Cyberella: Preyfinders Universe (28 page)

Silence and places where there were few people were her way to...not contentment. Peace though, yes.

After months of looping, over and over, through her wish to redo the past, sorrow and disbelief had given way to a morbid acceptance of this lonely existence. Acceptance but hate too. Self-hate. She wobbled from one to the other, some days. She frowned, dreading the claws of nausea that often accompanied such thoughts.

Maybe coming up here wasn’t such a good idea.

Ella put her gloved hand to her stomach, grimacing. Hate was a horrible thing but how could she feel anything else? Her fault, all of this.

She swallowed and a few tears dribbled down her cheeks. She prayed it was only her who suffered like this.
Please, let him have forgotten her.

A mild roar said a ship must be coming over, though the path to the spaceport was a little more northern. She looked up, expecting to see a vast shadow pass overhead.

A faint scuffle in the snow behind warned the guide was returning. When the ship didn’t fly over, she gave up and stood. The edge was a few yards in front. A rock, dislodged by her movements, tumbled a few feet before stopping. She backed up. Falling off due to a collapsed shelf of snow would be stupid. She’d had so many other opportunities to die.

Sadness hit her again – unexpected and rough enough to make her eyes sting. When, or if, it came to that, she’d choose a prettier way to go. Flying into a sun? Too hot, though nicely dramatic.

Shit. Stop being maudlin.

Torgeir would’ve hugged her if he found her sad. That brought on another wave of potential weepiness. She cleared her throat. When was she going to stop remembering him?

“Are we heading back?” As she turned, she glimpsed a white figure bearing some long weapon, then several other figures in white, floating in and landing, bending at the knees. A
whomm
noise preceded something whacking into her neck and she crumpled at the knees, with barely time to wonder what was happening. Then, she was gone.

Thoughts ceased.

*****

Awakening, after what seemed millennia, she had a distinct sense of déjà vu. Would there be a pumpkin-orange spaceship or a chandelier nearby? Someone had knocked her out, again.

Even with her eyes shut, she could tell if any cybernetics were nearby.

Here
was eerily quiet and empty of anyone or anything like that. She stretched her senses. Nothing cybernetic for miles.

Beneath her body was hard, smooth floor. Tiles. She listened and only caught distant whoops and bird calls, perhaps also the sigh of the wind. Light flickered across her eyelids and warmed her face. Sunlight.

She was dressed, from the feel of it, in panties and bra.

A heavy metal collar was around her neck. It seemed solid as hell and probably not cybernetic. Her throat moved in a furtive swallow. Shifting her arm as cautiously as she could, she reached up to touch it. Her nanogeers confirmed her suspicion – it was all metal.

“You won’t find anything you can manipulate. They’ve cleared away everything cybernetic for miles.”

The voice shocked her and her heart squeezed in.
Torgeir.
She’d not thought she’d ever hear him speak again. What did he mean
they
?

Ella opened her eyes then rolled over and pushed herself up from the floor.

Every apologetic word in the ’verse struggled to leave her tongue and she said none of them.

He sat, side on to her, outlined by brightness, in the right-hand corner of a long space where a wall should be. His features were blasted away by the daylight and she was pining to see him, every part of him, to kiss him from his toes to his lips, and she mustn’t, she had no right anymore.

She’d forced herself past grieving for him, after months of doing so daily, and now he was here. Could she hope? In spite of how she’d been brought here?

Being rendered unconscious and collared were not a good omens.

Hoping was premature.

“Why am I here?”

This room seemed suspended far above the landscape of whatever planet this was. There were green forests or fields down there, miles away and blurred by distance. This was not
Heksepp
, she was sure.

“That collar,” he said dryly. “Is packed with some new tracker they’ve devised just for you. Don’t ask me how it works but Concer’s scientist are happy with it. Try to remove it and they’ll likely kill you.”

Why would Concer be concerned about her? Ella fingered the collar again. Her actions might have been somewhat criminal...okay, she’d controlled people but who knew that? Not them, surely. No one ever noticed. She’d been crafty as an invisible fox.

