Genus: Unknown Adaptation by Kaitlyn O'Connor Read Free Book Online Page B

beyond his hiding place was clear, he returned to the corridor and made his way back to the pod/lift, ignoring the reluctance coiling tightly in his belly the further he got from Kate. The pod went up and came down, filled and emptied of humans, several times before he reached a level where he felt Dae and Rak strongly enough that he knew he was as near to them as he would get on the pod/lift.
    He stepped off and found himself in the part of the station that he had been brought through when he had first come. He felt his hackles rise at that discovery and had to struggle to maintain his guise once more as he moved quickly toward Dae and Rak. He found them in a space so wide and high that it almost did not look like a pod at all. It was filled with pods of many shapes and sizes, including some that were similar to the spacecrafts that had brought them to the space station, although these were much smaller.
    It is what they call a hanger, Dae responded. The spacecrafts they use to travel from this place to their world are here and that one is to leave shortly to pick up passengers and supplies.
    Excellent! They are going to take Kate down to their world. She is charged or to be charged. I did not perfectly understand that except that she is afraid of punishment. We will hide ourselves there and find a way to free her.
    What is this punishment, Rak asked, uneasiness threading his thoughts?
    Harm, Noo responded grimly. I do not understand it myself, but she is afraid. What else would she be afraid of?
    Rak considered that and finally shrugged. You must be right, he agreed tightly. We will not let them do that … whatever they mean to do.
    I think we must make ourselves look like those humans and go inside carrying something and then hide ourselves, Dae said. The skins they are wearing are different from these that we have imitated.
    Then we should hasten to do so, Noo agreed. It will not do to linger. They are bound to find those we killed and then we might not be able to leave this place. Do not try to verbalize. I tried to verbalize for their machine and it did not understand. It is a machine, though, and it was not alarmed or suspicious. They will be both if we are not able to make ourselves understood.
     

Chapter Three
    Nothing that had happened since she'd discovered the project was to be scrubbed and the specimens destroyed had seemed entirely real to Kate. She hadn't, in point of fact, been able to focus on much of anything beyond her discovery and the helpless anger and nausea that washed over her as her imagination supplied her with one nightmarish scenario after another of what was happening in the habitat. She'd demanded, over and over, to speak directly to the commander, General Lawrence Hart, and yet when she was escorted to the command center to speak to him less than an hour after they'd reached the surface, she was so unnerved by the frenetic activity around her in the command center that she had trouble gathering her thoughts.
    It seemed to take General Hart a few moments to place her when she'd been introduced to him by the guard that had escorted her. His gaze slowly focused on her face, however, and his expression became even grimmer. "The Sirian beasts have escaped," he said tightly. "If you know something, now's the time to spill it."
    Kate felt her jaw slide to half mast in shock. Her thoughts went chaotic. Dominant among her thoughts, however, was the sudden realization that she'd left the containment door unlocked when she'd dashed off to protect her project. She felt her face flash with guilty heat and then all the blood rush away as the enormity of her breech of protocol struck her. "Escaped?" she echoed faintly, visions of long term imprisonment replacing the horrific images of the slaughtered beasts.
    The general's lips tightened. "They found the bodies of the security team that was sent in to destroy the animals."
    The shock that hit Kate that time almost felt like a physical blow. She reeled, felt