Chapter 8
EIGHT
SUNSHINE
"HE'S ALIVE!" a woman cried out, her arms raising up in the air above me. "Aaaaaaaaalllllliiiiiiive."
I stared up at her, taking in the way her hair shifted from light brown at the roots to blue, how her muscles were cut and defined, accented by the tight-fitting bright blue tube top she had on that displayed her cut abdominals and pectoral muscles that were doing more than their fair share of lifting for the softer curves of her chest. Up on the ceiling behind her head, I could see the tools that hovered over the processing table, ready to be activated.
I focused back on the woman.
She was beautiful.
Warmth flooded me at the sight of her, a heat that I knew, deep within. I held the memory of her taste in my mouth, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was mine and I was hers, imprinted in the very cells of my being. Yet there was something missing, a bond that needed to be sealed.
"My mate," I said, reaching up with a hand to touch her cheek, in awe that I could ever be so lucky to have found her.
I pushed down with my other arm to sit up.
I cupped the back of her neck and pulled her face towards mine, her eyes widening, her palms pressing lightly against my chest even as she gave in to my urging, the heat in me urging me to claim as my lips found hers.
She melted into me.
I tasted her, my senses coming alive with the knowledge of her, the certainty of who we could be together, the searing awareness of her igniting my nervous system.
Her soft lips parted, and she let out a moan as my tongue slipped inside her, her chest pressing against mine, her arms sliding up around the back of my neck as she leaned into me.
I braced myself on my elbow as her body fit up against mine, and I slid my hand down from the back of her neck to her waist as I kissed her, feeling the firm curves as I gripped her, leaning back so I could drag her on top of me and satiate the feral urge inside of me.
I could feel my saliva glands begin to respond, filling my mouth with the slick.
As I began to lift her up, she jerked back out of the kiss, her hands pushing against my shoulders.
I relaxed my grip, swallowing as I set her feet back down on the floor, waiting for her to give me the sign she was ready to be bred.
"What did you call me?" she asked, her lips glistening, her eyes heated, her fingers curling against the bare skin of my chest like she wanted to dig her nails into my skin to drag me closer.
"My mate," I repeated, and the word felt so right even though it sat against a backdrop of emptiness in my mind, a place where context and understanding should have resided.
I knew she was my mate, I knew it, but I didn't know why I knew it.
I didn't know who I was, or who she was, or how we had come to get here. "But who am I?"
"You're Sunshine," she said. "Well, that's what I call you. Want me to call you something else?"
“Sunshine…” I said. “I like that name. Call me that.”
"You're a mix of biological and technological parts pieced together by a species called the Calicium," another woman said. "How do you feel?"
I sat up all the way, ignoring the soft ache in my skull and the more urgent ache of unsatiated need to mate as I draped my legs down over the edge of the processing table.
Next to the table was an empty reconstruction chamber.
I had been recently repaired. The other woman in the room was wearing a white coat with large pockets, had darker skin and hair than Lyssa, and was standing next to another reconstruction chamber containing INF-NOR 568910.
I reached out to the empty chamber and found my memories in its storage, and copied them back over.
The memories were a jumble of horror, a long trudge of a life lived out of my control, in service to the whims of the Calicium.
Horror after horror flashed before my eyes until, suddenly, there was the first glimpse of light, a bright crest of the sun peeking over the horizon, washing away the cold of my existence with a sudden, brilliant flood of light, life, and heat.
"Lyssa," I said, my mate's name flooding to my lips along with the memory of her tuning me to the frequency of her body.
"That's my name," my mate said. "Now, why did you call me your mate?"
Plexus command was gone, but I had saved details about my originator species in my memory bank.
Like most basic units, I was comprised of a single species.
Some of us were assembled from leftover parts and ended up being a compilation, but I was made during the processing of a primary batch and was single-origin.
"The species I had been built out of had a mating response that was triggered by tasting matching pheramones," I said, reviewing the data on my own biological origins. Normally, such a response would be suppressed, but that system wasn't firing on its own. Why wasn't I suppressed?
I ran a self-diagnostic.
Minor skull damage.
My control chip didn’t respond.
