Chapter Fourteen
Ryder stood in the centre of his bathroom, heart pounding like a jackhammer. She knew who he was and from the look in her eye it was personal. She or someone she had loved had been one of his victims. For the first time since he had awoken on the blood-spattered battlefield, he wished that he could remember what he’d done. If only so he could say sorry and know what he was apologising for…
He’d known she was watching him, known that she suspected what he was, but her fucking scent had turned his head and instead of confronting her, he’d decided to play.
He dried himself and pulled on his pants then went in search of the first victim that had found him to confront him.
He found her outside sitting on his special hand-carved wooden rocker. It was a rare find and one he spent most of his spare time in. The rocking motion helped him to think, to unwind.
She kept her face averted. Only the tension in her shoulders let him know she sensed him.
“I wish I could remember what I did to you,” he said.
“So do I. It would make hurting you much easier.”
“You can hurt me if it makes you feel better.”
She looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Like you let your opponents hurt you in the Under?”
She’d hit too close to the mark and Ryder felt his hackles rise. “That’s none of your business.”
She regarded him with a speculative look for a long moment. “I want to help you help Midge.”
He snorted, couldn’t help it. How they hell did she think she could help him? All she’d do was distract him, and that could get people killed.
“I can help you.” She faced him now, her eyes blazing in the gloom.
“No one can help me.”
She pushed off the chair, moving to stand before him, lifting her chin so she could maintain eye contact. “I can help you, but first you need to tell me. What are you?”
The last thing he wanted to do was talk about it, to relive it, but he figured he owed her at least that much. “Come inside. We’ll talk.” He didn’t wait to see if she would follow, simply pushed back into the building and headed for the back, the living quarters, where he delved into the back of his tiny fridge and pulled out a bottle of cola.
He popped the cap and lifted it to his lips, taking a long gulp. It was his one weakness, the sugary taste, the caffeine. It buzzed through his system, setting it straight.
He caught her watching him and lowered the bottle.
“You want one?”
She nodded.
He retrieved another bottle, popped the cap and handed it to her.
“Thanks.”
He watched as she tilted her head to drink, watched that slender throat work, those luscious lips wrapped around the head of the bottle, lips that he wanted wrapped around his—
Whoa! He needed to stop! He had no right to go there.
He averted his gaze and took a step back, putting distance between them. She was watching him, lips slightly parted, glistening with cola. He wanted to taste those lips so bad that it was almost a physical ache.
“Is Ryder your real name?”
And just like that she’d broken the spell. Thank god.
Chapter Fifteen
He wanted to kiss her. Star could feel his intention like a caress and it frightened her because on some level she wanted him to do it. How sick did that make her? She needed to diffuse the tension and so she did the one thing she knew would take the focus of her—she asked him to reveal his true self.
“So is Ryder your real name?”
His expression shuttered and he jerked his head toward the battered sofa, indicating she sit.
She perched on the edge, afraid to let her guard down and get too comfortable. She didn’t trust her body around his body.
As if sensing her disquiet, he took the single seater and dragged it so it was facing her before lowering his huge frame into it.
Her eyes strayed to the V of his chest visible through his open-necked shirt, and then he began to speak in that deep, caressing voice and she lost herself in his story.
“It was called the Horseman programme. Not sure why, but back then our home planet was dying and we were told that this programme was the key to saving it. I remember bits and pieces of before. I remember being a child. I remember my mother and the twin suns of Aretha. It was a beautiful place, but like every planet my race had inhabited before, this one, too, became depleted. The high council of the seven nations declared that preparations were being made for us to evacuate, to return to our planet of origin…Earth.”
“You…what do you mean?”
“The settlers were human once. They lived on this soil, but a catastrophic event millennia ago forced them to take to the skies. They’ve been travelling ever since, settling on habitable planets, using them up and them moving on. Their technology is light years ahead of yours. I was a settler once too, but then I did what many other young men decided to do; give up our lives to the Horseman programme, a chance to save our race. That’s what they told us, they told us that Earth was infested with savage beasts, deadly creatures who would need to be purged before the civilians could set foot on it. They told us we would be heroes…
Chapter Sixteen
Aretha.
20 years ago.
* * *
“I’m going, Ma, and you can’t stop me,” Ryder said.
He’d already packed his bags, they were by the door.
His ma glared at him, her lips trembling and he almost faltered. He reached for her and the intercom beeped—three short bursts.
Grayson was here.
“I love you, Ma. I promise I’ll call you to let you know how training is going.”
He was at the door when he felt her hands on his shoulders. “Please, Ryder. Please don’t leave me. You’ve all I’ve got left.”
He tensed. “Don’t you see? That’s why I’m going, so we can have a future. If people don’t volunteer then we’ll never have the soldiers we need to take back our home.”
