The sun hung high overhead, the yellow beams light and inviting on the soft fabric of his sweater. At Penny’s insistence, he’d pulled the hood up over his head, obscuring his face in shadow, and let the sleeves hang down low, covering his hands. The disguise wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny, but from a distance, he might look human enough.

They hadn’t said much since the kiss. Krayter kept pulling his hand down as it tried to rise up and touch his own lips, trying to feel the echo of Penny’s. She’d kissed him. No tricks, no games, just the right moment alone between them. He’d be outed as a lovesick fool if he asked her for another kiss right now. But the woods were heavy around them and a tree would provide cover from her sisters for at least a few seconds.

But Krayter had control. And hope. His denya wanted him. She’d already chosen him in some form, taking him to safety in spite of her people, and in spite of the danger.

Of course, he didn’t quite know where safety was. After more than an hour of walking, the trees looked almost the same as the moment they’d entered the forest. All Krayter knew was that they were headed to Murphy’s. No one had told him what Murphy’s was, or how far they had yet to go. But neither of the girls was complaining and Krayter wasn’t about to be outdone by two children.

“Wouldn’t it be better to make our escape once it’s dark out?” Nicole asked from behind him. They walked single file through the woods, led by Penny, then Resa, then Krayter. He’d been thinking the same thing and almost turned back to somehow silently thank her for asking. But he kept his head forward, not certain how she’d take a smile from him yet.

Both of Penny’s sisters seemed to be guarding her from him, and he wondered if Penny had caught on. He didn’t think she’d put them up to it. She seemed the type to say what she meant, not rely on protection from two kids.

“No,” Penny called back over her shoulder. She held a branch to the side and let all of them pass before jogging back up to the front of the line. “Dad gave us until night. I called and let him know that we wanted to be picked up at seven. That should buy us a few hours.”

They walked on in silence, with nothing but the sounds of twigs cracking under their feet and birds in the air. It would have been nice if it weren’t for the threat of armed men somewhere outside of view. Jaaxis didn’t have much in the way of greenery, which made upstate New York a wonderland, even if his legs were beginning to ache. Months on a spaceship followed by weeks in a big city made walking for miles and miles along uneven ground a somewhat unpleasant experience.

The trees thinned and Penny stopped, holding up a hand. Krayter and Nicole caught up and Krayter stood right behind his denya, subtly brushing a hand against her side while he looked over her shoulder. She leaned back a fraction into his touch, and Krayter didn’t try to suppress the smile that bloomed. Even with her sisters right next to them, she didn’t reject him.

Over her shoulder he saw a dilapidated white house with a half-caved in roof and grass growing up to knee height.

“Murphy’s?” he asked. The place was abandoned, the ancient road overgrown and not a person in sight. “Are we hiding out here?” They’d walked a long way from the house, but as far as Krayter knew, they hadn’t yet left the Highland Settlement territory, which spread for miles and miles.

“Not hiding,” said Penny. She smiled at him and pointed towards a small outbuilding beside the house. “Mr. Murphy left the settlement two years ago. And he left his vehicle there.”

“All the roads will be guarded!” said Resa, looking up at Penny like she’d suddenly lost half her brain. “No one will let us out.”

“The hover works now,” Nicole responded to the unanswered question. “He left it here because it was busted. I’ve been playing around with it.”

At that, Penny grinned. “That’s what I thought.” She clapped an arm around her sister’s shoulder and pulled her close, planting a big kiss on her cheek. “You’re the genius in the family.”

Nicole’s face scrunched into an expression that Krayter couldn’t identify and she pushed out of Penny’s embrace. “Ew! Alien lips!” She said it like a tease, but her cheeks turned bright red and she glanced back at Krayter, chagrined. “I mean, it was no big deal. I just needed to replace a thruster and fix some frayed wiring.”

Penny let her go and Nicole took a step to the side. They dynamic seemed familiar, as if the girl would rather shrink away than be acknowledged for her accomplishments. “Can you take Resa and get the transport started up?” Penny asked. If the girl wouldn’t take praise, at least she could have more responsibility. “Leave your bags here in case anyone is looking out. Just be casual.”

The girls shrugged their bags off their shoulders and left after a quick goodbye.

“That seems like a lot of responsibility,” Krayter observed as they left.

“If I baby them, they’ll just get resentful. I’m their sister, not their mom, you know?” She glanced over at him out of the corner of her eye.

Krayter stepped up beside her, more to keep himself from sliding his arms around her and hugging her from behind. There was no time to snuggle in the middle of an escape attempt. “Do you mind telling me the plan?” He considered himself an easy-going guy, but at some point he needed to know what they were actually doing.

