by Lucas, Naomi
It would be better if Hysterian didn’t know she existed. The longer she stayed under his radar, the easier it would be to destroy him. If he saw her coming…she was as good as dead.
His heavy stare bore into her, and as it did, her anxiety grew. Could he read her intentions? Did he see through her mask? Did Cyborgs really read minds?
Alexa’s fear spiked. This was too much, too fast. She wasn’t ready. Her fingers trembled.
No one should be subjected to this murderous Cyborg’s intimidation.
Hysterian stepped aside, breaking eye contact with her, startling her out of her rising panic.
“Raul, you can go now. We’ll meet you in the lab,” he ordered.
“I think—” Raul began.
Hysterian scowled at Raul, and she never saw a man cower so fast. Alexa was sure she’d been cowering a moment ago. Raul gave her an apologetic look as he fled.
It was just her and Hysterian now.
For nearly twelve years, she dreamed of this moment. She was sixteen when she’d discovered her dad’s body. This moment, in her head, was her getting justice, with Hysterian on the floor, waiting for the final blow, unable to stop her.
This moment never had her recovering from a near panic attack.
“Captain”—she swallowed, trying not to wither when his gaze returned to her—“what can I do for you?” His pupils jittered, but it happened so fast she couldn’t be sure.
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Dear,” he said, reaching out his hand.
Alexa stared at it.
‘We’re not supposed to get too close.’ Raul’s warning fluttered through her head.
Hysterian’s hand was gloved, covered like the rest of him. She recalled rumors about his skin on Elyria… One touch: bliss or death.
This is a test.
Holding back her need to wipe her palm on her suit, she clasped his hand. His fingers wrapped tightly around hers, and his thumb pressed down into the back of her hand, trapping it so thoroughly that fear zipped up her spine.
Their hands shook once before she jerked it out of his grasp.
“Nice to…meet you, Captain,” she managed, pressing her nails into her palm. “Are you okay?”
Hysterian’s head cocked.
Alexa wished she could read his expression, but his mouth was covered.
She didn’t even know what Hysterian truly looked like. It bothered her. She liked to imagine he was the ugliest motherfucker there ever was, but she knew that wasn’t true. She had a picture of him facing away, looking at something outside the frame, in the lining of her bag. Just the contour of his face proved he was handsome.
All Cyborgs were uncannily attractive.
Fuck them. A lot of people are attractive and are evil.
“I run hot, Dear.”
“Is that why you cover yourself up?” she asked before she could think better of it.
“Do you always ask so many idiotic questions of your superiors?”
Her lips pursed. “No, sir. I apologize. You startled me, that’s all. I’ll get out of your way and head for the menagerie.” She needed to get out of here before she asked or did something really dumb. Getting fired before they even took off would hurt her chances of success.
She couldn’t let her dad down, not after everything she’d been through, everything she risked.
She tried to leave, but he stepped in front of her, blocking the exit again.
“I am teasing,” he said, further confusing her. “I don’t mind questions. Raul told you I was a shifter, and he’s right. I just run hotter than most, but it’s not why I cover myself, Dear.”
The way he said her name made her uncomfortable. “You were listening to Raul and me?”
“Yes.”
She was suddenly very thankful she didn’t grill her coworker for information.
“I’m sorry,” she said, hoping he’d finally move out of her way.
He didn’t.
He took a step toward her. “Why are you sorry?”
“I—” Her mouth snapped closed as she craned her neck to meet his gaze.
“You’re not sorry, are you?”
“No…”
“Don’t ever lie to me, I will know. It’s my job to know.”
Tension filled the space, and the ability to breathe left her. She was afraid of him, she realized, truly afraid. This was her dad’s murderer. She’d never been afraid of him before. Only the ending…
He now knows I exist.
“Yes, sir,” she said, keeping her voice level. “I won’t do it again.”
“Good to know.” He moved out of her way.
Alexa slipped past him as quickly as possible. Like she was moving under the watchful gaze of a gargoyle. One waiting to strike out for blood. She stepped out the door, her heart lodged in her throat.
“Alexa.” His voice was ominous.
She stilled.
“Don’t ever try and get close to me. You won’t survive it. Defective doesn’t come close. That was the briefing you missed.”
Alexa fled, taking his warning to heart.
Two
Alexa entered the menagerie to the sound of a crash and men yelling.
The whole crew was surrounding a large, wooden box on a robotic lift as she neared. Screeches were coming from the inside of it. Something banged within, and the box shook hard, rocking just enough to one side that it almost fell over.
She ran over to help the others keep the box in place.
“Keep your hands on it! Don’t let it fall,” Daniels barked. He caught sight of her. “Where have you been, Dear?” Frustration edged his tone.
“With me,” Hysterian said, joining them around the crate and saving her from yet another reprimand.
She was getting a lot of them recently.
Daniels went back to what he was doing. “Very good,” he muttered.
Hysterian grabbed the back of the box, promptly stopping whatever was inside from overturning it. “Restart the lift. We need to get it into the enclosure. Now!”
