Even so, the change happened fast, overwhelming her with its immediacy, with the intensity that followed once he’d done it.
Whatever that muscle was, it kept her out before now, away from the deeper recesses of his mind. He’d been using it to protect himself from her. When it suddenly unwound, then opened, her own heart opened, too. Like fingers relaxing after being tensed around some hard object, Jet felt that part in both of them relax.
Grief rose in her, almost at once, more feeling than she could handle.
Feeling not only about him, about what happened between them, but from far back, from growing up in the skag pits, from death, disease, not enough food, people being picked off like vermin from the streets, fighting over scraps.
Jet hadn’t known her own block was there… not consciously.
But it was familiar.
She knew that feeling, that tightness in her chest.
She understood that Laksri shared it, too. She’d been feeling it there, between them, without understanding what it meant.
Whatever he’d thrust between them in those first weeks they’d been together, threading around the venom to screen himself from her… it was gone. Whatever she’d held up, protecting herself from him, from all of them really, even her mother, even Biggs, even herself… that was gone, too.
It was really gone.
She just lay there on the bed, gasping for breath, watching it happen.
His tail and leg and arm wrapped around her as he felt her defenses recede.
He stung her again, slower that time, letting her feel all the things he’d been keeping from her. He stroked her hair, watching her face as he relaxed his body against hers, as he felt her react to what he showed her. He stung her again after another few minutes, but she could hear him purring now, the sound rising from deep inside his chest.
It confused her, reminded her of Trazen, but the heat that rose in the other Nirreth’s face caused her to push the image of Trazen aside, to stroke Laksri’s face, to reassure him.
His fingers grew warmer as his reaction faded, softer over her skin.
Heat began to build between them as she stroked the velvet skin of his neck and chest, but he didn’t move for a long time. She felt it affecting him, along with that softer feeling, the one he’d never shared with her before.
Even so, he didn’t move.
He just let her feel him, his expression still holding that emotion she couldn’t quite put words to, even after her mind already understood.
She didn’t know how long they lay there like that.
It felt like hours. She coiled around him on the low mattress, unclothed but unmoving, his weight on her, his fingers around her neck and in her hair.
He didn’t seem to mind.
He just lay there, purring, studying her eyes as he let her see him.
17
Venom Dreams
Jet didn’t remember waking up.
She simply found herself staring up at a curved, white ceiling, trying to decide if she could remember a time when she hadn’t been. Staring, that is.
She didn’t remember opening her eyes.
At some point, she simply became aware that her eyes were open.
Her mind felt reasonably clear. Gaps existed. Fairly big ones, at least when she concentrated on any one for more than a few seconds, but she found it difficult to feel a lot of concern. Even in her fogged state, she remembered how the venom worked.
Everything would come back in time.
It would come back, likely in excruciating detail. It was part of what made the venom such a useful training tool for the Rings, even apart from the empathy it generated.
The empathy helped, too.
Nirreth really did tend to think about things differently than humans, which meant their idea of planning differed at times, too. Venom brought Jet closer to that state of mind, meaning the Nirreth way of ordering thoughts, of aesthetic, of excitement––as well as the Nirreth tendencies in strategy, even deception. The venom embedded those concepts in her mind, adding understanding, well beyond Jet’s photographic memory.
Besides, her memory quirks had their own limitations.
Mainly, her ability to recollect things in minute detail worked only for spatial-type things. Layouts, blueprints, maps, distances, ranges, anything three or two-dimensional, anything she could “see” within her mind’s eye––all of those things she found easy to remember.
It worked mainly for things she actually had seen, with her own eyes.
She could remember things she’d read or witnessed, more or less exactly how they’d looked at the time. Really, Jet could recall just about anything she’d gotten a clear image of, especially under the influence of venom.
It didn’t work so well with other types of information, or information gleaned in other ways, like verbally or via abstract descriptions or thoughts… really, anything that didn’t have a particular image with which it could be associated.
Those gaps included things Jet had to remember about the Rings that didn’t show up on floorplans, or that wouldn’t be visible as she prepped for her matches.
Her photographic memory didn’t really help as she sized up her opponents, either.
Like more psychological information about strengths and weaknesses of other candidates, or Al-En Mosq’s training style, or the things she overheard about his female candidate, Bokka. Jet might remember her fighting style, assuming she’d seen t, but not if she’d only heard about it via verbal briefs or coaching from Alice or Laks.
Her inbuilt memory also didn’t help her to remember who might be allergic to what, and what types of weapons person A might be more likely to wield than person B, based on preferences and/or personality alone.
For those types of things, the venom helped a lot.
Jet stretched her arms, twisting her back on the hard cushion.
As she did, it occurred to her that she was alone.
Glancing at first one, then the other side of the bed, she confirmed the suspicion, frowning as she tried to decide if that bothered her or not.
It didn’t, she decided.
She wished he’d stayed, though.
After a few more minutes, she dragged herself up to a seated position. She saw clothes on the floor, including a ripped shirt of hers she recognized. Looking down at herself, she realized she was naked, but that didn’t really concern her, either.
