Once they were inside, Aegeus laid out the blankets that he had brought with him and placed a pillow at the top, readying a bed for him to rest on as he received his treatment. He took a breath, glancing down at his body as if reminding himself one more time what he had gone through so that when the treatment began he would have a reminder that it was worth it.
Ciyrs lowered his supply bag to the floor and gestured to the blankets.
“Take your shirt off and lay down,” Ciyrs said.
He waited while Aegeus did as he asked and then reached into his bag for the container of special herbs that he had tucked there after using them on Maxim so long before. He never thought that he was going to have to use them again, had hoped that he would never encounter a situation when he would need them. Now, though, he was thankful that he had them.
“What are you going to do?” Aegeus asked.
“I am going to give you something to drink to help keep you calm. I’m afraid it won’t completely take away the pain, but it will help to relax you. After that I will have more herbs for you to take that will start to absorb the toxins in your blood. Then I will apply an ointment to your skin and perform the healing. I must warn you that my skin touching yours would be very painful and cause serious damage. With the ointments, I should be able to keep my hands on you for a few moments at a time without damage, but it will likely still hurt.”
“I understand,” Aegeus said.
Ciyrs took a bottle from his bag and offered it to Aegeus.
“Swallow this,” he said.
Aegeus complied and handed the bottle back to Ciyrs. Within a few seconds the healer noticed that the man’s muscles began to relax and his breathing became slow and even. Ciyrs watched him relax as he mixed more herbs and added them to thick nectar he had made when in his clinic. When the tincture was complete, he offered it to Aegeus, who swallowed it down without a moment of hesitation. After handing the bottle back to Ciyrs, Aegeus rested back on the pillow, closing his eyes as if preparing himself for the treatment that was to come.
Ciyrs opened the container of herbs that he had used with Maxim and carefully coated his hand. He remembered the way that Maxim’s skin had burned and seized when he touched it after he had begun to change, and he didn’t want to put Aegeus through the same agony. He didn’t ask if he was ready again. There was no reason. It was better to just get started. Checking his hands a final time to make sure that they were fully covered in the herbs, Ciyrs reached forward and began to smear the blend onto Aegeus’s pale, grisly skin. As soon as his hands touched him, Aegeus grimaced and tightened, but Ciyrs didn’t stop. He had to apply the herbs and the faster that he went, the sooner it would be over. As soon as his upper body was fully covered, Ciyrs carefully removed the rest of his clothing and covered his legs. Finally finished with that stage, he covered Aegeus with a blanket so that the herbs could begin to work.
Several minutes passed with only the sound of Aegeus’s hissing breaths in the air when he suddenly spoke.
“Tell me about my sons.”
The question sent a shock through Ciyrs. He carefully drew the blanket back away from Aegeus’s chest and covered his hands with a thick layer of the herbs again, preparing to perform the first healing treatment.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
Aegeus’s hands gripped the blankets on either side of him, bracing him against the pain that he knew was coming, and shook his head.
“Anything,” he said. “I just want to know about them.”
Knowing that hearing about the sons that he hadn’t seen since they were children would comfort and distract him, Ciyrs started talking.
“They are grown,” Ciyrs said, “and strong. Maxim has a mate named Ivy, she is human.”
As he spoke, he reached forward and pressed his hands to the center of Aegeus’s chest. The man’s eyes squeezed closed more tightly, but he didn’t make any sound. Even though Ciyrs knew that this part of the healing was the most painful, Aegeus endured it in silence, strengthened by hearing about his sons and thinking of the possibility of being with them again.
Chapter Ten
“Pyra, can I speak with you?”
Jonah led the tremendous Denynso toward the room where Samira and Ty had found the files and closed the door behind them.
“What is it?” Pyra asked. “We are getting ready to leave and I need to ensure that everyone is prepared.”
“That’s actually what I need to talk to you about,” Jonah said. “I won’t be leaving with you.”
Pyra’s expression fell and he looked at Jonah more intently.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “The wounded will be strong enough to leave in the next day. We have to get to Penthos. Maxim, Rain, and the others are waiting for us there.”
“I know,” Jonah said, “but there is something going on here that I need to investigate further.”
“What did you find?” Pyra asked.
“Samira and Ty found a box of files in this room. They are the medical files for all of the members of Nyx 23 from before we left.”
“The medical files?” Pyra asked.
“Like the one of mine that I found in the examination room upstairs. They are complete and untouched since the day that they were filled out for the mission. I went back upstairs to the examination room and looked around. I thought that nothing had been changed when I first saw it, but I wanted to look at it more thoroughly. Absolutely nothing has changed. The supplies in the cabinets are completely outdated. They are the brands and styles from when we were here. The others said that the hospital was still in operation for years after we left before it was shut down and sealed off. If that room had been used at all after I left it, there would be supplies that were newer. That just confirms that when my examination was over that day, they closed that examination room and never used it again.”