Like ants, they all scrambled. The shrieks of what was within grew by the second. Alexa rushed to the enclosure that the lift was heading for and signed into the adjoining computer. She unlocked it, and the glass door to the enclosure rose up. Hysterian lined up the wooden box to the opening, latching it. The enclosure’s door lowered to align with the crate.
His arms were straining, tense and spread wide to keep the box from falling. “Dear, when the beast enters the cage, shut the panel. You may only have a second to do so. If the locust gets out, we’ll have blood on our hands.” He grunted.
Locust? Whatever was inside didn’t sound like a bug. It sounded like a monkey—a large one.
“Yes, Captain.”
Raul and Daniels readied tranquilizer guns.
“Everyone ready?” Hysterian called.
“Yes,” they all said to varying degrees. Pigeon, the ship’s EPED liaison and mechanic, wiped his mouth, and Horace, another member of the bridge crew, placed his hands on his hips. Alexa poised her finger over the door’s trigger.
Hysterian let go of the box, jumped a top, and unlocked a mechanism. The part of the crate lined with the enclosure swung open.
Something big shot out, slamming into the back wall of the reinforced glass cage with a howl. Alexa initiated the panel door shut. Hysterian jumped off the crate and pushed it out of the way as the door came down. The creature spun around, nostrils flaring, and four meaty arms rose only to slam down onto the ground with a resounding bang.
Two large black wings popped out from its back.
It rushed for the door, crashing against it. Alexa stepped back. The glass panel held, and continued to hold as the beast pounded away. When it realized there was no escape, it lifted its head and roared.
Alexa flinched before setting the perimeters on the enclosure to muffle the sound.
Silence filled the space when the primate’s roar was cut off.
The alien creature coiled in
to a ball and rolled, hitting all the sides. It gained speed upon its second roll. The glass wobbled but miraculously held.
“What the ever-living fuck is that thing?” Raul asked.
“An Atrexian locust,” Hysterian answered, the only one of them completely unfazed. He moved to the enclosure’s computer, and Alexa shuffled to the side. He typed something in and a mist poured out from the top, shrouding everything inside and hiding the primate from view for a moment.
“That’s not a fucking locust. I’ve seen locusts at the zoo,” Daniels said.
Hysterian stepped back. “On Atrexia, it’s known as a locust.”
She and the rest of the crew circled the enclosure and stared at the creature raging within. Claws came out to swipe at the glass. Its wings hit the sides.
“They swarm areas destroying everything in their path, consumed with a breeding rage when entering adulthood. Their strength is beyond any animal borne of Earth, their rage indomitable. The males, like this one, will go from one female and to the next, forced to copulate as much as possible. They’re the only beasts we know of that are continuously in heat after they mature. Everything we know about them is in your requisition files.”
“Great,” Raul muttered, glancing at Alexa. “Guess we’ll have our hands full?”
She shrugged.
Hysterian glanced down at her. “It’s your job to keep them alive and contained.”
Hysterian’s abysmally dark eyes twitched again, and her brow furrowed. When he looked away soon after, she stared after him, confused.
Was it just me, or did his pupils bulge? His words came back to her, warning her of getting close. He’s right beside me. She stopped herself from taking an extra step away.
Her eyes narrowed. Is he testing me? Again?
She fisted her hands at her sides.
“And why is it here, on Earth, and in our possession?” Horace asked. “I thought we were picking up and delivering resources, taking the odd jobs the EPED is known for?”
Raul hmphed. “We’re delivering this, obviously. Why else would the Questor have a menagerie and enclosures like these”—he waved his hand at the space around him—“if it wasn’t for animals like that?”
“That wasn’t mentioned in the job description.”
“Maybe because it has nothing to do with the bridge crew.”
“I want to know if there’s dangerous creatures confined in the same space as me,” Horace quipped.
Raul laughed. “What did you think odd jobs stood for?”
“Enough,” Hysterian barked. Raul and Horace glowered at each other. “We have several more to onboard before we can take off. We can talk after we’re in the sky.”
“Yes, Captain,” Raul muttered.
“There’s more?” Daniels asked, sliding his tranq gun into the waist of his pants instead of setting it down.
Daniels wasn’t nearly as handsome as Raul, but was built all the same. With a closely shaved head and stocky features, the bridge officer looked more like infantry than someone who sat all day in front of a computer.
The doors to the lab zipped open behind them, revealing another, smaller crate and several tarmac servicemen.
“There’s always more. This is the job. If you don’t like it, there’s still time to leave.” Hysterian said, heading for the incoming crate, shooting Horace a look.
She watched him walk away, giving orders to the servicemen. He was the only one who wore a black suit, unlike the rest of them, who wore gray. Hysterian’s suit was devoid of metals, straps, or even buttons, and only had his name tag pinned to his right breast and a belt that had a gun attached at his hip.
His suit was strange, tight, leaving nothing to the imagination, unlike what she pictured he would wear. She’d never seen material like the one Hysterian seemed so comfortable in. Because when it came to revealing everything…it did; the bulge of his crotch, his physique, the play of his powerful muscles as he moved. She tried not to check him out each time she saw him, but it was hard not to.
Was vanity his weakness?
