We got back inside the central laboratory using the ventilation shaft I’d crawled through previously. Nikhara went first and I followed behind her. My body felt jittery with untapped energy, like a block faucet bursting to be released. It wanted me to expend it, to run, jump, and fly. Though I highly doubted any flying would be happening anytime soon.

I had been enhanced, not grown wings after all.

I showed Nikhara the broken vat and the label on its containment.

“There’s no containment date marked down,” she muttered after a moment.

“What do you mean?” I asked her, puzzled.

“Well if it’s a volatile agent or something to that affect. It should be marked as such and dated when the sample was taken.”

“Okay. So what does that mean?” I asked her. She shrugged at me. Calling the size of the vat a sample felt ridiculous to me. It was five feet tall and the container added another foot and a half to its size.

“I’m unsure. Its obviously been sent here, but why? and why did it have such an effect on you?” she said rhetorically.

“How did it feel?” she asked after we lapsed into a moment of silence. Her helmet was still on so I couldn’t see her expression. Her tone suggested she was inquisitive. But I had to wonder if she was second guessing that the man she was talking to was still her husband.

“It was strange at first,” I answered and paused as my mind swept back to the moment. I’d been afraid, elated, shocked, and a little intoxicated. “It felt right. Like it belonged to me, that I- I don’t know how to describe it,” I finished dumbly.

“I think I get it.”

“You do?” I asked and cocked an eyebrow at my orc-dryad wife. She sighed and nodded slightly, then reached up to remove her helmet.

Her thick dark bluish-green hair spilled out like silk down her shoulders. To an outsider I bet we looked like two muscular women talking about our feelings.

“When I fight … especially with this sword or in hand to hand combat. My blood burns with such an intensity. I try to fight it, to not fall into the blood rage that has swept so many of my kin. Yet its welcoming … enticing even. It wants me to loosen my control and a part of me does as well.”

“You feel powerful,” I said, finishing for her and she nodded. If she felt that way about her orcish half, what did that mean for me. What had happened to me now felt like the wrong question to ask. What am I? and had I always been this way? seemed like more fitting questions’ to answer now.

“I’m still me,” I said finally to her. Though it felt as if I was trying to convince myself. My personality was the same, my mind was my own. I was simply riding on a cloud of powerful elation. It couldn’t last. If it did then I would worry.

“I know,” my wife said quietly to me. Her lavender eyes flashed, gleaming.

“You do?” I said surprised. I shouldn’t have been.

“I’m your wife, Marcus. All of your mannerism are still yours. And I can still see the love, worry, and concern you hold for Andrea and I. And the other innocent people out there in the galaxy.”

Her words touched me. I felt my heart and that warm electrifying power inside me hum in delight at her words. That response told me everything I needed to know.

She donned her helmet once again, “Andrea feels the same way as I.”

I suspected that my android wife’s response had been filled with a lot more cursing. And likely something about my penis.

“Let’s go. I want to find out who exactly is behind this mess,” I said and gestured my empty hand at the door. My rifle was gone. I had my revolver still, but I didn’t want to use it if it wasn’t necessary. Looking around quickly I spotted the remains of the knight I’d killed in this room, and found where his weapon and shield had fallen.

Returning to Nikhara and exiting the room I gripped the black chitinous shield in my left hand, feeling the energy within me flowing like coils of tension through my arms.

It was strange, as if eels were wiggling through my veins reaching my palm and finger tips, then dissipating into nothingness.

Except I could see and distantly note how the pale green energy coursed through the shield drinking and sucking up whatever purple energy was within. The same thing coursed through the mace. Though both were noticeably lesser than the energy I had drained out in front of the building during the fight.

It still invigorated me. Sending electrical fires of responses snapping through my nerves. I felt wired once again. Like I could move and dance over a moonlit lake without touching it’s still surface.

“What did the hunters blood taste like?” Nikhara asked idly as we walked purposefully down the corridor. Each section leading deeper into the central laboratory was blocked by doors. None would open as we approached, so Nikhara and I took turns in wrenching them open. Apparently I was just as strong as her now. Maybe even a little stronger. It made me think of the true strength of pure blood High Orcs.

It was a scary thought.

“The thought of its blood and drinking it was disgusting, I’ll admit,” I started. “But the blood itself was… indescribable. It filled me like the fluid in that vat had done only it was different.”

“Different how?” Nikhara asked curiously.

“Well for one, the fluid in the vat felt welcoming. It- uh- dove into me. I didn’t seek it out, it came willingly… Considering I was smashed through the container and enveloped by it … might change the perspective. But I suspect– no, I know, that the fluid in that container wouldn’t gone to anyone else. I’m sure not how to explain it. The blood of the hunter and the energy in their weapons has to be drawn out and drained so--” I shrugged helplessly.