“Do you realize how many people you have angered, how many you have scared? Even Mimi seems sad. You ran away after making my men turn against me. They don’t understand and Dresdek, at the least, feels betrayed. The entire Concer administration wants you dead.”

Stunned, she put her hand to her throat and encountered that collar again. “Why?”

There was more to this than she’d imagined.

His monotone delivery had scared her more than anything. Which told her so much that she already knew. Torgeir meant more to her than anything or anyone else.

“Because you’re dangerous.” He twisted and looked toward her, though she couldn’t see his eyes. “You can do things that everyone is terrified of. They’ve calculated that forty-three percent of the population has enough cybernetics to be controllable by this power you have. They signed your execution warrant within a day of working that out.”

“Oh.” She put her palms to the floor. Her brain whirled with deductions. She hadn’t considered the implications. She’d put him into a bad situation by her actions. “I wouldn’t though, do anything terrible... Why am I alive? Why are you here? Whoever did
this
.” She waved her hand about. “Put me here. They’ve not threatened you?”

“Why do you think you’re alive?”

She sucked in her lip. A headache was looming. He was here but he hadn’t come to her. That said he wanted to help but he didn’t want to touch her. Horrible but understandable.

That he was here and Concer knew it, had let him come...

“You.” It meant he had some say in her outcome. That was good, for him. He wasn’t just a prisoner. At last her sorrow let her say what she wanted to, needed desperately to say. “I’m sorry.”

His inhalation and sigh was painful to hear. “Are you, Ella?”

He’d said her name and she hoped that was a sign.

“Yes.” She raised up on her knees, about to go to him.

“Stay there. I’m not done talking. Not at all.”

Ominous, and in that grinding, hard voice. She sank onto her heels, the ache in her chest enough to take her breath away. This was an interrogation not a lover coming back to her, but what did she expect? She’d wronged him.

She gulped and said, “I’m sorry” again in a small voice. He ignored her.

“Why did you run from me? We were almost fully bondmated.”

Why had she? Ahhh, all those reasons. They’d made sense at the time. She leaned down, so distraught she slowly collapsed and ended up with her forehead resting on her fists where she’d planted them on the floor. She rocked her head on her fists. She spoke into the dull space made by her fists and her body.

“I knew you’d hate me. I was Bak-lal. You said you’d pay to kill Bak-lal.”

“I may have said that, but you never gave me the opportunity to answer you.”

“I know.” A sob broke from her throat.

“Did you not trust me? The truth.”

The truth?
Fuck.
“No. I guess I didn’t, but –”

“Stop.”

Silence fell awhile and all she could hear was her breathing. Crying was pitiful. She sat up and waited for him to speak.

“I get it. I do. I understand in a way but it’s still inexcusable that you didn’t trust me. You used me as much as you did Dresdek. I would have understood. I’m not an ogre or a fool. The doctor’s report said you had one lesion that was removable. Your genetic structure otherwise was fine.”

“Oh.” She sniffed.

“Not saying sorry again?”

“I think I need to let you decide what you think.”

“What do you want, Ella? You ran and made no attempt to come back to me. I need you still, but I don’t know if I want you.”

His words pierced her like a spear. She only had the truth and she left her fumbling hands in her lap while she tried to say the right words.

“I need you still, Torgeir, and I want you. Is there a difference between the two? I’m too confused to tell.” A sob leaked out. “I never stopped loving you but I was...I am afraid.”

“Of?”

“You...” Damn, this sounded stupid. “Of you rejecting me. I was terrified you’d want to kill me or hate me for once being Bak-lal. Maybe for being Bak-lal now too.” She ran on, spilling all her fears. She’d rather have them out and ugly than stewing in the dark, eating away at her. “You haven’t seen what I was when they had me.” She gulped, nauseous and shivering, with tears flooding from her eyes. “I was this spider-like
thing
. Not human. Not anything like a human. I couldn’t conceive of anyone liking me.”

The brightness around his silhouette didn’t let her see his expression.

“I hurt you though. I knew it would hurt you, but I figured you were best without me.”

“Ella.” He was shaking his head, she thought. “They’ve given me the power of life and death over you. As if I could ever kill you. Can I ever trust you to trust me again?”

“Please, can I touch you?” The plea in her voice was obvious but she didn’t care.

