ElyriasEcstasy (6 page)

No, not much, Urna thought. Only a maze consisting of what
seemed like about a hundred locked doors, easily surpassed using the swiped
card. The trick was to avoid everyone else on patrol. Fortunately, he’d long
since left behind the personnel quarters. These were administration offices and
storage buildings, all silent in the night.

Unfortunately, he would have needed more than this standard
card to get access to the armory. There would be no retrieving his personal
sidearm and sword.

He finally reached the last structure in the row. Sidling
along a wall, as soundless as a mist, he halted beneath a high window. Nimbly
he leaped, caught the sill and drew himself up. The lock was far easier to
force than the last one. This one wasn’t even electronic. No alarms had sounded
when he’d disabled his room’s door. Power fluctuations happened occasionally,
even here on the Citadel’s grounds. No doubt some trooper sitting bored out of
his mind at a monitor screen had seen the interruption of the card-lock on
Urna’s room and made note of it. A repair would be scheduled. But that
unconscious guard would be discovered long before then.

Urna slipped out through the high window, jumping, landing
and rolling easily, as if he weighed nothing. He’d gone out headfirst and now
came up in a crouching position. He took a deep breath as he surveyed the
grounds. He was at the Citadel’s periphery. Above him was the night sky, a
clean black sheet pricked with icy starlight, so different from the glow of the
Black Ship’s underside.

Enormous solar panels stood on the tops of the buildings and
were scattered at intervals throughout the huge yard. These Lux-owned arrays
were all over the Safe, gathering what precious energy they could to be
distributed throughout the Safe proper, then more sparingly through the
surrounding border towns.

Looming in the night was the Citadel building itself, as grand
and imposing an edifice as just about anything Urna had ever seen crumbling to
dust out in the Unsafe, and certainly the most palatial structure in the Safe
itself. There the Toplux and his council presided. There the Lux jealously
nurtured their power. They were the political force that domineered the Safe,
using both the Guard and the military to keep themselves dominant. They had the
wealth and the technology. With a wrench Urna tore his eyes away from the
sight.

Only a few hundred feet worth of training grounds routinely
scanned by camera drones and searchlights now stood between him and the
perimeter fence. He would have to take down a few more men once he reached that
barrier, beyond which lay the city surrounding the Citadel. He still had the first
guard’s pistol, but using it wasn’t his first choice. His own gun would have
been more comfortable anyway, but that and his sword were always handed over
before debriefings. He would not fire his commandeered firearm. Nothing
announced trouble quite like a gunshot.

Good thing he was such a brilliant Weapon.

A light swept by, just past the tips of his fingers, which
were splayed on the ground, followed by the buzz of a camera high over his
head. He was still as a stone, waiting, but could not deny the grin that crept
across his sharp features. For all his periodic fantasizing over the years
about this night, this escape, he had never imagined it being so much fun. Or
maybe this was just adrenaline translated into giddiness. He’d felt this way
sometimes on missions, cutting through swarms of Passengers.

Go.
Rune’s phantom voice again. Urna was sure—well,
almost sure—this time that it was indeed imagined. Something in the mental
timbre was off. Some instinct told him not to trust the voice’s authenticity,
even though he had to admit it’d been providing him with good advice so far.
Shaking off whatever lingering feelings the presence of the voice had planted
in his mind, Urna pushed off the ground and sprinted across the yard.

Rune, the bastard, was determined to be a part of this, it
seemed, if only an imaginary part. The voice had to be some subconscious
concoction of Urna’s own mind. Maybe the drug withdrawal was already affecting
him. Maybe he was panicking on some level about leaving his longtime lover and
antagonist behind.

He gained speed as he went, a built-in benefit of running
full tilt. Weapons were trained so that no living creature could catch up with
them should the mission require a quick retreat. Another skill not imparted to
the Shadowflashes, who were always supposed to keep their distance from the
violence.

Twenty yards from the fence he would be in full view of the
two troopers he could see ahead. One of them, at least, would have time to call
in an alert—all this required was the touch of a button on the radio on their
belt. Not long after that, real alarms would start sounding, ones that would be
taken very seriously. But Urna planned to be far out of the compound before
that happened.

He selected his target, the more attentive of the pair, and
raced for him across the final distance. The trooper raised his gun.

