Chapter 1

Chapter One

Kevin Garin's little sister didn't bother with hellos when she picked up his audio call.

"Mom's meds still aren't here."

Garin pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand and kicked the door shut behind him. "When were they supposed to be there?"

"Last week." Beaty's voice tightened and Garin pictured her thin lips pursing into a point.

"Did you call?" Garin threw his duffel onto the bed of his borrowed room. The space was small and sparse, but not cramped, and he'd slept on a lot worse things than the mattress his bag bounced on.

"Yes. Last week when they didn't arrive."

When Garin didn't reply, Beaty huffed.

"I swear, Kev, I called last week, but they're still saying they're concerned about the payment."

"I believe you." Garin unpacked his clothes and arranged them in the chest of drawers against the wall. He'd checked, double-checked, and triple-checked he had the funds, but the pharmaceutical company still didn't like the amount of money they saw in his account. They could do math. They knew the money they pulled out for his mother's meds was greater than the money going in every month. But that was his problem to solve, not theirs. "I'll call them."

"I'm sorry, Kevin. I know you're busy." The tablet beeped to alert Garin of the incoming video feed request, and he accepted the feed and propped the tablet on his pillow. His younger sister's big blue eyes gazed out at him.

Like always, Garin's heart panged to think how few times he'd seen those eyes in person. "It's fine, I've got it."

"Are you sure?" Beaty bit her lip.

Garin glanced at the clock in the screen's corner. He and Dominic Turner had arrived at the new research station on the edge of Qesha's Dead Zone thirty minutes ago already. He only had a few more minutes to arrange his own quarters before he had to return to Dom's side. "Yeah, I'm sure. I'll call as soon as I finish today's shift."

"Okay." Beaty's sigh blew static through the tablet speakers. The Dead Zone's interference messed with communications even from within the research center. Whatever else that place messed with, no one knew. If Garin had his way, Dominic Turner wouldn't set foot on the same continent as the poisonous stretch of land, but the Turner brothers were as stubborn as they came. "If you say so."

"I do say so." Garin pulled his toiletry case from his bag and stowed his empty duffel under the bed. "Can you put Mom on?"

"I think she went out, actually." Beaty's background shifted as she stood from her chair and walked across the spacious living room to the hall of bedrooms. Garin paid for the apartment, but he knew its layout more from the background of video calls than from the handful of times he'd set foot in it himself.

"Out?" Garin paused halfway to the bathroom. His mother didn't go out.

"Yeah." Beaty nodded, and the creak of a door whispered through the tablet speakers. "Yeah, she went out while I was grocery shopping. I think to meet an old friend." She turned her big blue eyes back to Kevin. "Those new pills are amazing, Kevin."

"Wow." Garin shook himself and brought his tablet and toiletry case with him into the small, attached bathroom. "That's…that's wonderful."

And worth every penny. The cost of the daily pills didn't exactly fit into the family budget, but if after only a month on them his mother had already regained the energy, the motivation, the will to go outside and to meet people… He'd find the money.

"You have to come see her, Kevin." Beaty closed the door and leaned her back against it. "When you get a chance, I mean. But, Kevin, she's like I remember her."

Garin lined up his toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, and mouthwash, all in their proper order in the medicine cabinet. He wasn't so sure Beaty had any memory of their mother from before their father died. It was over twenty years ago. She'd only been five. He'd only been eleven, so he wasn't sure even he remembered it properly. "Don't get your hopes up too high, Beaty."

Beaty looked down. "I know." Garin felt a little guilty at her downcast expression, but he knew it was nothing near how badly he'd feel if the meds stopped working. Or if he stopped being able to pay for them.

"How are the boys?" Garin changed the subject as he placed his razor, shaving cream, and deodorant on the bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet. After a quick scan to see everything in its place, he closed the mirror and put the bag under the sink.

"They're good." Beaty padded farther down the hall.

"They in?" Garin leaned back against the hard sink and gave his full attention to his sister.

Beaty peered to her left, then to her right. Garin knew from the positioning of the ceiling light above her that she stood outside the rooms of their two young brothers, the twins Ethan and Lucas. "No, I think they went to Horowitz Labs, actually. They had interviews."

