Close Liaisons Read online

  “Your family had nothing to do with it, and I doubt the fighters would be vengeful enough to needlessly harm fellow humans. But your kind can be very unpredictable, so I will make sure that several of our best guardians are stationed near your family, to keep an eye out for them.”

  Mia opened her mouth to ask, but he forestalled her. “And no, that wouldn’t be enough to ensure your safety. There are still a few key Resistance leaders unaccounted for, and they’re armed with some Krinar weapons. I expect them to go into hiding and leave your family alone, but they may be willing to risk everything to get to you. So until they’re apprehended, you will be safest in Lenkarda. And if you have to venture out, it will be with me by your side.”

  How convenient for him, Mia thought bitterly, he could now keep her prisoner with good justification. Of course, the Resistance would want to kill her – and they would be right to do so. She was responsible for all those deaths today . . .

  “How many people were killed this morning?” asked Mia, feeling like she wanted to die herself.

  Korum shrugged slightly. “I don’t know if the medics got to the ones who were burned fast enough to save them. Some of them might have died from their encounter with the shield.”

  “What about all the other ones, the ones who were hit with that red light?” asked Mia, her heart beginning to pound in wild hope.

  “They were knocked unconscious – and so were the ones who attacked our other Centers. They deserved to die, of course, but we decided to let your governments deal with them. It’ll be interesting to see what their punishment will be for violating the Coexistence Treaty and endangering your entire species in the process.”

  The relief that Mia felt was indescribable. The painful grip in her chest seemed to ease, letting her breathe freely for the first time since she’d witnessed the attack.

  And then Korum added, “Of course, we’re not going to leave it to chance. All those fighters now have surveillance devices embedded in their bodies, so we’ll know everything they do and everywhere they go. They’ve been effectively neutralized as a threat to us, and we can now use them to catch the rest – those that were not near our Centers today.”

  So he had succeeded in his mission of squashing the Resistance movement. Given the number of fighters lying on the field, Ks would now have thousands of walking, talking surveillance mechanisms all over the globe. It was quite clever really; why bother killing a human when you could use him instead? Pure Korum deviousness at work.

  She must’ve looked upset because he said, “Mia, stop worrying about this. The Resistance is over. It was a foolish movement to begin with. Just think about it. So they don’t like us being here and changing a few things. Is that really a good reason to risk so many lives? You have to admit, we’re nothing like the alien invaders of your movies. We have no desire to enslave humans, or to take away your planet. If that had been our agenda, we would’ve already done it. We settled here as peacefully as possible, living in our Centers with minimal interference in human affairs. That’s far better than what your Europeans had done to the American natives.”

  Still sitting on his lap, Mia looked away. If Korum was telling her the truth and John had lied about the meaning of charl, then the entire Resistance movement was misguided at best – and criminally irresponsible at worst.

  “And do you honestly think it would’ve been a good thing for you to have those seven traitors as your rulers? Because, believe me, that’s what they would’ve been. They wanted power, and they didn’t care who got hurt as a result of their actions. Do you really think they would’ve been content to live quietly among humans, obeying your every law and selflessly sharing Krinar knowledge?”

  Now that Korum put it that way, Mia could see the implausibility of what John had originally told her. Maybe the Resistance leaders had thought they could somehow control the Keiths once the other Ks had left – but that could’ve easily been a dangerous assumption to make. Mia mentally kicked herself. Why hadn’t she probed further into the Keiths’ motivations? But no, she’d blindly gone with what John was telling her, too caught up in her own personal drama to fully think about anything else.

  Korum sighed, and she felt the movement of his chest. “Look, it won’t be so bad being in Lenkarda, believe me. Aren’t you the least bit curious to see how we live?”

  Mia looked up at him again, feeling completely drained. “Korum, I just can’t . . . I can’t simply leave everything and everyone –”

  “What if I take you to see your family in a couple of weeks as we originally discussed?” he asked softly. “Would that make you feel better?”

  “We’d go to Florida?” asked Mia in surprise.

  He nodded. “You could spend a few days with them before we have to go back.”

  She smiled, the pressure in her chest easing further. “That would be wonderful,” she said quietly.

  He smiled back and gently brushed a curl off her face. “And hopefully, by the end of the summer, we’ll catch the rest of the Resistance fighters – so if you still want to come back to New York then, we’ll return here and you can finish your last year of school.”

  Mia blinked at him, hardly daring to believe her ears. “You’ll bring me back here?”

  “I will . . . if you still want to return by then.” Getting up, he placed her gently on her feet. “Now put on a shirt and some shoes while I get dressed. It’s time to go.”

  * * *

  Korum allowed her to take her purse with its entire contents, the weapon excluded, and nothing else. When she protested that she needed her computer and her clothes, he laughed. “I promise you, there’s plenty of everything where we’re going,” he explained with a smile.

  “What about my passport?” she asked, and then realized that it was a stupid question. She might be heading to a foreign country, but she sincerely doubted she would be going through airport security. Somehow, Korum had managed to travel there this morning and then come back to New York – all within a span of a couple of hours. No, thought Mia, they likely wouldn’t be traveling by airplane.

  Her suppositions turned out to be correct.

  He led her into his office, holding her hand as if afraid she would bolt. Walking toward the back of the room, he held his other hand in front of the wall and it slid open, revealing stairs that likely led to the rooftop.

  “Come,” Korum said, and she followed him with hesitation, her pulse racing at the thought of where she was going. It was too late to turn back now – not that he would have let her – and Mia felt a heady mixture of excitement and fear rushing through her veins as she walked up the stairs.