“Hold it right—” But the Weapon’s whisper-quiet feet were
carrying him at a blurring speed by now. A quick elbow to the jaw cut off the
trooper’s last word, a few red drops of blood flying from his mouth instead. As
he stumbled back a step, Urna’s foot met decisively with the center of his
chest, sending him sprawling against the metal linked fence.

Urna didn’t have much experience fighting against ordinary
people. He’d trained exclusively with other Weapons, spent his time in the dark
of the Unsafe battling inhuman fiends. He thought he heard a rib crack, felt a
twinge of sympathy for the poor dupe. But this wasn’t the time for hesitation.

The one trooper’s chest had stopped his forward momentum.
Now he spun on the second figure, a female, who was still raising her firearm.
So far the assault had lasted roughly two seconds.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Urna said. An indulgence on his
part. A…mercy? Was it some lingering warm feeling from the episode with Arvra
earlier? Such thoughts flitted through his mind and vanished. He watched as the
woman, frozen in this tiny instant, seemed to consider her options.
Hyper-processing, the way adrenaline allowed one to do. Urna had an inordinate
supply of the stuff, a fact he
had
managed to learn from the doctors
over the years, something that was unique to his biology. It was interesting to
see the effect of so much adrenaline on a normal human as the soldier’s gun
twitched indecisively in her grip. Her other hand was motionless at her side,
as if she’d forgotten all about her radio. She had to recognize him, had to
know how dangerous he was. She couldn’t let Urna go, she must be thinking. But
if she tried to stop him…

The barely conscious man on the ground wheezed as if
offering an opinion. Already Urna could hear footfalls in the short distance,
heading this way. As instructive as it might have been fighting several
troopers at once, this wasn’t the time. “Let me make this easier,” he said to
the woman.

A swift punch to the nose dropped the second guard, a
follow-up kick sending her gun skittering irretrievably across the concrete
yard. Urna tossed the weapon he had claimed earlier over the fence before
launching himself at it.

His fingers curled around the cold metal rings. His feet
barely touched the fence as he used the strength of his arms to pull himself
quickly up. When he reached the top, he hoisted himself up into a standing
position. Easily and perfectly balanced on the thin rail, he allowed his head a
half-turn back in the direction of the compound. Another indulgence.

His whole life had been spent here. What he could remember
of it. A life closely monitored at all times, except for those spent under-Ship
with his dear Shadowflash.

Weapons did everything exciting in the dark. Run, fight,
kill, fuck—and they did it alone, save for the company of one other man.
(Except, sometimes, in the fucking case, he supposed, when it might be with a
woman.) So why didn’t those Weapons simply vanish, desert, quit their duties?
It was something he had often wondered about, one of those disturbing thoughts
that had perhaps translated itself into a tangled scrawl on the walls of his
room. The Guard never left the Safe. Only authorized daredevil salvage teams or
crazy civilians like Arvra’s brother ever ventured into the Unsafe.

The only other beings to truly walk in the perpetual
twilight beneath the Black Ship as though they owned it were the Passengers. So
why did the Weapons return to this compound, this dreary place, night after
night? Why subject themselves to the rigors, to the probes of the doctors, to
this awful regimentation?

Urna knew why he’d stayed, and he guessed it was the same
for the other, lesser Weapons. There was no life for them outside of this. This
was what they had been built for. The eternal struggle against the Passengers
of the Black Ship—and it would be eternal, for the Ship had never shown any
signs of moving. For whole generations of people it had been a fixture. A
permanent adherence. Elyria’s unremitting blight.

Without the struggle against the Passengers, the two-man
teams were nothing. Nobodies. He and Rune would be little more than oddly
matched males without the fight. Just an unused Weapon and his accessory. His
sightless-sight.

And that was why Rune would never have accompanied him on
this fool’s mission, why Urna couldn’t explain the picture of the two parents
and their son and what it meant to him. Rune didn’t understand. Rune didn’t
question. Rune didn’t doubt. Or at least he’d never given any sign of doing so.
Urna intended to discover some tangible truth about himself. No one, he knew,
would voluntarily tell him anything, even if they held the knowledge. He was a
tool for the Lux and the Lux wanted him just the way he was. Operational,
efficient, lethal.

The truth Urna sought was probably impossible. Or if it was
real, it was likely out of reach.

So what? Fuck it. He’d find it anyway. And he’d do it alone.
All these thoughts zipped through his brain in a heartbeat. A camera drone rose
up above the level of the fence, staring at Urna with its single green eye. He
smiled sweetly at it before he dropped off the far side.

