Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Consciousness trickled in a little at a time. An unsteady sensation followed.
Since Foster died, there weren’t many days Wynn didn’t wake up with a tight ball of nausea in her stomach, or a knot in her throat. Today it felt a little different, and her brain hadn’t caught up.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. A slice of gray cloud-covered sky shed dreary light through her quarters. A distant rumble of thunder broke the silence.
How could a storm last so long? She wished she had access to the grid if only to see how the system traveled over New Asia. It rarely rained, which was why she needed her irrigation system for the outdoor fields. Storms were rare, and usually short and violent.
Not long and violent.
Thoughts of the storm brought on images of her visitor. She’d left him alone, unsupervised, for way too long. Who knew what he could have gotten into.
Wynn leaned upward, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. A chill permeated the air in her quarters. She frowned, eyes scanning to her PALM to check the building’s ambient temperature, when she remembered she’d removed it again.
Maybe Iax had been messing with the environmental settings.
She swiped her hand over her face. Her temples throbbed in time with her heartbeat, the pain migrating behind her eyes. For the millionth time, she wished she could just take a painkiller like everyone else and have it work. Not that she hadn’t tried.
Her gaze moved to the skin of her unblemished arm. Another wave of embarrassment shuddered through her at being caught in the washroom. She swallowed it down, not even sure if Iax had understood what she’d been about to do.
How could he not?
Cool air swirled around the exposed skin of her arms and legs. She only ever wore shorts and a tank top to bed, but the chill of the room made her wish for sweaters and long pants. Shivering, she hopped out of bed, then paused at the threshold of the washroom.
She waited for it, the falling, out-of-control sensation, that itchy need to crawl out of her skin, but it never came.
“Steam, hot,” she said, stepping fully inside.
The shower compartment filled with a fine mist. Wynn undressed and stepped inside, allowing it to wash away everything from yesterday and heat her bones. The floor was cold beneath her feet when she stepped out, but at least her body was warm.
Her morning rituals complete, and dressed in an identical set of clothes as yesterday, Wynn slid on her PALM and paused at her door. What would she find? Not a dead man. She’d been certain of that the day before and had been so very wrong.
Unease and eagerness battled equally with each other. Wynn inhaled a fortifying breath and pressed the door’s control panel.
An empty hallway greeted her. Her shoulders relaxed a fraction, but then worry seeped in. Where was Iax?
She stepped into the corridor, the low pile of the carpet pressing against the soles of her feet. A glance toward the kitchen revealed the empty container of soup on the counter. At least he’d eaten.
Hand trailing along the wall, she closed the gap to Foster’s quarters, then hesitated.
Could Iax be sleeping? She raised her hand and swiped her PALM across the control panel.
The door slid open, revealing an empty room, unchanged from yesterday.
The bed looked slept in, but not any different from that first night.
Wynn turned and moved toward the lab. Her feet stopped when she caught sight of Iax in front of the window.
His glasses lay atop his jacket, which hung over the back of one chair.
Broad shoulders filled out the material of his shirt, narrowing down to trim hips that made her mouth water in a wholly inappropriate way.
Why him? Why was this the first time she experienced genuine attraction?
She pushed that shit down, not wanting to examine it this early in the morning, but couldn’t tear her gaze away. Iax stared into the storm like he needed to memorize it.
One tentative step, then another, she crossed the room to stand beside him. He didn’t acknowledge her except for a slight twitch of his body.
Centering her focus where he stared, she inhaled a surprised breath. Was it just her, or was the storm subsiding? The rain seemed thinner, not the thick buckets it had been yesterday; the wind had died down too. Maybe it was finally on its way out.
Casting him another glance, she accessed the terminal, checking on what the central hub had recorded over the night. Continued rain and wind, but yes, it had died down in its ferocity while the temperature steadily dropped.
With a touch of her hand, she accessed environmental controls, raising the ambient temperature and the in-floor heating. The carpet beneath her bare feet warmed, chasing away the lingering chill.
