Payton's Surprise (The Perfect Match Book 2)

by Serena Simpson

The bird that had been with her flew to the pillow on her bed, chirping.

  “Please,” her voice tore ragged and sore with the pain that flooded her. A year of pain and experiments flooded in. The realization that every day she lived minutes away from death. The vile hatred she spilled that made no sense stroked her memory. She found herself wishing for the death that had been denied her.

  The door opened, and Nevaeh walked in. Payton knew who she was. She watched as she did the trick with the chair and pulled it close to her bed before sitting.

  “I thought I had it bad when I came here, then I met you,” Nevaeh smiled at her. “Cassic do you want to tell our guest what she won? It’s not funny, and I’m not laughing. If I don’t try to keep it light, I’ll want to go over to that ship and kill those sons of bitches a second time.”

  Cassic walked over, holding a tablet in his hand. “Payton Juranski thirty-three years old. Taken from Earth. Their date doesn’t translate to our system. You were taken by the Fulyer a race we haven’t seen in this galaxy in many solar years. Their experiments were trifold. They wanted to see if they could turn you into a weapon against your people. To do this, they manipulated your memories using a device that would take any hardship you ever suffered and magnify it, aiming it at whoever you were facing. There is only one other human on this ship. Then they played with simple things that you may take for granted, like your impulse control and your emotions. Two specific lobes in your brain were targeted. They also found a way to magnify any bias or hatred you had, it may only be slight, but they were able to blow it out of proportion.”

  She dropped her head. There were so many things she had to wade through growing up. So many thoughts that she was finally able to put behind her. For them to be stirred up, for her to become something she couldn’t stomach. What was worse was that some of the evil in the world lingered in her long after she thought she killed it all.

  “You said it was a three-prong attack?”

  “They wanted to see if you would make a good incubator for their children. They lay eggs, and when they hatch, they need a food source to eat.”

  She put her hand over her mouth, and dry heaved. All she could see was little crocodile-like things eating away at her body.

  “Are there any in me?”

  “No, they hadn’t gotten to that stage in the experiment.”

  “What was the last attack?”

  “I don’t understand this one. It may mean something to you. They changed the way your body functions. You will now carry an extra amount of weight and not be able to lose it. They made it a baseline.”

  “I won’t be able to go back. If my parents see me like this, my dad, he’ll never accept me. I’ll fast, I’ll work out. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “I’m sorry; whatever you do, it won’t work. Your body has been fundamentally changed. I know you know it. Were they feeding you?” She shook her head. “Still, you were picking up weight.”

  “I guess that’s it. There’s not much more to say. Can these tubes come out?”

  “Yes.” Cassic took them out. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  “I owe you an apology. One’s not enough, to be honest. I never thought I could be that way, have that kind of hatred in my soul. There is nothing I can say that will ever mean more than the grossness I spat out, but I’m sorry.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Nevaeh asked her.

  “You know they say be careful what you say because your words can never be undone. I heard once that it took one hundred, I love yous to counteract one I hate you. I won’t live long enough to undo the hatred I sent your way, but I am truly sorry and regretful.”

  “We can start over. We’ll say you were under the mind control and manipulation of another species. That sounds like a good start.”

  “What about that seed of hatred of bigotry that must have been in me for it to sprout?”

  “Here’s the interesting thing about seeds. We spend our life picking them up. Ask any parent, and they will be able to recite a list of what their children wanted to be when they grew up. All of that is nothing but seeds. The only ones that grow are the ones we water. Now some of them will get the runoff when it comes to the watering, but we can pluck them if we choose. You don’t get to live on earth and not have to deal with the issue of prejudice unless you are that one tribe that stays away from the modern world.”

  “Your forgiveness is generous. I don’t know if I can forgive myself. Do you mind if I?” She looked around the silent medbay.

  “I’ll come back to see you later.”

  “Third-in-Command, I won’t be needing to go back to Earth after all.”

  Chapter Four

  “How much of that did you see?” Nevaeh asked as she came onto the bridge.

  “All of it,” Rale told her.

  “I told you I would handle it.”

  “That’s why I’m here and wasn’t there with you. I’m sure Julze was watching too.”

  Nevaeh leaned over and kissed him. “Remember when it was just the three of us here. And we could do anything we wanted anywhere.” She climbed onto his lap.

  “I was here, I was always here, and I’d appreciate it if ‘anything you wanted’ was kept behind the closed doors of your cabin,” Sassy said in a very schoolmarmish voice.

  Nevaeh dropped her head against Rale’s neck and laughed. “Sassy, you need a boyfriend. I think the bot who cleans the floors has been thinking about you.”

  “Well, I never.”

  “I keep telling you I can help you with that,” she laughed as she imagined Sassy flouncing away.

  “I blame it all on you,” Rale told her before he kissed her. “What other surprises do you think our guest will drop on us?”

  “Cassic doesn’t know. He says the thing with her brain was relatively easy to figure out. She’s not carrying any hitchhikers, he’s sure of that, but there’s not enough information on our brain to know if they did more than what he called surface reprogramming. That seemed deep to me, but he assures me it wasn’t.”

