by Lucas, Naomi
No one touched what belonged to Hysterian.
He caught up to Daniels just as he passed the menagerie’s storage.
“Daniels,” Hysterian called out.
The man swerved. Hysterian pounced forward and grabbed him by the neck, crushing Daniels’s larynx with one swift pinch, and dragged him into the storage room. Daniels screeched, coughing and clawing at his neck. Hysterian shoved him to the floor.
Daniels jerked away and crawled to the other side of the room, gasping for breath. Hysterian followed him.
He hadn’t planned on killing Daniels today, but whatever.
He hadn’t planned on his fascination for Alexa Dear either.
When Daniels sagged, shaking with his last twinges of life, Hysterian flipped him over onto his back. Hysterian pulled down his mouth covering and planted a soft kiss upon Daniels’s brow. A gift.
The fear left Daniels first, then his eyes dilated as he slumped to the ground.
Hysterian gently laid the human flat. “You shouldn’t have touched her. You’d be walking away from this ship right now if you hadn’t.”
Daniels didn’t look at him. He no longer registered Hysterian’s presence at all. A smile crept onto Daniels’s face, and then he was gone.
Hysterian gazed at his former officer for a moment, never liking this part. That moment when a human succumbed to the reaping. He always thought if they fought it hard enough, death wouldn’t come.
Daniels hadn’t put up a fight at all.
With a sigh, Hysterian picked up Daniels’s corpse and carried him to medical. He had no fear of being caught; he already knew the path was clear. He placed the corpse into one of the cryo units and sealed him in.
No one would look for Daniels there. And at the end of the day, when the Questor returned to Earth, he’d make sure the man would at least have a marked grave.
Hysterian straightened, pulled up his mask, and made his way to the bridge.
The last twenty-four hours had been hell. He questioned his decision to hire a crew. Because, apparently, death and drugs followed him wherever he went.
Maybe his brethren had it right all along: surrounding themselves with machines instead. Or just the one or two crew hands when things got out of hand… If Hysterian had machines working for him, he’d never have to worry about them doing the work—though they did lack the added touch of a human. But they always listened, and weren’t killable, weren’t poisonable. He would just have to keep their software updated and code them to his liking.
He tried to be like Cypher, but it wasn’t working. Having spent two months on the bear’s ship, witnessing Cypher’s affection for his woman, Hysterian wanted that for himself. Hah. His boots thudded as he approached the bridge. He’d seen Vee in her little red dress, he’d seen the way Cypher fucked her mercilessly like he would die if he didn’t.
Hysterian had been fucking envious.
He wasn’t a good enough being to win the heart of someone like Vee. She was far too young and innocent for him. She kept Cypher’s bed warm every night, but there was no past haunting her eyes, nothing that made her real to someone like him. No, Hysterian needed someone who didn’t care about his flaws, someone like a psychotic sycophant groupie. Either way, he was going after a woman that he could call his once he was cured.
For now, he’d enjoy Alexa.
Her back was turned to him when he entered the bridge.
She gazed at his seat and the controls of the ship, turning her head only to glance at the main station controls Horace and Daniels used. She was completely unaware of his return.
He leaned his shoulder on the door frame and watched her.
Nine
Alexa couldn’t believe her luck. She rubbed her shoulder as she glanced about.
She was in the bridge. She was in the bridge and Hysterian had left her there, knowing she would be alone.
The word perfection fluttered through her head.
She’d been surprised to find Horace making his dinner and having a beer in the lounge, and even more surprised to find Daniels and Hysterian in the middle of what seemed like an argument, but none of that mattered anymore, because now she had the freedom to find what she was looking for.
It also gave her another moment to collect her wits. Yesterday, when she’d invited Hysterian to kiss her, she’d been deranged and frustrated.
Waiting for Hysterian’s return from Titan had wrung her dry. Her thoughts were all over the place, and all she felt was guilt. The dried tears on her pillow were evidence enough of that.
How could she betray her dad?
What kind of person was she, wanting her dad’s killer to kiss her? Even if it was a test.
There was her loneliness too. Pigeon had asked her if something was wrong, and even Raul had started talking to her again, but she couldn’t confide in them. Alexa hated to admit it, but she was beginning to care for some of them despite her best effort not to. She couldn’t stop hearing about their lives, their jobs, their woes, and their happiness when they conversed around her.
She imagined what it would be like to be one of Pigeon’s daughters, living without this burden of loss and hate. She even considered accepting Raul’s invitation to become something more with him.
Lovers. It’d be easy. They already slept in the same room. And maybe having Raul beside her would distract her from whatever was happening with her regarding Hysterian.
I’m going to kill him. That’s what’s happening.
Raul could be easy and fun…
Alexa cleared her throat.
Today was a new day, a new evening. She’d come to find Hysterian to apologize for breaking protocol and to reset boundaries between them, to figure out where the bugs for Titan’s ambassador were, to finally get into the bridge, and most of all, remember why she was here in the first place.
Alexa inhaled and looked around her some more. She didn’t know how much time she had.