"Interviews?" Garin straightened up. "For jobs?"

Beaty gave him a look. "Yeah, obviously, Kevin."

"I just mean…" Garin glanced at the clock again. He had to get going. "I'll talk to them about it later."

"Why?" Beaty frowned and the stubborn glint in her eye told Garin he really didn't have time for the conversation. "The Labs are the perfect opportunity for them. It's exactly what their degrees are for."

"I know that." Garin held up a placating hand to his sister. "I know that. I just want to make sure it's what they really want."

"Alright." Beaty rolled her eyes and carried him back through the living room and into the kitchen, where Garin spied the tops of grocery bags.

"Alright. I'll call back after I get Mom's meds sorted." Garin mentally added to his growing to-do list the task of talking sense into the twin boys, then returned to his room. "Anything else I should know? Need anything?"

"No, we're good here." Beaty started unloading the grocery bags. "Thanks, Kev."

"Of course, Beaty." Garin paused long enough to smile at his little sister, despite the near spat. "Love you."

Beaty smiled back, her pretty face lighting up. "Love you, too. Talk to you later."

Beaty disappeared and Garin stuffed his bulky old tablet into the hip pocket opposite his gun. He didn't expect trouble on the tiny research compound, but that was even more reason to be ready for it.

It used to be people wanted to kill or kidnap the Turner brothers for a chance at their obscenely massive fortune. But ever since Dominic Turner had engineered a biological weapon and seen it unleashed on an entire continent, people were as likely to take a shot at him on ideological grounds. And the ideological types were the worst.

Garin stepped into the hall and locked the door behind him. He'd left Dom in the laboratory wing of the compound, under the care of Patrick Smith. Smith was more than capable of keeping the younger man safe, but Dom was Garin's responsibility, so he quick-stepped it from the living quarters and out into the dry air of Qesha's dead land.

Dust immediately clogged his nostrils, and he scrubbed them with a scowl. There'd been a time when he wouldn't have blinked at a harsh landscape, but years in the Turner Family's employ had softened him. Now he wrinkled his nose as every footstep on the dirt road between the labs kicked up little toxic clouds.

The only paved road in the compound ran perpendicular to his, carving through the smattering of low-lying buildings. A freight cruiser trundled along it, barely visible over the top of the roofs, likely carrying supplies for the scientists and soldiers insane enough to have requested this posting.

Scientists like the one twenty paces ahead, ambling in the same direction as Garin. He walked so slowly, Garin would catch up before they reached the lab. A qesh by the look of him, but not dressed like any qesh Garin had ever seen. No robes, for one thing. He wore only dirt-streaked and well-worn field clothes: a tough-looking jacket and pants that hugged his narrow hips so snugly Garin's eyes lingered far longer than they should have.

Above his well-attired ass hung the expected long white hair sported by most qesh, but instead of a loose, sweeping curtain, this scientist wore his hair in a practical braid. It swayed back and forth as he tilted and turned his head to study the rack of test tubes he held in his long hands.

Garin snorted.

The man was lucky their road was straight and smooth. His little glass vials completely absorbed him. He wouldn't notice if he stomped right through a puddle. A sink hole maybe. Garin's lips quirked. What was it like to be so intensely focused on a single thing? So captivated the world faded away?

There had been so many things to worry about for so long, Garin couldn't remember the last time he'd only thought about one. A carousel of faces needing tending spun through his mind: Mom, Beaty, Ethan, Lucas, Oliver, Dominic, his security team, his old Vanguard unit, anyone else looking to him for anything at any time. Then back around again to Mom, Beaty, Ethan, Lucas, Oliver, Dominic and again and again.

But that qesh with the long braid and the great ass saw nothing but the colorful liquid refracting the light of the blazing sun above them.

Garin huffed.

How nice for him.

Motion in the upper right of Garin's vision cone caught his eye. The freight cruiser lumbered down the road, crossing his and the qesh's path. It didn't speed by any means, but something that heavy didn't need to speed to do damage. So, it would be nicer if the qesh saw a little more than his pretty test tubes.

"Hey!" Garin picked up his pace. "Excuse me!"

The scientist cocked his head and held up a purple vial to the light as he walked.

