by C F Rabbiosi
“You can stick that thing inside me, but I’ll tell you right now that I have always been sick. I won’t survive being bred. Maybe not even by a man, let alone your species.”
Gerakon searches her small, frail body. “What sickness do you suffer from?”
“My lungs flare up and I can barely force air inside. And when Yule Tide season comes I often fall sick with infection for weeks.”
“What does she speak of?” asks Kraetorr, those haunting eyes swallowing Glenda.
“Their flesh is subject to foreign invaders,” says Gerakon, “as well as genetic defects such as asthma, as it is called.”
Vaerynn rips Glenda’s head back by her hair to lay her down. “And this is what you would turn us into. Weak, daily tortured beings.”
“We get sick, yes,” Scarlet says. “But I still want to be here. I want to live even if it means I won’t be happy all the time. It’s worth it.”
“We will continue with the test, havistonn,” the Koridon female says.
“She is very small.” Gerakon holds the device loosely, as though it has transformed into a venomous creature that may bite at any time. “There may be a question of whether she can carry a Koridon child or not as it is.”
“Dividond bakkis,” she hisses. “We have our orders.”
Kraetorr backs against the wall, his chest moving up and down rapidly. He wipes beads of sweat from his forehead and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
“Perhaps the males who aren’t havistonns with masks should remove themsel—” I put my hand over my mouth as Vaerynn spreads Glenda’s knees and Gerakon shoves the alien device into her depths. Her pained gasp pierces the air. He activates the claws and she bites her lip to stifle the sob bubbling up in her throat. Her breath sucks in and out, wheezing, rasping…
8
Kraetorr braces himself against the wall.
Vaerynn snaps her head up and eyes him curiously, but Gerakon pays no attention, studying the symbols appearing in the air as Glenda’s readings populate.
“Stop the test—” Vaerynn manages, but it’s too late. Kraetorr takes Gerakon by the back of the head and slams him down. A beast possessed, his knuckles blanch, squeezing the young doctor’s throat. Vaerynn shouts and shoves him away and his body falls, but he’s back up in an instant, locked on Gerakon for blood. Brekter holds him while Gerakon scrambles up, but the attacking Koridon breaks away and strikes him again and he flies down next to Scarlet.
Her big emerald gems fill with determination as she edges in front of Gerakon, an arm held out protectively in front of him.
What is she doing? She stands, a ten-year-old opposing Aslan the lion!
The big beast huffs wildly, and as he reaches for Scarlet I imagine claws preparing to rip her face off. But he stops, the madness flickering out. His breath settles, and his mighty form backs away, giving Vaerynn and Brekter the opportunity to seize him.
“I lost myself!” he roars, his entire body rigid. “What is happening to me?” They drag him out of the room as he yells with pure torment.
Larger than the others and built with iron rippling from beneath his skin, he seemed to grow even larger somehow with the instinct to protect her. What if she really is given to him as a mate? I turn away with intrusive thoughts of her thin form beneath him, a powerful thrust ripping her in two, the snapping of bones within his fevered grip…
Gerakon stands with bewilderment splashing his face at a frozen in shock Scarlet. “What has happened?” he asks her, his mask on the floor.
She turns around slowly, not a ripple of fear tainting her spirit. “I—” Gerakon towers above her, but she lifts her chin to meet his gaze. Her mouth squeezes shut, and she shakes her head. “I wanted to stop him.” Her words sound weak compared to her unwavering presence, and the space between them sparks. Gerakon sniffs the air, and his breath quickens. He moves toward her and she flinches, severing their near-contact, but the intensity between them thickens the air.
Vaerynn storms back in, long hair flowing around her shoulders, and stops dead in front of them. “Havistonn, you must continue. I tire of this, finish quickly.”
He shakes his head as though waking from a dream and puts his mask back in place. “This is madness. These women are not what I thought—”
“You agreed to this. You wanted this,” she says, closing the space between them. “Do what you have sworn. Enough of the small one. You will now study—” She nods past him toward Scarlet. “Her.”
