Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

THREXIN

T he day before the jump, Threxin attempted to avoid exertion, as Alina Argoud had suggested. He did so begrudgingly, knowing if he were not careful, he would be forced to call on her again to patch him up. He made a cursory appearance at the command center and spent the rest of the day monitoring vid feeds and directing his cohort from his quarters. Eventually, though, time had come to bite the hakstone and complete the procedure Threxin had been dreading.

He and Renza navigated to the medbay through his blood passage in silence. Threxin did not pause as they passed the spot where he had witnessed Orion Halen's violent copulation with his female, but the memory came fresh nonetheless. It was not the sight of them at the forefront of his recollection; it was the soft body against him, her round flesh pressed into the hard planes of his thighs. His hand wrapped around a pliable stomach, encircling her easily to keep her cinched against him. The way her fear and arousal had grown almost indistinguishable as they witnessed the vile scene before them.

Threxin and Renza exited the passage at the medbay. He knew now that this was the exit at which he smelled Orion Halen and his female most strongly. What had they been doing, sneaking here so often through these hidden passages? Was it the preferred entrance to enact their mating rituals? No… there was more.

Another thing to tackle after the jump was over.

Lesthin was already waiting for him in the medbay's receiving area, his human equivalent—a medic—looking pale by his side. Lesthin was a competent biogineer on Apth, one who had taken considerable time to research and familiarize himself with the human technology on Elysian since he was assigned to his profession during childhood. Yet Colossal's technology was more advanced, and not all of it was within Lesthin's or the other uhyre biogineers' knowledge base. Much of the gap would be filled by records, but humans had been enlisted to speed matters along.

"Are you prepared?" Lesthin asked, twitching his apertures in greeting. The human beside him flinched at the sight. Threxin wondered if they would ever get used to it. He hoped not.

"Yes."

Threxin followed Lesthin into an empty procedure room, apertures tightening with each step.

"Pl… please sit in the seat, Mr. Thraeggsin," the human stuttered. Threxin flared his nostrils slightly, eyeing the overly small chair positioned in the middle of the room.

He could smell the burnt flesh and the synthetic hallucinogens in the air, transported back to the dark room where his limiter had been injected. He could see the spilled blood and exorin from those who came before him. Those who did not come out. He tamped down the shameful reaction—every one of his cohort had gone through the same experience, and none of them had such a strong negative association with these places to his knowledge. He had spoken about it with Renza once, who confirmed that he did not even remember his own limiter implantation. Threxin remembered it all.

He watched warily as the human medic began arranging equipment on the steel cart beside the chair. It was not just his pallid shakiness draining Threxin's confidence. Renza had told Threxin of how another medic had tried to murder him when he was unconscious after the blood transfusion. He and Renza exchanged glances.

"Not you," Renza pressed a firm palm to the man's chest, pushing him back from the tools.

"How many ports have you installed, Lesthin?" Threxin turned to the uhyre.

"I have practiced on three human subjects," he said. Threxin was surprised he had heard no complaint from Orion Halen about this fact. "But there was no way to test effectiveness… We tested simple network ports, nothing more."

"You will do it," Threxin said.

"Are you certain?" Lesthin appeared skeptical. "Such an experimental procedure so close to the jump is already a risk. This human is old. He installed the port of Orion Halen and that of his mother. Having an inexperienced medic perform it leaves much room for error."

"Then you will be careful," Threxin stated flatly.

Lesthin tilted his chin in assent.

The right armrest of the chair had been heightened, extended, and angled to strap Threxin's arm upon it wrist up. Threxin watched in silence as Lesthin laid out the tools on a tray before him. First came an object that looked like a firearm fitted with a thick injection cartridge. Then a slightly thicker transparent tube. Finally, what appeared to be the device itself, suspended in a gel-like substance. It was a small metal cylinder with three veiny wires floating from one end.

"I will create an opening with the needle," Lesthin explained. "I will then find the vein and insert the cannula. The port will fit inside it, programmed to automatically seek blood and lodge the vein. Once it is in place, a buffer ring will expand underneath, preventing the port from sinking into your bloodstream."

