Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2)

by Christina Westcott

  “But shouldn’t he be awake by now?”

  Ski make a final adjustment to the infuser unit pumping the white nutrient solution into Wolf’s bloodstream.

  “Give it a few more minutes. Those surgeries were an insult to his system, even for a Lazzinair. During that last operation, I suppressed the symbiont so far that it’s going to take a while for it to bounce back, heal everything and then clear the drugs out of his system. In the meantime, why don’t you grab something to eat? You look like shit.”

  “Nice bedside manner, Doc.” Fitz rubbed her hands across her face, hissing an exhausted sigh between her teeth. “I haven’t been sleeping well, and thanks to my little alien buddy inside, sleep meds don’t last long enough to make it worth the effort of popping a pill.”

  “Even Lazzinairs need their rest.”

  “I know, but it’s odd. For most of my life I’ve slept alone and preferred it that way. Now Wolf and I have been together for only a few months, but if I’m not curled against him, listening to his heartbeat, all I do is lay awake and stare into the darkness.”

  “That’s not odd,” said Bartonelli. “It’s love.” She and Jumper were playing a game of Nuk’um All on the sergeant’s tablet. With Wolf’s surgeries over, Ski had relented and allowed the cat and his hair to enter the room with the cyber-operating tank.

  Fitz coiled her fingers around Wolf’s slack hand and brushed her thumb against his palm. “With everything going so well, the transfer of power and setting up Ari’s new government, we thought now would be a good time for him to drop out of sight and have this work done. And of course, that’s when the gods of chance decide to kick us both in the head.”

  Ski checked the monitor tracking Wolf’s vitals as they climbed toward the normal range. “Yig knows, that smiling bastard creating his own Lazzinairs is bad enough, but this bug thing? You don’t think Logan’s jerking you around, do you? Just told you that to make sure he got to see Wolf?”

  “With something as horrible as a second Bug War hanging over us, I can’t afford to take that chance. You knew Logan Von Drager better than any of us. You two had a relationship; what do you think?”

  “Relationship?” Ski snorted. “We met up a time or two at medical conferences, and after the meetings we…” She searched for the correct word. “…frolicked.”

  Fitz sputtered.

  “What, you don’t think this old lady can frolic?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about you. Von Drager seems to be…ah, wound a bit tight.”

  “He’s not always like that. We first met during a conference on Beckswold, and discovered we shared a mutual interest in the Lazzinair Puzzle. Logan, you may have noticed, is easy on the eyes, and I wondered why he hooked up with an old broad like me, but the mercenaries’ third rule is ‘Never turn down a good lay when it’s offered.’ So I didn’t.” Memory brought a smile to the doctor’s freckled features.

  “We would talk afterward. I’d ask what he’d say to August Lazzinair if we could magically bring him back from the dead.” Ski picked up a tablet and punched in data a little too savagely. “He was probably laughing his ass off at me the whole time.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case. He seemed truly concerned about whether you survived the attack at Ishtok Base.”

  “Back on Rainbow,” Ski said, “when you told me he was working for the Empire, I thought maybe he hooked up with me only to get information. I’ll admit to being pissed.”

  “You’ll get your chance to talk to him tomorrow. I’m assigning him to work with you.”

  “Right now I’m not sure if I want to deck him or kiss him.”

  Fitz gave a half-hearted chuckle. “Wolf and I hoped to get away for a few days, just the two of us. He knew of a little cabin up in the Cloud River Wilderness—no computers, no comms, not even a tri-D unit.”

  “Yeah, and you made it plain that I wasn’t invited,” Jumper complained. “Maybe Faydra and I’ll go on our own holiday—no humans allowed.”

  “I think the chance of any of us taking a vacation has been flushed out the airlock.” Fitz rolled her shoulders and, as she raised her hand to rub the back of her neck, noticed the fine tremors.

  So did Ski, her eyes narrowing. “I thought I told you to lay off the stims.”

  “It’s not like I have a choice. I’ve been a little pushed for time.”