“But why would the files be down here?” Pyra asked.
“I don’t know,” Jonah said. “The examinations were done in secret because of the nature of the mission. That means that the doctor who performed them could have kept the files after each one and put them down here. He must have just overlooked mine.”
“What do you think that means?” Pyra asked.
“I’m not sure yet, but that’s why I need to stay here. It has to mean something. There has to be a reason why that room is still in that condition and wasn’t used after I left, and why the files for the team are separate from the rest of the patient files from that time. I can’t help but think that it’s not a coincidence that all of that is happening in the same place that Ryan chose for his breeding facility. And if that’s true, this is much deeper than we thought. I need to try to find out what’s going on.”
Pyra looked tense.
“We should all stay together,” he said. “We aren’t as effective if we aren’t together. The conflict is waiting for us on Penthos. That’s where we need to be.”
“Ryan has called out Maxim, Kyven, and the Denynso. You have your army. There are many of my crew that aren’t around anymore. They didn’t have anyone to stand up for them then, and I owe it to them to stand up for them now. I need to know what happened. This is my fight.”
****
Rilex walked carefully back into the room with the women and the surviving hybrids, not wanting to make enough sound to disturb any of them. He expected to see Ciyrs checking on them, but the healer wasn’t there. Instead Eden was using a cloth to carefully bathe one of the women. Another of the women was sitting up against the wall, cradling Lysander in her arms. They had found clothing stored with the emergency supplies and seemed far more comfortable now that they were dressed in more than just the thin gowns that they had been wearing when they first found them.
“He’s so sweet,” the woman holding Lysander said.
Eden smiled at her and nodded.
“He is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. There’s nothing that can describe what it’s like being a mother.�
��
Rilex saw the woman give a tremulous smile and a tear slide down her cheek.
“I won’t get the chance to know,” she said sadly.
“Of course, you will,” Eden said, dipping the cloth in a bowl of water beside her and drawing it down the other woman’s arm again.
Rilex was impressed at her incredible tenderness and the way that she was able to balance attention for both women while also keeping her eye on her baby.
“Ryan won’t let us keep our children,” the woman said tearfully. “I won’t even be able to see him. When it’s time for him to come, Ryan will bring me to the delivery ward and put me to sleep. By the time that I wake up, my baby will be gone.”
Rilex stepped up to the woman and crouched down in front of her. She looked nervous, but he gave her a comforting smile
“Ryan has nothing to do with you anymore,” he said. “He can’t get to you. We will protect you now. When it is time for you to have your baby, it will be in the way that you choose, and then you will be a wonderful mother.”
Eden looked up at Rilex and smiled at him warmly. He returned it and then stood, making his way toward where the hybrid woman slept. He settled down beside her as he had earlier, not wanting to disturb her from her sleep. As if his presence itself had roused her, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. A hint of a smile touched her lips and he felt something tremble within him.
“Hi,” he said quietly.
“You’re here,” she whispered.
Rilex nodded and she started to sit up. He reached for hand and helped her until she was reclined against the pillows on her mat.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Better,” she said.
“Does anything hurt?” he asked.
“Something always hurts,” she said, “but it’s not as bad now. I can move. I can breathe.”
“I’m glad,” Rilex said.
They fell into a comfortable silence for a few moments and he felt the urge to touch her face. He resisted, however, all too aware of what physical contact had meant for her throughout her life.
“Is this all of the women who were in the breeding facility?” she finally asked.
“Yes,” Rilex reassured her. “I told you that we found them and rescued them.”
“But did they all…” her voice trailed off as if she didn’t want to finish her sentence and was hoping that he would understand what she was asking.
“They are all alive,” Rilex told her. “Some are close to delivering their babies, but none are seriously injured.”
She sighed with relief and nodded. Rilex hesitated for a moment before speaking again.
“How did you know about the women?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” she asked defensively.
“They have names,” Rilex said. “They weren’t born here. They were chosen specifically for the breeding part of the experiments. You were born here. Made here. If the women aren’t even permitted to see their babies when they’re born, why would Ryan allow his hybrids to know about the human women that he brought here?”
The woman looked stung and Rilex felt guilty for pushing her so hard. She had been through enough and he shouldn’t have delved into something so difficult for her so soon. He wanted to apologize to her, but she straightened slightly and stared directly into his eyes, showing more confidence than he had seen from her since the first moment he looked at her.
“I tried to escape,” she said.
Rilex drew in a breath, feeling his body start to shake as images of what she must have suffered when Ryan found her flashed through his mind.
“He didn’t kill you,” he said, genuinely surprised that Ryan’s first reaction when he found one of his creations defying him wasn’t to simply destroy it.
“I wish that he had,” the woman said.