“This is our home, this is my home. It’s where we were born and raised and it’s where we should die. It’s not natural, it’s unfair. Our race gave up Earth millennia ago. Whatever lives there now, it’s their home. How many more civilizations will we decimate before it’s enough? How many planets will we tap and ruin before it’s enough? Nothing should live forever, Ryder.”
“So you think we should give up? Just wait for the planet to die and then die with it?”
He turned to look at her and saw the answer in her eyes. She didn’t want to fight.
“You may not want to live, Ma, but I do, and I’m gonna make sure you come with me.” He slammed out the door and down the clean, white steps that led to the driveway.
“I won’t be going!” she called out. “I won’t be signing up.”
He ignored her, confident that he would come back, that he would change her mind. Once she saw him in his uniform, strong and ready to fight, then she’d change her mind.
He climbed into Grayson’s zoomer and they were off.
“You heard the news, Ryder? They’re picking teams for phase two,” Grayson said.
Ryder glanced up from his meal, chewing the tough meat until it was nothing but mulch in his mouth. That’s all they fed them, high protein, high carb foods, and they trained them hard; pumping iron, running obstacle courses. Yet so far, over the past year, there had been no combat training, no handling of weapons and this worried him.
Grayson was watching him think with those silver eyes of his. They drove the females wild—that and his cocky smile with the winking dimple. Yeah, Grayson had always been a ladies man, while Ryder had preferred to take a back seat.
“You still thinking of leaving?” Grayson asked.
Ryder shrugged to hide the shiver of apprehension that crawled up his spine. So far, ten candidates had left. The overseers said that anyone could leave at any time, but they weren’t allowed video or voice communication wi
th the outside world and he was beginning to suspect that those candidates had gone nowhere.
Alex and Bane slid their trays onto the table and sat down.
“You hear the news?” Bane asked. He was the slightest of the bunch, his body wiry, lean and athletic, eyes the colour of wet sand.
Alex began shovelling food into his mouth. “Man, I’m hungry.” The largest of the group, Alex outweighed and outmuscled them all. He was a behemoth and if he got you in a headlock then you were doomed.
Grayson glanced over his shoulder. “They’re calling it phase two.”
“I don’t like it,” Bane said, his eyes narrowing. “This isn’t what I expected.”
“I don’t think it’s what anyone expected, but I think we’re stuck,” Grayson said.
Neither male said anything for the longest time and then the bell to signal end of food break sounded.
“See you on the other side.”
Star watched the play of emotion on Ryder’s face as he recalled his past. “So what was phase two? Is that where they…made you what you are?”
“A killer? Yes. The pain was constant, screaming inside my mind, clawing at my insides. I was trapped, suspended in that one moment of time and there was nothing else. Time had no meaning. I remember things as if looking at them from behind a thick veil. The things I did, the people I hurt, I have no clear recollection, just fleeting images, sensations as if from afar. I did those things, and yet I had no control. I remember screaming for it to stop. I could feel the torment of my companions. Ironically, Grayson, Alex and Bane had been teamed with me. We were connected somehow, Grayson amplified our abilities and I housed the connection to the settlers. We were prisoners in our own bodies, controlled by outside forces and all I felt was rage.”
“You made those people crazy…you made them fight each other, kill each other… What about the others?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I recall snippets of conversation in the labs. The geneticists spoke of a creature indigenous to Aretha, one they had wiped out before we terraformed. Apparently it had the ability to affect the chemical balance of other creatures’ brains. I’ve thought on it a lot. I think they didn’t kill them all, I think they used them to build us, transferring their abilities into us.” He sighed. “Look, I’m no scientist, but I know what they did was unnatural and I know what I am. A monster.”
He said it so matter a fact, so blasé, that she was hit by a wave of remorse. He had killed, but he had been powerless, he had been a prisoner, a pawn, and he had to live with that for the rest of his days, however many there might be.
He was staring at the floor. “What did I do to you?”
She knew this was coming, but wasn’t entirely prepared to tell her story.
“Please. I need to know.”
He’d opened up to her, given her a glimpse of who he was, so she took a breath and told him what she remembered, leaving out her emotions, the fear, the anger, the devastation. She told it as economically as she could and then she held up her hand and stripped off her glove.
His eyes widened as he took in the puckered mess, pulled tight around the oval object buried within.
“May I?” He slipped off his seat onto the floor before her, and gently took her hand. She waited for the look of revulsion on his face, but it never came. Instead, his face was filled with wonder. “It was you…you freed us.”
“What?”
He looked up, locked eyes with her. “This was the device. I remember when they implanted it. It allowed them to control the unit, some kind of new smart material.”