“You talk as if the fluid in that container was alive?” Nikhara asked and I imagined she was quirking an eyebrow at me.

“Well… maybe it was,” I replied quietly. We lapsed into silence for a while as we moved.

“So I guess we know it was you who enhanced my sword then?” she asked. Her words gave me pause though. The realisation of that shouldn’t had been so profound to accept.

If I accepted that it was I who changed Nikhara’s weapon. Then the small pale green flames I had noticed as well, were also me. So it was me. I knew that already but knowing and understanding something was completely different.

I knew though and didn’t understand—not that I do now—that the change in Nikhara sword had been me. I’d just simply pushed it to the back of my mind. What did that mean now then? The fluid in the vat sought me, entered me. I knew deep somewhere within my subconscious that it would not have accepted someone else.

It belonged to me.

I needed to go home, not back to the Erebus but to Ardenai-Prime. Something was there … answers hopefully.

I had never thought of myself as inhuman or that different than others. Yes, I had a harder childhood. Being an orphan did that to me.

Suddenly, all the dead prone body’s lying in the streets on the surface and in buildings was all too familiar. Had Ardenai experienced the same as Lios. Some person—or persons—was somehow connected to both. Now, was I connected to both?

I shook my head slightly and dispelled my thoughts. Returning my attention to Nikhara as she grunted and wedged her fingers into the seam of the closed door. Jessica had closed every single one and busted the electronics for their opening.

“I guess it was me,” I said finally to her.

“Hard to accept?” she asked as the doors whirred a low deep groan as she forced it open.

“Yes, and no,” I answered, and she nodded slightly, leaving it at that. My wives knew everything about me, I had never held anything back. Some may think that complete and open honestly could be volatile to a relationship. But considering our line of work, we had found it rather worked for us.

We moved further into the laboratory, keeping out weapons at the ready. I took point as I had shield. I wasn’t entirely sure if the chitinous shield would stop a chitinous arrow, but I was certain to find out.

Then three ranged knights burst from a room ahead of us to our right and shot straight at me. Three sharp projectiles flew for me, I brought my mace up and shattered the first. The opening allowed the second to puncture through my right thigh. The three hit my shield and ricocheted off.

My thigh burned intensely and staring at the fleeing range knights I saw a deep dull purple energy radiate around their bow arms like an aura.

My own energy sort out the projectile wedged in my flesh and proceeded to burn and drain the foul purple energy seeping out from the arrow.

“Are you okay?” Nikhara asked me concerned and I felt her hand pressed lightly against my back. A part of me wanted to tell her to chase them down and kill them. But they could be fleeing to lead us into a trap.

“Yeah,” I said and winced slightly as I tore the arrow out from my thigh. These weapons though medieval in fashion seemed to pierce, crunch and slice through my armour like it was made of paper.

“We really need new armour,” I groaned a little as the itch burned through my leg. I shook my leg a little as the wound closed and I stood straighter.

“We need a lot of many things,” Nikhara said airily. “Let’s just hope your friend doesn’t bug out of the deal.”

“He won’t. Bill is pretty stable when it comes to deals and negotiations. If he wants somethings he’ll offer a price he knows you can’t refuse. Its simpler that way.”

“Should we follow?” she gestured her hand at the open doorway the trio had sped through.

“No. It’s bound to be a trap,” I replied, and she nodded.

The end of the corridor became more funnelled with no bisecting door way ahead. A single door blocked our path, and covering the walls around it was a pillowy yellow material I had only seen in areas of potential contamination and hazards.

Through the small thick glassy band near the top of the door I saw that along the right wall on the opposite side were three units of storage, each housing a hazard suit.

The wall on the left side was lined in bubbling tubes and electrical wires. I saw that a few wires had been cut and theirs sliced ends sparked brightly.

I passed my mace and shield off to Nikhara and grabbed the doors release lever. It jerked in my hand and snapped off with a chink of broken metal.

“Uh-huh,” I noted smartly and glanced at Nikhara to see that she was watching me intensely.

“Nice one,” she smirked at me. Well I assumed it was a smirk, couldn’t see through her helmet after all.

Rolling my eyes, I pressed against the door with both hands. It groaned as I pushed against it. I felt my hands leave dents with the amount of strength I was pressing in and leaving an outline.

I realised that I really wasn’t at all exhausting myself. So I pushed even harder. The door only groaned again, and I took a step back. Then ran forward, and shoulder barged it.

I rebounded off the metallic door and touched down lightly. The door shot off its frame breaking the structure, and skidded across the floor inside to bounce off a wall and fall flat.

Clapping sounded and I turned to regard Nikhara as she applauded me. “Well done, hon. Now they know we’re here,” she noted sarcastically.

“They already knew,” I snorted and took back my mace and shield. I liked the blunt weapon, but a mace seemed too narrow a blunt object to smash. A hammer would’ve suited me better.

