human in appearance, but there was no mistaking that he wasn’t.
She lifted her head off the pillow to get a better look at his pointed ear. Vera stopped caressing his cheek and reached up.
Roth pulled his arm from around her waist, gently catching her hand with his. “I am real. You shouldn’t touch a male’s ears.”
She gazed into his eyes. “I’m sorry. Would it have hurt you?” That was the last thing she wanted to do.
“They are extremely sensitive. How do you feel? You’ve been asleep for nearly fourteen hours.”
That shocked her. It must have shown on her face.
“You were exhausted. The amount of the drug in your body is decreasing. They have been taking blood tests. Doctor Kane predicts that in fifteen more hours, it should be completely be gone. She hasn’t found any lasting damage inside you. The black of your eyes isn’t shifting in size anymore, and they match.”
She had to think about that. “My pupils?”
“The black centers. They were doing bad things, but now they appear normal for a human. Are you feeling better? Do you see or hear anyone that isn’t here?”
She bit her lip and broke eye contact with him, turning her head. They were in what appeared to be a hospital room. The door had been mostly closed but not all the way. One wall held clearly marked cabinets for supplies. There was also a bathroom. No bigfoot, werewolf, or her father shared the room with them.
She peered back at Roth before speaking. “It’s just us in here. Did anyone else survive?”
His lips pressed together and his golden eyes narrowed. “My grouping and the human tactical teams sent to the planet’s surface discovered the source of the drug.”
She noticed that he hadn’t answered her question, but she really wanted to know how she’d ingested the drug. “What was it?”
“Your oxygen source was from the planet, but being filtered through a machine.”
“The air recycler. It makes sure none of the pollen or other pollutants come inside our living spaces. One of our scientists checked it. He said it wasn’t that. Was he wrong?”
“There was another machine that circulated the air inside your pods.”
“The pumps. We thought those were okay too. Then again, everyone was losing their minds. It was the pumps? The drug was airborne?”
He hesitated. “There were large canister devices found inside the vents that connected the different sections of your facility. Those devices dispersed the drug in a mist form. Doctor Kane ran some tests. The early results she shared is that the drug would have been absorbed through skin. It also would have gotten on your tongue, in your eyes, and inside your nose from breathing. Anything you touched near those vents immediately after it sprayed would have also infected you.”
Vera closed her eyes and put her face against his chest. Tears filled her eyes but she tried to fight it back.
None of her team had thought to check the vents. Just the source of where the air was being filtered and the large fans that pumped it though the pods. The vents were all located in the ceilings at the top of the pods, and they weren’t big enough for a person to fit inside. They wouldn’t have been able to check them thoroughly even if they’d wanted to.
“How did they figure it out?”
“The males were all given scanners programmed to detect the drug. The air vents turned on and they could see it coming from them. They tore out the ceilings and found the canisters.”
She clutched at his shirt. “Fuck!” It made her so mad! There were multiple vents in every pod, even inside the connecting corridors that linked them all. That drug had been raining down on them in mist form every time the pump kicked on to blow fresh air inside the pods. Why hadn’t they noticed? Seen it? The ceilings were at least fifteen feet high inside the pods, but only about nine feet in the hallways.
Roth put his arm around her and gently patted her back. “Do you remember any of the other humans working on the vents? Carrying long canisters?”
She shook her head against his shirt. “No. There’s surveillance cameras though.”
“The fleet is going over the recordings. That will take time. When was the facility built?”
“A little over two months ago.” She pulled herself together.
“Did any humans leave recently?”
“No. We came on the Dalton. It’s a freighter. New Worlds shipped us, the pods we lived inside, and the workers that assembled everything. Once we