by Naomi Lucas
His limbs shook as the jagged crevasse came for him. He jumped back but stumbled over the pliant bodies littering his escape. The small ray of sun from the entrance began to disappear. A gate closing in from the sides.
Dommik speared his lower half into the wall when the entire floor opened up into a black hole. The Trentians around the edges continued to berate him with bullets and throwing spears, he even felt the sting of rocks.
Fucking hell. His spider legs slipped down the stone and with the rumble of the floor closing up, he fell into the pit.
Chapter Twenty:
---
If there was one thing Dommik knew, it was that he didn’t have a perfect record; as a Cyborg, he was perfectly imperfect.
He cursed the EPED when he landed on two of his legs, crushing them beneath his heavy frame, he then cursed Stryker for having a perfect record; that bastard always took the cushy jobs.
If he deployed a distress call, how many would ignore it before it was too late?
His body sparked as he assessed the damage finding the two limbs next to useless. They pulled at his body, keeping him off balance and frustrated.
Dommik slipped his fingers across the crushed appendage, bending it towards him until it was close enough for coverage all while fighting off the pain. Because he did feel pain. Even with his nanocells programmed to heal him at a rapid rate and his natural tolerance toward it, he felt pain. It caught him up like quicksand, from the torn apart tendons to the bullet-ridden flesh, slowly sinking him into its pit.
He laid back amongst the corpses, listening to the last dying hushes of those he doomed around him, and waited until the final death breath whispered into his ear.
I have to get back to Kat.
The sparks died out, sputtering into the dirt and the blood. He lifted his arm and turned on his wrist-con and looked around. The light didn’t go far but he could tell he was in a cavern larger than the last, colder than the last, and there was life skittering around him. He waited for his eyes to adjust into night vision.
There were plants and small rodent-like creatures, blinded, and bugs–always bugs–coming to feast on the dead.
He sat up and looked closer, holding his arm out before his face. The body next to him twitched.
And then he felt it...something under him poking up from the ground like needles. His neighbor’s torso sucked inward as if something was slurping it from the inside-out, and it sounded as such.
Fuck. Dommik lifted himself to his feet and moved away, he wasn’t going to stay and watch when he could be its next meal. His circuits fired with each footstep, sending tiny jolts to his limbs. It was several yards of dragging before he stepped off the dead and onto the ground, the light of his tech leading the way.
His foot sank into the wet soil; the ground sucked at his every step.
Dommik gritted his teeth and looked down.
He saw the flowers.
Drifting toward the pile of gore with needle-like vines, sucking out the blood.
He stopped and watched, dazed as he began to actually sink. And as the wafts of putrid waste, marinated for an eternity wrecked his senses, the flowers dined. The sound of a hundred footfalls echoed above him where the floor had opened up.
So this is their secret. Carnivorous flowers. There had been no mention about the flower itself in the missive, only the ritual and perceived properties taken from the Trentians and the half-breeds that bought them. The real bloom wasn’t even suppose to exist.
He stepped farther away from the pile and located several flowers amongst the outskirts, unhindered by blood or crushed by bodies and metal, and appropriated it from the muck. It fought him with barbs and twisted like a snake in his hand. Carefully, he pulled it away from the floor, mindful of the gooping roots as he opened up a container under his arm.
A roach-like creature scuttled between the petals.
Dommik marveled at it for a moment before sticking both creatures away.
Time to go home.
If the flowers are down there, it meant there had to be a way out. An entrance and exit for the harvest. He waved his wrist-con above him and looked at the closest wall. He followed it with each lumbering step. The flowers and bugs paid him no mind, their focus on the easy meal of corpses in the center.
When he found a carved out ladder, gouged into the wall, and intermittent hand-supports he climbed it to the top, hauling the incredible weight of his broken legs behind him. His fingers dug into the stone as another jolt went through his systems, causing him to jerk and nearly fall. Something was sizzling inside him.
His tech could get wet, it was built to withstand the elements but his tech couldn’t get crushed and wet. He was on the edge of short-circuiting, he was going to fry.
Dommik gritted his teeth and kept going. He reached a shallow landing several meters up that led to a closed stone door. He laid on his back and took a long, frustrated breath before he broke the ground with his hands and gripped the bottom of the slat. He put his muscle into it and heaved the door up until he had enough room to crawl beneath it, pivoting and ducking his useless limbs through first.
He found himself in a dark tunnel that curved out of sight.
On either side sat half-empty crates and strung up animal carcasses being drained of blood. He tried not to smell; he tried instead to imagine fresh air and Kat’s erotic scent, but the rot was pervasive and forced its way inside. It left him feeling hungry for blood of his own.
His broken legs ground out the path behind him as he crept along, it screeched and thundered, creating their own echoes off of the walls. He didn’t try to be quiet, it would’ve been to much effort.
Before long the Trentians joined him in the shadows and fed his bloodlust. Each death brought him closer to turning off his humanity.
Each kill made him crazed. Crazed for violence and sex. Blood and rope, and his fairy waiting for him to take her.
A lever filled his vision. It stuck out of the stone wall at an angle. His eyes twitched and flashed as he ran for it.
