Deep Penetration; Alien Breeders I

by Stacey St. James

  Tariq frowned. After a moment, he crossed the small room and settled on the bunk Emerald had decided to ignore. “It’s curious that you used that particular word. It suggests a military alliance. Are you a politician? Or a soldier?”

  Emerald felt the color leave her face and return with a vengeance. She bit her lower lip in frustration. There really didn’t seem much point in trying to support the pretense that she had memories, though, when they clearly knew she didn’t. “I don’t know.”

  Koryn settled in the other chair. “It’s alright,” he said soothingly. “I think you’ll find it easier if you don’t work too hard to remember.”

  “I had a head injury,” Emerald said abruptly.

  “Did you?”

  There was enough curiosity in the question that it undermined Emerald’s certainty that that was what had happened to her. Wouldn’t they know if they’d treated her? “What else would explain the fact that I can’t remember things?” she asked, an edge to her voice that was more fear than anger. What weren’t they telling her?

  Koryn sent a tightlipped look in Tariq’s direction. Tariq shrugged, but she wasn’t certain if it was a dismissal of Koryn’s concern or her question. His next statement seemed to imply the latter. “There are other things that might account for the lack.”

  “Like what?”

  He smiled abruptly. Emerald felt her belly quiver, but she didn’t have to search for the reason behind it. His smile was as beautiful as he was, making it instantly, abundantly clear why they seemed alien when they looked so human. They were flawlessly perfect—both of them—and it wasn’t just the perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth he displayed. His mouth curled in a perfectly uniform smile and displayed two perfectly shaped and identical dimples, one in either cheek—in the exact same spot.

  In nature, at least human nature, there was no such thing as perfect symmetry. “You aren’t … at all like I expected you would be.”

  Emerald frowned slightly. It actually sounded like it was intended as a compliment, but it made her wonder how he’d expected her to be—and why he’d had any expectations at all.

  Because he’d been studying her when she was unconscious and vulnerable.

  She had mixed feelings about that that she couldn’t unravel or understand beyond the fact that she was flattered and dismayed at the same time.

  “Illness … other trauma,” Koryn answered her question instead of Tariq.

  She performed an internal inventory, but although she felt weak, that suggestion to account for her lack of memories didn’t seem closer than an accident. Maybe they’d zapped her with something that had caused the amnesia?

  “But you think I’ll remember?”

  “We have great hope that you will remember at least some things.”

  “Why?”

  Tariq lifted his brows but something flickered in his eyes.

  “I know why I want to remember. I’m just curious that it seems important to you.”

  “It’s important to your peace of mind,” Tariq responded smoothly. “That’s sufficient, surely?”

  It was and it wasn’t. She needed it, but she had the sense that they needed or wanted her memories as much as she did and maybe that explained why they weren’t willing to give her ‘suggestions’ that might produce those ‘false memories’ Koryn had mentioned? She might have pursued that except that the door opened and a third man entered. He was clearly of the same race even though he looked a good bit shorter—at least a half a head shorter, although still tall compared to a human male—and, unlike them, his hair was close cropped to his head. Military, her mind supplied, although she had no idea where the thought had come from.

  He brought a tray in, set it on the small table between the chairs, bowed and departed.

  Emerald stared at him until the door closed. “He doesn’t speak English?” she guessed.

  “He wasn’t programmed to, no.”

  Emerald glanced at Tariq sharply, considering that. “You’re saying …?”

  “He’s an android. They are both biological—externally, anyway—and mechanical. They serve us.”

  Emerald frowned doubtfully, going over what she’d seen in her mind, but she couldn’t think of anything that suggested he was a machine. “He didn’t look like a machine … or act like one.”

  Tariq shrugged. “Nevertheless, he was ‘born’ in a lab.”

  “Do they have names?” she asked curiously.

  “That was my assistant—Roth,” Koryn responded.

  Assistant? Did that imply they worked in a lab? It didn’t seem like the sort of term one would use in a medical sense. He would’ve said nurse, wouldn’t he? “He’s not a soldier, then? What does he assist you with?”

  This time it was Koryn who smiled and made her belly shimmy. He spread his hands wide in a gesture. “In whatever way I require assistance.”

  “What made you think he might be a soldier?” Tariq asked curiously.

  Emerald frowned. “The hair. It looks like a military cut.”

  Koryn removed the cover over the tray and set it on the floor. “Eat … while it’s hot.”

  Emerald’s stomach growled as soon as the aroma hit her, but she wasn’t particularly thrilled to see it looked like nothing but broth of some kind. Chicken, maybe?

  How could she know so many things and not remember anything about herself beyond her name, she wondered with sudden frustration? What sort of brain damage could she have that would allow her to talk and think, to identify what most everything around her was—even to know about things she had no reason to know about?

  Trusting the thoughts aside after a moment, she ignored the spoon and picked the small cup-like bowl up, taking a careful sip. She knew as soon as the hot liquid cascaded over her tongue and down her throat that it was chicken soup as she’d thought, or at least something very like it. “When can I have real food?”

  Koryn chuckled as if pleased. “We’ll get there.”