  They exited onto the rooftop, and Mia looked around. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to see – perhaps some alien aircraft sitting there. But there was nothing. The roof was empty, with the exception of some evergreen shrubs growing in neat rows around the perimeter. The rain had mostly stopped, but it was still wet and humid outside, and Mia could practically feel her curls frizzing up from the moisture in the air.

  “What are we doing here?” she asked in surprise. “Is someone coming to get us?”

  Korum shook his head and smiled. “No, we’re going by ourselves.”

  “How?” asked Mia, burning with curiosity.

  “You’ll see in a second. Don’t be afraid, okay?” He squeezed her palm reassuringly.

  Mia nodded, and Korum let go of her hand, taking a step forward. Extending his arm, he made a gesture, as though pointing at the empty space in front of him. All of a sudden, Mia could hear a low humming. The sound was unlike anything Mia had heard before – too quiet and even to be the buzzing of insects.

  “What is that?” she asked warily, wondering if Korum intended to teleport them somewhere. Mia had no idea what the limitations of K technology were, but she did know that Krinar physics had to have gone far beyond Einstein’s theories; otherwise, the Ks wouldn’t have been able to travel faster than the speed of light. Who knew what else they could do?

/>   Korum turned toward her, his eyes glittering with some unknown emotion. “It’s the sound of the nanomachines that I just released. They’re building us our ride.” And Mia realized that he was excited, pleased to be going home.

  Something began to shimmer in front of them. Goosebumps appeared on Mia’s arms as she stared in fascination at the strange sight. The shimmering intensified, as if a bucket of glitter had been thrown in front of them – and then the walls of the aircraft began to form in front of her eyes.

  Barely holding back a gasp, Mia watched as the structure assembled itself, seemingly out of nothingness. The walls slowly solidified, thickening layer by layer, and then a small pod-like aircraft stood in front of them. It appeared to be made out of some unusual ivory material, with no visible windows or doors, and was smaller than a helicopter.

  Mia exhaled sharply, releasing a breath she had been holding for the last thirty seconds.

  “It’s called advanced rapid fabrication technology,” Korum said, smiling at the look of utter astonishment on her face. “It’s one of our most useful inventions. Come with me.” And taking her hand again, he led her toward the newly assembled structure.

  As they approached, the wall of the pod simply disintegrated, creating an entrance for them. Mia blinked in shock, but followed Korum inside the aircraft. Once they were in, the wall re-solidified, and the entrance disappeared again.

  The inside of the pod did not look like any aircraft she could have ever imagined. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling were transparent – she could see the ivory color of her surroundings, but she could also see the world outside. It was as though they were inside a giant glass bubble, even though Mia knew that the structure was not see-through from the outside. There were no buttons or controls of any kind, nothing to suggest that the pod had any kind of complex electronics. And instead of seats, there were two white oval planks floating in the air.

  “Have a seat,” Korum said, gesturing toward one of the planks.

  “On that?” Mia had known that Krinar technology was far more advanced, of course, and she had expected to encounter some unbelievable things. But this . . . this was like stepping into some fairy realm where the normal laws of physics didn’t seem to apply – and she hadn’t even left New York yet.

  He laughed, apparently amused by her distrust. “On that. You won’t fall, I promise.”

  Warily, still clutching his hand, Mia perched gingerly on the plank. It moved beneath her, and she gasped as it conformed to the shape of her butt, suddenly turning into the most comfortable chair she had ever occupied. There was a back now too, and Mia found herself leaning into it, her tense muscles relaxing, soothed by the strangely cozy sensation.

  Grinning, Korum sat down on a similar plank next to her, and Mia stared in amazement as the white material shifted around his body, fitting itself to his shape. She was still holding his hand with a death grip, Mia realized with some embarrassment, and she let go, trying to act as nonchalantly as possible when confronted with technology that seemed exactly like magic.

  Korum nodded approvingly and waved his hand slightly.

  Softly, without making a sound, the pod lifted off the ground, rising swiftly into the air. With a sinking sensation in her stomach, Mia looked down at the see-through floor, watching New York City shrinking rapidly beneath them as they gained altitude. Surprisingly, she didn’t feel nauseated or pushed into her seat as one might expect during such a swift ascent; it was as though she was sitting in a chair at home, instead of rocketing straight up.

  “Why don’t I feel like we’re flying at all?” she asked curiously, looking up from the floor where she could now see only clouds.

  “The ship is equipped with a mild anti-gravitational field,” Korum explained. “It’s designed to make us comfortable by keeping the gravitational force at the same level as you’d experience normally on this planet; otherwise, accelerating like that would be very unpleasant for me – and probably deadly for you.”

  And then she could see clouds whizzing underneath them as the pod traveled at an incredible speed, taking her to a place that few humans could even imagine, much less visit in person. Never in a million years could Mia have thought that a simple walk in the park could lead to this, that she would be sitting in an alien ship headed for the main Krinar colony . . . that she would feel like this about the beautiful extraterrestrial who was sitting beside her.

  A couple of minutes later, they seemed to have reached their destination, and the ship began its descent.

  “Welcome home, darling,” Korum said softly as the green landscape of Lenkarda appeared beneath their feet, and the ship landed as quietly as it had taken off.

  Mia’s new life had begun.

  About the Author

  Anna Zaires fell in love with books at the age of five, when her grandmother taught her to read. She wrote her first story shortly thereafter. Since then, she has always lived partially in a fantasy world where the only limits were those of her imagination. Currently residing in New York City, Anna is happily married to the man of her dreams and closely collaborates with him in the writing of the Krinar Chronicles.

  To learn more, please visit www.annazaires.com.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author