Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cure and his female fell into a happy routine.
After they tended to their last patient each planet rotation, they would retreat to the laboratory.
His female would craft compounds to kill their mutual enemy.
Cure fabricated explosives. He reached out to Grudge, a cyborg skilled in that task, for his advice on the best way to design the bombs, as his female sometimes called them.
And he followed the male’s gleefully relayed instructions.
When Cure and his female decided they had made sufficient progress on the mission, they celebrated that accomplishment by breeding.
He currently had his little human lifted against the wall, next to the Rayon Skin Restorer. She gripped his shoulders with her hands. Her legs were wrapped around his waist.
Cure pistoned in and out of her with reckless abandon.
If his patients on the Dauntless saw him now, his fervor, his joy, his open admiration would shock them. There was no hiding his emotions with his female. And he didn’t wish to. He trusted her with both sides of him, his mechanics and his organics.
His female was as exposed with her state. Passion lit her eyes, and brought pigment to her cheeks. Her dark skin glistened with beads of sweat. Her pants punctuated his thrusts.
She was the most beautiful being in the universe. And she was his.
No one else would touch her. He’d protect her from all dangers.
Including the Humanoid Alliance.
He’d heard the threats the enemy had issued to her. The male had implied if she didn’t follow their orders, she’d be damaged.
That wouldn’t happen. Cure would work with Drift to eliminate the planet of the Humanoid Alliance. His female wouldn’t have to take the drastic and dangerous actions she had planned to engage in.
And he would transfer more of his repairing nanocybotics to his little human. He drove into her, burying himself fully in her wet heat. Their bodies collided. Her ass smacked against the wall.
She gasped and tightened around him. His female liked a little bit of pain with her pleasure. And Cure ensured he gave her everything she liked. He mouthed down her neck, tasting the salt on her skin, as he bred with her.
“Cure.” She moaned. That needy sound shredded his control, reducing it to the finest thread.
His balls ached. Wanting rushed through his circuits.
His pace increased. He grunted. Not from exertion. He was a cyborg, fabricated for endurance. But with pleasure. Breeding with his female was bliss. It was a delight.
“Yes.” She clung to him. “Yes.” Her arms and legs trembled against him. “Yes.”
“Yes.” He echoed her affirmation as he ravished her again and again. “Yes.” Whatever she asked from him, he would give her. “Yes.”
“Need.” Her gaze met his.
Cure processed what she required—more. More contact. More stimulation. More of him.
He drove into her up to his base, lowered his head, and nipped at the skin where her neck met her shoulder.
“Yes.” She screamed. Her inner walls closed around his shaft.
He broke with her. “Yes.” Cure roared his release. Ecstasy slammed into him. His auditory and visual systems went down under that emotional onslaught. Cum jetted from his tip.
His female gyrated around him again, drawing more essence from his form.
He came and came and came, taking her with him into the dark void of fulfillment numerous processor-straining times. She vibrated against him. It was the softest, most sensuous caress.
He framed his female with his form, pinning her to the wall using his cock, his hips, his chest—all of him.
His knees threatened to buckle under him.
Cure held firm. The elation might have damaged his systems. It was that good. But he wouldn’t allow his little human to fall.
The last of him transferred to her. He had been emptied of everything, his cum, his processing, any facade he’d projected erecting.
His female’s movements decreased in intensity more and more until she was still.
The frenzy of his satisfaction passed. His systems rebooted.
Cure gazed down at his female.
She smiled back at him. Her eyes were soft. Her skin glowed.
“You’re beautiful.” He brushed her upturned lips with his.
“I have hair now.” She touched the buzz of black covering her skull. “It’s extremely short, but it’s my own hair.”
“You were beautiful without hair.” He kissed her again. “And you’re beautiful with hair.”
Her cheeks turned bright with pigment. “I wish…” She looked toward the container holding the latest version of the tumor-slowing compound. “I wish we could, at least, spare our patients the hair loss.” Her gaze returned to him. “I know that’s a trivial thing. But, for many beings, including myself, losing their hair is soul crushing.”
“You didn’t feel beautiful without your hair.” He processed her damage. “Even though you were. Extremely beautiful.” He kissed her.
“I didn’t feel beautiful without my hair, until I met you.” She touched his face.
He pressed his cheek into her palm.
“But not every being has someone like you, my Cure.” She claimed him verbally, and that increased his joy. “Hair loss is…tough. And it feels senseless as the tumors are rarely on the treated patient’s head.”
The beings with tumors on their head died too quickly for treatment.
“The pills impact the entire body, however.” She frowned. And Cure would have killed beings to wipe that unhappiness from her gorgeous face. “They don’t focus on one spot, on the tumor. Fates. If we could design a pill that did that, we would boost its strength and kill the tumor completely. But we can’t and if we boosted its strength, we’d end up killing the patient faster than the tumor would.”