Threxin nodded, showing none of the hesitation he felt as he swallowed down a pang of nausea. Those tendrils floating in the gel with the port reminded him of miniature versions of the limiter. That had been marinating in gel also, right before it was plucked from the suspension. The neural implant had been inserted in what to his memory was not an entirely dissimilar way, through an opening drilled within his temple. He shook his head to dislodge the memory, hand coming up reflexively to rub the slightly puckered injection point. Renza did the same, clearly reliving his own implantation.

Lesthin sat on a stool before him, taking the injector in one hand and tapping firmly at Threxin's wrist with the other. He walked pressure up the forearm, avoiding the puckered puncture marks from the sampler probe that had pierced him repeatedly in the weeks prior. Threxin supposed Lesthin was searching for the most suitable place to access the vein, perhaps not too close to an aperture. The human medic behind him had edged closer and was now looking over Lesthin's shoulder. His head bobbed up and down in a series of small nods as Lesthin honed in on a spot about halfway up Threxin's taut forearm.

"Are you prepared?" Lesthin asked.

"Yes." Threxin wished he'd had some damn hak before doing this.

The needle that first punched through his skin was thick, but the pain was middling at worst. It was the cannula that made bile rise in his throat. The skin of his arm blanched as the catheter stretched it upward, and the sensation of it was entirely unnerving. Threxin could not help but imagine the limiter lodging itself in his head just like that—rearranging his tissues, making his brain blanch and twitch with the pressure.

The limiter now kicked in with a faint vibrating sensation in his spine, preventing the visceral disturbance coursing through him. Threxin fixed his eyes on the ceiling while Lesthin worked.

"You're too slow," the human medic chided. "Stop carving him up."

Threxin did not open his eyes to look, but heard the man slam into the wall, sending some equipment clattering to the floor.

"Do not distract him, human," Threxin commanded coolly, though said human had probably already gotten the idea.

"I found the entry," Lesthin announced quietly, reaching beside him for the final piece: the port itself. Morbid curiosity got the better of him, and Threxin opened his eyes to watch.

Lesthin plucked the port from the gel with a pair of large tweezers and shook it slightly to remove excess gel. He held it by the metal end and dangled the ends of the thin tendrils just above the catheter. His apertures twitched rapidly with tight concentration as he threaded the swaying tendrils into the opening.

It was as though they scented blood. The tendrils came to attention, growing taut as they stretched within the transparent tube. Lesthin lowered the tweezers to the catheter, and soon enough the tendrils disappeared under Threxin's skin. He felt them moving in there.

It was cold. Threxin wished suddenly for warm, soft fingers working at him with practiced ease. Or perhaps dampening his apertures one by one, stroking along the sensitive flesh. Maybe even tracing his brow and speaking some soft words of comfort—not something he remembered witnessing Alina Argoud do, but a strange wisp of a memory nonetheless .

Then the tweezers unclasped and the port slid down the tube of the catheter in a blink. Pain stabbed through Threxin's arm as it lodged itself at the opening, then again as something expanded right underneath the skin. Threxin permitted himself a hiss as the catheter was removed with a swift yank.

"Did it work?" He stared at the glint of the port in his forearm, placed between two apertures, which had grown needle-thin in protest.

"You will need to plug in to find out," Lesthin said, unclasping the restraints around Threxin's arm. "It will hurt more if you use it now, but it should work if the procedure was successful."

Threxin rose from the chair, the pit in his chest loosening when he was finally free.

"Then we will know shortly."

Threxin spent the remainder of the day in his quarters, trying to shake off the sick remnants of the medbay and the smells of old blood and astringent disinfectant. Renza had offered to keep him company, but Threxin refused. He did not need coddling from anyone, and Renza would be more useful finishing jump preparations and keeping the humans in check. Threxin, in the meantime, monitored his ship's vid feeds, especially those in the rear dock.