  “Stims aren’t going to help any more. The symbiont has to clear them out of your system, so in the long run it’s a net loss to your energy levels. You’re better off loading up on the elixir.” She studied Fitz’s face. “Or eating regularly. With the organism’s higher metabolic demands on your body, you don’t have the option of skipping meals now.”

  “Things have been so hectic for the last few days that I haven’t had the luxury of regular dining hours, so I’ve been living on hits of the elixir and emptied out my onboard reservoir. The stims are just to get me through until I can find a few minutes to reload it.”

  “For Yig’s sake. Just because you appear indestructible don’t mean you are. Now, take off your jacket and sit over there.”

  Fitz stripped off her black jacket, draped it over the back of the chair, and pulled up the high-necked armorcloth undershirt. The three faint spots on her side below her ribs could easily be mistaken for blemishes, but were the ports for her pharmacopeia’s reservoirs, embedded just below the skin. Ski returned with an infuser loaded with the same pale fluid that flowed into Wolf’s veins, and slipped the needle through the skin and into the port with such practiced skill that Fitz hardly felt it. The negative pressure in the reservoir sucked in the viscous fluid. As soon as she received a green light on her pharmacopeia readout, Fitz dialed up a hit of the nutrient solution and savored the warm flush spreading through her body, much like the sleepy contentedness after a particularly large holiday dinner. She sighed as the symbiont’s chorus inside her head smoothed out into a comfortable babble.

  Ski snorted as she picked up the empty infuser. “You’d think I was some kind of drug pusher. At least this stuff is good for you, but it’s no substitute for a decent meal. When he gets up, Wolf is going to be hungry enough to eat a neubeast whole, so go someplace nice for dinner. Doctor’s orders. And it wouldn’t hurt for him to be seen in public after he’s been out of circulation these past few days. People talk.”

  Fitz slipped back into her jacket. “What have you found out about that needler I sent?”

  Ski crossed the room and brought up a file on her computer. “Nasty piece of work, that. Only one use for it, and that’s killing Lazzinairs. Needlers aren’t usually lethal weapons. Load-outs generally range from mild tranqs to paralytics.”

  Bartonelli abandoned her game with the cat to join them as they studied the display. “They’re ideal for taking out sentries. It’s subsonic, almost no sound, and leaves an easily overlooked entry wound. If you’re good, they think it’s only an insect bite, and then it’s sleepy time. Although I have heard of some sleaze-bag bounty hunters who load them with toxins if they don’t care whether their target is dead or alive.”

  The computer displayed an exploded view of the pistol, revealing a canister packed with hundreds of tiny darts. Further magnification revealed that the injector at the tip of each had been replaced with a sliver of a flat black substance.

  “Those are made from the blades of Tzrakas?”

  “That would be my guess,” Ski answered. “We don’t believe the virus-like organism is in all parts of their bodies, but we do know it’s in the blades. And you could make a lot of these darts with a single one.”

  “Not much material there. Would that be enough to kill one of us?”

  “Wouldn’t be pretty, but it would do the job. I ran some tests on a sample of my blood and, for comparison, some the sergeant supplied. In a person uninfected with the symbiont, it enters the body and replicates at an astonishing rate, then goes dormant in the cells and waits. If the symbiont is introduced it reactivates and attacks, destroying it, but in the proce
ss the hemotoxin it produces kills the host.

  “If one of us were nailed with that needler, would there be time to do something about it?” Fitz asked.

  “Possibly, if you cut the dart out fast enough.”

  “Yeah, but that’s the problem with needlers,” Bartonelli said. “Sometimes you don’t even feel it, or you think it’s an insect sting. Only way to protect yourself is to always wear body armor.”

  “Unless you live your life in a full combat suit, there’s always some skin exposed. Like your hands.” Fitz raised her arms, palms out stretched.

  “And you’d have to wear a helmet,” the doctor said. “I suspect even a Lazzinair isn’t immune to a couple of slugs through the brain.”

  A series of chimes from the bed monitor interrupted them. “Ah, the sleeper awakens,” said Ski. “You get the dubious pleasure of telling Wolf that while he was asleep, Tritico declared open season on us.”

