Much like the command center in the Golden City, she realized. They stepped inside and the air felt cooler, fresher within. The door slid shut behind them and Kirov murmured, “Come.”
The hallway was brightly lit, but not in a clinical way. Kirov led her down and they passed mostly closed doors. But a few were open rooms that revealed walls of Com screens, similar to the ones at Kirov’s home, rooms Lainey shamelessly peeked inside.
A pair of Luxirian males inclined their heads at Kirov, stopping in their paths, as they passed. Kirov murmured something in Luxirian but his grip tightened at her waist and Lainey was once again reminded of the night of the lunar celebration. How he’d told her his Instinct demanded he ‘mark her as his.’
Suppressing a shiver at that erotic memory, Lainey nodded at the two males with a small smile when their eyes narrowed on her curiously. But Kirov kept moving, never stopping.
Not until he reached a door at the end of the labyrinth of a hallway he’d just maneuvered her through. Without him beside her, she’d never be able to find a way out. There were no neon exit signs with arrows to point her back, not on Luxiria.
That thought made her antsy, slightly trapped, and she picked at the skin around her fingernails, that old nervous, disgusting habit returning. She’d forgotten what it felt like, to be surrounded by walls.
Then Kirov ushered her through the last door…and Lainey managed to forget about those fears. Because he’d taken her to a large room, a room so big that if she yelled, she would hear echoes. There were no windows, since they were deep inside the hill, but there were ten panels of screens that showed live feeds of Troxva, of the Golden City, of other places on Luxiria that she didn’t recognize, beautiful places she wanted to see one day. She even saw anoceanon one panel, with giant, cresting waves. In another, she saw a peaceful forest, with trees similar to the ones surrounding the lake, white and mossy, swaying with a small breeze.
In the center of this giant room was a large, metal table, with various projects in various states of completion laid out, much like Kirov’s ‘office’ at home. Coms, with their bright, blinking screens, were positioned on the furthest wall. Some of Kirov’s projects were there, hovering in beams of blue light from the Coms. She wondered if those beams were the Luxirian version of a USB adaptor.
“This is my personal lab,” he said from behind her.
“It’s all yours?” she asked, awed.
“Tev,” he murmured, coming close, leaning his forehead down into the back of her head, wrapping his arms around her waist.
And just like that, Lainey forgot her frustration with him, for keeping her in the dark about his family. Perhaps ‘forgot’ wasn’t the right term, but she wouldn’t push him, not right then.
“And you think I’ll be able to help you with something?” she questioned, eyeing the space with trepidation. “Because I have to confess…back on Earth, I still had an old flip phone and I couldn’t tell you the difference between a Windows computer and a Mac.”
Lainey had only ever needed her sheet music and a piano. That was what she’d spent her time on. Nothing else.
“I need you to identify something I found,” he said, dragging himself away from her. She followed him to the impressive set up of Coms and he pushed away a heap of metal from a nearby table, clearing a space for her to sit. He helped her up, the cool table chilling her ass and the backs of her thighs, before his long, graceful, masculine fingers flashed quickly across one of the screens.
“Okay,” she said, slowly, still slightly confused.
Then she froze.
Because sounds were coming from the Coms. Sounds she’d never thought to hear again.
“That’s…that’s…” she trailed off because she didn’t want to miss a moment.
It was the song “Johnny B. Goode.” Performed by Chuck Berry.
The famous opening guitar riff was playing through unseen speakers, the sound completely…humanin such an alien place.
It was jarring. It was surreal. It wasfamiliar.
Kirov was watching her reaction closely but he let her listen to the entirety of the song before he asked, “This is…music from your home planet?”
“Yes, it’s rock and roll,” she whispered, her eyes wide because she huffed out a breath, a sudden grin appearing on her face. “Oh my God, Kirov, where did youfindit? Do you have others?”
He jerked his head in a nod and her breath hitched in excitement. “Tev. I found them in the Uranian Federation’s database. Apparently, an Earth probe was intercepted in the Fourth Quadrant, its contents uploaded, and then released.”
A probe?
Lainey’s brow furrowed, racking her brain.
“There were other contents,” Kirov explained.
“Like what?”
“Images. Languages. Sounds. Audio sounds, not music,” Kirov said, turning his attention back to the Coms before he played the unmistakable sound of chirping crickets.
