Also, rather curiously, she possessed little to no body hair. He studied her carefully as she walked not behind, but beside him through the tunnel that led toward the front staging room of the glacier station. Her strong legs were completely bare, as was her openly displayed sex. And her brows consisted of thin lines that appeared to have been sculpted somehow, though he’d yet to see anyone in possession of much more than a rudimentary bone hair comb among the Group 7 tribe.
Once again, he felt his male works respond strangely to his observations of the differences between this female and the other hominids he’d encountered. There was a tingling sensation in the lowest part of his belly, and the flesh behind and beneath his stomach not only felt heavy, but larger. As if his male works had swollen. To the point where the synthetic hides across his mid-section began to feel tight and uncomfortable.
The female was speaking again.
“Welligessthisizbetterthanthadoodswithspeers. Buttharwillbenosacrifycingtooday—idontcayrwoturscriptsez. Ugetthatryt? Ohgodpleeztellmeeugetthat…beecuzurlykarobotryt? Ryt?”
Xenon listened intently to the way her inflection raised at the end of her many short sentences but still, he could not glean even a fraction of what she was trying to say. So he gave her no response. And when they arrived at the front staging room, he merely indicated that she be seated on the pile of cream-and-white polar bear furs he had fashioned into a replica staging bed when he first set up his lab.
“Ohmigodthankyoo!” she said—this time without the upward inflection. Her flame changed from blue to light orange, indicating an uptick in her mood.
Xenon carefully watched as she reached down with a dark hand to pull one of the thick furs around her naked form. His scientific curiosity was thoroughly piqued, but he had no idea how to go about running diagnostics on her without breaking protocol. Also, there was the matter of the gash across the left side of her otherwise smooth forehead. It needed tending, or else there was an excellent chance she would succumb to one of the many viral and bacterial infections that ran rampant on this water-and-ice planet, just as had happened with so many of the other fragile hominids.
But at the moment, Xenon had no drugged meat available in storage. And it was against protocol to reveal his handheld scanner, or any other trappings of technology, to a native species. He’d likely have to wait until she fell asleep upon the staging rugs, and then use a sedation circle to knock her out. Yet…
He tilted his head at the unfamiliar feeling flaming within him. Impatience. Xenon did not desire to wait to discover more about this unique female.
“Fensa.”
His eyes flicked up, and he was once more distracted from his thoughts by the sound of her voice.
“Imfensa.” The female touched her now fur-covered chest with one hand, splayed wide. Was that…? Yes, it was…. she had dark, glossy red tint atop the small keratin shields at the tips of her fingers.
“whassyoornaam?”
Another inflection. Whatever language she spoke, it was nothing at all like that of the Far Travelers. Her voice was clear and melodic, he noted, with a wider vocal range than any language he’d heard thus far on this planet. Highly sophisticated, and therefore, totally unexpected.
Xenon could not wait any longer. No, he could not reveal his research tools to the female, but curiosity burned inside him. He would investigate. However, he’d have to do it another way.
He thought back to his schooling, and to the six necessary steps of the investigative process. Something all research scientists learned from the very beginning of their studies: Observe. Note. Listen. Note. Smell. Note.
He’d studied her. He’d listened to her. Now it was time to smell her.
Xenon carefully, cautiously (so as not to startle the creature) lowered his head towards the flesh between her legs. He wanted to start there to ascertain if she was with child. He deeply inhaled her scent, taking his time to carefully absorb and analyze her unique chemical signatures.
Strangely, it was this action that finally silenced her. In fact, she went from fidgeting to completely still.
She was not an anthrohominid, he quickly discovered. He could smell the strong lupine pheromone radiating from her almost as soon as he began the exam. Along with a few other less familiar scents. The signature hormones of foods he was unable to identify, some that smelled of neither meat nor plant. She must have come from a region with a substantially different diet than this one.
