by Sara Page
“Bastard,” Lexi whispers.
“Maul, we must leave this sector if you do not wish for your female to suffer a worse fate,” Randor says.
“Marketh, get us in accordance with Randor’s people. Get us to an empty solar system if possible. From there, we will need to make it back to Rathturia with all haste.”
Randor looks at me. “Maul, we would still like to speak of your offer of reward.”
Greedy fucking bastards.
Moreslin and Marketh leave the immediate vicinity of the bridge as they start plotting jump points.
“Yes, about my offer… You said you have more self-serving reasons, such as knowing more of her species?”
“Yes, that is so. But we would also like to extend the offer of removing the transmitter and repairing any damage it may have caused.”
To the oblivion with the man who had this damn thing implanted! “What is it you ask in return?”
“We would like an envoy to the Tribunal. We would like to speak with the heads of the Tribunal.”
Fuck me even further. With the assistance they’ve given me, I can’t say no.
“Damage?” Lexi asks as her hand grips mine tightly. Her fear is slowly starting to show.
“Yes, female.”
“Stop calling me female, dammit!” she growls. “My name is Lexi.”
“My apologies, Lexi,” Randor says. “Yes, damage. From the scans Bencade has done of your brain, the transmitter was put in very poorly. If it is not removed soon, we estimate your chances of surviving, considering the stress that was recently put on it, would be at ten percent. That number will drop dramatically if the one who had this implanted in you pushes it any further.”
“I think I’m going to puke,” she says and I can see her pale skin start to sweat.
“Please do not do that,” Bencade mutters out of the side of his mouth.
“Anything you ask for,” I say in a rush. Looking over my shoulder, I tell Marketh, “Get us out of here now!”
“We jump in thirty minutes. We should reach a solitary star system within three hours. The Vicarions are giving us jump points and star cluster points that aren’t known to anything I have ever used. The Tribunal would kill for waypoints like these,” he says, and I can hear excitement in his voice.
The final jump lands us in a system with a single star and four planets floating within its gravity well. None of the planets are within the tolerance zone of the star to support life though. This system, like many others out there, is only good for mining ores off the planets or perhaps an out of sight military outpost for times of war.
I don’t like being on the battlecruiser of the Vicarions. I don’t like putting all of our luck in one place. It seems a folly to leave my ship but for the sake of Lexi we’re here. The sheer amount of men lining the hallways as we’re ushered to their medical bay was very worrisome.
There will be no escape if things go sour here.
“They keep sniffing her, Marketh. It’s turning my stomach with anger and disgust.”
“Well, what is it you expect? They haven’t been near a woman in centuries. You know as much as I do about their race, or at least what the rumors are. At least they seem to be substantiated.”
“Yes, they do, don’t they? But how is it possible to be this… pathetic.”
“Pathetic but extremely powerful in the right circumstances.”
“That is true, I suppose,” I concede.
And it is. The Vicarions are a race that has lived on the fringes of the society for as long as it can be remembered. We know once they were a terrible race of war, but battles began to take a toll on their very existence. Death has a way of making even the most fearsome of foes wither away.
Vicarions, from what we know, began to lose traction in the face of war when their losses outnumbered their rate of procreation. But instead of slowing down their warring ways, they began to use body modifications to continue to win battles. Becoming part Vicarion, part machine. The further they outpaced their procreation numbers, the more they enhanced their bodies to survive.
That was their downfall.
Other races began to discover ways to defeat their enhancements. The women of their world became more rare as they were left untended to. It wasn’t long before their enemies avidly hunted the females down for slaughter and slavery.
Now, they float around the very outer edges of space in their giant battlecruisers looking for word of their women. None are alive from what the Tribunal records show. But if humans are able to aid in reproduction of their race…
Fucking oblivion, I may have just handed the Tribunal another interstellar war.
That they wish an envoy so they can communicate with the Tribunal is good, but just how far can I trust them is the question.
Looking down into the eyes of my bonded, I can see fear and worry across her brow. She is trying to be brave for me, I can feel it, but her concern is still showing.
Leaning down, I kiss her light pink lips. They are so soft and delicate. Each time I kiss or touch her, I’m reminded of how much I must protect her.
“Will the surgery start soon?” she asks the Vicarion we we’re introduced to as the medical officer.
The medical officer nods his head and turns towards Bencade. “Do not remove your hands from her headspace until the block is in place. Then, once we are sure there is no leakage, we will be able to remove you from the procedure.”
“I’ll be staying right here during the whole thing, my bonded,” I say as I grip her hand in mine.
The medical officer looks as if he wants to challenge that but Randor coughs quietly. “That is acceptable. Shall we begin?”
Chapter Fourteen
Lexi
Strapped to a table that’s been angled almost completely vertical with strange, alien men surrounding me as my skull is being sawed open, I can’t help but dwell upon the choices that brought me to this moment.
