Second Chance (4 page)

17 Rebecca Airies

simple, one taste of them and she had given in to the desire to know their touch. She awkwardly clasped the gaping sides of the robe together with her hands and stared at the floor after one glance at the two men, Darion beside her and Alek still kneeling in front of her. They both looked furious and tense.

“Enter.” Alek’s rich voice was laced with frustration and anger. One look at him and Laci could see that the only thing he was regretting was the brevity of her time in their arms.

Her anxiety was churning in her belly. She fought the knowledge she’d found in their arms. Deep within her, the belief was beginning to solidify. She belonged with them. The pleasure she found in their arms wasn’t something that she could deny, but it was also true that she hardly knew anything about them. For all their certainty, their statements about remembering her, she certainly didn’t know them.

A man wearing a blue shirt and black pants—obviously the uniform of this group—stepped into the room and after one glance at Laci and the furious expressions worn by the two Jatohn, snapped to attention and looked straight ahead. “Tech Ansten sent me to get you. He said there’s something that you should see at the med-bay, Jatohn.”

Laci almost wanted to scream at the man to let Tech Ansten wait. The temptation was hard to resist, but showing them that she’d fulfilled her part of the bargain would get her away from here. She’d provided the program to cure their men. Hopefully with distance, her sanity would return.

“You may go,” Darion stated, his voice containing far more gravel than usual because of the strain of unsatisfied desire.

“Stand up. You go with us.” Alek took Laci’s hand and pulled her to her feet before she could comply of her own accord.

Laci wasn’t willing to continue walking those hallways in that outfit. It was utterly ridiculous. They had to have some clothing other than this robe better suited to a child than an adult woman. She propped her hand on her hip and looked up into their eyes. “Is there any way that I could get some real clothing? With this thing, I might as well be naked.”

“There are no female clothes on this ship. It’s an oversight that we’ll have to correct.” Darion shrugged. His eyes were filled with carnal passion. They ran over her from head to toe in a long, deliberate sweep and then he licked his lips. “I like being able to see your legs and the lush curve of your butt. You’re a sexy woman. There is no reason to cover such lovely flesh.”

“I could wear pants. I’m sure you have some that would fit me. There are many men on this ship. You must have a supply of uniforms.” Did they think she paraded like this in front of everybody? “If that isn’t feasible, I had on clothing when you took me from that inn. It might have been a night shirt and shorts, but it covered more than this.”

“You, in pants.” Alek frowned. “Pants are for men. I want to be able to touch your skin. I can still hardly believe you’re here and the warmth and softness of your skin

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reassures me that this isn’t a dream.” His voice thickened and his eyes turned molten gold. She couldn’t doubt the sincerity of his words, even if she didn’t understand his sentiment. “No, you will wear what is appropriate and pants are not. Unfortunately, the clothing that you wore when we brought you here was destroyed when we took it off you.”

Laci found herself being hustled through more unmarked, gray hallways, down in a lift and through another series of hallways. They entered the med-bay, a room done in grays and stark white. All of the beds in the front part of med-bay were occupied, but the men on them seemed alert and aware.

She looked around the room with distaste as they waited for the tech to come over to them. Didn’t these men believe in color? All this unrelenting light gray was enough to put someone to sleep.

Tech Ansten approached them. “Jatohn, it’s working. The men who were just showing signs of infection began to show an almost immediate improvement. We’ll inoculate everyone to ensure that no one else is infected.”

The tech continued talking, giving a detailed explanation of how quickly the effects could be noticed in some of the milder cases. Laci frowned as she noticed that Darion had walked over to speak with a man in a white coat.

Alek held her by the wrist to ensure that she didn’t wander as he continued talking with the tech. Laci twisted her wrist in Alek’s loose grasp and considered kicking him. It wasn’t as if she had any hope of getting off the ship without their cooperation. She watched Darion. He spent a few moments talking with the medic and then returned to listen to the tech.

Darion stood right beside her, almost facing her. Laci thought nothing of it when Alek’s hand moved from her wrist to her waist. They had both seemed inclined to touch her whenever they wanted. She felt a sudden jab in her left shoulder and then blackness engulfed her.

