by Marie Dry
She took the plate and balanced it on her knee. “Thank you.”
It looked like Earth food, but she couldn’t be sure. Something that might have been meat was ground into an unpleasant pulp and mixed with equally mushy green beans. Some substance that looked like potatoes was squashed into the mixture. “Don’t you eat solid food on your planet?”
He stared down at his plate and then fixed her with such a vicious look, she flinched. “We were given a food paste to eat.”
“Given? By whom?” Wouldn’t the captain of this ship be in a position of power on his home planet? The way he reacted was painfully familiar.
“Eat your food.”
Aurora took a bite of green beans and shuddered. They should’ve grabbed a cook as well while they were at it. How did they manage to spoil such a simple dish?
“The food tastes the same, with or without company,” he said. The pulped meat on his plate had a large messy bite taken out of it. Did he test it to see how it tasted before coming in here? To see if there was a different taste when eaten with company?
She swallowed the laughter that wanted to escape. “It’s about more than that. You eat a bite, take a sip of wine, and then talk.” She took a small bite, chewed, swallowed, and suppressed another shudder at the awful texture.
He froze in place with his fork halted in front of his face. On anyone else, it would’ve looked comical. On Balthazar, the action looked ominous. “The president did not tell me your care required wine.” He got up in one powerful movement and left before she could tell him she didn’t require wine.
“Hey, where are you--”
Aurora put her plate on the floor, half expecting the deck to gobble it up. She wanted to make a big deal out of always eating together. She frowned down at her watch. It had stopped at the three hour mark. If only she’d paid attention, she would’ve known if it was the dimensional door or the ship interfering with it. If it was their equipment on the ship that made her watch stop, could it affect other Earth technologies?
She was almost asleep by the time he returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
He plonked the bottle down on the floor, and she flinched, but it miraculously survived. He narrowed his eyes at the bottle, and she quickly unscrewed the cap, poured wine into the glasses. She handed one to him and strangely her skin didn’t crawl when their fingers touched. It was almost pleasant.
He took a large swallow of wine, showing no reaction to the taste, and then picked up his plate. Did he have taste buds?
“What do you talk about?” he asked, continuing their conversation as if he hadn’t left the room for what she guessed was more than thirty minutes.
He took a large bite of the unpleasant cold meal on his plate and chewed without seeming bothered that it was a tasteless blob. He chewed with awkward movements, as if his upper teeth got in the way of his jaw.
She didn’t care what they discussed, as long as it wasn’t about souls and how they got into bodies. “Anything. For example, I’ll say, did you have an interesting day? Did you have any problems, and you’ll say...”
She was so tired, and with the wine added into the situation, she wanted to fall over and sleep.
She didn’t even care about the strange deck under her anymore. If she could just fall over, she’d sleep, and for once, she probably wouldn’t even dream.
He leaned closer to her, his big body towering over her even while they sat on the floor. “We have an anomaly in the cryo chamber.”
She leaned forward subtly, mirroring his movements. “That’s interesting. What’s a cryo chamber?”
Could he hear her heartbeat increase its rhythm? The dragging tiredness left her. He’d just told her something about life on board their ship. What if they slept in these cryo chambers? How difficult would they be to sabotage? Could she sabotage someone while they lay helpless in the cryo chamber, even an enemy? She straightened. If it meant she could get back to Earth, she’d do it.
Again that threatening sound, rumbled from his chest, fainter this time. “I say, it is not your concern.”
She backed off that subject at super-nova speed. “All right, I say, will you tell me why you call yourselves cyborgs?”
His back straightened even more. “We call ourselves cyborg as a reminder.”
“Reminder of what?”
“Of being betrayed.” Was his look pointed?
“Who did that to you, Balthazar?”
She tried not to look like a woman with dangerous pico technology hidden in a hair pin in her hair and explosives in her luggage, like a woman who planned to win his trust and then betray him.
“The Tunrians treated us like slaves but despised us when we developed ryhov.”
“How did you rise to the rank of captain of this ship if they treated you like a slave?”
“That is not your concern.”
She backed off that subject, too. Was there anything he wasn’t sensitive about? “Okay, what is ryhov?”
He pointed to his tattoo that had moved to cover his face, highlighting his eyes.
“Why is it moving around, and why did you having a tattoo make them despise you?”
“Ryhov means we are not purely machines.”
Now she understood his obsession with souls. The Tunrians were fools if they thought this man had no feelings. There was more than mere intelligence in Balthazar’s eyes.
“You don’t look like a machine.”
He picked up her glass and thrust it at her, not seeming to notice the wine spilling. “We will not talk about it anymore.” He glared at the glass as if he wanted to smash it to pieces.
“Okay, what else would you like to talk about?” She’d gotten him talking, relaxed with food and wine. Eventually, she might be able to coax some more information out of him. She prayed she could find their weaknesses before she had to try seduction. Somehow, she had the feeling if she had to resort to that, he wouldn’t be the only one looking for a soul.
