“Laks,” she said, sharper. “Unless the whole thing was just to screw my head, you were lying to me. You had to be, okay? Just admit it. Let’s stop dancing around this thing and get it out there. You lied to me, so you could get me to play my part. You lied to me, because you didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth. So you manipulated me into thinking you wanted me that day, that you were...”
Realizing where that sentence was going, she trailed, biting her tongue harder, even as she gave another glance around the room.
That time, when she looked up, his eyes shone hard on hers.
Keeping her expression level, she shrugged.
“I just don’t know why,” she said, her own voice sounding tired to her. She ran her fingers through her hair, getting it out of her eyes. “You could just ask me, Laks. I can be reasonable. I think I’ve been pretty damned reasonable, haven’t I? When have I ever point-blank refused to do something that was necessary, no matter what it was, for any of you?” Looking up, she met his gaze. “I’m more of a danger to you in the dark than I am when I know what’s going on. I could screw things up without even meaning to. Why didn’t you just ask?”
For some reason, her words only worsened the anger coloring Laksri’s eyes.
She saw frustration there, too, though, along with a kind of furious disbelief.
Before she could think of what to say next, he crossed the room, walking directly to where she sat on the low cushion. Before she could decide if she should try to evade him, he sat down, catching ahold of her by the shoulders. Pushing her backwards, he pressed her down to the bed, pinning her without holding her tightly. She found herself staring up at him, fighting to catch her breath, her back pressed into the mattress. She considered fighting him, then only tensed, watching his dark eyes on hers, seeing the anger in his dark irises still.
Breathing harder in spite of herself, she shoved a palm against his chest.
“What are you so pissed off about?” she said. “I didn’t do anything! I didn’t lie, or treat you like some dumb animal––”
“Do you still want me to sting you?” he cut in, his eyes hard.
She blinked, then nodded, still holding his gaze. “Yes, I––”
“Shut up, Jet.”
Her eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth to speak, but his tail moved, darting around and connecting hard with her side. She had time to think Trazen stung her in the same place, that it must be the easiest spot for Nirreth to sting humans...when the pain hit.
She winced as the barb sank deeper into her flesh.
Gripping the front of his shirt, which reminded her of a human T-shirt now that she could see it up close, she let out a gasp. Fear hit, in those few seconds it took for the venom to kick in...and a kind of panic as she second-guessed everything she was doing.
This wouldn’t help her. Sure, she might hear his feelings, even his rationalizations, along with whatever story he wanted her to believe about what he’d done, why he’d done it. She might have enough venom in her system that it all made perfect sense. Laksri might go back to feeling like a friend, someone she could trust. But no way could she trust him. Anaze warned her that Nirreth learned to block information they didn’t want shared through the venom. She’d just come out of the sting more confused, more tied to his mind and his point of view, more conflicted.
But he had to lower his defenses a little, didn’t he?
Remembering how he’d felt in their bed chambers that day didn’t help. If he’d been faking that, then he really could make her believe anything.
Even as she thought it, he let out a low growl.
He stung her again, not asking her permission that time. He avoided her eyes as he let go, his fingers tightening on her shoulders. More venom trickled into her system...a trickle that promptly turned into a flood...of warmth, of knowing, of near-relief. She felt shame on him, a kind of anger that he aimed at himself, even as he continued to be angry at her.
He hated that she thought he’d set her up. He hated it.
He was furious at her for believing he would do that, given everything he’d said to her. He was furious that she would believe Richter. She felt his anger at Anaze, for picking that time, of all times...his passive aggressive crap, trying to keep him and Jet apart. Jealous. The human wasn’t just play-acting jealous, he was jealous. Laksri had seen it over and over in his face, even though he’d been the one to suggest the two of them...
The thought died, even as the anger in Laksri worsened.
He gripped her shoulders, then stung her again.
Jet found herself wrapping her arms around his waist, tightly enough that his own arms abruptly wound around her back, along with his tail. He pressed her deeper into the bed, stinging her again even as the venom ran out the second time. Before she could recover from that one, his hands were pulling at her clothes, yanking on them, his tail too, fighting to get them off her. Jet tried to help, but he only pushed her fingers out of the way, groaning as he stung her again.
She felt desire on him...worsening as he let more of the venom go.
That anger she’d felt turned into something closer to grief, a lost futility that clutched at her, paining her heart. He was worried about her. Not just worried...
Affection reached her, indisputably his.
Not only affection, a want strengthened and confused by feeling, confusing him, intensifying the rest. Anger wound into it, partly because he couldn’t seem to control it. He felt confused, angry at his confusion, angry at her lack of trust, at his inability to understand how she felt about him. That warmth grew stronger, mixing with the desire. It felt real now, too. Starkly real, almost physical in its tangibility. Irrefutable.
What might even have been...
“I love you,” he told her.
She heard the words, gruff in her ear, but couldn’t comprehend them at first. Even so, a kind of tenderness filled her, warming her heart and belly even as she began stroking his bare skin. She remembered again how he felt, that strange softness over hard muscle, the way his skin slid like silk under her fingers.