  Fitz’s answering chuckle was little more than a growl as she went to Wolf’s side, Jumper following.

  Despite his stillness, she sensed he was awake. As she brushed his bare shoulder, he gasped and his body tensed in all the right places. Her laughter suggested the pleasures she planned for him as she hovered above him, letting her tongue taste the outline of his mouth. The response was immediate; his tongue invaded her mouth with a blistering need that made her ache to crawl onto the medical bed and straddle him then and there, audience be damned.

  As she lifted her mouth, his teeth seized her lower lip, refusing to release her. Pleasure quickly accelerated to pain. Fitz pulled back, tasting blood on her lip.

  Jumper leaped onto the gurney, head-butted Wolf’s face, then jerked back, hissing. “That’s not him, Boss Lady. That’s not Wolf.”

  The man opened his eyes, a glitter in his azure gaze, and one side of his mouth twisted in a wicked smirk.

  The mind behind those roguish eyes did not bear the slightest resemblance to the man Fitz knew and loved.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A void hovered behind him, a blank wall, dark and impenetrable. The Nameless Man awoke with an edginess that warned he’d been trapped in a nightmarish dreamscape, but he remembered only fear and anger, and a terrible sense of loss. The present consisted solely of sound and smell. And sight, but his training warned him to keep his eyes closed and his consciousness hidden until he’d assessed the situation.

  Training? He couldn’t remember any training, and yet the knowledge was there. Couldn’t remember how he’d come to be here, or why. Or who. He didn’t even know if he was he…or she. Or something else entirely. Could not recall…a name.

  He pushed down the panic and concentrated with the senses available to him. Sounds hammered against his brain.

  Too loud.

  His mind reached out instinctively to turn down the noise inside his head, and a jumble of icons and alphanumerics blazed in the darkness, a computer display seemingly written on the underside of his eyelids. The digital chaos receded as he thought-clicked on the programs, banishing each to a toolbar marching down the right side of his mind-sight.

  How had he known to do that?

  If not who, he at least had a name for what he was. An augie. A cybernetically augmented…what? Man? He thought of himself as male, but still had no memory of any life he might have lived before a few seconds ago.

  A cloying scent clung to his body, clogging his nostrils and coating the back of his throat, confirming he’d just come out of an operating tank. But why had they wiped his memory before making him a cyborg?

  Around him, electronics chirped and muttered in a large echoing room. The inhead display fed him dimensions of the space and pinpointed three voices, all female, 3.7 meters away. A warm laugh bubbled from one, igniting a surge that raced down his nervous system straight to his groin.

  Oh, most definitely male.

  A set of footsteps moved toward him. A small woman, judging by the short, quick stride. He dialed up his hearing and listened to the whisper of her clothing sliding across her skin, the cadence of her heartbeat accelerating as she came to his side. In the back of his mind, a wordless whispering began, swelling in intensity as she grew closer. A half-remembered scent of woodsy soap mingled with the dark, musky womaness of her, making him ache to drag her to the floor and bury himself deep inside her.

  Fingertips brushed his bare shoulder, driving a sharp, involuntary gasp from him. Beneath the thin blanket covering his hips, his body responded to the touch. The woman chuckled, deep-throated and appreciative. The feather of her breath across his face told him that she leaned over him, but he didn’t realize how close until her tongue traced the outline of his mouth. He parted his lips and pulled her in, their tongues moving together in an achingly familiar dance. His soul knew this woman, knew every dark and sweet recess of her mouth, every caress of her tongue, every secret pleasure of her body.

  When the need to breathe forced her to break the kiss, he refused to let go, seizing her lower lip in his teeth. He needed to see her, this wanton angel who felt so familiar to him, and he left the safety of his darkness to open his eyes.

  His soul might know her, but his mind had no clue who she was.

  Not a classic beauty, her not-quite blonde hair curled around a face with features too strong, a jaw too stubborn. This woman needed no one’s protection, nor would she allow anyone to dominate her. She would stand shoulder to shoulder with him in a fight, and Yig help the person who found himself facing her in battle. Eyes the cool gray of sea fog locked gazes with him, then darkened to the color of cold iron. Her arm blurred up with a speed too quick to follow, her fingers clamping around his neck and jamming the air in his windpipe. Ice frosted her words.

