Chapter 2
Priya, Phoenix Tower, Three Days Later
"Somethings wrong." Alvarez tapped me on the shoulder and crossed to the security screens.
"Maybe it's a drill." I talked the next plane in line to their runway and muted my mic. "They're always running drills these days." It was true. Anti-terrorist drills. Emergency drills. Crash landing drills. Fire drills. Biohazard. Toxic spills. Fuel leaks. So many.
“Tower, lock the cab. Lock it now. Male intruder in the lobby." Hollis' voice was full of panic. "Stop! He’s…sir! Sir, you can't…” Our normal security supervisor's voice faded and a sharp, electrical snap came through the channel. Then silence. Every head in the cab turned.
"What the hell was that?" Alvarez was leaning close enough to the security screen he could have licked it.
"I don't know." Ignoring the chaos going on elsewhere, I answered another pilot and kept calm.
We did not get real security calls in the tower cab.
We got drills. Or malfunctioning badge readers.
One memorable coyote that tripped half the perimeter alarms before leading airport security on a twenty-minute chase across the north lot.
What we did not get was Hollis, from the ground-floor desk, shouting over the radio.
“Hollis?” Alvarez grabbed the security handset. “Ground desk, respond.”
Nothing. The radio traffic from the airport continued around us.
An Embraer was on final approach. Two private jets waited for clearance.
Somewhere above Phoenix, a pilot asked for a new heading as if an armed intruder had not just attacked our security desk.
The rest of the world had no idea anything was wrong.
“Alvarez, pull up all the cameras,” my supervisor ordered. “Priya, keep working the Embraer. Weather, call airport police.”
We moved. Alvarez split the secondary screens and brought up the lobby feed. I kept my headset on and cleared the Embraer to land while watching a large man in matte-black armor step over Hollis’s unconscious body. I nearly sent the Embraer around.
“Holy shit,” Alvarez whispered.
I turned. Looked at the man on the screen. Froze in place like a damn deer in headlights.
There he was. Vesh. My Vesh.
Not a computer-generated simulation. Not pixels. Not a voice actor wearing motion-capture dots in a recording studio. Vesh, the alien warrior, in alien armor that looked exactly like the armor he wore in the game, was in my building. My fake alien boyfriend had broken into the tower.
The two guards in the lobby drew their weapons and shouted at him. The camera had no audio, but I could read Vesh’s lips when he answered. Take me to Priya Anand.
My stomach dropped.
“Anand?” Alvarez looked at me. “Did that guy just say your name?”
“No.” I was losing my mind. Right? This was a dream. Had to be. I pinched myself. Hard.
“He absolutely said your name.”
I shook my head as my supervisor put on a headset and ordered every plane in the air into a holding pattern.
I stepped closer to the screen and watched as one guard reached for Vesh’s arm.
Bad idea. Something on Vesh’s wrist flashed blue.
Both men dropped. No blood. No visible wounds.
One second they were standing, the next they were flat on the polished floor.
“Did he kill them?” the weather technician asked.
I leaned toward the monitor and watched the nearest guard’s chest. Up. Down. Up again.
“They’re breathing. He stunned them.”
Everyone looked at me.
“How the hell do you know that?” Alvarez asked.
Because I had spent nearly a year flying missions with the man currently disabling our security team.
Because the weapon on his wrist looked exactly like the stunner he used in the game.
Because I knew the roll of those shoulders and the impatient set of his jaw better than I knew my own reflection.
“Their chests are moving. He just knocked them out.”
Vesh went through a locked security door without slowing. The access panel flashed, the door opened, and he disappeared into the stairwell.
“Airport police are eleven minutes out,” the weather technician announced.
Alvarez checked the stairwell feed. “He’s already on four.” We were on eleven.
“How fast can he climb stairs?” my supervisor asked.
Fast. Very freaking fast.
“Shit. He's on six,” Alvarez took a step back and looked around for a weapon.
“He's fast,” weatherman said. "Anybody carrying?"
"No." I answered automatically. Alvarez said the same. There were rules. We could have been armed, if we wanted to fill out the paperwork and jump through the hoops. Never seemed necessary. "He won't hurt us."
“You say that like you know him.”
"I think I do."
"God damn it, Anand. What are we dealing with here?" Alvarez settled for picking up one of our office chairs and standing to the side of the door, ready to swing at Vesh's head.
"That's not a good idea. I'd put the chair down."
"Who is he?" Weatherman stepped away from the door and moved to the opposite corner of the room.
