by Alana Serra
She’d cooperate as much as she had to, tell them the truth when they asked, but she'd never expected a sympathetic ear from her Karuvar captives. She purposefully held back details for fear they would think her crazy and thus disposable. And, most importantly, she spent her free time looking for weaknesses that she could exploit.
Weaknesses in the room, in her captors, in the guard schedule, and especially in the security system. She'd spent time in captivity before, she knew what to look for, and she knew when to take a chance.
Or… she thought she did.
Two days ago, she'd been confronted by Rhavos as he tried what Ren could only guess was a more personable approach. She'd taken that for what it was worth—exactly nothing, since she knew she couldn't appeal to his sense of compassion—and had decided to turn this whole "mate" thing back on him instead.
It should have worked. It was obvious Rhavos thought this whole thing was complete nonsense—he'd even said as much. If she could plant a seed of doubt in him, use his own beliefs against him, then there was a chance she'd still get out of this alive.
But he'd taken it as a challenge; a way to prove he still had free will, that his implant wasn't controlling him.
And then she'd kissed him.
God, why had she done that? At the time, she'd told herself it was meant to show him how awful it felt to have no control over your actions, but that had turned into a lie she could never have anticipated.
Because it hadn't been awful. At all. Something had driven her to that point, and something drove her straight past it and way, way too close to the reality where she was fucking an alien in a quarantine room.
Or worse: Begging him to fuck her.
Fuck. At one point she’d been grinding against him like a cat in heat. Even when she had a few beers in her, Ren never let her inhibitions take that much of a vacation. So yeah, she proved her own point, but not in the way she wanted.
The hell of it was, she'd had an effect on Rhavos. He stopped coming to her little prison, sending his lackeys instead. Ren should have been looking for ways to exploit the lack of muscle, the breech in security, but instead she was forced to deal with the actual, physical aches and pains she felt every time someone who wasn't Rhavos walked through that door.
She hated it. She hated that she wanted him. She hated that she could barely think of anything else.
But… there was an oddly useful side effect. She'd discovered it the night before, when she'd been forcing herself to stay awake for fear of falling deeper into the all-too-real dreams she had about Rhavos. She focused on any and everything she could, and found that her memories weren't nearly as fuzzy as they had been. When she thought back to her college days, there wasn't as much static. She could remember names, faces, course numbers. She could even remember scribbling down a date.
There was something there, but if she tried to grasp it too hard, she lost the thread. Either that or Rhavos came within what seemed like a five-hundred-foot radius of her and her hormones went ballistic.
She had no idea how she was going to face him if he actually came back, but it didn't seem to be in the cards for today. Just after she'd been given breakfast, she heard a knock at her door, followed by a feminine—and definitely human—voice.
"Ms. Alvarez? My name is Addison Monroe, and I'd like to ask you a few questions if you have some time."
"Got nothing but time in here," she said reflexively. But then her brow furrowed as she realized what this woman had called her. "I never gave my family name to anyone here."
"You didn't," she confirmed. "That's what I'd like to talk to you about."
"… All right."
The door opened, and a tall woman with long, blonde hair stepped inside the quarantine room. She was smiling, a clipboard clutched to her chest. Ren realized that—outside of the people who'd processed her intake—this was the first human she'd actually spoken to since arriving at Helios.
Why, then, did she look so familiar?
"I'm sure you want answers, so I'll get straight to the point," the woman said. "When you were brought in, I thought I recognized you from somewhere. I couldn't place your face alone, but when Rhavos revealed your name, I remembered something I was given about five years ago."
Addison pulled a sheaf of papers from her clipboard and offered them to Ren. She accepted them, a quizzical look on her face, and that uncertainty only grew when she scanned the page.
Biological Dependence and its Impact on Humanity, by Renee Alvarez
Her lips parted in silent question, her gaze flicking back to Addison before she continued with the paper.
"This is… I spent months working on this."
She kept reading, the words coming to her with such clarity that she knew she'd seen them before. Hell, she'd practically memorized them once upon a time.
"This was my thesis paper," she said. "How did you get this…?"
Her pulse was racing, and for a moment, Ren felt like a little girl again. Exposed and vulnerable, cowering in that cellar as the door was pried open.
"You gave it to me," Addison said softly. "I spoke for a guest lecture at Everton College. You approached me afterward and handed me that paper."
She couldn't remember Addison's face or even her name, but she could remember sitting in that lecture hall and being blown away by the woman at the podium. She'd been so excited to share her theories and her ideas with someone who understood; someone who might be able to implement them.
"I… I think I remember," Ren said, her hands shaking as she read more of the paper she'd dedicated months of her life to researching and writing.
"Once I had a name, I called in a favor and started searching through some records," Addison said, pulling out two more sheets of paper and handing them to her. "Five years ago, after being an exemplary student, you just… stopped attending class. You stopped participating in campus activities. For all intents and purposes, you disappeared."
The first was a transcript showing her Incomplete for all the classes she'd been taking that semester, along with a note about her lack of attendance. She flipped past that page and gasped when she saw the second.