  “Who the hell are you, and where is Wolf?”

  The Nameless Man reached to pry her fingers from his throat, but his arm came up too fast, too hard, and slammed into her shoulder, knocking her to the side. She went down, her hold dragging him from the gurney. They crashed to the floor together, him on top, and his weight drove a sharp expletive from her. Her grip loosened enough for him to pull free. She swung for his jaw, but the blanket that had been covering him fouled her blow and he jerked back in time. He jumped to his feet, the world twisting around him oddly, skewing his perception. He stumbled, his bare feet slid on the slick tile floor, and he clutched at the bed to stay upright.

  Gray Eyes threw off the encumbering blanket, but before she could rise, he tipped the gurney over on her. He lurched back, blundering into another woman in a white medical coat. A cup of coffee flew out of her hand.

  Escape. He had to get out of here. If he didn’t, he was a dead man.

  He leapt toward the door and flew several meters in a shallow, uncontrolled arc, his legs churning and arms flailing. He managed to get his feet underneath him as he landed, but he moved too fast to keep his balance. The blank white of a tiled wall rushed at him with unbelievable speed. Twisting at the last second, he collided with bone-jarring force. Tiles cracked; pain lanced through his shoulder. His ears ringing, he staggered back, blinking, but his perception felt all wrong. The doctor he’d knocked down still hung suspended, falling backward, arms outstretched. The tumbling coffee cup hadn’t reached the floor yet. Initially, he thought time had stalled, but a brown blob of liquid appeared at the lip of the spinning cup and swam out.

  The Nameless Man laughed as he recognized it. It had to be the weird hyperawareness cyborgs slipped into to comprehend the world around them when moving at hyperkinetic speed. He raised his hands and stared at them.

  The things he could do now. No one could stop him.

  The gurney clattered and bounced across the floor, propelled by an awesome force. The gray eyed woman flipped to her feet with frightening grace. For the first time he noticed her black uniform. SpecOps. A Black Jacket. That meant another augie. She charged, ripping through the slow motion blizzard of data cubes, tablets and broken glass still raining down around her, moving like a projectile through a snow storm.

&nbs
p; Get out. Get out, now.

  He sprang for the door, desperate to evade her, but she tracked him with the focus of a missile’s guidance system. The force of her body slamming into him drove him face first into the wall. Blood filled his mouth as his teeth snapped shut on his tongue. With her fist tangled in his hair, she clawed at the back of his skull.

  He couldn’t let her pull his spike and shut down his cybernetic functions. If she did, he would die, cease to exist. Of that he had no doubt. With all his augmented strength, he pushed back, forcing them away from the wall. He reached behind him, seized her collar, and flipped her over his shoulder. Her grip tore free, at the cost of a handful of his hair, but in his panic the pain was easy to ignore. Her fingers wrapped around his ankle and brought him down as he tried to leap away. She straddled his chest and pinned his head, her hands a vice on either side of his face. She leaned in, screamed at him.

  “Stop it, Wolf. Just stop it.” Her voice had the knife-hard sting of command, but tears streamed down her face.

  He swung, a wild, uncontrolled flail, driving her off to the side. Before she could rise, he gained his feet, grabbed her jacket and belt, and hoisted her over his head. He tossed her high and hard into the plexisteel wall of the tank with a crack that set its robotic arms rattling and swaying. At first he feared the tank would rupture, flooding the room, but the plexisteel held. Her body slid down the glass.

  Only a small dusky-skinned woman stood between him and the door now, bringing a pistol to bear on him. Hesitation hovered in her dark eyes as he charged her. He smashed the weapon aside. The hot flash of the belated shot blazed past his face. He slugged her, then hit her again, sensing something break inside her. Fear drove him, and he smashed his fist into her again and again. The clatter of flying debris told him the augie had fought her way to her feet and would be on him in seconds.

  A long, clumsy leap carried him to the door, but it wouldn’t open. He pounded on it, drove his shoulder into it, but only dented the metal.