Alone,
he reiterated mentally as he landed. Alone
meant, more than anything else, without Rune. Not that Urna wanted Rune’s
company. Or needed his help. And if he had needed that aid he would have been
out of luck. Nothing he could have done would’ve brought Rune along, he knew.
He could have pleaded. He could have wept. It wouldn’t have mattered. Rune was
like the others. Full of the Lux.

Full of poison.

The last thought came unbidden. Whatever it meant, he knew
that Rune was irrevocably broken. The only semblance of a personality he had
came from Urna, surely. Borrowed emotional energy. Reactions to him more than
any original character. And if Urna had ever caught a glimpse of…something…in
Rune’s eyes that resembled genuine affection, it was surely precoital
excitement, nothing more. Urna felt unexpected bitterness tighten his throat.
What a creature for him to waste his love on.

Too bad for him. Too bad for them both.

Behind Urna the alarms started. But he had snatched up his
gun and was already fleeing the scene, running as only a Weapon could.

Chapter Four

Even in the stony nowhere of the dankish Guard holding cell
Virge Temple could hear the alarms going crazy. Her two Interrogators—highly
ranked according to the multiple silver bands encircling their upper left arms,
both men humorless and cold-blooded—tried to ignore the klaxons. They’d been at
Virge for quite some while and she could feel her mental defenses starting to
turn to mush. They used simple repetition, asking the same questions again and
again with the most minor variations in wording. It was maddening.

The alarms were, frankly, a welcome distraction for her. She
sat up straighter in her chair before the tiny metal desk. No confession had
yet been produced for her to sign and she hadn’t yet given away anything that
would incriminate either her or Bongo, the self-professed magic-using rebel
who’d concocted those silly anti-Lux leaflets using paper she’d given him. Even
now, this far into her ordeal, Virge couldn’t entirely regret what she had
done. Fuck the Lux. And fuck Aphael Chav for lording his wealth and power over
everyone and everything.

“You hear that?” she asked. She turned her head as though
she could spot the source of the blaring alarms through the gray walls of the
cell. She still felt a mild pleasant wooziness from the alcohol Nick Daphral,
the Junior Interrogator, had brought her earlier. That quick, hard sexual
escapade with him was something else she didn’t regret. “Sounds like,” she
murmured drolly, still looking around, “there might be some trouble ‘round
here.”

“That’s none of your concern,” one of the two
interchangeable Interrogators said a little sharply. The pair exchanged worried
glances that weren’t as sly as they meant them to be.

Virge permitted herself the ghost of a smile. Anything to
disrupt this session. She knew the tactic—keep at her and at her without break
until her whole world became this cell. But if things got interrupted it would
be like hitting the reset button. These two Guard Interrogators, professionals
or not, wouldn’t be eager to start from scratch with her.

They tried their questions again, but their rhythm was off.
Before, they’d gone after her in perfect tandem, trading off the inquiries,
making endless notes on the pads of paper they’d brought with them. Now they
started tripping each other up as the commotion of the alarms persisted, along
with a general rumbling, as of many footfalls, in the corridor beyond this
room. Virge slowed down her replies to make matters worse. Instead of
responding quickly so as to kill off the questions once and for all, she now
contemplated each query with a deliberate—and mocking—solemnity.

After a few minutes it was plain by the Interrogators’
manner that they’d lost control of the session. One muttered an aside to the
other. That one answered with a muted snarl.

Good, Virge thought with a growing glow of triumph. Let them
turn on each other.

Finally, without another word to her, they stood and exited
the little room. Virge, now starting to seriously wonder what the alarms
indicated, was strangely pleased when, a moment later, Nick Daphral reappeared.

He crossed toward her, something approximating a mischievous
smile on his face, and set on the desk the half-empty bottle she’d drunk from
earlier. Immediately she snatched it up and took a long swallow. Take what you
can when you can.

She regarded the low-level Interrogator. His demeanor was
different. He seemed looser, more relaxed. He was looking at her almost
goofily, like a semi-smitten adolescent. Had she changed him out of all
recognition just by sharing her body with him? Apparently so.

The alcohol burned in her throat, warmed her gut. Maybe she
liked her booze a bit too much, but so what? It didn’t affect her work at the
laboratory.

“Is it okay?” Nick asked solicitously.

No Guard had ever asked her such a question in quite that
tone of voice. Hiding her surprise, she said, “It was fine before. It’s fine
now.”

