by A. G. Wilde
The ache that filled his bones from crashing his body against the metal was nothing.
He could deal with temporary pain. He could always heal himself. What he couldn’t do was breathe life into those who’d lost it and if they didn’t get inside the structure, that’s exactly what would happen.
“Oxygen levels are critical,” the Arois said. “Their panic grows.”
A strained cry left the lips of one of the humans as she fell to her knees. “No.”
Her cheeks became wet—something that possibly meant she was so overcome with emotion she was losing control of her bodily fluids.
It only renewed Ajos’ vigor.
Once, twice, three times, he slammed his body into the side of the stasis hold.
May the gods of Tonvuhiri be on his side.
May they hear his plea.
He’d begged them only once before, and they’d denied him, but may they grant him this one thing.
It felt like minutes passed as they took turns slamming their bodies into the side of the hold, and as his shoulders ached and Ajos charged forward once more, he hit the side of the hold with all his might.
Gravity gave and he lost his balance as a part of the hold bent inward.
Triumph.
But they couldn’t celebrate yet.
He didn’t need to hear the cries of encouragement as he squeezed his body through the opening. The metal pressed against him, cutting into his skin, but as before, he ignored the pain as he forced himself into the hold.
It was dark but his eyes didn’t take long to adjust. The only lights were the dim blue strips that ran along each pod’s perimeter.
And there were many of them.
V’Alen had been right.
Over two stleks.
So many trapped humans.
In the back of his mind, he was aware that V’Alen had also managed to enter the hold.
Glancing behind him, he caught the eyes of Xul.
The female with the pale filaments on her head rushed by the commander’s side.
“Please,” she begged. “Please do everything you can.”
Ajos jerked his head in confirmation even as the female began squeezing through the hole as well.
Time was ticking.
V’Alen was already at a pod, his systems scanning the code pad to crack the key that would unlock the device.
Within seconds, V’Alen’s integrated AI returned a result.
“Code X—△□ (ex -ash zim por),” V'Alen said, as he punched in the code. The cover of the pod he unlocked began to retract as V’Alen moved to another.
The deep inhale of the first female reached Ajos’ ears before her scream ripped through the hold.
Qef.
This wasn’t how they’d intended to wake these females up.
The pale-filament female rushed to the woman. They’d been adamant about making the transition for the new females as smooth as possible.
Now, it wasn’t going to be that way.
He’d wasted enough seconds. With that thought, Ajos moved to the stasis pod closest to him. He didn’t even look at the being trapped inside, he just got to work.
X—△□.
The pod’s cover retracted and he barely registered the gasps of the human inside before he moved to another.
X—△□.
Another.
X—△□.
He didn’t know how many he opened; his only focus was on getting as many of them open as quickly as possible.
On the other side of the dark stasis hold, V’Alen worked even faster than he did, his robotic fingers flying as he entered the code and moved from one stasis pod to another.
When he reached the end of the line and glanced behind him, he realized V’Alen had already opened the last stasis pod on his side and was helping a female to step out of it.
Now, there was only one left to open.
Punching in the code, Ajos focused even as the loud exclamations and screams from the awakened humans filled the stasis hold.
That was expected.
Their planet knew not of life outside their world.
They were like lost infants.
Terrified and unsure.
The code pad below his fingers flashed but nothing happened.
Punching in the code once more, Ajos frowned, urgency making something akin to fear tingle in the pit of his spine.
The code pad flashed again.
Something was not right.
Small five-fingered palms hit against the inside surface of the pod and for the first time, Ajos’ gaze moved to the being trapped inside.
Trele!
His life-organ ceased thumping for a few seconds.
Terrified light-brown eyes stared back at him as the female slapped her palms against the pod’s transparent lid.
She was shouting something he could not hear, but he didn’t need to hear her words to know exactly what she was saying.
Ajos!
Please! Get me out of here!
Please! I can’t—
I can’t breathe!
It was just like that time.
This was a level of, ixfre—deja-vu—that he had never experienced.
There was fear in the human’s eyes.
Raw, unfiltered, terror.
It wasn’t over.
In an instant, he was there once again, staring down at Nama.
She’d had that same look in her eyes.
The coincidence…
No.
This was no coincidence. The similarities were too stark.
In the few seconds that passed by, the female before him began to change to a rosy color, her eyes watering.
Losing air.
She was suffocating.
A deep chill settled through his nefre as he punched in the code again, his forefinger trembling.
X—△□.
Denied.
X—△□!
DENIED.
“V’Alen!” Ajos’ voice carried over the commotion of the newly freed humans, but he did not hear nor see them. Vaguely, he was aware that the rebel fighters that had been stuck on the outside had managed to breach the stasis hold and were also stepping inside to calm the terrified humans.
But he couldn’t focus on that.
