With the two men moving on me from both sides, I fervently searched inside my pocket for the nail file. I realized the moment I pulled it out that my weapon was simply ridiculous against two strong, fully-grown Kealans.
“No,” I repeated, shaking my head. “I am not property. I don’t care how much you’ve paid for me, because I was never for sale in the first place. Stop!” I ordered to the men reaching for me and pointed the nail file at my own belly. Every muscle in my body tensed. Every nerve vibrated, strung tight like a string. “You just don’t want to listen,” I addressed Ricread again. “You refuse to understand. See how you’ll feel if I kill your hope and your future the way you’ve killed mine.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” His eyes on my hands, Ricread’s voice turned hollow, his expression guarded.
“Would you bet your entire career and the future of your race on that?”
My hands shaking, I gripped the nail file as hard as I could, pressing it into my dress a few centimetres below my belly button.
“You would die, too,” he hissed. “You will bleed to death, unless I decide to stop it.”
“My death is the whole point here, Professor.” I stared at him, unblinking. “If you want me to live, you’ll have to give me something worth living for.”
His eyes burning with fury, he threw his hands up in the air, spinning on his heel, which sent the ends of his cloak flying in a twirl around his shoulders.
“This is unbelievable! You cannot keep blackmailing me into concessions.”
“I’ve asked for little and got even less,” I argued.
“The protocol is there for a reason.” He ignored my words. “It took me years to establish it. Decades!”
“And now, if you want your experiment to continue, you will have to change it,” I replied as calmly as I could muster, with the tip of the nail file piercing through the fabric of my dress. “I want my husband with me, at all times. I want you to stop all surgeries on him. We both should be free to walk where we want and to eat whatever we like. No more spying. Let us live in peace. In exchange, I’ll promise not to cause any deliberate harm to myself and treat my body with the utmost care to ensure the results of your experiment remain in my uterus for as long as possible. Deal?”
“This is unacceptable. Your physical activities and your nutrition have to be stricktly regulated—”
“You’ll have to trust me when I say I’ll treat my body with care.”
“You are not the one in control here!”
“No. But I’m trying to change that.”
Ricread stopped right in front of me, his eyes flicked to the nail file in my hands then to the men on both sides of me, who appeared ready to pounce on me at his signal.
“I cannot agree to that.” Ricread shook his head, his eyelid twitched. “I’ve put my life into this research, I cannot let an emotionally unstable female ruin it now.”
“Then I’ll fight.” I sighed. “Every moment of every day. To ruin it for all of you. Even if you stop me now, I’ll find another way. You take sharp objects away from me—I’ll refuse to eat. I’ll keep finding ways to make myself sick, and I promise your head will spin at how fast and how many ways I’ll come up with, no matter how great you think you are at foreseeing all outcomes.” My hands cramped from gripping my ‘weapon’, and my chest felt tight. I panted to draw enough oxygen in, but I kept an eye on them all, watching their every move. “Look. Like I said before, ultimately, our goals are the same. You want me well and healthy, and I wish for nothing more.”
“Except that the list of your demands to achieve that state of wellbeing keeps growing, exponentially,” he snarled. The way his body seemed to deflate a little told me he might be losing steam. “You are holding my work hostage.”
I nodded. “Literally.”
He rubbed his face with both hands. “This will delay the whole process,” he groaned.
“How?”
“I’m running out of time.” He ignored my question. “You’re leaving me no choice.” He raised his head, meeting my eyes straight on. “I’ll go with what you demand, but only for the duration of the pregnancy.”
I stared at him, trying to process what seemed to be a victory for me but didn’t feel as such. With the high risk of my pregnancy, it already felt like living under a suspended anvil, expecting it to drop any minute.
“This is the reassurance I need for your co-operation during this time.” Ricread crossed his arms over his chest, regaining his calm composure once again. “This way, I believe it really would be in both our interests for the pregnancy to continue for as long as possible.”
“Tairan is staying with me.” I swallowed thickly, my throat dry and sore. “No more surgeries. If you need to check on him, you’ll do it in my room, with me present.” For however long it was going to last, I’d got my way for now. “No invasive procedures on either of us. And we both need to know what’s going on.”
“You need updates?” Ricread squinted at me, incredulously.
“Yes. Daily.” I had intentionally stayed away from knowing anything about the way my pregnancy was progressing before, but now, since it had been made a vital condition of our deal, I had no excuse to avoid the updates. “I’ll also need an explanation before any test or exam you decide to put us through. Deal?”
“Fine.” Ricread’s jaw flexed.
“Get it in writing.” Tairan’s rough, quiet voice reached me from behind. “He needs to sign it.”
“What he said.” I flicked my thumb over my shoulder.
Zavis rushed to Ricread with her screen aglow. “I got all the points of the verbal agreement right here.”
Ricread threw her a glance. “Add the condition of no intercourse between them.” He levelled a glare at me. “None, until another insemination is required.”
Zavis nodded, hurriedly punching into her screen before shoving her arm his way again. Ricread scribbled his signature on the screen. The weight of resentment in his eyes when he stared at me again was much easier to bear this time.