We marched inside, and ignored the hazard suits. The corridor before us twisted to the right and then left. The walls becoming more tunnel-like and framed completely with the yellow pillowy material. We came to another door and this one simply slid aside allowing us entry.

The small fifteen-foot room beyond was a decontamination zone. The floor beneath us grated with tight crosses. The right wall was a viewing window. And on the other side I saw several security terminals and two dead researchers slumped in their chairs.

Both had large cavernous cuts down their sternum and their throats slit.

The jets above us sprayed some irritable wash that stung my eyes slightly. My hair and skin were soaked to the bone. The wash slid off my armour and into a drain I could hear burbling beneath the grated floor.

The door on the other end clicked and a small bulb to the right of it flickered green before going out. I looked at Nikhara and she nodded. Moving to the door, it slid open and I stepped out followed behind my wife.

The laboratory was a cylindrical room, with a circular glass wall centre like a containment area. On the other side of the glass containment, I observed a tall blonde long-haired man with piercing purple eyes. They roiled and churned like volatile storms as they swept towards me.

He froze as our eyes met.

The woman clinging to him like a damsel was my ex-wife. She hissed and bared her teeth at me like some cornered beast.

“You always were stupid, Marcus. Sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong,” Jessica hissed at me. Then flexed her free hand into a fist. The bone blade slid out three feet from between her centre knuckles.

“Enough, Shra’anan,” the man said calmly to Jessica. The blonde-woman immediately masked her feature to a neutral expression and her bone blade slit out of sight. “Why have you come here abomination?” the man asked, and I realised he was talking to me.

“Abomina— what do you mean, master?” Jessica croaked. Her wide eyes snapped from the man to me in a flicker of surprise.

“To stop you,” I said, and my own voice felt cool and calm. It didn’t at all betray the screaming mess inside my mind and body. I could feel the power, or was it magic. I wasn’t sure what it was, yet rolled off him like some palpable force. It felt ancient and alive, and snappish towards us.

I wanted to ask questions, to know what he was. I noticed his long hair and incredibly pronounced canines. And could only imagine how alike we looked. The only difference being the colour of his and our eyes. At least I hoped my eyes weren’t purple like his.

“Then you work for the betrayer?” he asked, and I had no idea of whom he meant. Yet for some reason my mind flashed to my dream. And that man’s name. A name that caused a giant beast to fear him.

“Rokkaia,” I answered almost absently, and the blonde-haired man’s head snapped back in surprise. His eyes burning intensely.

“H-he is alive then?” the man asked rhetorically, and his voice quivered.

Jessica tugged on his arm, “master, we must proceed with our plan. Leave these gnats to your thralls and let us return to Grav’nion.” She almost pleaded with him.

Then Nikhara’s sword shot past me to impale the glass and slid cleanly through. The man reacted instantly and gripped Jessica from behind her neck and thrust her in front of the swords path. The blade punched through her sternum and out the other end to slice into the man’s forearm. Jessica gasped and I saw the frightened look in her eyes briefly. They dulled with dejection and betrayal.

The man hissed ferally, and displayed his fangs.

Purple coils of energy clung around his arms and he thrusted them towards us. Nikhara and I dove to either side and dodged the purple coiling lance.

“You are lucky I am not yet satiated,” the man growled at us. His eyes flickered briefly to Jessica’s impaled corpse. “Hopefully she followed my instructions and left something of herself behind.”

I charged the glass containment and whammed the business end of my mace through the glass. It shattered, and the rest of my body followed through with my momentum. I spun into the container and struck out for his middle with my shield. He caught it. Crumpled the rim of the chitinous shield and tore it in half straight down the middle. Tearing my forearm in two.

My mace swung upwards even as I cried out in agony. The blunt weapon swept up for his lower jaw. But the man moved in a blur and planted his foot into my chest. I folded with the blow and shot across the room. My back smashed through the glass containment, hit a desk and terminal and impacted a wall.

My head rung loudly, and I suspected I had a concussion. It mended slowly as my back and several ribs reknitted back together. My armour was practically hanging off of me now.

It was damaged to the point that it was falling off in shards pieces. The mans boot print finely outlined at the centre of my torso.

I heard Nikhara grunt loudly and saw a heavy-duty terminal fly across the lab and smash through the glass barrier. The man gestured and a swarm of purple shadows coiled up his forearm and extended out from his hand. He flicked the straightening coils out and in a blur of speed cut the terminal to thin pieces.

He vanished from sight and I saw Nikhara dive forward onto the ground a split second before the man materialized behind her. A sword made of coiling shadows burst through the air and slithered oily to shoot downwards. Nikhara rolled twice and leapt to her feet in a flip.

