by Marie Dry
“Tell me more about your laws.”
Aurora smiled and leaned down. “Why don’t we talk about that tomorrow? Kiss me.”
He kissed her, a very gentle careful kiss, almost as if he wanted to learn her lips and her taste all over again.
Aurora wriggled closer to him, put her arms around him. “This doesn’t mean I won’t nag you about vigilante justice, and that I’m not still angry and shocked at what you did,” she warned. “I might still rant at you about that even fifty years from now.” She loathed herself. Saying these things to him when she knew, after she betrayed him, he would never argue with her again.
“Humans make couples that stay together?”
“Yes.”
Her heart contracted. In fifty years, all this would be over. She would’ve used the picos and Balthazar would probably be dead. There wouldn’t be any tender moments like this. He’d be kept in a laboratory, experimented on, and probably tortured to make him reveal all his secrets. “Would you still want me fifty years from now, Balthazar?”
Her heart jerked, as if someone had stuck a needle full of picos into it. She shouldn’t torture herself like this. She had to choose Ter who’d been in the hands of the monsters since she was twelve years old.
He went still beneath hear. Like a cobra prepared to strike. “How long do humans live?”
Even while he asked the question, she could see him getting the answer on his database. “About a hundred and fifty years,” she said. What was wrong? Why did it suddenly feel as if the temperature around Balthazar dropped several degrees?
He recoiled. “Tunrians lived up to five hundred years before they started cloning themselves.” He stared at her, as if she’d just told him someone had killed another cyborg. “Few humans live longer than a hundred and thirty years.” He must’ve accessed their database for statistics.
“That’s right, what’s the life span of cloned Tunrians?”
“Six hundred years, per cloning, clones have copied themselves and existed for thousands of years,” he said, not trying to evade her questions like he usually did when she asked about his home planet.
“Wow, that’s impressive.”
“You cannot die,” he said.
If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought he sounded scared.
She cupped his cheek again. “That’s just the way of life. People get born, grow up, grow old, and die. We have learned to accept it.” In spite of her brave words, the thought of dying scared her. What if she passed on without ever seeing Ter again? With the memory of destroying Balthazar?
His grip on her tightened. “I will never accept it. As long as I live, you will be with me.”
“We can talk about that another day. Do you realize we’ve been together six months?”
“Six months, two days, twenty-three hours, two minutes, and fifteen seconds,” he said.
She rubbed her nose against his. “Not that you’re counting, huh?”
He looked at her with open suspicion. “Why did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Rub your nose against mine.”
She hid her smile against his neck, kissed the ryhov that followed her touch. “It’s a way of showing affection. Did you know that one of the traditions when couples celebrate their anniversary is to make love?”
She lifted her head and those eyes that she once thought dead and flat lit up with interest. She got up and, undoing her dress, let it fall to the floor, stepped out of the shimmering pool of material, and walked up to him. Dressed only in the miniscule panties and demi cup bra.
“It is also customary to buy special lingerie for a woman to wear for her man.”
“I approve of this custom.”
She sat back on his lap, enjoying his heat through his uniform, and kissed him. “I love how you feel. I can touch you for days.” When she was young, before their life became a nightmare, she’d dreamed about one day dancing for the man she loved. Now she had the urge to dance for Balthazar, and she couldn’t. She didn’t deserve for any of her dreams to come true.
“Only for five hours and thirty eight seconds. I have to attend a meeting with your president then.”
She forgot about her teenage dreams and what she was about to do, giggled, and pressed her forehead against his. “We’re going to have to work on those abstract concepts some more. Now be quiet and kiss me.”
He brought her lips to his, using the pressure of his hand on the back of her head. His lips were unyielding, firm against hers. The man could kiss. Her body tingled, and her toes curled. She moaned into his mouth and threw her arms around his neck. Tangled her hand in his wild black hair. She loved the coarse texture that made it so different from hers.
“Touch me, Balthazar, I love it when you touch me.”
“Where should I touch you?”
She took his hand and put it on her breast, moved his fingers to cup her, showed him how to rub her nipple with his thumb. He cupped her breasts with both hands, his thumb circling and rubbing through he silky material until she squirmed and moaned against him.
Aurora moaned again and kissed him harder, her own hands going under his shirt to his chest, stroking him, feeling his tattoo pulse under her hands.
He suddenly tore off his shirt and managed to push off his pants without unseating her. “We will do this on every chair on the ship. I have thought about that many times.”
She smiled through her tears and, gripping his shoulder, leaned up to kiss him.
He held her back and touched a wet trail on her cheek. “Why are you crying?”
“They’re happy tears, Balthazar, I love making love with you like this.” Her heart was breaking while she tried to store his every expression in her memory banks. To soak up his body with hers.
“You will shed many happy tears in the future.” He caressed every inch of her skin, touching and kissing and licking until she squirmed on his lap.
“Yes, Balthazar, touch me like that,” she moaned.
His lips nipped at her breasts while his hands had found the sensitive skin at the back of her knees.
