Damaged Goods Read online

  DAMAGED

  GOODS

  A XENO SAPIENS NOVEL

  Rena Marks

  DAMAGED GOODS

  A Xeno Sapiens Novel

  Rena Marks

  Monsters exist in perfect worlds, too. Iota Nine. A floating city created for the elite—the upper crust of the Earth survivors after the world wars. In this wonderful, dream-like land there’s a lot to live up to, especially when your father is a genetic scientist. But what if there’s always been a dark secret in the family?

  Kieran: He feels the pull the first time he sees her but there’s no way she’ll feel the same. She’s graceful, a princess of the highest class. She’s never been tainted by the ugliness that created Xeno Sapiens. But she also has never seen their species and the first word she utters before passing out is monsters. What will she think if she sees him, a monster caught between two worlds, his and hers?

  He has no chance to find out when she’s given to another.

  Alannah: She never knew another species existed in the world. Her elegant world consisted of neutrality; a place where everyone looked the same. Except for her, but that was Alannah’s horrid secret—something never to be referred to out loud. It was a price anyone would pay—a lack of childhood, sickly health, constant pain. And another secret.

  How can he want her when she’s damaged goods?

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  Xeno Sapiens

  Alien Stolen

  Abducted

  Space Babies

  Artificial Intelligence

  Stargazer Series

  The Hunter

  Also by Rena Marks

  Chapter One

  “MAY I HELP YOU?” A lyrical accent carried softly across the foyer.

  The woman who acted as hostess in the posh hotel where two inhabitants of the city Xenia had stayed a couple of weeks earlier swept down the stairs in a ballroom gown of sheer silk, numerous rainbow-colored layers of fabric. A wisp of the same material wafted over her lower face, as was the custom among all the upper crust. For a brief moment, the fabric shimmered as though the gown was a hologram. That perhaps she moved naked and clothing was a trickery.

  But as she got closer, they realized the gown was indeed real—and incredibly expensive. Of course, Jason was used to the amount of money spent in the floating city of Iota Nine, but Shawn had grown used to the dusty and raw reality of Earth-Ground. Not this fancy bubble of filtered rain, and joint-cushioning ground covering, and perfect temperatures.

  “Jason Becker and Shawn Tanner, milady. We’re looking for Lord Wilson Nolan.” Jason smiled easily, his accent suddenly matching hers. As expected, she was a thread more forthcoming than merely professional when she realized he was from the same floating city.

  “Wilson? I’m afraid he’s not here. He’s been on vacation for about a week now.”

  “During the holidays?”

  A frown of confusion whispered over her face before it disappeared just as quickly. “Yes. Believe me, I’m just as surprised. This is the first time I hosted the annual party on my own.”

  “Where’s he on vacation at?” Shawn asked, his rougher tone matching that of Earth-Ground. It was no longer necessary to fit in—not that he could, anyway. Jason was from this city, not him.

  She blinked at him. “I’m—uh—not sure?”

  “Who did he leave in charge of the hotel?”

  “Why, me. Of course. Lady Alannah Holland, at your service.” She didn’t extend her hand, but that was expected. Iota Nine residents were standoffish and pristine. Touching was kept to a minimum.

  “In that case, Lady Holland, we have a warrant to search the quarters of Lord Wilson Nolan.” Jason produced the warrant from the upper pocket of his uniform.

  “I see.” Her eyes roved over the document. With her left hand, she pressed a button on the bracelet of her upper arm. A small white light came from the center of her palm. She passed her spread hand over the document, checking for authenticity.

  Seemingly satisfied, she handed it back to Jason.

  “Lady Holland?” Another employee called from the top of the staircase. “Everything all right?”

  She nodded. “I’ll be a while. Take over for me, please?”

  He nodded and disappeared back into the room that hosted the party.

  “Follow me, please.”

  She didn’t wait for affirmation before turning and floating to the elevator doors. She passed her hand over the identifier screen and the doors slid open. Once they were all inside, her palm print closed the doors.

  The elevator whooshed with a sideways twist, indicating transportation. Sure enough, a queasy feeling hit the pit of their bellies, a side effect of transporting. But the manners of the Lords and Ladies of Iota Nine required that they would never show unease, and the Lady Holland was no exception. Her face remained expressionless. When the doors opened to a hallway, she walked them down to a set of double doors.

  “Do you have access?” Jason asked.

  “I do.”

  She touched the door pad. Her identification rolled across the viewing screen.

  Lady Alannah Holland. Girlfriend.

  “You’re in a relationship?” Shawn asked.

  Her lips tightened over his crasser accent, but professionalism won out and she nodded once. “He is my boyfriend.”

  Once the doors slid open, both men drew their lasers as if expecting Wilson to come crashing out of the suite. They cleared the area and switched their beams to a black light, looking everywhere. Every drawer. Every wall. Every light switch. The medicine cabinets. Closets.

  She realized having their court-licensed black light beams incorporated into their weapons allowed those weapons inside the higher, violence-restricted, floating city of Iota Nine without an additional bodyguard or law enforcement paperwork.