"Hey, sir!" Garin waved an arm as he broke into a job. The cruiser dipped out of sight behind a building, but its engine rumbled as it hurtled toward them. "Hold up!"

The scientist's slow pace and the freighter's blind momentum perfectly timed them for a catastrophic collision the moment the scientist stepped out from the shadow of the building, and still the qesh moseyed along.

"Shit!" Garin did not want to see the silly, pretty scientist reduced to a smear on the street of a shitty research station and he shot forward into a run. "Wait!"

He dashed the final dozen yards and lunged for the scientist as he reached the edge of the street. His palm wrapped around the qesh's upper arm and instantly the surprisingly strong biceps under his fingers tensed.

"Get off me!" The qesh yanked away and spun around with wide eyes. Fear flashed through those large, dark orbs, before fury drove it out and the bursts of red on his cheeks shifted into blue.

Garin's heart stopped as the qesh stumbled back toward the oncoming freight cruiser and he grabbed the qesh's wrists. "No, hold on?—"

"Let me go!" The qesh twisted, the test tubes listing precariously and his body pulling into the road.

"I will, just?—"

"Get off?—"

The cruiser's engine roared in Garin's ears. "No, you'll?—"

Garin yanked the qesh against him as the freighter thundered past. The qesh's foot caught on a rock and he pitched forward, sending test tubes and liquid splattering across Garin's chest and throat and into his face.

"Fuck!" Garin recoiled at the vicious sting in his eyes, but before he could wipe the burning liquid away, the slim body of the falling qesh slammed into him and they both crashed to the ground. Pain zipped up Garin's tailbone and thumped into his sternum as the qesh caught himself with a bony elbow.

He was in too much pain to even appreciate the way the qesh slotted between his thighs and lay against his chest.

"What is wrong with you?" The qesh scrambled off Garin as he lay groaning in the dirt. "Look what you've done! Do you have any idea of the vast amount of information you've completely destroyed? What were you thinking? How dare you?"

"How dare I?" Garin pushed himself up, grimacing at the burning pain of the ‘information' soaking into his shirt. "How dare I what? Save your life?"

"Save my life?" The qesh's plush lips parted in indignant shock and purple and blue streaked across his face. "Is that what you think you did? Do you think I didn't see the cruiser? Do you think I wouldn't have seen the cruiser?"

Garin opened his mouth to argue, but the qesh wasn't done.

"Do you know that every Qeshian child is taught to look both ways before passing into any sort of thoroughfare?" The scientist scrambled up to his knees. "Millenia of brilliant medical achievements, bacteria and virus-borne illnesses practically eliminated, but we still have no vaccine against blunt force trauma."

Garin gaped up at the qesh and clenched his fists in the dirt. Was he ever going to get a word in edgewise?

"A fact I am well, well, aware of. I do not need you to accost me out of nowhere and drag me around like a child who hasn't learned to look both ways before crossing the street!" The qesh's narrow chest heaved as he finally finished launching his barrage of words.

"I was trying to help," Garin bit out as he sat up.

"I didn't ask for your help."

"No, you were too busy looking at your pretty colors and wandering into the road." Garin pulled his shirt off before whatever the hell had soaked him corroded a hole straight through his skin.

"I would not have wandered into the road." The qesh's shoulders climbed up to his ears as his entire body shook.

"No, you wouldn't have." Garin pointed a finger at himself. "Because I would have pulled you back before you did."

"And those pretty colors were the culmination of weeks of study on my extremely limited field samples from my extremely limited excursions into the most fascinating area in this entire sector." The qesh's lips trembled and pressed together. His temples dripped with pink. His eyes shimmered. And Garin's heart turned itself inside out with guilt.

He swiveled his legs around under himself to kneel in front of the devastated man. "Look, I didn't mean?—"

"What the hell happened to you two?" Patrick Smith's horribly jovial voice boomed from across the street and Garin looked up to see Smith and Dom striding toward them.

Dom raised his eyebrows. "Making friends, Garin?"

Garin's stomach sank at the smirk spreading across Dominic's face. He'd seen that smirk before. That was the smirk of a Turner man watching some poor bastard fall directly into his carefully laid trap. He'd seen it on Alistair, he'd seen it on Oliver, and he'd seen it on Dom before, too.