He’d been the object of her vengeance for so long; she still couldn’t believe how near he finally was. Before this, she’d only glimpsed him from afar on several occasions, and had her one picture of him.
One truth Alexa realized this day was that Hysterian was fucking intimidating up close, even to other men. She knew killing him was going to be hard, but this just made it all the more difficult.
“Fucking hell,” someone said behind her. “Poor Alexa.”
“Don’t call me—” Alexa faced the enclosure and came face to face with the primate. She jumped, taking a step back.
Daniels and Raul laughed.
“Was wondering when you’d stop eyeing the captain. Looks like the primate likes you, Dear,” Raul teased.
“Seems the monkey knows who the females are in the room,” Daniels added.
Alexa gritted her teeth. The primate stared at her, drool pouring out of the sides of its mouth. Her skin prickled under her uniform. Awareness shot through her. When she finally tore her eyes away from the animal, she discovered her crewmates watching her.
Her spine straightened. “Seems to know who the real boss is,” she said, feigning indifference, trying not to look back at the salivating ape.
“More like it knows who it wants to mate with,” Daniels said.
Alexa pursed her lips. “It and the rest of the males in this room will soon realize they’ll be dead if they tried.”
Raul laughed again and clapped his hand on her shoulder. “We’re just teasing you. Don’t need to get yourself worked up. We’re family now. Don’t you know that?”
“Are you going to do your jobs, or do I need to fire you all?” Hysterian said, shooting them all a withering look. “Keep your hands to yourself, Raul.”
Raul dropped his hand from her shoulder. “Yes, Captain.”
Her crewmates went to help Hysterian with the new crate. She moved to join them when Pigeon, the ship’s manager who’d also lagged behind, stopped her.
“Ms. Dear, if you ever feel uncomfortable, please don’t hesitate to come to me,” he said as if to make her feel better. As if she didn’t know what she was getting herself into. “I’ve been on many ships, traveled through space most of my life, and I know how hard it is to be a female in this field, alone with men for long periods of time.”
Pigeon was the oldest among them. Nearly wizened with gray whiskers and white hair, he had the appearance of exactly what he said he was: a lifelong crew worker. His face was thin with shallow wrinkles, and his nimble hands barely hid age spots and their decreasing elasticity, Pigeon looked like he’d spent years working hard, yet hardly in sunlight.
“You come to me if anything happens, even if you’re unsettled. It’ll come to an end, I promise. I may be old, but I’ve championed many women in my time.” He smiled. “And our Captain made it a point to look out for you, knowing your unique situation.”
“My unique situation?” she asked, not sure she should be offended. Men like Pigeon, feeling as if they needed to help the poor females in their industry, were all too common. Alexa couldn’t count them on two hands. Whether in training, or in the field, there were always a few.
And why had Hysterian asked someone to look out for her? Did he think she couldn’t take care of herself?
Alexa shook her head. It didn’t matter. His opinion was less than nothing.
“That this is your first job. It’s not easy, spending long spans of time in space. Your circadian rhythm gets all jacked even if you follow the health guidelines, you’ll see. Your feminine cycle—”
“Is none of your business,” she snapped. Alexa stopped Pigeon again when he grew flustered and tried to apologize. “I don’t need your apology. I appreciate your concern and will come to you if something should happen that I can’t take care of myself, but this is hardly my first time traveling through space. I can watch my own back.”
Pigeon smiled. “Good to hear.”
“You two coming or what?” Raul called.
With one last glance at the locust, whose creepy gaze followed her every movement now, she joined the others at the new crate.
The rest of the afternoon went on without incident, and by nightfall, Alexa was certain that her first meeting with Hysterian and the crew wasn’t something that would often be repeated. She could still manage to make herself relatively invisible.
Except to Raul, who was always where she was.
He’ll be a problem, she mused when she hauled a bushel of leaves to the male locust’s enclosure. It was feeding time, and even though the creature had calmed down after the tranquilizer spray from earlier, it was still very much alert. It’d only acted up again when he saw the female locusts being placed in their enclosures.
The females, unlike the male, were less aggressive. After their initial fear, they settled easily into their spaces. It gave their enclosures time to replicate a small, simulated habitat for them. Raul was feeding them while she took on the male.
A stream of drool fell from the side of its mouth as she placed her bushel into the drawer. Whether it was hungry for food or her, she had no idea.
She didn’t care to know.
She didn’t like the locust either way. Alexa closed the drawer and let the food drop into the space. The male grabbed it with its four arms and tore into it, crushing chunks of bark with each bite.
If they could see it now… She thought of Horace and Daniels. As she stared at the locust feasting with a violence that didn’t make sense, since there was nothing it needed to fight to keep its food, she thought Horace had the right of it.
I’d want to know if I was sharing the small confines of a ship with a monster like that. But she knew when she applied for the job that she’d be working for animals and creatures from around the known universe. It was in the description.
The locusts aren’t the only monster on this ship. She frowned.
The ping of the ship’s intercom went off, and Daniels’s voice came through. “Take off commencing in fifteen. Lockdown initiating in five. Say your goodbyes to Earth, everyone. We won’t be back for months.”
