* * *

  Damn him!

  In a moment of panic and rage induced strength, Torik tore free of Korr's grasp and dropped to his knees by the unconscious figure. After a brief search, he found a pulse on the human form and turned to Korr looming over him.

  "You could have killed her! The Tah'Na will not negotiate if she's dead." The growl of anger in his voice was barely restrained.

  "You have jeopardized us all," Korr said from behind. "She should not be taught to understand us. It will only allow her to learn what she is, and then we are all doomed."

  Ridiculous. He was as bad as Karik. "Then don't speak about it around her." It was that simple.

  "You should not be telling her anything!"

  In their desperation to save their world, they would never learn. The war had hardened them, emptied their souls of compassion. That would ultimately be the undoing of Lereni society, or perhaps that's what the Tah'Na had sought all along—to ruin them utterly.

  "You'd best hope she is not fatally injured," he said aside. "And bring me a medscanner." Onduun might be delicate creatures easily injured. Until he knew her condition, he wouldn't risk further injury by moving her.

  The clomp of steps approaching set off warning bells that made his skin crawl and the hair at the nape of his neck stand on end. Those steps had an all-to-familiar force to them.

  "What happened?" Karik, as expected.

  "She attacked me," Korr said.

  "No." Torik jumped to his feet. "She was trying to stop you from attacking me."

  She had tried to protect him. That went against what they'd been told about the Onduun…Maybe they had been told wrong.

  "Why?" The accusation in Karik's tone was directed at him, along with narrowed eyes.

  "She wanted to learn our language so we could communicate."

  Karik's hair lifted with his agitation. "And you decided that she should understand?"

  "It is…less frustration."

  Karik's hard eyes shifted from him to Korr, wiping the hint of a smirk off Korr's face. "I'll speak to you later."

  "But—"

  The snarl revealing sharp teeth cut off the objection. "If she is injured or dies, this will be on you."

  Although he directed his words at Korr, it didn't excuse Torik. The castigation returned to him. "What does she know?"

  "Basics. Simple things."

  She was a faster student than he had anticipated, but they had only brushed through the most elementary of sentence structures and concepts—shapes, colors, numbers, actions.

  Korr inched away, but Karik's eyes followed with a warning trailing them.

  "Four more days," he said, his gaze on the girl. "She must survive until we reach Rahmir. Some understanding may help us control her, but that will be as far as this goes. Beware the power of the Onduun. Already, she may be poisoning your mind with empathy."

  "I simply feel that she deserves a certain amount of respect. Gaining her trust may serve our purpose more fully."

  "Noted."

  Torik risked a look up at Karik's face and caught a slow nod.

  "She will try to pull the truth from you."

  "That will not happen." Not while he was wary of her power.

  "See that it does not. She must not know what she really is, or we risk her fighting against us. That treaty depends on her being presented to the premier of House Raou, alive and healthy."

  "I understand." Karik needn't remind him at every turn that it did no good for their world if they were dead or injured. Torik was a seasoned veteran with a few dozen skirmishes in ground combat behind him. But warfare hadn't taken away his soul to what really mattered.

  Although he doubted the girl would do anything to hurt him, he was grateful to the others for being mindful of what she might do to influence him with her power. Their world was the reason he had agreed to join this mission rather than settle as his clan had.

  "She will not learn of her true heritage until the time comes, as we discussed." The lecture earlier had been more than he needed; but as the one closest to the girl, Torik had placed himself most at risk of being compromised.

  "I will deal with Korr." Karik motioned with his chin to the girl and said, "You tend to her."

  "Yes, sir."

  Relieved when Karik followed the trail of Korr, Torik breathed easier. He returned his attention to Krissa. She seemed so harmless. All this time among the natives of the planet, she couldn't have learned of her heritage. She should be harmless, otherwise the males pursuing her and preparing to attack when their party found her would have been bowing to her instead of threatening harm.

  Unless that was her influence, the uncontrolled fear of what she felt pressed into their minds to make them harm her.

  No. That was unlikely.

  He brushed away the hair tangled over her face, immobile with no reaction but that of the wind. She couldn't have been influencing him now and he still felt pity.

  Upon realizing the silence pressing around him, he looked up and realized Korr wasn't coming.

  Certain she wouldn't be going anywhere, he hurried through the hold and up the stairs to the medical bay to retrieve a scanner.

  A few minutes later, Torik knelt over her with a satisfactory reading on the medscanner in his hand and breathed easier. But she could still be wounded.

  Carefully, he scooped her into his arms. Through the maze of supplies, he maneuvered with her, mostly sideways, and then had to hang her over his shoulder to climb the steps.

  From the table in the lounge, Theen looked up but said nothing. Karik and Korr were gone, likely to a private area where Karik could express his thoughts freely. Whether he would give Korr instructions to beware of her or not wasn't important. She would survive to free their world.

  After adjusting the Seres into his arms, Torik carried her to the cushioned bench and laid her on it to rest.

  Sooner than he expected, her eyes fluttered open and she inhaled sharply.