He seemed to wince a little at her harsh tone, which
dismayed her all the more. Equally surprising to her was that she felt a tiny
twinge of guilt for being curt with him. But she had to press this unexpected
advantage. “What’s going on out there?” she asked.

The alarms were still clanging away in the distance. The
grounds of the Citadel were very large. In addition to the Lux’s grand edifice
and outbuildings, there were these Guard facilities, as well as the military’s
complex.

“I don’t—” Nick hesitated. Some of the puppyishness died on
his features. Whatever feelings he might suddenly have for her, he was still a
member of the Guard. “I’m not sure.”

Virge downed another swallow. The small bottle was rapidly
emptying. She thought about reaching into his pants, grabbing hold of his cock
and squeezing until he answered, but that might well lead to further fucking,
and she had no idea when the Senior Interrogators were coming back.

Instead she tried a softly pouty expression, feeling vaguely
idiotic putting on the coquettish pretense. “Fine, don’t tell me,” she said.

“Okay, okay.” He lifted a hand as if to pat her reassuringly
then dropped it without touching her. He really didn’t have much confidence for
someone aspiring to be a ruthless Interrogator. He went on, “There’s been an
escape.”

“Escape?” Virge blinked. She’d never heard of anybody
getting away from Guard detention before. That was good news. Bongo and his
gang would be glad to hear about it. “You lost a prisoner?” She tried not to
make it a jibe but it sounded like one anyway.

Nick stiffened noticeably. “Not an escape from our
compound,” he said icily. “From the soldiers’ complex. From the
Shadowflash/Weapon wing.” Then, the information he’d heard apparently so juicy
it overcame his incense of an instant ago, he added eagerly, “I heard it was
Urna who went over the fence.
Urna
. Can you believe that?”

Virge Temple, draining the bottle, found herself having a
hard time believing that the most famous Weapon in the world had just staged an
escape. If it was true, though, some shit was surely about to fly.

* * * * *

The woman they had sent Rune was hippy, with large, full
breasts and a fantastic ass. He was currently getting a nice view of it bucking
up against him as the two of them lay on their sides, back to belly. His hands
gripped her hips, cushioned by a healthy layer of soft flesh. He pulled her
back onto him, hard.

“Ah,” she moaned. “Do it like that.”

“Shut up.” He didn’t like it when they talked and so they
usually didn’t. This one was named Lavinia, and she was known to slip up now
and then. Maybe that was why she was, contrarily, one of his favorites. She’d
been sent to him often enough that he knew he had never impregnated her, which
was ostensibly the point of this exercise. He didn’t know if either he or Urna
had ever managed to father a child. Presumably an offspring would have the same
amazing abilities the two of them possessed. The other members of the
Weapon/Shadowflash division could only wanly duplicate these talents through
training and chemical enhancements.

Still, he or Urna
must
have succeeded in seeding one
of these women at some point, he figured, or else their superiors wouldn’t keep
sending them like this. Certainly none of the other Shadowflashes in this wing
of the military complex had the privilege of such company.

Lavinia. He even liked her name, liked the way it sounded in
his mouth whenever he bothered to say it out loud. The soft, round curve of her
ass beneath his hand was so unlike the last person he’d fucked, who was all
planes and angles. Taut muscles pulled tight over fine, sharp bones. A
drum-tight pale ass, and Rune’s cock penetrating. Urna, on that rooftop…

Rune ground his teeth together. Lavinia’s head was turned
back over her shoulder, her face—wanton eyes and full, flush lips—was mostly
hidden by the curtain of her thick, black hair. Her skin was bronzed by the
sun. Superficially, as far as pigment, hair color and meatiness of body, she,
of all the women who came to see him, least resembled Urna.

In short, she was the polar opposite of the man he called
his lover. And his professional partner. And his emotional adversary.

The two males might be bound together in training and in
battle, but as far as Rune was concerned right this moment, that was where
their association ended. Here, out of sensing range in his room, Rune wanted
nothing to do with his contemporary, subconscious or otherwise. This was a
source of near constant frustration, however, because Urna always seemed to
sneak into his thoughts anyway. It was like Urna was as determined to disobey
Rune here as he was in the Unsafe.

But whatever. Rune had better things to think about, so he
tried not to dwell on this particular defect or the implications it might hold.
He simply accepted it. Another fact of his strange existence, like the drugs
he’d obediently swallowed an hour earlier. Like this room, which he kept neat
and plain. Like the woman with him. Lavinia.

