Continued from: We Have a Source in TK77, Home Again TK76, One Populace TK75, and Mortality Challenge TK74.

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Julia stretched her arms as purple rays of dawn peeked over the edge of the window sill and danced across the white sheets. A cool breeze gently ruffled the curtains. The jungle around her grass hut hummed with friendly alien lifeforms waking and busying themselves with their day. She felt a sense of peace deep in her soul knowing she would never leave this planet. Here a perfect harmony between science and nature existed, supported by a benevolent government. An arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her close. The hair on Brandon's chest tickled her back, she turned and buried her face in it.

He was still asleep. With her ear against his chest, she listened to the even beating of his heart. Until it skipped a beat. Somewhere a worry tugged at the corner of her mind. She heard Brandon's heart flutter irregularly. The nanites on Laced. No. That was just a bad dream, a nightmare. Julia turned her head away from Brandon's chest. She didn't want to hear the irregular heartbeat. It was nothing really, just some premature ventricular contractions. Perfectly normal.

She pulled his titanium arm around her tighter. She loved this imperfection of his. She nuzzled her head up towards his neck and painfully bumped into a steel jaw. Her head throbbed as if it had struck her from a great height.

Julia's throat immediately felt tight and her stomach queasy. This man wasn't Brandon. She gave a yelp, jumped back on the bed and spun around. The chin's owner was not asleep after all. The wildlife outside fell eerily silent. The warm dawn light turned a cold steel gray, the same color as the unfriendly eyes that now stared at her naked body.

"Who are you?" asked Julia, her voice quivering. She grabbed the sheet and clutched it to her.

"Someone who won't give up until I catch you."

Julia recognized this man. She had seen him and his disreputable associates before through her drunken haze at Gunkle's tavern. Julia sprang out of the bed and tried to run but the floor seemed to melt beneath her feet. Her arms were yanked back and metal cuffs clamped tightly over her wrists.

The bed disappeared, the walls of the hut slid away. A gruesome creature with tentacles loomed in front of her.

"I'll get you my pretty and your little nanites too." The creature's cackle made her skin crawl. Its many arms grabbed her arms and legs and one wrapped around her neck, squeezing tighter and tighter. Her vision began to grow dim.

* * *

Julia woke with a start sweating and panting. Reality came tumbling back to her. Brandon's betrayal. Her crash landing on Laced. The terrible choice she made. Being jumped outside the bar. Her sister Kia's rescue. Her head still hurt and it had been almost a week since the incident. She gently touched the tender wound on her scalp. Kia was a rough surgeon, but she had managed to stop the bleeding.

Julia looked up over the jumbled heap of laboratory supplies they had managed to procure before leaving Nairobi and escaping to Rodos. She watched Kia sleeping by the door upright with her blaster across her chest and her boots on. Trying not to wake her, Julia carefully unfolded herself from the corner where she had slept on a pile of old blankets. She crept silently over to the single tiny window in the bunker.

Through the thick grimy glass, she looked out at the purple dawn rising over an apocalyptic landscape. Toppled skyscrapers, mangled train tracks, large burnt-out holes. There was no sign of any plant life whatsoever on Rodos. A far cry from her dream of a jungle paradise. She'd known it was all too good to be true.

Brandon Smyth had used her love to sabotage their mission of saving the Lacedian race from extinction and she would never see him again. She had made a dangerous choice, possibly a deadly one, leaving behind unattended nanties in seventy embryos on the polluted planet. They could evolve quickly into monsters left unchecked.

She had a lot of work to do to find a way to fix the mess she had created on Laced. Julia walked over to her electron microscope and powered it up. Time to start another day.

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The next two parts were already published in TK72 More Spy-Fi Stories, TK74 Holiday Cheer ...To be continued.