“Is this good?” I grabbed Zavis’s wrist and yanked her screen closer to Tairan’s face. He slid his gaze along the text quickly and nodded, letting me know I could sign it, too.
“Done,” Ricread bit the word out then spun around and stomped out of the room.
The nervous energy that kept me upright, vibrating through my every bone and muscle, left me with his departure. My knees buckled, and I propped my ass against Tairan’s bed, lest I collapse to the floor. His arm immediately went around my waist, as if he were strapping me to his side.
“The subject can’t be moved for another twenty-four to forty-eight hours, at least,” one of the team technicians pointed out, gesturing at the tubes and wires that were attached to Tairan’s waist, thighs, and bandages. “Her rooms don’t have the necessary equipment.”
“His name is Tairan.” I glared at the man who spoke. “Does referring to him as ‘the subject’ help you sleep at night after all the shit you’ve done to him through the day?”
The technician blanched, and Valran stepped forward.
“We’ll move him within forty-eight hours.”
“Then I’m staying here until then.” My voice was steady and firm, even as my body trembled from exhaustion.
“Bring another bed in for Isabella,” Valran instructed the team. “And arrange for her meals to be delivered here until the commander can be moved.”
I paid no attention to the commotion resulting from his words. Staring at the wall while the research team rushed to comply with Valran’s orders, I sat on the bed, my back to Tairan, his arm around my waist keeping me grounded.
“Would you have done it?” he asked quietly, as soon as everyone left and the entrance wall solidified behind them. “Would you have hurt yourself?”
The nail file slipped out of my weakened fingers and slid to the floor along the skirt of my dress.
“I honestly don’t know.” I shook my head. “I’m just really glad it didn
’t come down to it.”
Feeling completely and utterly exhausted, I climbed into the narrow bed they had placed next to Tairan’s. He lifted his arm, letting me lie on his bicep, then drew me into his side.
Finally, it felt like a safe place to have a meltdown, and I stopped holding back the belated fear and tears. His arm tight around me, I pressed my forehead into his shoulder and cried.
“I’m so sorry, Tairan,” I sobbed quietly, unsure of what I was apologizing for. “I’m just a girl from a small town, practically a nobody. I have no real weapons and no power, but I need to fight somehow. I simply can’t let them keep getting away with all of this.”
He kissed my hair, rubbing my shoulder soothingly.
“You’re doing good, Isabella. Better than good.” His voice was rough and sombre, with a hard note of steel I had not heard from him before. “And you have strength, so much of it, it astounds me. From now on, I’ll be your weapon and your power. We’ll fight together.”
Chapter 15
I DIDN’T LEAVE TAIRAN’S side, except to use the bathroom. We took all our meals together, and I was present at all his examinations. I watched them closely as they changed his bandages and reapplied the neon pink blobs of the Kealan healing gel to the puncture wounds along both sides of the hard V of his lower abdomen and at the top of his inner thighs.
I demanded painkillers, which had apparently been denied to him by Ricread, on the grounds that any ‘secondary’ medication risked interfering with the main objective of Tairan’s participation in the experiment—his fertility and level of ‘performance’. I suspected, however, that the true reason for keeping Tairan in pain had to do with Ricread’s personal dislike of the subject of his experiment, resulting in this unnecessary cruelty.
For a while, Tairan remained apathetic, bracing against the pain. However, when my struggle to get him painkillers finally registered with him, he grabbed by the throat the first technician who had the misfortune to step too close to his bed.
“Give her what she wants,” he gritted through his teeth, the lean, ropy muscles bulging in his arm.
The female attendant also present in the room spoke rapidly into her armlet, requesting authorization for the use of painkillers, as Tairan continued to hold the choking, gasping-for-air male technician by the throat.
Eventually, we managed to get the mildest analgesic for Tairan. It wasn’t much, coming at the point when the pain from the surgery had already started to recede, still, it felt like a victory for us.
“I am required to remind you,” the female attendant said before leaving the room that day, “that Commander Tairan Saryal has agreed to every procedure we have ever performed, including the most recent one. We have his written permissions on file. And I am told to advise you to keep this in mind before making any more demands or using violence against our team members.”
“You agreed?” I turned to Tairan the moment she was gone. “But why?”
He lay still, his features hard. Silent.
“Does he torture you into signing things? How can it even be legal? Do Kealan laws allow coercion and duress?”
“The Science Group has more power than the Kealan government now,” he replied gruffly. “Ricread is the law.”
He looked exhausted and worn, tired beyond belief. And I wondered what it must have taken from him, having to fight this battle alone for years now.
TWO DAYS LATER, THEY disconnected Tairan from all support systems and allowed him to be moved to my rooms. Placed in a gurney that had been folded into a seat, he was taken down the corridors, with me following closely behind.
Once in my rooms, he asked for a shower.
I started to unbraid his hair, while he sat in the gurney-chair hovering above the floor.
