by Milana Jacks
In prison, we had no money and yet we had everything we needed. Food, drink, and company. The latter only if we behaved, cared for each other, and spoke with respect to others. Prison had taught me that money meant nothing. Support meant everything. Loyalty and caring for others came back to me tenfold. Maybe it was even the reason I’d earned the honor of carrying the air dragon.
Arthur had named me Knight, thinking of the White Knight, and also because I wouldn’t let him use Mother Hen. I chuckled remembering the tequila-fueled night when Mother Nature had visited the four of us. I had dismissed the event completely until the next morning, when I drove us out of the barracks and into the middle of the desert so I could change into a beast. I remembered thinking Mother Nature had gifted me a chance to make up for my violent past, to do something good. And I would do good by my brother Arthur. I couldn’t have him close to the cyborgs, and I would never touch his spirit, even if she rejected him.
Next to me, Robert stayed quiet. He hadn’t said a word since we met up at the corner of Clementine’s street. “What’s going on with you and Seven?” I asked.
“What’s going on with you and Clementine?”
Touché.
We found our way out of the neighborhood. At the very edge of the habitat, we climbed the steps onto a ten-by-ten platform, a pickup stop for the next scheduled transport for the upper habitat floors. Level-five cyborgs guarded the entry. The Cy tech and their minions made my hair stand on end. Lance and Nentres had confirmed Cy sightings inside the habitats in their territories, meaning the aliens that were supposed to be in Earth’s orbit had actually landed. The reason we couldn’t see them was because the plasma covering the habitat masked their presence. It made them invisible. The thought of rubbing shoulders with them made me want to put on more clothes.
I hoped Clementine had listened at Nentres’s mansion. I hoped she heard them speaking about the Cy roaming among the humans. At the thought of Clementine, my dicks stirred in my pants, and the urge to return to her home and impale her on them made me snarl. I rubbed my face. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“Been wondering that very same thing for a while now,” Robert said.
The crowd of cyborgs parted as the transport arrived and the doors opened.
“Shit.” I patted my pockets, then looked to Robert, who shook his head and slotted his card inside the reader.
He punched in eight tickets. “Highway robbery.” The green light on the reader lit up, and Robert spelled out our names. We tried squeezing into a transport tube, a clear elevator-like structure that would shoot us up in the air. It cost a fortune, which prevented ground-level inhabitants from entering the upper levels.
I shouldered my way through and got stuck between my two wolves. I peered above their heads to see three more staring at us from the platform. We couldn’t fit inside the tube.
“It says it carries ten people,” Robert said.
“My ass,” another wolf mumbled.
“I suggest,” Robert said, “people with wings fly and let us ground folk take the transport.”
“Hilarious,” I said. If I sprouted wings and horns here, I’d have a mini apocalypse on my hands.
We moved around, trying to fit the other three wolves into the tube, but it proved nearly impossible. The doors slid closed with my three wolves left out. They’d return home. Inside the tube, the five of us did the sardine thing with Robert plastered to my front.
He looked down, then back up at me as my erections fit between his legs. Nothing to be done about it.
A warm breath on my cheek. “I wonder why I don’t have two dicks.”
Fuck my life. “You really want to talk about my dicks now?”
A few chuckles in the small space, which grew smaller as we waited for the damn cyborg to push the button and shoot us up. I glanced at the level five who just stood there like the machine that he was, probably receiving “data” inside his fucked-up brain.
“What the hell is taking so long?” one of my wolves asked.
“Don’t know.”
“Did you pay him enough?”
“Settle down and wait,” Robert said.
Nobody liked closed spaces, least of all animals, especially wild ones like wolves.
They huffed and puffed, but finally, the green light came on. A soothing female voice announced, “Three passengers not accounted for. Five for the upper level prepare for launch in three, two, one. Have a nice trip.”
The tube propelled us hundreds of feet into the air. My stomach plummeted, the skin on my face dropped. The transport halted, and the voice said, “Exit to your right.”
