Heat

He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then let it out in a sigh. His u

Panic was a nice thing to have in bad situations. It numbed the senses nicely and kept one from having to come to real grips with horrible things. Unfortunately, it was not self-perpetuating. Without the continued presence of the stranger (The alien! The monster! The clawed, fanged, evil thing!) to feed it, panic slowly bled out of her and lucidity stole in.

Daria shuffled forward, keeping contact with the dryer as long as she could, as though it were her own private tether to normalcy. She stooped and picked up the sock she’d thrown and returned it to the hamper. She put the empty paint can back on the shelf. It was dulcet powder, and she’d need the sample if she ever had to repaint her bedroom.

The door was still open, inviting her back into her house. The stranger was nowhere in sight. Daria tugged her t-shirt down over her thighs, steeling herself, and finally stepped out into the hall.

He was in the living room, cleaning up the wooden shards that used to be her coffee table. He glanced at her when she crept in, but that was all.

Daria waited nervously for him to do something and when he only continued to ignore her, she moved past him and picked up the bills she’d dropped in front of the door. She had nowhere to put them, so she righted the end table and put them there. The coat rack went back in the corner. The coats were hung up on the rack. After that, she had nothing else to do but look at Tagen Pahnee, the invader.

He leaned the pieces of her coffee table against the wall and turned around to face her. He glanced once at the muted TV—Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy was prosecuting the blue hell out of some little old lady—and then he looked at her again. It was hard to meet his frustrated, golden gaze without flinching.

She opened her mouth several times before she managed to ask the question that had been gnawing at her. “Are you an alien?”

“Am I—?” Surprise smoothed the anger out of him, and made his hard features seem somehow younger. A thin smile twitched at the corners of his mouth, exposing the tips of some very sharp teeth. “No,” Tagen said. “You are.”

The incongruity of that statement left Daria speechless and a little dizzy. She swept her eyes around the room, trying to draw strength from all the nice, normal things that bolstered up her life, and then looked back at him helplessly. “Why did you lock me in?”

“To keep you from ru

“Daria,” she said. “Just Daria.”

Tagen nodded, closing his falcon’s eyes briefly. “Yes,” he muttered. “You told me this.”

“What…What are you?” she asked. “What are you doing here? What are you going to do to me?”

He was watching her mouth closely, as though trying to read the words as they left her, and he gave his head a hard shake as her voice started to climb. “Slowly,” he said. “Please.”

She backed up a step, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. She stood and looked unhappily into his alien face, feeling lost.

Tagen seemed to be waiting for her to repeat her questions, and when she lapsed into her miserable silence, a thin line appeared between his eyes. He regarded her with that half-frown for a long space of seconds, and then said, “I do not know many of your words, but I will explain as much as I can. More than that, I can only say it is not my…my plan to hurt you. I would not be here at all if my need were not…not…bad.” He scowled at the inadequacy of the word and then shot her a glance.

She did not volunteer another. Eventually, he went on.

“I am—” He gestured at the TV, where a new Law & Order had started. “—a police. I have come…There is someone…”

He stopped, frustration climbing through his whole body, and glared at the television. “I ca

Daria shook her head, her hair snapping out wildly. “No, no-no-no! You can’t just lock me in here with you and say it’s okay because you’re a cop! That’s not a reason, that’s a résumé! Now you tell me what you’re doing here or I’ll—”

Tagen shot her a glare and then advanced on her like a panther. His mouth opened and out came a furious rush of sound that she tried hear as an alien language for several minutes before she realized her was speaking perfect Spanish.

The bones went out of Daria’s body. She staggered back and he came forward, circling her and driving her out the corner until she hit the edge of the couch. She sat strengthlessly and stared up at him. There was something so fundamentally surreal about an alien speaking Spanish, although she supposed there was no reason that should be any stranger than one speaking English.

“Stop,” she said finally. “Just stop. I don’t understand you.”

“No,” he snapped. “No no no. You ca

“Okay, I get the point.” Daria dropped her gaze and tugged her t-shirt over her knees. “I’m sorry.”

“We,” Tagen said fiercely, “must find some way of living together, because my patience is growing very thin and I am not going to leave until my questions are answered.”

“You may not believe this,” she said, tears stinging at her eyes and unsteadying her words, “but I am dealing with you the best I can.”

For a moment, the anger continued to smolder in his gaze. Then he let out a breath and stepped back, the tension fading from his body. “Yes,” he said, and he sounded tired. “I suppose you are.”

