“Your restraints cannot hold me, and I choose not to be immobilized.” He reached around her to set the glass on the edge of the sink, then returned to the gurney and sat on its edge, his arms folded across his chest.
He seemed not the least embarrassed by his nudity. Indeed, he seemed unaware of it entirely. But she was not. Eve wondered at the strange fluttering in her belly. She had seen many photographic images and many holovids of men. She had studied the differences in their bodies, their musculature, their voices, their skeletal structure. But she’d never experienced this strange ache in her lower abdomen that made her groin feel heavy and tight.
Stop, Eve! He is a man. You cannot forget that. Men were fascinating creatures, but driven by aggressive, hormone-powered tendencies. The holovids had made that perfectly clear. Men were destructive. It was men who had made the wars and the weapons that had ended life on the planet. Yet here, standing before her, was a man who could clearly overpower her, but who instead exercised restraint and claimed to be a preserver of life. A noah, whatever that was.
“A noah collects archetypal samples of all native organisms from the worlds he watches,” the man said, his intent gaze never leaving her.
“So, what, you’re some sort of alien biologist cataloging all life in the universe?”
“Not exactly. When the time comes, I transplant the organisms I have harvested to a world of the creator’s choosing so that life may begin anew.”
“The creator?”
“The entity you call God.”
“Ah.” Humor the man, Eve. At least he’s talking. And staying on that side of the room. “So you were sent to this world to harvest samples of all life and transport it to a new world?”
“Yes, that was my purpose.” He looked down. He interlaced his fingers and steepled the thumbs. “But I find I can no longer perform the duty for which I was made.” Abruptly, the noah’s belly rumbled and he glanced down at his abdomen in surprise.
“Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?”
“Eat.” He frowned, as if he had to process the information. “Yes, to eat would be good.”
“I’ll bring you something.” She started for the door.
“There is no need to confine me. I am no danger to you.”
“Yes, well, that remains to be seen.” She dialed the lock code on the touchpad and waited for the sound of the seal pressurizing and the lock bars sliding into place. Then she dialed another code to release a mild sedative into the controlled space. “I’ll be back shortly.”
True to her word, she returned thirty minutes later. She carried folded clothes and a plate of grilled vegetables and soybean curd in her arms, a charged disruptor in her lab-coat pocket. She wasn’t going to make the mistake of entering the quarantine room unarmed a second time, not even with the sedative she’d pumped into the chamber. Not so long as her guest, the noah, was so adept at freeing himself from his bonds and moving with such astonishing speed and silence.
The noah was sitting on the floor, slumped in one of the chairs near the gurney. He was still conscious – she’d been careful to keep the sedative dose mild – but he wasn’t going to be making any sudden moves on her this time. Eve dialed the code to filter the air, then opened the quarantine chamber and entered.
She needed to hurry. Misha would be done with her current training session in ten minutes, and Eve knew the child would make a beeline for this part of Homebase as soon as the training helmet lifted. The visitor would draw her like a magnet. After all, he drew Eve the same way. But until Eve understood exactly who the man was and what he was capable of, letting Misha near him while was conscious seemed like a very bad idea.
“I brought you a change of clothes,” she told the noah. “They should fit. I used your own clothes as a measurement. Once that sedative wears off, eat your food and get dressed. I’ll be back in an hour to check on you.” She started for the door.
The drugs in his system should have kept the noah too lethargic to move for at least another ten minutes.
Instead, the moment her back was turned, the man erupted from the chair. One second he was slumped over in a chair in an apparent mild trance, the next he was pressed against her back, pinning her to the wall, one hand slapped against the glass on either side of her.
“I was made to walk among your kind, but I am not of your kind,” he said. “My body does not process your drugs as your own does. Nor do I lie, as your kind has always done. Next time, when I say I am no threat, believe me.”
Eve’s heart was in her throat. He was very tall, and very strong. And every inch of him was pressed against her back, hot and hard and intimidating. His mouth was pressed close to her ear. She swallowed heavily. “If this is your idea of nonthreatening, you are not as familiar with the nuances of my culture as you think.”
The noah pulled one of his hands away from the wall and slid it down the side of her waist. The hand moved around the front of her belly and went slower still. Eve’s mouth went dry.
“What are you doing?”
He thrust his hand into the pocket of her lab coat and retrieved her disruptor. “I let you shoot me with this once. I will not do so again. It hurts.”
He’d let her shoot him?
“I have shown you how quickly I can move,” he murmured in her ear. “Yet you still doubt me? I had not counted you for a fool.”
“I’m not. I’m sorry.” Oh, God. He had the disruptor. He had just proven how easily he could overpower her. If he got out of the quarantine space into Homebase . . . he could kill her easily. He could kill them all.
The noah gave a frustrated sound and grabbed her hand. With a yank, he spun her around and pushed her towards the center of the room. “I will not kill you. I do not kill. I told you, I am a preserver of life, not a destroyer of it.” He cupped the disruptor in his hands and squeezed. Eve heard a crack and a sizzling pop, then he tossed the charred, smoking chunks of metal on the floor between them. “There, do you see? I no long have the disruptor, and you can no longer shoot me with it.” He rubbed the spot on his naked ribs.
Her earlier blast had left an ugly bruise.
“Do you read minds?” How else would he have known what she was thinking?
“Thoughts are energy. I am skilled at manipulating energy. And just so you know, I only remained in this room to put you at ease. You cannot hold me here except by my choice.” He touched the lock on the door behind him, and with a snick and a pop, the seal depressurized, the lock turned and the door swung open. “There is no technology you possess that I cannot manipulate.” Instead of walking through the door, he stepped back, hands open, palms up in an unmistakable gesture of surrender. “But I will stay here, in this room, to prove that you have nothing to fear from me.”
“Good, then I won’t have to shoot you myself.” Nonna stepped into the open doorway, a much larger disruptor in her hands. Dre stood at her back, also armed. Despite their gray hair, they both looked deadly.
Eve watched the noah’s expression go blank. For the first time, the humans had managed to surprise him, it seemed. Those brilliant blue eyes of his darted from her face to Nonna’s, then Dre’s. “You are the same,” he said. “You are the same woman, but different ages of the same.”
“The technical term is clones,” Eve said. She walked forward, putting herself between the noah and her family. “It’s all right, Nonna, Dre. He has proven that if he meant to harm us, he could easily have done so by now.” She waited for the two women who looked like older copies of herself – who, in fact, were exactly that – to lower their weapons.