Swoosh. The door opened.
We all just stood there.
“This bitch gets me every time,” Robert said.
“I fucking hate it,” I said.
We stepped outside and onto the platform, where a cyborg military unit awaited. A fully armed level-four cyborg approached, a twitch playing on the right side of his face. He patted us down for weapons we didn’t carry and said, “Michael Borski, the colonel cannot see you today.”
“I’m not here to see him either, so that’s fine.”
I pushed past the cyborg.
Mechatronic fingers clamped my shoulder.
I shook him off.
He gripped my shoulder again.
I took his hand and twisted, then ripped it off. I threw it down the habitat. Unsure what to do, the other cyborgs stared. If they had been human, they would have defended their buddy, but machines only followed orders, so I presumed they waited for those. I waited too.
The colonel was the most powerful man in the cyborg hierarchy around here. I couldn’t see my sister if the colonel wouldn’t let me. Well, I could, but barging into his home, then getting thrown out would upset her.
When the cyborgs didn’t respond with violence—unfortunately, because I sure wanted to beat someone’s ass today—and the armless one walked away, I proceeded across the platform and looked around for a ride to the top of the building.
Rose lived with her mother, and, the colonel, her mother’s husband, a level-four cyborg military commander, and the cyborg in this habitat. A royal pain in my ass. The pretentious money-grubbing domineering prick. But he was only one part of the problem standing between my sister and me. Her mother, my dad’s second wife, hated me. I’d caught her shooting my dad three times in the chest. Instead of testifying, I had run away from home.
I was sixteen.
Rose had just been conceived.
I theorized that my stepmom had killed my dad because she’d slept with the colonel and didn’t know who Rose’s father was at the time. Or she had known but decided to kill him so the other man would claim Rose as his own. As luck would have it, Stepmom had gotten what she’d always wanted, a rich man who seemed to always know what to do and how to best care for his family. He’d helped contract the work in the habitat, and little by little, over the years, I watched him grow from a level-one cyborg to level four, and now he was the most powerful man around. He even used a cyborg military unit as bodyguards. I glanced around and counted far too many cyborg pods mounted on poles, apparently on standby. The numbers had doubled from the last time I’d been here only a few months ago.
Robert noticed too. “Sure looks like we’re getting more neighbors.”
The black pods, armed with the latest and greatest in Cy-funded cyborg technology, appeared to guard this building. Though I couldn’t see through the black windshields, inside the pods, level-five cyborgs sat in their brainless state, awaiting instructions from Rose’s dad. My skin itched, a tightening in my chest as I sensed the entire army of tech around me. I didn’t like tech or Cy or humans who lived with Cy parts. Humans becoming cyborgs was counterproductive from what Creatures of Earth needed to do with Earth and what every human should want to do. We should preserve the men and women, protect them and care for them so that they could breed, so that their humanity would withstand the Ice Age and beyond. Instead, we got al
l these mechatronic people awaiting Cy alien mercy.
I stepped onto the edge of the platform. Below, I couldn’t see the ground level. It looked like the habitat ground floor stopped just a few feet under me. It was an illusion and an excellent way to separate the rich from the middle and the lower class. A pair of black pods came to hover in front of me. One engaged a weapon on its side. Robert approached. “For a peaceful alien race such as the Cy, I wonder why they’ve developed such an interest in weapons technology.”
“The cyborgs asked for this. The Cy simply provided.”
“They make my fur rise.”
“Are you coming in?” a man asked, his voice like gravel scratching against my brain.
I spun around and glanced up to see the colonel, a pen hanging between his fingertips, a coffee mug between the fingers of his other mechatronic hand. The man was a full-bodied cyborg, only his face remaining human, and, judging by the lack of wrinkles on his face, they must’ve tampered with that too. He left the door open.
A pod, my ride up, opened for me to enter, and I did. Robert and the wolves stayed downstairs.
