by Naomi Lucas
“I’ll be fine,” he said at last. He stood up and led her out of the lab. His feet felt the grooves of the claw marks as he led her to the bridge. Matt’s face appeared in the gap at the bottom of the door.
“You made it, and here I was, beginning to feel left behind.”
“Back up, Matt.” Stryker gripped the bottom of the door and forced it up into the slot above his head. The metal screeched into place but stuck. When the bridge came into view, clean compared to the lab and hallway, he walked past Matt and straight to the console.
“I don’t know what’s more unsettling,” Matt muttered. “That I’m not surprised by your nudity or that I’m glad you’re alive.”
Stryker grabbed the chip under his console and thrust it into Matt’s face. “This. Is. The manual,” he roared. “What the fuck, you could’ve been at Ghost by now, and my ship would be in repair. They would have taken care of everything. How can you not even throw a ship into auto-pilot?” He slammed the chip on a nearby table.
“When you said manual–”
“–don’t–” Stryker turned back at him.
“–I thought you meant a book.” Matt shrugged.
His muscles bunched and the need to strike out overpowered his reason. If it wasn’t for the slight hand that gripped his wrist, he would’ve let himself go off. Not in front of her. Stryker reeled himself in. Not again.
He pulled her into his side until he felt in control again.
Matt lifted a flask from inside his shirt and offered it to Norah. “Greetings.” She took it from him and sniffed the contents. And to his surprise she downed it in one go, her throat worked with each gulp. “Woah, slow down girl, that shit was Gunner’s. You’re gonna feel every drop of it.” Stryker watched the exchange with a little mirth.
Norah shook her head back and forth with a cringed expression over her face, brow furrowed and forehead wrinkled. She lowered her face and gave the empty flask back to Matt. “Gah, I’m Norah,” she smacked her lips and introduced herself. “And I hate everything.”
“I’m Matt, Stryker’s only friend.” Matt peered into the bottle with a frown and recapped it. “Damn.”
“Do you have any more?”
Stryker pulled her further into his side. “Trust me, you won’t need anymore.”
The thick black curls tumbled back as she looked up to meet his eyes, hers wide and already glazed, he assumed from residual tears and the strong alcohol.
“Trust me, I need a lot more.”
“I think we’re going to get along.” Matt laughed and popped out another magical bottle and handed it over. The number of flasks the man could hide never ceased to amaze him. It was on par with how many weapons a Cyborg carried under his armor.
Stryker took the flask before Norah was able to grab it. “We need to get you to the medlab, babe; then you can have the rest.”
She broke away from him and sighed, “if you actually loved me you’d give it back.”
Matt hollered, “Woah! Hahaha, Woah, you guys have problems. I take it back, Norah, I don’t think I can be friends with you if you actually love him back.” He walked past them and toward the passageway. “I’ll be in the lab while you two cuddle,” his voice trailed him as he left the room. “Weirdo's move fast.”
Stryker watched Norah’s face sober up and her arms wrap around herself. Do you love me?
What are you thinking?
The crunch of Matt’s fading footsteps was the only sound between them before a series of curses broke the near silence. They listened to Matt’s long string of expletives amicably.
“We should go help him,” Norah said finally.
“We will.” Stryker looked down at himself. “But I think I should get dressed first.”
She smiled and the remaining tension eased out of his frame. Norah swayed on her feet and he led her to his captain’s chair where she sat down with a withering sigh. “I like you naked. I can see all of your muscles.”
His lip twitched up but he pulled out a fresh suit from a nearby wall unit. “I like you naked too, especially when you’re naked and under me.” Stryker teased. “But, I should tell you,” he set the spare flask aside. “You may regret what you say later.” He strode to her side as she shrugged.
“I like your face too.”
“Thanks, you can have it when I get a new one.”
Her eyes widened in horror as he detached his ship from the EonMed’s vessel and maneuvered his a fair distance away.
“I don’t want you to get a new one, that’s so horrible, what a horrible souvenir. You can’t be serious!”
Stryker unlocked the blasters from under his ship as a screen filled his vision. He locked his weapons into place, the research vessel, his target. Time to kill the memories. The systems flared to life around him and networked with his tech. It was his reward each time he came back alive: an electronic hug from his ship.
Even with his reintegration, his entire being only had a mind for something else, someone else. He sucked in a delicious breath of Norah.
“I meant my mask,” he muttered through a hidden smile and blasted the other ship into oblivion. An explosion of gasoline, exhaust, radiation, and a myriad of other substances and chemicals spread out before their ship. It was there and gone in a second, muted by the vacuum of space, until only the jagged remains were left behind. A bright star, white with a subtle overtone of color, beautiful, deadly, and devastating, gone in a second.
He remembered his time in the war fondly in that moment, and the glorious last spark of life before only death remained.
Stryker turned away to see Norah at his side, cold and quiet. Like the debris that remains.
“Everything’s gone, billions of dollars of research, gone.”
“Yeah. Everything but what you and the crew uploaded to EonMed’s servers.”