Moreover, it was soon apparent the female was not with child. Yet there was something unusual about her scent. She fairly reeked of pregnancy hormones. But the more he took in the scent of her womb, the less he could identify the usual gestational hormones. What he did identify, however, was infinitely more startling. There were the distinct signature traces of an artificially created hormone mimicker, one designed to trick the body into behaving as if it were pregnant even though it clearly was not.
Bizarre. Perhaps she came from a region where Drakkon researchers were conducting an unknown experiment? But why would another research team wish to find ways to halt the fertility of this species? Hadn’t breeding these creatures for the hunt been the whole point of the original mission? Well, at least until the Royal Geneticist became overly attached to his creations.
This female confused him. From his crouched position below, Xenon looked up into her dark face. She was staring down at him, her eyes round and wide, pupils oddly dilated, and her flame burning a red and yellow he could not interpret. Discomfort perhaps? Curiosity, like his own?
A strange but pleasurable tingling made its way up from the base of his shell’s spine, and Xenon’s curiosity was further stimulated. There appeared to be a strong correlation between his current physical response, and this examination. Perhaps because it had been eons since he’d had the opportunity to use the six steps of investigation in this way…especially considering the extensive suite of research tools in his lab.
But like any good scientist, Xenon continued. He was especially intrigued by her body’s unusual chemicals, ones he had most certainly never detected on any of the other lupins. He muttered to himself, tilting his head to one side in a contemplative fashion…
Only to have his thoughts cut off once again when, without warning, more words spilled from the female’s mouth, only to just as suddenly cease with a large intake of air. Almost immediately thereafter, her body began to convulse.
Xenon’s stomach dropped. A seizure! She was having a seizure. Possibly the result of her head injury.
He had no choice but to act quickly. But that soon proved to be a mistake.
5
What the hell?!?!
Less than a few hours ago, Fensa was running away from the facility.
Less than thirty minutes ago, she’d woken from a deep sleep on the back of a reindeer.
Less than a few moments ago, she had been desperately fighting off a group of miniature-shifters with spears who seemed hell bent on ripping off her clothes. Unfortunately, it hadn’t taken them long to accomplish their disturbing goal. Due to the disposable nature of most clothes, fabrics were thin as hell these days. And Fensa’s shorts and t-shirt had given away to the grabby hands of the males as easily as if they’d been specially designed for a strip show. Leaving her in nothing but her sturdy hiking boots.
Just as she was deciding if it was a good idea to indulge in a full-fledged freak out complete with horror movie screams, she spotted a very tall man emerging from the ice castle, glacier—whatever the hell it was—and it was as if her prayers had been answered. The man wore an animal hide shirt and a pair of leather pants. His eyes were of the same almond shape as the savage shifters who’d attacked her. However, relief surged through her when she noticed his hair.
It was short and black, and neatly coiffed, and accompanied by a well-trimmed beard. He reminded her a bit of that old actor her mother liked. What was his name? Keanu Roberts? Reeds? She couldn’t remember. But this guy could have easily been that guy’s way taller, les
s scruffy son.
His uncanny resemblance to actors aside…at least this dude hadn’t cut his own hair with a fucking spear. It was evident he had access to scissors and basic hair product. And he lived in a sweet glacier fortress—so yeah, right now the clean-cut actor doppelganger dressed in animal hides was winning the popularity contest over the feral assholes who’d just ripped her clothes off.
Thank the Fenrir Wolf, Papa would say. Based on the appearance of ice castle man, Fensa felt sure she must be in modern times. Or, at the very least, a period after the invention of quality scissors and Vidal Sassoon.
She wasn’t exactly sure what she expected glacier man to do when he interrupted the assault. However, she was hoping for a little more than him standing there as the four shifters tore the very last shreds of her clothing from her body. Nor did she expect him to stare openly at her and her assaulters like they were mere curiosities who’d just popped up on his front step.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Don’t just stand there! Help! Help me! Please help me!”