He lay next to her now, completely naked, and she felt another flush of that affection on him as he began caressing her face with his cheek and fingers. He tugged on her hair, and then they were kissing, and Jet fought to hold onto the thoughts that shimmered through the venom between them, to understand what he...
“I love you,” he told her again.
Her mind struggled with the meaning of those three words all over again. Not just to her, but what they meant to him. The emotion didn’t feel particularly new, more uncovered, and maybe not only in him. In that sense, the words felt natural to Jet, too. Inevitable, maybe, like how she felt when his venom first hit her system. It felt right, but some part of her resisted, tried to draw definitive conclusions, or maybe just to make sense of it.
She was still trying, when she felt a knot of tension in him unclench.
She didn’t understand at first, what he’d done.
Even so, the change happened fast, overwhelming her with its immediacy, with the intensity that followed once he’d done it. Whatever that muscle was, it had kept her out before, away from the deeper recesses of his mind. He’d been using it to protect himself from her. When it suddenly unwound, then opened, her own heart opened, too. Like fingers relaxing after being tensed around some hard object, Jet felt that part in both of them relax.
Grief rose in her, almost at once, more feeling than she could handle.
Feeling not only about him, about what was happening between them, but from far back, from growing up in the skag pits, from death, disease, not enough food, people being picked off like vermin from the streets, fighting over scraps.
Jet hadn’t known her own block was there, per se...but it was familiar.
She knew that feeling, that tightness in her chest.
She understood that Laksri shared it, too. She’d been feeling it there, between them, without understanding what it meant. Whatever he’d
thrust between them in those first weeks they’d been together, threading around the venom to screen himself from her...it was gone. Whatever she’d held up, protecting herself from him, from all of them really, even her mother and Biggs, even herself...that was gone, too.
It was really gone.
She just lay there on the bed, gasping for breath towards the ceiling, watching it happen.
His tail and leg and arm wrapped around her as he felt her defenses recede.
He stung her again, slower that time, letting her feel all of the things he’d been keeping from her. He stroked her hair, watching her face as he relaxed his body against hers, as he felt her react to what he showed her. He stung her again after another few minutes, but she could hear him purring now, the sound rising from somewhere deep in his chest. It confused her, reminded her of Trazen, but the heat that rose in the other Nirreth’s face caused her to push the image of Trazen aside, to stroke Laksri’s face, to reassure him.
His fingers grew warmer as his reaction faded, softer over her skin.
Heat began to build between them as she stroked the velvet skin of his shoulders and chest, but he didn’t move for a long time. She felt it affecting him, though, along with that softer feeling, the one he’d never shared with her before.
Even so, he didn’t move. He just let her feel him, his expression still holding that emotion she couldn’t quite put words to, even when her mind understood.
She didn’t know how long they lay there like that.
It felt like hours. She coiled around him on the low mattress, unclothed but unmoving, his weight on her, his fingers around her neck and in her hair.
He didn’t seem to mind.
He just lay there, purring, studying her eyes as he let her see him.
Jet didn’t remember waking up.
She simply found herself staring up at a curved, white ceiling, trying to decide if she could remember a time when she hadn’t been. Staring, that is. She didn’t remember opening her eyes. At some point, she simply became aware that her eyes were open.
Her mind felt reasonably clear. Gaps existed. Fairly big ones, at least when she concentrated on any one for more than a few seconds...but she found it difficult to feel a lot of concern. Even in her fogged state, she remembered how the venom worked. Everything would come back in time...likely in excruciating detail. It was part of what made the venom such a useful training tool for the Rings, even apart from the empathy it generated.
The empathy helped, too. Nirreth really did tend to think about things differently than humans, which meant their idea of planning and suspense differed at times, too. Venom brought Jet closer to that state of mind, meaning the Nirreth way of ordering thoughts, of aesthetic, of excitement...as well as the Nirreth tendencies in strategy, even deception. The venom embedded those concepts in her mind, adding understanding, well beyond Jet’s photographic memory.
Besides, her memory quirks had their own limitations.
Mainly, her ability to recollect things in minute detail worked only for spatial-type things...layouts, blueprints, maps, distances, ranges and anything three or two-dimensional, that she could “see” within her mind’s eye. It worked for things she actually had seen too; meaning, she could remember things she’d read or witnessed, more or less exactly how they’d looked at the time. Really, Jet could recall just about anything she’d gotten a clear image of with her eyes or mind, especially under the influence of venom.
It didn’t work so well with other types of information, however, or information she gleaned in other ways, like verbally or via abstract descriptions or thoughts...really, anything that didn’t have a particular image with which it could be associated. Those gaps included things Jet had to remember about the Rings that didn’t show up on any floorplans, or that wouldn’t be visible as she watched runs in preparation for her own matches.
Her photographic memory didn’t really help as she sized up her opponents, either.
Like the more detailed information about strengths and weaknesses of other candidates, like Al-En Mosq’s training style and the different abilities of his female candidate, Bokka. Jet might remember her fighting style...if she’d seen it...but not if she’d only heard about it via verbal briefs or coaching from Alice or Laks. Her inbuilt memory also didn’t help her to remember who might be allergic to what, and what types of weapons person A might be more likely to wield skillfully than person B, and so on.
