by Quil Carter
When both of our orgasms had faded, Nero slowly pulled his cock out, just a small amount of blood on it, nothing like what it had been before, and then laid down on his side with his head propped up by his hand.
I kept staring at my now half-hard dick, the corners of my vision shining. “That was intense.” I shook my head and laid my head back down onto the bed, and wiped my hands down my face. My breathing was still catching in my throat, my lungs on fire, but the anxiety… the anxiety had disappeared with the pressure from the orgasm.
I think… I think I felt… better.
I did. Holy fuck. It wasn’t that bad… I actually don’t think it was that bad. I could do this, even with Nero’s stamina I could do this. I could survive it if I was ever dominated again.
This hadn’t been a mistake – I might’ve just found myself a golden ticket.
“Nero…” I said. I looked over at him, he was looking pleased with himself.
“Yes, Ducky?”
I found the side of my mouth rising into a smirk, and through a pounding heart I said to him:
“Is that really all you got?”
Chapter 36
Killian
The first inhale I took during my third time resurrecting was one that filled my lungs with frigid cold. The shock of it made me gasp and cough, then my eyes opened to figure out just what the hell was happening.
It was dark, it was dark and my body was freezing. I shifted around and felt ice underneath me and when I tried to sit up my head smacked up against something hard.
Panicked, I put my hands up against the ceiling only five inches above my head. The first terrifying thought was that I had been buried, but although my mind was on a runaway road, careening fast and picking up terror like speed, my mind allowed me to come to the actual conclusion:
I was in a fucking freezer.
I started pounding on the cold plastic, claustrophobia rooting itself deep inside of me and drawing out a phobia I hadn’t had a minute ago. My lungs took in another cold breath and I opened my mouth to scream.
Then suddenly I saw light, and the scream in my throat disappeared, replaced by shock as the bright lights above me stabbed my eyes.
“Well, that’s rather unexpected,” I heard a man say.
Without wasting any time, I jumped out of the freezer, and as I did I felt a hand grab a belt loop on my pants and help me out. I fell onto the floor and inhaled warm, stuffy air.
My eyes shot up before they widened.
In front of me… was Mantis.
He was still wearing the robe Reaver had shot him in, with a blue beater shirt and blue plaid boxer pants underneath – and he was looking down on me with a peculiar expression on his face.
Mantis looked to be in his mid-thirties, with dark hair several inches long, and a strong jaw and chin. He had vivid but narrow grey eyes and light stubble, and even though he looked unkempt I knew from just how he carried himself, and from our brief interactions at the festival, he was a strange yet proper man.
And not a chimera.
“So Elish has dispatched yet another tentacle into my home. In hopes for what?” He watched me intently as I got to my feet, his eyes analysing every detail of my face.
He didn’t look that happy to see me, that was for sure. “I am not one to divulge sensitive information freely. So though I suspect who you are, I will not say it out loud in case I am mistaken. So I will ask you this… who made you?”
“I’m not a chimera,” I said flatly.
“I know,” Mantis replied back, his tone cold. “I asked who made you, boy.”
Already he was rubbing me the wrong way. “Kristin and Jeffrey Massey made me,” I said, throwing his tone back at him. I braced my feet and steadied my stance as his eyes travelled around me like a spotlight. “I’m a Tamerlan factory worker’s son, and now a greywaster.”
Like someone had clicked smile from a list of facial features for a robot, the corners of Mantis’s mouth turned up, and with that new expression, the eyes that had been simultaneously digging out every detail of my face and body, became brilliant.
“Killian Massey. Yes, I suspected it was you, but I did want to make sure… such a pleasure to meet you.” Mantis held out his hand. I stared at it for a moment before I took it and we shook.
But when I tried to retract it, he held on, and turned it so it was palm up.
Instinct told me to snatch it back and get it out of his firm grip, but I found myself too shocked at what he was doing. Because when he stared down at my palm I only saw Perish when he had done the same to Reaver’s. A moment that would become burned into my memory, because we’d later find out that Perish wasn’t a chimera at all, but Sky’s twin brother.