At the time I agreed to have the device implanted into my brain, it felt like a no-brainer to allow myself to be permanently linked to Jack…
But now I just feel like a fucking idiot.
Jack was supposed to be my safety-net, my back-up plan.
And if things went terribly wrong, the witness.
Everything that I share with him, the things I see, hear, and experience, are supposed to be stored and backed up as evidence. I didn’t necessarily expect to die, though it was a very real possibility, but if I did, there would be justice done.
My death wouldn’t be in vain and everything I learned wouldn’t be forgotten.
Part of me wishes I could share this with him. The vibrations of the base of my skull being sawed open. The soft crack. The sudden release of pressure as a piece comes off.
The Vicarions can’t or won’t use lasers. According to them, there’s too much risk they could damage my brain so we have to do this the old fashioned way. I just have to really hope they know what they’re doing. With all the stuff they’ve got coming in and out of their heads, they must. But I must admit this medical bay of theirs reminds me a little of a futuristic Frankenstein lab. With the straps, the tables, and all the weird glowing tubes and stuff.
Did Jack know what he was doing would kill me? I don’t want to believe it. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t…
Even now, my old experiences want to tell me this isn’t the Jack I know. He is… was… my best friend. Up until what happened, I believed we loved each other like family. But obviously, that was all a farce.
Hell, for a while I was feeling pretty damn lucky that he was able to confiscate the implant off of an illegal poacher he caught in Argentina. Before that, I was struggling to figure out a way to remain in contact once I left the atmosphere. It would be pointless to infiltrate the alien’s illegal slave markets with no way for anyone to know where I was or who I was with. I would have just been another human taken. Another human lost in the system.
But now I have to wonder if he got the implant from another
source...
If he was willing to kill me in order to retrieve me, I never really knew him at all.
There’s a bright light above me but thankfully it’s mostly blocked out by the sheer size of those surrounding me. I look at their faces, at Maul’s, and I feel his fear. His worry for me. Without the transmitter in my head distracting me, the bond feels even more intense.
More real.
Catching his eyes, I hold them, not letting them go. Gently, I squeeze his hand and plead, “Please… don’t look.”
Of all things to be self-conscious about, I never thought I’d feel self-conscious about my lover seeing my exposed gray matter. But I don’t want him to have the memory of me looking this way. What if he can never get this out of his head? What if he’s forever disgusted by me? Or permanently repulsed?
Now that I need him, that I have him, I’m afraid I’ll lose him somehow.
Maul squeezes my hand and I feel his love, his warmth flowing into me to soothe me. He doesn’t have to say the words; I can feel them. His intention. What he wants me to know.
I relax a little, reassured by his devotion.
“Disabling the device,” the man operating on me announces. “In three… two… one…”
There’s a little zap and my muscles tense up with worry. Maul squeezes my hand tightly.
Then the one operating on me, I recognize him by his deep, staticky voice, says something but I don’t understand the words.
Maul stares at me expectantly, as if he wants me to do something, and says something but all his words are gibberish.
Fuck. With the device gone I’ve lost my translator.
I lick my dry lips and say, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
I don’t know how the Vicarions did it but they’ve managed to numb me only where I need it. I can move my face but I can’t move my head. With all their freaky upgrades, I bet these guys operate on themselves all the time. Their medical technology is downright terrifying.
Hell, strapped to a table with my skull cut open is terrifying.
Maul stares deep into my eyes and I find myself focusing on his face. He speaks again but once more it’s hissing and clicking gibberish.
Has he always sounded like that? Do I sound like that when I’m speaking to him?
I stare up at him in confusion. Now that I can’t understand him, he seems strange again.
Without our communication there is new a distance between us. All our differences seem more obvious.
It’s like I’ve been looking at him all this time without really seeing him. After those two weeks of serenity withdraw, when I finally broke through he instantly felt familiar to me. He instantly stopped being alien.
He and the Vicarions start arguing about something, and all I can do is to continue to stare at his strange and beautiful face.
His skin is a silvery gray that seems to change colors depending upon the light reflecting off of it and his features are too sharp, too harsh. I hate to say it but honestly, he looks perpetually angry even though I know he’s not.
His eyes, they glow a radioactive green. There’s nothing human about them but I know them. I recognize the tenderness there, tucked behind the animalistic intensity.
The more I stare at his face, though, the more I recognize the beast he keeps restrained. In his eyes there’s this foreboding sense of danger lurking just below the surface, waiting to be unleashed.
If he were anyone else, I’d be pee-my-pants afraid.
But I know he would never hurt me.
He won’t because he loves me. I know it, I can be sure of it, because of the bond we share. I’ve had him deep inside me and even now I feel him flowing through my veins.
This love of ours… it was forced upon us. Neither one of us asked for this. It’s just one great big complication that makes both of our lives harder and pushes the things we want further out of our reach. But even if there was a way to turn it off, to somehow break it. To untangle myself from him.
To separate our souls.
I couldn’t do it.