In what she immediately recognized as a complete betrayal of her badass Viking genes, and her even more badass Motorcycle Pack upbringing, Fensa ran as fast her cold naked legs could carry her, and hid behind the tall guy, clinging to him like a damsel in distress from one of those old-fashioned silent films.
But in all fairness, she was cold and naked with an offline bio-chip. She’d never felt so scared and vulnerable in all her life. She would have loved to suddenly morph into a shield maiden, like her Viking Aunt Myrna who, according to her father, had fought their village’s serpent enemy to the very end. However, the truth was, Fensa was modern as hell, with a dislike of fitness that bordered on the extreme. If a fight didn’t come with a game controller, Fensa was as good as dead.
And Glacier Man was huge. There was even a chance he was carrying underneath the fur-and-hide shirt she was clinging to for dear life—
Fensa pressed pause on her racing thoughts and sniffed the air. Because even though all she could see in every direction was the blinding white glare of snow and ice, something was on fire.
No…wait. Not on fire. But burning. Like an old-timey hearth.
Wait, that wasn’t it either. She raised her nose a little more and inhaled as deeply as her panicked state would allow.
It was him. This seven-foot-something guy she was hiding behind smelled like he was on fire…
The mingled voices of the shifter thugs pulled Fensa out of her musings, and thrust her right back into the situation at hand. The leader of her former assaulters was talking to burning glacier man in monosyllabic words with a short, stunted cadence.
“Unknown language,” her bio-chip informed her again. “Please connect to a server for more options.” Fensa really was thisfuckingclose to yanking that goddamn thing right out of her neck, severe nerve damage and pain be damned.
However, the big guy seemed to understand whatever the leader was telling him—and that was when she realized…“Wait a minute! Are they, like, giving me to you?!”
The answer to the question turned out to be a big yes. And she soon found herself being escorted down a tunnel by burning glacier man.
“Yeah…um, okay. Can I ask what’s going on? Why did those shifters just let me go? And where are you taking me?” Fensa peppered her new best friend with a litany of questions as they approached what appeared to be a large tunnel with a small stream flowing through it.
Burning glacier man merely glanced at her as he guided her to the right of the stream, onto a kind of smooth walkway. And then a new type of cold hit Fensa, one that was completely unrelated to the temperature, and caused her stomach to seize up into a tight ball of instinctual dread.
The man’s expression, it was…well, there was no way to describe it. Except to say it appeared utterly devoid of emotion. Like the face of a robot garbed in a human overlay. The man looked human, but something crucial seemed to be missing.
And his eyes…they were red. Dark red. She’d at first mistaken them for brown. But now that she’d calmed down from her earlier ordeal and could take a closer look at her rescuer’s face, she realized his eyes weren’t brown at all. The red was weird enough to begin with, but what pushed this guy from “mildly unsettling” into the “hot looking demon spawn” category was that his red eyes seemed to be glowing. Like shifter eyes when the wolf is far too close to the human surface-but red. So unnaturally red.
“Are—are you a wolf?” she asked him, her voice sounding nervous and unsteady even to her own ears.
She was almost positive this guy wasn’t close to being a wolf, especially because she couldn’t smell anything coming off him but fire. But she desperately wanted him to be one. Because it would explain a few things. And it would mean she could finally relax, and not be forced to leap to even more bizarre and dramatic conclusions.
But per usual, Mr. No Talk didn’t respond. Just stared. Much like those shifter guys from earlier, but somehow his gaze was way more unsettling. At least those animals blinked occasionally. However, Burning Glacier Man put her in mind of a reptile. Fensa felt clinically scrutinized, as if he were trying to decide what to do with her.
Once they stepped into the dark tunnel, her suspicions were confirmed: the guy’s eyes didn’t just look like they were on fire. They really were glowing. So much so that for a little while, the only light source she could see as they walked through the pitch-black entrance were the tiny, dark amber pinpricks of light from his pupils.