Now, Garin had a sneaking suspicion that the poor bastard was him.

"He's perfect." Sazahk stalked into his bedroom with a concerned Patrick on his heels.

The ‘he' in question had left to shower off Sazahk's precious samples as soon as he'd climbed out of the dirt. Patrick had then informed Sazahk that the man was Kevin Garin, Dominic Turner's current bodyguard. Garin was former Human Special Forces—the infamous Vanguard unit, specifically—and would escort Sazahk out into the surrounding Dead Zone. His company freed Sazahk from the confines of the research station. He was, essentially, Sazahk's new partner.

"You didn't seem to think that a few minutes ago." Patrick stopped in the doorway, his blue eyes widening at the tablets, tools, and clothes scattered over every surface in Sazahk's room.

"That was a few minutes ago." Sazahk found the pack he'd used for his last journey into the Dead Zone buried under two dirty sets of robes. "My heart rate and adrenaline were elevated from his attempted rescue, and I was upset and disappointed at the loss of my samples. I reacted emotionally and thoughtlessly."

"Okay, sure, but are you going to be okay spending a month alone with a man who made you react emotionally and thoughtlessly?" Patrick picked his way across the floor, picking up discarded pieces of clothing and piling them up into the emptiest corner.

"Patrick, I spent a decade alone with the Carta Cartel. And years with my family and the Qeshian Senate before that." Sazahk unzipped his pack and winced at the smell he unleashed. He'd meant to empty it, he really had, but the task had never risen to the top of his priority stack. "I can handle one overbearing military man with a poor grasp of physics and trajectory mathematics. Please stop moving my clothes about."

Patrick sheepishly dropped a shirt back to the ground. "I?—"

"What a tight ass!" Bar'in whirled into the room and flopped onto the bed, his back against the pillows. "You know, he's berating Dom right now about Dom not taking his own safety seriously enough."

"In his defense, Dom's one of the most hated men in the sector. It's a ballsy move to reassign his own bodyguard." Fal'ran followed him, but, like Patrick, stopped short at the mess.

Tar appeared after Fal'ran, rounding out their little group. But Sazahk's tiny room had never been intended to hold five people, especially not if three of them were klah'eel and so Tar squeezed into a corner between a wall and Sazahk's desk.

"Dom's a big boy." Bar'in flapped a hand around. "He can take calculated risks. Are you sure you want to go with this guy, Sazahk?"

"Like Dom, I am capable of calculations." Sazahk's frustrated purple crept along the back of his hands as he pulled the rest of his clean clothes from his drawers. "And the cost-benefit analysis is crystal clear."

"Yeah?" Fal'ran raised an eyebrow as he took one of Sazahk's shirts and folded it neatly.

"Yes." Sazahk took the shirt back and shook it out, then moved the others out of Fal'ran's meddling reach. "Cost, I spend every waking hour with a man who doesn't like or respect me and will no doubt serve almost entirely as an obstacle to my goals. Benefit, I immediately resume the research I have dreamed of conducting my entire life with the goal of finding a permanent home for a newly discovered, uncatalogued sentient species."

Not to mention earning his pardon, his access to the Archives, and the piece of himself the Senate had taken from him.

"Well, when you put it like that." Bar'in snorted, then crossed his legs and reached for Sazahk's clean clothes, but Sazahk shuffled them to the far corner of the bed. He smacked at Tar's huge paw as well when it went for a precarious pile of reading tablets on the corner of Sazahk's desk.

Bar'in's comment might have been sarcastic, but Sazahk's wasn't. He didn't relish the prospect of being leashed to the man who'd grabbed him, yanked him about, ruined his work, then blamed him for it. But he was beyond thrilled at the prospect of a true research trip into Qesha's Dead Zone. The thought of the discoveries waiting for him just beyond the boundaries of the compound made his blood sing. He had so many questions, so many theories, and finally—finally, after being catastrophically thwarted—he'd get so many answers.

The grumpy human man with the uncommonly symmetrical face would not ruin this for him.

