Shyra _ K1

by Aline Riva

  "Rik, you're not describing insanity. What you said about being eaten up by a void, maybe it actually was something like that. Something real, something physical."

  He shook his head as he laughed off her theory.

  "We crossed a line, Sin. No one can come back from that and be who they used to be."

  "But I have a theory, hear me out -"

  "No!" he said sharply as his expression changed, "I let you out of the cage for a reason, now get on your fucking knees!"

  She fell to her knees on the grass as Jinx stood over her, eyes blazing as he recalled her betrayal.

  "I don't care about your theories," he told her, "It's time for you to shut your mouth and listen to me. There's a reason why you and the others are still alive after trying to steal my ship - and it's all in your hands now, Sin."

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide as she felt a creeping chill steal over her flesh.

  "What do you mean?" she whispered as her throat went tight.

  He looked down at her, a look of satisfaction on his face as the thought of his plan seemed even more alluring than the sight of her, kneeling there in fear in Cora's sheer gown.

  "I'm only doing this because I love you," he told her darkly, "Sin, you have a choice. Either you kill Harvey and Janey and we carry on as before and all is forgiven, or you buy their freedom and they will both take a measured dose of Paromycin, enough to make them forget they ever left earth. Then I'll take them to the nearest colonised planet and they can find their way back home. My word can be trusted, I'll even take you with me so you can see them walk away from this."

  She shivered as she replied in a hushed voice.

  "What's the price?"

  His eyes were cold as he gave his answer.

  "You will pay with your flesh. We will leave Harvey and Janey on a colony planet and you will return with me and I will go to the med bay and Jody will have everything ready for the procedure - I will change your face and make you into my kind of exotic beauty and yes, the zestion is being taken out. You will feel no pain but I'll make sure you're able to watch every cut and slice. I won't be wiping your memory, I want you to remember. And you will do this of your own free will, you will come to me, you will walk into that room and kneel and kiss my hand."

  She was still trembling, words failed her as she looked to the other cage and blinked away tears.

  "It's your choice," Jinx added, "I know what I would do – I'd kill the pair of them, it's the easiest way. Would you like my rifle or my hunting knife? You can do it now if you're ready. I will of course be holding a blaster to your back the whole time to make sure you don't turn my own weapon on me, but I think you understand the order of things now...What's it to be, Sin?"

  She looked again to the cage, then turned away as Janey and Harvey looked back at her fearfully. Tears ran down her face. As she started to sob, Jinx grabbed her by the arm and turned her around, pushing her back towards the open cage door. Once she was inside he closed the door and locked it and smiled through the bars.

  "I do enjoy this game," he told her as his eyes sparkled, "Because no matter what you decide, I still win!" Then he gave her a wink and left her weeping in the cage as he went back in the direction of the house.

  As the sun went down, after a meal of cooked flesh in a red wine sauce, Jinx and the others went to the poolside, where candles were lit and they drank wine and relaxed as Jinx talked of his plans for Sin.

  "I think she will adjust," he said as he sat back on a comfortable seat and looked over at Mack and Jody, who were embraced on a bench as the water reflected moonlight and in the centre of the patio, flames flickered softly in a round steel fire pit.

  "She won't have any choice no matter what she decides to do." Jody remarked, "She's still staying here with us, there's no third option. I had a feeling something like this would happen – she's very strong willed. I don't think she will be so determined once she's paid a visit to me, how long until you think she will make her choice, Jinx?"

  Mack laughed.

  "You might as well book that appointment now, Jody – patient coming in for heavy modification. I bet she chooses to pay with her flesh. I can't see her killing anyone."

  Jinx smiled.

  "I'd love it if she killed them! If I went over there now and she asked me for the knife, I'd stand back and watch her cover that cage with blood and be proud of her. But I'd still be happy with her surrender – we did agree at the start she got to keep her mind. Her body has been mine all the long. She's still got her deal."

  "And what a deal it is!" exclaimed Zeke as he joined them, sitting on a sun lounger with a wine glass in his hand, "Tell me Jody, if she chooses to pay, what happens to the flesh you take off? I fancy cooking it."

  Jody leaned back on the bench, resting her head against Mack's shoulder as she thought about his question.

  "Well... if I cut away any facial tissue, you can have that. The tongue is being split, not cut out so that's off the menu – and definitely no tissue containing the piercing – that could be lethal!"

  Zeke laughed so hard he almost spilled his wine.

  "Too right it could be! There's no way I'm having you chop out half my stomach because zestion fibres are tearing it up."

  "That would be a very high price to pay for eating a little bit of pussy!" Mack said, then he threw back his head and laughed.

  Jinx was still thinking on the question regarding her decision as he looked to the fire and the flames reflected in his gaze.

  "I don't know what she's going to decide," he told them, "But either way I'm going to enjoy the outcome..."

  Night deepened, as stars pricked the sky and the heat cooled, Harvey and Janey were still side by side in the cage. Harvey looked over at Sin, who was curled on the floor with her back to them.

  "I wonder what they talked about today," Harvey said, "Why would he take her out of the cage, then put her back?"