  “You left her alone.”

  “Sassy is watching her. Payton has permission to go anywhere the door isn’t locked. Sassy will tell her if she isn’t allowed in, I think talking to someone in English that she can’t see will help to keep her even. What are we going to do with the Fulyer ship?”

  “Destroy it.”

  “As in disassembling it and sell it for parts?”

  “No, we’re going to take it to the Rohan sun and drop it in.”

  “What did the ship do to us?”

  “First, it has the coordinates of your planet. We still want to protect it, correct?”

  “We do.”

  “Second, if we allow the Fulyer to think they can step back into our galaxy without consequences, we will have a full-scale war on our hands. Since we already have one enemy, I’d like to cut this one off at the knees.”

  “I’m not sure they have knees, but I’m with you. Let’s make a run for the sun.”

  “Sassy, you heard Third-in-Command Nevaeh; we are headed for the Rohan sun.”

  “Have the two of you made the galaxy a better place for today?” Julze asked his mates.

  “We have,” Nevaeh told him. She loved the fact that the three of them could communicate between them.

  “Then why am I lying in bed all by myself?” He sent them a picture of his hand, slowly stroking his erect cock.

  It was a race to see who got to the lift first.

  *~*~*~*

  “Sassy, what are you?”

  Payton walked through the door that took her to the shower. It was called a soni-shower according to Sassy. She had provided her with clothes and a walking stick. The reversing of some of what the Fulyer did to her had taken its toll on her body.

  “I am the ship’s computer.”

  “I never met a computer like you before.”

  “I’m one in a million.”

  “And so modest. Am I being held prisoner here?”

/>   “You can go anywhere on the ship, wherever you see an orange door that means it’s a common area. If you see a purple door that is for the officers and off-limits to you.”

  “So, I can just walk out of here? No one will stop me?”

  “You can just walk out.”

  “Is there a place I can go to think?”

  “Try the observation deck. Follow me.”

  Payton walked out the door, waiting for an alarm to go off. When nothing happened, she noticed a blue light on the floor. It moved when she did. A small smile pulled at the corner of her mouth. She might like Sassy even if she was a computer. She followed the light to a lift and then down a corridor until she got to a surprisingly pretty orange door. It opened when she got close.

  The room was huge, with seating around the sides and a large clear area in the center of it. It reminded her of a large auditorium. All around the room were clear viewscreens with the visual of space showing. It was one thing to know she was in space; it was another to see it. This was something she couldn’t deny. It was more real in some ways than the Fulyer and their ship. Who really believed that crocodile-like people could operate a spaceship? But this, it was so simple. But she felt it in her bones.

  She walked until she was in the center of it all and then fell to the floor. She cried for the woman whose life was ending. Then she cried for the woman who would never have a life out here. She wasn’t Third-in-Command Nevaeh. Yeah, there was both bitterness and envy in the thought. It didn’t matter; she didn’t deserve to live.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  She rolled over, pulling her knees up to her chest to protect herself in case he decided to attack her.

  “Who are you?”

  “Malic. Who are you?”

  “Payton. Were you waiting for me?”

  “What? No. I was watching space and thinking. Then you came in.”

  “I’m sorry I was just looking for a place to be alone.”

  “This is the perfect place then. There’s only you and me, and the room’s enormous.”

  “What planet are you from?” She rolled over and sat up. Malic was crouching, but maybe if she sat, he would sit too.

  “Am I making you uncomfortable?” he asked, still crouched.

  “Sort of. How can you tell?”

  “The way your shoulders are hunched. Can I sit?”

  “That would be nice.”

  “I came from Hasian.”

  “You remind me of Cassic. Are all of you blue?”

  “No, have you seen the captain or the second-in-command?”

  “Not yet.”

  “They’re purple. It’s kind of the color everyone would like to be. A large portion of the planet is blue, but we have a rainbow of color. I don’t know why purple is desirable. Maybe because it’s rare.”

  “Do you hate them for being purple?”

  “No, they didn’t get to pick the color of their skin; besides, I’m partial to blue.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah.”

  She sat there; legs folded Indian style with Malic copying her. It didn’t seem to be a pose he was comfortable with. They watched the stars together until she was breathing without being frightened that he was waiting to hurt her. All it took was a year for her to be convinced that everyone was out to get her. Had she felt that way before? Before she was taken and used as a human pin cushion. Maybe, but her mind shied away from it. She spent the last year believing that everything human was wonderful, and her life had been a fairytale.

  “Can I ask what you were thinking of?”

  “I was.” He stopped to stare at her. “I was trying to figure out how I came to be here. I know how it happened, but how did it happen?”

  She gave a loud laugh and watched as he flinched.

  “Sorry about the laugh. It’s just that I understand every feeling you just put into words. I felt it down to my soul.”

  “You too?”