Fraggin’ hole. Her passion was arousing.
He gazed at his female. “We need a different conduit.”
“I tried a lotion, similar to the one we sometimes use to lower the pain levels of patients, but it wasn’t strong enough.” His clever female had, of course, processed that issue. “The treatment has to impact below the skin.”
“An injection would impact below the skin.” He offered another solution.
“I tried that.” His female sighed. “The impact was too isolated. I would have to inject the patient thousands of times.”
There wasn’t a machine that could accomplish that task.
For tumors.
Cure glanced at the Rayan Skin Restorer.
A machine would have to be modified and?—
His internal alarms sounded.
He constantly monitored the space around them, seeking to keep his female safe.
Someone had breached that invisible perimeter.
“There’s a being near the front doors of the medic bay.” He lowered his female until her bare feet touched the floor.
“Fates.” She rushed for her garments. “Tell me those Humanoid Alliance males aren’t back again.” She dressed quickly…for a human.
Cure donned his body armor, boots and medic jacket at cyborg speed. “The Humanoid Alliance males aren’t back again.” His lifeform scan verified that. “The being is humanoid.”
“It’s not Zorelle.” His female hurried through the doors. “She has the code to the doors.”
Cure followed her closely. He pushed back his jacket and placed his hands on two of his guns, prepared to fight for his female if that was necessary.
“It might be a patient.” His female continued to speculate on the being’s identity. “Something could have happened. Fates.” She reached out and linked her fingers with his. “It might be another incident. And this time, it’s during a rest cycle.”
“It’s Litph.” He glimpsed the Cancri female’s face through the pigmented portals.
“Then something has happened.” Cure’s female stated that with 100.0000 percent certainty. She grabbed the medic pack she stored by Zorelle’s station. “She wouldn’t come here after sunset unless it was an emergency.”
The Cancris avoided leaving their domiciles during rest cycles. The Humanoid Alliance targeted the locals more heavily under the cover of darkness.
Cure grabbed his medic pack also.
His female opened the doors. “Litph, what is it?” She let the female into the medic bay.
The Cancri volunteer was wearing an impractical light-green head covering.
It had similarities to the impractical head covering his female wore.
“Thank the Fates you’re here, Healer Cyra.” Litph glanced at Cure. “Healer Cure.” Her gaze immediately returned to his female’s face. She was the being the Cancri needed. “Kritalin is asking for you. Her mom said to get there as quickly as you can.”
“It’s her time.” Cure’s female was already going through the front doors.
Litph followed her.
Cure locked the medic bay as he exited. He projected her time meant the not-yet-fully-mature Cancri female was dying.
His female jostled with her medic pack as she walked along a pathway.
Cure took it from her. He slung both of their medic packs over one of his shoulders.
His female gave him a small smile and slipped her right hand into a pocket of her white jacket. She extracted the wrist decoration Kritalin had given her during the female’s previous appointment and she put it on her left wrist.
His female then gripped one of his hands.
He gently squeezed her fingers.
She squeezed back.
They moved quickly…for humans…through the settlement. Litph passed them, taking the lead.
None of them chattered. They didn’t want to draw the attention of any nearby Humanoid Alliance males.
Cure monitored their surroundings as they progressed. The planet’s moon lit the pathways. The narrow spaces were unoccupied. Beings remained in their domiciles.
Litph stopped at one of those structures.
There were numerous offerings to the Fates, the Cancris’s deities, in front of it. Flowers, fruits, polished rocks, and bits of nourishment were piled high on carved stone supports.
Litph glanced around them, as though ensuring they were alone, and then tapped on the door.
A Cancri female opened the door. Her eyes were red. There was a trace of wetness on her orange cheeks.
She looked at Litph, at Cure’s female, at Cure, and then beckoned to them to enter the domicile.
The interior of the structure was dimly lit and immaculately clean.
The doors closed and the unidentified female whispered, “Thank you for coming, Healer Cyra, Healer Cure. Kritalin spent all planet rotation making you a gift, and my daughter refuses to rest until she gives it to you.” The mother’s voice wobbled with emotional damage. “It’s like she knows if she sleeps, she won’t…she won’t?—”
She covered her face with her palms and sobbed.
“Your daughter is always thinking of others.” Cure’s female hugged the mother. “She is such a generous being.”
“I’ll be next door, in my domicile,” Litph murmured. “If you need me.”
The mother waved one of her hands.
Litph slipped out of the structure.
Cure braced his booted feet apart. He couldn’t process what to do or say.
But thankfully, his female did process the right response. “Kritalin gave me this.” She showed the mother her wrist decoration, distracting the female from her grief. “It has my name on it and everything.”
