Replicant: The Kithran Regenesis, Book 2 Page 5

  “Yes.”

  The simple answer carried no hint of flirting, no dishonesty. Nothing but truth. And a hint of sadness.

  Frowning, I crossed my arms over my nipples.

  “You’re very similar to the women Erik saw before he met me.”

  “You just said I wasn’t his type. So now he’s into skinny and bald?” I smirked.

  He shook his head. “Broken and lonely.”

  I stopped walking, frozen in place as Erik glanced over his shoulder. “Trust me, Jarana isn’t broken.”

  “Then you aren’t looking closely.” Maska’s words came on a whisper, and he slumped. Erik staggered and I reached out to help. He swore and pulled Maska out of my reach.

  “Don’t touch him. Just don’t.” He gazed down at Maska’s slack face. “He’s out again. Leave us. I promise to let you know when he wakes.”

  I scowled. Turning on my heel, I left them, cursing silently the entire way back to my living pod. I was not broken.

  But I was lonely.

  It hit me once I crawled into the massive round bed with the bottle of whiskey. I could have found a willing partner elsewhere on this planet. Kei for one.

  Realization kept me up the rest of the night despite the unhealthy amount of whiskey I put away.

  I didn’t go after Kei because I didn’t want him. He wouldn’t come close to easing this burn I felt in my body. I wanted Erik. But that wasn’t the thing that kept me staring into the glowing Kithran jungle outside my dome.

  Seems the Replicant had stirred something in me too, and that scared the hell out of me.

  Chapter Seven

  Another yawn threatened to snap my jaw, and I was so distracted, a robotic arm smacked my helmet hard enough to send me into the cave wall. Closing my eyes, I sank to the ground.

  “Jarana, you okay?”

  It was Lux’s voice. I held my hand with my thumb up toward the monitor.

  “What’s wrong with your com? I can’t hear you.”

  I glared at her and gave an exaggerated shrug before leaning my head back and closing my eyes again. Truth was I’d donned the defective helmet on purpose. I liked not having to talk to them. Three days had passed since Erik had gotten drunk in my living pod, and Maska was still out. For a time, I thought he was faking it, and Kei had caught me poking him with one of the sharp medical instruments.

  Lux cleared her throat noisily. “If you’re okay, why aren’t you getting your lazy ass up?”

  Remembering one of Lux’s favorite communication methods, I held up my gloved middle finger.

  Her laughter rang over the one-way com before she cleared her throat again. “By the way, Maska is awake. Egan is hunting down Erik so the two can talk. Will you give them a day or so before you start insisting I fly you off planet? Not that I’m saying I will or anything.”

  Not for the first time, I wished I could have flown my ship here. I had the skills to navigate the debris fields surrounding the planet, but the explosions had released heavier gases into the atmosphere. They’d dissipate in time, but they were too strong for anything but a ship made of our kithronite. One ship had managed to get through—the one that had rescued Egan and two other on-planet survivors—but gases had rotted the hull. The pilots had just dropped off the Gwinarians when disaster struck. Now, Lux was the only one with access to the only kithronite ship.

  The bitch.

  I sighed. She didn’t know I’d already promised Erik the time. I wished I hadn’t. I wanted out of here and away from those two men, and even more, I wanted off Kithra. The night before had been the worst. I’d downed the last of my whiskey and paced every inch of nearly every pod tunnel. All except the one where I’d had that memory of playing with my sisters.

  I was having to work for the numb—which meant it wouldn’t stick around much longer. Better to be far away from this world when my emotions made their reappearance. The only way I knew to stop them would be to take the last job and go after the remaining escaped Replicant.

  Letting out a deep breath, I stood. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be working down here today, so I ignored Lux’s questions and left the mines. I didn’t stop by my pod to change, just continued on to the poor excuse of a workout area the others had set up.

  In the past, we’d had swimming pools and gyms attached to every section of living pods. I missed the pool I’d grown up using. It had been built to replicate the waterfalls and cave pools on the planet’s surface—an area we couldn’t explore outside of proper suits, but so beautiful, photographs of the settings had graced most calendars in the cities. The room we had now held two air treads and a set of virtual weights. Grinning, I grabbed the goggles, remembering how much I’d loved them when I was younger. The settings hooked into brain waves, making the user really believe he or she was lifting weights, and though nothing gave the body actual physical resistance, the mind supplied it. Muscles were used as if weights were really being lifted. I placed them over my head and scowled when I realized I still wore the metal shell. I stripped down to the fitted suit layer.

  Lying back, I wrapped the goggles around my eyes, flipped them on and chose the third weight setting. The pull and cry of muscles I hadn’t been using did what I’d hoped. My mind stayed away from all the upsetting things and focused on the workout. I lifted for nearly an hour before dropping my arms to the mat. I managed to gather enough energy to raise one arm and pull off the goggles before letting them drop to the floor.