  Very clever.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked after twenty minutes of searching.

  Shawn turned to her as if assessing something. “Primarily medications. Instead of a liquid tincture for B vitamins, it would be processed into a dissolvable tablet form similar to a tiny piece of cellophane.”

  “Like these?”

  She waved her right palm with the bracelet on her arm over the other palm, expanding an image of a hologram pill box that looked like Leah’s, the Xenia resident who had stayed in the hotel. A mimic of Jason’s sister, Dr. Amanda’s, prescription.

  “Where did you see that?” Jason asked.

  “My apartment. The prescription is in my name. I’ve always carried a script for the B vitamins. But Wilson recently had the liquid re-produced into the dissolvable paper tablet form. He thought the box would be easier to deal with. It was a kind thought.”

  “He set you up, sweetheart,” Shawn grumbled.

  “Pardon?” The look on her face was expressionless, her eyes large like a doll.

  Jason spoke. “The patent on the dissolvable tablet is only available for sleeping pills. That’s how we avoid mixing up medications. Putting your prescription into the new form was to set you up. A woman who took the sleeping pills, prescribed by Dr. Amanda Becker, stayed in this hotel. Her sleeping meds were exchanged for the vitamin version while she awaited her turn to testify at a trial for Brock C
iregna. Since those illegal substances are yours, we’d like to know how they turned up in Leah’s bag?”

  Alannah turned up her nose. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve only been given one box.”

  “Where is it?” Shawn asked silkily.

  “My apartment.”

  “Show us.”

  Her eyes crinkled as if she smiled underneath the face covering. “That warrant is for Lord Nolan, correct?”

  “Actually, no,” Jason said. “The fine print on the last page includes all acting management of The Bella Hotel of Iota Nine. You took us to his apartment and we thank you. But you also admitted to being left in charge in his absence so carry on.”

  Her face tightened and she turned without a word. They followed her back down the hall where she barely paused to slap her hand against the viewing screen of another door. When it swooshed open, Shawn stayed near her while Jason held his scanner out, following the beeps to the bedroom.

  He returned to the living area holding a small bag. “We got it. Normally this is a jail sentence, Lady Holland.”

  “I have nothing to do with that. I didn’t even request it. He was doing me a favor, since I’d spilled my liquid drops once—”

  “He made a mistake, Alannah. He expected Brock Ciregna to have a verdict of innocent during the recent trial. He was probably assured that without her sleeping meds, Leah Margulies would seem agitated and confused on the stand. Nothing dangerous, he would have been assured. But in reality, it is punishable. He realized it when Brock was deemed guilty. And now Xenia wants to know how and where your boyfriend developed the meds for you. He knew this and disappeared. But the fool forgot to take the box.” Jason slipped it into his upper pocket. “So he’ll be coming for you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because records show you alone had access to Leah’s quarters. Like we said, he set you up.”

  “That’s untrue. I wasn’t even on duty Thursday and Friday during the trial.”

  “Then someone managed to change the records to show you were. For that reason, we think he may come after you. He needs your leftover meds…and he needs you to keep quiet about your days off. You’re the only person who can implicate him. All other evidence points to you.”

  “Ma’am, you’ll need to come with us to Xenia. It’s the only place we can protect you until he’s caught,” Shawn said.

  “Caught? He doesn’t even know—”

  “A world-wide statement is going out within the hour posting a manhunt. Every bounty hunter on the planet will be searching for him. It’s only a matter of time. If you want to live outside of prison, I’d suggest you follow us.”

  Alannah Holland’s jaw dropped. She’d never been on any city other than Iota Nine. Certainly not the crass Earth-Ground, where actual creatures existed. Wild animals once used for food. Where clean, filtered soil was plain old filthy dirt. Where the temperature wasn’t regulated and actual disease-infested bugs filled the raw air.

  Was that even a step up from prison?

  Chapter Two

  LADY ALANNAH HOLLAND had never been outside of her own floating city, Iota Nine. She’d never cared to. Figured the one and only time she left, it would be to visit Earth-Ground. The most basic, uncouth, coarse, crude, filthy area there was. While she was told she would be hidden within the newly established, protected city of Xenia for her own safety, she was also threatened with law enforcement if she didn’t comply. So what choice did she have?

  And why was there even a new city within a city?

  “So what makes this Xenia so protected?” she muttered, forgetting her ingrained manners enough to mumble under her breath, a habit as crass as the place where she was going.

  The two men who flanked her on either side spoke at the same time.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  At her blank look, Shawn said, “The land of Xeno Sapiens?”

  “I’m sorry, what’s that?”

  Jason said, “Don’t you follow the news?”

  His look turned incredulous when she answered. “No. I don’t. Not unless it has to do with the arts, or—”

  A sigh reached her ears. “You would be the only person on the planet who hasn’t. Crash course. Several types of alien DNA were discovered in the lost city of Atlantis. With that DNA, a new race of beings was created. They were kept locked up in underground laboratories and experimented on until they were freed by two of the female doctors paid to revive them. We created the city of Xenia to house them. It has its own immunity from the rest of the world. In order to pass through the gates, you’d have to give up your citizenship and be subject to the laws of Xenia.”