The humans had been maintaining and cleaning their craft since his arrival. When questioned some time ago, the dockmaster's explanation was that ships would be needed to scout the planet, as well as in case of attack should they encounter problems on the way to… wherever this was. Threxin had begrudgingly allowed the maintenance work to continue under his cohort's close watch—he assigned uhyre to monitor the video feeds of the docks.

Now he monitored them himself, for he knew that was where Alina Argoud had been assigned. He needed to keep a closer eye on her, make sure she did not snap after the night before. After all, she was the one with the most information to betray.

So he watched as she sprayed and scrubbed the Ariel craft late into the night. She was not getting enough sleep. Yet she seemed more relaxed compared to her distraught state the night before. Renza found himself reclining in his bed, watching the female's practiced work. She looked just as at ease scrubbing the hull of one of Colossal's vessels as she did moistening his own apertures—almost like she fell into a sort of trance with the repetition of the movements.

Layers of clothing had come off over the hours in which she worked, her skin growing reddish as it overheated with the physical exertion. A sheen of sweat was revealed on the back of her neck when she paused to wipe her oily hands on a rag and tie her dark hair back in a loose shamble on her scalp.

She was down to a black singlet, and Threxin's apertures tightened when it rode up her waist as she lifted her arms over her head, small back arching with the stretch. Threxin shifted his hips slightly, wincing as the fabric of his briefs rubbed against him.

If he was hard, it was only because he hadn't had time to release pent-up urges since his arrival on Colossal . And if he palmed his erection over his pants at the sight of her propping a slender leg on a notch in the Ariel's hull, it was only to release the tight tendon in his groin. He tried very hard not to follow the bunched fabric of her pants to the bare beige skin at the curve of her calf.

The limiter should kick in soon, shouldn't it? He wanted it to. Only the limiter wasn't designed to suppress this particular urge. How would his kind survive otherwise, without fucking? Threxin remembered prior experiences with his partners and focused on those far more appropriate scenarios .

Fucking amongst uhyre was a violent and extensively bloody experience before the limiters, but Threxin had never known that way. He mostly knew the way of measured stoicism, slow and controlled movements to avoid letting out the deeper, less tasteful urges that would activate his limiter. It was common to fail at it when they were younger. They'd get going when the urge to claw at your partner's throat or impale her on your cock until she couldn't help but show that it hurt would explode out of them, triggering the implant so suddenly that they'd have to fling themselves back and lose any urge to finish the job.

Threxin reached down slowly and unclasped his briefs with measured movements. He shoved them low on his hips to free his shaft. He palmed it down, biting back a groan as a bolt of current twisted up into the root of him and dissipated into liquid heat in his gut.

One time he came close. He had taken a training mate into the Elysian's command center when his father was gone. He had made a bet with Renza that he could have her. She hadn't had anyone before, but she would have him—he could see in the way her spikes rose and her apertures melted when he looked at her.

Threxin fisted his shaft, and when a drop of precum beaded at the tip, he palmed it over the overheated skin to slick his way. He glanced at the human on his screen, but forced his eyes away, staring instead straight ahead at the wall on the other side of the cabin. He refused to look or think about this human in such a moment.

His memory would take his mind somewhere safer. He'd shoved the uhyre female against the hull right across from the ship's old commander, strung up on his wires and tubes. She kept looking up at that half-alive male over Threxin's shoulder.

"He's watching," she had told Threxin, but that was silly. The alien's eyes saw nothing and the watching she felt was Renza hiding in the shadows, getting his proof. Probably tugging himself off to it too.

Threxin pumped his fist, breath hitching as he caught an involuntary glimpse of the human bending over the curved hull of the Ariel to reach a difficult crevice with her scrubbing tool. Threxin raked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, the spikes dragging his skin raw.

When his training mate kept insisting the human commander was watching them as Threxin mated her against that wall, Threxin had clasped a palm over her incessant mouth. Her eyes had flashed with unsuppressed anger and she bit his hand, and then Threxin had clamped his own teeth into her throat before the limiter could catch up.

The female on his screen wouldn't flap her mouth like that. She would be quiet, her big eyes black with invitation like they had been when he captured her on his finger. He would keep her in her daze, like he knew he could now. A fragile, helpless thing following his whims.