An alarm rang as he re-entered the cavern, and released the floor. It was too late for the savages caught in their own trap.
The rest he killed with his claws.
***
Kat heard the androids first. Then she heard the hatch.
Her first instinct was to stay calm and peek around the corner, in case someone besides her Cyborg overrode the ship’s systems.
“Master Dommik.”
Her second instinct was running to him and flying into his arms, taking the flower from his hands and potting it in the botany enclosures, all while kissing and preparing for take-off. That was playing through her head as she hurried after the androids.
Kat stopped short as the door opened to a gore-covered broken pile of man and metal. Not the man she had pictured. She recoiled as familiar black eyes peered up at her under a face covered in foul smelling grime.
It’s wrong. Kat gagged. No…
He fell forward, scraping limbs against the silver floor. She jumped back and flinched away from the screeches, from the monster dragging forward.
“Kat,” he groaned.
No. No, please no. She barely stopped herself from retching.
The androids surrounded it and tried to lift the broken machine into the ship.
“Dommik?” she asked, afraid of the spindly robot in front of her. His head fell forward under the weight of his hair, dripping brown sludge. “Dommik,” she cried and gripped his face, finding his eyes again amongst the odd metal extruding from his jaw, the metallic teeth pointing up. “Oh my god, what happened to you?”
He twitched and jerked and she felt the shock in her hands. He didn’t answer. His entire body seized and crackled.
“Okay. Okay,” she breathed. “You’re safe now. I’m going to make you better.” Kat put herself under one of his arms and helped the Bins drag him into the ship. They made it half a foot before he collapsed, bringing them with him.
“Dommik! W
ake up, WAKE up!” She contorted her body and cupped his face. “You have to help us get you to medical. Dommik!” Screaming at him when he didn’t move. “Please wake up.”
Kat joined the androids again in pulling him forward. “Come on, come on. Come-fucking-on!” She unhooked herself and gripped his arm, trying to pull now with the Bins. “You’re,” she hissed, “So,” she leaned back, “Fucking,” Kat fell on her ass, “Heavy.”
Her hands came away covered in only-gods-know-what something that smelled of sour sulfur.
She got back up and tried again, screaming expletives the whole time. Kat begged him to wake up, changing tactics and finding water to pour on his face, he didn’t.
The Bins on either side of her continued at it with a calm assurance that she wished she had.
Sparks flew off several of his lower limbs and as she moved to get a closer look at the damage, a roar filled her ears.
Not a roar. Kat stiffened, terrified, and looked out the hatch. “That’s not wind,” she whispered, her eyes noticing the other damage her Cyborg had endured. Slashed skin and burned holes.
Kat struggled to her feet and grabbed the pistol that was still attached to Dommik’s unmoving side and ducked out into the open landscape and ran toward the alien’s ship.
“Open up!” she threw herself at the side, tears trickling down her face. “Help me! Markoss. Help me, please!”
Kat pounded at the side of the large spacecraft, knocking the gun against the unmovable wall, spurred on by adrenaline. She didn’t even leave a dent nor a mark, her screams and psychotic worry went unheard between the ships.
“God damn it.” Her body fell into the alien ship and slid down its side. The sound of encroaching battle grew closer.
She wiped at her face and fumbled with the gun, unsure on how to use it, but finding the safety nevertheless and turned it off. With her body trembling from exertion and her palms damp with sweat she held the heavy firearm out before her and watched as the field of stalks began to sway and shake; waiting for whatever, whoever would break through the plant wall.
Kat ducked behind a sharp cone of metal and screamed, “If you don’t fucking help me, Markoss, I will destroy you. If Dommik dies…” she hesitated, waiting, and whispered to herself, “If he dies, I’ll kill you all.” She felt the rage in her words, she believed in it although she knew she wasn’t going to make it out of this alive.
The first men ran through the edge and stopped, taking in the giant metal ships they came to attack. Kat lifted her gun and aimed.
The recoil jerked her hand. She missed and aimed again. Her muscles tensed and she shot off several rounds. One target went down wailing.
They saw her location and started running for her, their bodies becoming a swarm as they appeared from the field. Another went down. She shot at them until her gun clicked empty. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Kat ducked behind the metal wall and took a deep breath. Her heart wanted her to run, to hide, but her mind and body were ready to fight. She crept back toward the edge, bracing to pounce, her eyes wandering back at the open hatch where her Cyborg laid unmoving and the androids who continued to try to get him inside.
The first Trentian rushed by. She leaped onto him, tearing at his skin and bringing him to the ground. She struggled to get the dagger he wielded.
But then he slumped on top of her, dead.
Kat’s eyes filled with rainbows as the body was lifted away. She caught a hold of Markoss just before he unsheathed his diamond scythe and she went blind. He gripped her shirt and half threw her back behind the metal cone, berating her, “A pregnant woman should be nowhere near a battlefield, Katalina.”
When her sight came back, it came with the spray of blood, and a dozen aliens dead beside her.
Dazed, she barely comprehended the alien’s words. They were crazy. Dommik must have lied to the Trentian so they wouldn’t abduct her. She didn’t look back at the Space Lord, still blinking out the blindspots she incurred. Her hands found the dagger and ran back to Dommik. She covered him until the battle cries vanished and a chant she couldn’t understand replaced it.
