Deep Penetration; Alien Breeders I

by Stacey St. James

  He seemed as fascinated with her hand as she was with his, studying it intently as he explored the width and length of her palm and each digit. “What feels like the truth to you, child?”

  Emerald sent him a startled look, distracted by the fact that he’d called her ‘child’ just as Tariq had. In a way, it almost sounded like affection the way they’d used it, and yet it carried some unnerving connotations. “Why would you call me a child?”

  He sent her a startled look, seemed to debate a moment, and finally gave her a penetrating look. “Because you are in every sense of the word beyond the fact that you have the body of a fully matured adult. You are an infant.”

  Emerald searched his face for some clue of his age. Beyond the fact that he appeared to be a fully mature adult male, however, she discovered no foundation to base a guess of his actual age. “You’re … older than me?”

  He grinned abruptly, making her belly shimmy in that strange way that was both unnerving and exciting. “Vastly, child … in every sense of the word.”

  Emerald looked away, mulling over everything they’d said, had hinted at without actually telling her anything specific. A horrific thought emerged, grew to be a certainty despite every effort to discount it. “I was dead,” she said finally, turning to search Koryn’s face again. “You pulled me out of this pit. That’s what Tariq meant.”

  He didn’t have to answer. She saw the truth in his eyes. Despite the fact that she’d put the idea together herself from the things they’d hinted at, though, acceptance didn’t come. She felt the ‘sense’ that it was the truth and still couldn’t make herself believe. “That’s why I don’t remember anything. There aren’t any memories. I’m not … real. I’m a clone.”

  Koryn’s hand tightened on hers when she would’ve snatched it away. His expression was hard when she glanced at him angrily and she felt her own anger fade in the face of his. “You are as real as I am—as any natural born thing in this universe! The method of your birth and development didn’t change who and what you are. I merely took the seeds of life and planted them in fertile soil to grow—accelerated, of course—we needed mature adults, but the memories are yours—and they will return to you. They’re just as much a part of your DNA as the color of your eyes and hair!”

  He looked away. “That’s a part of the mystery here. You should remember. You should all remember and no one does.”

  Emerald’s heart leapt jerkily. “There are others?” she gasped, setting aside his other strange comment for the moment.

  He shrugged. “You are the first woman. I regenerated two males before you. They also had no memories to speak of—only the most basic, just as you have—and their instincts, of course.”

  “But … they’re alive? And they’re … humans from my time?”

  He studied her face. “As far as we can determine—yes.”

  “But … they might remember me! If I’m familiar to them, I might trigger memories or they might trigger mine!”

  His gaze slid away. “Not likely.”

  “Why? You said I should have my memories! I don’t understand. I thought all memory was stored in the brain, but if that’s true then maybe I only need to see someone familiar to begin to remember.”

  His lips tightened. “It’s entirely possible that in your time scientists didn’t know how to turn on that part of the DNA strand or even that it existed or what it was, but much if not all of the memory is ‘backed up’ in the DNA, very like a secondary recording device. This isn’t ordinary memory loss, Emerald. If it was, then familiar things might trigger the return, but we found you here and you’ve remembered nothing.”

  “That’s not true! It looks familiar! It’s just … changed beyond true recognition. If I knew the men, though ….”

  “I had to implant false memories in their minds,” he confessed explosively. “The … void was too disturbing for them. They began exhibiting signs of onset psychosis. It was either that or keep them sedated and possibly do more damage. The chances are slim, now, that they’ll recall anything about their past lives.”

  Emerald stared at him in dismay. “You … put false memories in their minds?” she gasped, horrified. “But … you changed who they were!”

  “There was no other option! If I hadn’t, they would’ve been completely useless to us!”

  Emerald felt her jaw go slack. Fear chased the shock in rapid succession. “Useless? What use to you have for us?” she asked faintly.

  He sent her a look she found hard to decipher and looked away. An expression of relief flickered over his features. Following the direction of his gaze, Emerald saw that Tariq was striding briskly toward them. Koryn stood up abruptly. “I have to get back.”

