He leaned over my body, closing the door. I could feel his hot breath waft across my neck. His palms were sweating, but he held me down, grinding his hips while his legs coiled around me like a snake. His hand cupped my mouth as I tried to scream and bite.
“You want to know what I’d do near the swamps?” he asked. “I’d catch gators for fun. Vicious predators.”
I could feel the metal latches scrape across my back as he forced open his belt buckle. Through hungered noises, he subdued me. All I could see was the door to the escape pods. Cade had made sure they were all gone.
It didn’t matter how hard I yelled and struck him. He kept hitting my face, all the same. The door was locked, and the inside was soundproof. I was done for.
When he was able to keep me still, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a boxcutter, laughing louder now. “Found this near the control center.”
He sliced into the bottom of my wrist, carefully making the incision. I screamed and cried with bubbling saliva running out of my mouth, but I couldn’t keep him off me. He managed to get two magnets into my wrists. He sewed me shut.
He pressed a button on a small tablet, and my hands locked to the floor, magnetized and bloody. He stood over me now, huffing loudly while taking off his belt. “My favorite part,” he said, “was skinning them alive. Just feeling that defense kick in, and them knowing there’s nothing they can do to get out of it was a joy to witness. It really was.”
“Talis will skin you alive,” I grunted and struggled to lift my head to see him.
Cade dropped his jeans and took my hips, lowering himself. Shrieking, he smacked me quiet. “Talis is long gone, honey-pie. It’s just you and me now.”
Through the large and rounded windows, I could see the other end of the shuttle. There was a breach. The airlock. Everything was falling out from the inside, falling from our once peaceful unit into the darkest phenomenon known to man.
Space was a receptacle for our waste. It recycled our sins. But what would happen when it began to reject us?
“Talis,” I cried. “He can’t be dead.”
Again, sharp pangs tore through my stomach. I couldn’t move, but I could feel my baby twisting inside of me. No, it felt like it was actually swimming inside me. More saliva and blood fell from my lips, and I was starting to feel weaker. A sense of extreme urgency was the only thing keeping my eyes open. My baby was killing me, and the only one who could help was Talis.
I started to weep, not for my own life, but because of the tragedy that mankind had gone through. Out of all of the stages of civilization that existed throughout history, this was how it was going to end.
“Please, don’t tell me he’s dead. Don’t tell me that—”
“He is floating with the stars in oblivion,” he said, kicking the air out of me. “Now, let’s get these legs spread, honey. I’m ready for my last supper.”
13
Talis
“Starship T1-95 Pandorum to Earth. Show me the strength to get me out of this one,” I murmured while pulling against the outside of the ship, holding my breath, feeling the cold start to fold into my skin. The fact that I had managed to hold on startled even me, but Juliana had taken to grabbing my feet. Miraculous, sure. But she was weighing me down.
The hand of space was unbearably strong. Here, there was no sense of direction. Outside the comfort of any space station, wherever it takes you, there is no way to know which direction you are tumbling.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, has an innate sense to stay away from the place above the sky. Far past the clouds and colorful backdrop—The illusions disappear. We start to realize how darkly complex our universe truly is. Even my people rarely took to leaving anymore.
In space, the body doesn’t explode. Your eyes won’t burst from their sockets. It takes about ten seconds to lose oxygen. You might get lucky if you find a breathing apparatus in time, but it won’t save you from your body swelling up with water.
We were seconds from dying, but the image of Mia and I, flying away in my ship gave me a new wave of energy. I came to this ship to survive, but she gave me something else. Purpose, and the finest cunt in the galaxy. I didn’t need anything but that.
With all my strength, I pulled myself back into the ship, swinging down on the ladder and balancing with my feet in the bars. “Juliana, pull yourself in,” I said.
Her eyes were wide with fear, but it was either dying in space or getting saved by an alien. She grabbed my hand, and I took her into my chest. Falling back, I closed the airlock and shut it tight. Quickly, the sound around us shifted. Gravity came back, and I could feel the cold sensation burn inside my veins. But we were alive.
We tumbled onto the floor. At this point in my relentless hunt to find my mate and go, I had been poisoned, whipped, beaten, and left to freeze in open space. Any extra pain that I felt was just another cherry on top.
“W-W-Who are you?” Juliana asked.
“Talis Critas. I am an outlaw from the Nyelan region in the—”
“I don’t give a fuck where you’re from. I asked you who you were,” she said, standing up despite the visible wounds she had.
“Those from Cade?” I asked.
She glanced down and tried to remain proud. It was a sign of some strange denial. She was tough; I could see that in her eyes, as well as in the way she held onto the cause of righteousness when all morality had turned to chaos. But, sometimes, being strong wasn’t enough. Just like everyone in this ship, she was fading.
She took deep breaths and collapsed against the floor. “You’re the... intruder?”
I nodded and stood up, finally able to acknowledge who I was. “Talis, destroyer of worlds,” I said. I owned my actions and lowered my head.
“Did you come here to kill us?” she asked.
I offered her my hand. “If you had asked me that hours ago, I might have answered by unhinging your jaw with my fist,” I said. Flashbacks to the bloody massacre in the cafeteria. “Humans are far more capable of going against their best interests than I thought. It’s Cade that you have to worry about,” I added.