  I felt eyes on me. Damn, I’d forgotten about the coms. Prying one eye open, I glanced around for the camera placement and sat up when, instead, I met Kei’s dark amber gaze. He dropped to the floor beside me, reached out to run his hand over my flat stomach. “Your body is so thin, I didn’t expect to see beauty. I’m surprised.”

  I let him touch me, waited for the stir of lust. He was a beautiful Gwinarian male—tall, proud and everything I’d dreamed of having as a girl growing up here. And he did absolutely nothing for me. “Where were you when the explosions happened?” Don’t know why I blurted the question, because I certainly didn’t want him asking the same.

  “Vacationing with five other Gwinarians who are back on planet now. You could eat in the social pod tonight, get to know them.”

  “Is it hard for you to be here?” I didn’t look at him as I asked the question.

  He removed his hand, sat back. “I drank through the first three months, but having my friends with me helped me get through it. Where were you?”

  “Not vacationing.” I tightened my lips and sat up, grimacing at the clingy, sweaty microsuit. “I miss the pools.”

  “The Company doesn’t think those areas are necessary for repair yet.”

  “I’d say I was surprised they have us mining when there is so much tunnel repair needed, but their greed is known throughout the galaxies.”

  He pushed his long, loose strawberry-blond hair off his shoulder. “I, for one, am thankful for that greed. It brought me home.” He stared at me. Hard. “This isn’t home for you anymore, is it?”

  The sharp pang in my chest surprised me, then pissed me off. “I don’t have a home.”

  “You do, you just don’t see it yet. Gwinarians belong here, Jarana. Even you.” He clasped his hands together. “Especially you, as a female.”

  I knew what he was getting at. As one of the few, my people were going to hope I’d get with another Gwinarian and start reproducing. The thought of a baby was such a foreign concept to me, I couldn’t see it ever happening. “There are probably a lot more. Think of all the schools out there, all the Gwinarians who were hungry for knowledge.”

  “Don’t you remember that most had come in for the mining bonuses?”

  That was why I’d been home. The Company had offered double pay for a few months if we could mine twice the usual amount of kithronite. Most of us had come in to work the mines. “There are more survivors, trust me. They’ll stumble on that net beacon page just as I did.”

  “That’s how the family on
Earth 4 found us. Once Lux, Kol and Egan got the first pods and tunnels up and running, The Company sent word throughout the galaxies.” He laid his hand on my knee. “More will come home. It might not ever be the home it once was, but it’s still our Kithra. Will you at least think about staying here?”

  I brushed his hand off and stood, biting back a groan at my sore muscles. “I’m not the right female for the job you have in mind.”

  He didn’t say anything, just watched me as I left. I held my breath until I was two tunnels away before the lack of air sent the world spinning. I sat on the floor and leaned back against the wall. Once I’d dreamed of a family. I’d grown up in a big one. I’d had only two sisters, but there’d been fourteen cousins. Family gatherings had been noisy and so damned fun. My parents had just married a fourth Gwinarian when this world was crushed. Lanna. I could still picture her, still remember how new their relationship had been. My sisters and I, grown at that point, had moved out to give our parents space. We’d just set up our own pod, and Gwinlan—

  Ice froze my veins.

  I hadn’t thought either of my sisters’ names in so long, the sudden pain slashed through me like foot-long claws raking my body. Moaning, I dropped fully to the floor, curling up to try and hold in the cries that built in my chest. Wave after wave of agony washed over me, polluting my lungs, turning the world around me black and tight as if the walls were moving in, crushing me. I clawed at my throat, feeling skin give beneath my nails, the physical pain shocking me into the realization that I had to get somewhere private. I tried to stand and couldn’t get my legs to work. Sobs wracked my chest and I crawled, part of my mind desperately hoping no one came along.

  Arms came around me. “Hey, shh, it’s going to be okay, Jarana. Try to breathe.”

  “No,” I moaned, trying to crawl faster, trying to dislodge them. I thought it was Kei, that he’d followed me. Kei, who thought I could have children, a medic who couldn’t see past the apparently healthy body to the living nightmare inside me. Children? What a joke. No child deserved a mother like me. One who had slit a man’s throat and watched his blood pool into the floor of his own spaceship, one who had turned an entire ship of people over to the worst prison in the galaxies, knowing some could have been innocent.

  I blindly struck out, my fist connecting to someone’s flesh with a loud smack. The arms disappeared. Stronger ones replaced them.

  “Hell, run and get Kei so he can knock her out!”

  Part of me heard Lux, but my mind was bombarded with memories of Gwinlan and Selena, my sisters, and Lanna, Borkan, Galan…and Naanlee, oh gods, my Naanlee…my mother. Peeling hands off me, I snarled and pulled away, curling back up and pressing my palms to my head to hold in the screams. “All dead. All dead. All dead.” The words escaped my mouth no matter how hard I tried to hold them in.

  Loud footsteps pounded and stopped beside me. I rolled onto my stomach and started crawling again. I had to get home. I remembered I didn’t have a home just as something touched my neck. I heard a whooshing sound and then nothing at all.