She rubbed the back of her neck.
Her throat was dry, shrunken with thirst.
Her eyes shifted to the right, where she saw a glass of water sitting, almost as if waiting for her. Without hesitation, she leaned over, clasping it carefully with her fingers. She brought the glass to her lips and drank it down, feeling relief, even gratitude.
When the water had all disappeared down her throat, Jet placed the glass back on the table, sighing before plunking her palms back on the mattress, propping up her upper body.
Again, she looked around the room.
Somewhere in that, she grew aware of time.
Three weeks. They said it would be three weeks before they reached Astet.
Only one day had passed since the ship left Earth.
Possibly two.
Sliding her body back carefully on the mattress, she leaned against the wall. She knew she could push the venom a little, bring back the memories faster. Not a lot faster, but a little faster. Closing her eyes, Jet rested her head on the wall, gripping the sheets with her hands.
Sensual memory hit first, enough to flush her skin.
It didn’t surprise her, that she and Laks had sex.
She’d sort of known that would happen, even going in. She was more surprised at how far they’d gone with it, and how willingly he’d opened up to her, when all was said and done. He’d barely put up a fight, despite how angry he’d gotten beforehand.
What she still couldn’t wrap her head around, was what he’d told her.
A part of her wanted to not believe it.
Or maybe she just wanted to retain some semblance of a healthy skepticism around everything Laksri confessed. She could admit to herself the difficulty of doing that, though. A measure of self-delusion lived in even trying, but the side of her that always excelled at self-preservation refused to let go of the effort entirely.
Anyway, it’s not as if she had no reason to doubt him.
All along, she’d suspected he kept things from her, even when he stung her the first time. She’d wondered how much, but none of her estimates came remotely close to the truth. He’d hidden a lot from her, more than she would have dreamed, even after Richter clued her off about the set-up with Anaze.
It frightened her, even doped on venom as she was, to realize he could still be hiding things from her.
Doubt rippled the calm of her mind, fighting to find a place in it.
If she could believe half of what he’d let her see, that night alone––
Jet closed her eyes tighter.
When that didn’t feel like enough, she placed a hand over her face, wincing.
He’d told her he loved her. He said he hadn’t tried to seduce her so that Anaze could burst in and find them together. He admitted they had a plan, yes, but claimed Anaze had changed that plan. The fight had been scheduled to happen that night, in one of the eating establishments in the Royal compound.
Anaze was supposed to make a scene, threaten Laksri’s life.
The jealousy thing had been part of that, but––
Laksri’s thoughts had grown confused, angry.
He considered Anaze a friend.
Since Jet met Laksri, the tall Nirreth and Anaze acted like they didn’t know one another well. They’d acted like they distrusted one other. They pretended like each saw the other as a pawn of Richter, a liar, a rival, not trustworthy.
All of that collapsed when Laksri let Jet past the blocks in his mind.
According to Laksri, he met Anaze first.
Anaze got captured by one of Laksri’s cullers.
Laksri stung him, to figure out who he was, what he was doing there, then stung him again when he grew curious with what he found.
They got to talking as Anaze healed from some other kind of injury.
Laksri stung him a few more times, looking for any hint of deception, even as he grew to know the young human better, and began to protect him from his Nirreth guards. They’d grown to like one another… then to respect one another.
Laksri stopped stinging him and that respect grew into friendship, a friendship that deepened as each began to understand the other’s goals.
Eventually, perhaps inevitably, they began discussing an alliance.
The affection Jet felt around and between the two of them probably threw her the most.
Laksri and Anaze had liked one another, almost from the beginning.
They’d trusted one another, even before they had good reason.
Laksri and Anaze started conspiring how they could work together, only a few weeks into having met. Even in the beginning, they agreed it would be better if they let Richter think it was his idea. They agreed it would be better if they pretended not to know one another, if they pretended even to hate one another.
They’d wanted to keep some of their plans separate from Richter’s.
Jet saw through Laksri that Anaze had been desperate.
Anaze still wanted to free the humans living under the heel of the Nirreth, but he increasingly feared his father, and his father’s goals.
More than anything, Anaze feared what Richter seemed willing to do in order to attain those goals.
Anaze warned Laksri, from the beginning, that Richter couldn’t be trusted, that neither of them could ever tell Richter everything––
Seeing the two of them together, in Laksri’s mind, through Laksri’s memories, spun Jet’s mind off its axis. It changed everything she thought she understood about the two of them, much less the relationship between them. It colored every interaction she’d witnessed since she first landed on the deck of that culler ship over Vancouver.
Anaze had seen how Richter ran the fiefdoms he scratched out of the skag pits and the roving bands of human ex-military.
He’d seen Richter recruit from the Hamster Cages on the polluted edges of Nirreth industry, worsening their living conditions deliberately so they’d be grateful and loyal when he finally deigned to pull them out. Richter had done the same to the skags, Jet saw, stealing as much as he could get away with, starving them out and making them desperate before he approached any of their fighters with an offer to deal.
