No Rules

by McCormick, Jenna

  “Link.” Alison turned toward the man leaning against the doorjamb and wiped her eyes. “Thank you for taking such good care of her.”

  “It was my pleasure.” He waved her out and shut the door so they wouldn’t disturb Ari. Deep, dark chocolate eyes fixed on her face. “I want you to know I volunteered as your first in the vanguard.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it pissed Gwella off, although not enough to have her rethink this madness, unfortunately.”

  A wry smile worked its way out. “I don’t blame her. If someone caused Ari any harm, I’d want his guts for garters.”

  He flashed her a brilliant grin, that seemed to glow in the dim lighting against his dark skin. “That’s how mothers are.”

  “Oh, I’m not Ari’s mother.”

  “In all the ways that matter, you are.”

  She closed her eyes. “I never wanted a child.”

  “Why?”

  Normally she’d deflect or ignore the personal question altogether. But with the sands running out of the hourglass, she couldn’t remember why. Opening her eyes, she met his gaze. “I’m selfish, always have been, always will be. I don’t make sacrifices for others, not without resenting them. It’s not pretty, but it’s the truth. No child should grow up with someone like me for a mother.”

  Behind them a door closed, and she stiffened, sensing Del’s presence. How much had he heard?

  He stopped behind her and though he didn’t touch her, she could feel him in every cell of her body. “Would you excuse us?”

  “Have a good night.” With a nod, Link disappeared downstairs.

  “Come back inside.” Del took her hand and pulled her into their room.

  She looked at the thing on the table, which seemed to still be in as many pieces as when she’d left. “Any progress?”

  Slowly, he nodded. “I think so. I hooked it to the bio-mechanoid from Ari’s pod. Carbon life forms generate heat, which can be converted to energy. In theory, it should work but that’s not why I dragged you back in here. I owe you an apology.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Not paying attention to your needs. You wanted to talk and I distanced myself. The cause was just, but I don’t want you to think you are alone.” Blowing out a breath, he sank onto the pile of cushions. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. I don’t know how to be left behind.”

  He looked so miserable and it tore at her heart. “At least you and Ari will be safe, might even have a chance to get away. By all rights you should hate me for what I’ve cost you.”

  Stroking the side of her face he whispered, “I could never hate you. Haven’t you figured out yet that I’m in love with you?”

  She sucked in a sharp breath, but when she released it, the question popped out too. “Why, for fuck’s sake?”

  He grinned. “It might be your elegant way with words.”

  She shoved him. “Don’t jerk me around. My sanity is dangling by a thread here.”

  Sobering, he moved closer again until the back of his hand stroked her face. “I’m sorry, I’m no good at lightening the mood either.”

  “So, it was some kind of joke?” She refused to cry, not over that, no matter how much she wanted his love, his acceptance, and the knowledge that she mattered to him for whatever time she had left.

  “No. Stop twisting my words. You asked why. Maybe because you accept me and all my faults? Or how about the way you take care of Ari?” He put a hand over her mouth, the knowledge of her protest in his eyes. “It was a mistake, Alison, a bad judgment call. I know you didn’t mean to put her in danger.”

  He took a deep breath and lowered his hand. “I’ll be honest, I like your jealousy. Not the result, but that you felt strongly enough about me to be so possessive . . . no one ever cared so much about me. And waking up to discover you’ve been caring for me for a week, when I know you’ve never done that for another person in your life. It was an incredible feeling.”

  Her heart thundered and the room spun. “It wasn’t a sacrifice. Not really. I just wanted you to be well.”

  His gaze smoldered across her body. She could feel it like a touch and her libido responded to it. Nipples tightening, sex moistening, preparing her for him.

  His eyes met hers again. “I’m well now. So what are you going to do with me?”

  Licking her lips, she thought of the best way to answer when the clang of a bell drew their gazes to the window. Del was on his feet in an instant, shoving the window up. Screams and shouts drifted from the area by the gate, along with the roar of a helcat.

  “One got in somehow.” Grabbing the device, he turned to face her, his expression dire. “Time to see if this thing works.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  Taking her hand in his, he brought it to his lips. “It has to. I won’t lose you now.”

  24

  Ari was irate at having her sleep disturbed only to be lashed into her carrier, and her screams made conversation impossible. Fenton thought his eardrums were bleeding by the time she finally settled down.

  “You could stay here with her,” Alison whispered when his niece stopped wailing. “It’s probably safer here than anywhere else in the compound.”

  Fenton didn’t argue, just strapped Ari to his back. “I’m more comfortable on the move.”

  It was a lie. He’d be most comfortable taking the danger on himself, instead of sending Alison out to face down one of those horrors with nothing but his muddled mess of technology that might not even work properly. He admitted to himself that he didn’t know what he was doing. He was a soldier, not a tech. True, he’d personally handled all the repairs and upgrades to the equipment at the base, but he’d never built a weapon from scratch before and her germ shield was unlike anything he’d ever dealt with. If there was any way to take on the weapon himself, he would, Gwella’s orders be damned. But removing her shield and trying to recalibrate it to his genetic code would take more time than they had.

  A furious roar punctuated that thought.