She moved her hands over his muscled chest. “I love touching you, love the way your tattoo comes to my hands.”
She kissed his chest, went lower. She wanted his last memory to be of her loving him. If there was any kind of justice in the world, he wouldn’t be aware of her betrayal in his last moments. Every caress, every kiss she put on his body was her way of showing her feelings for him. And also an atonement for what she had to do.
He picked her up and stood. “We need the bed.”
She hid her bittersweet tears against his chest, kissing and licking while he took them to the bed. He laid her down and then lay next to her. His touch was gentle, his lips hot as they explored each other, and she gloried in the feeling of belonging to him. She pulled him over her, wrapped her arms and legs around him. “Come inside me, Balthazar. I need to feel every inch of you.”
“Every inch, except two,” he said and surged deep.
She laughed and cried and came on his second stroke. He kept moving, and her sensitized body pushed her higher, and she screamed as she came, vaguely aware of him tautening against her, his roar as he joined her in a little death.
Aurora kept her arms and legs clamped around him. She couldn’t bear the thought of letting him go.
“I am too heavy for you,” he said and disengaged from her. He pulled her back against him.
“Kiss me, Balthazar, before you fall asleep.” He leaned down and kissed her while his hand did sinful things to her body. She kissed him back with every emotion she felt for him.
When at last he fell asleep, she held onto him while tears streaked down her cheeks. She didn’t want to lose him, didn’t want to have to make such a terrible choice. How could she? If she chose him, she’d lose Ter, if she chose Ter, he became a vegetable. She reached beneath the cushion for the hairpin she’d stashed there. Held up the small glass pin filled with pico technology that wou
ld destroy him. That would also destroy her.
Such an innocent looking thing to cause such devastation. She angrily swiped at the tears. She couldn’t stand the thought of the wounded soldier painfully regrowing his body, of Balthazar reduced to nothing. Because of her.
She didn’t want to harm him or any of the other cyborgs. It might’ve been wrong for them to attack Earth, but she understood their motivation. In their way, they fought for survival as well. And Balthazar had been unfailingly kind. She had no doubt he’d face any danger for her, give his life for her. But she couldn’t turn her back on Ter. She had to choose Ter, who only had Aurora to fight in her corner. Ter who Aurora needed to forgive her.
“I’ll never forget you,” she whispered. I’ll always love you, she said silently. She twisted the top of the hairpin, placed the syringe against his neck, and her lips against his at the same time. “I’m sorry,” she murmured against his lips and pressed the end of the pin that would push the needle into his skin. The bed shook with her sobs, and it took a while for her to realize that his eyes were open.
“Why are you crying?” He could still talk, didn’t realize that soon he wouldn’t be able to move.
She hid the pin under the cushion and cried harder. “While you are still Balthazar, I want you to know that I didn’t have a choice.”
“Why would I not be Balthazar?”
Sobs shook her body, and she tried to force it under control. She wanted to tell him how much he meant to her while he could still understand. The picos would work within minutes, and she’d spare him the knowledge of what was coming.
“If it was anyone else, Balthazar, I wouldn’t have done it. But she’s my sister. I failed her so many times. I can’t fail her again.”
“Are you talking about the picos that you thought you injected into my veins?”
“Thought,” she whispered. Even knowing what this meant for Ter, hope grew.
He got up and stood next to the bed. Beautiful, naked, and alive. She could’ve wept because she knew whatever he was going to say next would mean they would be apart for however long he allowed her to live.
“I removed the picos from your hairpin the first day you came on board.”
She stared up at him. All that anguish for nothing. “Please, please, don’t punish the rest of the human race. I’m the one responsible for this. Punish me, kill me, but please let the peace agreement stand.” She’d thought she’d give up the president the first chance she got, but she couldn’t make herself do it.
“I will not kill you.”
Dizzy with relief, she held onto the mattress. “You won’t?”
“Your president will not fare as well.” Pure menace coated his words.
She got up, clutching the sheet in front of her. If he tried to harm the president, all hope was lost. “What about the president? He had nothing to do with this.”
“Do not think me a fool.”
“All right, so he wanted me to use the picos. Admit it, in his place you would’ve done the same. Please try to understand. We are fighting to survive as a species.”
“This does not concern me. We had a peace agreement, a ceasefire, and you responded by trying to erase me.”
“That was because you refused to agree to not execute humans. How could we trust you not to kill us off on one pretext or another until we didn’t exist anymore?”
“You don’t, and I will never give such an agreement. We are the superior race, and you will bend to our will.”
He’d never understand that, while many would bend before him, the human spirit were such that many more will rise up again and again in defiance of being ruled by another species.
“What are you going to do?”
“Kill him,” he said with chilling finality.
“No, Balthazar, you can’t. Please don’t kill the president.”
“His continued well-being depends on you.”
A sense of déjà vu almost had her laughing like a loon. Did everyone want to use someone she cared for to blackmail her with? “How can it depend on me?”
“I told you I wanted you to live for as long as I existed. You will agree to accept our technology into your body. It will maintain you at this physical state for as long as I desire. In return, I will not kill your president.”