The most sterile home, devoid of all but a few classic novels from before my time, greeted me. I knew the house well enough to make my way through the hallway and up the stairs, where two guards stood on either side of Rose’s bedroom door.
Why the hell were there cyborgs stationed at her door? What the hell did a seventeen-year-old child need guarding from?
I pressed my palm against the metal when it didn’t slide open. “Rose.” I knocked.
“Miss Rose is not at home,” the cyborg said.
“Where is she?”
“The colonel invites you for breakfast. He reminds you it’s seven in the morning.”
“Exactly why I wanna know how come my sister isn’t here.”
The cyborg didn’t answer. I stared at the door. I figured I’d visit while here, and we could talk about that college thing she’d mentioned after Thanksgiving dinner. I didn’t want her to leave this habitat. I kept my eye on her.
Rose should be sleeping now. “Rose.” I banged on the door and startled one level five. He snapped his head my way. “What is your purpose?’
“Fuck off.” I stepped back. “I’m gonna count to three. If it doesn’t open, I’ll break it down.”
The cyborgs didn’t reply, but I was pretty sure they replayed what I’d said to the colonel downstairs.
“One, two…”
The door slid open.
I stepped into an empty room with faint pink walls. Rose had fought her parents for two years, so they’d let her paint the walls pink. I was so proud of her for that. Her bed was made and empty. The white stuffed dragon she’d bought somewhere sat in the corner of the headrest. I looked inside the bathroom. Empty. “Where’s my sister?”
“The colonel invites you to breakfast downstairs.”
I would dismember more cyborgs today. “Where. Is. My. Sister?” A faint scent hit my nose, a scent I didn’t associate with Rose. It wasn’t hers, it was….it was… I couldn’t make it out. I allowed my dragon closer to the surface of my mind and approached the sheets. I picked up the pillow and sniffed. Detergent. I got on my knees and sniffed the bed. Also detergent. Inside the bathroom, I sniffed the air. Soap and toothpaste. I opened the lower cupboard and dug up Rose’s pajamas. I brought them to my nose. The scent hit me like a ton of bricks. Disease. The same stench I’d smelled at the ground level. Was it this year’s flu? Had Rose caught the flu up here in the fucking sterile, safest place on Earth?
I snarled. “Rose is sick.” I walked out of the bathroom holding up her pajamas. “She’s fucking ill, and you didn’t tell me?”
The level-five cyborgs stared back at me, expressions neutral.
Unicorn pajamas in my hand, I ran down the steps and into the sterile cube they called a kitchen, where my stepmom sat at the table, eagerly awaiting me. The sight of me made her nauseated but she smiled politely the way a snake would smile at the mouse while waiting to ambush it. The colonel leaned on the white counter, still sipping his coffee. “Have a seat, Michael.” He extended his hand.
I sat at the table with Stepmom and nearly vomited when she kissed my cheek. “Michael, calm down, everything will be fine. My husband will take care of her. As he always does.”
I clamped my teeth together lest I bite her fucking face off. Stepmom had full custody of Rose, and when the colonel wasn’t around, she showed her true colors. She hated me with a passion I never understood. Perhaps I reminded her of my father. And that made me smile, because Rose looked nothing like the colonel and all like a girl with a Native American ancestry. Rose looked like me. There was no mistaking we were related. I wondered if her stepdad ever gave Stepmom shit about it. Granted, he’d treated Rose as his own and taken care of her. Rose had told me so.
The colonel commented on the bitter cold weather he’d encountered last week when he surveyed the new project grounds.
I should take an interest in his goal to expand the habitat grounds, but not today. I wanted to learn the whereabouts of my sister. “The last I checked, humans living up here didn’t get sick because there are vaccines for just about everything the Cy can come up with. I wanna know how Rose caught the same bug that’s circulating on the ground level.” One of the reasons I didn’t simply kidnap her and keep her with me was the habitat’s resources. The colonel was well connected. We Creatures of Earth healed naturally. Sick humans didn’t live long unless they had access to the best doctors.