  Alison’s eyes met his. “What do you want me to do?”

  What he wanted and what he’d ask of her were two different things entirely. A lump formed in his throat. “Activate your shield. I need to calibrate the demoleculizer to your genetic pattern. Once it’s activated, do not touch anything you don’t want to annihilate.”

  Looking down, he fussed with the power source. “These things are used to living in a colony. I’m not sure how long they’ll hold out on their own. If they fade out, your energy source is depleted. If that happens I want you to get yourself to safety. Climb a tree, dig a hole, whatever it takes, but do not engage those creatures. I will find you, but you have to get away first. Run as fast as you can, got it?”

  “Yes. Del?”

  He looked up just as she moved into him. Reflexively, his arms went around her and her arms went around his waist, her head pressed against his chest, next to Ari’s. She was shaking from head to toe. He closed his eyes and buried his nose in her fragrant locks.

  “I wish we had more time. I wish we had a lifetime to get it right.”

  His throat closed up. Never enough time. They never hit the right chord, followed the same wavelength. Instead they had to fight their way from one dead-end situation to the next and hope they made it out intact.

  He held her to him. With both his females safe and whole in his embrace, he begged the universe that it wouldn’t be for the last time.

  Alison pulled away first. “Okay. Hook me up.” Her fingers depressed the trigger on the inside of her elbow and her health guard snapped to life.

  Scanning the energy signature, Fenton calibrated the device he’d constructed, praying it would be enough to keep her safe. Once he was certain he breathed, “It needs to stay in contact with your skin.”

  “I’ll hold it. I wouldn’t know what to do with a chem whip anyway.” One pale, trembling hand reached forward and she picked the small thing up between her thumb and index finger.
/>
  They both sagged slightly when she took it and he didn’t vaporize.

  “Should we test it on something?”

  He pointed to a small evergreen sapling off the corner of the porch. “There.”

  Cautiously, she moved forward and he held his breath when her hand reached out, her index finger pointed at the topmost branch. He waited, unable to draw a breath and beseeched whatever deity might be listening.

  Please let it work, please.

  There was no noise, no flash of light to indicate something miraculous had happened. One second the small tree was there and the next it was gone. Erased, as though it had never existed.

  “We did it!” She whirled and took a step toward him before she remembered they couldn’t touch. “How do I shut it off?”

  “Put it in your pocket and deactivate your shield. But don’t, not yet. The extra stress might kill the bioluminescent microbes more quickly.”

  She nodded. “Time to annihilate some helcats, then.”

  “Lead the way.”

  The forest around Gwella’s house was deserted, not a single patroller left behind to guard them. They moved quickly, Alison several paces in front of him. The path through the woods seemed to take a lifetime to traverse but when it finally spit them out by what had once been the town green, Fenton wished it had taken longer.

  The huts were ablaze, fire licking up the sides, engulfing five homes up. A helcat stood at the gate, all the patrollers and several dozen breeders lashing out at it with their chem whips, trying to drive it back out. Each lash made it roar in fury but it kept on. People ran everywhere and three helcats circled overhead, their large wings almost spanning the humongous dome. What had once kept the inhabitants of Daton Five safe had become their tomb. The outline of ribs poked through layers of fur. Dani had been right. They were starving, and hunger made them even more vicious.

  “Del, up there!” Alison pointed six huts up. The staircase was covered with smoldering debris and two little boys were trapped above. The helcat’s cry sent a chill to his marrow.

  “I need to be in two places at once,” he warned Alison. “I can’t take Ari up there.”

  Her gaze met his and he saw understanding flash in her eyes. “Stay safe.”

  “You too.” Taking a deep breath he turned away from her and focused on his split.

  His double appeared in the vacant hut above the trapped children. The helcat swooped down, spotting what it thought was easy pickings. Fenton rolled over the edge, gripping the staircase with his fingers and rocking his legs to build momentum.

  “Stand back!” he shouted, hoping the children inside could hear him.

  Another shrill call and the helcat came for him again, its razor-sharp claws whistling just above his head a second before he swung himself into the hut below.

  The place was thick with putrid black smoke and he heard coughing from a far corner. Dropping to his knees, he crawled farther into the alcove home. A cough alerted him. The children were huddled together in the farthest corner.

  “It’s okay,” he soothed them, moving closer to the frightened pair. The oldest couldn’t be more than seven, his face still round with baby fat. He wondered if the helcats had picked off their protector. “Are you alone?”

  “The breeder left us to fight,” the older one whispered. “He said we’d be safe here.”

  Tamping down his ire at the stupid male who had thought it noble to abandon his frightened charges, he said, “I’m here now and I won’t leave you.”

  The floor beneath his palms grew hotter by the second. It wouldn’t be long before the entire infrastructure went up in flames. They needed to get to lower ground now. Glancing around, he took stock of the contents of the room. “I need you guys to help me. Toss as many pillows as you can out the window into a big pile okay?”

  “What about the beasties?” The younger looked at him with wide-eyed fear.

  “They can’t see through the smoke.” Fenton genuinely hoped it was true. “Stay low just in case.”

