Chapter Fourteen
Roan
I’d gotten my confirmation a few days prior and winced at the sound of children running rampant through our home. Nexus and Noah were attached at the hip, and Nexus needed to stay somewhere away from Noel with their egg due soon. Zurok and Fel agreed the presence of young may disrupt his nesting.
As I sat up and blinked fuzzily at the opposite wall of the bedchamber, a lightning bolt of blue and orange raced through, screaming at top volume before something wet, white, and rubbery flopped across my blanket.
It reminded me of flesh soaked in bleach, puffy and sticky, corroded.
“What’s this, Nexus?” I swallowed metallic bile in my throat as I glanced around for an article of clothing or a rag, towel, anything really, to pick the thing up before shoving my blanket immediately into a laundry chute.
“Kill’d it!” Nexus puffed up, presenting his find as I studied the thing in disgust.
“What is it?” I tried my absolute best to flick my tail with delight, so my facial expression of disgust didn’t betray Nexus’s pride in having brought me a gift.
“Worm.” Nexus’s proclamation didn’t tell me much at all.
But, out of an abundance of caution, I signaled my hand to catch the AI’s system. The AI that dominated Paradise wasn’t really tailored to hybreed thought processes, having been inundated with the chaos of Terran society. So, when I spoke to call for Tish, she answered with a polite. “M’yesss?”
The delighted purr in her voice was one of pride I couldn’t mistake for anything other than what it was—a vixen that had snatched her a particularly lovely mate.
I rolled my eyes. “You or Merriel know what kind of worm this is?” I gestured at the creature, and several of the wall ports with visual capabilities whirred with movement.
“Well, I can say for certain that I know what it is. Merriel has relayed the info to me and is speaking to Noel, Doc, and Fel. Would you mind taking the babies down to the clinic and not speaking further about the worm?”
That was a vague response if I’d ever heard one. As time stretched, a knot of dread formed in my stomach. “Should I bring this worm here for them to analyze?”
“Leave it where it is, Roan. Green.” The utterly calm and polite tone she had was not the tone I’d come to know from Tish. And with the added color, I knew it was something high priority. Green meant go, get the fuck out, now.
“Understood. C’mon, kiddos. Let’s go see your papas at the clinic and get a snack on the way.
” I stood and threw on a toga-looking article of clothing and scooped up the children, my left and right arms burdened with their ever-increasing weight.
They wrapped their tails around me as Nexus puffed with juvenile pride.
“Nak?” Noah leaned his head into my shoulder, orange scales glinting as he purred.
“Once we’re there.” I gave a happy little flick that seemed too forced for my liking, but I left our home with a clip in my step, the unfamiliar weight of my small belly jutting forward in a sight that had become common.
As I exited the building, Zurok came running up, his bright eyes ablaze with fierce anger as he glanced me and the little ones over. His tail held stiffly out behind him so as not to scare anyone. He sniffed each of us, glanced around our mouths, and nodded once. “Go.”
I had a dozen questions I wanted answered, but Fel would handle that; I was certain. So, I jogged while Zurok invaded our residence.
But I already knew in the back of my head.
I didn’t see how, though. All the Colthraxians were in almost-immortal bodies, were desexed, and had undergone gene therapy with Noel’s stem cells.
The Colthraxian bodies were effectively dissolved…
Unless some hadn’t gone through with it. Was it that, though?
As I made it down the street and into the medical center, Noel and Fel accosted me, both rather encumbered with egg. Noel shouldn’t have even been away from his nest, but there I was again, intervening in what should have been a wonderful experience.
Fel swept in, tail flicking agitatedly as he handed Nexus and Noah off to their paters. Fel pulled me aside and marched through, urging me out of my clothes as he cleansed his hands and roughly drew his hands over my body with squeezes and sniffed at me. “On the table.”
I obeyed as he readied the 4D and scanned my body, throwing up a rather intimate view of my insides and my perfectly nestled eggs.
He inspected me from head to foot as the images generated and rotated, layers sliding away section by section as he studied my slowly ossifying eggs in great detail and moved all along my spine with fingers tracing the image, to turn and study every fiber.
He made notes in the system and gave my body a once-over again before muttering, “Clear.”
“Clear?” I was afraid to ask, but the fact that I held my own mind meant a lot, I supposed.
“You’ve not been infected, nor has an attempt been made. They’re checking the whelps.” Fel sighed in deep relief before rubbing over his face and belly.
“I’m a mated omega, so wouldn’t my chance of infection be low?”