She moaned again and Rune felt his orgasm lurking
tantalizingly close. Just out of reach, as it had been for several minutes now,
despite the steady plowing he’d been giving her. He released his grip on
Lavinia’s hips, brought his hands to her shoulders, shifted himself, pulling
her up onto her knees. He planted his own knees between hers as she settled
onto all fours.

She made no protest when his fingers crept in from her
shoulders to curl around her throat. She was accustomed to his proclivities.
Immediately, as he applied pressure, he was closer to completion, waves of
warmth and pleasure in his groin spiraling outward and up his spine. He jerked
Lavinia upright onto her knees with a low growl. She didn’t struggle, though
sometimes he liked that, too.

He pulled her against his chest, her backbone pressing onto
his sternum. He felt the sweat-dampness of her flesh. His hands still clasped
her throat. His hair, as dark as hers, blended with her locks as he dropped his
forehead onto her shoulder. She fell back onto him and he found himself even
deeper inside her. She rode his cock hard, grinding her pussy on him and
gasping urgently. By the motions of her shoulder he could tell she was sliding
her hand up and down her clit, spreading her wetness onto him as she started to
come, and he was set to join her—

Just as the alarms let loose.

These were followed by three sharp bangs in the short
distance, all coming from different directions. Gunshots? No, of course not.
Doors slamming. The corridors of the Shadowflash wing were suddenly alive with
commotion.

Bootsteps were moving in the direction of his room, quickly.
ETA, one minute, forty-five seconds. That was, however, a genuine estimate.
Rune could only pick out sounds with absolute razor certainty when Urna was
involved. Otherwise his senses were merely extraordinary, not superhuman. Another
reminder of that treacherous affinity they could never seem to escape.

“Stop,” Rune ground out. “Get
off
.”

But there was no stopping Lavinia as she relentlessly rode
the waves of her orgasm, delirious with pleasure. Her vaginal walls gripped him
like a slick fist.

“I said, off!” The urgency of his own body’s needs had been
canceled out by the sounding of the alarms, which continued to wail in the
nighttime. He finally managed to shove her roughly forward. She offered a small
yelp of surprise, sprawling across the mattress as he wrenched his
still-rampant cock from her. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and
reached down to retrieve his discarded clothing.

His denied orgasm was meaningless, he told himself grimly,
even as he found some difficulty wedging his rigid shaft down into his briefs.
Duty called.

Lavinia rolled onto her back, cast Rune a disparaging
glance. He paused to eye her vaguely up and down. With her knees spread and her
pussy dripping, propped up on her elbows with her breasts heaving, she still
managed to look oddly dignified, more offended than ridiculous.

“What is it?” she wanted to know.

Not knowing why he deigned to reply, he said, “Someone’s
coming.” He pulled his pants up one-handed, not bothering with the drawstring.
With a curt snap of his other arm he tossed Lavinia the gauzy garment she
always wore on these visits.

He’d once briefly entertained the idea that all of the women
who’d come to his room over the years—and, he knew, to Urna’s room as well—were
first taken to a changing area somewhere containing nothing but this same
flimsy dress and a hundred like garments. Color and size would vary slightly to
accommodate individual preferences. Did some female who Urna routinely fucked
also wear this same sheer garb he always thought of as Lavinia’s? The notion
had troubled him when it first occurred to him. Why? Did it bother him that
women were sent to pleasure Urna too, if that was even the accurate verb to
apply to what these females did? He and his Weapon partner never discussed the
matter in depth. Of course they didn’t. Despite how close they were in some
respects, they were still separated by an unresolved emotional gulf. By a
shared but indistinct past.

Before Rune had deduced that the women were part of a
breeding program, he had assumed that they were meant to keep the two males
unwound, so that they wouldn’t be distracted by carnal urges in other
situations. So much for that. He had also concluded that they likely came from
the border towns rather than from the more prosperous populace of the city
surrounding the Citadel or even the nearby outlying towns of the Safe proper.
He was at least certain that the women weren’t actually housed somewhere here
on the compound, stored like so much equipment. Now there was a morbid thought.

But he’d never bothered to ever ask one of these females
anything about her background. It didn’t matter to him, in the end. He
performed with them in here like he performed with Urna out there, and that was
as much as he needed to know.