The only thing he could see was the light-brown eyes of the female before him.
Pleading.
She was pleading with him just as Nama had on that horrible day.
This female didn’t know him. She’d never seen his kind before. Yet, in her shock, he doubted she even realized that she wasn’t looking at a human.
The need for survival overrode all of that. This female was begging him to do something to save her.
“V’Alen!” he shouted again.
V’Alen was taking too long.
If he had to smash the pod to bits just to get inside, then so be it.
He didn’t know this female, but he couldn’t let her down.
Clasping his hands together, he made a double fist that he brought down with force against the pod.
“V’Alen!” Ajos repeated the action, lifting his arms to bring them down in a punch that should shatter the transparent surface.
The female’s gaze locked with his, and her eyes became glassy.
As her hands stopped pounding against the surface and fell limp by her sides, time stood still as he watched her eyes close.
No.
“Hold on!” The words tore from his throat.
But her eyes remained closed.
By the Shum’ai gods of Tonvuhiri…NO!
Not again.
2
Ajos wasn’t even sure when V’Alen arrived and began interfacing with the stasis pod.
He’d seen him do it before, override circuits with his own input, so he knew the cyborg could do it.
But he could focus on nothing else except the female dying before him.
She was limp…lifeless.
“Hurry!” His voice did not so
und like his own.
It sounded like the young male he’d been many moons ago—the one who had let his sister die like the helpless Shum’ai he had been.
Painfully slow seconds passed as he looked down at the female. He pressed his palm against the surface, staring in, and the pod’s cover slid partially open.
The mechanism stirred, jerking a little, but the hatch would open no farther.
Qef.
He couldn’t let that deter him.
With all his might, Ajos braced his entire weight on the lid, pushing against it.
The muscles in his arms screamed and the tendons in his neck tensed with the effort. With a roar, he pushed the lid fully open.
Without a pause, Ajos reached inside the pod to take hold of the female. His life organ was hammering against his chest as he reached in, and at that first contact, the organ skipped a few beats before regaining its rhythm.
She was soft…so incredibly soft. He hadn’t expected that.
He noted immediately that she wasn't as small as the humans he’d met before—this one’s limbs were longer—but she was not nearly as sturdy as a Shum’ai female either.
Even in the urgency to have her regain consciousness, he could feel how delicate she was in his arms.
Breakable.
He could feel there was no strength in her bones—as if one wrong move and he could snap her in two.
Someone handed him a breathing apparatus, he wasn’t sure who, and he slipped it over the female’s face and activated the device.
The seconds that ticked by felt like hours, and in that time, there was no change.
She was still limp.
Still lifeless.
Moving quickly but with care, Ajos lifted the female from the stasis pod and into his arms like something he was afraid to hold too tight.
Stooping to the floor, he held her against him as he placed a palm to the back of her neck.
What was he thinking? She had no nefre.
He knew nothing about human physiology, so he had no idea how else he could check the female's life force.
Seconds ticked by as he held his breath, searching her neck for the pulse of her life-organ.
Nothing.
He could feel nothing, and even with the breathing apparatus, she wasn’t stirring.
Panic gripped him, Nama’s face swimming before his eyes, and Ajos gripped the female tighter, willing her to wake up.
Still nothing.
He was just about to remove the breathing apparatus and perform resuscitation on his own when V’Alen spoke.
He had forgotten his comrade was there. He had forgotten everything that was happening around him.
The stasis hold…the screams and cries of the other humans…it had all melted away.
“She is breathing,” his comrade said, but even to Ajos, who was so close to the female, it didn’t seem that way.
“You are positive?”
“Yes. I can sense her airflow.” V’Alen paused. “Initial scans tell me the female is in a state of unconsciousness, possibly as a result of the low oxygen.” V’Alen’s gaze probed the human. “It was not enough to cause permanent harm. No cerebral damage detected. She should revive soon.”
Ajos jerked his head in confirmation. He trusted V’Alen. His comrade had resources he didn’t, and he was sure V’Alen was right.
"The signal," V’Alen suddenly said, "it has stopped."
Ajos met his friend’s gaze.
“Since when?”
“Since just a moment ago.”
"Is everything all right?" The human with the pale filaments, Athena, rushed over. Her gaze locked on the female in his arms.
"Is she…"
The female was so limp in his arms, he knew exactly what Athena was thinking.
"She lives.”
Athena released a breath.
“Thank God,” she said. “So far, we’ve had no casualties.”
Xul moved up behind his mate, his gaze set on V’Alen.
"The signal?" he asked.
"It has ceased."
Their gazes crossed, and Ajos saw the unease in the back of the commander's eyes.
"Maybe it was just an alarm because we broke into the hold?" his mate asked.
"Maybe," the commander replied, but his gaze said something else.
