Deadly Pleasure: 2 (Mercy)

by Lexxie Couper

  He locked his legs around her calves and rolled them both to the side, stabbing his cock into her cunt as he did so and driving it all the way in.

  * * * * *

  The bio-weapon jumped at his voice, humanlike dark-brown eyes snapping wide before its companion—a short, plump female with a soft body and sharp eyes—grabbed its arm and yanked it behind her back.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  Forty-Two turned his scan on the woman. Bio-living tissue covering an air servosystem kelruudium skeleton. P0-2 nanny gynoid.

  [caution]

  “Surrender the M.E.Lii and I shall not disassemble you.”

  The gynoid didn’t move. “Leave.”

  Forty-Two raised his arm, leveling his disruptor on the location of the nanny-bot’s power source. “Surrender the bio-weapon.”

  The gynoid swiftly raised her own arm, a neo-pulse blaster instantly tearing through the dermal layer on the back of her hand. An alarm sounded in Forty-Two’s head as the small but highly lethal gun locked onto his right eye. “Leave now.”

  “Surely you realize you are outclassed?”

  The gynoid smiled at him, a kind, gentle smile of infinite tenderness and maternal compassion. “Surely you realize you are outdated?”

  “Mare’ree?”

  A small trembling whisper reached Forty-Two’s aural receptors and instantly his targeting unit locked onto the bio-weapon’s location. Four point seven inches to the left of the gynoid’s center of gravity.

  Forty-Two charged his molecular disruptor. And lunged.

  * * * * *

  Falynn’s sex gripped him. Her firm, slick muscles squeezed his cock, taunting him, teasing him. She extracted pleasure with the same absolute determination she dedicated to extinguishing a life. Despite now being beneath him, back pressed to the mattress, she owned the rhythm, her cunt constricting and contracting around his length in sensual pulses that stole his breath and robbed him of thought. She rode his body, not just his erection, her sweat-slicked skin sliding over his, her palms exploring his chest, his shoulders, his hips; her long, lithe legs entwined with his to hold him to her.

  “Kiirs, Corvan, you feel so fucking good.”

  Corvan stared into her eyes, unable and unwilling to break even that abstract contact. Her words, low and throaty, made his heart thump harder. He felt good? One hand cupped the back of her head, the other smoothing up and down the length of her torso, from breast to hip to ass and back again as he slowly pumped into her. Her sex stretched around his cock, enveloped him. Fri’ac, she’d never felt better. Their bodies moved together in such perfect unison, with each breath he drew she took him deeper, deeper.

  His gaze dropped to her mouth, and the sight of her parted lips, glistening with the moisture of their kisses, sent a surge of fresh blood to his groin. Fuck, he was close. He gripped the thick base of her braid, guiding her harder into his thrusts, his balls slapping her ass. The tingling pressure in his groin began to spread to his spine. His breaths grew rapid, shallow.

  “Oh, by the gods, yes.” Falynn groaned, bowing her back to grind her clit against the root of his cock. She sank her nails into his shoulders. Raked them down his back. Marked his flesh with ten scored lines of burning pain that bespoke of her rapture. It shot through him. Ignited a liquid fire in the pit of his gut, his balls.

  He’d been so tempted during the last three years to Traverse to another of his dimensional existences, one where he and Falynn fucked each other—no, made love to each other every night—just to see her. To draw her soft scent into his body with each breath. To Traverse and experience her again in the flesh…

  But he couldn’t. He couldn’t leave Emylie unprotected.

  Now here she was. In True Time. Her body against his, her sweet taste on his tongue. Her tight sex gripping him with divine, exquisite pressure. Fri’ac, what had he done for the gods to reward him so?

  What was right. You saved a life when you could have taken it. For the first time in your life, you did what was right.

  His chest grew heavy and he lowered his head, brushing his lips over hers as he slid deeper into her very center. “I love you, Falynn Mavek,” he stated calmly before the building tension of his imminent climax could steal his ability to form words. “In all dimensions, in all temporal possibilities.”

  Falynn’s blue eyes widened. A silent gasp slipped from her parted lips, and then her cunt constricted around his cock, squeezing in powerful pulses as her orgasm claimed her.

  And detonated his own.