The habitat’s upper levels came with in-house visitation, meaning a doctor should’ve come here and sat in the house until he cleared her. As much as I hated these two cyborgs in the kitchen, I put up with them for Rose’s sake.
The colonel sat down and flexed his mechatronic fingers. They clicked against each other. I put my elbows on the table and leaned in. “I’m all ears,” I said.
“Two weeks ago, Rose got arrested.”
I blinked. “Whatever for?”
“Street fighting.”
I was a mute.
The colonel nodded. “I bailed her out. It appears Rose has been traveling to the ground level for quite some time. Down there, she’s been paying a man to teach her hand-to-hand combat. We believe this is how she got sick.”
“I can smell disease.” I lifted her pajamas. “She’s very sick.”
The colonel nodded. “When she first told me she wasn’t feeling well, the best doctors came. They couldn’t help her and recommended Rose be taken into a Cy clinic.”
“And?”
“Rose is still in the clinic.”
My heart thudded in my ears. I braced for the bad news as he continued. “They are doing the best they can.”
A mute.
Stepmom started crying. “Oh, my poor baby.”
My brain kicked back up as I realized Rose wasn’t dead. She only had the flu or something, which would clear up. I scrubbed my jaw, then walked to the mini sink to splash some water on my face. I was trying to find a towel when a thing in the wall blew hot air in my face. Fucking tech. I paced the small space. Three steps forward, three steps back. “How long has she been sick?”
“A week today.”
I cracked my neck. “And you didn’t tell me about it because…?”
“I don’t report to you, son.”
I paused, glared at him. “Don’t fucking call me that.”
“Michael,” my stepmom bit out. “Have some respect.“
“Where is she?”
The colonel snorted. “You can’t possibly think I’d tell you where the Cy ship is docked.”
I continued pacing, thinking up a strategy to visit her. I had her pajamas to track her scent, but if she’d left with a pod, I’d need to track it airborne. Okay, then.
I sat back down and glanced between the two cyborgs, something about the air in the room making me uneasy. My stepmom could lie with the best of them, had lied her way out of prison for killing my dad. Everyone had felt so
rry for her, in fact. She made sure to accuse my dad of beating her so nobody cared about his death. From a few states away, I’d read all this in the papers. With her record of lies, I probably couldn’t scent her deceit. The colonel, on the other hand… “I’d like to know everything. From the beginning.”
“I told you everything,” he said and glanced at the clock. “I have work today.”
“I don’t.”
He smirked. “You never had.”
“What did you do with my sister?”
“Your sister is your sister. She takes after you. Why are you surprised she snuck out and engaged in dangerous…sports? Hand-to-hand combat is not for Rose. I blame you for this.”
“It’s in her genes, hm?” I sniffed the air. He told me the truth, but there was something else.
“Genes that need to be fixed if Rose is to have a bright future.”
I inhaled deeply, didn’t notice any change in scent. Truth. “What do you mean by that?”
Stepmom sat up straight, and a pair of cyborgs walked in and flanked me.
The colonel crossed the kitchen. He readied to leave. “Rose needs special care.”
Two huge cyborgs made a wall in front of him as he walked up the stairs.
“What kind of special care?” I shouted after him. He feared me, couldn’t tell me anything man to man. My stepmom had more balls than this guy. At least she stayed.
“The kind of care only the Cy can provide.”
“Melanie,” I bit out. “What the fuck is he talking about?”
My stepmom looked me straight in the eyes and said, “It’s none of your business.”
I leaned my palms on the table. “Are you sure you wanna do this?”
“I will make sure Rose never speaks to you again.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Yes, indeed,” she whispered.
I blinked, unsure if I’d heard her correctly. Probably not. Then the cyborgs closed in. My ears started buzzing, and my chest filled with my beast. “This is an emergency,” she whisper-hissed.
