by Naomi Lucas
“And the timing?” she wrapped her fingers around his wrists. “That can’t be a coincidence.”
He shrugged, “There was a lot of water in the air. Someone got something bad in their system, it would have dehydrated them first, taking on excess water while it festered and grew throughout their body. The storm came in, your team had to evacuate, I would assume it would have been stressful. It thrived, might have been passed on by sharing a drink or a kiss, or sex. It ate out the insides and absorbed the water from the air, fled into the rising water within the swampy jungle. It could have remained dormant until the storm. The event was a catalyst.”
“How do you know all of this, or any of this? We were together almost the whole time. What if it really was ghouls after us?”
“You should become a monster hunter,” he said again without meaning to. Stryker locked back onto his ship, perturbed that so many functions were offline or broken. Something twisted in his gut. Impatience fueled him. He stared into Norah’s eyes. There are too many things I need to do. She needed him. I want to consume you. His ship needed him. His beast wanted to emerge and strike out.
Everything should have been on its way to being perfect but instead, it seemed the devil himself fought him at every turn. And there was no religion when it came to him and the other Cyborgs. They believed in nothing but the technology rooted through every fiber of their bodies and each other.
He found himself lost in her eyes and unwillingly pulled himself from their depths. “It’s how diseases react. It’s how I would react if I were a disease,” Stryker answered honestly. “Humans are great receptacles. Not only that, you and your team were non-native beings that were vulnerable where the rest of that world could’ve been immune.” He tugged on her hair. “I need to board my ship. There’s something wrong.”
Norah released his wrists and stepped back, only to follow behind him to the hatch that joined their ships.
“And you’re sure I’m okay?”
Stryker didn’t stop. “The meds I gave you in the vehicle would’ve killed off anything. They’re still in your system.” He placed his hand on the console outside the door and triggered viral sanitation measures to start after they left, even though he intended to blow it up afterward. “Even if I’m wrong about everything and those creatures were smart enough to infiltrate and take down your co-workers, would you really risk everything to find out?”
A minute passed before she answered. “I don’t know.”
“Keep behind me, babe.”
“That bad?”
He glanced back at her. “Yeah.”
Chapter Eighteen:
***
Stryker turned away from her and did something to the controls on the hatch. She placed her hand on top of the gun hanging off her new belt. It was the only thing that held the billowing lab coat close to her skin.
Keep behind me, babe, he said. Norah took a step back. I’ll keep back thirty feet behind you. She turned to look at the empty passageway behind her and shivered. Maybe just ten feet.
She was so tired and so strung out that she felt like she couldn’t trust anything anymore, not even her own eyes. The lights of the ship brightened overhead before they streaked with red. Norah knew it was the internal scanning systems.
Her ears twitched as the lasers turned on afterward with a zip.
Her empty hand reached forward and gripped the back of Stryker’s too-small suit. A moment later the lasers ran over their bodies and decontamination went wide for the whole ship.
“Is this necessary?” Of course, it is. “Never mind, don’t answer that.”
“Can’t be too careful.”
Norah kept thinking back to everything that had happened to her and the crew over the past six months, especially everything that had happened to her over the last week and a half.
She tried to pinpoint the one moment in time where everything went wrong. Not just when the sirens blared, but the calm before the storm. Figuratively and literally. She took a deep breath of the cold, clean air of the ship.
She wanted the pure air to last. If she never breathed in water again, it would be too soon.
Stryker reached back and pulled her under his arm; she didn’t let go of him. They waited in silence as the quarantine procedures finished. Norah buried her head against him, and when the last of the lasers ran over them without incident she realized how frightened she was that her health was in jeopardy. Her very human existence.
He squeezed her shoulder and let her go. It was their way.
The wall opened up next to them, a closet full of space-suits, breathers, and tools. Norah took a mask and placed it over her mouth. She wasn’t going to take any more chances. The door to the hatch opened up and they made their way through the passageway that connected their ships.
When the EonMed’s ship closed behind her, she felt a bit safer.
And she didn’t know why.
The door to Stryker’s ship opened up to another quarantine receptacle. They went through the decontamination process again. She rubbed the goosebumps from her arms. When it ended, she grabbed the pistol again; her fingers slid across the cool metal but it didn’t make her feel better. Norah had never thought that her life would come to this.
Disasters, murders, and outbreaks all happened on the Network, places that were far away from her. It had always seemed natural to watch the tragedies with indifference. She leaned back into the Cyborg for comfort while he stood frozen before a panel to the side.
Norah breathed in the warmth that Stryker always had around him. It soothed her. That was until the sound of metal breaking and bending thundered behind the door.
Stryker spoke into an auditory feed that blipped on from the console.
“Matt, what the fuck have you done?” A visual feed opened up as Stryker typed in the code. A blueprint of his ship flickered.
The noise on the other side had stopped.
“Stryker...what’s on your ship?”
He glanced at her before returning to his work, his eyes filled with code, while his hand remained connected. “Acquisitions.”
“What acquisitions?” Fuck this. Norah backed up a step until her back hit the closed hatch.