  Tariq’s gaze flickered over her face and then he glanced at Koryn’s retreating back. When he met Emerald’s gaze again, there was wariness and speculation in his eyes.

  “He suggested we might be useless to the Anunnaki,” Emerald said, her voice quavering with unnamed fears. “What did he mean?”

  Tariq rolled his eyes. “Imbecile,” he muttered.

  Emerald jolted to her feet. “What did he mean?”

  His lips tightened, but after a moment he seemed to force the anger back. “We mean you no harm, child. Surely you have had time to understand that much?”

  Emerald swallowed a little convulsively, feeling her alarm waver. How much could she believe of what she’d been told, though? “What did he mean, then? And why do both of you call me a child when I’m not?”

  Tariq smiled faintly, lifting his hands and settling one on each of her shoulders. “You find that insulting? It isn’t meant to be, I assure you. It’s a term of endearment.”

  Warmth fluttered through her, but doubt, too. Why would they feel any affection for her? Because she was their prize experiment?

  “You are human—a child of the Anunnaki.”

  Emerald blinked at him. “A child …? You’re saying we’re the same?”

  Tariq glanced around and then led her to a place to settle that was out of the direct sunlight. “I promised to explain what I could,” he said when they’d settled. “My people found this world long ago. The humanoids that inhabited it then were barely more than animals. In the beginning, they were merely considered handy for experiments.” He shrugged at her expression. “I promised the truth. I can paint a prettier picture if you like. I’m not particularly proud of my ancestors in that sense, but then again, I wasn’t their keeper. I had nothing to do with what they did.”

  “I’d rather have the truth,” Emerald said stiffly.

  He nodded. “We were just exploring genetics then. They were close enough to our own species to make them ideal for the experiments—and simple enough to make them malleable. We re-engineered them in our own image, altered their DNA until it matched our own—more or less. This wasn’t a swift process. It took generations of humans to perfect the strain.” He paused again, seemed to wrestle with something, and finally shrugged. “Part of the reason was that, in the beginning, it didn’t occur to them to try. They were far more interested in seeing what the limitations were and beginning to understand genetics better. There were … other medical experiments, as well. Transplantations, hybridizations of two or more species. This world was little more than an enormous lab to build our own understanding of the sciences.

  “Eventually, however, we managed to produce a pure species identical to our own from the native population and, once we had, we realized the true value of them. They were our insurance of the continuance of our own species. They—you—became our baseline when we began to manipulate our own DNA in our quest for perfection. For many years, we were guardians of this world and then, as our children ‘grew up’ we came less and less often, checking from time to time to make certain we still had our insurance in case of need, testing to make certain the strain was still pure enough to use as a baseline, but leaving the Earth primarily in the hands of our children.

  “The reason I thought the name might be
familiar to you is that the ancients of this world considered our people gods—because we told them we were. It made it … easier to gain their trust and their cooperation. And because they believed we were gods and worshipped us, we became part of the history they recorded for future generations.

  “It wouldn’t have been necessary except that we needed to test their learning capabilities and behavioral modifications as part of the process. The alternative, however—to cage them or enslave them with our superior strength and technology—wasn’t considered … conducive to our experiments. We needed to keep them in a more or less natural setting to get accurate data.”

  When he ceased to speak, Emerald mulled over what he’d told her, trying to consider it objectively. It wasn’t easy to ignore the churning sense of betrayal and yet it was that very thing that made it feel like the truth. “That’s what Koryn meant about us being of use to the Anunnaki?”

  Anger transformed Tariq’s face into a frightening mask. She was relieved when she discovered that anger wasn’t, apparently, directed at her.

  “Yes,” he growled. “We came to take our children home … only to discover that something had befallen our nursery and apparently destroyed what we’d come to consider our insurance of the continuance of our species.”