And my boyfriend above me had the same palms as his.
My eyes closed for a brief moment when I felt Mantis trace his finger along my palm lines, but opened them when I heard a low laugh, then his release. “So many hidden gems embedded in this dead world and all you colour blind fools see is grey.”
His words hit me, and an off-kilter feeling started to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. I took Mantis’s own palm and looked at it, then at my own.
“No, Kaiser, you’ll find no answers in my hand, unless you’ve defied the laws of science and have taken up palm reading,” Mantis said, amused. He pulled back his hand and gave me a lip curling smirk. “I should’ve been paying more attention when I looked into those eyes at the festival. So Perish was successful then? You have broken free of the shackles that bind even the most strongest of men and have become an immortal?”
“Yes,” I said. I glanced down at my own palm and wondered what he saw.
“And you’re now immune to radiation too? Prolonged Concentrated Exposure was successful?”
I nodded, a brief recollection was gathered and delivered to the front of my mind as I remembered Perish mentioning Prolonged Concentrated Exposure. It was exactly what it sounded like, doses of concentrated sestic radiation right into your body until you develop an immunity. I suspected the ravers must have some sort of version of that, but with Jade’s ravers maybe it was different.
“Fascinating,” Mantis said with an odd smile. “So…” He took a step towards me and I took one back. “… tell me, Kaiser–” Why was he calling me that? “–who is above us? Was that Reaver who shot me?”
I glanced up at the ceiling and then to the closed metal door. I had been so distracted talking to this man that I hadn’t even got my bearings.
I was still downstairs apparently. At least Mantis was awake, which meant an adult who knew chimeras could put a muzzle on the two bitches that had kept me, Ceph, and Kiki prisoner.
“He’ll talk to you, he won’t talk to Adler…” I let out a sigh of relief and walked to the metal door, I put my hand on the lever and turned it.
It was locked.
My attention shot back to Mantis and I saw his smile was gone, but when he saw the expression of fear on my face, he shook his head slowly.
“You’re not locked in here with me, Killian,” Mantis said in a tone starting to dip into impassiveness. “We are locked in here together.”
“Adler locked you in here?” I said. I gave the door handle one more try before sighing and walking back to the freezer. I sat on top of it. “Why would he do that to you?”
Mantis pointed to the ceiling. “I suspect it has something to do with the feet thumping around my mansion. Confirm it for me like I asked. Elish has come for my clone, hasn’t he? I see no other explanation as to why his science experiments and the thick-headed brutes would show up at my doorstep for no reason.”
“No,” I said with a shake of my head. I drummed my feet against the side of the freezer. “We came to Melchai to escape the proxy worms.” Mantis’s gaze shot to me again, one that filled with even more interest. “We started hearing about Man on the Hill and Angel Adi. Reaver and I aren’t stupid, we knew you guys were chimeras or similar. We got curious and went to the festival, and you know what
happened next. Kiki begged for our help to free Nero and Ceph, and that’s where you got shot and I got captured and killed by Angel Adi and his pitbull. Elish is back in Skyfall, apparently Jade is really ill and Elish won’t leave his side. Elish doesn’t even know…” I caught myself, but my politeness had died some point along the way and I didn’t even try to make up a false trail as to where I was going with those last words. I let them hang and die on the air, then said, “You can keep Nero and Ceph, I don’t give a flying fuck. I just want to leave with Reaver. We don’t care about Adler, or what you’re doing, or who you’re hiding from.”
Mantis fell silent but the expression on his face was loud enough to make up for it. It scanned me for any falsifications in my statement, but even though I wasn’t lying, if I was he wouldn’t know. I’d become quite good at the poker face and this man was no chimera, with no enhancements, or–
“Your heartbeat remained steady. So you’re telling the truth,” Mantis said amused.
