Trickster

by J. C. Andrijeski

  He had been this tired before.

  He was always this tired when he rebirthed back into the world.

  He’d merely forgotten.

  He looked around the stark green-silver walls, floor and ceiling of the lab, smiling as the utter familiarity of it began to return in earnest to his mind and memories.

  That was a good sign, he knew.

  It meant he had once more coalesced into a reasonable facsimile of a complete being. It meant he was himself again. He was some form at least, of his best self––the self that combined him with his darling Tariana, and combined him with himself.

  Really, it was confusing to think of it in gendered terms at all, or in terms of which part of them might be more dominant in any given moment.

  Far easier to think of himself as Terian, rather than as either of her/his two component parts, or even some pronoun that would have combined them together.

  Right now, Terian was male.

  He smiled at the thought, then again, as he looked around the lab.

  He liked it here. It was familiar, and comforting, despite the somewhat ghoulish décor.

  In a strange way, it was home.

  It was the origination point. It was where he returned to, again and again.

  It was the place of his birth… of every birth he experienced.

  Embryos floated in glass tanks all in a row near the stainless-steel and organic hybrid table where he sat. They created a kind of divider island between himself and the other lab tables in the room, including the one where his previous body lay, the one that would now undoubtedly go back into cold storage.

  It was only a temp, after all.

  His eyes scanned the embryos individually next. He recognized some of them––he had been involved in studies of genetics for as long as he could remember in this life, after all––but these were not his pets, not subjects of his whimsy or contrivance.

  They belonged to Xarethe, his mentor.

  He frowned a little, trying to recall his last memory of his last life.

  It was a bit fuzzy this time.

  He might have thought it was because he was still early in the stages of his current waking-up period, but he sensed actual erasures in the dark spaces this time. He could feel gaps there, things that wouldn’t come back, not even if he wore this body for years.

  But then, he almost always made certain that he didn’t remember absolutely everything.

  Too much of what happened in those years before he’d found the Org––or, more accurately, before Galaith found them which became him––had been unpleasant. They were too unpleasant, and too un-useful, for Terian to want to spend much time dwelling on any of it.

  As any seer could tell you, memory constituted one of the most profound advantages and disadvantages of being a seer. Terian, meaning the whole, unencumbered being of him, could remember absolutely fucking everything.

  That could be incredibly useful in so many endeavors, as well as the ability to map causalities, create matrices of associations and relation. He used such things in his work, to understand wider trends in history, psychology, even in terms of pulling together dimensional and semi-dimensional models, another hobby of his, although one he’d indulged in considerably less, with Dehgoies gone.

  Dehgoies.

  The pulse lingered there, twisting inside his light.

  But where was he? What had he been thinking of?

  Ah, memory.

  He could remember everything, which was fantastic.

  On the other hand, he smiled ruefully, clicking to himself… he could remember fucking everything.

  Everything he didn’t consciously erase, that is.

  That ability was a godsend, a true gift. It almost made up for the fact that he had to remember so much in the first place.

  Some memories, though.

  Some memories he kept.

  Sometimes he kept even the painful ones.

  He kept them, so he would never forget.

  He kept them, because some things hurt so much, so exquisitely, it was almost like a drug. He binged on those memories at times, rolling in them luxuriously, fucking them with his mind and light. If those memories were a person, he would have sodomized them regularly, jerking himself off while they sodomized him.

  Galaith had tried again this time to get him to erase some of those memories.

  Galaith particularly wanted him to erase some of those concerning Dehgoies.

  Galaith worried he’d snapped, here and there, indulging in those recollections. Galaith worried that he’d lost perspective… that he could no longer respond rationally to inducements, negative or positive, where Dehgoies was concerned.

  Terian knew that wasn’t true, though.

  His memories of Dehgoies constituted the greatest inducements of all.

  He was still lost there, swimming in those memories, when he felt her approach.

  His light had already partitioned, a piece of it monitoring the room while the rest of him rolled around in the dirt of his past, feeling it tug at the deeper reaches of his belly, making his cock hard. Still, when he noticed her enter the room, he refocused most of his attention on her, on her light.

  By the time she spoke, he was even looking at her with his new eyes.

  “Ahh,” the old seer said, smiling at him in a motherly way. “There he is. Our birthday boy. I had wondered if you might make an appearance.”

  She had entered the lab from the corridor to the right side of the wide room, and now she walked right up to him, her razor-thin lips still tilted in a smile.

  Well, as close to a smile as she managed, at least.

  “How are we feeling, my young friend? Good and awake? Cognizant of your surroundings?” Her lips lifted in a higher smile. “Hungry yet?”

  Pulling out a pen light, she flashed it back and forth across his eyes, testing his reflexes.

  Grunting in satisfaction a few seconds later, she stuck the light back in the pocket of her lab coat. Placing her gnarled hands on either side of the padded bench where he sat, she leaned forward, quirking an eyebrow at him from only a few inches away.

  “And are we contemplating clothes then, little brother? Or are clothes too pedestrian and passé for this new, sexy body of yours?”

  He looked down at himself, realizing only then that he was naked.