“Please put the chair down before the armed alien gets here.”
The cab went silent. Alvarez stared at me. “Did you say alien?”
Oops.
“Priya,” my supervisor said slowly. “Who is that man?”
How was I supposed to answer? I designed him in a video game sounded insane. I think he came from outer space to pick me up sounded worse. “His name is Vesh.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It’s the only answer I have that doesn’t make me sound completely insane.”
Vesh reached the eighth floor. Another guard stepped into the stairwell. Blue flash. Down. He never hurried. Never looked confused. He knew exactly where he was going.
Three nights had passed since I completed the Starfighter Training Academy game.
Three nights since my gaming rig died and a strange voice welcomed me to Velerion.
I had spent all three nights scouring every online post, rumor, conspiracy theory, podcast, whistleblower interview and meme about Jamie Miller, Mia Becker, and Lily Wilson.
Officially, their missing persons' cases were still open. Unofficially, the police believed the missing women were dead.
The Internet, however, believed they had been taken by aliens. I had spent three nights pretending I still thought the Internet was wrong. Now seven feet of proof was climbing the stairwell.
The back of my neck grew hot beneath my hair. I reached up and touched the skin, but there was nothing there. No burn. No rash. Just heat.
Vesh reached the tenth floor.
“Priya.” Alvarez moved between me and the cab door. “I don’t know what is happening, but you need to get away from the entrance.”
“I think he’s here for me.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“He won't hurt me. I'll be fine.” Somehow, I knew I was right. That should have terrified me more than the armed alien.
The mag-lock on the cab door was designed to hold during an active attack. It lasted approximately three seconds. The control panel sparked. Metal slammed inside the frame. The door slid open.
Half my coworkers ducked behind consoles. My supervisor stepped in front of the weather technician. Alvarez stayed planted between Vesh and me even though he was five foot ten, unarmed, and visibly reconsidering every decision that had brought him to work that day.
“It’s okay,” I said.
Nobody listened. I yelled. “Everyone stop. I know him.” That got their attention.
Vesh filled the doorway. The game graphics had not done him justice.
He was taller than I had imagined, and broader through the shoulders. His matte-black armor fit close to his body, layered over muscle the game had rendered with fantastic accuracy. Dark hair. Hard jaw. Bright green eyes that found me instantly.
Then traveled from my face to my chest, my waist, my legs, and back up. Slowly. My nipples tightened beneath my blouse. Excellent timing, girls. Vesh took one step into the cab. His gaze remained locked on mine as if the terrified people around us did not exist.
“Priya Anand. I am Vesh of Velerion, your bondmate. You have completed the Elite Starfighter training program. You must come with me. Velerion needs your help to defend my people from Queen Raya and the Dark Fleet.”
His voice was real. That low rumble had lived in my headset for almost a year.
Hearing it come from a living male, close enough to touch, went straight through me.
My knees went weak. Heat gathered low in my belly.
I clenched my hands into fists at my sides so I wouldn't reach out and try to touch him.
God damn it. The sane response to an armed intruder was not sexual attraction.
Not just attraction. Need. Lust. Made ten times worse by the fact that I felt like I knew him.
I'd spent hundreds of hours with him. Knew the way he thought. Moved. Talked.
Guess my sanity had left the building the moment Vesh had entered.
“Hello, Vesh.”
His pupils widened. "You must come with me."
“You really know him?” Alvarez asked.
“Sort of.”
“What does sort of mean?”
I kept looking at Vesh, held his gaze. Dared him to deny what I was about to say. “I created him in a video game.”
“You did what?”
Vesh frowned. “You did not create me. And it was not a game.”
“I picked your face from a game menu.”
“The program matched your preferences to an existing warrior.”
“Wait.” Alvarez held up both hands. “The alien is your pixel boyfriend? The one you picked over tacos?”
“This is not the time, Alvarez.”
Vesh’s gaze snapped to him. “What is a pixel boyfriend?”
“Definitely not the time,” I repeated.
My supervisor stepped closer to me. “Anand, airport police are on the way. Are you in danger?”
Good question. I looked at the unconscious guards on the camera feed, then back at Vesh. “Did you kill anyone on the way up here?”
He looked offended. “No.”
“Permanent injuries?”
“No. Your guards attempted to stop me. I disabled them. They will wake with headaches.”
“How bad?”
“Moderate.”
“You couldn’t have asked to see me?”
“I did. They refused.”