“I say, do you enjoy sexual intercourse?” he said without missing a beat, as if he’d read her mind.
Aurora scooted away from him, as far as the little room allowed without ending up with her back against the groping wall. This cell was way too small to be trapped with an amorous cyborg. “Why are you asking me that?”
She could’ve kicked herself. She should’ve moved closer to him, pretended she wanted him.
“I wish to experience intercourse with you,” he said, as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world to talk about intercourse with a woman he’d taken prisoner.
Sweat broke out in her armpits. Many times through the years, her ceremonial dress had acted like a kind of armor. Sometimes, she’d thought of her heavy ceremonial dresses as a shroud that she’d be able to take off when she found Ter. Today, with the heavy dress smothering her, it was more shroud than armor. A roaring in her ears, like the sound of the ocean waves, drowned out everything else. “I thought you wanted to see me run.” She’d be the best little runner in the world if it would stop him wanting sex with her--at least for now, while she was this tired.
“When you run, my mind thinks of sex.”
She frowned at him. “When did you see me run?”
“On your social media. I saw you run to grab a short human from in front of a yellow car.”
So that’s why he asked for her specifically. He’d found the news clip about her saving the little boy from being run over by a taxi in New York two weeks ago. Who knew the reward for that would be to be sacrificed to the aliens?
He got up with sure deliberate movements and stepped forward.
She scrambled to her feet, not about to be caught vulnerable or get grabbed by the neck again. She held out her hand and then dropped it. “Stay back. I do not wish to have sex with you.”
Her shoulders curved in on themselves, and she clenched her hands. Such a gesture wouldn’t stop him but her body had reacted out of instinct.
“If you are a person, you would wish to shar
e sex with me.” Now there was suspicion in his voice.
Aurora clutched her temples. “What is this? Are you crazy? Humans don’t just share sex left, right, and center.”
Some did, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
“They do. We have observed your species, and they share sex at many opportunities. They are very animal-like in their behavior.”
“What does that have to do with a soul, and what do you mean animal-like? Don’t your people have sex?”
Maybe she should just have sex with him and get it over with. No, she needed to seduce him, when she wasn’t tired down to the last molecule in her bones. He had to learn to care about her and, through her, the human race. If she failed to steal their technology or blow them up, maybe she could appeal to his emotional side.
He turned away from her and paced to the opposite wall. In a human, she would’ve assumed it a nervous gesture. From the little she’d seen so far, she didn’t think he had nerves. “We will share sex, you will give me my soul, and we will become one.”
“Not that again. Get this into--” Aurora bit her lip to force the words back. If she had to, she could pull of some kind of soul giving ceremony. “I do not need to have sex with you to give you a soul.”
His lips pulled own and that glaring gaze intensified. “Do not lie to me, Aurora. I know what you are doing.”
It was worth a try. “If you let me return to Earth, I promise I’ll find you a soul.”
“You will remain here. I chose you to have sex with because you have my soul.”
Her heart beat so loud in her chest that she had to listen carefully to hear him. This was what she’d feared from the moment the president told her Balthazar wanted her.
She was on her own. No one was going to come up here and rescue her. She tried to swallow, but it felt like a mothball was glued to her tongue.
“How do you know I have your soul?” She’d like to run, but apparently, her running turned him on. “Why do you believe sharing sex will get you a soul? Is that what your people believe?”
“Our creator told us that we will find our other halves on Earth, and that they will give us souls after we share sex for the first time.”
How could a race that created spaceships believe something like that? “I really don’t know what to say.”
“You do not say anything. Take off your clothes.”
Aurora moved back from him until she ended up with her back pressed against the wall and pushed herself up. “No.”
He stilled, thought over his answer. “All right, I will lift your dress and look at your hooha before I penetrate you.”
She stumbled and fell back to the deck, coming down hard on her butt. And of course, that unnatural floor tried to massage her sore butt. She absently slapped at the floor that was trying to cop a feel. “My what?”
The shaking started in her ankles and moved up her body, until every joint in her body rattled like that of a skeleton devoid of flesh and muscles. Boy, did she fall down a rabbit hole. If she lived to be a hundred and fifty, she’d never hear a stranger proposal for sex. Arranging her dress with care so that it covered everything, she crouched on her haunches, where the floor couldn’t get at her butt.
“Hooha is the polite term for vagina,” he said in all seriousness.
She was either going to laugh hysterically or start crying and wailing. If she ever got off this ship, she’d be certifiably crazy. She’d probably get hysterical every time she saw a wall. “Where did you hear that?”
“On your social media. It is the term most often used to be polite. I have decided to be polite so that you are not scared and will want intercourse with me.”
Like when he adjusted the temperature, he acted as if he was doing her an enormous favor.
Think, Aurora, talk your way out of this. “You know, I’m a person, and as a person, I need to do certain things before I can have anyone look at my...uhm...hooha.” Nobody at the foundation would believe this. What in the world did he look at on Earth’s databases, what sites did he go on to hear that kind of terminology? “I have to be happy and relaxed to be able to share sex and...uh...hand out souls.”