“My samples. My friends…”
“It wasn’t worth the risk.” Stryker set his course for Ghost City. The new coordinates had already uploaded into his navigation banks. He breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled Norah away from the window and the storm. Mercifully, the planet vanished. “Would you have given your recommendation to your superiors that Axone was a candidate for human habitation, after everything that had happened?”
“No. Never.”
“Then it doesn’t matter.” He led her back through the ship, past Matt, who for all his faults had a real old-fashioned broom in his hand.
“My computers are gone. Gone! And there’s blood on everything I ever cared about!”
“How can it not matter?” her question came as they walked past the Wieraptor’s body. He sensed its heat signature, alive and well despite the corpse the beast presented. Just like the creatures on Axone.
“The universe is big, practically infinite. One planet means little amongst a billion.”
“You make my work sound so useless.” Norah stumbled but he caught her and lifted her into his arms, picking up his pace until they were securely in the medbay. The alcohol was slowing her movements.
“I don’t think bringing oceans back to Earth is useless, I’m just saying, maybe Axone isn’t the means of doing so.”
Norah laid down on the pallet as the scans went off, sprays misted over her, as he tested her blood. When he found her clear, again, he handed her a canister and ration that would stabilize her imbalanced nutrient levels and a sedative to help her fall asleep.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” she asked him, handing half her portion over. “Or drink?”
Stryker took it, peeled back the rest of the wrapping and fed it to her. “Not today.”
“I should’ve gone into cybernetics,” she smiled up at him.
“We might’ve never met then.”
“That...that would be sad.”
“I agree, Norah Lee, rest now. It’s over,” he stroked her hair away from her face and helped her settle onto the cot, adjusting the bed to produce a pillow top mat that would conform to her body.
“You dru
gged me,” she accused him as she curled up. “Should’ve known.”
“Yeah,” Stryker smiled under his mask. Why stop being a snake? Even when I don’t look like one. “Probably.” He watched as her eyelids drooped and her jittery movements ceased, as her heart rate settled to an even tempo, and her muscles relaxed. He waited as the cot formed into a pod around her, equipped with everything that would keep even a coma patient safe and secure.
“Will you join me, love?”
The lights dimmed low, soft, and the quiet of the room amplified the severity of the past few days. Norah fell asleep before he could answer.
Chapter Twenty-Two:
***
Norah woke up sometime later, her heart racing and sweat on her brow. She snapped open her eyes and sat up, lifted her hand to her chest, and felt her heart beating like a battering ram against her rib cage. The room blurred in low-light around her as she felt a rush of giddiness and fear flow through her.
Stryker’s medlab. She ran her fingers through her curls and squeezed her eyes shut, willing the whirl away.
Norah took a deep breath and eased her legs off of the pad. It shifted under her as she moved. She wiped her palms over the lab jacket she still wore. The taste of alcohol lingered on her tongue.
I’m thirsty. She shut the thought out knowing she was safe, she was fine and on the mend within the Cyborg’s domain.
Somehow, reminding herself of that, it relaxed the muscles in her shoulders and neck.
Her bare feet hit the floor; glancing down she saw her boots placed on the ground next to her. She stepped past them and headed for the open lavatory across from the bed and shook as the faucets came into view.
She wiped her clammy hands down her lab coat again. Water or dirt, water or dirt. Her eyes clenched shut as she stripped down and took a step into the cubicle. When the water shot out above her, soft as a sprinkle and hot to the touch, she shook out her whole body until the tingles inside her went away.
It’s not so bad. A soap receptacle came out of the wall. It was scentless and heavenly. Even better was the fact that the water felt clean as opposed to the rain that had soaked her for days. Still, she took the quickest shower of her life.
No matter how much she scrubbed, the bruises didn’t come off, the aches didn’t melt away, and her cracked nails didn’t round out. It really isn’t that bad.
It didn’t stop her from using the blower several times over though, until every bit of moisture had dried away. She was out of the lavatory and dressed in a new lab coat, had on her boots and was out the door within moments. Feeling clean almost made up for her persistent aches and fear.
Everything has to be clean when you’re a chemist. Norah’s lips jerked up, she was halfway back to normal.
It didn’t take her much to find her way to the animal laboratory–all she had to do was listen to the voices.
Stryker’s ship wasn’t small per-se, more like compact, easy, and decked out with the best tech on the universal market. One look around his cockpit and bridge was enough for her to discern that.
Norah looked down from the second-floor railing to Matt, Stryker, and a series of robots, cleaning up the lab. Signs of the fight were still there but the debris was gone and many of the scratches had been buffed out. Some deep ones remained.
She looked around for the Wieraptor but found no trace of it. Even the smell of its thick blood has vanished from the air.
Norah’s lips twitched up into a full-on grin. They didn’t notice her and she relaxed as she watched the two men banter and clean.
He knows I’m here. Stryker flexed his muscles and made a show at bending the giant metal table back into shape. She couldn’t hide her smile even if she had wanted to. Their eyes met for a moment before he looked away and continued to play the game with her.