“I’m taking Nicole and Resa to our mom. She has a… place, or compound, I guess, about sixty miles from here. I can’t defend them from my dad. But she won’t let them go back.” A touch of sorrow laced her voice, right along with a healthy dose of anger, though this time it wasn’t for her father.

“I thought that your mother must be dead, from the way you spoke of your father.” Unlike Detyens, humans didn’t mate for life. They had no denyai, except for the few like Penny who proved to match. Humans could leave their chosen mates behind, find new lovers and lives. It shouldn’t have shocked Krayter. Even some Detyens did not live happily with their mates and chose to live separately. But to abandon children? He couldn’t comprehend.

Penny pursed her lips and clenched a fist. “She left when I was Nicole’s age. Said I was old enough to take care of the girls; that she couldn’t stand him anymore but he wouldn’t let her take us. Resa was three. I don’t think she even remembers her.” She looked up at Krayter and he pulled back his hood so that he could see her better. His heart shattered for her, and his arms ached to hold her, but he held himself still. She wouldn’t break, not yet. Of that he was certain. “I’ve been planning escape routes since then. Mom sends cards on our birthdays and holidays. She included an encoded address once, so I would know where to go if I ever left.”

 “You never planned to go to her, did you?” Though he phrased it as a question, Krayter knew the answer. This time he didn’t stop himself from putting a hand on her shoulder in comfort.

Penny didn’t shrug it off. “I was waiting until Nicole turned eighteen. I thought then she and Resa would be old enough to decide.” She looked out into the field in front of them as her sisters disappeared into the small garage on the far side of the house. “Maybe she’ll be just as bad as Dad, but she hated the isolation back then. And she’d worked with aliens when she was younger, she never… I guess if you live here, you still agree to all this shit, don’t you?” Penny turned her gaze to him, eyes full of a question he didn’t know how to answer and a vulnerability that rocked him to his toes.

“Children aren’t responsible for their parents’ hate,” he said.

“I’m twenty-four.” She tried to step away from him, but Krayter moved with her, grabbing both of her shoulders and holding her close, her skin warm under her top.

“You raised two girls who knew it was wrong to turn over an injured man to the slaughter. Despite the danger, you’re doing all you can to keep me safe. You’re not a part of that mess back there.” He didn’t want her to think that he saw her as a threat, as unworthy. Not when he’d worship the ground she walked on if she only said the word.

Penny stared into his eyes, piercing him deep. Her brow furrowed and she swallowed, the lump traveling down the curve of her throat as her muscles contracted. “If you don’t have mind powers, then what is it?” she asked. “Why do…” She trailed off and took a deep breath. “Why do I feel this way?”

“Do you really want to know?”

He hung in suspended animation, time freezing around them as he watched the decision blossom in Penny’s eyes. The denya bond held tight between them, not fully anchored, but pulsing with possibility. Krayter had never known it would be such a physical thing, but he could just about reach out and grab it and use it to tug Penny even closer.

“It isn’t just me, is it?” she asked instead of answering his question. She pulled one of her hands up and covered his with it, resting it on her opposite shoulder and curling her fingers around the edge of his wrist.

“It’s not.” They stood like that for several moments, until the sound of an engine starting ripped through the clearing, alerting them that the actual mission was calling.

“After we get to my mother’s, you can call for help in New York, or I can see you on your way,” she said as she pulled away. “My sisters need to be safe there first.”

“I understand. I’d do the same.” He hadn’t seen any of them besides Kayleb in more than a year, had known that leaving to come to Earth might mean that he never saw them again. But if there was ever any question of his siblings’ safety, that little brood would come before all others.

“You said you had a brother, right?” Penny asked, her gaze split between him and the garage where Nicole and Resa were still doing their work.

Krayter laughed. “More than one. My parents have taken it upon themselves to repopulate the Detyen race with NaMoren children. I have twelve siblings.” No, that wasn’t right anymore. “Had. I have eleven living siblings.”

“Had?” Now her eyes were focused on the garage where her sisters sat, the meaning of his words, and the cost, evident.

“My eldest sister, Karwan, died two years ago.” Despite her best efforts, she’d never found her denya. The pain of the loss was with him every day.

“Was she sick?” Horror crossed Penny’s eyes and she blinked a few times, shaking her head as if that would give her control of her emotions.

“It was not unexpected. But still tragic.” He wasn’t going to explain the Denya Price, not yet. Not until she knew him a little better and they were no longer running away from her more violent relations. Though, he realized she might mean to be done with him in a matter of hours, if not days. “How far is the journey to your mother’s?”