  Emerald nodded a little distractedly, trying to figure out how she’d known that she had to start with clear liquids and work toward solid food. How would she know that? Did it mean she had a medical background herself? Or was it because she’d been hurt badly enough before to discover it?

  “You never told me why you’re here,” she said after a moment, realizing they’d actually told her very little at all. It seemed they had a question for every question she asked.

  Tariq studied her for a long moment and stood up, clearly intending to leave. “In a very real sense, we are … allies of your race. We’ve been to Earth many times in the past—though it’s been a quite a while since we last visited.”

  * * * *

  “What do you think?”

  They’d left Emerald to rest and retired to Tariq’s quarters to discuss her condition where they could speak openly since Tariq insured his privacy with a daily sweep for any sort recording devices. Tariq, who’d sprawled in a chair and stretched his long legs out before him to study his boots frowning, glanced up at Koryn’s question. He thought she was breathtaking. He thought they’d made a serious error in judgment when they’d decided to seek perfection. Nature had made Emerald beautiful despite the many tiny imperfections his own people had obsessed over.

  Of course, no one was disputing that they’d made far too many mistakes—not anymore.

  Somehow, he didn’t think that Koryn’s thoughts were running in the same direction as his own, however. He shrugged. “I’m not the scientist.”

  Koryn frowned. “This isn’t my area of expertise,” he pointed out tightly.

  “This isn’t anyone’s area of expertise,” Tariq said angrily, shoving to his feet and crossing his cabin to his beverage dispenser. “I’m having nizsum? You?”

  Koryn’s brows rose. Tariq rarely indulged in fermented drinks, particularly not anything as strong as nizsum. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “She’ll sleep a while. You’ve time for the effects to wear off.”

&nbs
p; “A small one, then.”

  Tariq took the two drinking vessels the dispenser produced, which were roughly the size and length of his index finger and crossed to hand one to him. When he’d settled in his chair again, he merely studied the dark liquid in the transparent vessel, however. “I think she’s the strongest one we’ve found … and I’m still not certain I want to risk it. In fact, I damned well know I don’t. She’s too ….” He broke off, his mind straying to her again as he struggled to find the word he was looking for.

  “Precious,” Koryn finished when Tariq didn’t, lifting his vessel and downing the contents. “There is not another like her in the universe and never will be again if we aren’t damned careful with her.”

  “No two are ever entirely the same,” Tariq said dryly. “But you’re right. I don’t want to risk losing her. Even the mission isn’t worth that. We’ll keep digging.”

  “So … you’re saying we should implant memories to guard her sanity?”

  Tariq stared at him for a long moment, struggling with the angry denunciation that instantly rose to mind. “I don’t know,” he growled finally and downed his own draught of nizsum.

  Koryn tilted his head, frowning at Tariq curiously. It wasn’t like Tariq at all to be so indecisive. “We only have two options,” he reminded him. “We can wait and see if she remembers anything of use to us, or we can manipulate her memories.”

  The memories would change her, though, Tariq thought angrily, and he didn’t want anything about her altered—not by so much as a hair. She would be someone else, because she would have some else’s memories. Unfortunately, his orders were clear cut and not open to interpretation. “Prepare the implant,” he said tightly. “That way it’ll be ready if we see it’s necessary. In the mean time, we’ll keep her under close observation.”

  “What do you suggest?” Koryn asked slowly.

  Tariq glanced at him sharply, feeling his belly tighten with reluctance. He swallowed with an effort against the knot that rose in his throat, a mixture of frustration and disgust and anger. “What the hell happened here?” he growled.

  It was a rhetorical question Koryn made no attempt to answer. None of them knew what had happened, had so much as an inkling. They’d been trying to find answers to their questions since they’d arrived weeks earlier to find a garden of Eden bereft of the children left in her care.

  “Study her personality and try to work up something as close as you can,” Tariq said tiredly. “I think there’s a good chance that she had a military background and, if that’s true, she’s the first we’ve recovered that might have some of the answers we’re looking for.”

  * * * *

  Emerald was so sleepy when she finished drinking the soup that she immediately suspected they’d laced it with something to knock her out. She discarded the thought after a few moments’ reflection. She hadn’t noticed anything ‘strange’ about the taste and she felt sure she would have if there’d been any sort of drug added.

  For a while, she resisted the pull, too unnerved by her situation to feel safe to sleep, but it was a losing battle. Finally, she got up, climbed into the bunk and yielded. She had no idea how long she slept, but she woke feeling far more alert than before and not nearly as weak. Deciding the soup and the nap had been beneficial, she got up and explored her cabin. There wasn’t much to explore, unfortunately, but she did discover that there was a private facility that included a shower attached to the small cabin.

  The long, hot shower sapped a good bit of the energy she’d woken up with, unfortunately, even while it seemed to ease some of the soreness from her muscles and invigorate her. Wrapping up in the sheet again when she’d dried off, she returned to the main room and settled in a chair to think.