“She was so excited making that.” The mother sniffled. “She said you loved her head coverings, but this, this was something different, a thank you for all your support with her garment fabrications. That has always been a dream of hers—to fabricate garments, and you helped that dream come true. She?—”
“Mom.” Kritalin’s voice was weak.
That variance from her previous perkiness inflicted damage on Cure’s heart.
He pressed his lips together.
“I’m coming, baby.” The mother brushed the tears away from her cheeks, squared her shoulders, and hurried into the next chamber. “Your Healers are here.”
Cure and his female clasped hands and trailed after the mother.
The chamber was an explosion of color and garment designs and small fabric squares. There were head coverings in different stages of fabrication hanging on the walls and stacked on the floor.
In the middle of that chaos was a sleeping support, and upon that sleeping support was Kritalin.
He had seen many dying beings over his many solar cycles of living but the female’s appearance was still a shock.
His female must have had the same reaction. Her grip on his fingers tightened.
Kritalin lay amongst six, seven, eight brightly colored cushions. The previously vivacious young Cancri female’s skin was pale. Her eyes were slightly unfocussed. Her body was emaciated and bizarrely—for her—still.
Her mother held her daughter’s right hand in both of hers.
Cure and his female moved to her left side.
“Healer. Cyra.” Kritalin’s smile was feeble. “Healer. Cure. You. Came.” There were pauses between each word as though speaking was a tremendous struggle.
“Of course we came.” The lightness in Cure’s female’s tone was forced. “We heard you were hosting a celebration for four, and we wouldn’t miss it for the universe.”
“True.” Kritalin’s laugh turned into a cough. “My. Celebrations. Are…”
“Your celebrations are noteworthy.” Cure’s female grinned. “Remember your last birthing-planet-rotation celebration?” She sat on the edge of the sleeping support.
This was unlike any patient call Cure had ever experienced. It resembled a social visit more than a medical event.
“Fun.” Kritalin’s eyes lit up.
“Fun is the understatement of the solar cycle.” Cure’s female snorted. “I laughed so hard I fell off a chair.”
Cure wished he could have been there.
He would have caught her.
“Remember.” Kritalin shifted her gaze to a nearby horizontal support. “Gift.”
Another wrist decoration had been placed there. It was fabricated from blue fabric and was much larger than the one on Cure’s female’s wrist.
“Is this for us?” Cure’s female picked it up carefully.
“Healer. Cure.” Kritalin looked at him. “Blue. Like. Eyes.”
“It is.” Cure’s female swallowed hard. “Blue like his eyes.” She blinked rapidly. “Can I put it on his wrist?”
“Yes.” The Cancri girl gave her permission to do that.
Cure held out his arm.
His female didn’t meet his gaze as she encircled his wrist with the band of fabric and fastened it.
He gazed down at it.
And he struggled to contain his emotions.
The words Healer Cure had been painstakingly woven into the wrist decoration.
Kritalin was dying. That scent hung in the chamber.
And she had spent her last planet rotation alive fabricating this gift.
For him. A being she had only met once. A male the Humanoid Alliance had manufactured to be a disposable weapon.
“It’s beautiful.” He had to resort to his machine side to give that compliment. “It’s the best gift I’ve ever received.”
He had projected that nothing would top the Rayan Skin Restorer, a gift from Power, the cyborg council’s leader. But the young Cancri female had proven that wrong.
The Rayan Skin Restorer had cost Power very little. It had been obtained using credits, numbers in a database.
The wrist decoration had cost Kritalin the last planet rotation of her lifespan.
That was irreplaceable.
“Like. It? Truly?” She gazed at him with the earnestness of youth.
“I love it.” He skimmed his fingertips over the band of fabric.
Tears rolled down his female’s cheeks.
The mother sniffled.
“Good.” The Cancri girl relaxed against the cushions. “If. You. See. My. Mate.” She closed her eyes. “Tell. Him. I’m. Waiting.”
The mother sobbed.
“I’ll tell him you’re waiting for him.” Cure couldn’t project what happened after a being died. The Cancris might be correct. Which meant telling the mate that Kritalin was waiting for him might not be a lie. “I’ll tell him he’s a fortunate being to have a generous, kind mate like you.”
And Cure was a fortunate being to have met Kritalin.
He clasped his female’s hand and battled with all the strength in his form and in his soul to contain his sorrow.
That should have been an easy task. He’d been hiding his emotions all his lifespan.
It was the most challenging thing he’d ever done.
But he did it.
Because Kritalin deserved at least one more moment of feigned happiness. And she wouldn’t have that if he was crying.
“I’ll tell him you make the best wrist decorations.” He spoke to the young Cancri female, not processing if she could hear him. “And if he’s as fortunate as I am, you’ll fabricate one for him.”
Cure chattered excessively until Kritalin’s breathing slowed.
The female slept.
He fell silent.
She might never waken.
He touched the wrist decoration she’d given him, and he waited.