  “Yep, me too. I know how I got here, but for the life of me, I can’t understand how I got here. On my better days, it boils down to why me. I had a nice apartment; I wasn’t rich, but still. I had a car, and my parents were well to do. Why me? Of all the people they could have snatched, dirty homeless women or teens. Why did they take me?” It didn’t matter how many times she asked that question; there was no answer. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. At least, that’s what she told herself repeatedly. It was the thought that kept her warm on cold nights.

  “Now I’m here,” she said softly. There was only one way out. How could she be expected to live in this foreign world of monsters?

  “Now, you get to come along on the adventure too.”

  “Adventure?” She eyed up Malic, almost wishing whatever the monsters had done to her was still in effect so she could tell him off. “This isn’t an adventure! It’s a wreck. My life is over, and well, I am going to die.”

  “Did Cassic tell you that?”

  “What does he have to do with this?”

  “He’s a healer; he won’t just let you die. He put his life on the line to save yours.”

  “He what?” She jumped up and toppled over without the benefit of her walking stick. Malic lurched forward quickly to catch her, then acted like his hands were on fire after he sat her down.

  She watched as he rubbed his hands on his pants and the floor as if he picked up a disease.

  “I don’t bite, and your hands won’t dissolve,” she said I her snootiest voice.

  “I know,” he told her while he ran his hands over his pants again. “I’m just not used to touching females. There are none on our planet.”

  “Malic, say what?”

  “There are no females on our planet.”

  “How can that be?” she sputtered to a stop. “You need women to have children.”

  “We don’t; we engineer our children.”

  They engineered their children. It was like being in the middle of some high-tech science fiction movie. A shudder went through her. That’s what this was.

  “I don’t know what to say to that. It’s hard for me to imagine a planet without women. Who do you make love to?”

  “Make love?”

  “Yeah, you know have sex. Part A into part B.”

  “Cassic is my mate.”

  “You’re gay.” She flinched at the accusation in her voice. Then wondered was this her or the manipulation done on her brain. She hung her head because you couldn’t manipulate something, not there. She always thought she was the live and let others live type of person. Wasn’t it discouraging to find that somewhere buried deep inside was prejudices that were waiting to sabotage her.

  “What is gay?”

  “You and Cassic, your planet. That’s what gay is. Wait, I thought Third-in-Command Nevaeh was mated to the captain.” Yes, she heard the bitterness, but she was ignoring it.

  “She is as well as the second-in-command.”

  “That hussy has two men!” The words came out like a bomb going off. This wasn’t bitterness. Thank you very much. This was Jealousy, the plain old-fashioned kind. The kind that said what was wrong with her when she can’t even land one man, but you landed two. “She has two lovers?”

  “They are mates, the three of them.”

  She thought about her husband, her ex-husband, and at that moment, she was happy to know someone was living their best life even if it wasn’t her. Her shoulders slumped before she laid on the floor again.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, why are you here in space? Is this your job working on a starship?”

  “It is now.” Malic slumped on the floor, watching her.

  They both looked when the door to the observation deck opened. In flew the bird-like creature. It settled on the back of one of the chairs watching them.

  Payton started swatting at her head again. Those flies were back crawling up her spine and making her want to gouge out her ears.

  “I don’t know anyone on this ship. Wo
uld you like to be friends?” She jumped up with her walking stick and hurried out the door before he could answer her.

  Chapter Five

  “Would you like to be friends?” Those words swirled around in Malic’s head as he entered his cabin. Did he want to be friends with a female? Not any female, an Earth female. If she were anything like Second-In-Command Neveah, she wouldn’t be easy to get to know.

  “Would you like to be friends?” He wasn’t looking for friendship when he came to space. All he wanted to do was spare Cassic’s life until the disease took both their lives. He had been so sure it was a disease; then, he met Captain Rale, Second-in-Command Julze, and Third-in-Command Nevaeh, now he wasn’t sure. Were they being condemned to death for something they had no control over? Had the great one looked at them at birth and marked them for death? Had he planted within them this abnormality for one of the females that almost destroyed their planet?

  He kicked his boots off before stripping his clothes and walking to the mirror naked. He took in the broad expanse of blue skin and the flatness of his abdominal area. Slowly his hand slipped down until he palmed his member. It lay long and limp against his leg until he thought of Cassic. His male had an epic ass with legs that held him tight. He loved everything about him, the strength in his arms and the beat of his heart. He loved that softness in his middle that wasn’t as hard as his own middle. He loved it so much that he had made it known in a lowkey kind of way that he would be upset if Julze or his mate trained Cassic to the point that it was gone. Strangely, they seemed to understand.

  Julze had taken him to the side and told him that if someone tried to steal his mate’s softness, he would kill them and hang the body from the ship as a warning. Malic shivered when he heard that because he believed the male, Julze, and the captain might have been a bit crazed after coming so close to death, but he got it.

  That was the one thing that appealed to him about Payton; she was soft. It made him wonder if the perfect mate for him and Cassic would be soft too.

  “You, naked in front of the mirror.” Cassic threw his shirt at a chair as he toed his boots off and came to stand in front of Malic. “Were you reading my mind?” Cassic sank to his knees in one smooth movement.