“Only a few hours, I hope. If we’re very lucky, we might just make it before nightfall.” She stooped down and scooped up Nicole and Resa’s bags. “It looks like they’ve opened the garage door. I think that’s our sign to get out of here.” She handed Nicole’s black backpack to him while slinging Resa’s over her shoulder.

Krayter took the burden and followed her out of the edge of the woods, his mind spinning, trying to find a way to convince Penny that he was worth more than a ride to safety and a message to friends in the city. If she said the word, he’d stay by her side until she found him worthy and be her man for the rest of their days. But if he asked her to come along with him and see his world, would she?

***

They bumped along down the road and Penny’s arms were getting tired from wrenching the controls back and forth every time the automated steering failed. Nicole had done a lot of work on the vehicle, but it still barely functioned. And each mile she covered made her less and less sure of the path they were on.

“What were the parameters on your antigrav test?” she asked her sister. This truck was Nicole’s baby; Penny only knew the broad strokes.

Her sister sat beside her, nervously monitoring the fuel levels and ad hoc control system that she’d appended using an old entertainment tablet and a rope’s worth of wiring. “It works,” Nicole promised. “Just… keep us on the ground for as long as you can.”

That was promising.

Resa sat behind them, and Krayter was stuck on the floor of the cargo area behind her, covered in a stack of blankets arranged artfully to give him a few pockets of cool air. It had to be unbearably hot back there, but he wasn’t complaining. Part of Penny had wanted to let him sit beside Resa, or even in Nicole’s spot in the front seat, but it was too dangerous. Some of the patrols were done by surveillance drone and she wasn’t going to risk one of them getting a picture of Krayter.

So far, there’d been no sign of a patrol. It was by design. Penny could map out the patrol routes by heart, and had a handful of paths out of Highland Settlement that should see them free. The Settlement was built to keep others out, and any adult was free to leave.

In theory. Somehow, she doubted that her father would let her go.

With Nicole and Resa in tow, the point was moot. In the eyes of the Settlement, they were both still children and were stuck there until they turned eighteen or their dad gave them permission to go. Given his demands that morning, permission wouldn’t be forthcoming.

Nicole’s request to stay on the ground was more difficult that it might have otherwise been. To avoid patrols, they needed to stay off the main road. And staying off the main road meant careening through the woods, which could have been worse.

A hundred years ago, Highland Settlement had been a small town with a few hundred residents. The central part of the city was now the headquarters, but out on the edges, there were plenty of trails that had once been roads. Grass and trees grew up around them, but not nearly as dense as what they’d walked through to get to Murphy’s.

“So, not to second guess you or anything,” Nicole began, clearly about to second guess her. “But doesn’t this path lead to the old bridge by the power plant?”

Penny gripped the controls tight as they rambled over a particularly large branch. “It does.” There was a reason she’d kept most of her plan to herself. Mostly because it was just this side of crazy.

“You mean the old bridge that doesn’t exist?” Resa demanded from the back seat. “By the place where no one’s allowed to go because it’s full of nuclear waste?” She practically screamed the last bit.

Penny kept her eyes front and gritted her teeth. “They can’t patrol it because it’s too dangerous for people, and Nicole said the hover’s working. It’s the smartest place to get out of the Settlement. Besides, a few minutes in the red zone won’t kill us.”

She didn’t think. After all, the reactor had melted down more than a hundred years before. Plenty of wildlife lived around there and the deer seemed to survive just fine. A half hour wouldn’t do too much damage.

“Um, Pen?” That was almost enough to jerk Penny’s attention back. She hated that name.

“What?” she demanded, making it clear that it was Resa’s only chance to call her that.

“How sure are you that no one’s following us?” This time, Penny did risk a glance and saw her sister peering out the window and up into the sky.

“What is it?” Penny leaned forward, trying to see what Resa saw, but the trees were too dense in front of them.

“It looks like a drone.”

“Shit!” Penny pressed down on the gas, trying to move them along faster than the crawl she’d been reduced to. “How far away is it?”

“If I had a ball, I think I could hit it.” That wasn’t reassuring coming from a twelve year old who could only do one pull up.

Nicole set the car’s control panel aside and pulled a slim tablet out of her pocket. She held it flat and out of the corner of her eye, Penny saw the screen flash bright green.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It detects the signal the drones send back to base. Some of the kids at school were getting sick of being caught when they went to have s—when they were making out. So we put this together.” She flicked the screen, but Penny couldn’t take the time to actually watch what she was doing. The woods were starting to thin out as they neared the old power plant. The road didn’t head directly past it, but they’d be able to see one of the tall stacks in the distance as they made the final turn for the old bridge in a few miles.

“What’s it say?” Penny asked.

“There’s a drone behind us,” Nicole confirmed, rolling her eyes. “What did you think?”

