Deep Penetration; Alien Breeders I (3 page)

Trusting the thoughts aside after a
moment, she ignored the spoon and picked the small cup-like bowl
up, taking a careful sip. She knew as soon as the hot liquid
cascaded over her tongue and down her throat that it was chicken
soup as she’d thought, or at least something very like it. “When
can I have real food?”

Koryn chuckled as if pleased. “We’ll
get there.”

Emerald nodded a little distractedly,
trying to figure out how she’d known that she had to start with
clear liquids and work toward solid food. How would she know that?
Did it mean she had a medical background herself? Or was it because
she’d been hurt badly enough before to discover it?

“
You never told me why
you’re here,” she said after a moment, realizing they’d actually
told her very little at all. It seemed they had a question for
every question she asked.

Tariq studied her for a long moment
and stood up, clearly intending to leave. “In a very real sense, we
are … allies of your race. We’ve been to Earth many times in the
past—though it’s been a quite a while since we last
visited.”

* * * *

“
What do you
think?”

They’d left Emerald to rest and
retired to Tariq’s quarters to discuss her condition where they
could speak openly since Tariq insured his privacy with a daily
sweep for any sort recording devices. Tariq, who’d sprawled in a
chair and stretched his long legs out before him to study his boots
frowning, glanced up at Koryn’s question. He thought she was
breathtaking. He thought they’d made a serious error in judgment
when they’d decided to seek perfection. Nature had made Emerald
beautiful despite the many tiny imperfections his own people had
obsessed over.

Of course, no one was disputing that
they’d made far too many mistakes—not anymore.

Somehow, he didn’t think that Koryn’s
thoughts were running in the same direction as his own, however. He
shrugged. “I’m not the scientist.”

Koryn frowned. “This isn’t my area of
expertise,” he pointed out tightly.

“
This isn’t
anyone’s
area of
expertise,” Tariq said angrily, shoving to his feet and crossing
his cabin to his beverage dispenser. “I’m having
nizsum
? You?”

Koryn’s brows rose. Tariq
rarely indulged in fermented drinks, particularly not anything as
strong as
nizsum
.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“
She’ll sleep a while.
You’ve time for the effects to wear off.”

“
A small one,
then.”

Tariq took the two drinking vessels
the dispenser produced, which were roughly the size and length of
his index finger and crossed to hand one to him. When he’d settled
in his chair again, he merely studied the dark liquid in the
transparent vessel, however. “I think she’s the strongest one we’ve
found … and I’m still not certain I want to risk it. In fact, I
damned well know I don’t. She’s too ….” He broke off, his mind
straying to her again as he struggled to find the word he was
looking for.

“
Precious,” Koryn finished
when Tariq didn’t, lifting his vessel and downing the contents.
“There is not another like her in the universe and never will be
again if we aren’t damned careful with her.”

“
No two are ever entirely
the same,” Tariq said dryly. “But you’re right. I don’t want to
risk losing her. Even the mission isn’t worth that. We’ll keep
digging.”

“
So … you’re saying we
should implant memories to guard her sanity?”

Tariq stared at him for a
long moment, struggling with the angry denunciation that instantly
rose to mind. “I don’t know,” he growled finally and downed his own
draught of
nizsum
.

Koryn tilted his head, frowning at
Tariq curiously. It wasn’t like Tariq at all to be so indecisive.
“We only have two options,” he reminded him. “We can wait and see
if she remembers anything of use to us, or we can manipulate her
memories.”

The memories would change
her, though, Tariq thought angrily, and he didn’t want anything
about her altered—not by so much as a hair. She would
be
someone else, because
she would have some else’s memories. Unfortunately, his orders were
clear cut and not open to interpretation. “Prepare the implant,” he
said tightly. “That way it’ll be ready if we see it’s necessary. In
the mean time, we’ll keep her under close observation.”

“
What do you suggest?”
Koryn asked slowly.

Tariq glanced at him sharply, feeling
his belly tighten with reluctance. He swallowed with an effort
against the knot that rose in his throat, a mixture of frustration
and disgust and anger. “What the hell happened here?” he
growled.

It was a rhetorical question Koryn
made no attempt to answer. None of them knew what had happened, had
so much as an inkling. They’d been trying to find answers to their
questions since they’d arrived weeks earlier to find a garden of
Eden bereft of the children left in her care.

“
Study her personality and
try to work up something as close as you can,” Tariq said tiredly.
“I think there’s a good chance that she had a military background
and, if that’s true, she’s the first we’ve recovered that might
have some of the answers we’re looking for.”

* * * *

Emerald was so sleepy when she
finished drinking the soup that she immediately suspected they’d
laced it with something to knock her out. She discarded the thought
after a few moments’ reflection. She hadn’t noticed anything
‘strange’ about the taste and she felt sure she would have if
there’d been any sort of drug added.

For a while, she resisted the pull,
too unnerved by her situation to feel safe to sleep, but it was a
losing battle. Finally, she got up, climbed into the bunk and
yielded. She had no idea how long she slept, but she woke feeling
far more alert than before and not nearly as weak. Deciding the
soup and the nap had been beneficial, she got up and explored her
cabin. There wasn’t much to explore, unfortunately, but she did
discover that there was a private facility that included a shower
attached to the small cabin.

The long, hot shower sapped a good bit
of the energy she’d woken up with, unfortunately, even while it
seemed to ease some of the soreness from her muscles and invigorate
her. Wrapping up in the sheet again when she’d dried off, she
returned to the main room and settled in a chair to
think.