Brekter steps inside. “No more males should be allowed inside this room during examinations.”
“And what of you?” Vaerynn asks. “How will you control yourself when Calypso’s turn comes?”
Stormy eyes flick up at her wickedly. Because he’s already had me today. The spell has been lifted just enough to cut through the fog and return his senses. Though with him, it never feels like desperation or instinctual possession. Just rage.
Gerakon picks up the fallen device. “I will not continue until speaking with the leader about what has happened here.”
“It’s fine,” says Scarlet. She scoots back on the bed and pulls a sheet over her waist. “Just do it. I’d rather the nightmare be over.” Gerakon approaches, his eyes moving over her form as though seeing for the first time.
After a brief hesitation, he bends between her legs and taps her thigh. “O-open. Please.” She immediately spreads them for him. Placing the device under the sheet, he penetrates her and beads of sweat form at his hairline. With a tensed jaw, Scarlet’s bare feet dig into the bed.
“So, you’re their doctor or something in this society?” she asks, straining to sound normal.
“I am more of a geneticist, as you would call it. It is the reason I have come here,” his gaze flicks to me. “Because I could no longer stand by as my people died.”
“My people die all the time too.” She grimaces, but unlike the others, not a single tear slips down her cheek. “You have taken much.”
Gerakon grunts his disapproval. “We only wish to live.”
“So that’s why we’re here. Your last chance.”
Vaerynn tugs strands of her light hair, jerking her head to the side. “You do not understand anything, animal. Do not speak again.” She shoves her cheek aside, then circles the room. “Make no mistake, we are using your inferior bodies as test subjects, and most of you will likely die. But it is an honor you will accept with grace.”
“An honor?” I say, and she spins around. “You are larger, more densely muscled beings, but what does that matter here? You wish to survive. Have families. Well, we only have weaker bodies because our minds are incredible.” We love, laugh, and find joy in everything, a perfect balance, and I’m baffled at how this female is nothing like us. She can’t see us at all.
“Useless and unbearably unevolved,” she says.
Scarlet’s readings come to life in dazzling symbols that populate in an unseen database of some kind. “They have a beauty about them though,” Gerakon says, closing out the moving symbols and removing the tool. He brushes his fingers along her leg and follows the racing goosebumps down to her ankle. “She provokes a tactile sensation in my fingertips. A softness that seems to stroke my nerve endings.” Vaerynn breaks him from his trance with a disgusted groan, and he steps back quickly. “Her date of ripening will arrive in fifteen days,” he says, turning away.
“Look at you,” says Vaerynn, again focusing on me. “You are what we have to endure to stay alive. Our beloved children will have to look like you. Our only hope is to breed most of the human out eventually.”
I scoff. “But, you’d have to breed them the second they became fertile. One half-Koridon bred to a full Koridon, then continue the cycle! We may not survive this, let alone very young ladies.”
“A chance we’re willing to take,” she retorts. Never having had a child of her own, she must have no perception of the love a mother is capable of. If they take our children away young to be mated and possibly obliterated, we wil
l never stop fighting. There will never be peace.
“This isn’t the way.” I stand up and touch my belly. “The only way all of us will find happiness is to coexist. Love and cherish each other.” I note the indignation in her crooked frown and sigh. “You don’t understand those words, do you?”
“Understood but forgotten by superior minds.”
“You understand it, all right. That’s more than a dog would. But then to ignore its power… well, that’s worse than a dog.”
She bolts toward me and I wait for the impact. Instead, she cracks a grin an inch from my own. “You will learn. When that prince of yours comes to find you bedded by his enemy, there will be blood. And you will be reduced to the incubator you are meant to be.”
“Is he alive?” That is all I care about. The way she smirks, I fear she only taunts me.
“Gerakon,” she says without moving an inch. “Let us find out what is going on in this one’s belly.” She shoves me, and my back hits the bed.
