Invaded (27 page)

Her failed attempts at entry must have set off an internal alarm, because a guard
ambled up from the front walkway. Without offering a greeting, he motioned for her
wrist while pulling a
handheld scanner from his pocket.

“
Mahra
,” Cara said, offering her hand, palm up.

He nodded a return hello and swept his device over her skin. A tinny voice from the
speaker informed him, “
Cah
-ra Sweeney. Resident of the first Aegis,
l’ihan
to
Aelyx of the first Aegis. Chief Human Consultant. No alerts.”

Cara perked up at the mention of her title. “I’m here to see Larish,” she told the
guard in L’eihr. “He’s a scholar in this building, but I can’t seem
to get inside. Can you help?”

He didn’t seem enthused about the prospect of letting her in, but he opened the doors
and led her to an office on the second floor.

The room looked more like a reading lounge than a formal workspace, with several deep-cushioned
chairs positioned around a data table, its surface displaying multiple windows of
text and images.
A middle-age man—Larish, she presumed—bent over the screen, tapping it to enlarge
a photograph of a red planet.

“Larish,” the guard said, extending two fingers in greeting. “
Cah
-ra Sweeney requests congress with you. Do you accept?”

Congress? That sounded dirty, like a line from a Victorian romance novel. Cara lifted
her data tablet toward Larish, who stared at her in obvious bewilderment. She smiled
brightly and bounced on
her toes in her best fan-girl impression. “I absolutely
loved
your thesis on the primate connection,” she said in L’eihr. “If it’s not too much
trouble,
I’d like to ask you a few questions.” Being human, her interest in the topic of shared
lineage shouldn’t raise any red flags.

Like many of his generation, Larish’s eyes betrayed little emotion, but his posture
lifted in tandem with the corners of his mouth. It told Cara she’d hit the bull’s-eye.
Academics loved nothing more than discussing their theories—especially with those
who agreed with them.

“Please,” he said in meticulous English, indicating the chairs opposite him. “Be my
guest.”

Cara thanked the guard for his assistance and took a seat. “I can’t believe I’m sitting
across from
the
Larish. Your work is brilliant.”

He waved her off, his smile widening. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Thanks for making time for me.”

“Anything to assist an eager young mind.” Larish sat back and crossed his legs at
the ankles. “How can I help you?”

Cara didn’t want to alarm him by leading with questions about the Aribol, so she started
small. “When did you realize the old legend was wrong—that your ancients were actually
human?”

“As soon as we made contact and accessed your electronic databases,” Larish said.
“Humans have unearthed fossils of
Homo Erectus
that date back more than a million
years. On L’eihr, we’ve found no remains that predate the ancients. Some of our anthropologists
argued that L’eihr’s mild climate and predominant water mass were to
blame—”

“Because remains decay faster in warm temperatures,” she interrupted. “Plus, weren’t
storms a big problem before you controlled the weather?”

“Yes,” he said, sounding impressed. “Which would have destroyed even more evidence…but
surely not
all
of it.”

“Totally.” She had been on board from the beginning. Now to get to the good stuff.
“I’m also curious about the Aribol—you know, the aliens who kidnapped all those
ancient soldiers and carried them here?”

“A name I assigned to them based on hearsay, you understand…”

“Of course.”

“What would you like to know?” he asked.

She leaned forward and caught her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment. “I can’t
stop thinking about them. I mean, if they had the technology to abduct a whole legion
of
warriors thousands of years ago, what’s stopping them from doing it again—here or
on my planet?”

Larish lifted a shoulder. “Nothing, I suppose. But they haven’t, which is telling.”

“What do you mean?”

He shifted in his seat, pausing for a moment while folding both hands in his lap.
“I don’t have any evidence to support this, but I believe the Aribol are tinkerers.
Behavioral
scientists on an intergalactic scale. They like to seed species across multiple galaxies
to see how each one develops uniquely in a new environment. I don’t think they wish
us harm. But
before I can convince you, I need to explain something about our ancients.”

She nodded for him to go on.