She stared at the piece of metal under her skin, the deformity that had caused her so much angst, but had allowed this man his freedom. “I guess it was worth it then.”
“For what it’s worth, I am truly sorry.” He was looking at her with those mesmerising eyes, so intense and sincere, and he was still holding her hand. It was strange, all these years of holding on to the fear, the nightmares, and now she was faced with it, kneeling at her feet. Instead of running, she wanted to crawl into its arms. She wasn’t sure what it was about him. One minute he was abrupt and closed off, the next he was taunting and almost playful and then he was soft and vulnerable.
She must have stared too long, revealed her thoughts in her expression, because he let go of her hand abruptly and retreated back to his chair. His expression was guarded now and she felt a pang of regret.
“Do you know what happened to my friend? Do you remember me now?”
He shook his head. “The moments after the device was ripped from me are a blur. I’m sorry.”
She sat back and closed her eyes, her heart sinking.
“Let’s talk about Midge,” he said.
Back on topic, it seemed. Okay, she could handle that. “There’s this guy Terry. He watched you fight, said you had potential. I think we should speak to him.”
Ryder’s lip curled. “On the basis of what? The fact that I may, or may not, have potential? I can fight, Star. I can kill if I want to, I just chose not to. This rage inside me, once I let it out, consumes everything around me. Granted, the radius is much reduced to what it used to be, but I won’t risk any more deaths. I can’t.”
“So what do you intend to do, glare your opponent to death? Look, Terry may be able to help or know someone who can. Fighting is all about discipline and control. Maybe you can learn to control what’s inside.”
“In two days?”
“Dammit! You’re the one that suggested the fight, so why are you being such a defeatist now?” She watched the play of emotion on his face. “You don’t expect to win do you? What…what were you planning on doing?”
He exhaled. “There are bidders that will pay a lot to watch a good beating, a close to death beating. I can give them that. I can be the guy on the ground.”
She’d watched him take a beating, knew he could do it. It would be the easiest way, but… “No. You can win this. If we can get you in control then you can do this.”
He snorted in derision. “You think I haven’t tried?”
Yeah, he probably had, but he’d never had her in his corner. Star didn’t like to lose, and she didn’t quit. “Give me the two days. If you’re not in control by the time I’ve finished with you, then we do it your way.”
She could see him contemplating it and then he nodded. “Fine.”
She stood. “I best get going.”
He stood too. “You should stay. It’s late.”
“You could walk me home?”
“I could.” He didn’t make a move.
Mum had made it clear that Star was a threat, that she had to leave, and she was right. The last thing she wanted to do was cause further problems for her family.
“You got a spare room?”
He looked startled, as if he hadn’t expected her to take him up on the offer.
She chuckled. “Look, I need somewhere to crash for a few days, until my…until my new accommodations are ready. So, what do you say?”
“You can have the couch.
“Chivalrous.”
He turned his back on her and sauntered out of the room into the workshop.
After a few minutes she heard the clang, clang of metal on metal.
Ryder was going to take some getting used to.
Chapter Seventeen
City was a low hum, a level sound that made him want to tear his hair out. The noise came from huge posts that surrounded the city. The posts emitted some kind of electromagnetic frequency that would fry any human trying to enter or leave. The settler brain chemistry was different from humans and they were immune to the effects of the posts. The only legitimate ways in or out of City were through the checkpoints. Humans who had been integrated and chipped could leave for short periods with leave cards, but if they missed their return window they would not be allowed back into City.
The settlers were wily, they didn’t hold anyone hostage. Instead they offered sanctuary, food, shelter and work, a better life, or what was
left since they had wiped out the old way. People came to City because they had no other choice; for their children, for their families, for their loved ones. They came because it was the easy option and the lack of freedom would be a small price to pay for all the other comforts. Inside City you could almost forget what had happened, if you ignored the grey clothes, the hum of the posts and the settler law enforcement always a foot larger than any human.
Garret wondered what would happen if every human simply vacated City, leaving the settlers to their own devices. But he knew that wouldn’t happen because if it did the settlers would take action, and any illusion of choice would be ripped away. He knew that it was coming, that they were going to expand their reach. Like a huge ink blot, they would absorb everything, growing and growing until every human left on the planet was chipped and controlled by them.
The ironic thing was that even with the decimation of the majority of the human race, he suspected that humans still outnumbered the settlers. The only advantage the settlers had was their advanced technology and a secret weapon that he’d heard rumours about. That was why he was here, to find out more.
He dropped out of his thoughts and back into the bosom of the hum which drowned out conversations and made it particularly hard to eavesdrop on the streets. Garret wasn’t worried about the streets. He was headed to one of the few bars where settlers and humans mingled.
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 181