The man flicked his sword out again, and I watched as the purple shadowy tendrils receded to reveal a glassy obsidian blade. The hilt looked ornamental and antique. The blades surface seemed to radiate a deep swell of power. And it was power, I realised. It was magic of a different variety.

“You’re skilled unlike your abominable master,” the man mused as he approached my wife. “You also have a spark of life magic. Pity, I could’ve used a servant as capable as you.”

“Fuck you,” Nikhara growled, “I’m already married.” A buzzing sound blossomed in my hearing, and I noticed the man had stopped. Looking at the rooms entrance curiously.

Nikhara bounded forward at the same instance a sapphire painted drone missing its gatling laser burst into the room and slammed into the man.

Nikhara punched him square in the throat and he blanched clutching at his neck. Blue Bitch impacted his chest and drove him tumbling back to slammed into the glass container.

I crawled to my feet. My left arm hurt maddeningly. I didn’t dare glance down at the stump. Instead I stood in a slump and wobbled over to the dying man. My right hand fumbled at my revolver.

“You’re just a distraction,” I said to him, remembering that person’s words in my, and the man actually smiled at me weakly.

“Indeed I am,” he muttered and winced as Blue Bitches propellers whirred angrily and tried to decapitate him in half. “After all, I’m already leaving this facility. You are like an infant in our kinds ways abomination.”

“Oh really. Is that what I am, one of you?” I asked him my handgun wavering upwards to point directly at his head.

“No, not of us. You are changed, diluted somehow. Where are all your thralls abomination? Your conduit? Where is your mastery in coils, and death, and dark magic?” he laughed bitterly. I took note of the mention of magic. “An infant is all you are. All you ever shall--”

My revolver boomed in my hand once and cut him. His head exploded and cracked apart. Then the rest of his body followed suit behind him. Crumbling away into dust and nothingness.

“Did we get him?” Nikhara asked me uncertain.

“No. From what I could make out. He said something like he was already leaving the facility.”

“Fuck,” Nikhara growled and walking over to where her sword hung impaled. She jerked it free and I watched as the body of my ex-wife fell lifeless to the floor.

“My thoughts exactly,” I sighed. My guts churned looking at her listless expression. The apparent shock when her master had used her as a body shield was still apparent in her frightened eyes.

“Are you okay?” Nikhara asked me. I wanted to reply snappishly at her for that question. To ask her to clarify on which pain was she asking me about.

Does my arm hurt? Yes it hurts like thousands of sporay ants are crawling over my arm. Eating the tissue and excreting acidic fluid as they went.

Was seeing my ex-wife die to my current wife painful to watch? Yes and no. I’m still processing it. Had she always been that mans puppet. I think that question hurt the most. The definite plausibility that she had never truly been mine when we’d been together.

“Marcus?” Nikhara prompted me, and I shook my head.

“Yeah … lets get out of here. If he’s leaving this facility that means he’s either using the elevators, or there’s some other way out.”

She nodded and decided not to press me further on what was going through my mind. I just needed a moment to sit down and figure it all out. Then I would tell her and Andrea.

“We also need to grab Sidney as well,” Nikhara noted.

“Who?”

“The hot damsel doctor,” Nikhara elaborated. Orcish customs were so weird at times. A male orc is either powerful because of his strength or prowess in battle. Or because of how many wives he had. If he had more than four, then there was possibly something unique and powerful about him.

High Orcs supposedly had harems of women at their beck and call. I’d met Nikhara father once. The guy had frightened the absolute shit out of me. Yet he tiptoed around his many women like they antique pieces of art.

“Let’s move,” I ordered ignoring her comment. Andrea’s drone flew after us. I ran and kept my stump of a left arm close to my chest. The pain helped to distract me somewhat from my own thoughts.

“I thought Andii’ drone couldn’t make it this far?” I asked Nikhara.

“She flew Erebus to land atop the building over us on the surface.”

Made sense. The closer landing point meant more reach with her drone. It was still missing its most vital function though. I guess that Nikhara had dismounted the gatling laser rather forcibly, considering the spew of torn wires and broken pieces dangling from beneath Blue Bitch.

My eyes locked on a flicker of movement, moving upwards at the far reach of the cavern. It was the held elevator ascending past the mesh and out of sight.

“They’re ascending,” I called to Nikhara and we race on. I noticed now that my speed was most definitely reduced. My breaths began to heave with exertion. The pain of my stump stung more than I felt was reasonably needed.

Whatever enhancement I had received. Whatever boost I’d gotten from the draining of their weapons, drinking that hunter dry, and consuming the vat of fluid. Not in that order. Was now dissipating like ephemeral mist’s.

This novel is the work of Rhys Thomas. If you are reading this and it has not been published by Rhys Thomas, then this work has been stolen. Please report this to Amazon and me at email: [email protected]