“Extraordinarily low, but a young Colthraxian may not know better or be controlled by impulse.” Fel sat on a nearby stool and huffed, rubbing over the small dome of his belly.
“I’m putting word out for everyone to be inspected.” Fel sighed halfheartedly. “There’s only a few hundred of us in this district. We’ll send word through other districts if Zurok gives the command.”
I swallowed hard and Fel brought up a window after a high-pitched beep signaled a call coming in. Zurok, as thought. “Good, Roan’s there. The kids, too?”
“Yes.” Fel rubbed at his head, exhaling deeply. “Gonads?”
“Intact, recently expressed. Left their host to find another, and looks like they were mauled to death.” Zurok’s face twisted on screen.
“We find out who didn’t take the therapy and see which of them is missing.” Fel drew up a few documents and began taking notes.
“That’s the problem.” Fel held up a glassine dish holding the worm that Nexus had brought us. It’d degraded even more since last I saw it. Aside from some purposeful incision marks, the damage to it looked aggressive and ongoing.
“I found their body nearby. It’d brooded. They supposedly underwent the therapy. Kimlar.” Zurok stared back down at his dish.
“How is that possible? I verified with my own scans.” Fel glanced away from his files, face twisted with frustration that his tail showed in spades.
“How, indeed, Fel?” Zurok sneered, and something about his posture made me and Fel flinch.
“You cannot believe I had something to do with this!” Fel stopped, pulling his hands away from the interface. “I understand. What can I do to assuage you? I am to lay within the next day.”
“I think you should be in a holding cell until—” Zurok’s cold voice cut off when I shouted out.
“Hey!” I stood, stepping into a clear field of view. “Bring the corpse in. Both. I have an idea.”
“Why?” Zurok narrowed his gaze.
“I…the corpse. When Nexus put it on my bed, it looked like it’d been soaked in bleach—”
“What is bleach?”
“Corrosive sodium hypochlorite.” I stared him down and gears were turning. “Do Colthraxians degrade very fast after they die? Do they have any sort of lyse agent internally that causes rapid degradation like that?”
“No.” Zurok and Fel answered at the same time.
“Then I really want to see that corpse and the host.” I crossed my arms, frowning at the camera until Zurok nodded once and cut the feed.
I called out to Tish. “Leticia, please have someone bring the purity meter.”
“What for? Everyone on this fucking rock is full lizard.” Her piping voice and sudden diction change made me weary. She’d been hanging out with Merriel’s programming too much.
“Protocol green. Do it.” I sighed in relief as she beeped out without another word.
“Purity meter?” Fel’s look of concern made me flinch.
“Religion met racism. It’s something the Naleucian worshipers implemented as a way to track hybreed percentages.” I cleared my throat, and Fel nodded once.
A sharp beep pinged in, Doc’s screen coming up. “Fel, oh, and Roan. Great! Noel is nesting hard. Whatever this is, sent him into panic and now he’s having contractions. The little ones are clear.”
“Come, bring the runts. Wallace is at the bakery today. They’ll be fine with Uncle Roan and Fel.” I waved him on, wincing as I thought better of the corpses about to come. “They may have to cover their eyes, though.”
I slipped my clothing back on as Doc ended the call, bringing the little ones by right as Zurok arrived with a hovering gurney and the covered dish. “Hello, little warrior! You did a very good job at catching this worm.”
Zurok’s tail didn’t match his face, but it was good enough for Nexus as he puffed up with pride. “Kill’d it!”
“That’s right.” Zurok smiled and flinched as a drone whizzed through the hall and dropped a handheld device beside me.
“Have fun,” Tish said as I grabbed for the device and pushed a few buttons.
“Kiddos, close your eyes while Uncle Roan does something pretty disgusting.” I gave them my best smile and Noah obediently covered his face, but Nexus blinked at me defiantly. “Okay, Nex. Keep an eye on Noah to make sure he’s not scared, okay?”
That seemed to sate his curiosity, and I pushed just outside the hall to scan the Colthraxian’s corpse with my meter. It blinked an error twice as I tried to scan its remnants.
I used it on myself and earned a 99.2 percent.
The thing had been standardized to Noel’s, so it was no surprise I was that high, especially as an omega, meaning, I already had mitochondrial contributions from him.
I was an omega long before I knew it. I scanned the corpse again, and it briefly flashed a 0. 001 percent. It errored again.
“Tish, call Sarge.” I focused on the corpse as I scanned it again and moved to the pale-yellow body of a Naleucian omega with no mate mark to speak of. “Get him onto the table and 4D.”