  "Torik?" She focused on him, her eyes clearing.

  He knelt to her level. "You are well," he said slowly.

  "What of you?" she said in Lereni.

  "He could not hurt me. You were brave to try to stop him."

  A smile flashed and twisted into a grimace, her hand going to the back of her head. "I…hurt."

  "Yes. I'm sorry. Korr is…dedicated." He wanted to say something worse but censored his words.

  "He scares me. The others scare me. Thank you for…kindness."

  Uncertain what to say for the double-edged knife cutting through him, he could only smile weakly. "You are welcome, Krissa."

  The guilt about what they were intending for her twisted, driving him to want to leave rather than face that this Seres was different than what he'd been taught. She was not arrogant or manipulative, unless her gratitude was fake; but she seemed sincere and had every reason to be when not understanding what she really was.

  A loud huff came from Theen at the other end of the booth. The others probably expected she was acting to win them over and ensnare them in some sort of plot. That was overthinking. Even if it was true, that didn't mean one couldn't show compassion.

  The touch of a warm hand on his arm stopped him from rising fully.

  "Stay. I…not alone with them." She would learn more words in time, but for now, he understood what she meant and would stay to keep her safe from the vindictiveness and distrust of the others. With nothing else immediately requiring his attention, he sat down on the cushions near her head.

  "This is good?"

  "Yes." She smiled at him. "Keep them…gone."

  "They will not hurt you."

  With that, she breathed deeply and closed her eyes.

  Chapter 6

  Krissa swallowed the water, feeling better in the lounge after the medical care Torik once again provided, this time to her head and neck. Of course, the full night's sleep, or what passed as nighttime on a ship in space with no sunrise or sunset, had helped revive her.

  Only one of the others sat nearby at the table, examining images and symbols—some form of writing, she guessed.

  To her relief, Karik only walked through the hold with a dark glower sliding over her. He didn't slow down but continued his tromping steps to the forward command center. She breathed easier when the door closed behind him and set her metal cup on the floor by Torik, her only friend on that ship.

  "Why he not like me? Is he…" Damn the lack of words yet! From what she did understand, she made a guess to finish, "…Mad at me?"

  Torik's eyes twitched in astonishment. "Karik thinks about our world, his duty."

  "Because of me?"

  He fell silent and she looked into his face, studying it. Despite his silence and turning to stare across the room from where he sat on the floor near her legs, it didn't take long to interpret the debate taking place within him.

  "It is me. Why do they not like me?"

  "You…frighten them."

  "Me?" She didn't believe that. How could she frighten them?

  "Yes. You are…" He paused, his eyes lifting away with a look of indecision crossing his face.

  "Yes? What am I?"

  The other Lereni paused in his work at the table to watch them. Torik's jaw stiffened and he turned to her and lowered his voice, "You are…not human. What you are can be dangerous."

  "Why?"

  "I am forbidden."

  "Forbidden?"

  "From telling you. I said too much."

  After a pause in which the truth hit like a blow to the head, she said, "Karik."

  "Yes. And his reasons are sound."

  "You agree with him?" Just when she thought Torik was different. She should have known—same coloring, same species, same uniform, same mindset.

  "No, but I do what I must to protect my world."

  What could be so threatening to their world about her? She was a nobody. The logic didn't fit in her mind.

  When she could think of nothing reasonable, another disconnect surfaced. "Why are you nice to me?"

  The hand with the spots on the fuzzy back fell upon her arm. "You are different, innocent of those like you."

  "Like me? But I'm…" Krissa sat up and dropped her feet to the floor as his words sunk in fully, slamming her into disbelief. Not human…

  There must have been a mistake. How could she not be human? She had grown up on Earth, looked human…

  No. There were oddities. Was that why they avoided her? Was there something about her that repelled real humans?

  This was too weird to think she wasn't human. How was it possible?

  How was all of this possible?

  Aliens existed; they were proof. What if she really was an alien herself?

  She looked down at the human body she had worn for twenty years. It had never changed but for its size.

  No. She was different. She had never had the normal female problems of other girls.. How odd that her adoptive parents had never questioned any of it. Had they known?

  "You will learn," Torik said.

  "When?"

  "Soon."

  She hated that answer. How soon would be soon?

  She followed his eyes to the scowl on the face of his crewmate, whose hatred chilled her to her core, and realized what he was saying.

  "Are they so afraid?" What could she possibly do to them? They were bigger and stronger than her. What threat could she possibly pose to these aliens?

  "Yes."

  She blinked at Torik, startled by the straightforward answer.

  "Why?"

  "I…am forbidden to say."

  Krissa huffed her indignation. Not even Torik would give her an answer of what this was about. How long would he stand by her and defend her from the others before he too decided she was a threat?

  "How I prove…truth?" She hoped he understood what she was trying to say in her still-limited Lereni vocabulary. They had to see that she wasn't going to hurt them. She just wanted answers.

  He shook his head and his fingers tightened briefly around her arm and released as the one known as Korr curled his lip back in a hint of a snarl. Hair flattened on Korr's head and his eyes narrowed. Without a word, Korr rose and marched past them in the direction of Karik.