  Her nails pierced his shoulders, her heels dug into his back. She bucked underneath him, her sex milking his cock of his spurting seed. She cried out, wild, uninhibited keening sounds that fed his own violent release. He slammed into her, again and again, filling her, possessing her. Never wanting to let her go. Never wanting this moment of True Time to—

  A high-pitched squeal pierced the air and Corvan froze, his blood running to ice.

  Fri’ac, no.

  “Corvan?” Falynn’s voice was lost in the ear-slicing alarm.

  Snapping upright, throat tight, chest tighter, he smacked his fingers against the small com-unit strapped around his right wrist.

  “Corvan!” Emylie’s scream burst from the com-unit, her voice high with terror, the sounds of metal smashing against metal in the background. “Corvan! He’s got me. He’s got—

  The com-link went dead.

  Fuck.

  He leapt from the bed.

  Falynn scrambled upright. “What’s going on?”

  Shoving his legs into his trousers, Corvan shot her a quick look. “Emylie. Someone’s got Emylie.”

  And before she could reply, he snatched his strafer, synaptic neutralizer and gutting blade from the bench and ran from the room.

  * * * * *

  Forty-Two walked through the crowded passageway, assessing the report from his internal diagnostics, ignoring the stares and angry shouts of those he pushed aside. A ruptured hydraulic line, two shattered servo controllers and a destroyed munitions control module. His targeting system was currently offline, requiring a reboot to realign the target-firing lock, and there was a fluid leak in his left “calf” that would need to be stemmed before the seeping liquid bled his hydraulic systems dry.

  He affected a frown. If his E.S.O.U.L program was still functional, he’d be grudgingly impressed. The nanny-bot knew how to fight.

  He continued through the busy corridor, readjusting the load under his arm as he headed for Level 7. The P0-2 had been much harder, much more time-consuming to destroy than he’d anticipated. Who would have thought a gynoid built like a human geriatric would be capable of putting up such a battle?

  He ran another diagnostic, detecting a cascading failure in his core control unit. The P0-2 had somehow damaged his exo-battle armor deployment mechanism.

  He shuffled the load under his left arm to his right. “Impressive.”

  A blistering hiss sounded near his left ear and a hot jolt shot across the side of his face, distorting his vision for zero point eight seconds.

  The bio-weapon knew how to fight too, obviously tutored by Thanatos. The damage it had caused to his dermal layer with the small neuron-destabilizer was extensive.

  “Hey.” A voice rose above the clatter of the passageway. A tall humanoid wearing an officious expression and a slightly crumpled Master Merchant’s robe pushed through the throng of suddenly curious onlookers, stopping directly in front of Forty-Two to glare up at him. “What’s going on? What are you doing with Mister Jareth’s little girl?”

  Forty-Two let his stare slide to the unconscious body hanging limp on his hip before returning it to the man blocking his path. “Taking it,” he said, and smashed his palm heel into the man’s nose.

  The man flew backward, a splattering arc of bright-red blood spurting from the shattered mess of his nose as he landed on his back on the floor.

  The passageway erupted into a cacophony of screams and shouts. The crowd scattered, jump
ing over the fallen Master Merchant, and Forty-Two continued to the docking level and The Wisp. He would secure the M.E.Lii in the vessel’s lockup before completing the second part of his new mission.

  Terminate Unit Zero agents Thanatos and Proserpina.

  Chapter Seven

  Corvan was halfway across his apartment before what he saw really sank in. He stumbled to a halt, gut clenching.

  No.

  The living area was in chaos, furniture overturned and shattered as if a meteorite storm had raged through the small space. He stood still, scanning the mess, refusing to feel anything. He needed to be ice. Detached. He needed to find—

  There.

  Tossing aside an overturned armchair, he crossed the room, dropping into a crouch beside the motionless Mare’ree. Fluid-weeping wounds crisscrossed her bio-dermal layer, some so deep the intricate circuitry beneath was visible. One optical sensor lay against her cheek on a tangled rope of wires, the scratches around the socket indicating the bionic eye had been gouged out of the gynoid’s head. Her mouth hung open, jaw skewed to the right; the entire left side of her once kindly, maternal face now just shredded skin and shattered components. “Mare’ree?”

