“Thank you,” Cassic started working on her until he had her stable. “I need to get her back to my ship to help her. You’re welcome to come along.” He heard Captain Rale take a deep breath, but he didn’t counterman what Cassic said.
When no one said anything, Cassic unrolled a field battle cot. “Malic, help me put her on, and let’s get off this ship.” The bird jumped onto her stomach as they carried her off; no one making any sudden moves.
Once they had her in medbay, Cassic sprang into action. “She needs surgery. It doesn’t appear to come from what happened in the battle. She has internal bleeding. The scans seem to suggest they performed experiments on her. Sassy, were you able to find anything out?”
“They seem to have detailed records but translating them will be hard. It’s an unknown or lost language in this part of the galaxy. It may take me several days to teach it to myself.”
“Do what you can. I’m going to stop the bleeding.” He gave Malic a quick kiss. “I’ll see you later.” He was off to prepare for surgery.
He hummed as he opened her up. Sassy had shared the scans and what knowledge she picked up from the planet Earth. He had a better than average working knowledge of humans in the few weeks he had been aboard. There was nothing for him to do except examine and learn about a new species. Once he stopped the bleeding, it was easy to see the different manipulations that had been done to her body. He didn’t know enough about the Fulyer to make an accurate decision, but he was pretty sure they were doing one of two things to her. Neither of which she would be happy about.
He closed her up, then, with the help of a drone, got her back onto a bed. Once done, he pulled up a chair. He would watch her until he was sure she was out of trouble.
“Cassic.” Sassy’s voice startled him into jumping. “Go get some sleep. Her life signs have rebounded, showing that she is doing better. I’ll keep an eye on her and wake you if there is a change.”
He stood and stretched before giving her another exam. “Thanks, Sassy, if there is the slightest change, wake me. If not, I’ll see you in the morning.”
*~*~*~*
“Different ship, still an experiment.”
“Did you say something?”
The female in the bed tried to jerk in shock before she groaned in pain.
“You don’t want to do that. Cassic operated on you to stop the internal bleeding, but with all the damage you suffered you’re going to feel it for a while.”
“Who are you? Where are you?” She was in a lot of pain, but her voice worked fine. They liked to hear her scream. Where were those crocodile looking bastards?
“My name’s Sassy, and I’m all around you.”
“Are you high on some new-fangled drug?”
“I am high, as well as low. I’m everywhere. The more I think of your question, the less sense it makes. You may be experiencing aftereffects of whatever was done to you. Do you know your name?”
“Payton… Payton Juranski.”
“Nice to meet you, Payton Juranski. You’re on Captain Rale’s ship, the Falling Water. He saved you from the ship you were on.”
“Saved me? Am I dreaming? Wait, you speak English. Oh my God, you’re speaking English. Is this a dream?”
“It’s not a dream. You have been fitted with a translator in order to understand the rest of the crew, but yes, I am speaking to you in your native tongue.”
“My native tongue. I never thought to hear those words in response to English. How do you know English, did you go to my planet?”
“I have been to your planet.”
“Stealing women?” The bitterness in her voice was tangible in the air.
“My crew and I have never stolen a female or a male from your planet.”
Payton looked around the room again, trying to find the female speaking before she carefully pulled herself up to lean against the headboard of the bed.
“Can you take me back?” It was a Hail Mary she didn’t believe would pay off, but she had to try.
“I could, but only if the captain gave the order.”
“Who is the captain? Where is he? I have money; he can have it all if he agrees to take me back.”
“Money has motivated him before. Nevaeh may want to go back, do some shopping. Pick up anything she left behind. I will inform the captain that you wish to speak with him. Cassic, the healer that operated on you, is also on his way down.”
“Thank you, whoever you are.” She laid down, for the first time, a shaft of hope took root in her heart. There was a possibility she could go home. Her parents would be so happy to see her, of course, they wouldn’t even think about what she looked like. They would roll out the red carpet for her. There was no way she could tell them the truth about what happened, but she’d come up with a plausible lie. She’d tell them that she’d been kidnapped and even used as some mad man experiments. That was close enough to the truth. If she left off in space, it would work out well.
The door opened, giving Payton the first glimpse of her new captors. He was blue. Not her favorite color… but she was willing to revisit that. He was tall and slender, reminding her more of an agile swimmer. Then there was whatever was around his eye. He looked like a six-year-old bedazzled him. She shook her head. At least, he was humanoid.
After so long she had begun to believe that only her planet was filled with humanoids, and that’s why they were experimenting on her.
“Hello,” the blue male walked over to her bed, smiling. “I am Cassic, the healer on this ship. How are you feeling today?”
Payton placed her hand on the back of her head, right over her brain stem. There was an echo in her head and a slight pain at the base.
“That’s the translator. Normally you wouldn’t be able to feel it. The Fulyer manipulated your brain, making it more sensitive than usual. You will get used to the sensation and then find that it doesn’t bother you at all. I could have waited, but I thought you might find being able to communicate worth a small ache that will go away without causing a problem.”