“How do I know it wasn’t you who murdered my crew in the dining area?” she asked. She stared through the alarm systems and blinding lights that flashed across every area of the ship.
When I arrived, I was starving and injured. I was ready to kill everyone in sight, but then I found Mia. “Ask her yourself. We found it together.”
“What is your obsession with our fertility specialist?” she asked.
“She was ripe, and I needed a kin,” I said. “We are… in love.”
There was that human word again, but I felt it. Love, the unconditional reality that pulls two together.
Near the door was a black bag. Juliana reached inside and pulled two guns. “Sounds like you’re in over your head.”
“I hate to break it to you, but we are all in over our head,” I told her.
She tossed me one of the guns. I looked at it and chuckled. Assault rifle. The weapon was childish and took me about two seconds to figure out. I clicked off the safety and stepped near the automatic door. It opened.
She stumbled forward and gripped the poles on the sides of the octagonal walkways. Her blood was soaking through the fabric of her torn clothing. The wounds themselves were corroding and turning color. She needed Mia’s assistance.
As we walked through the long corridors, we passed the bunks of the individual prisoners. The map on the screen provided me with the initial context, but I was beginning to memorize the architecture of this place through experience. This wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
Most of the rooms were storage areas and spaces to perform certain tasks. There was the center of the ship, located on the third level. There was the eating room, and the nearby garden, now a growing mess of fungus and death. On the level above was the control center, no doubt where Juliana went about her work, but it was also the area where Mia gave thousands of transcriptions to the home she thought
was destroyed. It was a sad place, one I wished to steer away from for good.
We were in the top of the ship, near the cryo-chamber. I could already smell the misty atmosphere leaking into every orifice of the vessel, reminding me we weren’t safe yet.
Seeing Juliana limp pained me, so I tried picking her up to carry her to where I thought Cade was, the rooms to the escape pod, directly attached to the cargo hold. “Get your hands off me, boy,” she snapped.
“Boy?” I smirked and laid off her, slowly making my way down a new ladder.
“You know what I mean,” she said, barely able to stand on each step. “You. Cade. You’re all the same to me.”
“Men,” I grumbled and tried not to roll my eyes.
“Who else?” A smile graced her face. “All the wars, the issues with our climate, and then, this—do you really think the death of our planet happened because of a woman calling the shots?”
“You might honor the fact that I’m the only one interested in saving your life,” I said, ignoring the setup. “Mia thinks you’re dead.”
“I am dead. There’s nothing to save,” she muttered. “This program was bound to be derailed. I’ll honor the fact that you’re a bit of novelty before my death.”
“You aren’t dying,” I said.
I reached the floor, caught her, and eased her down. Clearing my throat, I tried to be a little... nicer. “Before we were enslaved, the women on my planet were the ones who made the tough decisions. Maybe that was why we lived longer.”
All of that changed when we were invaded, but she didn’t need to know about any of that. I was looking past that now. I was trying to remain hopeful about my future with Mia.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
Juliana exhaled sharply, swinging her pistol into sight. “Jesus, what!”
Lowering her weapon slowly, I made sure no one heard her yell. The coast was clear, but I couldn’t be certain for how long. I kept walking through the maze, pushing myself closer and closer to the sick fuck at the end of the tunnel. “Sorry. Should have warned you. I was just thinking about something Mia and I need to take care of.”
“Lord have mercy,” Juliana whispered, hand against her heart. “You nearly gave me a heart attack. What on God’s green earth do you and my beloved doctor need to take care of that’s more important than this?”
I thought about what Mia would go through. Without the strength of an omega’s reproductive system, this was going to be difficult.
I needed to get that baby out of her. I needed to save her like I told her I would.
“We, uh.” I coughed. Looked away. Crept into myself like the ashamed brute I was. “Where I come from, procreation is a life-saving ritual.”
“Oh, no,” she muttered. “You two really fucked.”
Silence.
“Talis, please tell me my best friend isn’t pregnant with an alien fetus,” she said.
I swallowed and scratched behind my ear. There had to be a way out of this. “Omega. Woman. What’s the difference?”
Her face twisted with revulsion. “Omega...?” She waited, but I wasn’t explaining shit. “Okay, I’m just going to let that one go, but I’m going to ask you one important thing. Is Mia safe? I mean, biologically speaking...”
I reached the end of the hall. We were close. I could smell her, and she was definitely alive, but that’s all I could sense. “There is a chance that the baby will turn parasitic. She will...” I stopped to catch my breath because it didn’t hit me hard until I nearly said it aloud. But once I realized how dire this was and how much time we truly didn’t have, I nearly lost control. “She will die if that happens. Gods be damned.”
“Here I was thinking this was a horror flick gone wrong, but then you go ahead and tell me this is a romance gone wrong.”
I actually laughed. “Didn’t say it was a romance.”
“Well, what the hell is it?”
“Real fucking life.” I reached for the bar above me and heard a large crash. More movements circled our heads before Mia’s screams were audible. I turned and made sure Juliana was okay to go, and she had her weapon in hand, her face tough. She was as good as the circumstances allowed her to be.