  The nanny-bot didn’t move. He ran a quick inspection over her brutalized form, noting with detached anger her body ended at her hips, circuits and wires and hydraulics rupturing from the ragged wound. Whoever had taken Emylie had torn Mare’ree in two.

  “Mare’ree?”

  Nothing.

  “Corvan? Is Emylie—” Falynn sprinted into the room, the question dying on her lips as she stumbled to a halt beside him. “Kiirs! What happened?”

  He cast her a quick look, noting she’d dressed herself in his discarded jacket before leaving the den, the heavy leather garment almost hiding her naked body. Her eyes narrowed as she looked about the room, her grip on the pistol in her hand tightening. “Who did this?”

  Ignoring her question and the crushing weight of time, Corvan turned back to the gynoid, closing his fingers lightly around her forehead. An unexpected sense of loss at Mare’ree’s demise pressed hard on his chest as he twisted her head to the left, revealing a small access point behind her ear. With a gentle tap, he opened a concealed panel, exposing the nanny-bot’s internal communications unit. He pressed his finger to the small sensor pad, triggering the security override system and activating the P0-2’s Final Message function.

  “R42 combat ’droid.” The words sounded from her motionless lips in a low, distorted, metallic vibration.

  Corvan stared at her shattered face, a fist squeezing his heart.

  “R42?” Falynn echoed from behind him, confusion and disbelief in her voice.

  White-hot rage roared through him. He sprang to his feet, turning to fix her with a level gaze. “You’re responsible for this.”

  “What?” She shook her head, eyes wide. “No, Corvan. I didn’t program—”

  He didn’t let her finish.

  Perhaps she’d programmed the R42 to attack. Perhaps she hadn’t. At the moment, Corvan didn’t have the luxury of trust where Emylie’s life was concerned.

  He whipped his destabilizer from its holster and stunned her before she’d even realized it was in his hand. He watched as she dropped to the floor in a crumpled heap across Mare’ree’s severed torso, eyes rolling back in her head, limbs limp.

  Refusing to acknowledge the numb grief threatening to claim him, he turned and left his apartment. He had to find Emylie. Now.

  * * * * *

  “Let me go! Let me go let me go letmego!”

  The bio-weapon thrashed in Forty-Two’s hold, small childlike arms and legs whipping out, smacking against his chest and thighs in stinging little punches and ineffectual kicks.

  He ignored it, moving through Spaceport Mercy’s empty docking level, heading for UZ Agent Proserpina’s Dragonfly-class vessel.

  “Let me go!” the thing screamed again, its tiny bunched fist bouncing off his cheek, just below his eye.

  He gave it a sharp shake. “Be quiet.”

  “Corvan is going to make you dead,” it shouted, twisting and bucking against his side.

  Forty-Two smiled. “Agent Thanatos is more than welcome to try.”

  “Thank you.”

  The sound of the deep male voice, emotionless and cold at once, made Forty-Two spin around. Standing on the passageway behind him, the musky stink of Agent Proserpina wafting from his flesh in potent waves, was the towering bouncer from The Steam.

  “I see you have finished fucking, Agent Thanatos.”

  “Corvan!” the bio-weapon squealed, squirming.

  The man tilted his head a little, studying Forty-Two intently, silver eyes steady and unwavering. “Put the child down.”

  “I will put the bio-weapon down in The Wisp. After I kill you.”

  “Very well.”

  His arm moved in a blur, so fast even Forty-Two’s bionic vision failed to track it. A sharp report cracked the air, followed immediately by explosive heat in his chest and a wailing siren in the air as the spaceport’s security system activated, slamming shut a thick set of solid blast doors, cutting the docking bay off from the rest of the spaceport.

  Forty-Two staggered backward, bio-dermal layer sizzling into eroding blisters under Thanatos’ fire. His positronic matrix registered the painful neo-energy signature of a de-atomizing pulse pistol blast spreading into his living flesh, and he ground his teeth, redirecting power to his internal equalizer. He gripped the kicking, squirming bio-weapon under his arm tighter, crushing it harder to his side to prevent it slipping free.

  “Lemmegolemmegolemmego!”

  Thanatos charged him, pulse pistol leveled on his chest, dead stare locked on his face. Forty-Two lifted his left arm, skin splitting as his molecular disruptor burst from his forearm. The destructive weapon detonated, a thick, blinding bolt of iridescent white cutting the air to sink into Corvan’s chest.