  Laughing a little, he met her gaze, grinning at her.

  “Does my nakedness offend, dear lady?” he asked with a wink.

  “Not at all, Terry,” she smiled. “It’s a very nice body, brother. You have chosen well.” She grunted again, looking down at him. “Then again, you always did have impeccable taste.”

  “Don’t let me corrupt your blushing innocence, Xarethe, my dear––”

  Leaning back, she smacked him smartly on the thigh.

  “Considering I made the damned thing for you, Terry, I don’t know why you think I’d be offended,” she snorted. “I’ve been working over this mobile corpse of yours for weeks. Or had you forgotten? I know this cock better than you ever will.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he murmured, smiling back at her. “And we mustn’t get too cocky about your skills, my dear… you did not make this body all on your own.”

  She clicked at him softly, melodiously, but she’d gone back to leaning over the computer, checking over his vitals, since he was still hooked up to most of the electrodes she’d attached to his body while he slept, completing the transfer.

  “You are feeling okay, then, little brother?” she asked him, without looking up from the screen. “No nausea? Not too much fatigue?”

  The barest tinge of a German accent lived in her words.

  He smiled at her fondly.

  “No, mother,” he teased. “All better.”

  “That is good.” She gave him another sharp look. “Don’t break this one, Terry.”

  “I won’t.”

  “It’s got a good aleimic structure,” she added, as if not hearing him. “At least
a nine in potential. I have his last rating at 6.86 in actual, but you can probably boost that, by using some of the structures he never learned how to access. The Pyramid kept most of his real scores from him, once you’d earmarked it for yourself.”

  Terian nodded, glancing once more down at his body.

  “This one’s tall,” he remarked. “I’d forgotten how tall.”

  She nodded. “Only about an inch and a half taller than the last one, but yes.”

  Terian stretched out his arms, frowning at them.

  “It definitely looks familiar,” he said. “You said I picked this one out myself? When?”

  She snorted, rolling her eyes. “I can’t keep track of your infatuations, little brother. If you can’t recognize them afterwards, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

  Terian nodded, flashing her a faint grin.

  The frown soon returned to pull vaguely at his lips, however.

  He really felt he should remember why this body was so familiar.

  He hopped off the table, still naked, dragging the electrodes with him.

  “Hey!” the old woman scolded. “Stop that!”

  He ignored her, walking away from the padded table so that he stood directly across from a long segment of organic, green-tiled wall. He wanted to see his new reflection.

  Squinting at the face he could see there, and then the body, he tilted his head.

  “I look like Revi’,” he pronounced after a beat. “How odd.”

  He turned, staring at her. “It’s not Revi’ though… is it? He is not dead?”

  She rolled her eyes, clicking at him.

  “It’s not Dehgoies, brother Terian,” she said mildly. “Don’t get too excited. It does look a bit like him, yes… believe it or not, I had noticed that.”

  “Yes. Well, it’s definitely familiar, Xarethe.”

  From her position leaned over the machine, she only grunted.

  He stepped closer to the mirror, still dragging electrodes.

  “It looked even more like Dehgoies before,” she told him, motioning towards his body vaguely with her stylus. “We changed the hair, to make it how you like it. Changed a bit of the facial structure, too, so no one would recognize it from before.”

  She gave him a level stare. “He was one of ours. There was a chance you’d run into acquaintances of his, so the surgery was necessary.”

  Terian tugged at the longish auburn strands, nodding to her words without really hearing them. Something lingered in the back of his mind, some familiarity that her words didn’t entirely explain. He found he couldn’t untangle it well enough to see it clearly, though.

  It hovered there, like a taste at his lips.

  The sensation was briefly maddening.

  Then only annoying.

  Then, sort of irrelevant.

  “I’m hungry,” he announced, turning to look at her.

  She laughed. “I was waiting for that,” she said, clicking at him in mild exasperation as she shook her head. “I guess that means my job here is done.”

  He laughed with her. “Is that the key phrase, for you to set me free?”

  “More or less,” she grunted.

  Beaming a smile in her direction, he cocked an eyebrow, his amber-colored eyes glowing under the organic lights that shimmered in the lab’s ceiling.

  “Well? What’s for dinner then, gorgeous?” he said.

  The old woman only grunted again, but Terian saw another smile creeping at the edges of her lips, almost as if she couldn’t help herself.

  Chuckling a little at the humor he saw there, he stretched his arms out, swinging them a few times to limber them up, to get the hang of their muscle tone and length. Exhaling in a contented sigh, he let them fall briefly to his sides.

  This was a good one. It felt good.

  Definitely not a temp.

  Sighing again, he began plucking electrodes off his newly-acquired skin.

  A few minutes later, he’d ceased to think about his body’s previous owner at all.

  It was his, now.

  In the end, they were all just his.

  WANT TO READ MORE?

  Check out the main series of the BRIDGE & SWORD WORLD, starting with:

  ROOK (Bridge & Sword Series #1)

  Yanked out of her life by the mysterious Revik, Allie discovers that her blood may not be as “human” as she always thought. When Revik tells her she’s the Bridge, a mystical being meant to usher in the evolution of humanity––or possibly its extinction––Allie must choose between the race that raised her and the one where she might truly belong. A psychic, science fiction romance set in a modern, gritty version of Earth.

