Page 36 of Alien in the Depths

It was wild, angry, anguished. It was all his feelings for Sofia alchemized into a desperate concern for her wellbeing. In fact, it was all the things he hadn’t allowed himself to feel for another person since he’d left Rikuus all those years ago.

The sudden rawness of it hit him in the chest. Without thinking, he spoke.

“I love you, Sofia,” he said out loud, hearing the power in his words. Words he wished he’d told her sooner. The thought that she was out there, her life at risk because she’d tried to save him from injustice, pained Zaraq. He, who hardly deserved a second glance from her because of his past, had not only put her in danger. He had failed to protect her.

As he continued to gaze into his own anguished eyes, he heard footsteps enter the hotel room.

“Sofia?” he cried out suddenly, tearing his eyes from the mirror and dashing into the room. But of course, it wasn’t her. The person who greeted him was Arccoo.

“I take it that means things didn’t go according to plan.” The Thryal prince gazed at Zaraq solemnly, his gray hands clutching the edges of his intricately embroidered robe.

“No, not exactly.” Zaraq crossed the room in just three steps, his boots heavy on the carpet and his brow tightly furrowed. In his hand he still clutched his pack, and when he pulled out the sigma blaster, Arccoo’s dark purple eyes widened.

“Is that…” he uttered, his gaze flicking between Zaraq and the weapon.

Zaraq nodded. “The weapon he used to kill Ryka.” The words hung heavily in the air, but the next part really weighed on Zaraq. “I’ve got the proof, but I wasn’t fast enough. Some of his guards found me. I got away, but Vexis figured it out. He has Sofia, and he wants to make a trade.”

Zaraq could feel the heat rising in his face as he said it, and he knew all the emotions he’d seen in the bathroom mirror must have been on full display now for Arccoo. For a moment, the two men stood in silence. The only sound in the hotel room were the shouts of fighting and revelry that floated up from the city’s sordid streets below.

Then another sound rang through the stillness. Zaraq’s comm was chiming again, and he felt his heart jump into his throat.

When he checked the message, it practically jumped out of his body altogether.

“Zaraq,” came Sofia’s voice. It was a thin, hurried whisper but undeniably her. “Don’t make the trade, okay? We worked so hard for this, and I knew the risks. Just promise me you’ll—”

In the background, a sudden bang, like a door slamming, stopped Sofia in her tracks, and a second later, the recording stopped.

Zaraq didn’t consider her suggestion for a moment, and when he looked up at Arccoo again, a fire blazed in his eyes. “I have to go get her.”

Without another word, he stuffed the sigma blaster back in the pack and made to leave, but Arccoo stopped him with a hand to the chest.

“Do you have your own weapon?” he asked, his voice low but firm.

From the pack, Zaraq pulled out the small zapfa ray, but Arccoo just shook his head.

“If you’re doing this, you’re doing it properly. And with backup,” he told Zaraq with the authority of a prince. “You might want to change as well.”

Zaraq looked down at himself, the tight blue suit still clinging to his body. He could feel it hot around his throat again, and as much as he wanted to rush out and get Sofia back, he knew Arccoo was right.

“What backup are you talking about?” Zaraq asked, though he thought he already knew the answer.

“You’re looking at it.”

Arccoo held out his hand, his fingers splayed forward in the traditional Thryal greeting of solidarity. Zaraq hadn’t encountered that gesture since he was a child—not since his mother and father were alive.

With a solemn nod of thanks, Zaraq held his hand out at a ninety-degree angle to Arccoo’s and then slid his fingers between the prince’s. To seal the gesture, they each bowed until their foreheads touched.

When they stood straight again, Arccoo was smiling slightly. “We’ll make sure she comes home safely. You get changed. In the meantime, I’ll find you a real weapon.”

“Thank you.” Zaraq’s words came out thick with the gratitude he felt, and as he grabbed a pile of his regular clothes and ran to the bathroom to change, he thought again of how remarkable Sofia and her family’s solidarity had been.

As he unzipped the suit and finally released himself from its clutches, he was struck by a touching realization. Just a few weeks earlier these people had been strangers, and realistically, they owed him nothing. But as he was learning, that came second to their sense of justice and solidarity, as well as Sofia’s feelings toward him.

Zaraq could never have guessed that three Earthlings and a Thryal prince might rally behind him like this.

Out of his blue suit and gloves, and dressed once again in his black cargo pants, gray shirt, and black leather jacket, Zaraq wiped the last of the purple makeup from his face. When he stepped out into the room again, he was met by two of the three Earthlings, plus the Thryal prince he’d just been musing about.

“Sofia’s in trouble?” Carmen gasped the second he appeared.