  Chapter Three

  A wave of nausea rolled through Emerald. Despite the fact that she’d been skeptical about just how important she was to them and the seemingly affectionate nature of their attitude toward her, she realized nothing even close to the truth had occurred to her.

  The Anunnaki had returned to collect their guinea pigs and discovered some predator had apparently gotten into the ‘cage’ and wiped them out. So they were very busily digging for remains to try to resurrect the species because they’d finally reached a point where they had need of them.

  And she still didn’t know what purpose they were supposed to serve.

  The Anunnaki were neither allies nor enemies of the human race. They didn’t consider them significant enough to see them in either light.

  “I think I’d like to go back to the ship now, if it’s alright?”

  Tariq sent her a keen look, but he merely nodded and rose to escort her.

  The truth was, she didn’t want to go back to the ship at all. She wanted to escape, but as Tariq had pointed out—to where? This place might truly be Earth, and yet it was as alien to her as if it was another world. It might as well be one. Beyond that, both of them had told her there weren’t any humans left to run to.

  She wasn’t sure she believed that—or much that they’d told her, for that matter, but she had eyes in her head. This city had been abandoned long ago and if it had, it seemed to her that, regardless of how far or how fast she ran, she would only find more of the same. It wasn’t reasonable to think otherwise.

  Her head was throbbing with the endless round of conflicting thoughts and emotions by the time they reached the ship again. She was also limping, although she did her best to hide it—from pride, she supposed. Her feet had begun to feel sticky, though, and she was fairly certain the boots had rubbed blisters and then rubbed the skin off.

  Koryn, she discovered, had beaten them back to the ship. As they approached, he and several other men were directing some sort of robotic cart up the gangplank. Her stomach lurched. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what it was beneath the tarp that was so valuable to them.

  She stopped abruptly, unwilling to move any closer. Tariq sent her a curious look, but returned his speculative gaze to the cart almost at once. When they’d entered the ship, he took her arm and walked her up the gangplank.

  He was frowning when they reached the corridor, scanning her speculatively. “You’re limping.”

  “The boots are too big,” Emerald said evenly. “It’s hard to walk in them.”

  “Take them off. You don’t need them now.”

  Reluctance flickered through her. Too big or not, the boots were some protection for her feet and if she gave them up she wouldn’t have anything if she decided to take her chances and flee the tender mercies of the Anunnaki. “I’m used to them now,” she lied.

  His lips tightened. “Remove them.”

  Rebellion flickered through her, but she bent down and pulled them off, returning her borrowed boots ungraciously by throwing them down. “I suppose you want the suit, too?” she asked tightly.

  “Don’t pretend to misunderstand me,” he growled. “Why the fuck didn’t you say anything? Your feet are raw and this is not the sort of place you want to pick up an infection! The micro organisms have had generations to outstrip any immunities you might have!”

  Snatching her off her feet, he swept her up into his arms as if she was no more than the child he referred to her as. Emerald would’ve tried to thwart him if he hadn’t pounced on her too fast for her to grasp his intentions. “Put me down! I can walk!”

  “You aren’t going to, though,” he growled, striding so swiftly down the corridor that the stir of air whipped her hair around her face.

  As little as she liked to admit it, even to herself, the man was intimidating beyond his size, as if that wasn’t intimidation enough! She felt as if she was being hauled away by a giant and the really unnerving part was that that wasn’t all that far from the truth. She had only to look at his face at such close range, the ‘wall’ of his chest, and the size of the arms and hands coiled around her to feel like a pigmy. She was far enough from the floor in his arms for her belly to quiver with a fear of heights she hadn’t even realized she had.

  It went way beyond being made to feel ‘dainty and feminine’, maybe mostly because there was nothing at all lover-like about his hold or his manner. His attitude was more like an angry parent furious with childish stupidity that had resulted in an injury.