* * * * *

Laci woke in her starkly impersonal brown room back at the inn on Viaga.

I should have known better than to think that I could trust those men.
Laci’s already dark mood turned black as she noticed the absence of Vanya Steryan.

Cautious of possible side effects from the stunning, Laci levered herself into a sitting position and let her thoughts turn to what she would do to those men if she ever saw them again.
I hope I’m armed the next time that I meet them. If I am, they’ll see what it’s like to wake up imprisoned somewhere—preferably somewhere cold, wet, dark and deep enough to keep them there for awhile.

“Ah, you’re awake and feeling wrathful.” The vid-screen in front of her bed activated, showing Darion and Alek seated in chairs in some kind of conference room. “We kept our word, although you might think differently. We never said that we would

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give you Steryan, just that you would have to wait and that you would both be going to Viaga.” Alek’s tone was smug.

Laci glared at the screen. “You son of a Tendaran whore, you’d better hope that we never meet again. I expected better, that even if you didn’t say those specific words, you would honor the spirit of the deal.” The truth was that she hadn’t caught the vagueness in the wording. She cursed that small lapse.

“We’ll take whatever advantage we can get. You know that, Laci.” Darion leaned back in the chair and a confident smile crossed his lips. “We will meet again. Steryan is going before the Tribunal. The only change in your plan, it won’t be you who escorts her.”

“Stay away from me. I won’t warn you again. I gave you a chance and you played games.” Laci felt like throwing something through the vid-screen. She’d never been angrier than she was now. She couldn’t decide if she was more annoyed with them or herself. “I could never trust you now.”

“We’ll give you a little time to calm down and see reason.” Alek leaned forward fixing her with an intense stare. The words carried indulgence as if he was giving a gift to an unreasonable person. A moment later, the screen went blank as the transmission ended.

20 Second Chance

Chapter Three

Laci kept very busy in the three months following her encounter with Alek and Darion. It was the only way to keep her thoughts from focusing on those two men to the exclusion of all else. Only after she’d made certain she hadn’t been followed did she go to the compound-like complex on Beria where she lived with nearly a hundred other Third Gen women. They’d all escaped from the same lab.

After repeated scans to ensure that she hadn’t been tagged with some kind of tracker, she’d gone to work. She brought in three other criminals associated with the labs and had been doing some research into the old labs. The new search had been prompted by what she hadn’t found in the previous searches.

For the creation of both Gen Two and Gen Three, there were meticulous records, thousands of hours of recorded footage and audio files on each subject. For Gen One, there was a partial list of the subjects and that was it. That sparse list didn’t follow the scientists’ nature of documenting and recording. There was no way this deviation could be a coincidence.

That had prompted her to dig deeper into Gen One. She’d discovered that the labs had been moved just prior to the escape of the Gen One men. There was no record of the previous location, but she refused to give up the search. She knew that there would be some trail leading to it.

Laci idly rubbed at her temples and squinted at the vid-screen in front of her. She blinked at the fuzzy images and sighed, then stood and began pacing the computer room.

She’d been sifting through financial and government records during the weeks following her abduction. In spite of all of her work, she was no closer to finding any answers. Her head throbbed and her eyes burned from hours spent staring at various computer screens.

She paced to the end of the long, narrow room and glanced at three large boxes of disks. Three companies on two planets had been behind the experiments that resulted in the creation of the hybrids. Those boxes held every known piece of information about the experiments. Even financial information from the First Gen experiments was hard to find.

The experiments had started with Vari-Co and Mari-Tec, companies based on Maridon. There was no information on the original reasons for the creation of the hybrids. It hadn’t taken long for the Maridon government to decide that these created beings would make perfect soldiers. That was when the scientists from Bio-mec on Larisk had been enlisted. Both planets had backed the experiments fully until about eight years ago.

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The door to the computer room swished open and Teira Saron strolled into the room. The tall, blonde woman smiled as she walked over to look at the screen. “I knew you’d still be at it. Do you want some help?”

“Yes, this is all starting to look like the same thing.” Laci walked back over to her seat.

She slid into the seat and propped her elbow on the table. She idly played with a strand of her hair as she read through old memos and reports. Most of the information pertained to routine business matters and wasn’t useful.