“What are you staring at?” The question popped out of her mouth, scratchy, her first words of the day.
He didn’t answer right away, and she stared in the same direction, examining the gray-on-gray horizon.
While she watched, the rain slowed, but it also changed. Hints of white intermixed with the moisture, first just one here, one there. Then more bloomed, catching the dull light of the cloud-covered sun, and the rain disappeared altogether.
It took her a minute to process the glints. Snow! She’d never seen snow before, and her heart leaped at the sight of it. It was unreal and magical, swirling in little vortexes to float lightly to the ground. Mesmerized, she couldn’t look away.
“Something approaches.”
Iax’s gravelly words snapped her attention back to him. His gaze remained on the storm, but a thoughtful furrow puckered his brow.
Her heart thumped twice as hard. “What do you mean by ‘something’?” A surface vehicle? Or a ship? Was someone here to take her away from this bizarre waiting period?
The thought created a dual sensation in her chest, one that both rejoiced at being rescued and another that tugged her insides, rebelling that Iax might get in trouble for being here.
Trouble. What would that even entail? What would the CORE government do to a rogue Calypson?
Her throat clicked in a dry swallow.
“They are primitive creatures,” he finally replied.
A swooping sensation took over her insides, making the floor feel like it disappeared from beneath her feet. Only one type of primitive creature survived in this area.
Her vision blurred as she focused on where he stared. He couldn’t mean the beasts because they’d been captured and taken far away, to one of the wildlife reserves on the coast of New Asia. Scientists had either kept them alive for study or put them down. She hadn’t cared which.
But two dark shadows formed in the distance. The smudges solidified into slender shapes as they neared, contrasting against the white of the snow.
Terror weakened her arms and legs. “No,” she whispered. “Not possible.”
The beasts were back.
The urge to scream welled in her throat. Why were they back?
They prowled forward, their shoulders as tall as her chest, snow coating their spines. Tongues lolled out of their mouths, dripping strings of saliva into the wind.
Her breaths shortened; her heart pounded between her ears.
The view tilted. Wynn braced her hands against the terminal to remain upright and focused on the readout in front of her. There were two of them instead of four. Why were there only two of them? She tried to take a deeper breath so she wouldn’t pass out.
Out of the corner of her eye, Iax stepped toward her, his arms lifting like he thought he might need to catch her. She shook her head, then met his gaze.
“Why?” she whispered, not even understanding what she was asking.
His arms lowered. “These creatures distress you?”
Distress. She almost laughed at the word, but nodded over and over again. There was nothing more terrifying than those beasts, even being locked up with a Calypson for days. She’d seen what those beasts could do, up close and personal.
All the images she’d tried to erase since Foster’s death resurfaced: The four beasts circling them while they were in the field, of Foster sacrificing himself so she could make it back to the outpost, of how they’d dragged his body to the door like some sort of sick sacrifice, then ate him in front of her like they’d known how much that would disturb her, how much it would fuck her up.
She could hear his screams when she closed her eyes at night.
Iax turned his body toward the window. “I will converse with them.” He grabbed his glasses and jacket, then shrugged the garment over his shoulders as he left the lab.
What?
Her lungs froze. His words didn’t settle fully in her mind until the decontamination door opened and closed.
She blinked once, then twice, then ran after him in time to see the back of his jacket disappear around the edge of the building.
“No,” she choked, a new well of panic rising in her chest to strangle her throat.
On soupy legs, she stumbled back toward the lab until she fell against the terminal. Her eyes scanned the horizon for any signs of the beasts, but in the time it had taken her to follow Iax, they’d disappeared.
Her hands flexed and clenched against the slick surface of the terminal while the landscape stayed disturbingly empty, filled only with blowing snow.
Iax rounded the corner of the building, boots crunching in the ice that had formed over the mud.
Snow covered his head, and his jacket whipped about his legs.
No UV-suit. His first bout of radiation sickness hadn’t been enough?
He’d almost died, his skin trying to melt away from his body, and he wanted to repeat the experience?
