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“No lies, ma’am. Just the gruesome facts. Did you really think that using alien technology to heal the damage your brute here did would somehow undo the fact that he savagely beat your ex? Or the fact that he nearly killed Ryan’s friend when he upended the car he was in.” The wicked grin he flashed showed even from behind his clear plastic biohazard mask, reaching his beady eyes, which glinted with exuberance. “I can’t wait until the tests are done. As soon as the nerds have gotten all the information they can out of that thing, I’ll be free to do whatever I want to him. I can’t decide which would be better: torture first, or flat-out extermination of this threat to Earth.”
“Q’on is not a threat to anyone!” I pounded my fists on the plexiglass wall, wishing I could be smacking Agent Wilson’s thick head. “He only wants to protect me. If Ryan hadn’t attacked me, he wouldn’t have laid a finger on him.”
The agent’s eyes crinkled in mock humor as his brows shot up. “I thought hedidn’tlay a finger on him. Didn’t you say he only gave you the restraints?”
Crap. He made me so angry that I forgot what lies I’d told him. I couldn’t even see straight, let alone remember what fragments of truth I’d given and what I’d fudged in my account of what happened.
“That’s what I meant. He put on the restraints.”
“So, he participated in kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment?”
“I didn’t say that. You’re twisting my words.”
Agent Wilson made a show of inspecting his fingernails, though his hands were gloved. “And I suppose you had no idea that your ex and his friend were hypothermic by the time we found them? The heater you’d so kindly provided for them stopped working, and the temperature dropped during the night. We have them in our infirmary now, with warming blankets piled on them. They might survive, despite your best efforts.”
Shit. I hadn’t considered what would happen if the heater broke. It was an old one, one I’d been meaning to get rid of—that’s why it was in the shed in the first place—but it never occurred to me that it might shut off. I despised Ryan, but I didn’t want him dead. Not that the AARO would believe that if I said it. No, I was looking at hard time, and so was Q’on … if he lived through their experiments.
Then something Agent Wilson said sank in: Ryan and Evan were intheirinfirmary. Here. That meant they weren’t brought to a regular hospital with normal cops. They weren’t getting the ordinary authorities involved yet, which might have been a good thing. I didn’t know anything about the AARO, but maybe they had limitations to their scope. Usually, covert government agencies ran amok in the movies, taking liberties that the police couldn’t. If these agents were keeping my ex as segregated as me and Q’on, there was a chance that what they were doing was against the rules. Could Q’on and I use that against them?
I didn’t get much chance to think about it before the woman in the lab coat was back with her guards. She took more blood from me, without any explanation, and pulled some hair from Q’on’s head after taking another cheek skin sample. I had no idea what the tests were for, and it bothered me that she wouldn’t say.
This went on for several days. Agent Wilson would come in and harass us, and periodically the scientist or doctor, whatever, came in for more tissue samples. They fed us a couple times a day, as promised, and allowed us a couple hours’ sleep at a time. It became almost routine, and I noticed that between visits Q’on had become quiet and withdrawn. He still stayed as close to me as the plexiglass wall would allow, but he all but stopped talking. I worried that something was wrong, though every time I asked he just grunted and shrugged, his eyes locked on the door to our cell.
On the fourth day of this tortuous monotony—or at least, I guessed it was the fourth day, as I’d lost all sense of time when my smartwatch battery ran out—Q’on’s demeanor changed. Instead of sitting in silence, he began to pace, his every muscle coiled in preparation for … what? Did I miss something?
Apparently, I did miss something, because right as Q’on geared himself up, Agent Wilson appeared with the scientist.
Occasionally he was the only guard who accompanied her, and this seemed to be one of those times. I guess since Q’on wasn’t fighting the sample collection, they weren’t too concerned with his threat level. One lone agent was enough, I suppose, when Q’on behaved himself.
Except that day, Q’on wasn’t behaving himself. His yellow eyes followed the duo’s every move, from the door to my cell to his, and the whole time he looked like a wild animal waiting to strike. It was sexy as hell, though admittedly a bit terrifying. I simultaneously wanted to jump his bones and cower away from him.
Agent Wilson seemed oblivious. He even whistled a little tune as he unlocked the door to Q’on’s side of the room.
I don’t think he ever saw it coming.
Hell, it was over so fastIalmost didn’t see what happened.
Q’on struck with lightning quickness, efficient, with deadly accuracy. Agent Wilson dropped like a brick, and the scientist didn’t even have time to scream before Q’on caught her in a weird headlock. Within seconds she passed out, and he lowered her to the floor. He swiped Agent Wilson’s passkey and left the two of them in a tangled heap as he hurried to my door to open it.
I surged into his arms the second he had the door open, and he held me close for a few moments. A few days without his touch was too much, and it felt so good to be wrapped up in him again that it almost ached.
Q’on kissed me so deeply I thought he’d steal my breath, but he backed away just as abruptly.
“No time. They patrol every few minutes. We have to run.”
Run? I was half starved and sleep-deprived, and he expected me to run? “Q’on, I—”
He left me no room for argument. When I didn’t immediately agree to book it, he scooped me into his arms and carried me down the maze of hallways. His gripper-socked feet pounded on the concrete floors. The sound echoed in the empty halls, and I worried we’d draw unwanted attention with it.
To this day I still don’t know how Q’on did it, but he found the exit in less than two minutes. We exploded out the door at full force—
—Straight into a blizzard.
The sudden shock of freezing air took my breath away, and I gasped and wheezed in an attempt to force my lungs to function again. My body shivered violently, and I curled closer to Q’on’s chest, hoping to siphon some of his warmth.
Muffled shouts pierced the gale-force winds, but I couldn’t see anyone or anything in the whiteout conditions. I didn’t know what capabilities Q’on’s eyes had in this environment, but given that he said that Xalan is a temperate planet, he probably wasn’t accustomed to weather like this, extra layers or no. He might have been just as blind as I was, or he might have had some special Xalanite trait that allowed him to see thermal images. Kind of likePredator, or at least that’s what my mind came up with as he ran through what I assumed was a parking area or maybe a courtyard, dodging unseen obstacles. Were we even heading for a gate?
My question got an answer when he paused just long enough to vault into the air, grabbing what sounded like a chain-link fence one-handed. He started to climb, and if I had learned anything from watching movies and TV, there would be barbed wire at the top.