“What do you need before I look and penetrate you?”
She groaned and clutched her head, feeling the hairpins. A subtle reminder of why she was there. “Please stop saying that.”
“What do you need?” he persisted.
“I need to get to know you much better. It takes a long time for a man and woman to know each other well enough to look at their respective...uhm...hoohas.” Could she string him along? Get information before they got to the hooha stage?
“How long?” he asked, suspicious again.
“Until we know each other really well.” Hopefully, she’d find their weaknesses or inject him with the picos and be long gone before she had to sink low enough to sleep with him and then betray him. She shied away from the image in her head of him reset to mindlessness.
“I need a specific date and time.”
Not as gullible as I’d hoped he’d be. “I can’t give you that. I’m not even comfortable here yet.” At least he was talking to her and not forcing himself on her. Maybe she’d get off this ship unscathed, after all.
“What do you need to be comfortable here?”
She gestured around her. “Just look at this place. It looks like a jail cell. No woman is going to be happy in here.”
Actually, it looked like the veined insides of a lung to her, but she wanted to make a point. She was so tired, if he’d just leave her alone, she’d drop to the floor and sleep like the dead, even with the floor groping her.
He looked around, as if trying, and failing, to see what she saw. “It is adequate for one person.”
“It doesn’t even have a bed or a table. We had to eat, sitting on the floor.”
At home she slept on the floor, but he didn’t need to know that.
His eyes narrowed on her. “The Tunrians lived in decadence. They had beds and tables as well,” he said, as if living like that was the original sin.
They might be different species, developed in different galaxies, but hatred seemed to be a universal emotion. It blazed from his eyes, scorching her skin. Who are Tunrians? The creators of the cyborgs?
“Where do you sleep, Balthazar?”
“Why do you want to know?” He actually took a step back from her. “I am cyborg. You cannot catch me unaware. Even in stasis, I would know if you approached.”
Well, there went that plan. Obviously, injecting the picos while he sleeps isn’t going to work. Back to Operation Seduction Cyborg. “I didn’t want to harm you, Balthazar. Finding out things about each other is part of eventually having sex.”
She could see him debating whether he should tell her. “I sleep in a regeneration chamber in the cargo deck.”
Pity stirred at the image that sprang into her mind. Whenever she’d thought about the commander of the alien ship, she’d thought of him as powerful, with status among his own people. He still didn’t trust her, but didn’t want to undermine his chance of having sex with her and getting a soul.
She ruthlessly suppressed any sympathy. “Why do you have to regenerate?” Unpleasant images of rotting flesh haunted her.
“I am fully created, and my cells do not need to regenerate anymore.”
“Then why do you sleep in a generation unit and not in a bed in your own room?”
Something about her question upset him. He leaned slightly away from her. His eyes always looked as if they glared, and he wanted to hit something. Now, they glared hatred at her, but, somehow, she thought the hatred had more to do with something in his past than with her. He grabbed her arm and dragged her through the door. “Come, human.”
Aurora blinked up at him. He’d already put her in a cell. Did he plan to put her somewhere worse? “Where are you taking me, Balthazar?”
“To your new room.” He stopped and stared down at her. “If you run in front of me, I will give you the b
est room on the ship.”
She shook her head vehemently but stopped when her elaborate hairdo moved, as if it wanted to come down. “No, just, no.”
At least he didn’t seem so mindlessly angry anymore.
“You may let me know if you change your mind,” he said the same way a queen would graciously invite a lowly subject to tea.
“That is very kind of you,” she sniped.
“I am not kind to my enemies, but I can be good to you, Aurora.”
They went through several corridors that lit up with tattoo-like veins that changed shape and kept pace with them. She eyed the walls warily and crowded closer to Balthazar’s warm body, to keep the wall from massaging any bits of her it could reach. “Why does it do that? And why is your ship trying to massage me at every turn?” She pointed to a tattoo that had changed to show exotic symbols. The closest she could come to describing it was distorted hieroglyphs.
“Run for me, and I will tell you.”
“Tell me and I’ll give you a kiss,” she countered.
No one was as good at cutting deals as she was. She might not be prepared to sleep with him yet, but she had a job to do here and a kiss would keep him focused on her.
He checked and she thought she had him, but his eyes narrowed, those pupils looking even more sinister. “You want to give me a soul now?”
She sighed and motioned to the corridor. “Please take me to my room. I’m too tired to do this now.”
He gave her what she could only describe as a crafty look. “If you run to your room, you can sleep faster.”
“In your dreams, Balthazar.”
“I do not dream. When you have given me a soul, I will dream of you running.”
She wasn’t going there. She was too tired to cope with his unhealthy fixation with running and souls.
They stared at each other for what felt like centuries. He motioned down the corridor, and they walked until her legs ached and her eyes were so gritty she could’ve dropped down right there and fallen asleep. The corridor ended in front of double doors framed by an arc with moving hieroglyph like symbols. They opened to reveal pure unadulterated decadence.