Rilex shook his head, fighting the sickness in his stomach and the tears in his eyes. He gingerly rested his hand over hers and didn’t feel her resist or try to pull away, but also didn’t feel her try to return the touch. It was enough for that moment. It had to be enough.
“I’m glad that he didn’t.” He knew that there was more to that story, but it wasn’t the time to hear it yet. She would tell him in her own time. Instead, he tried to offer her another smile and eased slightly closer to her. “Have you chosen a name yet?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I wouldn’t even know how to begin choosing one,” she said. “I haven’t heard many names in my life. I don’t know what it should be.”
“It can be anything that you want it to,” Rilex said. “This is your chance to be whoever you want to be. Ryan doesn’t have control over you anymore. You’ve escaped. You’re free. You can choose to be called whatever you want.”
The woman looked into his eyes again, her hand moving very slightly against his.
“Would you choose for me?”
Chapter Eleven
Maxim felt the ship tremble beneath his feet and reached for Ivy, who grabbed his hand and coiled against his side.
“What was that?” she asked with fear in her voice.
“I don’t know,” Maxim said. “They might have weapons and are attacking the ship now rather than waiting for us to come back out.”
“Maxim!”
A shout from the front of the shuttle brought Maxim running from the room he was sharing with Ivy, his hand moving to the sword at his side as he went.
“Maxim!” the shout came again and Maxim recognized it as Lynx’s voice.
The warrior met him in the front chamber of the shuttle, his face high with color and an excited smile reflecting in his eyes that told Maxim he had been wrong about the assault from the hybrid army in the desert outside.
“What is it, Lynx?” Maxim asked, still tense from being startled.
“She did it,” Lynx said. “She did it!”
“Who?” Maxim asked. “What did she do?”
Lynx had started across the shuttle and Maxim followed, confused by Lynx’s excitement. The warrior led him along a narrow hallway that he hadn’t been in yet and then turned into a room. Maxim noticed Athan and Rain in the room before he recognized that it was a control room.
“Rain,” Lynx said by way of explanation. “She figured out how to use the shuttle.”
“What?” Maxim asked. “Avery wasn’t even able to make it work again.”
He stepped up to the control panel where Rain was standing and watched as she pressed a few buttons, bringing up an image on the screen ahead of her. She pointed to it, indicating an area of the shuttle on the blueprint that had appeared.
“That’s because he is only familiar with this type of technology,” she said.
“I don’t understand,” Maxim said.
“I was upset because I’m not familiar with the transportation technology that has developed since I left Earth,” Rain said. “I thought that that was keeping me from being able to figure this thing out. Then I started thinking about the StarCity and what I learned from Etan before we left.”
“You knew how to fly the StarCity?” Maxim asked.
“Yes. Back then every crew had a pilot, but there was also another member, one who wasn’t identified in the mission logs or even known among the other crew members, who was familiar with the ship and how to operate it. They might not be as extensively skilled with it as the actual pilot, but the point was for them to have enough knowledge that they could take over operation of the ship should something happen to the pilot at some point during the mission. That’s why I went into the control room during the crash.”
“Because you thought that Etan just wasn’t controlling the ship.”
“Right. I knew that something was going wrong. He had already confirmed that the ship wasn’t operating properly and that we had lost communication and navigation, but during the crash the ship went totally out of control. It felt like he wasn’t even trying. So, I went into the control room to do my duty. That’s when I found him.
I tried to get the ship back under control and on track, but I couldn’t. It had been too severely sabotaged.”
“What does that have to do with you being able to operate this one?” Maxim asked. “Like you said, this technology is far more advanced than the technology in even the StarCity.”
“That’s right,” she said. “But sometimes advanced doesn’t always mean better. Some of the advancements that had been integrated into the StarCity were simple, but extremely effective and efficient. Jonah and I used those advancements and some of the prototypes of further technology that was under development when we left to design the vehicle that he brought to Earth.”
“So, you were able to use that knowledge to figure out how to operate this shuttle,” Maxim said.
“Not exactly,” Rain told him. “The Valdicians haven’t changed very much since they first brought Nyx 23 to Uoria. They utilize essentially the same weapons to disable the ship so that they could redirect it here rather than letting it get to Earth. What they didn’t expect, though, was that there would be safeguards. I thought about what Avery and Elon had said about the panic room. There was no such thing as a panic room in the StarCity. That came to be after Nyx 23 disappeared. That got me wondering whether they would have put other forms of safeguards into place. It turns out that they did.”
“Wouldn’t Avery know about those?”
“Maybe if he knew what he was looking for. The team that designed this ship created several levels of protection to help prevent a ship from being taken over again. Some of them are pretty obvious. So obvious that it was fairly easy for the Valdicians to use their same weaponry to get past them. That’s when I decided to take a glimpse at the blueprints and I noticed this.”
The Alien Uncovers (Uoria Mates IV Book 3) Page 8