“I was hoping it was a pigeon.” They were almost out of the territory. Even if it was a drone, they’d be out of her father’s grasp in fifteen minutes. Or at least farther away. She didn’t doubt that he’d expand the search beyond the land that they controlled.

“Are you hanging tight back there, Krayter?” she asked. It couldn’t be comfortable, and it had to be alarming to hear the latest turn of events.

“Never been better,” came his muffled reply. Despite the tension, Penny smiled and glanced in the rearview mirror, shaking her head slightly at his pile of blankets. She didn’t know how to joke at a time like this, but she appreciated his levity.

“It might get a bit bumpy,” she warned.

“Oh? And I thought I was floating on a cloud.” Despite the sarcasm, she knew he didn’t mean anything negative. She wished he was just a normal human man, one she’d met at a town social or through her work. Someone she could get to know beyond a day. Someone who wasn’t wrong in every way.

“Stop mooning over your space boyfriend,” Nicole snapped as they went over a particularly nasty rock.

“I’m not mooning.” Penny stuck her tongue out and took a turn.

“So that means he is your space boyfriend!” Resa crowed, laughing.

Penny was glad Krayter couldn’t see her blushing right now. She’d never be able to face him again.

“Yes!” Nicole shouted, holding up her tablet in triumph. “The drone’s flying away.”

Penny narrowed her eyes. “Or it’s going for backup. Maybe the signal isn’t strong enough this far out to transmit video. Or maybe it was flying in a set formation.” No matter what, it wasn’t good. She worried that they’d find men blocking the road when they reached the end, but if she turned back now, they were certain to be intercepted.

Penny placed her finger over the antigrav control and flicked the switch, engaging the thrusters and shooting the car up off the road. “It’s going to hold,” she told Nicole, half-commanding the car to do as she told it.

“Uh, sure it is.” Unfortunately, her sister didn’t sound so sure.

They didn’t fly high. The only thing different about gliding above the road rather than driving on it was the lack of jostling. And the speed. Penny doubled their pace, eating the last mile in three minutes and taking the final turn.

The edge of the old power plant’s smoke stack was visible in the distance and the BRIDGE OUT signs were little more than orange dots at the end of the road. Penny said a silent prayer and switched the controls to overdrive.

“Everyone hold tight,” she warned, mostly for Krayter’s sake.

“We’ve got more drones coming this way,” said Nicole, gripping her tablet tight. “It looks like a fucking swarm.”

“Language!” The admonishment slipped out, but Penny didn’t pull it back. She didn’t look behind them either. Unless the drones were going to shoot, they were too far away to stop them. And she seriously doubted that her father would risk killing them.

She hoped.

The road was clear from the final turn all the way to the bridge and Penny built speed, feeling it in the pull of her skin as they shot forward, covering the last mile in less than a minute, five times faster than they’d moved for the last hour.

Trees grew tall and birds flew overhead, darting out of the path of the oncoming drone army behind them. Something exploded on the ground beside their vehicle as a laser blast ripped out of one of the drones aiming straight for them.

“Fuck!” yelled Penny.

“Language!” both of her sisters retorted, but when the next blaster shot took out a small tree, they quieted.

“What is it?” Krayter asked.

“Fire incoming.” There wasn’t much Penny could do to avoid the lasers. With the spotty antigrav engine, evasive maneuvers might send them tumbling down onto the old railroad tracks below. And since they were in a regular civilian vehicle, there was nothing beyond basic anti-accident shielding. Nothing that could deflect weaponry.

They reached the old bridge and she shifted the antigrav to full, lifting them even further off the ground in an arc. The drones shot wide on either side, the trajectory calculations off by just enough to keep them safe. The air in front of them shimmered faintly, blue sparks jolting as twigs and pollen brushed through the Highland Settlement force field.

It couldn’t do much to stop them, but once they were through, they’d set off all sorts of alarms. With the drones closing in on them, that wasn’t an issue she’d been too worried about. They careened through the air and began to lose altitude as the car raced to meet the road on the other side of the gap.

The force field lit up blue as the hood of the car hit it, but they didn’t stop, didn’t even slow. When the car jerked to the side, Penny thought that the antigrav engine was faltering, but a window smashed behind them and she could smell the electric scent of a laser burning the car. They crashed down, barely clearing the gap and rolling forward, past the force field.

They tilted wildly, tipping forward, hood on a collision course for the ground below. Penny flicked the controls, trying to compensate for the mechanical failure, but the ground rushed up to meet them and the last thing she heard was a deafening screech as smoke filled the cabin and burned her eyes and lungs, squeezing her to the edge of consciousness and plunging her into darkness.