Dazon Agenda: Complete Collection Read online

  He’d also gotten taller and far broader in the shoulders, which emphasized his narrow waist and flat stomach. The dark suit had morphed into a simple black garment that covered him from neck to ankle.

  She sagged in her electric wheelchair, shaking her head as she tried to deny what she was seeing; what she had just seen. “What’s going on?”

  He bowed his head slightly, and it appeared to be a gesture of respect. “As I said, I’m Ryland Breese of the Dazon Empire. I’m an inquisitor, which is akin to an earthling detective. Your blog post caught my attention. You have similar occurrences noted that match events occurring in an investigation by my home world. I’ve come to Earth to find the answer to where your friends have disappeared to.”

  She shook her head, gripping the poker even tighter between both hands. “I don’t buy it. Why would some alien dude care about a bunch of missing Earth women?”

  She wanted to say he arched a brow, but she realized he had no eyebrows. He just had a thick mane of golden brown hair that flowed from his forehead down to the back of his neck, though there was no hair on the sides of his head. She didn’t know if that was a deliberate styling choice, or if perhaps they didn’t grow hair there.

  Or perhaps she was going crazy by believing this was actually an alien. It seemed far more likely it was someone pretending to be an alien, simply because that was what logic suggested. However, if this was a pretense, the person had certainly done a good job of presenting an alien appearance, and how had they managed that trick with her door?

  “May I sit down, Jada?”

  She almost snapped at him, wanting to demand to know when they had become familiar enough to be on a first-name basis, but if he really was an alien, it seemed like the kind of lapse in etiquette she should just let slide. Still clinging fiercely to her poker, she waved a hand toward the recliner in her living room. She had gotten rid of all the other furniture, because it impeded the path of her chair, and visitors were infrequent. “Have a seat, Mr. Alien.”

  “Ryland Breese,” he said for the third time as he walked past her, nodding his head again in that same fashion that suggested it was a show of respect. He sat down on her lounger, and though it was cushiony and overstuffed, he looked far too big for it. It was like an adult trying to squeeze into a child’s recliner.

  Any urge she had to laugh faded when she met his golden-brown eyes again. There was genuine concern reflected there, and also what looked like…guilt? She wasn’t certain. If he was an alien, could he even feel guilt? She wheeled herself a bit closer, but certainly not within easy grabbing range, and set the poker across the arms of her wheelchair in a decisive fashion, clasping the metal rod in both hands as she stared at him. “Explain to me why any aliens would care about earthlings?”

  “May I share a little of the history of our empire with you?” At her nod, he said, “The Dazon Empire is slowly dying out. Three generations ago, we were at war with an enemy who unleashed a biological weapon upon us. We managed to defeat the enemy, but it was only as the war came to an end that we started to see the effects of the biological weapon.

  “The primary effect it had was to render Dazon females sterile. Some women were still getting pregnant, but far fewer than we needed to keep our species alive.”

  She made a small sound of distress on behalf of the women, finding sympathy for them even if this was all some sort of elaborate hoax, or the women didn’t even exist. She could empathize, having had to give up her dreams of motherhood upon realizing she had Kaiser’s Syndrome.

  She couldn’t risk passing on the disease, and with rapid progression, she hadn’t been in a proper state of health to get pregnant anyway, even if there had been a prospective father in the picture at that point. Her fiancé had been long gone, disappearing shortly after her diagnosis and before things even got really bad. Barry never would have made it through seeing her confined to a wheelchair and having to adapt to that kind of life.

  “Our scientists have done what they can, and some genetic manipulation is possible, but now when there’s a successful and healthy pregnancy, eighty percent of the time it results in a male child. We’re not certain if that’s a direct side effect of the biological weapon, and it was designed to work away, or if it’s a result of the genetic manipulation our scientists use, and the fact that males seem to be immune to the effects of the biological weapon.”

  “So you have very few women who can get pregnant, and when they do, four out of five babies born are male?”

  Ryland Breese nodded again. “Yes, that’s exactly right.”

  She frowned at him. “It sounds like a terrible problem for your Empire, but I still don’t see the connection with my missing friends.”

  He nodded. “For the past generation, we’ve been desperately searching for a genetic match among other species, hoping to find women who could bear Dazon young before we’re completely extinct. It’s been slow going, and politics hamper how to proceed should we find a compatible species. There is debate between simply snatching the women and forcing them to bear our young, or attempting to solicit their compliance with material things, or perhaps treaties and information exchanges with the governments of the planet involved.”

  “And have you reached a consensus?”

  He hesitated for a moment before shaking his head. “The only resolution our General Council has fully embraced is the women must be compliant and consenting. We might be on the verge of extinction, but that doesn’t justify kidnapping a race of sentient beings to save our own. We don’t have a firm plan in mind, and there’s an outspoken minority that protests this. The High Council has never given their official position, but it’s well known they align with the minority.”

  Her head was starting to hurt. It was simply from the overload of information and trying to absorb the fact that maybe, just maybe, this guy was a legitimate alien and not some actor or hoax. “What… Do you think Earth women are compatible?”

