“She won’t try to escape,” Justin said, sounding annoyed and Holly glanced over her shoulder to see that his expression matched his tone of voice as he followed them.
“You can’t read her, Bricker,” Anders said solemnly, which made Justin turn a worried gaze her way, his eyebrows raised in question.
Holly just turned her head forward. What did he expect? She didn’t know any of them. She’d been knocked out and transported to some house outside Los Angeles and was being kept there for training with four strangers. Of course she had thoughts of escaping. That was just common sense, she assured herself. So why had his expression made her feel guilty?
Seven
“So . . . nanos?” Holly prompted. They were in an expensive black sedan with tinted windows, one that belonged to her absent hosts, Vincent and Jackie, would be her guess. Anders was driving, with Decker in the front passenger seat and Justin in the back next to her. But she couldn’t help noticing he was scrunched up against his window, as far away as he could get. Holly tried not to be insulted by that. Was he afraid she’d try to bite him again? Shrugging the question away, she said, “Justin? Nanos?”
For one moment Justin continued to peer out the window and she thought perhaps he hadn’t heard her, but then he turned and said, “That’s what I gave you with my blood. Nanos. Right now there are millions of bio-engineered nanos racing through your blood stream, traveling to any parts of your body that need repair, or where viruses or germs have gathered.”
“Millions?” Holly asked with disbelief. “Surely you didn’t give me millions when you—”
“No,” he assured her. “But they multiply quickly when necessary, using our blood to clone themselves. That would have been the first thing they started doing after I gave them to you. Well, one of the first things. Some would have been busily doing that while others were sent to stop the bleeding and begin repairs on your chest wound. They act like white blood cells and surround and remove germs, parasites, fungus, poisons, and whatnot from our systems, but they also repair anything that needs repairing in us: organs, cells, skin—”
“Is that why Gia looks so young when she’s eight hundred years old?” Holly asked.
“Yes. The nanos are programmed to keep us at our peak condition, so we never age past a certain stage.”
“You all look about my age,” Holly murmured, glancing to the two men in the front seat. “How old are you three?”
When Justin hesitated, Decker announced, “Anders is over six hundred and I’m over two hundred and sixty.”
Holly’s eyebrows rose, though she wasn’t sure why. Gia was much older. She turned to Justin curiously. “And you?”
“Over a hundred,” he said evasively.
“Okaaay,” she said slowly. She was riding in a car with three octogenarians, she thought and then frowned. No, that was someone in their eighties, wasn’t it? Not over a hundred. So was she riding with centurions?
“We’re centenarians,” Anders corrected. “A centurion was a commander of a century, a hundred soldiers.”
“Oh,” Holly murmured and thought, you really do learn something new every day. Well, some days anyway. Shaking her head, she glanced to Justin. “So these nanos keep you young and healthy. Why the need for blood?”
“They use blood to do their work as well as to clone and propel themselves,” Justin explained. “It takes a lot of blood, more than we can produce ourselves.”
She considered that. “So, if you stopped taking in the extra blood, would the nanos just die off and leave you mortal again?”
“No,” he assured her solemnly. “They would devour the blood in your veins and then go after the blood in your organs, causing excruciating pain and eventually madness, so that you became a ravening beast who would attack and destroy anything to get blood.”
“Riiiight,” Holly said weakly. “So taking blood regularly is good.”
“Definitely,” he said dryly. “I’m sorry. There is no cure, no way to rid yourself of the nanos. Not yet anyway.”
Holly sighed. “Well, I guess it’s better than dead.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
Holly nodded, “So, you gave it to me through blood. Can it be passed via other bodily liquids? Say kissing or sex?”
He shook his head. “Blood only.”
“So a blood transfusion or . . .” She didn’t bother finishing because he was already shaking his head.
“Too many nanos are needed to start a turn. A blood transfusion wouldn’t work.”
“Why?” she asked with surprise. “If they’re in the blood, then—”
“Think of it like fish in a dammed-up river. You stick a net in to try to catch one and the fish will all scram. Knock a small hole in the dam and maybe one or two fish who happen to be close by come out with the water, but the rest will instinctively swim away as quickly as possible from that small hole, maybe out of that tributary altogether and to another part of the system. But if you open the floodgates, or blow up a section of the dam, loads of them come flowing out before they can get away from it.”
“So you’re saying the nanos would flee from the needle like fish would flee a net or a hole in a dam?” Holly asked slowly. When he nodded, she said, “And opening the floodgates is like biting into your wrist?”
He nodded again.
“What about slicing your wrist open?”
“That would work, but only if the wound is deep and severs the vein entirely. Otherwise the nanos would repair and stop the bleeding too quickly.”
“We’re here.”
Holly glanced forward at that announcement and noted that they were at a California Pizza Kitchen. That was when her stomach gave a loud rumble. It seemed she was hungry after all, Holly acknowledged with a grimace and reached for the door handle.
She was halfway across the parking lot, Decker and Anders on either side of her, and Justin behind when she suddenly came to an abrupt halt. “Wait a minute!”
All three men stopped, concern on their faces. At least they all three looked concerned for all of a heartbeat and then Decker and Anders relaxed. She guessed they’d read her thoughts. Of course, Justin couldn’t and it was him she turned to, to say, “Gia said she was eight hundred, and you guys are over one hundred, two hundred and six hundred. Right?”
“Yeah,” Justin nodded with confusion, unsure where this was leading.
“Well, there is no way this kind of technology was around eight hundred or even one hundred years ago. Just no way,” Holly said with certainty.
Justin relaxed and smiled faintly as he agreed, “No, it definitely wasn’t around eight hundred or even one hundred years ago.”
“Then . . . oh, hell,” she breathed suddenly, taking a step back from them before accusing, “You’re aliens, aren’t you?”
Justin blinked. “What?”
“That’s the only explanation,” she said with certainty. “You’re aliens from another planet.”
“No, we’re not from another planet,” Justin assured her, and then glanced nervously around at the passing people coming and going from the restaurant. Holly hadn’t been whispering. If anything, she was speaking in a louder than normal voice.
“Yes, you are,” she exclaimed, sure she was right.
Justin winced. “Holly, honey, you maybe want to keep your voice down. We’re in public and—”
“You’re from a more advanced planet,” she accused. “And you crash-landed here or came here to study us and— Cripes, we’re like cows to you!”
“Honey,” he began, and then glanced to Decker and Anders. “A little help here guys?”
“Nah,” Decker said with amusement. “This is too interesting.”
Anders nodded. “I want to hear more of her theories.”
“I want to see how he explains away her theories,” Decker countered.
“You’re going to farm us,” Holly accused. “You’re going to get the extra blood you need for your people by using us as cows and milking us by the millions. You’ll lock us up on farms and bleed us daily.”