Wait, what? “You’re not a chimera,” I said to him suspiciously. “How the hell would you know? You’re just some Skyfaller Silas made immortal, right?”
Mantis leaned against the wall of the storage room we were both locked in and crossed his arms. “I suppose since you were nice enough to freely give me information, I will do the same to a point. I was the first artificially-created immortal. I was the one who Silas performed the first operation on, and after I was deemed a success it was done to the first generation. The same thing happened every time we had a breakthrough in implanting enhancements. I was their experimental specimen, and my reward was those very enhancements and an immortal life as a chimera psychiatrist. The only thing that differentiates me from chimeras are my genetics.”
That was interesting, but it led to another question: “Why are you this far away in the north? And… with Sky’s clone and a chimera?”
“And why are you?” Mantis smiled thinly. “Perish told me he was leaving you a quad full of his research. I assumed when you never arrived that you had been trapped inside and were burning. But no, not only are you safe, but you still remain near the explosion. Why is this?”
“Hiding from…” My words trailed and I realized he’d basically tricked me into answering the question I’d just asked him. “… from Silas.”
“And Elish?”
“We’re not…” I sighed and looked at my boots, streaked with wetness now from the freezer I’d jumped out of. “… we don’t hate Elish. We just wanted to be…”
“… dead?”
“Just at peace and… to have some quiet.”
Mantis nodded at this. “Some people love to play games, Kaiser, others would rather unplug the system and go outside for a while.”
Unplug the system? I had to deflect my gaze as he said this. I’d said close to that in my own head many times when Asher the game player had come to Aras. It looked like Mantis had reached a conclusion that I’d come to rather quickly when I’d been forced into Silas’s games. But… didn’t that just mean…?
“We’re not that different from the sounds of it,” I said to him slowly, then I looked at the locked metal door. “It’s too bad we got off on the wrong foot. A lot of this could’ve been avoided if we’d had this conversation before that festival. Maybe I could’ve convinced Reaver to let you keep those meatheads instead of him needing to settle a score.”
“Settle a score?”
I knew then I’d said too much, but there were many reasons to hate Nero. I would never tell him what Nero did to Reaver, but I also didn’t have to lie either. “Nero was the one who pulled the trigger on Lycos,” I said. And it was true. It might’ve been Silas’s orders but he was the one who shot his own brother. Reaver never mentioned hating him for that, but I’d never forgotten. “We weren’t here to save him… we were here so we could have him to ourselves.” Then I thought back to the festival. “What are you doing with proxy worms? You… were able to have Nero under your control. We were ambushed by them in the plaguelands.”
Mantis’s eyes brightened. “You were? Tell me everything. Where did you see them? How many?”
“Why are you implanting chimeras with them?” I asked first. “And what else are you doing here in this lab? I lived with Perish, I saw his splices. I know what you guys can do.”
Mantis’s brow furrowed at this before he raised a single dark eyebrow. “You catch on quickly. Very well, information for information. The worms’ migratory patterns are of great interest to me. You must’ve found Calgary then?”
“Calgary? In what used to be Alberta?” I said, surprised. “That’s hundreds of miles from where we were. I saw my first one in an old Wal-Mart off the highway, maybe fifty miles from the border, and we got swarmed by them that…” My voice trailed when Mantis’s face dropped. “… that… that night.”
He let out a nervous laugh that automatically stirred up an anxious feeling inside of me. “You must be mistaken… the radiation is too weak along these lines. They cannot survive unless they’re implanted into immortals.”
“They… followed us to our house, a few hours from Melchai. We saw them infect a whipwolf. Reaver says he saw this huge mass, two-storey’s high, of dead animals moving south…”
Mantis paled, then he gave me the weirdest, stressed out smile. “Will you indulge me for a moment and get back into that freezer?” he said through pressed teeth. “I won’t be long.”
I knew just from his expression that what I’d just disclosed was something major, and though I didn’t trust this man, I realized I wasn’t at risk of being locked in the freezer; there wasn’t even a lock on it.
