“Do what?” He stared me in the eye, calm and unhurried as he moved to sit in his favorite recliner, the one that used to have a sidearm tucked between the right arm cushion and the seat. The firearm was now safely stowed in my pocket, but he didn’t know that.
“You know, set me up. Kill a few dozen innocent women. Go into business with the cartel. Sell out your city.”
His hand moved to the space between the cushions and I smiled, watching his eyes change from blank to furious as he realized his weapon was gone. He sighed and lifted his han
d to cross his arms across his chest.
“Do what you have to do, Jess, but you won’t get a confession from me. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
I ached to shoot him at point-blank range, blow a hole in his chest the size of Texas, but something stopped me.
God, sometimes it sucked to have a conscience, not that this man would understand what that meant. I’d killed during my tour in the Middle East, but I’d been forced to. Kill or be killed. That was different. This? This was cold-blooded murder.
But seriously, he deserved to die.
I stared for a full half-minute, weighing my options. Kill him and run? Tie him up and call the cops?
They’d never believe me. Never. I was the sellout, the corrupt ex-military officer who’d been found with an extra million in the bank, a stash of C-bomb in my home, and the drug in my bloodstream. In this city, he was a god. I was a criminal and a liar. I was scum.
He smirked at me and the sight made me angry enough to stand and take a step forward. I was going to have to lie to him and take a chance I could push his buttons and piss him off. Force a confession. I’d left my stakeout as soon as I took his picture talking to the agents, but he didn’t know what I’d seen, and what I hadn’t. “I don’t need a confession, Clyde. I’ve got you on camera at the blowjob café with a hooker between your legs and bag of drug money on the table.”
“You bitch,” he sneered at me, all attempts at maintaining the appearance of humanity gone. “I’m going to get you so high you won’t know your own name, and then I’m going to dump you in the middle of the men. They’ll tear at you like dogs.”
The neurostims in my temples buzzed and I shook my head to clear it. It happened again, louder this time, a strange noise I’d never heard before, like machines talking to each other.
I took a step back and Clyde rose from his chair, crouching to make his move while I was distracted.
Shit. Something was wrong. I lifted a hand to my temple and moaned. I had to get out of here. Now.
Too late. Pain shot through my temples and I dropped to my knees. The shotgun clattered to the floor as I bent over and whimpered, fighting to remain conscious.
Clyde grabbed the weapon and took one step toward me before the front door exploded inward on its hinges. Three gigantic beings stepped into Clyde’s living room. They were not human. Their entire bodies were metallic, but not hard and reflective, like my grandfather’s wrenches; they were soft, like metal that moved, flowing over their bodies like skin, like living tissue. Their eyes were silver but in the center, where the pupils should be, ran black dots and lines like patterns on a computer part. They had eyelids, but they did not blink as they took in the room and the man who charged them with the shotgun.
They were like something out a movie. Robots come to life. Aliens. Something definitely not human.
Clyde blasted one of them with the shotgun as I grabbed my camera and scrambled beneath the kitchen table, headed for the back door. My head pulsed with pain but I knew these men—or whatever the hell they were—were not here for a friendly visit. If they wanted Clyde, they could have him.
The buckshot bounced off their armor, splattering in a wide pattern throughout the room. I clenched my teeth to remain silent as I felt a piece of buckshot embed in my leg, another in my shoulder.
I’d had worse and compared to the pain in my head, it was nothing.
I was crawling out onto the back patio when I heard Clyde start screaming. Heavy footsteps moved toward me, the thud of metallic boots shaking the hardwood floor beneath my knees as one of the monsters came for me.
Giving up all pretense of stealth, I scrambled to my feet and ran, my planned escape route now coming in handy, not to flee the scene with my recording, as I’d originally intended, but to run for my life.
Clyde continued to scream in agony, but I didn’t turn back. I ran, one of the creatures right behind me. It didn’t matter how many times I turned, how many shortcuts I took, or places I tried to hide. He kept coming, as if I had a homing beacon…
Shit. I lifted my fingertips to the scars on the sides of each temple and cursed fate, God, and the alien prince who’d abandoned me. They did have a tracking device. It was supposed to be a fucking language translator! The crackling sound had faded, but it was still there, and I realized it was their language. True to Warden Egara’s promise, as I heard more, their words became clear. Except they weren’t speaking aloud, like normal people, but through some kind of broadcast frequency my new implants could pick up. It wasn’t English, but I understood it perfectly.
“Find the woman. We must take her to the core.”
“She is approximately seventy-two feet from our position. We will capture her in twenty-three-point-five seconds.”
“The human male is dead. Get the female. We need to get off this planet before the coalition tracks our ship.”
“Nineteen seconds at current position and speed.”
“Increase speed.”