  It cowed her, wilted the brief flare of rebellion. Even that analogy wasn’t accurate, she realized with dismay, because parent and child implied affection and concern and his only concern was that she’d damaged one of the guinea pigs they’d worked so hard to resurrect. She wasn’t at all surprised when they arrived at his destination and she discovered it was a med-center. He spoke to the man who seemed to be in charge and then plunked her down on a gurney unceremoniously.

  The man, who was clearly a doctor, lifted her feet one by one and examined the raw spots with an expression tight with disgust. Feeling chastised when he flicked a glance at her face and moved away, Emerald didn’t attempt to object when he returned with a small basin to catch the fluids he pored over her feet. Whatever it was stung like fire on the raw, bleeding patches, though, and it took all she could do to maintain a façade of stoicism. The pain brought tears to her eyes and a knot to her throat. When he’d finished torturing her with the fluid fire, he dabbed some sort of pasty goop on the spots and then wrapped her feet with something similar to gauze. She braced herself when he left and returned with something that looked a lot like a syringe, but discovered that, at least, wasn’t painful. It felt more like a puff of air when he pressed it to her arm than a shot.

  Tariq listened in grim silence as the doctor spoke to him in their language and then scooped her up again. She had to suppose his anger had worn itself out since he didn’t seem to be in nearly as much of a hurry to return her to her cabin as he’d been before, and she simply didn’t believe he’d been in a such a rush to get her to a medic over nothing more ‘life threatening’ than blisters, raw or not. Anger had set the pace.

  She would’ve almost preferred it as they left again. She wanted to be alone and the sooner the better. She was tired and she felt battered and emotional from the things she’d learned, Tariq’s anger, and the doctor’s complete disregard for whatever pain he might be inflicting. It seemed to emphasize her status as an experimental animal rather than a person and that thought plunged her spirits to lowest ebb.

  To her dismay, he didn’t return her to the cabin where they’d first put her. Instead, he carried her to his own. She held out some hope for a few moments that
he’d only done so to appropriate the clothing he’d loaned her, but he disabused her of that notion as soon as she’d stripped and handed it back.

  “Consider yourself a prisoner of the Anunnaki,” he said tightly. “You’ll stay here. If I’m not here, there’ll be a guard outside.”

  “Where would I go even if I wanted to escape?” she demanded plaintively.

  His gaze flickered over her face. “You are too hardheaded for your own good. I admire your spirit, but I’ve no intention of allowing it to overcome your good sense … or my admiration mine.”

  Emerald swallowed convulsively. “You could imprison me in the other cabin just as easily and I wouldn’t be around to bother you!”

  He moved closer, capturing her face in one hand and tilting her head back so that she had to look at him. “It won’t bother me, Emerald. I can assure you of that.”

  The implication in the way he looked at her if not what he’d said should have frightened her. Instead, it only suffocated her spirits further. She didn’t feel up to the challenge of trying to protect herself. She felt as weak, and lost, and afraid as the child they called her. Tears welled in her eyes in spite of all she could do. “Why didn’t you just leave me in peace?”

  Some of the ruthless aggression left his face. For a moment, she almost thought he would kiss her again and her belly fluttered with anticipation. Instead, his face hardened again. “If I had, you wouldn’t be of any use to me,” he said coldly.

  She wanted to fling herself down on his bunk and cry her heart out when he’d left her. Instead, she pulled the coverlet from the bed, wrapped it around herself, and curled up in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the room. Her chest ached with the tightness of unshed tears she refused to give in to. Her thoughts were no comfort and did nothing to ease the ache.

  Everyone couldn’t be gone! She couldn’t accept that. She thought she had to accept that she was, in truth, on Earth and that the Anunnaki had resurrected her from a speck of DNA left behind. And if she accepted that, then she had to accept that a great deal of time had passed since whatever it was that had happened, but she couldn’t believe the human race was extinct! Somewhere out there, there were survivors. There had to be! They’d existed for thousands of years, fought everything Mother Nature could throw at them, and survived—despite the odds against them. Whatever had happened, there would’ve been some with the cunning, determination, and luck to make it and, in the time that had passed, they would’ve multiplied.