She crouched down and sat on her knees as she watched him, the light-headedness helped her forget the horrors. She was going to take what pleasure she could in the moment.
She could see the twinkle in his eyes. It was everything she needed and everything she wanted. Against all the terrible things that lurked within the recesses of her mind, she was happy. Happy, light-headed, and dry. She was safe, secure, and protected. Norah was on her way home.
Norah couldn’t take her eyes off of the man that had saved her. Her fingers wound around the bars before her as she gazed down at him. As Matt complained, Stryker picked up the heaviest, most damaged equipment and proceeded to fix it. She watched as he did inhuman things and appeared unimpressed.
The more she smiled, the more his eyes were drawn to her.
Matt downed sip after sip of the flask he kept nearby that made her jealous. To be so relaxed, so sure that one’s safety was...secure, must be a wonderful feeling.
He disappeared around the corner with a handful of rubble, leaving her and Stryker behind; the robots trailed him with a load of their own.
Stryker stretched and turned toward her; soon he stood right below.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hey.”
“Please come up here and make me feel that everything is safe.” Norah sat back as he huffed and walked up the stairway. She got to her feet.
“I missed you.”
Stryker pulled her into his chest and she relished his grip, his heat. “I haven’t gone anywhere,” she murmured against his chest.
“I fucking hope not, otherwise there’d be something wrong with me.”
Norah smiled against him. “How do you figure?”
“I can monitor you from anywhere on this ship. If you managed to leave without my knowing, then I would have some serious problems with my systems.”
“Or,” she laughed, “I can be just that good. I bet I could win against you in hide and seek.” She tempted him, imagining the outcome, knowing she wouldn’t win the game itself; making him play was victory enough. Heat zipped through her, slow and malleable and wonderful. It was a distraction she didn’t realize she needed.
“Yeah? I’d take that bet.”
“I bet you would!” Matt yelled up at them, his eyes rolled as they looked his way. “The lab is almost clean, so-help-me-god, you better take your games elsewhere or I’m going to quit.”
Norah laughed. “But hide and seek isn’t a dirty game, Matt.” She already felt a fondness for the guy. Maybe because he’s the only other human to survive. It hurt, the ghoulish horrors that plagued her, and the aftershocks of an event she couldn’t quite believe was over.
She felt Stryker run his hand down her back, slowly and with so much promise, the heat inside her sparked.
“Yeah, tell that to the creatures who would be traumatized by it,” he muttered and turned away with a sigh, looking in the direction of the one working computer.
A shiver blasted through her when Stryker cupped the back of her neck and squeezed.
“Do you want to play?”
His question was so simple, so coy, dripping with enough subtext that if it had a smell, it would smell like caramel. Norah gripped the railway again and squeezed the metal, trying to let go of the tension within her. But Stryker continued to pet her from behind, and the more she tried to ground herself, the more she was overcome by the man behind her.
The man that had answered her distress call. Had saved her life and had even changed her so much that what had mattered most to her a month ago no longer mattered at all.
An image of them in the vehicle, sinking within the flood waters, the coilers barraging them from every side. That moment when he held her, stared into her eyes, only to look past them and into her soul. Stryker had stolen her from death itself.
She had been meant to die on Axone. She was sure of it.
She was meant to suffer at the hands of Mother Nature for being the greedy, curious human she was. For invading another world; for scouting a place for humanity to move so their mistakes in caring for their homeworld could be swept under the rug. For having the audacity to believe that humanity deserved a second chance.
And his question, dripping with sex, had assailed her.
“I love you, Stryker,” she announced as her heart exploded in her chest, forcing its way from her ribcage and up her throat. “I love you so much.”
The Cyborg bulked up and let out a deep breath that whistled under his mask. Please don’t deny it.
She covered her torso with her arms and hugged herself, her belly strained from the air she held captive, ready to protect herself from the vulnerability she felt.
Norah continued with a stutter, “I fell in love with you in the car, that moment when our eyes locked before we almost drowned. I felt so much at that moment that when we survived, I doubted my feelings for shock, maybe even trauma, or just the excitement of thwarting death. But It stayed and, well, I didn’t want the feeling to go and when it didn’t go away, it was such a relief. I keep thinking back to that moment, I had barely met you, and here we were dying together and it felt so right,” she rambled. It wasn’t like her but she hadn’t been herself since the attack. “I loved that moment. I love you…” She took a breath. “Please say something.”
His brow crinkled and she could have sworn if she saw his face, that he was smiling.
“I loved you the moment I heard your voice. When you called for me.” Stryker picked her up in his arms and led them back into the ship.
Matt’s constant musings and complaints trailed off with every receding step.
“So we’re both irrational.” She gripped the lapels of his space suit.
“We are, but don’t tell anyone else–I have a reputation to maintain as a Cyborg,” he teased as he stepped through the threshold of a new door.
“I promise, my lips are sealed. I have a reputation to maintain myself.” Norah laughed and peered around the room that she had been brought to. “We have nothing to tell.”
“Nothing is error.”