“The backup engines will overload in less than three,” Cade said, coiling his arms around me, resting his temple on the back of my head.
It was too late for remedial action. The power core had been considerably damaged. I should have given up, but every time I thought about Talis, the more I wondered if he’d somehow survived. I wasn’t too great at being an optimist, but I felt some semblance of hope.
“Okay,” I said, out of breath and shaken. “You win. You can... I’ll let you have me.”
I nearly vomited as soon as the words came out of my mouth, but it was the only thing I could say to convince him to let me go. He ran his lips across my ears, pausing as soon as the hairs began to rise. I clenched my eyes shut and listened to his horrifying wishes. “Let me get this straight. You’ll let me take you? All of you.”
I tensed up and nodded, swallowing hard. I would kill him. I would rip his fucking balls off. “I’m dying, Cade. There’s nothing I can do, right?”
A long pause seemed to make the alarms sound louder and more threatening. “Permanent Black initiated. T-minus eight minutes.”
“Please!” I screamed loud enough for Talis to hear me. It was so loud Cade rolled back and crashed into some loose items. “Just let me go, and you can have me in any position that you want.”
He showed off a wild grin. Lowering his hand, he traced his finger across the curves of my stomach, moving toward my locked hands. In his other hand was the control tablet. All he had to do was press the button, and I’d be free to hit the fire safety.
“How dumb do you think I am?” he asked, holding the tablet near my face.
In that moment, everything slowed down. Everything. For the first time on this journey, time and space had finally collided in the most perfectly imperfect way possible.
Just as he was about to take complete control, I heard the frightening sound of a beast roar from below. Talis wasn’t dead. He was alive!
Cade darted back, furiously frightened. To make matters worse for him, the ship’s magnetization had been shut off, and I had managed to unsew the skin that housed the small magnetic chip. My wrists were no longer a problem for me.
Darting around, I kicked him in the groin, driving forward until I felt his spine hit the wall. Without wasting a second, I pulled on the fire safety and blasts of gas came shooting from the walls and ceiling, along with a mixture of soap and water. A stream sprayed directly into his eyes as the gravity came back on in the shuttle.
Cade and I slammed against the corner of the room with me on top of him. He heaved in breaths of air, but he could hardly move. I had the upper hand. There was more I should have done to him but I didn’t waste any time.
I ran from that room, slamming my palm against the door lock before skidding around the corner. I just barely caught sight of the door sliding shut behind me. “Good night, Cade. Good night Project Onyx. Goodbye, cruel and distant moon. May you all burn in Hell.”
The ship’s energy source was going berserk. Cade’s scream burned in my ears. From my position, I could hear the engines fire up, but it wasn’t enough power. “Talis!” I cried. “It’s okay! I’m alive! Talis!”
“Permanent Black initiated. T-minus five minutes.”
Condensation had drenched the ship. I walked through the cold air, stepping into small puddles along the way. The alarms had turned off, but the occasional light flashed as the last of the ship’s power cells had finally stopped producing.
I reached the control center and typed the failsafe code in. The air was getting thin, and I was having trouble seeing straight.
Error.
There was no time left. I felt short of breath. I smacked the computer and screamed, “Come on!”
I typed the code in again, eyeing each specific letter and number in the combination. I was sure it was the right code.
Error. Error. Error.
I stood up and checked behind the row of computers. Cables twisted and hooked into their respective plugs. Everything looked like it was in place.
I grabbed the keyboard once more and went to the last mode of turning on the emergency power, “Starship T1-95 Pandorum, turn on the emergency engines!” I screamed.
“Invalid command. Intruder alert. Permanent Black has been initiated. T-Minus three minutes until detonation.”
“Fuck. That son of a bitch,” I punched the top of the screen and fell over, clutching my stomach. Something else was happening. As I hunched to try and find a position that didn’t cause me such great discomfort, my water broke.
I felt a quick popping sensation follow a flood of wetness. My eyes widened and my body stiffened, but the pain that followed was like nothing I had ever experienced. I had no idea what I was doing, but I lowered my body to the floor and breathed.
I rolled over onto my back and felt my child move against one side of my womb, claws digging into the membrane. Air caught against the back of my throat, but I let out a choked cry. “Talis!”
She was coming. Our baby was fucking coming, and I had two minutes to get out of this ship. I had achieved a lot of things in my life, but the odds of pulling through this were completely against me.
That wasn’t the only one who was coming either. Dropping down from the vents above, Cade fell to the floor. His breathing was heavy, and there were massive contusions on his flesh. He rose pointing a gun. A few of his fingers were frozen to the core, turned black and ready to be dissected.
“You fucking... whore!”
“I’m pregnant,” I said. “Why can’t you let me go?”
His fingers gripped down the trigger tighter. Tears ran down his sullied face. “Because you brought life into a lifeless place,” he muttered.
But for the first time, he said something honest. “Because I thought I might adapt to this horrible environment just as the others adapted to Earth. As years went by, I was afraid I might forget where we came from. I’m afraid I may have begun to lose the memories of the mountains and the woods, the things that once made sense to me. Nature. Wild nature. That’s where I come from, and that’s who I am.”
