Free Liquid Lies by Hanna Martine

mush.
    If she were a Primary, the sound of a foreign tongue would be nothing but background noise, but since she was a Translator, the new sounds solidified into mental building blocks. They stacked themselves. Slid next to and behind one another, formulating correct sequences. New words and cadences and grammar rules formatted in her mouth and in her mind.
    Two people spoke this new language simultaneously, which always made her head ache and her body woozy at first. She gripped the edge of the bar to steady herself as foreign speech hammered its way into her subconscious. Manny came over, concerned, but she waved him away.
    Once the initial shock of the Translation wore off and she released her death grip on the wood, a new set of alarm bells almost threw her off her chair.
    Three things about this Translation were seriously off.
    First, she already knew a few of the words because they were part of the ancient codes used to manipulate Mendacia .
    Second, some deep, dark part of her recognized the sounds. Like she’d spoken them ages ago but had since lost them, and now she was pulling the language out from behind the thickest partitions of her mind.
    Third, this language did not originate here on Earth, and neither did its speakers.
    She jumped off her chair and whirled toward the newcomers. A man and woman. That persistent, buzzing feeling she hadn’t been able to decipher not moments ago? She recognized it now.
    Ofarians knew their own kind blindfolded. Their bodily signatures emanated something that existed above and beyond humanity. It wasn’t a smell or sound; it was a sense . It’s what made them Secondary.
    These two were also Secondary, but they were not Ofarian. How was that possible? No other Secondaries lived on Earth.
    Had David seen them? From across the street he would be too far away to sense their signatures, but had he at least noticed them? Maybe he’d be suspicious and jog over to Manny’s to check it out.
    But then, these two didn’t stand out nearly as much as Reed, and David hadn’t appeared when Reed had walked in. Gwen was on her own.
    The fair-skinned man was taller and thinner than Reed. If it weren’t for his dour expression, the steely, unwelcome look in his eye, and the knotted blond hair dusting his shoulders, he might have been handsome. The woman was tiny, her posture betraying her timidity. She stood with her hands in her pockets, and stray brown hairs dangled out of her ponytail as if she’d slept on it then bolted out the door. It must have started to rain because their shoulders were darkened with water droplets.
    Everything about them told Gwen to flee, to get away as fast as possible. Yet curiosity and fear rooted her to the spot. She had to know who they were, why they were here.
    Why Reed headed straight for them.
    “Is that him?” the woman asked in her language, pointing to Reed.
    “It’s got to be,” muttered the blond man. As Reed reached them, the blond switched to English. “I’m sorry. We were looking for the Mexican restaurant.”
    “It closed five months ago,” said the new kid in town.
    The blond man nodded. “Retriever?”
    Reed’s smooth head nodded firmly. The taller man pulled a small, white envelope from inside his distressed leather jacket and handed it to Reed.
    Gwen realized who they were. And she couldn’t get past them to escape out the front door.
    She wheeled on Manny. “Please tell me you have a back exit.”
    He twisted a bar towel. “You okay?”
    “I’m fine. You don’t need to worry. Just the exit.”
    He pointed. “Back of the storeroom. Opposite the john.”
    She walked fast toward the back, feet smarting in the high-heeled boots and trying not to draw attention by moving too fast. Shoving open the storeroom door, she saw the exit, partially covered by paper towel packages. As she threw the first one to the floor, she heard Reed ask Manny, “Gwen. You seen her?”
    He sounded so calm and focused. Like he had in the alley before