  See below for sample pages!

  JOIN MY MAILING LIST!

  THE REBEL ARMY

  For new releases, invitations to review advanced copies of books, exclusive content and giveaways.Your email will be kept private, you will never be spammed and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  * * *

  JOIN MY READING GROUP!

  THE REBEL BASE

  Join my Facebook group to talk books, meet other readers and book lovers, and be the first to see cover reveals, hear about new projects, special deals and other bookish news!

  * * *

  PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A REVIEW!

  A short review is fine and greatly appreciated.

  Word of mouth is essential for any author to succeed!

  Sample Pages

  ROOK (A Bridge & Sword Novel)

  1 / Allie

  I KNOW WHO I am.

  Somehow, deep down inside, I’ve always known.

  I don’t know how to explain that statement precisely. It’s not in the “I am Alyson May Taylor” sense of knowing myself. It’s more like this presence I carry within me, this solid sense of “me-ness” that feels untouchable in some way. It shocked me as a kid, when I realized a lot of people didn’t have that.

  For a lot of people, that rock-solid, “here I am” thing was more elusive. A lot of them spent their whole lives searching for it.

  Funnily enough, with me, it turned out who I was didn’t end up being all that important.

  What I was mattered a whole lot more.

  On that front, I knew a lot less than I thought I did. I might have had that essence thing down, but I was missing a hell of a lot of pretty significant details.

  “HE’S BAAAACK.” MY best friend, Cass, grinned at me from where she leaned over the fifties-style lunch counter, her butt aimed at the dining area of the diner where we both worked. Given that our uniforms consisted of short black skirts and form-fitting, low-cut white blouses, she was giving at least a few of our customers an eye-full.

  Seemingly oblivious to that fact, and to the men sitting at the counter to her left and my right, pretending not to stare at her ass as she stuck it in the air, she grinned at me, her full lips looking even more dramatic than usual with their blood-red lipstick.

  “Did you see, Allie?”

  I pursed my lips, rolling my eyes.

  “What’s the pool up to now?” she said. “Seventy bucks? Eighty?”

  “Eighty-five.” I used the metal stopper to compress finely-ground espresso beans into the metal filter I held in my other hand, managing to spill a small pile of grounds on the linoleum counter in the process. “Sasquatch threw in twenty yesterday.” Remembering, I let out a snort-laugh. “He walked right up to the guy’s table. Asked him his name, point-blank.”

  Cass’s black-eyeliner decorated eyes widened. “What happened?”

  I smiled, shaking my head without looking up. “Same thing that always happens.”

  Cass laughed, kicking up her high heels, which were red-vinyl platforms, more seventies than fifties, not like it mattered. Again, I saw the men nearby sipping their coffees while they surreptitiously stared at her legs.

  Cass had been on a red kick lately. Her long, straight, raven-black, Asian hair had dark red flames coming up from the tips, the color matching her lipstick, eyeshado
w, fingernail polish, and the five inch heels.

  Two months ago, everything had been teal.

  She could get away with just about any style she wanted, though. Her ethnicity, an odd mish-mash of Thai sprinkled with European and Ethiopian, somehow mixed inside her to make her one of the most physically beautiful women I’d ever seen.

  I hated her a little for it, sometimes.

  Other times, I pitied her for it. Truthfully, I hadn’t seen that it had done her a lot of favors over her life, and Cass and I had known each other since we were kids.

  Looking up from where I was doing battle with the diner’s antiquated espresso maker, a machine I was convinced had it in for me, personally, I blew my much less dramatic dark brown bangs out of my face, glancing at the man in the corner booth in spite of myself.

  I’d seen him walk in.

  Truthfully, I’d felt him walk in.

  It was unnerving as hell, the effect he had on me, simply from entering a building I happened to occupy.

  This was in spite of him never saying a damned thing to me, apart from whatever single-item purchase he made off the diner’s crappy menu. He paid in cash. He never came in with anyone else. He flat-out ignored any attempts at small talk, even polite questions. He rarely made eye-contact, although I always felt his eyes on me. When I looked over, however, he was usually staring out the window, or down at his own hands on the table.

  Mr. Monochrome wasn’t a talker.

  He wasn’t a people person in any sense of the word. He took ignoring other sentient beings to the level of an art form. The extremes he went to in avoiding conversation didn’t just verge on rude; they were rude. Mr. Monochrome didn’t care.

  Mr. Monochrome wasn’t interested in our opinions of him.

  Mr. Monochrome wouldn’t even tell us his name.

  That last part was the pool Cass referred to.

  Given that most people paid bills with their headsets these days, the fact that he paid in cash made him frustratingly impervious to our curiosity about him. He was a blank canvas. My mind superimposed that canvas with various stories, of course, as did my co-workers––undercover cop, international fugitive from justice, spy, private detective, writer doing research, terrorist for the seer underground. Serial killer.