  She’d had another nightmare. Unfortunately, from the moment she woke it was just as elusive as the one before except that it left her with the sense, right or wrong, that it wasn’t just a ‘generic’ nightmare. She struggled with her memory for a little while and finally gave up. She couldn’t be certain the nightmare had any basis in reality at all. It might, as she suspected, be the result of something she’d experienced, but she had no way of determining that even if she could remember the details of the dream.

  She didn’t know what to think about her situation. It just seemed too pat that aliens had come to visit the Earth and run across her and decided to rescue her even if not for the fact that she could tell they were withholding a great deal from her. It was possible, she supposed, that the Anunnaki were a benevolent race and such things were commonplace to them—assisting others—and yet she couldn’t imagine that they would travel so far merely to ‘visit’. They would almost certainly have an agenda. She just couldn’t figure out what that might be.

  She knew, though, that they’d traveled a tremendous distance. Even if not for the fact that that ‘felt’ true, they’d implied it themselves.

  So, they were here for a reason. Did she have anything to do with that reason, she wondered? Or had they come across her purely by accident?

  It seemed to her that she could safely discard the suspicion that they were enemies of the people of Earth. What would be the point in taking care of her if they were? They’d said she wasn’t a prisoner—or Koryn had, although there’d been something about Tariq’s manner that made her question it. They certainly hadn’t treated her like one.

  She was naked, though, and Tariq’s question had unnerved her when she’d asked if she was free to leave. ‘Where would she go?’ Somehow, she thought it wasn’t a reference to the fact that she couldn’t remember where she belonged. It had seemed … ominous somehow.

  Shaking the thought and the sick feeling that began to churn in her belly, she got up decisively to test whether or not she was a prisoner. The door opened the moment she approached it. Gathering the sheet more tightly around herself, she stepped into the corridor and looked around. Since she hadn’t seen anything the way they’d come when they’d left the treatment room—or whatever it was—she headed off in the opposite direction.

  The corridor seemed endless. It was a while before she noticed that there were doors leading off of the corridor. Closed, they formed a nearly invisible seam against the surrounding walls. She hesitated when she reached the next, but since it occurred to her that it was quite possibly someone’s private quarters, she decided not to test the theory.

  She’d been moving along the corridor for perhaps twenty to thirty minutes when it abruptly dawned on her that she had no idea how to get back to the room where they’d taken her. Dismayed, she stopped, turning to look back in the direction she’d come from. A very little consideration convinced her that she was committed to her quest. She really had no choice at this point but to continue to look if for no other reason than she was lost.

  She reached a branch in the corridor a few minutes later and debated whether to stay with the corridor she’d been following or try the one that branched off at a tangent. She saw what appeared to be a row of windows further along the branch, however, and that decided the matter.

  Moving a little more quickly, she hurried along the corridor until she reached the first and discovered it was just as she’d suspected, a view port. A wave of shock and horror swept over her when she saw the view, however.

  She was too shocked for many minutes to actually assimilate what she was looking at and too distressed even when she had to throw off her shock. The first indication she had that she was no longer alone was when a hand settled on her shoulder. Jumping, she whirled instinctively, clamping a hand on the wrist attached to the hand on her shoulder and whipping his arm behind his back. She didn’t get the chance to finish executing the maneuver that should have put him on the floor. He followed, flowing easily with her movements and using her grip on his wrist to jerk her against his length and bind her in an unbreakable hold.

  “So … you are military.”

  Emerald twisted her head around to look up and back at her captor. There was no relief in discovering it was
Tariq. “Let me go,” she said through teeth clenched to hide just how shaken she was.

  His brows rose at the demand, but his grip slackened. Emerald whirled away from him immediately, bending to snatch up the sheet she’d dropped and whipping it around herself shakily before she confronted him. “That isn’t Earth!” she said angrily, pointing a shaking finger toward the window. “We aren’t on Earth! I don’t know where the hell we are, but that isn’t Earth!”

  Chapter Two

  Tariq eyed her assessingly. “It isn’t the Earth you once knew, but it is Earth,” he said finally.

  It wasn’t! He was lying, damn him! She knew he had to be. Without another word, she whipped around, intent on racing down the corridor in search of a route of escape. He caught up to her before she’d even managed to accelerate to an all out run, snagging her around the waist. She whirled on him, her survival instincts at the fore, intent upon fighting her way to freedom if necessary.

  Unfortunately, she’d already given away her hand in the previous encounter. He was ready for her and he was not only far bigger and stronger, he was amazingly fast for a being that was big enough he should have been slow and clumsy. He caught her wrists and when she tried to break free and run again, he merely twirled her in a tight circle and used her own arms to bind her against him. “Calm down! Now!” he growled through his teeth.

  “You said I wasn’t a prisoner! That was a lie, too!”

  “We didn’t go through the effort of regenerating you just to allow you to destroy yourself,” he said tightly.

  His comment took the fight completely out of her. She twisted her head to look up at him in disbelief. “Regenerated?” she gasped, so horrified at the implication that her mind had gone completely chaotic.

  Several emotions flickered across his face in quick succession—anger and self-disgust among them. Finally, a look of resignation and purposefulness settled on his hard features. “Come with me and I’ll explain what I can,” he said decisively.