“Life is here, and it belongs everywhere,” I said, even as my own child was tearing through me.
“Your focus is on science. You are confident you can destroy nature. You can’t. Your work has only fucked us, and now I’ll never see home again.”
“You would have been killed, either way,” I growled. “Don’t act like a saint.”
“Shut your mouth.” His screams circled in my ear, but I couldn’t focus. “You... know... nothing... I am the closest you will ever come to meeting a saint.”
I grabbed onto the legs of the control desk, choking down every drop of pain. I pulled myself away from him, tears falling from my eyes. “My... baby... is… going… to… LIVE!”
Out of all the fertility experiments, mine was the one bad enough to kill me. I needed to get off of this ship, but I felt his hand grab my hair. I felt the weight of metal against my temple. “Goodbye, sugar—”
Click. Pause. Bang.
Does one react before they die?
I slumped to the floor. Shocked, I trembled and only opened my eyes when I heard Talis’ strong and protecting voice say, “We come in peace, bitch.”
“Juliana! Talis!” I was so excited that I tried to stand, but I instantly fell to the floor.
Talis checked Cade’s wounds. He wasn’t dead, but blood was dripping from his mouth. A crooked smile formed. He whispered, “Why can’t you face the facts? Life has no meaning. It is a mesh of experiences. Your precious love is but one of a multitude of events that happened, but how much violence can a simple act of goodness bring? To give up, to stay alive. It’s all the same. Unintended consequences.”
“So what?” I managed to ask. “Nothing is planned, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel.”
Nihilism. The last philosophy a man could get to before completing his breakdown. It was the only fallback and justification for his failures, but time would not reward it.
/> Space wasn’t just impenetrable darkness. It was made up of bits of light and color, of moving energy that created vast designs around the cosmos. What did it all mean? We may never know, but it sure as hell needed to be respected.
Cade closed his eyes. His gut was a growing mess of raspberry soak. Talis set Cade’s body against the wall and sighed. “Well, it’s been real fun. I wish you an easy journey on the other side.”
After, he pointed to the ladder headed down toward the cargo hold. “Juliana, go downstairs. Get those fuel cells ready, and make sure my ship is safe.”
“Like hell,” she said. “I ain’t going anywhere.”
Talis unbuttoned my jeans to check on me and shot her a furious glance. ”Now!”
I looked down at my belly and nearly passed out. I knew that it had grown in size. I had felt it happening, but I didn’t want to look down. Now that I had, I couldn’t believe it. “Get it out of me,” I cried and watched as what looked like a tail ran against the inside of my stomach. “Oh, God. Don’t look at me. I’m a monster.”
Every movement, every angry hit and curious touch could be seen. It looked and felt so...inhuman.
Talis’ eyes glowed, hungrily. “You are the finest omega in the universe.”
“Woman.” I contorted in agony, rolling onto my side for comfort. “An omega—is that what you want me to be?”
“No,” he muttered. “You’re something else. You’re a miracle.”
“Fuck your miracle. Your child is killing me,” I said.
“Permanent Black has been initiated. T-Minus one minute until detonation... Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight...”
“I’m taking you with me, dammit!” he screamed and lifted my body.
“Fifty-seven, fifty-six...”
The pain was spreading and taking over, paralyzing my fingers and toes. My body was trembling unnaturally. I placed my arms around him and let him do as he promised he would. He tried to save my life.
It was a miracle we met. He was misunderstood. He was trouble. An alien insurgent, thief, and my mate. Maybe it didn’t make sense to anybody else, but I was able to experience passion again. He gave me that. And, as we hid and tried to make sense of our future, I fell in love with him.
But I knew the risk of this pregnancy. I was not an omega.
Looking at his handsome face, I cried. “Take the fuel cells. You need to get out of here. I’m just going to weigh you down,” I said.
“Ship is still here!” Juliana yelled. “Got the fuel cells out. Ready when you are.”
He was never really looking for love. He was just trying to survive. This was me letting him go. This was me giving up what could have been for what I thought had to be. Lost in the center of the universe, what could I do? Love was selfish. I had to let him go.
“Fifty... forty-nine...”
The clock was still ticking down the time until our annihilation. I pretended not to notice it, but it was nearly impossible to put out of my mind. Amidst the red, I looked into his eyes and felt the tears painfully sting. Nothing felt right anymore. My balance had been stolen from me. He lifted me and carefully started to walk downstairs.
“I’m not leaving without you,” he growled.
He cradled his hands against my bruised cheeks, muttering about how he was going to murder Cade all over again for what he had done. I sank into him, heaving in big and exhausted breaths, trying to heal my heaviest emotions. Anxiety was nothing compared to this. This was like feeling a freight train crush your soul.
“Oh, Talis,” I wept. “What are we going to do? You can’t save me. I can see it in your eyes. You’re not a doctor.”
But part of what made Talis such a good recusant was the fact that he didn’t internalize pessimism. He was brutal. He was dark and brooding. But he was also understanding. That’s what allowed me to let him take me.
He looked at Cade’s body, still in the last spasms of death. “You worry too much,” he said. “Cade is gone. My ship may be a piece of shit, but it has a first-aid room. The AI robotics will help you deliver along the way.”