How was she supposed to answer that? Another small ache after all the other aches wasn’t a big deal, but some part of her wanted to holler at him, cuss him out. She knew, understood, he was so much nicer than her other captors that she wanted to take her frustrations out on him. That wouldn’t happen, she’d keep it pushed down all she needed was to get home, then this nightmare would be over.
“It’s nice to be able to understand what is being said to me. Can I go home?”
He blinked quickly, like he wasn’t sure how to answer that question. He raised a hand, drawing her eye to his wrists that also looked like they had been bedazzled. Not just bedazzled, but bedazzled with precious jewels. She knew a real gem when she saw one.
“That is up to the captain. I need to look you over to make sure you’re healing.”
“You rescued me?”
“We did.” He ran a scanner over her before going over to a bank of medical equipment.
“What will you do with me if I can’t go back home? Will you sell me into slavery or use me?”
“We don’t believe in slavery, and I’m not familiar with the term use you. Use you to do what?”
“Don’t play innocent.” A bit of her grip slipped on her tightly controlled anger. “Men use women for sex or punching bags or whatever they want. I will not be used like that. I am not a whore to be sold. I have money, just take me home, and we’ll pretend this never happened.”
“The captain—”
“Cassic,” Nevaeh said, walking through the door. “How is our patient doing?”
“She is healing Third-in-Command Nevaeh.”
“Glad to hear it. I don’t want to kick you out of your medbay, but I’d like to talk to her.”
“I have some work to do in my office.” He left via a different door than the one he came in through.
She watched as Nevaeh touched a spot on a chair and slid it across the room before touching a different spot and sitting.
/> “It works kind of like a magnet. I can touch it to reverse the strength of the magnet, to slide it across the room and then re-establish the hold. This keeps it from moving during battles or hyper speed. I’m Nevaeh, the third-in-command. What’s your name?”
“I’m Payton Juranski.” She looked down her long aristocratic nose. How had a black female come to be in space as well as have a position of authority on the ship? She was probably sleeping with the captain. The captain’s whore.
“I demand to see the captain and to be taken back to my planet. No one had the right to steal me away.” There was no need to hide her anger. The woman would know what she had to do. She would take her home like she demanded.
“There are going to be a few problems with that.”
“I don’t think you heard me.” She tried to get up in the bed, but the pain meds must be wearing off. She slid down with a sharp cry of pain.
Cassic came out to look her over. He gave her another shot before leaving them alone.
“I want to go back home,” she mumbled as the pain medicine started to take effect.
“You can’t. Once you leave Earth, there is no going back, even if you didn’t leave willingly. Then there is the fact that your captors experimented on you. Some of what they did can’t be undone. Your changes can’t be allowed to fall into the hands of our scientists.”
“You’re lying.” She spit out. “You want to be in charge. You like the thought of having a white woman at your beck and call. Well, I’m not a slave, and I won’t act like one.”
“Daddy complex? I think those are worse than mommy complex’s and I have a mommy complex. What else don’t you like?”
She narrowed her eyes at Nevaeh.
“Come on, spit it out. This is your one free shot. The one where I won’t shoot you into space without the benefit of a cryo pod. Tell me what else is rolling around in your head. By the way, we found the cage you were kept in. Your scratches are correct. You were there for one year three months and nine days.”
That was it. She couldn’t take any more. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! You’re black and fat! How dare you tell me! Me! I can’t go home. I followed the rules every single one of them and now look at me! I’m as ugly as you! I want to go home!”
“Sassy?”
“I’m giving her a sedative. She’ll be out for a couple of hours.”
Chapter Three
Payton blinked, her senses coming back online as the recent past played in front of her eyes like a video. A groan of self-hatred came from her lips. Why had she said all those foul things? Did she believe them, or was her father talking through her?
“You’re awake.”
She would answer, but it hadn’t been a question. The voice that belonged to Sassy wasn’t as nice as it had been earlier. ‘The key to survival in this world is to know when not to show everyone how much you hate them.’ Her father’s voice lectured her for the umpteenth time. She couldn’t avoid it, not even in space.
“What happened?” Maybe pretending she didn’t remember would gain her points.
“I believe you know what happened. If you don’t, I have it on vid to show you.”
A fake memory lapse wasn’t going to help. Time for bravado. “She deserved it. You don’t understand what people like her have done to our planet, our way of life. They steal your man instead of sticking to their own. Then they eat so much there is no food for anyone else. Hell, they’re so heavy that the gravitational pull from the planet is losing alignment. They steal our jobs, influence what gets put on television. They make songs that we can’t help but sing! They’re a menace, one that needs to be stomped out. Brown people are ruining the world!”
Oh, hell no! That wasn’t her. She looked up to see Cassic standing in the doorway staring at her. She couldn’t see Sassy, but she knew she was judging her. Even her bird (where did he come from) was standing at the end of the bed looking at her. Slowly she sank in the bed and pulled the covers over her head.