“It’s going to be okay now,” she said, protecting his shell. Markoss and a band of aliens appeared, the crystal scythe once again put away. Kat held up her dagger. “If you want him, you have to go through me first.”
The Trentians stared at her.
“You have beautiful green eyes.”
Chapter Twenty-One:
---
Markoss and several of his guards carried Dommik into the ship. Kat led them up to the medbay, using his metal frame to open the previously locked doors.
She didn’t trust the aliens and watched them warily. They set Dommik on the medical slab, where the Bins began to work on his broken metal, repairing him piece by small piece.
A compartment opened up at the back of the room for the Bins, housing everything a Cyborg could need for emergency assistance, down to low-grade replacement limbs and circuit boards.
Kat got to work cleaning his wounds, stripping him of his dirty suit, and sewing up the deeper gashes. She ran a cleaning cloth over every inch of him, every piece and part of his eight limbs, all while Markoss sat and watched her from the corner. Silent and eerie.
It was hard for her to breathe with him drilling his eyes into her soul.
This is not what I imagined.
One of the androids opened up a box, spilling forth a writhing flower and a bug that skittered across the floor. Kat jumped back as the flower crawled to her.
“What the…”
Markoss picked it up and examined it. “An O'lia flower, a real one. How intriguing.”
Kat looked at the bloody thing in his hand. “What do you mean a real one?”
“We harvested them to extinction centuries ago, Katalina.”
“I don’t understand?”
Markoss found a container and placed the flower within, slicing his hand to drip blood over its roots. Intrigued, Kat watched as the thing drank it and bulged up. Markoss placed a top on it.
“Katalina, Lina, the real O'lia were thought to be extinct. The stuff on the market now is a cheap imitation to satisfy the ritual. But this one is real, Katalina, very interesting.”
“You knew and you didn’t tell us?”
“Why would I?”
Yeah, why would he? Kat counted to five. Then counted to five again.
She followed the roach with a sigh and trapped it within her hands, placing it within the container that jailed the vampiric flower. She watched as it settled on the stem before wiping her hands clean. Her attention returned back to Markoss, the alien, where he hovered at her side, towering like Dommik.
“I don’t know if I should thank you or kill you,” she said.
“Neither. I deserve neither.” He bowed his head and went back to his spot in the corner.
Kat moved to sit at her Cyborg’s side and settled in to watch his body heal and the androids work their magic. When there was nothing left to do but wait she found sleep with her head resting on one his arms.
Her eyes fluttered open sometime later, feeling movement under her cheek, she lifted up to a body crooked and aching with pain and a stomach full of cramps. The first thing she noticed was Dommik’s limbs shifting, the second thing was that Markoss was gone.
Only one android remained and she knew it was Bin-Three. The metal spider turned back into a man with a ticking and a creek. Gone was the fluid silence of his movement. His eyes didn’t open.
“Is he going to be okay?” she asked the bot.
“Master Dommik is restarting. He is okay.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-four minutes and three seconds until completion.”
“Thank you.” She massaged the back of her neck. A sheet was placed over Dommik’s nudity when his extra limbs fully vanished inside his shell.
“Here is your dinner.” Bin-Three handed her a nutrition bar. Kat took it with a smile. Routine feels good. She placed it on the tabl
e next to her knocking her knuckles into a reader.
Her reader.
The one that had beeped.
Kat grabbed it and turned it on. She closed her eyes to find her buried courage, fear strangled her heart and closed up her throat. I’m fine. I don’t have the parasite. I can’t have it. I’m vaccinated. I don’t have it. Her body broke out into a cold sweat.
“Katalina, dear, nothing in life comes easy. You’ll find that your demons come back over and over. What you do about those visits is entirely up to you. Exorcising a demon is as hard as forgetting a memory.”
She opened her eyes and read her results.
***
Dommik woke up alone. Not alone. His eyes landed on the Trentian standing at the foot of his bed. His skin was cold but his metal interior burned him up from the inside. He flexed his muscles, registering his extra limbs locked within.
The next instant he had his metal claw around the alien’s throat, drawing blood. “What happened?” he growled.
The Space Lord remained still. “You came back broken. Katalina, Talina, and your robots repaired you, Dommik.”
“Did you touch her?” Venom rose up into his mouth.
“I did not.”
“Where is she? If she has come to any harm, I’ll kill you slowly, painfully. And your entire crew and gift your corpses to the flowers.”
“Dommik, she is fine, shook up, but here. Katalina took your prize and is housing it in an enclosure as we speak.”
Dommik threaded through his androids and saw her through their eyes down below. He stole their recordings of the last day away and uploaded them into his drives. It took him all of several seconds to review the material.
Her screams, her cries as she tried to get him inside. Taking his weapon and calling for help, shooting at the remaining pilgrims, and of Markoss and his men slaughtering them. He saw Kat crouch over him with a knife, preparing to fight to the death.
For him.
The surgery, the cleanup, her conversation with the Space Lord, the flower, and he saw her find the reader.