Maybe he’s a robot, she thought to herself. That would explain the haircut and the crazy red eyes. Fensa recalled a few of the animatronic parks humans were so wild about these days. Even her cousin Koko had visited one in Alaska. And apparently, the gameplay experience was so realistic, Koko hadn’t even realized she was in the game until a man in a leather jacket grabbed her on the way to the bathroom, and told her she had to help him pull off a three-billion-dollar Serbian mafia heist. According to Koko, she’d had the time of her life which eventually culminated in what her cousin described as some serious robot mouth action in a stylish bedroom inside what looked exactly like a swanky Brooklyn high-rise apartment.
Yes, that would explain things. Maybe…just maybe...this whole mess could be sorted out with a simple call to the park’s front office.
“Well, I guess this is better than the dudes with spears. But there will be no sacrificing today; I don’t care what’s in your script. You get that, right? Oh God, please, tell me you get that…because you are like a robot, right? Right?”
Big surprise—he didn’t answer. Okay, well…
Neither of them spoke again as they navigated the remainder of the dark tunnel; him seeming to know exactly where he was despite being surrounded by utter darkness. And Fensa forced to depend on her companion’s glowing eyes, and heavy footfall to make her way to a large, dimly lit cavern at the end.
Upon closer inspection, the cavern appeared to be a kind of front room. It was huge…with a ceiling that doubled as the very top of the glacier. The room also had glowing blue walls and floors, which, based on the increase in temperature, seemed to provide a type of heat source.
“Whoa!” she said, taking it all in.
The small stream of fresh water from the tunnel made its way through this room, too, eventually veering off to the right and vanishing around the corner of one ice wall. Rectangle seams were cut into it. The top one so high, she guessed the rectangle had to be at least fifty feet tall. But it didn’t strike her as decorative. Was it a door maybe?
Burning Glacier man got her attention then, waving his hand toward…
Yes! Yes! The choir sang a-freakin-men. As pretty as the vast cavern looked, nothing was more welcome to Fensa than the sight of a pile of off-white furs scattered across the floor in front of her. She rushed over and pulled one around her body. She quickly wrapped herself up in it like she was making a fur cocoon, and—
Strange, the blanket looked and smelled exactly like polar bear (though it couldn’t
be real polar bear—not even the richest animatronic park could afford to decorate its stunning glacier habitat with the hides of a critically endangered species).
Still, the skins were incredibly realistic, right down to their scent. Fensa had to ask, “Did you guys spray these hides with actual polar bear pheromones? Because if so, that’s some serious commitment to authenticity…”
Of course, the robot with the weird eyes said nothing, fixing her with his super intense gaze. And as grateful as she was for the warm blankets, Fensa once again felt deeply unsettled.
“Um…I can’t wait to tell my mom about all this—you might have heard of her? Tee Greenwolf, the head of She-Wolf Games? She’s been considering a few offers from park corporations like yours. They are all really interested in making an animatronic version of her classic video game, Viking Shifters. Maybe you can take me to the park director now, and I can discuss it with him…or her?”
Fensa waited patiently, hoping her third name drop in as many hours might at least spark some interest in whoever was monitoring the park’s current game play.
But the robot gave no sign he understood or cared…his piercing, unblinking gaze making her feel more and more like a specimen under a microscope.
Maybe he didn’t speak English? But seriously, what kind of bullshit animatronics park wouldn’t program their bots to speak English?
Wishing she’d bothered to learn a few other languages the old-fashioned way, rather than always depending on her bio-chip to translate, Fensa tried a new tactic. “Okay, look. I’m pretty sure there’s been a huge mistake. I’m not even supposed to be a guest here. Do you have some sort of emergency alert button on you? Some way I can contact park services or my family or, I don’t know, a medbot? You may have noticed I’ve got some head wound business that needs tending—um, what are you doing?”
The robot had crouched down, his strange unblinking gaze intent on a particular patch of white fur. A funny feeling welled up inside Fensa when she realized…he was staring right where the polar bear hide draped directly over her naked sex.
NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1) Page 19