“Who braids it this neat for you?” I asked, carefully placing each of his hair rings into a velvet-lined tray.
“It’s done by robots now.”
I continued to undo his braids. Each strand slightly thicker than that of a human, his hair sprang perfectly straight as soon as it was released from the ring, without any wave left from the pleats.
“You look different.” I ran my fingers through the snow-white silk of his hair, brushing it away from his face.
“Gaunt and scary?” He gave me a faint smile.
His white skin had an ashen undertone, and he still had a long way to go in regaining his former body mass. Regardless, I found him very handsome.
“Far from scary,” I disagreed.
There was a kind of poetic beauty in the suffering imprinted on his face and body that filled me with sadness. I wanted to erase every single shadow under his eyes and in the hollow of his cheeks, brighten his skin again, and return the lustrous glow to his hair and eyes.
“You are beautiful.” I traced the side of his face with my fingers.
He caught my hand in his, pressing it to his lips. “I don’t believe anyone has ever called me that.” He chuckled against my skin.
Arm around my waist, he yanked me into his lap.
“Be careful,” I warned, tensing to keep away from his surgery site. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“I am hurting whenever you’re near,” he stated matter-of-fact, and I spotted the movement of an erection under his bandages.
“Tairan, this must be painful,” I said softly and made a move to get off his lap. But he flexed his arm around my waist, keeping me where I was.
“It hurts,” he said simply, sliding his other hand up and down my bare thigh under my skirt. “And there is nothing I can do about it yet—that part of my body is not healed enough to be useful.” He moved his arm higher, cupping my nape to draw me closer. “But I need you close, Isabella. I want to feel you, breathe you.” He nuzzled the side of my neck with a deep inhale. “Touch you.” His hands roamed over my body as his lips captured mine in a kiss.
Perched on his knees, I leaned into him. Sinking my hands into his hair, I deepened our kiss, every stroke of his lips, every brush of his tongue against mine reassuring me again and again that he was really here now. I’d got him back.
“You know.” His breathing was deeper when he broke our kiss. “Before I met you, I ordered myself not to care about you. But you crawled in here,” he pressed his fist to his chest, over his heart, “curled up like a baby edhie spider in there, and refused to leave.”
“I saw that spider in the gardens. It’s pretty.” Head on his shoulder, I played with a long strand of his hair. “And I care about you, too, Tairan. Very much.”
“In this place, emotions are a weakness.” His tone sobered, prompting me to glance up at him. “Caring, sympathy, love—all can be used as a weapon against you.”
“Is that how Ricread has been forcing you to comply all this time?” It dawned on me. “Is he threatening someone you love?”
The moment stretched into eternity as he hesitated. Our marriage came with no commitment. And there has always been a part of him that I felt had been closed for me.
“You left someone on Keala?” I asked quietly, moving away.
Was there a woman he loved?
The thought was more agonizing than I could have imagined. Without having any confirmation of him being single and unattached, somehow I had allowed myself to believe that he was.
He drew in a long breath.
“The last live birth on Keala . . .” he started.
“I know, I’ve heard about it. It was a boy.”
“Erix. My son.”
I shrank back in shock, letting my hands drop from his shoulders.
“Your son?” I stared at him blankly for a moment.
“I was twenty-two when he was born. The Science Group took him right away, but I used all my influence in the Forces to allow him to be raised at home. And for a while it was possible . . .” A shadow crossed his face, his forehead furrowed.
“Where is Erix now?”
“Back in our home, in Atal on Keala, with my friends. I have an agreement with Ricread. He wo
n’t touch him, as long as he has me.”
“You traded his future for yours.”
“Except that Ricread is getting impatient. He is determined to see tangible results of his work before he dies. Erix is ten, heading into puberty soon, and I don’t know how long I can keep Ricread’s eager hands off him.”
SITTING ON THE COUCH in the living area, I waited for Tairan while he was taking his shower. He had refused my help, and I didn’t insist when he explained that my presence there would result in another painful erection for him.
Instead, I sat alone, staring at the dark, snowy landscape outside of the huge window as I tried to process what I’d learned.
“Tell me everything,” I asked as soon as he was back in the room in his chair, freshly showered and dried off, wearing a loose white caftan instead of the usual grey uniform.
“What do you want to know?” He manoeuvred the chair to the couch, and I helped him take the seat next to me. “Where shall I start?”
“From the beginning. Who is Erix’s mother?”
“Adrids, she was two years older than me. We met in the Academy and started seeing each other as a couple shortly after graduation.”
“You were never married.” I remembered him saying that once.
“No. Marriage no longer exists on Keala. My grandparents were the last of my family who had a real wedding ceremony. My parents lived most of their lives together but never made their union official. Many couples of their generation started to split. Now, many prefer living on their own, having short-term, casual relationships. With the chance of procreation at zero, no one cared about forming a family unit any longer. Adrids and I used to spend time together, sometimes like a couple, other times with a group of friends. We never shared a home, never even talked about living together until she went for a routine medical check-up one day and discovered she was pregnant.”
Experiment Page 14