She moved away from the door after waiting another few seconds, just in case Hysterian watched the security feed later. He could be heading back at any moment if his business with Daniels was done.
She closed in on Daniels’s station first, slowly making her way to her target: the captain’s logs. If she knew she wouldn’t be caught, she’d have followed Hysterian to overhear his and Daniels’s conversation. Maybe she’d find out what Daniels was looking for in Hysterian’s quarters…
She shook her head. I’m not here for Daniels.
The screens ran continuous feeds at Daniels’s station. Numbers and alerts popped up in the air directly above the hardware. There were calibrations and readings of the Questor’s systems, their usages, and maintenance specs. It was strange information for someone on the bridge to be viewing but not wholly unusual.
The ship’s water supply and recycling were at their max. The Questor’s AI suggested water replacement immediately due to an unusual number of unknown substances in it. Strange.
Alexa pretended to stretch and swiped her finger across the specs, pushing them away. New information came up. Navigational specs, random coordinates, and more popped up. A correspondence from Elyria? Her eyes widened at the planet’s name coming out of nowhere, and when she stretched again, she was dismayed but not surprised the correspondence was locked.
She moved away from Daniels’s station, cutting her gaze to the ship’s windows in the front.
Titan was a beautiful planet, but the tarmac was not. Condensation evaporated off the cement, making the view foggy.
She made her way to Horace’s station next.
His station was a complete disaster, and she wondered where the cleaning bots were, but she had also interrupted the officers in the middle of something, so maybe they hadn’t had time to clean up and organize their stations before the next shift cycle.
Horace eluded her. She’d barely spoken to him in the weeks they’d been traveling. He was a quiet man with a testy demeanor. Neither she nor Horace made the effort to get to know one another.<
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But his screens were filled with correspondences, and her curiosity piqued. It made sense. Horace was the communications officer, their expert on the various sects of humans across the universe. Snooping on his mail would be satisfying, but she wasn’t here to get distracted. She backtracked to stand beside Hysterian’s chair.
The captain’s seat was front and center, and above the others—even the empty stations across the bridge. Power, it screamed. Authority. Leadership. She didn’t belong anywhere near it.
Alexa would never be a captain of anything. She was lucky enough to have the position she trained for. She’d been poor growing up and only had her dad. He taught her how to survive up until his own death. He never taught her how to survive without him though.
He would’ve made a great captain.
Dad never left Elyria. He never so much as stepped onto a spaceship. He’d been a Trentian half-breed. Part-human, part-alien. Alexa reached out and ran her fingers over the back of Hysterian’s chair, soothed by the soft, rich leather she felt.
Dad never had a chance to be anything more than what he was. He could work for neither government nor any organization affiliated with both. Humans didn’t trust him; Trentians tolerated him. And since Elyria had more humans than either Trentians or half-breeds combined, life had been hard for him.
He found work wherever he could, using whatever resources were available. There were half-breed communities that helped, but when every half-breed had the same problem, some just got shuffled to the end of the list. Dad spent his free time giving help in return.
He cared. So much. He wanted a better life for me. For us. For all half-breeds.
Women like her didn’t have it nearly as hard as a man with the same predicament. They had it hard, but in an entirely different way.
Purebred Trentians overlooked the human part in the women of her community. They didn’t care. They needed women to replace the countless they lost in the war, and so half-breed Trentian females were a desired commodity. Knights from Xanteaus, the Trentian homeworld, would come to the slums once a year to gather willing women of age, and offer them a chance at matehood, and a way off Elyria—a better life.
Many took the opportunity, while some, like herself, hid.
Dad made her fully aware of her predicament. Alexa’s heart fell. He protected her with every ounce of power he held, which wasn’t much.
Then a Cyborg killed him. Her eyes narrowed. The same Cyborg I tempted to kiss me. Alexa snatched her hand back, rubbing the feel of the leather from her fingers.
And if anyone found out she was a half-breed…she was doomed.
Or as good as dead. She’d been on Earth, in the presence of her species’ greatest enemy. An enemy who would either kill her on the spot because of it, or turn her over to the authorities.
She’d paid a lot of money for her fake medical records and for the glamour surgery to change her eye color. She tried to blend in.
Her eyes snapped to the screens in front of the captain’s chair. Screens with dozens of different windows to search through.
“You’ve been staring at that seat. Is there something wrong with it?”
Alexa stilled, the blood draining from her face. She slowly turned around.
Hysterian stood in the bridge’s doorway. He was leaning against the side. He had the look and demeanor of a man in charge, but none of the virtue. He was strikingly handsome, exotically so, with his lean frame, tight armored suit, and blindingly white hair.
But he was also a complete mess.
Dirt covered him from head-to-boot, gross dried green splatter stained his uniform and gloves, and even his hair fell in an unkempt, windswept mess. If she hadn’t known where he’d been, she would have assumed that he’d just returned from war. There was a wild spark in his eyes.
They twitched, bulged slightly but when she blinked, they were back to normal. Again.