That wasn’t exactly how I pictured having a baby, but I was in the throes of labor. As we reached the cargo hold, Talis laid me down on a blanket Juliana had prepared. He ran to install the fuel cells as I tried to breathe through the contractions, but time was running out.
Juliana pressed the bottom of my stomach, feeling the thickness of the skin. She slowly lowered my pants and said, “Old pal, we’ve done a lot of weird shit up here, but I never thought we’d go this far.”
“Juliana... don’t... mess... with me... right now.” I could feel the life draining from me. Weakness attacked me. It was my child. It was taking everything from me, and even though I knew it wanted me to die for its sake, I was slowly becoming more and more okay with that. I came to bring another version of humanity into this world. My child would live on without me.
Juliana lowered her palm, checking more of me out. Her smile quickly disappeared. ”Okay, first thing’s first. Keep your head on straight ’cause you’re not about to enjoy what you’re going to hear.”
My body was stiff. I was going to be forced to give birth to this monster without the use of any drugs. ”Just tell me what’s going on,” I snarled like a jaguar.
Juliana frowned but wasted no time. “You’re about nine centimeters dilated, which is pretty fucking unbelievable considering you two fucked like a day ago.”
“We made love,” I corrected her. Dark, passionate, and fetishistic sex is still making love. “You don’t understand, Jules. He’s an alpha. His biological design is to—”
“Make love?” she asked.
I blushed and coughed. “His cock... it was fucking massive, Juliana. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to take it.”
“Go ahead. Keep bragging.” She laughed and helped me breathe some more.
“He knotted inside me,” I admitted, knowing it sounded a million times weirder than bad.
She swallowed strongly and breathed, carefully gathering everything that I might need to endure this childbirth. “He whatted inside you?”
Okay, I had to laugh because the whole idea was so insane, yet it all happened. I experienced the pain, the pleasure, and the warm hold his come needed to flow through me. “Every alpha carries his knot inside him. It is the mechanism that gets an omega pregnant. It buries deep into the--”
Juliana zipped up the rest of what we’d need. ”Don’t need to know about all of that,” she said.
Of course, I was leaving out all of the fun bits, such as when his cock actually opened and split in two purely to service my clit. A man who recognized a female’s orgasm was rare. And now, I was dying on the cross of my decision to let him seed me.
“You really thought your system could handle him?” she asked.
“Things here weren’t going as planned. I wasn’t thinking. Can you blame me for thinking of this as a way out?”
All of a sudden, Juliana winced in pain and fell over. She pulled down the front of her jeans. On her thigh was a deep wound, but it was nothing compared to the blood leaking from her arms and side.
“Juliana!” I tried to stand up, but she wouldn’t let me. She sucked in her pain and held my legs down.
“Don’t,” she said. “It’s not worth all the fuss. You’re going to get out of here. You’re going to have this child, and everything is going to be fine. I’m dying, Mia, and frankly, I feel pretty damn okay about it.”
“You can leave with us. We have the necessary med-kits. You heard Talis. He has an AI operating system that’s probably a hundred times more advanced than ours. You need to leave with us. I can’t do this without you. I can’t...”
I tried not to get emotional, but everything was coming at me at once.
There was life—my baby. There was death—Juliana. My crew. Earth.
“Thirty seconds until detonation...”
“What else do I have going for me? I miss my home. Miss my family. I’m staying, Mia. This is my sh
ip, and it’s my job to lower my head and drown,” she said.
I must have cried for only a few seconds, because it all seemed to happen so fast. Entropy was following our every move. The clock was always ticking. The ship was going to blow, but our goodbye was so important to me. I wanted to let her know how much she meant. “Six years,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. We knew the risks.”
I saluted her. “My pilot.”
She threw her arms around me, holding me until I felt the blood soak through my clothes. Then, she pushed me away. Like that, she sank back, ready to die. Ready to go back to wherever we came from.
I prayed for the impossible. I hoped she could see her family again, hoped that Earth could be restored.
Was it all for nothing?
“Twenty seconds until detonation...”
Talis’ hands circled underneath me. He cradled me in his arms as I struggled to reach for Juliana, screaming through the burn in my throat, screaming until I fell catatonic. My baby was taking the life from me, and my friend was leaving me for good. I tried to be resilient, but it was so difficult to hold on.
Juliana was out of view now. We lowered into his ship, and the lights were fading out. The engine powered on, and all I could think about was Juliana and the crew, and how sorry I was for everything.
I was so sure we could save our planet’s memory. I was sure of a lot of things...
“Ten seconds until detonation...”
Talis engaged the system, and a wide variety of shapes and signals appeared on the wall. He pressed one of the middle ones and quickly latched me in. “Hold tight, little fawn.”
“One second until...”
Our ship tore through time and space. I turned to see the explosion, but I was only able to see the beginning flames of destruction. My life’s work was ruined. Everyone I had come to know had died. My life, my home movies—all of my memories were gone now. No trace of us existed anymore.
Seed: A Dark Sci-Fi Omegaverse Romance (Alpha Unknown Book 2) Page 11