His sack tightened. The spikes at the underside of his shaft had emerged, leaking exorin along his fingers, moistening the way for his grasp. He held his breath. He would not come like this, with the human in his head. He took himself back to the Elysian .

It—the bite—had only lasted a moment before both of their limiters brought them back into the fog of artificial calm, but that moment had been enough for the two of them. He had pumped her full and she had screamed her release around him, and both of them had seen how it was supposed to be. It was a curse, the knowing.

Threxin locked his knees straight, thighs tensing, trembling as he thrust his hand along his dripping shaft.

What was fucking like for Alina? The humans had no limiters to hold them back. What he had seen in Orion Halen and his female was quite vicious in itself, but Threxin suspected part of that was due to what Orion was, coupled with his female's addiction. Would Alina Argoud look at him with the same hunger?

"Shoq." His body tightened when she bent to grab a rag from the floor. The contour of her pert ass flowing into her hamstrings was perfectly accentuated under the fabric of her green work pants.

He exploded with a stuttered grunt, the first black-tinged glob of seed arcing to land on his abdomen just in time for him to shove his shirt up his stomach. It kept coming, and now Threxin had already failed—already looked. Her small, full form on that shoqing screen begged to be fucked.

It would take nothing to wait for her return in her cabin. He'd relish that frightened look she always got on her face when she saw him for the first time. For those few moments, she looked at him like he was a monster. He could be that for her—he could ambush her in her quarters and show her what a real monster was.

He had only just grown aware of the escalating hum of the limiter when a dull chime announced an arrival. Renza.

"Shoq," Threxin grunted under his breath, rolling off the bed and shoving his way to the bathroom to wipe the mess he'd left off his abdomen. He winced at the pull in his chest—he'd moved too quickly.

When he had gathered himself and let Renza in, his brother entered his seating area with a glass of something brown in his hand.

"What is that?" Threxin studied the liquid suspiciously.

"They call it coffee," Renza said. He took a small sip and his face twisted into a grimace. He held the glass out to Threxin. "Try."

"You make it look very appealing," Threxin ignored the offering. "Any news?"

"All quiet," Renza said, taking another pained sip.

"Why are you doing this? We do not require hydration through consumption. "

"This is not for hydration, brother," Renza worked his jaw and smacked his lips distastefully. "Caffeine keeps one awake."

"And we are rationing stims…"

"So you see."

Threxin grunted, continuing to close his shirt.

"Your wound is much improved, yes?" Renza asked.

"Yes," he said flatly. He felt his brother's eyes on him, weighing.

"You came to the human female after your… punishment."

"My wound needed dressing. What of it?"

Renza's nostrils flared slightly, and his eyes slanted in the direction of the bedroom. He leaned against the wall, spikes rising slightly as his head tilted to the side. "Do you wish me to assign you one of our cohort for fucking? Silarra would be glad to have you."

"Silarra can go fuck a corpse," Threxin muttered, lip curling in distaste. "I am too busy. What does this have to do with the human, anyway?"

Renza's spikes rose yet higher. "I would expect her to regret saving your life after that display, Threxin."

"She is defective," Threxin shrugged. "She feels some compulsion to care for others at her own expense. When it is not me, it is her Kaia."

"Better dispose of her now, in that case. I understand humans tend to grow… attached. She may be especially prone."

Threxin flicked his talons. "She may be useful yet. She has one foot in Orion Halen's world."

"And the other in yours," Renza pointed out, logically. "If her access may be useful to you, it may likewise be useful to him."

Threxin was growing tired of this line of discussion, irritation itching at the edges of him. "Which is why I monitor her closely."

"How closely do you monitor her, brother?" Renza leveled him with a look Threxin did not appreciate.

"Not as closely as you appear to believe," he said. "Have you found Orion Halen's sire?"

Renza sighed, jaw working with tension. "Not yet."

"He has hidden him well, and for a reason. Perhaps you should focus less on me and more on your job, brother."