“To say they were merely brutal would be a flagrant understatement,” he told her.
“I’ve studied human history, and the ancients who ruled our seas rivaled that of your
most savage societies. Men and women fought alongside one another while the injured
and elderly remained with the younglings. Even children were trained in combat. I’ve
read stories of boys
and girls as young as ten doing battle.”

“Wow.”

“Indeed,” he said. “Even rulers occupied the front lines. In fact, one of our most
infamous queens died in a bloody battle, along with her consort. It was rumored she
was with
child at the time of her death, and several years ago, scientists confirmed it.”

“Oh, I heard about that. Their tomb was on the colony, right?”

“Very good.” He gave an approving tip of his head like a proud teacher. “The remains
were brought to our genetics labs when I was a youngling, but as my path didn’t
follow a scientific bend, I wasn’t able to study the data. Anyway, the queen was in
her second trimester when she perished.”

“I had no idea the ancients were so hard-core.”

“And it stands to reason their ancestors were just as savage when they were abducted
from Earth. Imagine what the Aribol faced when they teleported these warriors aboard
their
craft.” He sniffed a dry laugh. “It must have been utter bedlam.”

Cara imagined the scene: dirty, blood-streaked warriors wielding primitive weapons
against their kidnappers, fighting to the death to regain their freedom.

“The fact that those ancients survived,” Larish said, “implies the Aribol are not
a violent race. Otherwise, they would have simply terminated the legion instead of
re-homing
them.”

Cara supposed Larish had a point, but just because the Aribol were originally lovers
and not fighters didn’t mean they were passive today. Look how much the L’eihrs had
changed
during that time. “What if they got curious and decided to check up on L’eihr?” she
asked. “How do you think they’d go about it?”

Larish let out his version of a hearty laugh, more like a snicker by human standards.
“Very carefully, I imagine.”

Cara didn’t want to use the term
probe
, so she chose her next words carefully. “Do you think they might send a robotic device
to gather information about us?”

“Like a probe?” he asked.

So much for avoiding red flags. “Yeah, I guess.” She shrugged casually. “If you want
to call it that.”

“Anything is possible. They certainly have the technology to manage it.” He cocked
his head to the side and considered her in a way that warned he’d grown suspicious.
“Are you worried for your safety or that of your kind?”

“Uh…” She thought fast. “Yes, a little. Until a couple of years ago, I didn’t know
life existed beyond Earth, and it’s scary to think an advanced race might
swoop in and kidnap me.”

Larish offered a comforting smile. “You needn’t be concerned. The odds of a repeat
abduction are infinitesimal. The Aribol have lain dormant for thousands of years,
so I doubt they
pose any threat to us.”

That was because he didn’t know about the probes. Someone—either the Aribol or another
advanced race—had taken an acute interest in this world, and until L’eihrs
discovered otherwise, it was a good idea to assume the worst and hope for the best.

“Does anyone know what the Aribol look like?” she asked, pointing to the data table.
“Are there any sketches or photographs of them?”

“Only about a hundred.” He tapped the screen and spoke some cryptic commands, bringing
into view dozens of animated sketches that depicted everything from furry purple monsters
to
green-tentacled squid. “The only accounts we have of the Aribol are verbal in nature—stories
handed down from one generation to the next. As you can imagine, each report varies
widely.”

“Like a game of telephone,” Cara said.

“Pardon?”

“Never mind.” She flapped a hand. “It’s a human thing.”

“Anyway,” Larish continued, “I believe they have the psychic ability to project a
variety of physical appearances, to make us see what they want us to see. Besides,
if
L’eihrs can change our features, it stands to reason the—”

“Wait,” Cara interrupted. “You can change your appearance?”

“Well…” Larish ducked his head. “Perhaps I exaggerated. We can lighten or darken our
skin, and of course alter our hair and eye color. It’s how our Voyagers
infiltrated the human population before making contact.”

Something he’d said piqued her interest. “How do you change the color of your eyes?”

“With cosmetic drops. It’s quite simple.”

Cara thought back to the day Aisly had applied drops to her eyes, which seemed to
darken to a slightly smokier shade of chrome afterward. Those drops were cosmetic,
not medicinal. But what was
the point in darkening Aisly’s eyes…unless they weren’t silver to begin with?