  The boys worked quickly, dragging the pillows and cushions to the opening and throwing them out. Del went into the lavatory and began ripping the metal sheets off the wall into the longest strip he could manage. The material was thin, but sturdy. It would hold the children at least.

  The sounds of battle chilled his blood, the screams and shouts enhancing his worry for Alison. Neither version of himself could see her, the air thick with smoke and the stench of death. The children had to be terrified, but they bravely plodded on until every pillow and cushion lay mounded on the ground below. “Nice work,” he said and the oldest boy grinned, baring a gap between his teeth.

  “Now, here’s what we’re going to do. There’s a man down there and he is going to hold the bottom. You’ll recognize him because he looks a lot like me and he has a baby with him. You do exactly as he says, all right?”

  “Is he your brother?” the youngest asked.

  “We’re very close.” Fenton unrolled the metal sheeting and held it down. Down below, his other self aligned the slide with the cushions.

  “You have to go one at a time.” He held the sheeting down, placing his full weight on it.

  The youngest one sat on the ramp. His eyes were huge as he gazed down the massive drop.

  “It’s okay, he’ll catch you. Try to stay to the center as best you can. Just push off and it’ll be over before you know it.”

  The boy looked to his brother, who nodded. “Go on.”

  He pushed off, screaming in terror the whole way down. He landed face-first in the mountain of pillows.

  “Are you all right?” the Fenton with Ari asked him.

  “Can I go again?” The boy grinned up at him.

  Back at the top, Fenton indicated the older boy should go ahead.

  “What about you?” The child looked from where he stood holding the top portion of the metal down the ramp, quickly figuring out that there was no one to hold the slide in place for him.”

  The floor beneath them groaned, hot even through his boots. This place wouldn’t last much longer. “I’ve got another way down. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  Another scream and then the second boy was safe an instant before the floor gave way beneath his feet.

  Getting close enough to touch one of the helcats without accidentally bumping into one of the patrollers or breeders fighting the massive creature was incredibly stressful. Alison had already had a couple of near misses with patrollers who had backed up suddenly to avoid the snapping jaws as the beast pushed forward.

  Her shield hummed at the ready and Fenton’s little invention was grasped tightly in her sweating palm. To her right, Gwella drew her chem whip back and lashed the creature, landing the blow just short of its massive eye. It screeched in outrage, trying to spread its enormous wings and take flight. Overhead the circling helcats called back. She eyed them ominously, but they remained aloft.

  The wood around the gate had begun buckling with each push the beast made to break through the bottleneck. She had no idea why the ones overhead weren’t picking off the fleeing people below like fish in a barrel. It made no sense, they wanted in, they were starving, so why wait?

  If she could get to Gwella, perhaps the empress would order the patrollers back and give her room to work. Picking a deserted path behind the melee, she goose-stepped around the fallen warriors, unwilling to cheat their loved ones out of closure or expend more energy than her little demoleculizer could spare.

  “Empress!” she called but the helcat roared in outrage at the same moment, drowning her out. She needed to get closer.

  A few more steps forward and, hauling in a substantial lungful, she bellowed, “Gwella!”

  It worked. Gwella glanced over her shoulder, scowling and sweating from exertion. “What are you waiting for? Grab a chem whip.”

  “I have something better.” At least she hoped. “Can you call everyone back from the gate?”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Another lash
from Gwella’s whip hit its mark, this time the great beast’s left eye. Rearing up, it let out another of those soul-disturbing cries. “If we pull back, it’ll take advantage and break through.”

  “Just trust me!” The words came out before she realized how foolish they sounded. Of course Gwella didn’t trust her; it was why she was here in the first place. “Listen to me, I’m so, so sorry about Dani, you’ll never know how sorry. But I can help. Del and Ari are here too. Please, I wouldn’t ask this if I didn’t genuinely believe I could do this.”

  Gwella pulled back and stared directly into her eyes. Squaring her shoulders, Alison held her gaze, hoping her sincerity would shine through and convince the empress to listen to her.

  “All right.” Gwella nodded once, then whistled. The patrollers instantly fell back, and after a moment the breeders, realizing their female counterparts were retreating, followed suit.

  The half-blind helcat roared and those circling above did as well. Hands shaking, Alison stepped forward on its blind side, alone against the massive beast. She had to do this, had to get rid of this thing that never should have been. The idea of touching it scared her to death, but every second she wasted collecting her courage was another second that it could break free or the others could attack.

  She had just put her hand out when the creature jerked toward her, somehow sensing her presence. The remaining golden eye gleamed and the paw came down, ready to cut her in half. She screamed and brought her hands up to protect herself from the deathblow.

  Contact. But instead of her being cut into pieces on the ground, the monster had simply vanished.

  Righting herself, she stared at the bent gate, at the helcats above and the fires licking up the giant trees. The warriors all stared at her, stunned with disbelief.

  “What did you do?” Gwella whispered, her eyes wide.

  “Saved your people.” She looked around for Del and Ari, but she couldn’t see them in the chaos. “This place is going to collapse in on us. We need to evacuate.”

  “There might be more of them out there,” the bitchy patroller who had been her guard protested.