  Ryland shrugged. “I’m not certain. I’m not tasked with the scientific investigation into finding a compatible species. I know Earth women have been tested, but it’s my understanding there was no clear outcome. However, the scientist in charge went on hiatus two months ago, as did a small number of his core team. I’ve been unable to find any trace of Jorvak Ha or the others. It’s my supposition that perhaps Dr. Ha found a link between our species’ genetics and a small subset of your species’ genetics.”

  She let out a ragged exhale. “You’re going on the assumption that women with Kaiser’s Syndrome are genetically compatible with Dazon men?” The idea of being intimately…compatible with the golden alien squished into her recliner was distracting and threatened to derail her from the conversation as erotic images flickered through her mind. Forcing her attention back to him when he nodded, she asked, “And what was Jorvak Ha’s position on how to handle finding a compatible species?”

  His expression closed, and his lips tightened as he radiated evident anger. “Dr. Ha firmly believes we should take the women with or without their consent and use their genetic material as needed.”

  Her head spun, and she slumped even further in her chair. “Do you think my friends have been abducted by aliens?” She let out a laugh, but it held a slight edge of hysteria. “I want to say that sounds crazy, but it’s actually the most logical theory I’ve heard or come up with myself since I started noticing their disappearances. Do you know where my friends are, and where the other women have been taken?”

  “No, not yet, but I hope to figure that out with your assistance, Jada.”

  She blinked at him, shocked she was in this position. Was she really having a chat with some intergalactic detective-type who was investigating missing persons cases of galactic proportion? Were her friends really being held as some sort of breeders for a desperate race of aliens on the verge of extinction? It truly was no crazier than some of the other theories she had come up with or had been suggested on her blog. With a helpless shrug, she said, “I’ll help ho
wever I can, but I’m not going to be very useful to you in this chair, Mr. Breese.”

  “Call me Ryland, Jada. And if you permit me to do so, I can solve that problem.”

  Chapter Three

  She stared at herself in the mirror in disbelief. It had taken some persuading on his part to convince her to accept an injection from an alien device, especially when he had explained it held nanobots. They would quickly adapt to her human genetics and restore her body to a state of perfect health. They wouldn’t be able to remove Kaiser’s Syndrome, because they couldn’t reprogram her DNA or remove the fragment of the ninth chromosome that shouldn’t be there, but they would keep her body in a healthy balance, and she would no longer be confined to the chair.

  With that promise, she had been willing to try anything, and now, less than an hour later, she stood in front of her mirror and admired herself.

  She’d always been on the curvy side, and the last eight years being ill, with six of those confined to a wheelchair, had added some extra pounds despite regular physical therapy. Now, she was in the best shape of her life, better than she’d ever been. She still had soft curves and a rounded tummy, but she could see the biceps flex under the skin when she moved her arms, and she could feel the rock hardness of her abs beneath the soft layer of flesh.

  He knocked on the door, interrupting her visual inspection of her changed body, calling, “Are you all right, Jada?”

  “Yes, I’m coming.” She cleared her throat and turned her attention to rummaging in her closet again, barely tearing herself away from the entrancing sight of her body in the mirror. Her skin was gleaming and perfectly mocha-brown, with no blemishes at all. The mole on her shoulder was gone, as was scar on her knee from the time she had fallen off her bike in third grade.

  Even her hair was shiny and flowing, the kinky curls looking as though they’d had a fresh salon treatment. She felt beautiful and amazing, and that brought a load of guilt as she hastily slid on a dress that was now too large before walking—walking, how good that felt—out of the closet and across her bedroom floor on bare feet.

  She experienced guilt that her friends were still in various stages of poor health when there was technology to treat them all. She opened the door and took a deep breath before stepping out to join her new alien partner in crime fighting. If that wasn’t the strangest turn of events of the day, her physical transformation certainly vied for first.

  “This is amazing,” she said. “I feel wonderful. I feel better than I ever have in my life, even when I was in my late teens and early twenties and full of energy, before I started getting sick. Thank you for this, Ryland Breese.”

  “Just Ryland, please.” He inclined his head. “I’m happy to see the nanobots were able to communicate with your genetics. It also confirms my theory that women with Kaiser’s Syndrome are compatible with Dazon males. Which means…”

  “My missing friends and all the other women are probably somewhere at the mercy of your rogue scientist.”

  He nodded, looking regretful.

  “Will he have cured them? If not, can you cure everyone?”

  “It’s not a cure,” he reminded in a gentle tone. Ryland held up a hand, such a human gesture, to indicate he needed her to pause. “I’ll assist your friends how I can. I suspect our government will negotiate with your government to trade nanotechnology to keep Kaiser’s Syndrome and other illnesses in check in exchange for Earth’s government setting up a screening program of women willing to help produce offspring for the Dazon.

  “To answer your other question, I have no idea if Dr. Ha would have treated the women, or if he would have left them in a weakened state to make it easier to manipulate them.”

  Her heart stuttered at the thought, and she took a deep breath in a vain effort to ward off tears that prickled her eyes. “What’s he doing to them? Has he been…forcing them and impregnating them?”