His glasses shielded his eyes, his attention fixed ahead of him where she’d first seen the beasts.
“Come back inside,” she whispered, hands pressed flat against the terminal. Her gaze bounced over the terrain, never stopping. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”
Why was he doing this? She didn’t even understand what he meant to do. How the hell was he going to “converse” with wild, rabid, homicidal beasts?
A shadow skulked to the left of the building.
Wynn sucked in a breath, holding it. One beast emerged from the blowing snow.
Its faceted and mutated flesh, like armor, lifted around its spine and shoulders in warning.
Razor-sharp tines lined its jaws, the front six elongated, curving over an angular mandible.
Iax raised his hands away from his body, palms facing the beast, and stopped.
She gripped the edge of the terminal, preparing for the beast to pounce. She wouldn’t be able to watch. Not again. With its head lowered and teeth bared, it paused two meters away, as motionless as a statue.
If it weren’t for the snow and the way Iax’s jacket pressed against his legs, she would have thought she viewed a still image. Neither the man nor beast moved for what seemed like an eternity.
Her heart pounded between her ears. She kept waiting for something to happen, for blood and death, but everything remained as frozen as the breath she held in her lungs.
Where’s the other one? Her vision blurred, and Wynn exhaled, taking another quick breath to dispel the faint sensation consuming her head.
Icy goosebumps spread across her skin when the second beast cleared the opposite corner of the building. Low to the frozen earth, it stalked Iax.
Wynn slapped the windowpane. “Behind you!” Her hand stung from the force of the smack.
Iax twitched, his chin jerking to the side like he’d heard her through the transparent aluminum, but he didn’t turn around to confront the threat.
The second beast stopped, its head down, mimicking the posture and distance of the other.
The three forms stood there in the snow, motionless. Was he really conversing with them?
There was so much guessing with Calypsons.
Some people said they could read minds. Others said they sucked people’s brains out through their ears.
Since they’d created the nebula that hid the Calypso and Omega Station from sight and scans, no one knew much of anything about them except that some worshiped the race because of their apparent longevity, wanting that for themselves.
People pilgrimaged to the nebula, never to be heard from again. Like Iax.
Her throat clogged, and Wynn swallowed, mesmerized by the inconceivable tableau. Everything was stuck, static, until the beasts twitched. Wynn inhaled sharply, braced herself, but they tucked their tails between their legs, and backed away one slow step at a time.
Her vision blurred again, and she forced herself to exhale.
It did nothing to dispel the turmoil seething inside her.
They’d eaten Foster but only talked with Iax?
Memories of Foster’s desecrated body flashed in front of her eyes.
Blood. Flesh. Muscle. Bone. A living, breathing, intelligent person downgraded to a piece of meat.
An invisible band squeezed her chest so tight she couldn’t breathe. Her vision blackened around the edges. Rage and relief mixed a terrible cocktail in her stomach.
The snow swallowed the beasts as they retreated. Iax didn’t move for a long while, then turned, his alert focus aimed toward her.
Wynn stumbled away from the window, and wheezed, staggering toward the hallway. With one hand braced against the wall, she tried to inhale, but it was like breathing through a clogged straw. She bent at the waist, but it did little to help the way her head felt like it was about to explode.
The building spun around her. Stars speckled her vision. The need for pain, for something to focus her, cascaded over her head, and she reached for that section of arm that should have three lines etched into the skin, but remained smooth. More panic swelled.
The sound of the decontamination process pierced through the buzzing in her head. Her throat burned; her heart pounded.
Hissss. The inner door to the decontamination zone opened, and a full breath expanded her lungs for the first time in minutes.
The texture of the carpet sharpened. She inhaled a breath, and another, then lifted her head to find Iax naked before her, skin pink and eyes glinting.
A new familiarity shot through her, one she hadn’t connected yesterday. But after seeing the beasts again, she realized their eyes glinted, caught the light similarly to his, almost glowing.
Her mind rejected that new insight as she choked out, “What the fuck was that?”