  "Why are any of us still alive?" Janey wondered, "I mean, he should have killed us. Why didn't he do that? We tried to steal his ship. He cut Lola's throat just for talking back at him. We should be dead by now."

  "Actually that worries me too," Harvey replied, "He's got something planned... something terrible. And I think it involves her."

  As they looked over to the other cage, her back was still turned and it seemed she was sleeping, but Sin was awake, her eyes set on the blackness of the sky, that void of madness Jinx had spoken of was elusive to her, she saw night sky and stars, mapping the way home to earth, far away. But escape was out of the question now.

  Sin had turned over the choices a thousand times – killing Harvey and Janey would be the way out, but she could not pick up the rifle or the knife and harm either of them, she was not bitten by his madness...

  Had it been a bite? Or maybe some kind of parasite had crawled into his body, through his ear or under his skin, there was something... It seemed there may be a physical cause for the whole of the group of survivors to have been afflicted by the same madness after the crash, but now was not the time to consider that theory...

  It appeared to be a simple choice to make, kill the other two, or pay with her flesh. Of course she wanted to save herself – but the thought of killing Harvey and Janey was something she found impossible to contemplate. Her thoughts turned again to escape, then tears filled her eyes as she guessed no escape was possible now.

  As the last trace of warmth left the air and a chill descended, the piercing felt like ice and sent an ache deep into her body, a reminder of how far those alien fibres were travelling, readying to break off and escape into the bloodstream and kill her without warning. Removing the zestion was inevitable now, if she wanted to stay alive... She slipped her hand between her thighs to try and keep out the cold that travelled deep into her body and then she lay there in silence, waiting for daybreak, knowing when the sun rose, Jinx would be impatient for an answer to his question - and she still didn't know how to make such an impossible choice...

  Wh
en morning came, Jinx woke early and was up before Zeke had cooked breakfast, while Mack and Jody lay embracing in their room, he was halfway across the field, heading for the cages, and as Harvey and Janey slept sitting up against the back of the cage, Janey resting her head on Harvey's shoulder, he went over to the other cage, where Sin was kneeling at the door.

  "Do you have an answer for me?" he asked as he stood there keenly, "Hurry up Sin, I don't have all day!"

  She looked up at him as she blinked eyes reddened by tears that had since dried.

  "Let me out of the cage, Rik."

  "Have you decided?" he asked.

  "Yes I have."

  She said no more as he unbolted the door and then opened it. As she got out, he watched her intently as she stood before him, but the look in her eyes gave no hint to her choice.

  "Oh no," Jinx said, wagging his finger, "You're not making me play a guessing game! Give me your answer, Sin... Or shall I just go and fetch the rifle for you and then stand back and watch you blow the pair of them away?"

  There was a hopeful sparkle in his eyes.

  "I'll pay with my my flesh."

  As she knelt before him and took his hand and kissed it, Jinx looked utterly stunned. He pulled away from her grip, unable to truly believe she had taken the hardest choice – to be remade in an alien image...

  "Is that really your choice?"

  She started to smile, knowing at once she had caught him out – it was another power game, he had been hoping she would ask for a weapon, kill the others and join him.

  "The hardest choice would have been to kill. I'm not a killer, Jinx. Have you noticed how none of us have chosen to join you? That's because we're not infected with whatever changed you on that empty planet."

  He glared at her.

  "We crossed a boundary – evolved into a higher way of living!"

  "Something got inside you and changed the way you think!" she got up off her knees, "Rik, you and the others all share the same tendencies – identical! Even if it had been a psychological thing, you would have had some differences in your needs. But you don't, you all have the same desires. All savage, all need to eat your own kind and you all have massively high sex drives. Reason and logic and humanity is stripped away by whatever has done this to you! I think it's an infection or a parasite, I think you all got infected on that planet where nothing could survive – nothing was there because something else got to other life forms long ago and made them turn on their own kind!"

  His jaw dropped, he stepped back and then he shook his head.

  "No, no...you're wrong..."

  "Maybe I'm right! Rik, if it's a parasite of some kind, if it's feeding off you in some way, you could die."

  Anger burned in his eyes.

  "Did you spend all night thinking up this shit? What is this, some kind of distraction? You've made your choice! Now I'm going to take Harvey and Janey and lock them in a secure room on the ship and then we are flying off to the nearest colony planet and they are out of our lives!"

  As he turned away from her and headed over to the other cage, she felt powerless to stop him as Jinx ordered them out, then pulled his knife and started to walk them towards the ship.

  "Jinx!" she yelled, and as she ran after him, the thought crossed her mind that maybe madness had touched her in some way, for her to be held captive all night and then go running after her captor, but she trusted her instinct, she was very sure her theory was right, then there was also the fact that she had developed a madness all of her own, something that had not touched her life for many years, that madness being love, ever present no matter how hard she tried to reject it. She had found a man who was crying out to be helped, a man who under the surface of insanity inflicted on him by a force he could not control, was still locked in there beneath it all - what was left of him she could only guess - but Ritchie Gregory Mason Jinx, co pilot of the tragic Pharaoh disaster, mattered to her. It also mattered that she found a way to prove her theory and as she boarded the ship to join him, she knew she had crossed a line of her own – what ever the outcome of this, her life would never be the same again, because she was determined to prove she was right and save Jinx in the process...