  Again, Ryland shrugged. “From a logical perspective, the easiest thing to do is accelerate egg production by stimulating the women to produce a larger-than-usual number of eggs. Those would be harvested, fertilized with Dazon sperm, and then grown in an exo-womb. However, I’m uncertain about Dr. Ha, since his ethics are clearly degraded, and he has no respect for the fact that your women are sentient beings with the right to choose for themselves.”

  His words offered no comfort, but she appreciated the blunt honesty more than she would have a soothing platitude. She stood awkwardly in front of him, finding his height still impressive even now when she was back on her feet and restored to her normal five-seven. Unable to resist the impulse, she reached out and squeezed his hand. “Thank you so much for this, Ryland.”

  He stiffened lightly at her touch, but he didn’t shrug her off. For a moment, she feared she had breached some Dazon etiquette by touching him, and she should regret the impulsive gesture. Instead, her nerve endings sang with sensation. She hadn’t experienced such an intense and immediate physical reaction in at least eight years, and probably longer. If ever.

  His tawny-gold eyes darkened slightly, and she was certain his breathing pattern changed, but she didn’t know what any of that meant. In a human male, they would have been signs of arousal, but she had no way of knowing with an alien.

  Regretfully, she forced herself to release him and break the flood of sensation coursing into her. She wondered if it was an actual chemical reaction from touching him, or if it was simply pheromones and attraction. She hugged herself again, tilting her head sideways as she looked up at him. A question suddenly occurred to her. “Why me?”

  Ryland frowned. “Why you what, Jada?”

  “Why did you pick me to help you? If you needed a human liaison, wouldn’t it have been better to pick someone in law enforcement, or even go through proper political channels? I’m no one, so why did you pick me?”

  “You had put together enough of the pieces not to freak out—I believe that is the proper phrase—and scream hysterically at the idea of an alien in your house.” His answer was perfectly logical, but something about the way he held his shoulders and the rapid movement of his eyes for a moment made her think he hadn’t told her the truth, or at least the whole truth.

  That raised little alarm bells in the back of her mind, and she cautioned herself to proceed carefully. For the first time since he had offered to heal her, she wondered if he might be affiliated with the people who were taking her friends. Were they sweeping them off their feet with the promise of a cure only to be locked away in some alien harem?

  Dread filled her as she realized this could simply be a taste of being healthy. It could be that soon he would present her with the choice of becoming a broodmare in exchange for keeping the technology, or else losing it and reverting back to the wheelchair. Would they consider that honoring the right to choose?

  It seemed like wild speculation, but she didn’t know the alien in her living room, and she had no way to truly gauge his honesty or intentions. She had to admit it would be a powerful motivator, and if they threatened to take back the gift of health, she would probably be tempted to pump out as many alien babies as they required in order to keep the nanotechnology inside her.

  “Now what?” she asked briskly. “How will we find my friends?”

  He inclined his head, seeming to be deep in thought for a moment. “There appears to be a geographical pattern to the abductions. They’re occurring in a random fashion in each city where they take place, but Dr. Ha and his group are moving steadily around the globe in a semi-predictable manner and have acquired all the women registered with Kaiser’s Syndrome, except for those residing in your city. They started in the Far East and have gradually worked their way west since then. Before arriving here, they were in Toronto, where only one woman with Kaiser’s Syndrome resides.”

  “Beautifuleyes_1251.”

  He arched a brow ridge, looking confused. “Is that an earth idiom?”

  She allowed a small smile to blossom despite her distrust. “No, that’s one of
the members of my board. I bet it’s the same person. Beautifuleyes_1251 stopped posting a couple of weeks ago, and she lives in Toronto. All I have for her is an email address, but I traced her through her I.P. number and discovered she’s in Toronto. I was able to dig up a phone number for her, but she didn’t answer. I hadn’t found her cell phone number, and it was on my to-do list of things to accomplish this week.”

  He looked thoughtful. “There are some things I must check out, and I would suggest you continue your computer probing.”

  She tried to hide her disappointment, not liking the idea of being banished to the computer once more, though realistically that was her most useful skill, and it made sense to focus on her strengths. It wasn’t as though she had any sort of law enforcement or investigative training, unlike the alien inquisitor. She inclined her head to accept his decision before asking, “What are you going to investigate?”

  “I’m going to see if there’s some kind of holding facility suitable for the doctor’s needs. He must be storing the women he’s kidnapped, and it seems unlikely he would leave them in a centralized location distant from his current location, especially if he’s in the process of egg harvesting or insemination.

  “I doubt he’s had time to reach the stage of implanting blastocysts into exo-wombs, but if he’s farther along than I think, he’ll need a place capable of supporting a massive power source, and he’ll have arranged some method of travel for the people he’s kidnapped.”

  A pang of worry shot through her, and she couldn’t explain it, nor the need to reach out and hold him again, once more grasping his hand with hers. She was startled by her display, but even more startled by the suddenly desperate way he clung to her hand, as though he had been denied physical affection for almost a decade as well.