And I think I knew what he was about to do…
So I opened the freezer, which I saw was full of meat wrapped in brown paper, and slid back in.
As soon as the door closed, a loud and extremely pissed off voice rang out.
“ADLER GET THE FUCK OVER HERE!” Mantis screamed.
I opened the freezer door. “How are you going to even explain how you know?”
“I’ve been lying to that little brat since he was ten. Close the damn freezer!”
I shut it with an eye roll, and waited to see if Adler would actually come. I was looking forward to Mantis getting a hold of him. He was a normal build, not strong and muscular like Greyson, but I’d seen Leo verbally rip Reaver’s face off many times.
“What!” a faint voice could be heard, one I recognized as Adler.
“This is no longer about our issues. I must be let out now to deal with something imperative. You’ve made your point, Adler. Let me out,” Mantis said sternly.
“Are you going to show me Perish’s files?”
There was silence, but I think I could imagine the expression on Mantis’s face. “We will discuss Perish’s files when I take care of pressing matters.”
“Then no.”
“This isn’t about those files, Adler.”
“Then tell me who he is. Tell me where he is and why we can’t go get him?”
“I told you, Adler. He’s dead.”
“Fuck you, Mantis.”
“ADLER!” Mantis shouted. “This goes beyond your god damn delusions! He’s dead and even if he isn’t, he thinks you are!” This was fucking intriguing. I couldn’t wait to tell Reaver what I was listening in on. I had no idea how all of these tidbits of information fit together but I had a feeling it all wound together into a really interesting tapestry. I wonder how much I could get out of Mantis, and more importantly, if we could use it as a future bargaining chip or blackmail.
“Adler!” Mantis yelled louder. “I… fine. Let me out, and I will look at Perish’s files myself and tell you if–” I heard something slam against metal, once, twice, and a third time. “What the hell do you plan on doing? Keeping me down here forever? If my god damn horses starve or they hurt our cats, I swear on the Fallocaust I WILL WEAR YOUR FUCKING SKIN!”
Everything went silent after that, and then a minute or two later he lifted up the freezer door and sta
lked away from it.
“Who’s he want information on?” I asked as I crawled out of the frozen coffin.
“None of your business,” Mantis said in a flat tone. He kicked the door again before letting out a long string of expletives, followed by threats, towards Adler.
“Why don’t you just lie?” I said as I got back onto the freezer. “You said you’ve been lying to him since he was ten. So lie some more.”
“He’s gotten smarter. I made the mistake of taking in a sick chimera and the fool has been teaching the boy logic and filling his head with intelligence ever since. The exact opposite of what I’ve been trying to do since finding him. Both Spike’s teachings and my own un-teaching has recently come back to bite me in the ass. You idiots barging into my house has just been the icing on the cake that is my life currently.”
“You’ve been purposely keeping him stupid?” I said slowly. I thought back to my boyfriend. Reaver was super intelligent when it came to surviving in the greywastes and fixing things, but he had trouble getting through books that didn’t have pictures in it. “But why? The only reason I can think of is that you don’t want him to know he’s Sky’s clone and he already knows about that, and he knows about the Dekker family.”
“Long story,” Mantis said acidically.
“Well, I don’t see anything else for us to do.”
Another look. “I trust you about as far as I can throw you, Kaiser. Your genetics will make you inclined to betray me, I’m sure.”
“Yeah, those Tamerlan genetics are deadly.”
Mantis said nothing, he only kicked the door again.
“For a scientist you’re certainly not following scientific method very well. The experiment of kicking the door isn’t producing results. So research why and come up with a new hypothesis instead of repeating your failed procedure,” I said casually.
Mantis stopped and gave me a heated glare. I couldn’t help but stifle a laugh. “Sorry,” I said with a half-smile. “According to Reaver immortality has turned me into a ‘huge bitch’. I’ve been enjoying not being terrified all the time a little too much.”