  As Harvey and Janey were taken to a small windowless room, Sin watched as Jinx ordered them into seats, put on their belts and locked them in place, keeping their hands cuffed. Then he went over to an intercom on the wall and pressed it, keying a signal link to the house.

  "Jody...get over here, I need two passengers ready for a return trip. Give just enough Paromycin to make them forget they ever left earth."

  "I'm on my way," she replied, then the intercom fell silent.

  Harvey shot him a look of alarm.

  "You're going to make us forget we ever came here? You're just going to send us on our way and then what, wait a while to be sure we really did forget, and hire yourself another Wolf to bring more victims?"

  Jinx looked past him to Janey, who looked back at him calmly.

  "I would love to forget the shit we've seen and been through," she told him.

  "You seriously want this place to stay a secret? Are you mad? They're fucking lunatics, Janey!"

  "I just want to go home," she said quietly as a tear ran down her face.

  Harvey glared in anger at Jinx, who ignored his rage, stepped out of the room and locked the door behind him.

  As Jinx turned from the sealed door, Sin was standing there and she spoke up at once.

  "When Jody has given them the shots want her to see what she can do about the zestion. I'm in pain, I can feel the fibres stretching into me, she has to help me before it's too late!"

  Jinx looked at her doubtfully.

  "You said that last time and tried to fill me with a memory wipe!"

  "I want Jody to help me."

  He ran his gaze down her body, then looked into her eyes, still suspicious of her motivation.

  "Having the zestion removed was the last thing you wanted. Why would you change your mind now?"

  "I don't want it surgically removed, I want to know if there's anything she can use to stop it from bonding the fibres to my body!"

  "I don't think there's anything that can do that, Sin. Ask her but don't expect much because there's no way to reverse it once it takes hold. I'm sorry, I didn't think the risk was so severe – I bought it in an alien market, a lot of others were buying the same kind of stuff, so I thought the rumours about the dangers were nonsense. I put the warnings down to scare stories, I thought maybe the earth government wanted monopoly on zestion for medical use and wanted to stop production of any other purpose - I didn't think it would cause you real harm!"

  Sin looked back at him, seeing a flicker of the real Jinx underneath the urges and actions prompted by whatever had taken hold of him after the crash of the Pharaoh.

  "At first I was scared I'd lose the ability to climax, now I'm worried for my life. I'm guessing before your ship crashed Rik Jinx the flier was a charming and likeable man, probably a womaniser, certainly not entirely stupid but not as clever as he liked to think – which often led to stupid mistakes. You must feel so powerful now the others look up to you..."

  A flicker of hurt registered in his eyes.

  "I said I was sorry! I said I'd spend my life making up for this!"

  "So the choice you gave me was nothing but a trick, maybe a little fantasy in your head about turning me into something like those alien women you find so alluring? You had no intention of letting me go ahead and pay with my flesh, you wanted me to grab the knife and kill Harvey and Janey to turn me into a killer like you are!"

  He smiled as his face flushed, oblivious to her anger.

  "You're too good at working me out!" he said fondly.

  She shook her head.

  "I need to prove my theory to you. I need to find a physical reason for the way you are."

  "Okay," he replied, "When Jody gets here, I'll ask her to check me over, let's see what she thinks of your theory."

 
"If I'm right and you're all affected, she may not want to believe it," Sin reminded him.

  "I just want to prove you wrong," Jinx told her, then he kissed her cheek and headed for the hatch to wait for Jody and the chance to blow away Sin's theory once and for all, so they could get on with their lives in the way that he defined the new normal to be, the only way he could imagine it after the crash of the Pharaoh had changed everything, forever...

  Chapter 10

  Jody reached the ship quickly, Jinx ordered her again to get the shots ready and as Sin turned to call her back as she headed towards the med bay, he caught her arm.

  "Not yet. We have two prisoners to set free. You can talk to Jody on the return flight."

  Sin nodded, then she looked to the sealed door that led to the room where Harvey and Janey were trapped. She suddenly wished she could stop this, because she had no idea just how much of their memories would be wiped – then she thought of Jinx and her theory and blinked away tears as she guessed there was no other way – Harvey was set on telling the world about Shyra-K1, if that happened, there would be no chance of helping Jinx, if her theory was proven right...

  "What's wrong?" Jinx asked, noticing she looked tearful, "I'm not going to change my mind – I am letting them go."

  "I know, I was thinking about you."

  She reached up and placed her hand on his cheek as more tears shone in her eyes and he looked back at her in confusion.

  "Why are you crying?"

  "I'm afraid for you," she said honestly, stroking his face, "All the time I've been watching how you live, you and the others, I knew something was happening that was more than madness! I was trying to work it out and then I realised – this isn't psychological, there's another cause. I'm so sorry for all of you, because if I'm right, you can't live with this forever – the animals were wiped out on that planet because they devoured each other until none were left. They ate their own, they had a taste for their own dead – that means pretty soon you and the others will start to get sick. The purpose of whatever caused this, is not to evolve you into a new way of living – it's killing you, Jinx!"