“Load up,” she said, checking out the gun before pushing on ahead of me.
“One misfire and we’ll start to lose oxygen again,” I said as a warning.
The pilot started to climb. “Got a newsflash for you, alien. We’re already losing oxygen, and my crew is long past dead. Pay attention to your gun. You know where your site is and all of that?”
My fingers hugged the side of the weapon. “I’ve shot a gun before, woman.”
She laughed and reached the top, stopping to pant near the entrance of yet another crawlspace. “Well, Talis. It looks like we’ve made it. Let’s go and kill that son of a bitch, shall we?”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I looked down that narrow corridor and stared at the rounded metal door that led to the main emergency exit on this ship. The escape pods were gone. Cade, no doubt. Now, the only exit was my ship down in the cargo hold, but there was no way he knew how to rig an old fuel cell into much newer technology.
I heard Mia’s scream, and nothing could hold me back from lunging at the door. An alpha is designed to do three things: fuck, mate, and kill. This was my final act of triumph. I was going to protect what was rightfully mine. Her. My growing seed.
Someday, we would be a family.
As for now, it was killing time.
14
Mia
“Talis is dead,” he repeated. “They’re both floating in space,” Cade said.
Head bent against a storage container, my vision facing the windows to the outside. But I wasn’t looking at anything. I was just staring into darkness.
I yearned to see the sun rise in the distance. Even now, I remember what that felt like. Warmth on a summer day, when all of the kids got a break from school. When my family and I could imagine lives far beyond ourselves, dream for the future, and feel in love with the world.
I could see nothing now. The dream of flying through the stars had turned into a nightmare. I was face to face with my needs, and I wished to go back. Back home. My planet had died without me. As far as I was concerned, the only real tragedy was that I had somehow lived.
I blinked and winced, the pain creeping up my back, cheeks, and nose. I was sure he had broken me more than I currently knew, but the magnetized floors made it even harder to get through it.
Above me was the emergency fire button. If I could’ve somehow reached it, I’d be able to distract him. That would be my only chance to escape. I just had to convince him to release the magnets.
I coughed out blood and groaned, sucking in air grievously. “The emergency sequence,” I said as loudly as I could. “You need to punch in the code, or we’ll die.”
Pain. The legs of my child, whipping through my ovaries. He had learned new tricks. Every minute that passed, he seemed to grow stronger and more aware. He wanted a way out; my body wasn’t a fertile garden. It was rejecting him. If he died, I’d die with him.
“Spread your fuckin’ legs, cow.”
Cade’s voice crawled like a lizard. I couldn’t turn to see him in all his demented horror, but I knew he was naked. I could hear the subtle sounds of hand against soft skin. He was having... troubles. In space, this was common, and, as the leading expert on fertility, I often left the room and let them use the pump or whatever toys were necessary.
Talis didn’t need any of the toys. All he needed was my body. His cock took care of everything.
I lay in silence, tears resting in my eyes. Quietly, I sniffed my blood and snot, rolling my forehead against a spot of dry ground. I couldn’t look through that window anymore—there was the thought of the bodies I had set free. Were they really floating alongside Talis?
“Why do this? Whatever pleasure you get from this won’t last,” I told him.
Cade spread my
legs and wriggled his fingers up my calves. I tensed.
Forcefully, he pounced and took my hair, pulling back. “I don’t need to fuck you to know that I’m better than you,” he sneered. “Your privileged life has amounted to nothing, just like mine. It’s a true joy to know that morality meant nothing. In the end, this is what it all led to.”
Fine. I accepted it. This was the end. It had to come sooner or later. Cade managed to get the best of Juliana. He killed Talis with the airlock. My baby was eating me alive.
In all honesty, I had hit a brick wall. I felt as if there was nothing to live for.
Game over, man.
“Please, just let me go. I want to die in peace,” I cried, searching for the only ounce of decency inside him. I couldn’t wrap my head around why someone would want to kill if they knew the end was coming for everyone. But some people can’t turn off the darkness inside them. Cade had been living like this all his life.
Using my fingernails, I clawed at the sewed wrists. He curled his body around mind, grinding his hips forward, closer by the second. I tried to kick back, and it helped briefly, but the magnetization held me in place, stopping my efforts.
He was about to enter me when he justified his actions. “You robbed us of everything. You let an intruder into our world, our ecosystem. You caused us to lose our place. You’re a parasite that needs to be eradicated.”
“Cade, wait!” I arched my shoulders up, but he quickly twisted them back to the ground.
“I’m going to rape you like they raped our planet. I’m going to take you like they took me. But do not worry. I will show you some benevolence. By the time I am finished, I will have set you free.”
“Permanent Black initiated. T-minus ten minutes.”
It was already starting. Permanent Black. It was the final straw, the last string of codes that needed to be entered before complete shutdown and termination occurred. I needed to enter the backup code into the system to make sure the shutdown procedures didn’t go all the way through. If I didn’t, the ship would self-destruct.
Seed: A Dark Sci-Fi Omegaverse Romance (Alpha Unknown Book 2) Page 10