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I flashed my badge at her. "I’m with the Wanderstar Fleet Investigative Division. You and everyone in a thirty-foot radius need to clear the premises."
"Why?" The stall vendor on my left asked. Suddenly they were all staring at me, waiting for an explanation.
"So what if the Wanderstar Fleet gave you a badge." The other vendor folded his arms. "Why should we trust a foreigner?"
Before I could answer, a wave of dizziness washed over me, clouding my senses. I clutched at my chest, my breath coming in short, labored bursts.
The same thing affected the stall vendors. They coughed and gasped. "What is happening?" The female Javorian choked out the words.
I fought against the panic gripping at me as I noticed the air was growing thin in a pocket of the marketplace. Klinn Ustrar wasted no time, that’s what was happening.
"Go." I eked out a single command and jabbed my finger towards the street leading to the north exit of the marketplace.
As the vendors and shoppers in the area fled, my eyes darted around, searching for more escape routes to direct people towards, but the crowd was already descending into chaos.
I fought against the increasing lightheadedness. The area was steadily being depleted of oxygen. I raised my voice above the clamor, my words echoing through the marketplace. "Get to safety. The air... it's thinning."
The remaining shoppers and authorities alike turned their attention towards me, their expressions a mix of confusion and alarm. I flailed my arms in the direction of the exits. Both my movements and the urgency in my voice spurred them into action. Aliens scattered, seeking refuge and escaping the suffocating atmosphere.
During the commotion, I latched my sights onto the masculine figure in the Chicago Cubs hoodie standing at a marketplace gate. The person removed the hood to reveal his long dark hair and teal face. Our eyes locked. Klinn stared right at me with his onyx eyes, his annoying alien good looks unmistakable.
I hated how I noticed his looks. My jaw clenched.Son of a...
My vision blurred. I didn’t have the luxury of standing there, hurling silent curses at him in my head while he sucked the air out of the area with his Ventivore species deoxygenation process. I took off running in the direction of the gate.
"Hey, Faye, we gotta talk." He called after me, his voice casual.
My lungs burned while anger boiled inside me. Did he not see the mayhem he caused? No, of course not. This was Klinn. He only cared about himself.
How had he managed to escape from Earth and find his way to planet Xaxos? And now, he had the audacity to put innocent lives in danger.
It wasn’t the first time he pulled this stunt. The last time he did it was on Earth when he was being detained. We had to evacuate the whole building before we could get a handle on him.
Building. That’s it.
I maneuvered through the crowd, my gaze fixed on an empty warehouse across the street. It was new and still under construction. If I could get Klinn away from the marketplace, the effects of his deoxygenation would deplete rapidly and the crowd would be fine. Hopefully, backup from the Wanderstar Fleet still had a trace on my location.
I looked behind me to see Klinn strolling after me, hands in the front pocket of his hoodie. Despite not making use of his arms, he somehow propelled himself to move several paces faster than everyone else even while walking. Must be the extra set of lungs. Darn Ventivore advantages.
"You want me? Come get me, you poser Cubs fan."
My weak taunt sure took a lot of needed air. I gasped and broke into a sprint across the street. I made it before the light changed and hovercars came zooming down. The traffic would buy me a few precious seconds before Klinn could come after me. Unless Ventivores also had the ability to fly. They didn’t master that yet, as far as I knew.
The entrance to the warehouse lay wide open. I breezed past the Do Not Enter and Construction Area signs. My nose wrinkled, both from the smell of fresh plaster and the fact I had to break the rules to do this. I didn’t have better options.
I breathed in the stale air as much as I could. Stale air was better than no air. My feet stirred up dust on the recently sanded main floor of the building. As I ran across the floor, my heart pounded with each echoing footstep. I heard more footsteps behind me. I slipped into the warehouse's dimly lit interior, relying on shadows and the maze of unfinished walls to shield my presence from Klinn.
What did he want from me? How did he even know where to find me?
"What are you doing, detective?" His voice bounced off the empty walls of the warehouse. "Is this like one of those odd hide-and-seek games you humans always have in your scary movies?"
What the heck was he talking about? He was chasing me, not the other way around. I stayed crouched in a corner. Then I reminded myself that Klinn was a certain kind of slick talker. One of his tricks lay in getting people charmed or confused by the stuff he said. It left them vulnerable and open to his manipulations.
"I could never get into scary movies when I was on Earth."
While he talked on, I tried to pinpoint the direction of his voice while I kept my back pressed against a wall. The air supply here was at normal levels even though I took ragged breaths from running.
Klinn’s species could adapt fast to most environments. At least on Earth, I had the home field advantage. Planet Xaxos was still new to me. The docs at HQ cautioned it could take months for humans to completely adjust to the new environment, and that was with the vitamins and supplements they put us planetary transplants on.
