Nathan Hystad - The Survivors - Books 1-3

“For me?” Realization came over me. “If you lied about Leslie and Terrance, and needed to find the base… then… it was you.” I couldn’t believe it. I fought in my mind, looking at the face of my close friend Mae, the woman who wore my dead wife’s expression as she started to cry. “You killed that guard Clendening and the other one in the garage.” Images of Clendening, sticky red blood soaked into his bed, and the bloated face of the woman hanging in the office nearly caused me to vomit on Mae right there.

“I had to. It was the only way for you to focus on them. I knew they were making a move to get off-planet. I knew everything that happened at that damned prison in Long Island.”

It all made sense. They just wanted to get to a ship to see if Kareem would take them in, and Mae used it against us, used our hatred of hybrids to fuel their capture, even though they wanted to get caught. They fed off each other, even if the pair hadn’t known it.

“You had to kill them in cold blood?” I asked.

“The ends justify the means. Just look around down the hall at all the innocent Bhlat you killed. Or the race of Kraski you ended to protect your own. We’ve both done terrible things, Dean, but I did them for you.”

She stopped struggling then, letting me take the rifle from her. She was right, but I still didn’t put those in the same category. I supposed it was a matter of perspective.

Mae looked so small on the floor as I raised the pulse rifle. She was far from helpless.

“You killed those guards to perpetuate our hatred, so we would follow them when they escaped?”

She nodded.

“And then made us think they assaulted you as they escaped? Did you have anything to do with them getting out?”

She nodded again. “They didn’t know it was me, though.”

“What were you doing here? For real? Why not just tell us you knew them, and that you could help us? Didn’t you trust us? Didn’t you trust me ?” I asked. Her eyes welled up with tears.

“You wouldn’t have believed my story. I was turned by them years ago. I had so much anger, and nowhere to focus it. The Bhlat didn’t ask for much. They offered me a place with them when it was all over, but they really just wanted information. The Kraski were just a nuisance to them, but they were intrigued by their cloning ability, and we hybrids were something of a legend to them. At first, I thought they would dissect me, or throw me in a lab, but they treated me with respect and honor. It was the first time anyone had shown me respect, knowing I was the hybrid of a dying race and a human. The whole mission sparked their interest.” Mae slid over, sitting up so her back was against the wall.

“Go on,” I said, gun still raised.

“I hated the Kraski.”

They had wronged the hybrids, creating them to sacrifice themselves to convince humans to shut down the Deltra Shield, but there had to be more to the story.

“I feel like I’m missing something.”

“You are, babycakes,” she said, tears falling down her face. The pet name Janine had called me when we first started dating, but seemed to grow away from, hit me like a brick wall. Why had Janine’s phrase for me been uttered by Mae?

Looking at her curled up in the dim room, hair in her face, tears streaming down her cheeks, I suddenly understood. The pulse rifle fell from my hands, clanging on the ground. I knelt before the crying woman, my own eyes watering without control at that point.

“It’s you,” I said, hardly believing it.

She nodded.

“How?”

I was holding her wet face in my hand. “They were pissed at me for choosing you instead of that beefed-up military guy. They almost killed us both, but I convinced them I was right in choosing you. They let me stay with you that first year. You proposed, and it was so sweet. One day I went for a run, and they picked me up, told me I was being replaced, and that I was now named Mae. No one was to know. I met the other Janine, and they beat me when I wouldn’t cooperate by telling them intel on you. I guess they had enough, because they gave her my clothes and sent my replacement back to you.”

I slumped to the floor, looking at the real Janine sitting on the floor of an alien outpost so far away from home. The dream from the other day flashed in my mind, and I recalled that day. I remembered how strange Janine had been for a few months after that day, and how I’d let it go because she’d always seemed distant and brooding. Now it all made sense. I married another hybrid, lived with her for years. Watched her die. I had loved that woman too, and I honestly think a part of her had loved me, but Mae was the real one. The woman I’d met at the Boathouse in Central Park so long ago, drinking Scotch with me under the twinkle lights late into the night. Choosing me to help their cause over the other guy. My life would have been a lot simpler without that night. Maybe I’d be dead… maybe everyone would be.

It was too much to take as the alarms around us rang, red lights flashing from the hall. “How is this possible?” I asked, slumping beside her on the floor.

Could we go back to Earth like this? How would we explain it to the others? How would I explain it to Mary?

“Dean, I’m sorry it all worked out like this. You can’t imagine my thoughts when I saw you fly through that door on the vessel ship last year. It was a sign. It gave me renewed hope, and I kept telling myself that you would recognize me, that you would tell me you were in love with me still. But then you were with Mary, and I stepped back,” she said. I thought of all the times Mae seemed down, in a dark mood, and it made even more sense.

I held her hand, squeezing her fingers just like I used to do, and she rested her head on my shoulder. I almost laughed at the insanity of it all. The woman I’d fallen in love with that night, so many years ago, wasn’t the same woman I’d married and watched die. She was beside me on a remote outpost of an alien race we hardly even knew.

“Do the Bhlat know what happened?” I asked her.

“About the humans? I talked with them right as I got here, but they didn’t communicate it out yet, as far as I know. They didn’t have time.”

“We go to the ship, blast this place to smithereens, go home, and pray they don’t come for us.”

“I don’t think they will. It sounded like they were in the middle of a serious galactic battle out there, a long way away. They have a dozen outposts like this set up to ensure they keep the bloodlines intact, just in case.” Mae seemed to know a lot about them. I looked at her, and suddenly found it hard to believe I hadn’t known she was really Janine. My Janine.

“Are you ready?” I asked, getting to my feet.

“How is this going to work? Will they take me back?” She took my hand and got up.

“We’ll tell them what you told me. You were going to sacrifice yourself to go to their outpost to tell them there was no point in worrying about the humans. You knew we wouldn’t go for it, so when you saw the opportunity, you took it.” It seemed like the truth, at least the version she’d given me.

“And what about the other part?” The question came with a look I’d seen many times that first year with Janine. A cute, coy look.

I loved Mary, but this complicated things. Every bit of me knew I was going to marry her, but having my first real love nearby wasn’t going to make travelling in close quarters an easy task.

“We tell her. It’s only fair,” I said. She didn’t press me on my feelings, and I was thankful.

“Thank you, Dean.”

“For what?”

“Just for being you.” She moved to the door, and I was about to transmit to the ship that I had Mae with me, and we were coming back.