“This procedure will not benefit her if she is carrying.” Gerakon holds the spiked metal tool to the side. “It may even hurt the process.”
She puts her hands on her hips. “Let us see if her chemistry and anatomy are truly worthy of being the savior of our people.”
Brekter steps forward, tilting his head in ambivalence.
“For her,” says Gerakon, “we shall see what lies inside.” He takes a different tool from the table, and fear spikes through my chest. He raises the strange device over my belly. “Lift your gown.”
A cobalt liquid, thick like metal, floats out toward my cringing flesh. It forms a thin, sharp object, then the tip buries in below my belly button. I fight to stay still, the pressure boring in, my knuckles white, gripping the bed. A sound rings out and a holographic image projects from the device. In vivid color, it displays the whooshing of blood through tiny vessels, through living tissue, and though it’s a strange sight, somehow I know it’s my womb. He clicks a few buttons and a tiny mass appears in the air and spins.
“There. A child is forming.” He touches buttons in sequence again and the mass changes, growing bigger and taking form. “Using advanced DNA development, you can see how the machine is predicting its next sequence of growth.” The image spins slowly, a small, undifferentiated mass, then develops into a fully formed, perfect baby. Its fist opens and shuts in the fluid, and the chest vibrates with a small hiccup. Mary-Shelly puts her hand to her mouth, and me… I go numb.
“If my theory is correct, the child will be ready to deliver safely between eight and ten months,” Gerakon says as the holographic growth from bundle of cells to child begins again. “It is male.”
My heart drops, the numbness transforming into fire. A male has never been born by a human before. Koridon women have steel bodies that won’t burst from the inside out, but will my half-breed body be able to endure it? Brekter moves to my side. “Whose is it?” I ask.
“That will take longer.” Gerakon clears his throat and makes the floating image vanish. More readings come in with strange tinkling sounds, data I can’t begin to understand. “I will study the results.” He removes the needle and puts the machine away.
I was secretly holding out hope that there was no pregnancy. Free from the unknown of conceiving this child. Brekter knew it. And he knows it’s his, too. I’m ashamed because it’s ungrateful, but I mourn my youth, feeling my energy seep into the growing baby to give it new life that drains my own. This could kill me even though I’m half-Koridon. What parts are human? How does it work? Did I inherit a strong enough womb to encase the unnaturally strong being? Do I have an efficient enough circulatory system to support it, or will my heart give out? Just when I thought dying young was behind me.
“How much do your males usually weigh at birth?” I ask.
“Twelve pounds. Minimum.” Gerakon places a hand on my knee, the gesture touching from such a cold male. “I will do all I can to help you through this.”
* * *
“Scarlet,” I whisper in the dark. Moonlight glitters down from the glass ceiling and floods over us, such beauty transforming the horror of our situation.
Her head lolls toward me.
“Are you all right?”
She lifts a hand, just to have it yanked back down by her shackles. “Great.”
“Why did you jump in front of that monster today?” Kraetorr’s snarling face reanimates across my memory, reminding me that he could have ripped right through her to get to Gerakon.
She lets out a shuddery breath. “I don’t know. It’s as though my body moved without me. I don’t know.”
“He stopped dead,” I say. “You calmed him when no one else could.”
Being thrown together is like oil bursting upon the fire, an explosive combination not easily contained as it burns through everything. How will we ever live together without being in constant danger? Gerakon wore a mask to prevent possession by our pheromones, the drug that dances through a male’s blood, and Brekter takes his aggressive attraction out on me as he pleases. I don’t know what’s going to happen to all of us, but having children in such an environment is psychotic.
Scarlet’s silent for a few moments. “When Alexander and his men hurt us in the woods that night, I think that was the day I died.” The leaders of our village were supposed to be trustworthy, but he dragged us out of our beds and flayed our innocence open before the night. She’s changed since that happened, giving me this feeling with every move, every word, that at any moment she’ll burst out of her pale skin. The lively girl who laughed easily as long as it was something mischievous had gone, her spirit vanished.