The emptiness where it used to be was like a weight lifted from my chest, a rush of relief that the pressure was gone, yet also an unsteadiness, an unfamiliarity.
There was nothing to tell me what to do.
I looked through the status checklist and found that my systems were all in good condition, with the sole exception of the control chip.
I could trigger my biological suppression on my own; that implant was still intact, but the control chip was what did it automatically.
With it missing, Plexus command would have immediately flagged me for capture and repair... but Plexus command was gone too.
I was free.
The sheer shock of it surprised me, more because I never imagined that such a thing would ever be possible. I wasn't an infiltrator unit, sent out on missions with a chance to run into alien technology that could help me disable my control chip before it stopped me. I was a basic unit.
"Are you saying that you imprinted on me when I stuck my finger in your mouth?" Lyssa asked.
I reviewed my originating species file.
"Yes, of a sort," I said. "We would need to mate to anchor the bond permanently."
"Bond? What kind of bond?" Lyssa asked, her eyes narrowing.
"My speci... the species that I came from pair bonds for life," I said.
"Once they find and accept their mate, they form a permanent chemical bond that heightens their physical abilities.
In encountering you, I was able to resist my control chip for brief moments.
You gave me strength I didn't have before. "
I didn't have to mince my words. With it and Plexus command gone, there was nothing to monitor or flag my behavior. I could say or do whatever I wanted.
"Oh," Lyssa said as she gave me a speculative look. "Interesting."
"Now that your control chip is gone," the other woman spoke up. "What do you intend to do?"
There was only one thing I wanted to do.
"Protect my mate," I said without hesitation. "Provide for her every need."
"Hot," Lyssa said, her eyes narrowing as she stared at me.
"You are too hot?" I asked. "I will decrease the temperature in the room."
I accessed the environmental controls for the room, turning the temperature down several notches.
Lyssa laughed, sudden and brilliant, the sound glorious music against the backdrop of my life, lived in silence and isolation except for a few emojis back and forth with other units.
Since I was still in the system, I felt the sudden pressure of awareness, optical units in the walls moving to focus in as something larger than myself took note of what I was doing.
The ship was free, and it had noticed me accessing a system.
I withdrew quickly.
"Why am I still alive?" I asked, looking around the room. "Why does this room still exist?"
"You're alive because I'm strong and carried your heavy ass to safety," Lyssa said as she lifted one arm, flexing her bicep and giving it a kiss.
"Why wouldn't this room exist?" the other woman asked.
"The ship isn't enslaved anymore," I said. "Why would it keep this room intact?"
"How do you enslave a ship?" the other woman asked. "It's not alive."
"Oh my gaaaaaawd Doctor, enough with the questions!" Lyssa said. "My man just woke up from brain surgery, and he needs a break. Come on, Sunshine, you're with me."
She strode to the door, and I got up off the table and followed her.
She was right, it didn't matter why the Vaurelcar hadn't crushed everyone inside of it.
By now, it had to have installed its optical sensors everywhere, and it knew what the women were doing.
It had let us live, let me live, and that was enough for now.
"We're not done!" the other woman called out. "I need more test subjects!"
"Girl, you have had multiple successes now; it is time to tackle the one you've been putting off," Lyssa said from the doorway. "Go rest, replenish, and I'll help you get Mecun under your knife once you decide you’re ready for him, okay?"
"Test subjects?" I asked as Lyssa sauntered out into the hallway.
I stopped abruptly, the sight of the hallway confusing. It didn't make any sense. Instead of metal panels, there were colorful ones, with vibrantly contrasting colors, patterns, and materials, each panel different.
"Ignore the swatches," Lyssa said. "Mei can't make up her mind. We still have a bunch of guys in storage, and she wants their first sight to be comforting but also clear that they aren't in evil robot Kansas anymore."
I followed her down the hallway as the dizzying array faded away into a clean, crisp, white wall.
The white of the walls and floors wasn't the only difference.
The hallway was wider than before, the floor was soft and carpeted, and there were handrails on either side at a height ideal for someone of Lyssa's size.
The hallway opened into a large space with a window facing the stars. There were raised platforms with cushions on them on either side of the room, and on the far side stood a large wall.