If she cared, she would ask how he got that way. If she cared, she would show concern for him. Her lips flattened.
Arched brows and amused eyes met hers, and she braced. The wildness in them remained despite his obvious amusement.
Her heart hammered.
She’d lost her chance—again—to find something that would help her, but she found something much greater, her need for vengeance renewed.
“Nothing is wrong with it, Captain,” she said. “I was just imagining what it would be like to sit in such a seat.”
Hysterian pushed off the wall, and she swallowed. How long had he been there? Had he been watching her? He came to stand in front of her, and Alexa straightened even more—to the point her spine threatened to lock her in place forever.
“It’s just a seat. Here, sit.” He moved past her, unlocked the chair, and swiveled it in her direction.
“I can’t break protocol, sir.”
“Haven’t we already? It’s just a seat, Dear. It won’t eat you. I promise.”
Her eyes dropped to the leather chair and the enormous amount of power it held. She hesitated.
“Go on.”
Alexa took a step back. “I’m sorry, Captain, but this is part of the reason why I’m here. I wanted to apologize for my actions in the menagerie yesterday—”
“No need,” he snapped. “I should be the one apologizing. I led you to believe I want something more with you, and that was wrong of me. You are my subordinate, and I’m your captain. I have no intention of taking advantage of the position I’m in beyond what incurs for a job…that is.”
His words burned. Why did his words burn?
“Good,” she mustered. “Thank you…for understanding.”
“You’re welcome.”
They stared at each other.
Alexa couldn’t break eye contact with him to save her life. He was a mess, and she had a feeling that if he hadn’t been a Cyborg, he may have died today.
Good.
A niggling, annoying spark of concern churned her stomach.
If he had died, then she wouldn’t get the satisfaction of killing him. That’s what she told herself.
“Is this why you’re here, Dear?” he asked. “Or was there something else?”
Alexa internally shook her concern away. “Where are the creatures?”
Hysterian lifted his hand and looked at his fingers. “Still on Titan.”
“Were you not able to procure them?”
His gaze shot back to hers. “Are you questioning my abilities?”
“I’m only trying to do my job, sir.” But she wanted to kick herself for caring at all. Who cares if he procured them or not?
“Your job is to answer me when I ask you a question, to make certain any acquisition we bring aboard this ship remains healthy and intact. It does not include questioning me.”
“But I am questioning you,” she snapped.
Teal flashed in his eyes, and she managed to catch it.
“I chose not to procure them,” he said, dropping his hand.
“Why?”
“Those who gave me this job left out some key elements to the reason why it needed to be done. I don’t like being lied to, not when that lie can lead to the eradication of a species, human or otherwise. Not when that lie puts me in a position to decide such fates when I should have no authority to do so. Titan’s officials need a solution to their problem because they are bleeding money and resources, and their solution was us. They paid a lot of money to shift the blame on another. What they didn’t realize is that they’re already fucked from here across the galaxy. They invaded a hive in the mountains, rich with iron. An active hive of a species that predates them by many millennia, I assume. A species that clearly rules the bowels of this planet. I closed off what I could of the hive to the surface and did what I thought best. It’s not my job to decide what comes next.”
“But isn’t that what we do? Make these decisions, and help others make similarly tough decisions that may be out of their scope? You’re sent because you offer a unique perspective—”
Hysterian held up his hand. “Let me stop you right there. That’s what the other retrievers might do, but not us. We procure, we transport, and we provide. That is the job we’ve been hired to do and the job we will do. We’re not experts, not seers. We are living, breathing beings like anyone else. Even if one of us has metal for bones.”
“So you closed off the hive and left?”
“I did what I thought best. I told them to find a new prospector and move their mining equipment elsewhere. Whether they listen or not is not our concern.”
“Will these creatures… Are these creatures that dangerous?”
His gaze sharpened. “Only if you invade their domain and provoke them.”
“Am I provoking you?” Alexa was feeling brave—or reckless. She had no idea. But he was answering her, and she…she was listening.
“If you were, you would know.”
“I only want to do a good job,” she lied. He was bothered, it was obvious. Was it because of whatever happened with Daniels before she arrived, or was it because of Titan?
What could bother a Cyborg like Hysterian? She needed to know, she had to know. A weakness meant everything. But it was more than that…
She was also genuinely curious.
“You’ve said that already.”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“No.”
“Good.” Alexa adjusted her jacket. “Wh—”
He interrupted her, “You’re done asking questions.”
She knew when to back down. “Yes, Captain.”
Hysterian’s gaze trailed over her, and she tensed. “If there’s nothing else, you’re dismissed, Dear.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Alexa felt a rush of tension leave her at his order. I made it. I made it through a conversation with him without making a fool of myself. And she learned he could be bothered, could be manipulated. Since she’d first encountered Hysterian, he’d been cold and calculating, but now she knew he could feel more, that he wasn’t just a machine under his man suit.
That was something, wasn’t it? It had to be.
Perhaps I need to find Daniels, try and find out what happened…