“You didn’t die, though,” I say. “You just have to find a reason to live again.”
“I know,” she says with a note of laughter lighting up her darkness. “And that reason is why I found myself standing against the scariest creature I’ve ever come in contact with. What in the name of hell did I really plan to do?”
“Oh, my friend. You’re bonding to Gerakon. That’s wonderful.” Everyone’s a mess, our chemistries mixing and bubbling over, but this is the beginning of everything. We are.
“If it’s him who wants to mate me, I can take whatever comes. But how can I have such hope that he can be mine? We have no control over anything here.”
“Because he felt it too. It was obvious by the way he looked at you. The way he touched you. And you heard all that about how he was swooning over the feel of your skin. Having only heard terrifying stories growing up about the monstrous enemy out in the forest, it’s confusing, right? Your heart wrenching for the enemy’s touch?”
“You’re a fool,” says blond Alice. “They’re going to rip us to pieces. By their cocks or by their horrible spawn. We’re nothing but experimental monkeys to them, and we’re going to die.”
“Alice, go back to sleep,” I say. “Stop scaring them.”
“They should know the truth!”
“And what of your truth today?” asks Jane, her mousy voice too sweet. She moves to fold her hands in front of her stomach like she usually does, but her chains remind her to stay still. “Do you really sleep with old Tiberius?”
“Of course not. I hit my head really hard.” Blond Alice closes her eyes. “I was out of my mind, now goodnight.”
Ehh, love is such a skewed subject in our villages. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if fatherless Alice did fall in love with an older man. What is love, anyway, but something we greatly need from the opposite sex only to be denied by our own laws to protect us?
“The truth of the matter is that we aren’t sure of anything yet,” says Scarlet. “But we’re writing history.”
“They look like Vikings,” says Sybil. “Don’t they remind you of the history books? The long braided hair and eyes that reflect a love for only blood and violence?”
“Except Vikings weren’t eight feet tall,” says black-haired Alice with a nervous chuckle.
“You don’t know,” Sybil replies. “We hardly k
now anything.”
“How do you think they’re pairing us?” asks Glenda, her voice shaky. After what Kraetorr did today, it’s a wonder if it helped or hurt his chances of having her. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did mate the two, his enormous strength mixed with her slight frame and weakness. If she did survive a pregnancy, it would still result in a genetically superior child. In size, anyway.
“Well, if it’s based on their preference—” Blond Alice snickers, and I know she’ll slit her own throat before she lets Arek have her.
I have no idea how it will be decided. For Scarlet, I hope the Koridon male chooses, but for Glenda, I hope they don’t. “Kassien is a prince, so he could claim me by his own decree. But look what happened anyway.” Brekter lurks somewhere close by, I can feel it, and the thought of having his child inside makes my stomach wretch. I will surely be cast aside by Kassien then. I suppose he’s good at that anyway. I wonder if he’ll take a new bride then. maybe blond Alice? She’s a beauty, why wouldn’t he want her?
Being forced to wed Brekter is my worst nightmare, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I won’t run away. I’d rather endure his massive cock up my slit and his ugly words than ever abandon my child. My mother didn’t abandon me, and I’m sure she could have, sure the village leaders would even have encouraged it. Maybe they wanted to leave me out in the forest to be eaten by wild dogs.
Light cracks across the room, and I squint toward the hulking shadowed male. My pulse jumps in fear of Brekter coming to me now, here with my friends. If he slipped my dress up and forced me to mate, I suppose I’d have to keep quiet and not fight as to keep from scaring the others.
Clever bastard.
9
The figure walks across the room, the door shutting quietly behind him, and I can feel the girls’ tension thicken. As my fear rises, it gives way to fury, and I realize blond Alice is completely right. I’ve been fighting it, so swept up in my mixed feelings for Kassien and his people. We don’t owe this race anything. In fact, it’s a travesty that they’ve taken us against our will to be sex slaves. What right do they have? Brekter says there’s no time to romance us, that they will do what they have to do in their last hour.