I haven’t known him for very long… but he means too damn much to me now.
I could resent not having a choice, but he also didn’t have a choice. I could curse the gods or the stars or whatever higher power is out there, but I recognize this for what it is.
It’s a gift.
A freakin’ blessing.
Whatever may come… whether we find Isla or not, I’ll never be alone again. He’ll always be there.
Maul speaks again and I desperately wish I could understand him. He squeezes my hand and stares deep into my eyes. One of the Vicarions says something and he nods his head.
Maul’s tight, almost crushing grip on my hand and a burst of soothing reassurance being pushed through the bond are the only warnings I receive that something is about to happen.
The staticky Vicarion speaks slowly, as if he’s counting down again, and then I feel a sharp zap.
All my muscles below my shoulders jerk. My arms and legs try to kick up as if someone just activated all of my reflexes. I kind of feel like a puppet that just had all of her strings yanked at once, but Maul smiles down at me with relief.
“Did they get it out?” I ask, my voice a little more than a whisper.
“Yes,” he answers and then leans down to kiss me.
I’m so relieved I can understand him again I almost start crying. “Am I still going to die?”
“No, not today,” he answers, his eyes flashing brightly.
It’s everything I can do to keep from bawling like a baby. Now that the device has been successfully removed from my brain, the full force of my situation finally hits me. If it weren’t for the Vicarions, I would be dead. And if I die… so do Maul and Marketh.
I owe them more than I could ever pay back.
“Are we done now?” I ask after a moment. It’s been quiet, too quiet. I can feel Maul holding something back from me. His apprehension is hovering at the edges of my senses. “Can we return to our ship?”
“No,” Maul says and seems to hesitate. “Not yet, my heart. It appears that the device caused quite a bit of damage…”
“Brain damage?” I breathe, the very idea frightening.
Slowly, reluctantly, Maul nods his head.
“Oh shit. How bad is it?”
“If it’s not repaired, you’ll perish.”
The knowledge that my brain is so damaged I could die from it just kind of hits me hard in the chest. “Damn.”
The memory of Jack ensuring me that the implant was perfectly safe and I had nothing to fear from it flashes through my head. I’m not sure though if I knew the true risks before it was attached that I would have refused it. There’s not much I wouldn’t put myself through to find Isla.
Before Maul, I had nothing to live for. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I was willing to sacrifice myself for the greater good. For my sister. Perhaps that’s why I took to the serenity so well.
I longed for oblivion.
“They’ve removed the device and replaced it with an updated translator, but to repair the damage, they’ll need to replace all the damaged tissue...”
“Replace with what?” I ask. Surely the Vicarions don’t have some extra human brain tissue just hanging around on their ship.
But then again, looking around this medical bay/Frankenstein’s lab, maybe they do.
Maul hesitates for a moment, looking uneasy before he says, “Upgrades.”
Ugh. Does that mean I’ll have neon tubes and wires coming out of my head?
“Are they going to make me like them?” I eye the Vicarions still hovering around me warily. So far they’ve been so quiet it’s eerie.
“Only a little,” Maul answers as if it pains him.
Chapter Fifteen
Maul
“I don’t want to look, Maul. I don’t want to look like them,” Lexi says, avoiding the mirror in our cabin.
“My bonded, I do not see your concern. You are beauti
ful. The Vicarions did the best they could to completely hide the implant,” I say again as I try to reassure my beloved that the small metal implant port in at the base of her skull is not as bad as she believes.
“I have a hole in my head!” she squeaks out as I wrap my arms tightly around her body.
It’s been a week and a half since the surgery, long enough for her to be fully healed. Her mind is her own worst enemy right now. There is no problem with her implant, it’s in her head that it is ugly.
“No, my dear bonded one. The time for this silly fear is done,” I say as I hold her tight. “Computer please display on the screen a picture of Lexi’s implant.”
“No!” Lexi yelps as I turn us towards the mirror.
She has been so fearful of this little metal adapter
“What if your family thinks I’m a freak?” she quietly asks with her eyes squeezed shut.
My mouth opens to speak for a moment but closes.
She hasn’t voiced this fear to me and the moment it comes out of her mouth I know that this could be one of her big fears. Meeting parents in my culture, I’m sure, is just as nerve-wracking as it is in hers. In my culture, it is best to be on the right side with the woman’s family as they will be your family for the rest of your life. We do not have things like separations from your spouse.
Bonds are for life.
“See, you don’t want them to see me either! I’m hideous!”
Growling through my clenched teeth, I say, “No, you are the physical form of perfection, my bonded. Whether your implant is showing or not has no effect on me. I thought I proved that late last night when I took you from behind.”
“You had my ponytail in one hand. I was assuming you weren’t paying…”
Relaxing one arm, I slide my hand down to slowly graze the top of her breast. Then I push my hand down further to make long circles on her stomach. After a moment, I start to slowly work my hand past her flat stomach only to get stopped by her hand.