  “And what are the laws of Xenia?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “The same basic laws, commandments, and principles as anywhere else. No killing. No stealing. No lusting after your neighbor.”

  Shawn elbowed him, snickering. Obviously the association between the two men went beyond a work relationship.

  “You’re sure I’ll be safe there?”

  Shawn flickered through the communicator on his wrist. “Too late to worry about that, princess.” With a touch of a button, the live feeds scrolled onto a wall in the hovercar.

  Bounty hunters: job needed. Lady Alannah Holland—Iota Nine, dead or alive. Reward: Two million credits. Her identification image came up.

  “What’s that?” she gasped.

  “The underground feeds. Illegal job postings. Your death has been ordered.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Lady, have you ever left Iota Nine?” Jason asked.

  “No.”

  Shawn leaned back. “This just got a whole lot interesting.”

  “I demand to go back,” she said. “I will be perfectly safe within my own city. There’s law enforcement for these kinds of situations, I’m sure. I’ll hire bodyguards.”

  “We can’t do that now that the feeds have been released and the statement has been issued for your boyfriend. It’ll fall back on us if something happens.”

  She sputtered. “You can’t keep me.”

  “Yeah, we really can.” Jason spoke without his Iota Nine accent, sounding as crass as his partner. “We can invoke your arrest instead. It was your quarters the illegal prescription was found and it’s only your word that Wilson Nolan had anything to do with it.”

  She was trapped between a rock and a hard place. She could come willingly, or she could come kicking and screaming. Either way, she would come.

  The hovercar stopped at the iron gates of Xenia. A man came out of the office area, the window of the hovercar slid open, and he peered inside. “Just us, Adam,” Jason, one of the men who’d practically abducted her, said.

  The man produced a tablet and handed it to her. “Read and sign for access to Xenia.”

  Seriously? They’d told her they couldn’t protect her unless she came with them, then didn’t allow her to change her mind, then forced her to sign a statement to get in?

  “Whatever,” she said, affixing her finger into the well for a DNA scan to sign.

  The gatekeeper didn’t care that she didn’t read the document. He merely smiled and said, “Enjoy your stay.”

  The vehicle carried them all the way inside the gates to a round building. A vision caught her eye. Some sort of creature—a green blur—raced through the woods. Surely she was mistaken?

  She split her attention from the movement in the woods long enough to notice Shawn and Jason whispering back and forth.

  There. Another movement. Not an animal, but what it was she couldn’t place.

  “Did you see that?” she asked.

  “Not sure. What was it?”

  She was unable to answer because the hovercar’s door opened and along with it, her jaw.

  The scene was surreal.

  The people were…creatures. Striped. Horned. Blue. Purple. Green. Upright, walking lizards. Something that looked crossed with a man and a beast. Despite their…hideousness, they all wore smiles. Incongruous, misplaced smi
les.

  “What?! Is this a joke?” she whispered. Her heart thumped against her chest. Were they part of an elaborate costume scheme?

  “No, milady,” Jason said, taking her elbow to escort her from the car. “Welcome to Xenia.”

  Her legs were trembling. She’d never seen an actual animal up close, as zoos had been outlawed and the wild creatures only lived on Earth-Ground. And to see people with inhuman traits? It was mind-boggling.

  An awed hush roved over the crowd as they took in her party dress. Shawn and Jason hadn’t allowed her to change. They only allowed her to pack a bag of her most prized possessions, which they carried for her. In response to all the beings gathered on the stone steps, she stared.

  Anxiety rolled through her midsection, the familiar tension coiled like a spring. When was the last time she’d taken a tablet of vitamin B? Goodness, she’d been so busy with Wilson’s abrupt departure, she might have forgotten her doses here and there. And then with the party earlier tonight, she was too busy to remember. Did she even take one the day before? This was why she’d angrily told Wilson she preferred to keep her liquid vial. She never had to think about taking her dose. She simply placed her water glass on the stand of the vial and it absorbed her minimum daily requirement. It was a routine she was familiar with and these dissolvable tablets threw her off balance. She had intended to take one last night, but these two had arrived and confiscated her box.

  “My pills,” she said, turning to Jason and Shawn.

  “Not your pills, milady,” Shawn said. “It’s our evidence.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” she said. “I need them. My B levels,” she gasped, sweat suddenly pouring from her skin as if by the realization that she was behind on her levels triggered an immediate attack.

  “Amanda!” Jason called out for someone, his sharp gaze taking in her face. Her clawed fingers reached for his shirt, her lungs trying to suck in needed air. Her weakened knees sank as she clutched the forearms of Jason. Behind her, Shawn caught her dropping body.

  “Alannah? Right here, honey. Relax,” a lilting, feminine voice behind her said. Someone slid a hoverboard behind her back and she was floated effortlessly upward, her skirts fluttering over the sides of the board. A scanner hummed over her body.