Which would mean Aisly wasn’t a clone.

The tiny hairs on Cara’s forearm prickled, standing on end. Her instincts told her
she was right. Jaxen and Aisly were different—she’d always sensed it. Nobody seemed
to know
the siblings personally. What if they weren’t L’eihrs at all? What if they were something
else entirely—like an advanced alien race with the ability to alter their
appearances?

Could Jaxen and Aisly hail from Aribol?

There was just one hole in her theory: as brilliant as the Elders were, one of them
would have known if outsiders had compromised The Way. If nothing else, Silent Speech
would reveal the
impostors’ true nature.

“Miss Sweeney?” Larish said, jerking her back to present company. “Are you all right?”

She flashed a quick smile. “Fine, just thinking. But I should probably get back to
the Aegis.” She stood and held two fingers toward him in a good-bye, and he did the
same.
“Thanks for your time.”

“My pleasure,” he said with sincerity. “Come back whenever you like.”

Good thing he’d extended an invitation, because Cara needed all the help she could
get. “I’ll take you up on that.”

A
elyx heard a knock at his door and set down his interview script. “It’s unlocked.”

The door flew open and David poked his head into the room, apologizing with his eyes.
“Hey, I know you’re studying lines and stuff, but do you have a minute? Syrine just
hopped in
the shower, so this is the only time I can talk.”

To hear David explain, you’d think he never left Syrine’s side, which was only partially
true. The two parted for public relations visits, bathroom breaks, and the occasional
foray
into the living room when the ambassador was home.

“Sure, the notes can wait.” Aelyx tried not to sound bitter, but truthfully, he resented
the fact that Syrine had commandeered his only friend on Earth. Aelyx would never
admit it,
though. Not after he’d confided his feelings to Cara, who had then giggled and accused
him of having a “bromance” with David.

The bed jiggled when David took a seat on the other side, but instead of initiating
dialogue, the boy picked at his cuticles.

“You okay?” Aelyx asked. Bitterness aside, he hoped there wasn’t trouble in paradise.
He wanted to see his friends happy, even if they had abandoned him in favor of each
other.

“Yeah, it’s no big deal. I just wanted to talk. You know, guy-to-guy.”

“Is something the matter with you and Syrine?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” David bowed over, cradling his blond head in both hands.
“I need to process what’s going on, but I can’t talk to any of my buddies
about this or it might get back to my CO. He’d have my balls for paperweights if he
found out about Syrine and me.”

“Talk about ugly paperweights,” Aelyx said.

David gave a throaty chuckle, but his shoulders remained clenched. “The worst.”

“So talk.” Aelyx sat back against his pillows and folded both hands behind his head.
“But you’d better make it quick. Syrine takes short showers.”

David nodded as if to get down to business. “I’m all mixed up.”

“About what?”

“How I feel. Where this is going.” David pointed toward the hall bathroom, where Syrine
hummed off-key over the spray of running water. “I thought I was in love once
before—senior year with this girl named Beth. I wanted her all the time and I couldn’t
stand to see her talk to other guys. But this is different.” He grimaced. “This is
painful.”

Aelyx didn’t quite follow, and it must have shown because David gave a sad shake of
his head. “Syrine’s all I think about. And when I imagine her leaving in a few weeks,”
David said, palming his chest, “it hurts. Like it
really
hurts, right here under my ribs.”

Aelyx understood now. His own chest had perpetually ached since he’d left Cara’s side.
David may have thought he was in love before, but this sounded like his first experience
with
the real thing.

“And when we’re together,” David said, “you know…
alone
…I feel like I’m a living puzzle, and she takes a piece of me every time. The more
I’m with her, the more I lose of myself. It’s like I only feel whole when we’re together
because she’s got all of me.” He smacked his own forehead in disgust.
“God, that sounds cheesy.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Aelyx hadn’t been physically intimate with Cara, so he didn’t know
with any degree of certainty, but it made sense that consummation would lead to
a greater level of attachment. “I think what you felt for Beth was infatuation. But
this time, it’s love. And yes,” he said with a sympathetic nod, “it’s equal parts
excruciating and wonderful.”