She’d had another nightmare.
Unfortunately, from the moment she woke it was just as elusive as
the one before except that it left her with the sense, right or
wrong, that it wasn’t just a ‘generic’ nightmare. She struggled
with her memory for a little while and finally gave up. She
couldn’t be certain the nightmare had any basis in reality at all.
It might, as she suspected, be the result of something she’d
experienced, but she had no way of determining that even if she
could remember the details of the dream.

She didn’t know what to think about
her situation. It just seemed too pat that aliens had come to visit
the Earth and run across her and decided to rescue her even if not
for the fact that she could tell they were withholding a great deal
from her. It was possible, she supposed, that the Anunnaki were a
benevolent race and such things were commonplace to them—assisting
others—and yet she couldn’t imagine that they would travel so far
merely to ‘visit’. They would almost certainly have an agenda. She
just couldn’t figure out what that might be.

She knew, though, that they’d traveled
a tremendous distance. Even if not for the fact that that ‘felt’
true, they’d implied it themselves.

So, they were here for a reason. Did
she have anything to do with that reason, she wondered? Or had they
come across her purely by accident?

It seemed to her that she could safely
discard the suspicion that they were enemies of the people of
Earth. What would be the point in taking care of her if they were?
They’d said she wasn’t a prisoner—or Koryn had, although there’d
been something about Tariq’s manner that made her question it. They
certainly hadn’t treated her like one.

She was naked, though, and Tariq’s
question had unnerved her when she’d asked if she was free to
leave. ‘Where would she go?’ Somehow, she thought it wasn’t a
reference to the fact that she couldn’t remember where she
belonged. It had seemed … ominous somehow.

Shaking the thought and the sick
feeling that began to churn in her belly, she got up decisively to
test whether or not she was a prisoner. The door opened the moment
she approached it. Gathering the sheet more tightly around herself,
she stepped into the corridor and looked around. Since she hadn’t
seen anything the way they’d come when they’d left the treatment
room—or whatever it was—she headed off in the opposite
direction.

The corridor seemed endless. It was a
while before she noticed that there were doors leading off of the
corridor. Closed, they formed a nearly invisible seam against the
surrounding walls. She hesitated when she reached the next, but
since it occurred to her that it was quite possibly someone’s
private quarters, she decided not to test the theory.

She’d been moving along the corridor
for perhaps twenty to thirty minutes when it abruptly dawned on her
that she had no idea how to get back to the room where they’d taken
her. Dismayed, she stopped, turning to look back in the direction
she’d come from. A very little consideration convinced her that she
was committed to her quest. She really had no choice at this point
but to continue to look if for no other reason than she was
lost.

She reached a branch in the corridor a
few minutes later and debated whether to stay with the corridor
she’d been following or try the one that branched off at a tangent.
She saw what appeared to be a row of windows further along the
branch, however, and that decided the matter.

Moving a little more quickly, she
hurried along the corridor until she reached the first and
discovered it was just as she’d suspected, a view port. A wave of
shock and horror swept over her when she saw the view,
however.

She was too shocked for many minutes
to actually assimilate what she was looking at and too distressed
even when she had to throw off her shock. The first indication she
had that she was no longer alone was when a hand settled on her
shoulder. Jumping, she whirled instinctively, clamping a hand on
the wrist attached to the hand on her shoulder and whipping his arm
behind his back. She didn’t get the chance to finish executing the
maneuver that should have put him on the floor. He followed,
flowing easily with her movements and using her grip on his wrist
to jerk her against his length and bind her in an unbreakable
hold.

“
So … you are
military.”

Emerald twisted her head around to
look up and back at her captor. There was no relief in discovering
it was Tariq. “Let me go,” she said through teeth clenched to hide
just how shaken she was.

His brows rose at the demand, but his
grip slackened. Emerald whirled away from him immediately, bending
to snatch up the sheet she’d dropped and whipping it around herself
shakily before she confronted him. “That isn’t Earth!” she said
angrily, pointing a shaking finger toward the window. “We aren’t on
Earth! I don’t know where the hell we are, but that isn’t
Earth!”

Chapter Two

Tariq eyed her
assessingly. “It isn’t the Earth you once knew, but it
is
Earth,” he said
finally.

It wasn’t! He was lying, damn him! She
knew he had to be. Without another word, she whipped around, intent
on racing down the corridor in search of a route of escape. He
caught up to her before she’d even managed to accelerate to an all
out run, snagging her around the waist. She whirled on him, her
survival instincts at the fore, intent upon fighting her way to
freedom if necessary.

Unfortunately, she’d already given
away her hand in the previous encounter. He was ready for her and
he was not only far bigger and stronger, he was amazingly fast for
a being that was big enough he should have been slow and clumsy. He
caught her wrists and when she tried to break free and run again,
he merely twirled her in a tight circle and used her own arms to
bind her against him. “Calm down! Now!” he growled through his
teeth.

“
You said I wasn’t a
prisoner! That was a lie, too!”

“
We didn’t go through the
effort of regenerating you just to allow you to destroy yourself,”
he said tightly.

His comment took the fight completely
out of her. She twisted her head to look up at him in disbelief.
“Regenerated?” she gasped, so horrified at the implication that her
mind had gone completely chaotic.

Several emotions flickered across his
face in quick succession—anger and self-disgust among them.
Finally, a look of resignation and purposefulness settled on his
hard features. “Come with me and I’ll explain what I can,” he said
decisively.

Emerald was in no mental state to
either agree or object. He took her silence as acquiescence and
eased his hold on her. Settling an arm around her shoulders, he led
her back in the direction she’d come. When they reached the
connecting corridor, he turned left and hurried her along it,
stopping after only a few moments before a door. It opened,
revealing an apartment far more elegant than the one she’d been
taken to before and at least three times as big.