This wasn’t her; she didn’t feel like this. Yeah, she grew up with prejudice against anything that wasn’t what she was, but she didn’t act on it. Her husband had been stolen, but the woman was white with blonde hair and blue eyes. She, on the other hand, had inherited her father’s black hair and brown eyes, unlike her other siblings. It didn’t matter because she wasn’t loved less. Shit! Did it take coming to space for her to fall apart?
Her whole life played in front of her like a blooper wheel you see after a comedy or a bad video on Facebook. What was wrong with her?
“Payton, stop hiding.”
She was back, that arrogant woman who thought she could tell her what to do. Well, she was going to settle this right now.
“I hate you. I despise you. You should be dead, and I’m going to make sure it happens.” She pulled herself to the edge of the bed. It was over. This woman had taken everything from her. She took her husband, her job, her friends, her everything. Now she would pay with her life. It was the only thing she had worth paying with.
“Sassy, do not let Rale or Julze in here until I handle this problem. Come on, Payton. You want me come get me.” Nevaeh moved back.
Payton fell to the floor and started crawling. “I hate you! I hate you!” She foamed at the mouth her pupils were so large there was only a sliver of brown left in her eyes.
Neveah stood behind a chair. Payton grabbed it, forcing herself to stand on unsteady legs. Tears ran down her face as foam continued to come from her mouth. “I will kill you. I hate you. I hate myself!”
She started to shake; both hands gripped the chair in her effort to stay upright. Her head thrashed back and force. “You will die. All of you will die. I will feast on you and your children.” Deranged laughter came from her.
“Cassic,” Nevaeh said, voice low as she tried to be heard over Payton's furious sounds.
“Not yet, we need more.”
“The only feasting that will be happening is when I suck your man off tonight between my nice thick brown lips.”
“You bitch!” Payton launched herself at Nevaeh
“Now!” Cassic screamed. He launched himself across the room with a vial he stuck into her temporal lobe, while Nevaeh stuck hers into the frontal lobe.
Payton collapsed in Nevaeh’s arms. They put her back in bed, then Cassic started running tests on her.
“Do you think it worked?”
Cassic rubbed the jewels on his wrist against his leg. “We won’t know until she wakes up. The only other option is to operate on her brain. I don’t want to tamper with it after all the Fulyer did to her.”
“How did you find it?”
“When I went to put her translator, I scanned her brain for a baseline. Several parts of it lit up. According to Sassy, along with the scans I have done of you, that shouldn’t be happening. Using what Sassy was able to find before she left your planet. The segments they targeted were memory, emotions, self-control, and possibly higher intellectual thought, as well as inhabitation. That, of course, was a guess.”
“A guess, right? Sassy, let me know when she wakes. No one other than Cassic sees her before I do.” Nevaeh told her before leaving.
“Sassy, I’m going to look over the reports and scans I have on her again. Call me when she wakes up.” Cassic said before going towards his office.
“What am I? The human female whisperer.”
“Did you say something?”
“Not a thing?”
“Are you still bat shit crazy?”
Payton closed her eyes real tight. There was that voice again, the one haunting her dreams. She slid her hand over the bed, coming up empty. He wasn’t there anymore. He would never be there again. She was divorced. How had she forgotten that little detail? Divorced and alone. Why? She wasn’t skinny enough; it didn’t matter to him that she didn’t eat three days a week; it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t blonde. There was never a hatred of blondes until he introduced her to the woman he was leaving her for.
; “Look at her, she’s not only blonde with blue eyes, but she’s a spinner.”
“A what?”
“A bitch small enough to spin on my dick.”
“Your dick? What dick? The one I couldn’t find with a magnifying glass? The one I oohed and ahhed over and pretended to reach a climax on. The one that always made me have to go to the bathroom to get myself there. That dick? You’re a dickless wonder. I loved you; I didn’t stay because you knew what to do in bed. I stayed because I promised to love you in sickness and health, good sex or bad sex, and it was definitely bad sex!”
“Look at yourself, Payton. How many times did I tell you to go on a diet? How many? You weigh nearly as much as the goodyear blimp. Who would want you?”
“If I lose any more weight, my doctor has threatened to have me committed.”
“Then you should sleep with your doctor since he likes cows.”
She weighed ninety-nine pounds when they had that conversation. If he could see her now, he would think she was a cow for real.
“Are you with me?”
Payton opened her eyes, hoping the other memorys where she called a black woman a whore, and more were nightmares. Then the memory of being in a cage came back. She breathed a sigh of relief; it was a nightmare.
“Who are you, and why are you in my room? Oh hell, did I decide to see how the other side lived? Please tell you’re not blonde. Was I any good? Were you any good? I don’t feel like I had sex. I mean, would it feel the same way?”
She opened her eyes and slowly pulled herself up in bed. Every part of her hurt.
“This isn’t my bedroom. Please tell me this is your bedroom and you have a thing for space. Like the medbay on Trek.”
“This is the medbay. I don’t know what Trek is.”
“No, please, let this be a nightmare.”
“It’s not, but I would feel the same way if I were you.” Cassic came out of his office, a look of compassion on his face.
Payton's Surprise (The Perfect Match Book 2) Page 2