He didn’t answer her but yelled into the comm. “Matt, I know you’re on the bridge. Get off your ass and answer me.” A minute went by. “Power on the mainframe and swipe the goddamned screen where it’s flashing a message notification.” Stryker’s voice boomed from under his mask. “Goddamned idiot,” he muttered.
“Your co-pilot?” she asked.
“My alcoholic.”
Okay.
An unknown voice filled the space. Matt, she assumed. “Hey, man, you save the girl?”
“I’m only going to ask this once, so you better listen up. What the fuck did you do to my ship?” Stryker asked in a deadened voice. Norah chose to stay quiet.
The audio feed crackled. “I don’t know what you mean, I’ve done nothing to your ship. Our Wieraptor, on the other hand, has been trying to get into the bridge since you left,” Matt said, unfazed.
“Fuck,” Stryker said under his breath.
The roar of metal hitting metal picked up again beyond the closed door. “Another monster?” Norah asked, staring at the vibrations over the barrier and wondered what type of creature could overpower the reinforced structure.
“A bitch-of-a-one.” He spoke back into the comm. “When?”
“Eh…several standard hours after you took off. Tried to reach you but couldn’t find this manual you said would be here. I’m alright by the way. Really hate the rations you got stockpiled in here.” A monstrous screech was picked up in the background.
“The manual is right under the fucking console! What the hell, Matt, I’m going to kill you myself.”
“Not if the Wieraptor gets to me first, which is seeming pretty likely.” Norah could hear the shrug in Matt’s response.
Stryker moved away from the panel and checked the guns he had strapped to his f
rame. She didn’t like the sound of the beast outside and, in comparison to what they had to defend themselves, she didn’t like their odds.
“What’re we going to do now?” she asked but had half a mind to go back into the EonMed ship and battle the enemy she knew. The shriekers couldn’t break down walls.
“I’m going to recapture it. You’re going to hide.”
Yes! Sounds good to me. I love hiding now. I can be very quiet. “I’m not leaving you,” she said instead. “Everything gets worse when we separate and I know how to shoot.” Norah stood her ground.
“Babe, it’s not about your ability to help. It’s about my ability to take this thing down. These guns won’t pierce its hide, you’d have to shoot it in the mouth or the eye for it to do damage.”
She could have sworn she felt the floor shake underneath her.
He turned to her, “Can you fly?”
“Yes. Not well, but I can at least enable autopilot.”
“I’m going to get you to the bridge. I want you to follow the coordinates to Ghost.”
“What about the other ship?” I can’t leave it.
“Leave it.” Her eyes narrowed but he turned from her and spoke into the console again before she could respond. “Matt, we’re coming. When you hear three knocks, release the security breaks and let us in.”
There was a moment before his response. “Not if you’re going to kill me.”
“What the fucking hell do I pay you for, you piece of shit? You’re going to open that goddamned door before I have to override my systems and break it down myself because if I have to do that, I’m placing you in a pod and jettisoning you into space to starve to death. And, Matt, you won’t have your flasks with you. You’ll have to die alone, going through withdrawal in a place not big enough for you to sit,” Stryker raged.
Norah gaped and held her breath. If I don’t breathe maybe he’ll forget I’m here.
“Who’s going to run your labs then, Cyborg?”
She bit down on her lip, adrenaline coursing through every vein in her body and waited for Stryker to...strike out. He slammed his hand into the wall, punching a hole through the metal.
“Oh my god, calm down. He’s baiting you.” Norah reached for him and took his arm. She felt the shift of metal under her palms. “Please.” She still couldn’t suck in air as she waited for him to react. When he did, he turned toward her and placed his brow against her forehead.
“Are you ready?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
Chapter Nineteen:
***
Stryker braced himself and sucked in a long breath filled with Norah’s fear, apprehension, and adrenaline.
He lifted the magnum to his temple and sent a prayer to his Lady Luck. His rage tempered as he threaded his way deep into his ship’s systems, seeking out the location of the beast.
It prowled back and forth between the bridge and the menagerie. He could sense the thick blood pumping through the Wieraptor’s body, its muscles tensed, and the vengeance it sought to bring down on him and his ship. It was trapped within the passage.
At least Matt had the sense to initiate a lockdown. Even if he only did it to save his own ass.
“My ship is shaped a little bit like a magnifying lens,” he said to Norah. “The lab is the round end, two layers, the bottom has the enclosures, the second floor is a railway above it. There’s a set of doors directly above one another that leads deeper into the ship. The bottom level leads to the bridge and the top level leads to operations, living quarters and such. Everything else is located on a third level that has a hatch entrance. If we get split up, you know where to go, understand?”
“Got it,” her voice hitched.
“We’re entering the lab.” He moved to open the door.
“Stryker…” Norah grasped his arm and tugged. Her brow furrowed as her lips moved without saying anything. He pulled her into his arms and held her close, gripping her soft body against his hard one, flesh to metal, organic to artificial. “I hate this,” she squeaked into his chest. He relished her every supple curve from the toes strained upward in his embrace, the soft frame pressed to him, to the thick black hair that fell in wild coils at her shoulders.
