Species Traitor: A Science Fiction Dystopian Novel by Kate Mary (universal ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Chapter Eight

Dean, dressed in civilian clothes, was waiting for me by the gate. He smiled and waved when he caught sight of me, and I returned both gestures even though everything inside me was still heavy with worry. On the walk from Ione and Rye’s house, I’d briefly considered calling the whole date off—especially when I reached the second level of houses and found myself once again straining to spot Finn. But I needed this. Needed the distraction and a night to relax and feel like my life was just a little bit my own. A date would do that.

“Where are we off to?” I asked when I stopped in front of him.

“There’s a little place on the other side of the city I like. It’s affordable,” he shrugged, indicating he had no desire to hide that he was as low income as I was, “but good. We’ll have to take my motobike, though. I hope that’s okay.”

He had a motobike. I was impressed.

“Sure,” I said even though I was already mentally tabulating the time of day and how bad the traffic would be.

By seven o’clock, a lot of people had made it home from their jobs, and some of the public lines stopped running at seven-thirty, so realistically it shouldn’t have been that bad. Slow, but not gridlocked the way it was in the morning, during lunch hours, or after most jobs ended at five.

Dean’s smile didn’t disappear, but it turned tense when he glanced toward the gate. “They’re still protesting, so getting out might be tricky. The guys are going to help us, though.”

He nodded to the other guards.

“I’m not worried.” I waved to the scratches on my arm. “This time I’m prepared to fight back.”

Dean’s smile grew more genuine. “That’s what I liked about you from the first moment we met, you know?”

“My scars?” I asked, lifting my eyebrows.

“No.” He chuckled. “Your spunk.”

I tried to remember the first day Ione and I came to the District, but I couldn’t recall if Dean had been one of the guards at the gate or not. In fact, I wasn’t sure how long after we started coming here that I’d actually noticed him. Not for a while. I’d been much too focused on what was inside to pay attention to the humans checking my bag.

“What did I do?” I asked. “I can’t remember anything that special.”

“You and Ione were getting your bags searched.” He paused thoughtfully. “I think it was your first time here. Anyway, I was looking through your bag when a woman walking by yelled, ‘Species traitor.’ You turned around and said, ‘With people like you in my species, can you really blame me for wanting to hang out with aliens?’”

Suddenly, I remembered that moment with perfect clarity. It hadn’t been our first time visiting, although we hadn’t been coming to the District for very long. Rye had asked Ione out, but she was struggling with the idea of dating an alien. She’d liked him immediately but had known what it would mean if things went well. We’d spent the entire walk to the District talking about what she should do, resulting in her tentatively deciding she was going to say yes.

Then that woman had screamed at us.

I’d seen the expression on my cousin’s face, watched as her resolve melted and reality slammed into her, and it had made me furious. Like Ione, I’d liked Rye right away, and thinking about that human woman hating him without ever having met him infuriated me. That was why I’d stood up to her. For my cousin, but also because I knew what was right.

There was something else I remembered about that day, though, something I might not have ever thought about again if Dean hadn’t brought it up. It was the expression on the face of the guard searching my bag. He hadn’t looked amused by my spunk. If anything, he’d looked disgusted.

“You were searching my bag?” I asked slowly.

“Yeah.” As if realizing his mistake, Dean’s smile faded. “Or Ione’s. I can’t remember, really.”

He was lying. Or at least I thought he was. I couldn’t know for certain since my memory of the guards was limited to the uniforms they wore. Back then, they’d all looked the same to me.

Before I could ask anything else, Dean turned to the guards flanking the gate. “You boys ready?”

“Ready,” Brentwood said.

His eyes briefly flitted to me when Dean took my hand.

My date didn’t look my way, making it nearly impossible for me to remove my hand as he headed for the exit. There we paused long enough for a guard to scan my chip, then the gate was pushed open. Brentwood stepped out first, his pulse rifle up and his expression severe, and Dean followed, pulling me with him.

Right away, the crowd turned on us, throwing insults our way. They screamed everything from species traitor to ET lover to tentacle teaser—that particular slur had always struck me as idiotic. Veilorians didn’t even have tentacles.

Like always, I kept my back straight and my head up in the face of every insult, refusing to react even if someone decided to spit on me.

“Back up!” a guard I didn’t know called. “This is a guard leaving his shift with his girlfriend. Let them through.”

I stiffened at the implication that I was Dean’s girlfriend, but he didn’t react.

“What was she doing in there?” someone yelled.

“She was visiting me at work,” Dean snapped. “We’re just two humans trying to live our lives. Just like you. Now, move!”

The crowd parted at his authoritative tone, and Dean pulled me past the protestors and away from the District then down the street. It wasn’t until we’d reached the end of the road that I yanked my hand from his. Probably a little more violently than necessary, but I was irritated, and I’d never been one to bottle my thoughts or feelings.

Dean stopped walking and turned to face me. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” I glared