"I think there is a phrase about picking on someone your own size," he said. "If it doesn't apply to you, then it doesn't apply to me."
"Fuck you," Miles spat, before turning.
She watched her ex walk back toward the small parking lot behind the Pink Flamingo Cafe. When he was finally out of sight, she let out a tense breath, unaware that she'd been expecting something so much worse. Of course, he'd probably just try it again, but at least now she knew what to expect. Miles simply wasn't going to take no for an answer. If he did, he might have to get a real job.
"Thanks," she told the big guy, aware that he was still standing protectively before her.
He turned to face her, his hood hiding most of his face. "Thank you for the coffee. Being too big seems to be the least I can do."
She grinned, enjoying the strange sound of his accent. "Depends on how you define too big." She tried to look under the hood to find his eyes, but shadows hid them too well. "Anyways, you didn't have to do that, but I'm really glad you did. Thanks."
She held out her hand, not knowing what else to do. His head tilted slightly, then he clasped her palm in his, long fingers wrapping around the back of her hand. His lips slid up for a split second, then she felt a pinch and flinched away.
"Shit, I think there's something on your jacket," she said.
He looked at his wrist, brushing one hand across the cuff, then picked at something. "Yeah. Sorry. Have a good night, Hahlee."
Then he just walked away, heading in the same direction Miles had gone. Hailey rolled her eyes. Men, she thought, wondering why all the good-looking ones seemed so very strange. At least her knight in shining armor's version of strange seemed sweet. Ok, maybe a little dark and mysterious, but then again, everything was a little crazy lately, what with the ship and all.
Turning her feet up the street, she looked at the red mark on her palm. Whatever had stuck her had gone deeper than she'd thought. As she headed home, she pinched the skin, checking to make sure there wasn't a splinter lodged deep inside.
Chapter Four
When Tsij saw the man shoving the woman around, he'd tried to tell himself to ignore it. Some kind of primitive mating ritual, he'd thought. Humans were known to be exceptionally aggressive. The female should find it appealing, and the male was clearly trying to attract her.
But rationalizing it didn't help. When he saw the fear on the human girl's face, he'd tried to stop himself, but the words fell from his mouth before he was even fully visible. He was just glad that neither of them had noticed. That would have ruined everything.
Then the idiot had attempted to threaten him. Tsij chuckled at the memory. The man had postured before him, spreading his chest to look as broad as possible, but he still hadn't been able to appear large enough. Tsij had half expected the primate to start pounding on his pectorals, but it appeared they had managed to evolve beyond that. Slightly.
What had truly shocked him was how the girl had reacted. His size hadn't intimidated her at all. Most likely, the females found large males reassuring. An evolutionary holdover for protection. Either way, when she'd offered her hand, he hadn't been able to refuse. It had been the perfect excuse to get a sample from her. Just a little puncture from the barb on his wrist, careful not to expel any toxin, and a tiny amount of human tissue had been retrieved. She hadn't suspected a thing. He hadn't been so gentle when he'd collected the sample from "Miles."
Now, back in his temporary living space, Tsij prepared them both for testing, carefully labeling the tubes so that he could find the donor again. For the girl's, he used her name: Hailey. His tongue refused to wrap around the letters properly, but if he said it enough, it eventually would. Oddly, he didn't mind saying it.
She wasn't like he'd expected. Instead of avoiding him - which humans typically did, according to records from previous expeditions, instinctually knowing he was different - she'd been kind, possibly even curious. He set the vial in the incubator and let his eyes close. She'd seemed completely healthy. It had been almost a full day since he'd first met her. She should be showing some signs of infection if she was susceptible. A slight irritation of the eyes, a cough, maybe even a fever, but she seemed fine.
The chances that the first person he came across would be the ideal sample were astronomical. Then again, so were the chances of an asteroid impacting the oxygen reproduction section of their ship. They could repair almost anything else en route, but not that. It was the one thing that would force them to land, and Earth had been the only planet in the region suitable for them. Granted, that was exactly why the Gahnek had been studying it for so long.
Tsij pushed his hands across his face. The pilot should've sent off a distress message, but it would be years before anyone would arrive, unless another science vessel was in the area. With humans swarming all over the ship, there was no way to know if help was on the way, and unless humans could read or speak his language, replies would simply go unanswered.
That meant he had to find a vaccine for the human population, and soon. He had to prevent Gahnek bacteria from wiping out the entire species of this planet. Human biology had never encountered things that Gahnek had learned to live with symbiotically. While most creatures had some amount of simple organisms, usually yeasts and bacteria, on their skin, the alien strains could be fatal. Human immune systems simply wouldn't know how to fight it. Few of them used the same proteins, and the amino acids his world favored were much less common on this planet.
It worked both ways, but long ago, before any scientists had been allowed on the surface, they'd had to find a way to inoculate against all foreign pathogens. Now, it was standard for the entire crew of the ship to be prepared. Tsij's body could adapt to the germs on Earth as easily as a human's, but the microbes on his skin, in his breath, and even in the air of his ship would infect all creatures with a specific intolerance. That meant all primates definitely, and possibly other creatures as well. And he was the only one that could find a solution before people started dying. He should have about seventy-two Earth hours before symptoms began to show. Fatalities would begin to appear somewhere within two human weeks.
He yawned, wiping at eyes stinging from the pollution in the air, then checked his experiment one more time. He knew it was a long shot, but stories told of early explorers mingling with the natives. Hushed rumors whispered that crossbreeding was even possible. Their species were very similar, after all. So similar that it was inexplicable. Similar enough that images of strangely-colored human women still circulated back home as fetish pornography.
Tsij had never understood the appeal. Simple-minded, uneducated, primitive creatures, humans were close enough to his kind to be interesting, but different enough that they should be little more than pets. Yet, when the observations first started, travel through space took so long that it only made sense to mingle with the natives. Gahnek would spend most of their lives here, cut off from their own kind. It was only natural for relationships to form over time. Supposedly, some of the early expeditions had members who'd requested to stay behind when their ship left. Reports hinted at children being born, but only if one read between the lines.
That meant there was a chance that the gene for recognition of Chajek antigens - those from his planet - were embedded in the population somewhere. In four thousand years, surely it hadn't been wiped out completely. If he was lucky, it had been passed on enough to give the population a head start against the pathogens that had been released with the emergency escape hatches.