  Oh, no.

  After he disappeared through the same door, Krissa exhaled and slumped on the seat. "This is worse than home," she muttered in English.

  Torik frowned and rose from the floor to sit next to her. "I don't understand."

  "I am…lonely on Earth. Like your…friends—" If they were friends. "—they not like me."

  He sat in silence a while before saying, "I like you."

  Although she breathed easier to hear him say it, she still had trepidations; it couldn't be that easy. "Then tell me why I am here." She turned on the seat to face him, searching his face for an answer.

  But he didn't give her an explanation and only dropped his eyes. As she expected—he wasn't truly a friend.

  She turned away, his silence in response to her request stabbing through her with betrayal.

  "Krissa…"

  She shrugged off the touch on her shoulder. "If you were a friend, you would tell me." She didn't need the false pity or any pity. Whatever they intended for her, clearly he wasn't the ally she had hoped he was. She wasn't going to fall for his kindness if it was just a way to win her trust so she would cooperate with whatever they had planned.

  After some time, he let out a breath and departed. Not even an apology.

  She turned her head slightly and saw Torik striding to the rear corridor. Between them, Theen paused in his analysis of the figures over the projection table to give her a cold look.

  The table and their writing sparked an idea. She turned away from it and studied the few signs about the hold area, warning signs she'd guess. If she could read, she might be able to assess what they did at that table.

  But that meant convincing Torik to teach her to read their language, a tough task when he wouldn't even tell her what she was.

  I thought you were my friend. He'd been considerate since the beginning, the only person in her life besides her adoptive parents to ever truly seem to care, to show her the kind of respect she had always sought but never fully appreciated. Torik wasn't like anyone she'd met before. He wasn't even human, but maybe that's what made it easier. The people she had known had all been human and none seemed to really care.

  Funny that. It took an alien to make her feel appreciated for who she was.

  But he still kept a secret from her. And that hurt more than anything, because she had wanted to trust him. His mannerisms inspired that in her.

  Why can't you just tell me?

  Was it that bad? Didn't she deserve to know? After all these years of wondering who her parents were and why they'd given her away with only a pretty bracelet to hint of who they were, she was with aliens who knew. Her parents must have cared. She finally was close to the truth, had only to reach out and grab it, but it still eluded her, because they felt it would bring some disaster on their world if she knew.

  Damn them all! She had to know. What was wrong with her?

  The thought rang through her skull to strike a chord that rattled her to her core. Torik's refusal to tell her left her shaken on that realization.

  Am I a monster? Was he protecting her from a horrible truth?

  No. She couldn't be.

  On the cushions of the bench, Krissa tucked her knees up to her chin. It couldn't be true. She'd always been good, studious, making her parents proud.

  But others, after initially friendly greetings, always made excuses to leave her. She'd learned to be guarded and wary of the encounters with strangers, all the while hoping for that special connection that she saw in other kids and classmates. It's why she had agreed to that party—an attempt to expand from the two or three regular somewhat-friends, and because her college roommate had said it would be "rocking".

  Maybe no one wanted her because there was something awful that they sensed in her.

  Tears burned in her eyes and she buried her face in her knees. What kind of monster was she? What kind of alien was she?

  A moment of humor elicited a small chuckle and passed. She would be alien. It explained the weirdness in her life, and maybe her innate ability to learn any language almost without effort and to alienate everyone she came in contact with before she said or did anything.

  On her wrist, the labradorite pendant with its iridescent rainbow in black pressed against her skin. She twisted her wrist to relieve the pressure but then thought again of it and lifted it to her eyes. At the right angle, the pointed oval shimmered its colors in the low light of the hold and she sniffed away the tears.

  A gift from her mother, but her adoptive mother had worn it every day since she could remember. When Krissa was older, her mother revealed that it had been Krissa's all along and she had simply been keeping it safe. The wire band twisted in swirls and twinings like something as delicate as a dragonfly's wings, but it was far stronger than she imagined and had adjusted to fit her wrist perfectly, something she had attributed to the heat of her body. Impressive jewelry making; definitely not human-made.

  Now that she knew she wasn't from Earth, she wondered if it's self-sizing was a result of advanced technology, or if the stone was even from Earth.

  She'd thought the symbols etched into it were some sort of inspirational glyph, but now a new suspicion dawned on her—alien script. Yet that didn't explain why she'd found the symbol in an old language buried in over four thousand years of dust, a language studied by so few that only scraps were available on the 'net, unless her species had been to Earth before.

  "Protection," she murmured the translation while studying it. A part of her felt closer to her mysterious birth mother to know that she had left it as a keepsake, apparently a message that she had been loved enough to give her an object symbolizing the protection her birth mother had felt for her.

  But it didn't explain why that mother would give up her child.

  Krissa wiped her eyes and studied the bracelet that she hadn't removed in so long that she had nearly forgotten that she wore it. It had become a part of her, her only link to her birth family and one she couldn't bear to part with.

 

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