“Hey, at least it’s organized.” Teira flashed a smile as she turned on one of the computers. “How far have you gotten in your search?”

“I’m still on the Maridon documents. The next disk is M-368.” Laci reached for the tumbler of juice she’d placed to the right of her keyboard. She took a long drink, savoring the cold liquid.

The reason that the information was so organized and readily available was very simple. The Maridon and Lariskan governments had withdrawn support when the Second and Third Gen experiments had been discovered. Condemnation of their actions had been swift and vicious. The governments’ withdrawal hadn’t saved them from censure and penalties set by the Intergalactic Council and later the Tribunal. Both governments had cooperated fully and provided anything asked of them.

Even at the beginning, most of the research had been done off-planet, in isolated sectors. It was very possible that records had been missed or deliberately misplaced.

“What do you hope to find?” Teira asked as she began reading through the material.

“I want to know where they found the genetic material for the First Gen. Why didn’t they make females as well as males in those first experiments?” Laci resisted the urge to put her head down on her arms and take a nap. She focused on the records in front of her.

Laci read the next memo. It was from one of the scientists advising the development of some kind of fail-safe protocol written into the programming. Both the company and the government had considered it a paranoid request. Also, they didn’t want to chance losing their investment because of a malfunctioning program.

While Maridon and Larisk no longer supported the experiments, the three companies and scientists still continued to strive toward their goals. Two distinct factions had formed. The companies and most of the scientists wanted to regain control of control of the “subjects”. Then there were the radical scientists and their supporters who believed all the Arceins should be destroyed and actively sought ways to accomplish their goal. Laci feared these people the most. She’d seen the damage they could do.

“You know, even at the first, they weren’t stupid. Although a lot of the experiments could be directly linked to them, they hid the worst under the names of shell companies,” Teira observed.

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“I know.” Laci closed her eyes and rubbed at her neck. Some of those companies still existed. They were based on worlds that gave hybrids, clones and any nonhuman very few rights. “I’m looking for records of shipments or strange purchases we didn’t note earlier.”

It would take a month of searching before she discovered one location beyond all of the well-traveled space routes which wasn’t a documented, legitimate holding. In the intervening time, Laci didn’t sleep very well. The dreams were becoming more frequent and some nights she stayed awake rather than risk falling into one of the disturbing visions. They raised far too many questions. As she would be traveling to the planet known as X-R321, she couldn’t avoid the dreams this night.

* * * * *

Laci stared at the sparkling gray stone walls. The surface appeared rough, grainy. She looked down and noticed that her hair fell past her hips. She wore a flowing, bright green dress. Heated thoughts swirled through Laci’s mind. She was lusty, hungry, awaiting their return. The door opened and Alek and Darion strode into the room.

“Ah, Satira, are you ready for us?” Alek stepped behind her, his arm curling around her waist. His hips flexed and he rubbed his cock against her buttocks.

Darion stepped in front of her and pressed his hard body against her. She was caged between two large, warm male bodies and she couldn’t think of anywhere she would rather be. The arousal rolled through her body. She wanted them. She could feel the hot liquid warmth of her desire on her thighs.

“Aleksin, I am always ready. Feel,” she offered, pulling his hand forward as she gathered her skirt. She pushed his hand against her mound.

“Very creamy and hot,” Alek said approvingly.

“Offer me your breasts,
be’rai,
” Darion ordered.

Somehow the knowledge was already within her—
Be’rai
meant sweet. The dream Laci pushed the cloth off her arms, baring herself to the waist. She lifted one of her breasts in her palm and turned slightly to Darion.

“Taste me, please, Rionis.”

Darion’s lips enclosed the tip and—

Laci jerked awake, frustrated and nervous. Her breasts were swollen and aching for the feel of that warm mouth. A knot of sexual tension curled low in her belly. Her thighs were slathered with her hot juices. There was something more to these dreams. Everything about those dreams was so real, so clear.

Nervous but in need of sleep, Laci closed her eyes again.

She moved a plate on the long, polished wooden table. Through the thin, filmy curtains separating the dining room from the common room, she saw Aleksin stalk toward the large entry doors. He seemed tense, strained.

A smile tilted her lips and she started after him.