"When you put it like that, I feel compelled to remind you that you're only cleared to be out there for a maximum of twenty-eight days." Patrick crossed his arms and Sazahk scowled. In the absence of clear medical guidelines regarding acceptable acute exposure to the Dead Zone, Patrick had decreed no trips could last longer than a month. Sazahk wasn't particularly inclined to honor the arbitrary rule. If it restricted him once he was out in the Dead Zone, he didn't plan to obey it.

"Don't worry, tight ass will probably insist they're back in twenty." Bar'in smirked, and Sazahk's scowl deepened.

"I will not be dragged back eight days early." Sazahk did not intend to be dragged at all. Being hauled around by the man once had been quite enough.

The scar at the base of his skull throbbed at the memory.

Sazahk returned to his packing and ignored it. The pain was psychosomatic. The nerve endings had healed long ago. Sazahk had done his own probing and experiments in private to prove it to himself. But the moment that vice-like grip had locked around his arm and halted his movement, his old wound had blazed with agony, stoked by the irrational rush of fear. He'd spun around half-expecting to see a scalpel-wielding qeshian doctor. That the face he'd confronted was instead human and handsome hadn't endeared him to it.

"Hey, you alright?" Fal'ran's hand on his shoulder turned him to face the big klah'eel. "Did he hurt you?"

Bar'in and Tar stiffened, and Sazahk shook his head quickly.

"No." Sazahk shrugged off Fal'ran's hand. "I am perfectly fine and perfectly content with my assigned escort."

Bar'in's lips twisted. "Are you?—"

"Do not ask me if I am sure, Bar'in." Sazahk sent the small klah'eel a glare. He dumped the old contents of his pack out on the floor and stuffed in the clothes gathered at the corner of his bed. "You have already asked me if I am sure. You have all asked me if I am sure. Except for Tar, but he's probably thought it." Tar ducked his huge head and Sazahk tsked as he zipped up his bag's pockets. "I have done my due, mental diligence and I am sure. I will travel into the Dead Zone with Kevin Garin, and I will be fine. Fal'ran, do not organize my medkit."

Fal'ran raised both hands and backed away from the overstuffed kit sitting on the floor where it had fallen from Sazahk's bag.

"Alright, everyone, let's give him some space." Patrick clapped his hands and gestured for Bar'in to get up from Sazahk's bed. Sazahk released a sigh and sent Patrick a grateful look, a soft brown tangling over his fingers.

"But he leaves tomorrow morning." Bar'in pouted, but still dropped his boots to the floor and stood.

"So, you'll have plenty of time to smother him with your love this evening." Patrick stepped out the door and beckoned for Bar'in, Fal'ran, and Tar to follow.

Bar'in sucked his teeth, color rising in his cheeks. "Oh, shut up."

Even after months, Bar'in hated to have the fact that he cared about them verbally acknowledged. It was one of the curious tics of his teammate that Sazahk was still picking apart.

Fal'ran hesitated, glancing between Sazahk's haphazard pack and his blatantly hazardous floor. "Are you sure you don't…" Fal'ran trailed off and raised his hands in surrender once again to Sazahk's glare.

No, Sazahk did not want any help packing. Yes, he was sure. He was perfectly capable of packing his own bag and he didn't need or want other people poking and prodding and bossing him around in his own bedroom about his own bag.

"Right. Have fun." Fal'ran shook his head with a crooked grin, and he and Tar filed past Patrick and out into the hall.

"We'll see you at dinner, Sazahk." Patrick sent him one last smile before closing the door and leaving Sazahk to his own peace and quiet.

Sazahk slumped into his desk chair and rubbed his eyes. He'd become incredibly fond of his teammates. And he'd gradually allowed them to help in his lab and to carry things for him occasionally. He'd even let Bar'in braid his hair. But sometimes the pressure of their care, their pressing, and their pushing made it hard to breathe.

He wanted to be out in the fresh air, under the sun, with a burning question and the freedom to find an answer. And soon he would be. And if all went well, he'd have a lot more than that. He'd waited a decade for this opportunity. He stood up and pushed the hair that had come loose from his braid out of his face and smiled to himself.

Even the thought of Garin grumbling at his heels wouldn't dampen his mood.