  Or it should have. The man twisted midair, avoiding the lethal charge and firing off another pulse before Forty-Two could track his path.

  The energy pulse tore into Forty-Two’s side, stripping more skin from his structure, scorching circuits, wires and hydraulics. He stumbled to the side, the CPU controlling his equilibrium faltering for a micro-second.

  [deploy exo-battle armor]

  The command code shot through his core unit, followed instantly by an alert alarm.

  [exo-battle armor offline]

  A pulse blast struck his shoulder. Another. He reeled backward, the sensory receptors in his right side spiking into overload.

  He spun, flinging the GU’s bio-weapon from his hip as he did so, clamping his arm around its tiny torso to pin it to his chest. “Shoot again and I will crush its thorax.”

  The small, sweaty thing squirmed, fingers clawing at Forty-Two’s arm. “Corvan!”

  The docking bay’s siren abruptly fell silent, reverting instead to a dull, red flashing light that cast Thanatos in bloody shadows. “Let her go,” he ordered, his low growl cutting into the heavy silence, his pulse pistol targeting Forty-Two’s forehead. “Now.”

  “I have two missions to complete, Thanatos,” Forty-Two stated, ignoring the writhing body in his grip as he kept his molecular disruptor trained on the assassin. “Return the bio-weapon known as M.E.Lii to the GU Interplanetary Alliance Council, and terminate Unit Zero agents Thanatos and Proserpina.”

  “Then you’re about to fail both.”

  “And how are you going to stop me? I have disengaged my external emergency deactivation function. Apart from the pulse pistol in your hand, I detect a strafer on your right thigh, a neural disruptor in your right boot, a synaptic neutralizer at the small of your back and a neo-energy gutting blade on your left biceps. None of these weapons are sufficient to destroy an R42 military-combat ’droid.”

  “I won’t need any of them.”

  Forty-Two narrowed his eyes, scanning the man again. His composed confidence was unpredicted. Unexpected.

  [zer
o undetected weapons]

  [bio-rhythms fluctuating]

  Tightening his hold on the still-squirming bio-weapon, Forty-Two returned his attention to Thanatos’ face. What was he missing?

  “Corvan?” The soft sob scraped at Forty-Two’s aural senses.

  The assassin’s stare slid to the bio-weapon and he gave it a small smile. “Remember my promise, Emylie,” he said, voice calm, soothing. “Remember, I will never break my word to you.”

  “Very touching,” Forty-Two said. He abruptly released his grip on the bio-weapon, letting it free fall for a fraction of a second before closing his fingers around its neck to hold it dangling above the floor, its feet thrashing wildly in the air, its small hands clawing at his large one. “But—”

  [alert]

  [bio-rhythms fluctuating]

  [temporal shift detected]

  [temporal displacement detected]

  “But your time’s up, Metal Man.”

  The low snarl to Forty-Two’s right snapped his head around. His gaze locked on a pair of very angry silver eyes almost level with his own before, point zero zero four seconds later, a second Agent Thanatos pressed a strafer to his forehead and fired.

  A spreading wall of concentrated deax energy penetrated his teratanium skull, raining fire through his neural net. His sensory receptors exploded with impulses. Molten heat flooded his system. The fingers clenched around the bio-weapon’s neck sprang open. It squealed, falling toward the floor before he snatched it from the air again with his left hand and yanked it to his side, keeping his molecular disruptor extended and charged.

  He spun, swiping his right arm at the second Thanatos, his locked fingers tearing across the man’s cheek, gouging the flesh even as his logic circuits denied the man’s existence.

  A sizzling bolt of deax energy struck his neck, and for a micro-second his whole system froze.

  [alert one system shutdown]

  [alert one system shutdown]

  [redirecting power to secondary processors]

  [E.S.O.U.L rebooting]

  A shudder racked Forty-Two’s frame.

  “Corvan!”

  [E.S.O.U.L online]

  A child’s petrified scream snapped Forty-Two’s visual sensors back online. He turned, fear and rage and guilt abruptly flooding through him, just in time to see the original Thanatos aim and fire the pulse pistol directly into his face.