She made herself see him then, not just look at him, but truly see him. She saw a stranger who knew full well that he was alone and far from home. She saw a man at the end of his endurance, exhausted down to the very bones of him, and desperate enough to grab at straws. She saw a cop at the end of a long day, one who had put himself in a lot of danger and who was still determined to do his job. She saw Tagen Pahnee, and it broke her a little.

“Okay,” she said. “What are your questions?”

He met her gaze, mistrustful now that she had shown compliance, but then come forward again, intensity a hammer behind every word. “What are your planet’s defenses?” he demanded. “Who has control over the weapons that orbit Earth? Can they be used to repel off-world invasion? What are your methods of locating alien life-forms once they have come to your world? What is your access to the media of—”

“What are you talking about?” Baffled, Daria interrupted him with upraised hands and a hard shake of her head. “We don’t have anything like that on Earth! Most people probably don’t even believe in aliens, and no one could stop a—” The breath fell out of her, heavy as a hot stone, and she stared at him. “Alien invasion?” she gasped. “You’re invading Earth?”

“What?” Now it was his turn to draw back, confused. “No!”

“Don’t lie to me!” She sprang up, her fists balled uselessly at her side and shouted at him. “Why else would you need to know what Earth’s defenses are? I’m not a complete idiot, you know, I can co

Tagen derailed her suicidal bravado with one universally-recognizable gesture. He raised his hand and smacked himself in the forehead.

Daria’s growing outrage blew out of her like steam from an open kettle. She blinked at him, watching him stand before with his eyes tightly shut and his breath coming hard and slow between tightly-clenched jaws, and slowly sat back down. “You…aren’t invading?”

“No.” Tagen moved nothing but his mouth and that not much. “Not as you mean it. There is one only. I am here to take him back.”

“Then…then why would you need to know all that stuff about…weapons and…and repelling aliens and…”

He snatched his hand away and glared at her. “I thought perhaps Earth’s defenses may have located him, sparing me the trouble. It was a fool’s thought, not a conqueror’s. Did you really think I would come to land on Earth and then ask what defenses you possessed if I came to invade?” he demanded, sweeping his arm out to one side as though physically displaying the stupidity of that notion. “And that you would think all of Jota would come to Earth! Do you know what that would cost? What would put such a thought into your head?!”

Daria picked at the hem of her t-shirt, her eyes darting to the shelves beside the TV where she kept her DVDs. Damn the movies.

“No,” Tagen continued. “Only one has come to Earth and only I am come to find him. Even if I were to die, still no one else would come. Your Earth is quite safe from invasion. Are you glad with that?”

“Am I…? Yeah, I guess I’m satisfied.” She risked an upwards glance and dropped her eyes back to her knees when she saw he was still glaring at her. “Sorry.”

He did not seem much mollified. “Will you answer now or must I ask again?”

“I don’t think Earth has any defenses the way you’re thinking,” she said. “And if there’s weapons in orbit like you said, I don’t even know what they are. As for tracking aliens on Earth…Tagen, we just don’t have that kind of technology.” She peeked at him again; he was glaring at the television screen. “Who is this guy you’re looking for?” she asked. “What did he do? And why did he come here?”

Tagen turned back around, his eyes narrowed. He studied her in silence for a short time, and then said, “His name is Kanetus E’Var. I have no words to tell you his crime.”

“But you’re going to find him.”

“Yes.” He paused. “If he is here.”

“You don’t know for sure?”

His brows drew down slowly, carving that line in deeper between his eyes. “No.”

“You can’t…I don’t know…scan for his life-source from orbit?”

Tagen’s head cocked to one side. He stared at her in thunderstruck irritation and snapped, “Can you?!”

“No,” she admitted, and then frowned. “Are you saying…are you seriously saying that you came all the way Earth looking for one guy, and you don’t even know where to look? What was your big plan, just to walk around shaking his food dish?”

It was just as well he couldn’t follow that, because it really wasn’t too smart a thing to say. While Tagen was still obviously attempting to decipher that, Daria took a breath and tried again, more calmly, “Do you know how big Earth is?”

“Yes,” he said, with a black that’s-enough look lurking in his eyes. “I am aware that it will be difficult.”

“Difficult? Tagen, making cassoulet is difficult! Solving the Rubik’s cube is difficult! Stumbling over the whole planet on foot looking for one guy is impossible!”