She had become everything to him, and he could barely wait for the dust to settle so he could wrap her up within his beast and cherish her.
Norah made him soft where he was hard. She made him feel more human. He saved her to take her, to keep her, to feast on her. Not to set her free.
His heart sped up. Stryker released her before she made him too soft.
He turned toward the door and opened it, lifting his next-to-useless gun level with the scope implanted in his eye. His once beautiful, symmetrical, pristine lab came into view to reveal an explosion of glass and machinery. Stryker looked down at the mess and jerked his head, snapping at it from behind his mask.
The only containment structure that had broken was the one the Wieraptor was in. It seemed that Luck had smiled on him.
His eyes ran over the other habitats, all still intact, all functioning within the parameters given for a lockdown scenario. Some of the plants and animals were creatures he didn’t want to deal with again.
He motioned for Norah to follow him to a stairwell that led to the second level. His bare feet crunched over the debris and tore up his soles but it didn’t stop him from maneuvering between his acquisitions. He heard Norah follow steadily behind him as he went up to each sealed enclosure and checked their vitals.
The last thing he wanted to do was delay his trip home to recapture a creature.
Stryker stepped back to join Norah who was staring at the alien animals throughout the space.
“They’re fine,” he answered before she could ask.
Her curls fluttered as she shook her head, “But is it safe? For them? Are they okay?” She placed her hand against the nearest enclosure. Behind it were nesting beetles from Taggert, a prisoner planet. The inmates crushed them and used the paste as a strong numbing agent for wounds. It lasted for hours and had begun to be used to prolong fights, torture, and other recreational activities. A man’s foot could have a knife sticking out of it and he wouldn’t even notice.
“Of course they are.”
A crash of metal screeched through the lab, powerful enough to dent the closed panel that was his destination. The glass habitats could keep out nearly everything but not the sound the monster roared as it slammed into the barrier between them.
Norah covered her head and flinched away from the sound. The rubble beneath his feet vibrated with each consecutive impact. Just under the shards of plastic and glass were the long grooves of nails dragged across the floor.
“What the hell is that?” Norah asked over the barrage.
“Wieraptor, a beast at the top of its food chain on a planet the EPED is looking into for a port.”
“So, what? They wanted to bring them to Earth? I don’t want to know what’s behind that door.”
Stryker bent down and traced the claw marks with his finger. Half an inch deep. Cold. Matt couldn’t be lying about when the beast broke free. He looked around. The dust is settled.
All of this under an extra dose of tranquilizers. He frowned and felt the itch to kill the monster rather than recapture it, but as the thought formed in his head, he disregarded it. I’m low on tranqs.
“I’m not sure,” he told her, although he had an idea. “I would assume that it’s so they know what they’re up against and how they can maintain and fortify a structure against them.” He didn’t want to think about all the men and women who would die during the port’s creation if the project was green-lit.
At the rate the Wieraptor was going in destroying its habitat, damaging the ship, and fighting the narcotics, he couldn’t see anyone ever wanting to risk colonizing its world. Stryker walked over to the damaged computer system that fed all of the inhabitant’s reports to the EPED’s server, and notified Mia, his handler at the agency. His h
and ran across the shredded electronics. Had to be the tail.
The tail would grow back every time it was cut off. He had seen remnants on the beast’s world, half chewed up, skeletal remains, and decayed. Territory disputes.
Unfortunately for him, if his tail were cut off, it wouldn’t grow back. He’d have to have it rebuilt piece by piece, hoping all the while that his nanocells didn’t reject the new parts.
“Is it worth it?”
“That’s a hard question to answer, babe.” Stryker made his way to the door and the monster that roared behind it. When he was a step away, the sounds vanished and the reverberations settled. He systematically turned off the safety of his low-grade guns and, when he was done, motioned for Norah. The pounding of her heart was like thunder in his ears.
“I want you to stand to the side,” he gestured to a ridge of metal to the side. “Behind there. I’m going to lure it out so that when it’s through I have its full attention. I want you to run through, close the door, and head for Matt and the bridge.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Norah, you can’t fight this. It’s a demon, for lack of a better term. It won’t go down easily.”
Her fingers clasped his wrist. “I can’t leave you, love; leaving you will kill me. It can’t be worse than Axone.”
Stryker turned to her and pulled on one of her curls. “Feels right, doesn’t it?” he asked but felt the pressure of the silence to be ominous. The Wieraptor was cunning, intelligent, dangerous, and strong. His mouth tilted up. Love felt the same way.
“What does?” He heard her ready her gun.
“Saying, love.”
Norah stepped to his side and behind the metal that would cover her until the path was clear. “Don’t start, Cyborg.” She sighed. “Just get through this alive, please. I can’t think about anything, at all, right now with everything fighting to be in the forefront of my thoughts.” She pointed at him, her finger straight at his heart. “If you don’t get out of this alive, I’m going to curse you to my dying breath, I swear it.”