He patted his lap. “Come here.”

She crawled to him and laid her head on his lap, not daring to ask for more. After a long drawn-out silence, he put his hand on her head.

“I trust you,” she whispered.

“Hmmm.” His fingers stirred her hair a little.

I do, I do, I do.
She said those in her head and her heart because she was sure they wouldn’t help if said out loud. Maybe nothing would.

“You know how they tracked you? Through the slave code. You removed the code on your cybernetic parts but neglected the genetic component.”

They
would be Concer, the big daddy administration of the known ’verse.

She’d known that was a flaw. Seemed it was lucky she’d not been able to erase all the code. Just being able to be with him awhile was enough to soothe her...to demolish her and to soothe her, to send a desperate longing through her such that she’d fall apart completely if, after this, he left her alone again. But it was worth it. So worth it.

She knew now, she needed to at least try.

“If you want to come back to me, if you want them to let you live, I have to prove that you trust me absolutely, that I can control you, and I have to bondmate you.” He smoothed down her lustrous dark hair, feeling the thickness under his fingers, remembering how things had been between them, and wanting to weep as Ella had done. “So I ask you again, do you trust me?”

“Yes.” She didn’t turn her head to look at him. “I would do anything, Torgeir, to be with you again, though I don’t deserve it. I trust you and I
know
, I know that...” Her voice hitched. “That I should have given you a chance to tell me what you felt. I gave you up and ran because I was scared. I’m stupid. Just stupid.”

“Shhh.” Her sadness was melting the armor he’d built around his heart. He hadn’t been sure he could, in all honesty with himself, take her back, even if his body was screaming at him to do it.

There were some blows that went deeper into the psyche than could ever be repaired.

He whispered-growled at her, “You made me so angry.”

Ella only stirred her head, burrowing into him.

She wasn’t just repentant, she was scared and vulnerable, and her reasons were indeed ones he understood. It was just...still, a betrayal. He would’ve been there for her, in an instant, without thinking about it at all, and she had run. More than that, she’d hurt everyone who mattered. Concer wanted certainty? He’d give them that. He’d convince them. All this needed was her faith, in him.

He was going to be hard on her, so hard, but maybe that was what he needed too. Proof. Something that proved beyond all doubt she trusted him. Well, this would do that, or they’d both die.

He was going to kill that residual anger he had stored up inside him.

Kill it like the motherfracking beast it was. After that, never again.

“Stay there. Don’t move.” He slipped out from under her and went to the pile of stacked cases against the opposite wall. In one was a coil of red rope – the same rope he’d used before. It seemed good and right to be symbolic about this.

He walked to her with the rope in hand and was pleased she’d stayed exactly as he’d left her, curled on her side. Plain white panties and bra, her hair out and loose, and she was so near the edge, some of her hair had flowed over to be flicked in the breeze.

He went to one knee and placed his palm on her back where the bra strap wrapped across, then undid the clasp. The straps sprang apart. She twisted her neck, venturing to peek at him.

If you fell out of this opened-up wall, the ground was a mile below.

The planet was
Jorburr 5.
He’d spent so much time helping eliminate the Bak-lal here that he’d barely noticed its beauty. This towering building was in the center of an animal park. It was deserted of people, as was the entire planet – only wildlife remained. The Concer military unit in charge of dealing with Ella had chosen an apartment with a wall-sized window. They’d removed the window, removed everything cybernetic, and also removed any way to exit this building except with a rope of immense length, or some way of flying or floating down. The three stories below this had been wiped out – walls, contents, until only the outer structure remained.

And they were watching. If he didn’t convince them...

He shook his head. This would work.

Maybe she still didn’t comprehend how dangerous she could be, but he knew. They’d told him in detail. Her behavior after escaping had left a foreboding trail. With no visible sign from her at all, she’d coerced droves of the cybernetically enhanced to do her bidding. Only analysis of surveillance footage had uncovered what she’d done. She could, theoretically, command vast armies. Concer weren’t certain but the possibility alone had caused a meltdown of astronomical proportions. If it weren’t for his influence with some of the higher-ups, they’d have taken her out with a remote strike. No question about it.