I opened my eyes and frowned. A glint of light on the ground caught my eye. The bracelet still lay where it had fallen.
On impulse, I bent and picked it up, turning it over to inspect the inside, where four markings had been etched, the writing something between hieroglyphs and Roman numerals. The metal felt cool and smooth, like polished glass.
I can’t leave it out here for someone to find. If he’s telling the truth, then someone finding this thing could be dangerous for his people if it got into the wrong hands.
“I’ll just hang onto it while I consider things.” Stuffing it into a side pocket of my backpack, I closed the tailgate, hopped into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. I’d go back to the park and try to forget I’d ever met an alien named Drayven Naxar.
After a warm shower at the nearby campground facilities, I ate a peanut butter sandwich, then tied my hammock between two tall pines and climbed inside and laid down.
The fresh air, sprinkled with the scent of grilled meat and spring flowers, eased my nerves. Though I tried to banish this morning’s events from my memory, it was no use. Drayven’s face—hisrealface, kept invading my thoughts. Now that I’d had a few hours to process the events in the last two days, the fear I’d initially felt changed into curiosity. And annoyance.
How could I be both fascinated and irritated with Drayven?
Does it matter? He’s gone and he’ll never come back because I shunned him like so many have shunned me.Why hadn’t I even tried to give him a chance, to learn from him? But I knew why.
Every person I’d ever known and loved had left me or let me down. My anger really wasn’t directed at him, but at myself for not being able to trust anyone, to let them in, for always running away.
He’s gone, probably back on Mars or wherever, and I’ll never have a chance to tell him what I think, what I feel deep in the marrow of my bones.I’d never kept a lover for long. As soon as they became clingy or tried to change my way of life, I always left.
But Drayven didn’t seem disgusted or intimidated by my free spirit. He’d accepted me exactly as I’d been. Flawed, quirky, and human. Why couldn’t I have done the same?
We just met, yet it feels like I’ve known him forever.
Regret tinged my thoughts. Closing my eyelids, my body swinging gently with the breeze, I recalled Drayven’s pink tongue, split at the end, as it swiped against his sharp teeth, how his purple skin flushed with heat, how his horns—the color of onyx—emphasized the lightness of his eyes. With his true form in my mind, I faded into sleepy darkness.
Chapter 5
Imust make the most of this trip before I return and forget I ever met a human named Gerri.
With a tap of my finger on the viewscreen, I selected the opposite end of Barkley and zoomed in on a large building, clearly defined on the map as a botanical garden and ordered the computer to take me there.
Several messages scrolled across the console panel: three from Baraxen and two from his brother. I glanced at the communication readouts. There were still plenty of Earth hours left before my return to Mars, so I would salvage what I could of this trip.
For several hours, I stealthed above the city, scanning the university, the medical facility, the weatherworn church, and the city park. Nothing in the data screamed for my attention or felt very inspiring.Maybe I should just accept I am an engineer gifted with a knack for creating ships to get from point A to point B—nothing more.Getting my people to Voldera in onepiece should be my focus.Let someone else worry about their mental well-being.
“The mind cannot survive without the heart, though.”
Gerri’s brown eyes and slow smile flashed in my thoughts, and I imagined her touch on my skin again as we painted, her soft breath in my ear.
“Get out of my head,” I growled. But similar to a pleasing song, I could not turn off my thoughts. She had become a harmony of emotions to my lonely heart, a breath of clean air for my lungs, a sweet song caressing my ears.
I must concentrate.
Forcing my mind to the present, I reached for the lifecord around my wrist to ensure its mode remained in projection so I could blend in with humanity.
Only the smooth skin around my wrist met the ends of my fingers. My heart stopped, and I cursed.
I never retrieved it when I left.Besides the lifesaving medicinals loaded into its core, lifecords also contained highly evolved Volderen technology.In the wrong hands, such as the United States government, it could prove deadly to my race.
My skin prickled with panic, but I forced the sensation down. I needed calm, not chaos.
The first order of business would be to track the bracelet with the Sparrow’s scanning system, which detected Volderen technology across vast distances.
Although I had lost the bracelet on the other side of town, no more than half arugaraway, it did not mean the device still lay on the ground. Out in the open, anyone could grab it and accidentally trigger a pre-programmed routine. Knowing how dedicated and persistent the military’s Xeno Vigilance Unit could be, one bleep from the lifecord would send XVU to that person’s doorstep almost instantly.
How could I have been so ignorant?But I knew why.
Gerri Johnson.