It was a copy of a missing person poster, with her face on it.
"The police wouldn't do a full investigation, so some of the students and faculty purchased an ad that was run in the local papers. Nothing ever came of it."
Ren was finding it hard to breathe. The thesis, the transcript, this ad… all of it unlocked a wealth of lost and fractured memories, yet she couldn't seem to grab onto any of them.
"What's the last thing you remember from your time at the college, Ren?" Addison asked gently.
She shook her head, prepared to say she just didn't know; that she couldn't remember. But something came to her. An image that was far less fuzzy than the others. She grabbed it and held on tight.
"I was meeting someone for drinks." A face flitted through her memories and she gritted her teeth. "A man named Dallas. We were just talking, and then… I don't remember."
Addison wrote down a few things, but before she could ask any more questions, Ren spoke again.
"They did something to me. To my implant." Panic set in, her eyes wide. She clutched at her arm, feeling what she could only describe as a phantom pain there. "I don't know what it is, or how it works, but…"
Ren choked back a sob. Five years. That's what Addison had said. Five years of her life were just… gone. Her friends. Her degree. Everything she'd worked so hard for. All of it just gone.
And that wasn't even getting into whatever the Freedom Fighters had made her do.
"I think… I think they had me writing malicious code," she confessed, unable to stop herself.
"Malicious code?" Addison asked with a frown.
She drew in a shuddering breath, tried to get control of herself. "The last time I… woke up… I was looking at an executable program that was meant to target implants. I think it was some kind of virus."
Addison's eyes widened
. "… Are you sure?"
Some part of her resisted. Some part of her wanted to deny it all and focus on getting herself out of this mess. But Addison knew of her past. She'd been a part of it. And right now, Ren was overcome by a desperate need to have that back.
"’In darkness, we fear. In darkness, we wait. In darkness, we see.’ It's one of my favorite lines from The Deafening Blind. I use it in everything I code as a signature."
"Then you were the one who altered the kits' code," Addison said, her face going pale.
Ren looked up, her stomach coiling with dread. She'd done this. They'd made her do this. All to harm innocents. “I didn’t know,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Please, you have to believe me. If I’d known…”
“You’re not on trial here,” Addison said, reaching out to squeeze her hand. Ren drew in a breath and tried to calm down. “But I do need you to answer a question for me, and it's important that you do so truthfully, and with as much detail as possible."
"I'll try…" She curled in on herself, her hands still shaking as she just stared at the picture of the woman she'd been.
"Do you remember anything after that night? After you and Dallas met at that bar?"
"I…"
She tried. She tried so hard to fight past the blackness. Then and now. But every time she reached out, there was nothing to grab onto. Just hazy, fleeting moments. Dallas smiling at her. Leaning in close to whisper something. His hand at her waist as he led her out of the bar. And then… nothing.
Icy fear spread throughout Ren’s consciousness. He could have done anything. Could have made her do anything. And she’d been powerless to stop it.
She closed her eyes, let out a shuddering breath, and tried to push past the strong desire to throw up. But before she could dig any deeper, the door was thrown open so fiercely that it rattled on its hinges. Rhavos filled the doorframe, massive and imposing, a murderous look chiseled into the hard lines of his face.
And Ren found herself feeling… relieved to see him. Grateful for his presence.
Because at least with him here, she wouldn’t have to think about those five years she’d lost.
"What are you doing to her?" he snarled at Addison.
Rhavos moved toward her, placing his body between her and Addison. Another Karuvar male moved to occupy the space Rhavos had once held, his violet eyes burning with the same thing she'd seen in Rhavos': A desire to protect.
"Kor'ven, I'm fine—" Addison started.
"This doesn't concern you, Engineer," Rhavos growled. "It doesn't concern either of you."
"You have been terrorizing this poor girl for a week. Now I'm finally getting us somewhere, and you want to—"
"Leave!" Rhavos’ command sliced through the room, instantly silencing everyone in it. "Now!"
Addison, evidently not deterred, looked around Rhavos' large frame. "Think about what I asked, Ren. Please."
She nodded, but scooted herself all the way back on the cot until she was propped against the wall. Rhavos let out a bone-rattling growl that finally made Addison and the other Karuvar move, both of them leaving the quarantine room, the door shut behind him.
Ren should have been terrified. She was alone with a hulking brute of a male who'd just proved he wasn't above the threat of violence to get what he wanted.
Yet when that door was closed, when it was just the two of them, she felt like she could finally breathe for the first time in ages. And with that breath, she was unable stop the sudden, gasping sobs that followed.
8
Rhavos had never experienced such an inescapable rage in all his life.
Many Karuvar believed the role of Conqueror was bestowed to a brutal warlord. Someone who tore through their foes without any sense of right or wrong. Someone who would see his potential enemies gutted just for sport. But that was not the way of the Conqueror that Rhavos took, as his father did before him. He used his strength to bring potential threats to heel before they ever became a serious problem. But he was not an animal. He was not a violent beast driven only by his most basic instincts.
The moment he felt his human captive in distress, though, he had become just that.