They all knew—him, V’Alen, the commander—the signal was much more than a simple alarm.
It was a beacon.
As soon as they cleared out the humans, they had to deal with whatever the signal had hailed.
It should strike fear into him, but this was the life he had chosen—or rather, the life the gods had chosen for him.
Turning his attention back to the female in his arms, Ajos was vaguely aware of the others moving off to help the rest of the rescued humans.
It felt as if he was in another space as he looked down at the small creature cradled against him.
His gaze moved over the female’s pale skin to land on the streaked filaments that fell across her face. They were a mixture of light strands mixed in with dark ones, a bit wavy, and falling down her shoulders.
His people were fur-less, but it seemed all humans possessed a mass of filaments on their crowns, based on the few he’d met.
Tentatively, he moved a finger forward to brush the strands away from the female’s face.
A small mouth was revealed, resting underneath an even smaller, pointed nose.
She didn’t resemble Nama in the least…yet…the look that had been in her eyes…
That memory was burned into his brain.
Running a finger across the female’s cheek, Ajos brushed away a few more stray strands and gazed upon the female.
Her skin felt like flower petals underneath his fingertips. Soft and easily broken.
He’d never touched a human before to realize this. Were they all this soft?
He was almost afraid to touch her. A delicate creature she was…
Sure, he’d been around the other humans that had been rescued first, long before they’d been able to open the stasis hold, but never had he been this close to one.
They were all mated, after all; betrothed to other members of the Restitution, and he would never disrespect his brothers in such a way.
One of them was even carrying a fighter’s young.
The female’s breaths picked up a little and Ajos released the tension that had set his shoulders rigid.
His throat moved as he swallowed hard, unaware that he’d been holding himself so rigidly, waiting for some sign of life within the female’s limp form.
Her mouth opened slightly with a breath and as Ajos removed the transparent breathing apparatus, he found himself tensing for a whole other reason.
She was beautiful. Perfectly formed and delicate.
It had been many moons since he’d been this close to a female, even one of his kind. He had not allowed himself the pleasure.
To be holding one so close now…
Something stirred within him, but now was not the time.
He should put her down.
She would wake soon and probably scream in terror if she found herself in his arms.
However, as he made to move, a soft voice had him frozen mid-motion.
“Don’t leave me.”
Ajos’ eyes widened, his gaze moving to the female’s lips.
She’d spoken. He was sure of it.
“Don’t leave me…please.”
A plea.
Ajos blinked, his gaze moving from the female to the chaos around them.
He should put her down. But…
Eyes falling back to the female, he settled on his haunches, his gaze moving over her features.
More strands of her strange filaments had fallen over her face, and he brushed them away with his finger.
She was soft. Warm.
He could stay for a little while.
Maybe he could hold her for just a bit longer.
3
She
should have known something was out of the ordinary when she twisted in her sleep and encountered hardness.
“Goddamnit,” Kerena mumbled, her voice muffled by the hard thing she was pressed against.
Blasted mahogany.
She had to get rid of this old chest of drawers. It had been a mistake putting it so close to her bed.
Somehow, she always managed to hit her head against it when she had particularly restless nights, and this was one of those nights.
Annoyed, she tried to snuggle farther into the warmth so she could return to sleep.
Her sheets smelled good. Like fresh winter air. So much so that she inhaled deeply and groaned.
Well, she had used that new fabric softener she’d bought. She’d have to look at the scent and write it down.
She’d been in such haste as the supermarket, she’d just grabbed the nearest bottle.
But whatever it was, this scent was utterly relaxing.
Snuggling farther into the warmth, Kerena stretched out her arm for her blanket, but her fingers grasped air.
Kerena groaned.
No doubt Cindy Clawford had pulled it off her in the night.
Her Maine Coon had the attitude of a supermodel—hence her name—and she seemed to be of the idea that the double bed was hers and that Kerena was the one who had the habit of sleeping in it.
That darned cat.
The bed was warm, but the air felt chilly. She needed that blanket! She wanted to snuggle and get a few more minutes in before she had to head to work.
Note to self: Lock the bedroom door before you go to sleep. DO NOT open it! No matter how Cindy begs and paws at the door at five A-frickin’-M. You are the boss! Not the cat!
The sound of screams and a lot of noise also slammed into her consciousness all of a sudden.
That darned cat probably turned the TV on again.
Don’t ask her how Cindy did it; she just did. Cats did what they wanted when they wanted.
You know, if she sat and thought about it, Cindy owned the apartment and she was the cat’s roommate.
“Cindyyyy,” Kerena groaned again.
“Nee wekda ji nee foofre xiteeklu.”
Huh?
That didn’t sound like Cindy at all.
She kind of had a deep meow for a female cat, but her arguments never sounded like actual words before—regardless if it came across as utter gibberish.
God, she must be extremely tired.