There were times he talked to her with a monotone emotionless voice. Other times, she thought there was caring for her. Now all she heard was a vicious unconcern for her and anyone standing in the way of what he wanted.
“No,” she whispered, devastated by another impossible choice. She didn’t want to become a brainless puppet he could force to do whatever he wanted.
CHAPTER 17
He walked toward the door, and it was not a bluff. It had purpose, deadly purpose. If she didn’t agree, he’d kill the president. She couldn’t take the chance that the president’s guards would be able to protect him.
“I will execute the president now,” he said without turning.
“He has guards protecting him.” Unlike him, she was bluffing. If the president died, she might never find out where they kept Ter. She wanted to fall down on the floor and scream and keep doing it until the universe stopped punishing her. And through her, Ter. She’d been so close to finding her when the president sent her to this miserable spaceship where there were no seasons. No fresh air. And now the person who could find Ter for her was about to be killed if she didn’t agree to become some kind of experiment.
He kept walking. “Human guards cannot stop me.”
He could open a dimensional door inside the oval office, pop out, kill the president, and disappear. “No, wait.”
He turned back to her. “You have something to say to me.”
She couldn’t believe she was doing this. “I will do it. You can turn me into a robot, if you give me your word that you’ll let the president live. That you will respect human laws.” Visions of tiny little robotic pieces let loose in her blood stream made her nauseous.
She’d done that to him. Injected him with picos, knowing it would reset his mind to a blank slate. “What if I’m not compatible with your Bunrika technology?”
“Hamurabi assured me there is no danger,” he said.
She sagged, relieved, but still terrified. So much could go wrong. She didn’t want to be altered, not even if it meant living longer. Ever since that day she’d left Ter behind in the dirt, she’d known she didn’t deserve any good things to happen to her. She blinked and had to resist the urge to smirk in his face. He was about to turn her into a cyborg. She’d be strong enough to rescue Ter. She’d have access to their systems and could steal a shuttle and go back to Earth. Walk on grass, feel soil beneath her feet and the sun on her face. Rescue Ter.
“Come, Hamurabi will do the procedure now.”
He had blackmail and intimidation down to an art. The president could learn a thing or two from him. “Do you even care what this will do to our relationship, to me?”
“Did you care what it will do to our relationship when you did not trust me?” he shot back.
Balthazar took her arm and led her out into the corridor. They’d made love together, he’d asked her for a soul, and yet his hold wasn’t intimate or soft. He held her as if she was nothing to him. She recognized the route to the infirmary where that unfortunate cyborg lay with only half a head left, still alive and aware. Would she end up like that one day? Essentially dead, but with parts of her refusing to stop functioning. A shudder started deep in her stomach and radiated to the rest of her body like a quake gaining momentum. She wanted to beg him not to do this, but if there was even a small chance that she could save Ter afterward, she had to do it.
He led her into the infirmary and over to the glass case holding Amelagar. He now had the beginning of hipbones, the top of the skull fully formed. It had grown substantially since she last saw him, but it would still take years for him to grow a functioning body.
Again that one eye moved toward them. Balthazar said something
in Tunrian and then turned her toward a bigger glass case that wasn’t there with their previous visit. It took all her self-control not to kick and scream in hysterical fear. Soon she’d be entombed inside that glass case. Already she had trouble breathing, as if she was trapped in that small space with the air running out.
He had to hold her up, her legs trembled so much. The glass top slid open.
“Place her inside,” Hamurabi instructed.
Balthazar picked her up and laid her down. It was cold and hard underneath her. If she died, who would care enough to find Ter? She grabbed his shirt. “Promise me you’ll find my sister. If I don’t make it, please make sure she’s safe.”
“It will work.”
Aurora sagged. She’d have to get through this. She was the only one who cared enough to find Ter.
“Will it hurt?” She couldn’t hold back the question. She shouldn’t worry about that. Instead of saving her sister, her actions had condemned her. She deserved to feel pain.
He pressed buttons set in the side of the thing she lay on. “Yes.”
“Will I still be me? Afterward.”
“No.”
The glass sealed shut over her, and the last thing she was aware off was his cold, expressionless eyes staring at her through the glass. And pain, so much pain. Staring at her while she was entombed so that she could be turned into a machine as well. Would her eyes also die? Become without mercy or pity like his? His eyes were quite beautiful, even staring at her without any emotion.
***
Balthazar placed his hand on the glass and stared down at his human. She’d betrayed him. From the first moment she set foot on this ship, she’d assumed he was what she called a tinner. Merely a machine, incapable of thinking complex abstract thoughts. Someone easily fooled by their laughingly primitive secret code. If cyborgs had younglings, they would’ve been able to decipher the code at a glance. He gripped the glass until his nails bit into it. He’d known about the picos the moment he went to collect her. Had divested her of it that first night. They’d studied the technology, but it was primitive compared to what they had on board. It did make some interesting weapons, should they need something more subtle than bombs to use on the humans.