Anaze warned Laksri that Richter wasn’t entirely stable.
According to Anaze, Richter never got over the war, despite what he pretended.
Anaze feared Richter could never be content with anything less than the complete annihilation of the Nirreth species.
Laksri had come up with the idea of offering a partnership to Richter.
He pretended Anaze was only a contact, some boy who’d proven useful following a raid. Astutely, both Anaze and Laksri saw it as a perspective Richter would be able to relate to. It was how Richter viewed people, as tools.
Jet gripped her hair in one hand, fighting her way through the flood of information, through Laksri’s memories, which felt so close, so visceral, she had trouble distinguishing them from her own. She could see them, hear them, even smell them.
Anaze and Laksri, meeting late at night behind the Trevi fountain, where Anaze had taken Jet that first night she spent in the Green Zone. Anaze and Laksri arguing about how much to tell Jet, what they could tell her, without Richter finding out. Anaze and Laksri meeting hurriedly in the lower gardens as the bombs fell that night, deciding what to do, what to tell Richter, knowing he would want to use Jet…
She learned things about Richter, too, and how he always seemed to know what she was thinking. It turned out, Richter had something on her, some kind of device, something he’d put on her when she’d first been culled. He’d been screwing with her, pretending he could all but read her mind, when he really read her thoughts off a machine.
Another stupid ploy to exert power over her, to keep her on a leash.
In addition to the added surveillance, Richter did it for the same reason he did most things with people he wanted to control. He did it to throw her off-balance, to make her doubt herself, convince her how transparent she was to his superior intellect.
But the whole thing was all a cheat.
Whatever it was, whatever device Richter used to see into Jet’s mind, it felt similar to the implants the Nirreth put on her when she’d first entered the Green Zone. Anaze and Laksri had been trying to figure out how they might remove it.
Training accident in the Rings?
Could they get it “found” in a casual scan, maybe at one of the medical facilities?
They couldn’t risk having Richter picked up by the Royal Guard. They couldn’t trust what he might do, if really cornered. He appeared almost like an animal in Jet’s mind, and she realized she was seeing Richter the way Laksri saw him.
Laksri saw Richter as a dangerous animal, nothing like Anaze… or Jet herself.
Jet’s head pounded harder.
Richter had put a surveillance device on her.
Whatever it was, it tracked some aspect of her thoughts. It also kept tabs on her emotions. Laksri seemed to believe Richter had unusually finely-tuned powers of observation and perception anyway, for a mammal. The device gave him a leg-up on that skill.
Laksri and Anaze still thought they could train Jet to hide things from Richter; they could use the venom to teach her the rest, but they needed to get that device off her first.
They wanted to remove it in a way that wouldn’t make Richter suspicious––
Another memory swirled around her, a realization.
Reaching behind her shoulder, she winced the instant her fingers touched the back of her neck. A thick and painful crust of blood remained there, throbbing at the base of her skull. She p
robed the cut despite the pain, even as it occurred to her that it would leave a permanent scar.
She had a vague memory of Laksri with a knife, determined to get it out of her.
He’d been so tired of lying to her, of not being able to ask her opinion on things that mattered.
All because Richter…
Jet’s mind blurred, even as the memory of pain worsened.
Laksri said Richter might know what he’d done, but maybe they could find a way to excuse it. Make it about sex, about Laks noticing it while she slept… have Laksri accuse Trazen of putting it there, or the Royal Guard, or one of their spies.
Richter might not believe it.
Laksri seemed to think he probably wouldn’t. On the other hand, he seemed to think that would be true no matter what they did to get rid of it.
Richter didn’t trust anyone.
Least of all, anyone he thought he needed.
Laksri seemed to think Richter already suspected something between him and Anaze. Laksri didn’t know the extent of Richter’s suspicion, but he’d caught Richter staring between them, as if trying to make up his mind. He watched all three of them, too closely for them to be able to fool him forever. He watched them openly… especially her.
Richter seemed obsessed with her, with what she might do.
He thought he understood what Laksri wanted, and he barely counted Anaze at all.
It was Jet who worried him.
Richter didn’t understand her, didn’t know what she wanted. It had been his idea to pull her family, “in case they needed the leverage.” Anaze tried to talk him out of it. Laksri did, too, but they let it happen anyway.
Jet felt her heart constrict.
Trazen had been telling the truth. Richter had her family.
He had Biggs. Her mom. Her aunt and uncle.
Jet fought to breathe, clutching her chest as her vision started to gray.
Richter had her family.
He wanted something from her, even beyond what Laksri told her.
Richter’s exact plans for Jet eluded Laksri and Anaze, too. She saw them arguing about it, Anaze and Laksri, in a soundproof booth in one of the underground parks. Anaze had been shouting about it, pacing back and forth, so angry his skin turned dark red, his eyes flashing with a fire Laksri watched warily, wondering again just how complicated things would get, with Jet in the middle of all three of them…
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 62