For those types of things, the venom helped a lot.
Jet stretched her arms, twisting her back on the hard cushion. As she did, it occurred to her that she was alone. Glancing at first one, then the other side of the bed, she confirmed the suspicion, frowning slightly as she tried to decide if that bothered her or not.
It didn’t, she decided, not really.
She wished he’d stayed, though.
After a few more minutes, she dragged herself up to a seated position. She saw clothes on the floor, including a ripped shirt of hers that she recognized. Looking down at herself, she realized she was naked, but that didn’t concern her particularly, either.
She rubbed the back of her neck. Her throat felt dry, shrunken with thirst. Her eyes shifted to the right, where she saw a glass of water sitting, almost as if waiting for her. Without hesitation, she leaned over, clasping it carefully with her fingers. She brought the glass to her lips and drank it down, feeling relief, even gratitude as she finished it off. When the water had all disappeared down her throat, Jet placed the glass back on the table, sighing before plunking her palms back on the mattress, propping up her upper body.
Again, she looked around the room.
Somewhere in that, she grew aware of time.
Three weeks. They said it would be three weeks before they reached Astet. Only one day had passed since the ship left Earth. Possibly two.
Sliding her body back carefully on the mattress, she leaned against the wall. She knew she could push the venom a little, bring back the memories faster. Not a lot faster, but a little faster. Closing her eyes, Jet rested her head, gripping the sheets with her hands. Sensual memory hit first, enough to flush her skin. It didn’t surprise her, that she and Laks had had sex. She’d sort of known that would happen, even going in. She was more surprised at how far they’d gone with it, and how willingly he’d opened up to her, when all was said and done. He’d barely put up a fight, despite how angry he’d gotten beforehand.
What she still couldn’t wrap her head around, was what he’d actually told her.
A part of her wanted to not believe it.
Or maybe she just wanted to retain some semblance of a healthy skepticism around everything Laksri confessed. She could admit to herself the difficulty of doing that, though. A measure of self-delusion lived in even trying, but the side of her that had always excelled at self-preservation refused to let go of the effort entirely.
Anyway, it’s not as if she had no reason to doubt him. All along, she’d suspected he kept things from her, even when he stung her the first time. She’d wondered how much, but none of her estimates came remotely close to the truth. He’d hidden a lot from her. More than she would have dreamed, even after Richter clued her off about the set-up with Anaze. It frightened her, even doped on venom as she was, to realize that he could still be hiding things from her.
Doubt rippled the calm of her mind, fighting to find a place in it.
If she could believe half of what he’d let her see, that night alone...
Jet closed her eyes tighter. When that didn’t feel like enough, she placed a hand over them, wincing, embarrassed in spite of herself. He’d told her he loved her. He said he hadn’t tried to seduce her so that Anaze could burst in and find them together. He admitted they had a plan, yes, but claimed that Anaze had changed that plan. The fight had been scheduled to happen that night, in one of the eating establishments in the Royal compound. Anaze was supposed to make a scene, threaten Laksri’s life.
The jealousy thing had been part of that, but...
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At that point, Laksri’s thoughts had grown confused, nearly angry.
He considered Anaze a friend.
Since Jet met Laksri, the tall Nirreth and Anaze had acted like they didn’t know one another well. They’d acted like they distrusted one other. They’d pretended like each saw the other as a pawn of Richter, as a liar, not trustworthy.
All of that collapsed when Laksri let Jet past the blocks in his mind.
According to Laksri, he met Anaze first.
Anaze got captured by one of Laksri’s cullers.
Laksri stung him, to figure out who he was, what he was doing there, then stung him again when he grew curious with what he found. They’d gotten to talking as Anaze healed from some other kind of injury. Laksri stung him a few more times, looking for any hint of deception, even as he grew to know the young human better, and began to protect him from his Nirreth guards. They’d grown to like one another...then to respect one another. Laksri stopped stinging him and that respect grew into friendship, a friendship that deepened as they each began to understand the other’s goals.
Eventually, perhaps inevitably, they began discussing an alliance.
The affection Jet felt around and between the two of them probably threw her the most.
Laksri and Anaze had liked one another, almost from the beginning. They’d trusted one another, even before they had good reason. Laksri and Anaze started conspiring how they could work together in their aims, only a few weeks into having met. Even in the beginning, they both agreed it would be better if they let Richter think it was his idea. They agreed it would be better if they pretended not to know one another, even to hate and distrust one another, so they could keep some of their plans separate from Richter’s.
Jet saw through Laksri that Anaze had been desperate.
Anaze still wanted to free the humans living under the heel of the Nirreth, but he increasingly feared his father, and his father’s goals. More than that, he feared what Richter seemed willing to do in order to attain those goals.
Anaze warned Laksri, almost from the beginning, that Richter couldn’t be trusted, that they couldn’t ever tell him everything...
Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV) Page 57