I agree. You’ve surprised me with how much you’ve stuck to your promise to keep the peace between Ks and humans.”

  “That’s because we are a peaceful race, a race who values love and hard work, especially positive work. We base our value in society on what we bring to others. I have been alive for over eight thousand years.”

  “Eight thousand?” The president choked on the words. “I knew you lived a long time, but…”

  “Yes, and in all that time, I’ve come to learn how rare it is to find someone who belongs to you, someone who is your other half.” He hoped, given what Bianca had said about her mother, that the president would understand the depth of one’s feelings for a mate.

  “Uh-huh…” The president’s eyes narrowed slightly as if he sensed where the conversation was headed.

  “What I’m trying to say is that I would like to ask your permission to court Bianca,” Soren said. He felt oddly nervous, not because he feared Wells, but the man wasn’t his enemy, and he might become family if he would give his blessing. The happiness and fate of their two peoples also rested on this moment. If he and Wells could come to an understanding, especially a positive one, it would make great strides for the peaceful relations between them. Soren didn’t want to have to choose between his people and Bianca, even though he knew that if it came down to it, he would choose his charl in a heartbeat above all else.

  “My daughter?” Wells drew in a deep breath. “She’s too good for you.”

  “I agree,” Soren said immediately. “She’s brilliant, compassionate, spirited. She’s everything a male dreams of in a charl, or a wife.” He was careful to add the term that Wells would see as positive. While charl was a positive word to the Krinar, it was still seen negatively by humans.

  “Wife?” Wells’s eyes bulged as he struggled to retain his composure.

  “Yes. Those are my intentions. To tie my life to hers in the ways of my people and yours, if she agrees.” Of course he knew she would, but her father didn’t know that yet.

  Arus’s surprised gaze drifted between them, and Secret Service agents hovered nervously nearby, as though they expected the president to either attack Soren or have a heart attack.

  “I will not”

  Wells’s cell phone rang, and he stared at the name on it. “It’s Bianca.” He answered the phone, and then his face went white.

  “They want to talk to you.” He held up the phone, clearly startled and more than frightened. Soren put it on speaker.

  “This is Soren.”

  A man’s gravelly voice came through the phone’s speaker. “This is the Anti-K Resistance, Ambassador Soren. We have your human pet. If you want her, she’ll be at this address—271 Meadow Lawn Drive, the old tire factory in Princeton.”

  “What do you want in exchange for her?” Soren held up a hand to silence Wells, who looked ready to shout at the phone.

  “What do you think we want? For you Ks to leave our planet and never return.”

  “And if we don’t?” Soren challenged, his tone hard-edged. A dark black rage was building inside him. When he found these men, he would rip them limb from limb.

  “I will kill her,” the man snarled. Wells made a choking sound. Secret Service agents were all whispering urgently into their comms to find the address the man had mentioned.

  Soren heard the sound of metal creaking, and then he heard the man speaking to someone else, not him.

  “Beg me for your life, traitor.” The harsh demand filled Soren with pure terror.

  “Go to hell!” Bianca’s furious reply came in the background.

  “You first, K-loving bitch,” the man on the phone snarled.

  Bang! The loud pop of a gunshot came through the line, and Wells collapsed into the arms of a quick-moving agent.

  Soren roared into the phone, “You will pay for that!” Then it chimed as a live streaming video came through. He stared in horror at the sight of Bianca lying on the ground, clutching her leg. She’d been shot.

  “You see that?” the man on the phone snapped. “Get your alien ass here and you can have her, but only after we see you guys getting in your ships and leaving. Try anything dumb, and you can have what’s left of her.”

  Arus caught Soren’s attention and nodded.

  “I will see it done,” Soren growled into the phone. The call ended. Soren tossed the phone at Wells. If he hadn’t, he would’ve crushed it into pieces.

  “Bianca,” Wells moaned. “She can’t be…”

  “She isn’t,” Soren said darkly. “She won’t be. I’m going to save her.”

  “You do and you’ll have my blessing,” Wells said, desperate and afraid. “Please, save my baby girl.”

  Soren nodded, unable to speak further as he rushed from the room. Arus was right behind him.

  “We have a way to fake the ships leaving. I messaged Korum while you were talking. We can broadcast images of our ships taking off like mirages in the skies all over the world. It will look like we are leaving.”

  “And in the meantime, I can find Bianca and kill every man in my way.”

  Arus pursed his lips but didn’t argue. They rushed from the White House onto the green lawn, where Arus pointed to his waiting ship. It was a large one fully equipped with weapons, a medical bay and sleeping chambers for at least five people.

  “We have the location in Princeton. We can be there in five minutes,” Arus said.

  “Five minutes…I hope she doesn’t bleed out by then.” He should have given her the nanocytes earlier. He had wanted to wait until she was certain she was ready, and now it might cost her life.

  When they arrived minutes later outside the abandoned factory, he gave his cuff to Arus. “Press the groove on the side and you’ll be invisible. Use it to watch the outside for me. I don’t want to be ambushed inside there.”

  Arus slipped the cuff on and studied the factory. “Be careful. This is almost certainly a trap. I’ll contact you if I see anybody.”

  Soren’s blood pounded through his veins as he stepped toward the entrance of the abandoned factory. The metal doors hung at odd angles on their frames. Just beyond them was darkness broken up by shafts of light from grime-coated windows. Soren listened, straining to hear any sounds. The humans would be stupid to stay here. Once he had Bianca safe, he would hunt them all down and exact his revenge.

  “Bianca?” He shouted her name loudly enough that the metal rafters above creaked in protest.

  A voice, the same one from the phone call, came over a rusty loudspeaker. “She’s on the second floor. Down the hall.”

  So the humans weren’t stupid. They knew better than to be here to face him, but they had set up cameras to monitor his movements. Which meant this was a trap. The only question was, what kind? Soren considered the possibilities as he rushed up a flight of narrow stairs and down the hall.

  He scanned the halls for choke points and barricades, expecting a legion of armed soldiers hoping to catch him in a crossfire, but he found none. Strange. He carefully avoided debris and the decaying floor tiles as he reached a room with a metal door. He jerked it open, finding the room empty.

  “Bi” He grunted as someone threw themselves at him, causing him to shuffle back a step. He was about to retaliate when he realized it was Bianca, who was now limping away from him.

  His brave, beautiful charl. She had ripped part of her dress and fashioned a tourniquet over her injured calf.

  “Bianca!”

  She stopped and turned, mouth agape. “Soren! I thought the man had come back.” She threw herself into his arms, burying her face against his chest, her whole body shaking violently.

  “Shhh, you’re safe now.” He cradled her close, trembling with relief just as much as she was. He hadn’t wanted to think about what could have happened if he hadn’t found her in time.

 

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