He’d been speaking to one of his men, reviewing what they’d found in a second raid on the now-empty Freedom Fighter vault. They’d been discussing unresponsive lock panels and impenetrable doors when he’d felt it—a sharp pang of fear and panic deep in his gut. He knew it was not his own, and the instant he realized that, he knew exactly whose it was.
He’d flown from that room in a tear of violent energy, storming through the halls of Waystation Helios, oblivious to anything and anyone in his way. He hadn’t stopped until he’d reached the quarantine wing, only one thought in his mind:
I must protect her. I must protect my mate.
That drive was so strong him that he couldn’t argue with it logically. He couldn’t tell himself it was human trickery; couldn’t talk himself down from practically ripping the door from its frame in his quest to get to her. And when he’d seen her there, so fearless before, yet so frightened and defenseless now… he’d lost all sense of who and what he was. In that moment, his only purpose was to keep the human—his human—safe.
Kor’ven and Adi’sun left without Rhavos having to make any further threats, and he saw Rhin begin to calm somewhat. The sight of it soothed something inside of him, but Rhavos’ voice was still rough when he spoke.
“Did they do something to you?”
“No,” she said, turning her face away from him.
He did not need to see her eyes to know she was crying, and that very fact sent his own emotions into a tailspin. He wanted to raze this entire Waystation for her, and yet he also felt helpless. He did not know how to ease her pain. He did not even know what was causing her pain.
“Then what?” he asked, that frustration coming through in his tone. “They obviously upset you.”
Rhin unleashed a string of words in a language his implant did not immediately identify. Finally it caught up, and he understood the tail end of what she was saying.
“—don’t need some overbearing asshole to fight my battles for me!”
Pain lanced through his chest, as sure as if she’d stabbed him there. He lashed out just as if she had. “You were frightened!” he said with a growl. “You’re still frightened. They could have been hurting you.”
“Why does it matter?” she shot back, her hands balled into fists that clutched the sheets. “I’m your captive. Why would you care what happens to me, so long as you get your information, right?”
Because you’re my mate.
The answer rang out so clearly in his mind and in his soul that Rhavos was momentarily stunned by it. This went beyond human trickery. But if it wasn’t manufactured, that meant…
“I do not know how humans treat their captives, but Karuvar operate by a code of honor and integrity,” he said instead, his jaw squaring as if to keep himself from uttering the very words that vibrated through every inch of his being.
She had no quip for this. Instead, she curled in on herself again, and Rhavos’ heart ached. “Considering what I’ve seen humans do, I guess I lucked out.”
“What do you mean?”
Rhavos had to fight with everything in him to resist the urge to fly into a rage. He could guess what humans she meant. The very humans he’d thought her a part of. But… wasn’t she? Wasn’t she just like every other human, taking advantage of the kindnesses Drol’gan had shown them and attempting to gain the upper hand on the Karuvar?
“You wouldn’t believe me. You haven’t believed a word I’ve said so far,” Rhin said.
And why should he? She was…
He didn’t know what she was anymore. That kiss she’d so bravely initiated had been like a landslide. He’d felt it deep within him, running over his good sense, his inhibitions, his knowledge of what was good and true in the universe. Her fear today had been the aftershock, tearing away at the resistances he still had
in place.
“I will try,” he said, pulling up a chair near her cot and taking a seat.
Rhin looked up at him, her amber eyes narrowed in skepticism and still red-rimmed from her tears. Rhavos felt the strangest urge to brush the tracks of moisture from her cheeks, to take her into his arms until she stopped shaking. Completely foreign urges, both, and yet something in him seemed to recognize their value.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t know anything,” she said, swiping angrily at her eyes. “I don’t know anything. I don’t remember anything. Apparently I’m missing years from my life.”
“I do not understand.”
Rhin let out a breath then shook her head. Tears were escaping the corners of her eyes again, and she pushed herself to the edge of the bed, her bare feet finding the floor. “Just forget it,” she said, trying to pass by him.
Rhavos reached for her, his hands on her arms. She stilled, like he’d wanted, and when she looked up at him, it wasn’t exactly fear he saw in her eyes. But there was conflict there, and it gave him pause.
“I want to understand,” he told her, his voice as quiet as if he were confessing a secret.
And maybe he was. His father had taught him to listen to his captives, but Rhavos was beginning to see Rhin less as a captive, and more as someone he desperately needed to understand. So that he could protect her. So that he could please her.
She drew in a sharp intake of breath and jerked away from his hold, rubbing her arms. Had he hurt her? He didn’t think he’d grabbed her that roughly.
“Then stop handling me like I’m a sack of potatoes you can toss wherever you want,” she said, lifting her gaze to him.
There was defiance in her eyes, but something else, too. It was, ultimately, the something else that made Rhavos step back. He dipped his head in acknowledgment, as if he’d been given an order by a commander. Rhin’s eyes widened, but she sat on the edge of the bed once more. Her voice was very quiet when she said, “Thank you.”
She is your prisoner, something inside of him said. She is working for the enemy. You cannot let her control you.