  Someone was stroking my hair. I didn’t make a sound, didn’t twitch, and didn’t do anything to let the person know I was awake.

  “She never dealt with it. No wonder.”

  Recognizing Egan’s voice, I held still because I couldn’t remember how I got here. There was a knot of panic or, no, something else in my chest. I didn’t recognize it—it felt hard and so painful, it captured most of my attention. There was enough left to let me know it wasn’t Egan touching me. His voice was too far away.

  “Gods, my heart hurts so much right now. Shit.”

  That was Lux. Foul-mouthed as always. In college, I’d put my mouth on those luscious lips of hers to shut her up. She had an overbite that made her self-conscious. She didn’t think anyone realized it did, but I’d seen it right off and had been shocked because all that lush upper lip made me think about was sex.

  Lux wasn’t the one stroking my hair either because her voice sounded like it came from the same place Egan’s had. My forehead wrinkled with the frown I couldn’t hold back. I didn’t want Kei touching me.

  Kei, who talked of Gwinarian children, who’d looked at me like I could provide them.

  “She’s waking.”

  That voice, close enough to send breath over my cheek, forced my eyes open because it wasn’t Kei. My gaze locked with Maska’s. He was stroking my hair? Compassion softened his beautiful, masculine features. Compassion I didn’t deserve. I pulled back and his hand dropped, his expression going closed in a heartbeat.

  Something beeped by my head, and I looked at the wireless monitor that ran my vitals continuously. I was in the med pod. Sudden humiliation swamped me when I remembered the very public breakdown. Groaning softly, I shut my eyes. “You can all go away now. The crazy woman is under control.”

  “Shut up, Jarana,” Lux snapped. “Crazy is the last thing you are. Hell, woman, did you ever deal with what happened?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  I heard rustling, and in the next instant, she was leaning over the bed, touching my face. “Look at me.”

  A tiny smile wormed its way past the humiliation. “You know better than to order me around.” But I opened my eyes again. She had a purple bruise blossoming on her cheek. Her eyes were filled with the kind of consideration I did not want to see right now. Everything in me felt shaky and brittle…like I could shatter with the slightest nudge. “How many?”

  She frowned. “How many what?”

  “How many saw that?”

  Lux sucked in that full upper lip and bit it.

  “I don’t want to know, do I?”

  “You were right outside the control room.” She met my gaze straight on.

  “Fuck.”

  She grinned, her lip popping back out. “Yeah.”

  She was strong, independent. She knew what this sort of public display would be like for me, and I could see the understanding in her expression. “Who carried me here?”

  Lux nodded toward the corner of the room. I turned and felt all heat drain from my face when I saw Erik. He watched me with an expression I couldn’t read from the shadows. That strange connection snapped between us again. Something about his body language hit me, and I glanced at Maska to find him looking from Erik to me. A faint hint of sadness crept over his features before he quickly looked down and let his hair slide around his face.

  Gods, Maska is an empath.

  He could sense emotion, feed emotion back to people. A few Replicants carried that extra sensitivity, and so far, all the ones I’d encountered used the ability to manipulate people into doing what they wanted. I stared at the Replicant. Was he trying to make me feel sorry for him?

  Meeting his gaze, I tried to read him, but it was hard with those nearly solid, opaque eyes.

  “You haven’t been eating well,” Kei said, stepping into my line of sight next to Maska. “Your body is nearly starved of nutrients, so I’m putting you on a strict diet. And maybe you should lay off the whiskey until you build your system back up.”

  Like that will happen.

  “Seriously, Jarana, you’re in rough shape.” Kei turned the monitor my way and pointed.

  I ignored the squiggly lines that showed what vitamins and nutrients my body was missing and instead looked around the room. I didn’t know what to say to these people. Couldn’t find words to explain what happened because I couldn’t understand it completely myself. On some level, I knew that the years of bottled grief had spilled over, but even trying to come up with an explanation hurt too much. I felt inside out, raw and liable to lose it again at any second.

  “You should talk to someone, Jarana,” Lux said quietly.

  I sat up, glaring at Kei when he stepped in front of Maska and tried to push me back down. “Want to keep those fingers intact?” I lifted an eyebrow.

  “We don’t have any psychologists on planet, but you could talk to some of the other Gwinarians. You could talk to
Egan.” Lux threaded her fingers with Egan’s, looking up at him. “He…well, I’ll let him tell you, but he went through something awful here.”

  “I don’t need to talk to anyone. It was nothing but exhaustion. A little rest and I’ll be good as new.” I noted the monitor picked up my faster heartbeat. If I wasn’t careful, my agitation would be on display for the full room.

  “It is necessary.” She wrinkled her nose. “But maybe after a shower, huh? Did you really work out in the microsuit?”

  “Nothing like telling a woman she stinks to bring her back to reality.” I swung my legs to the side of the bed but didn’t try to stand yet because my limbs felt kind of loose and a little numb.

  Erik stood. “I’ll take you to your pod.”

  Scowling, I clenched my hands into fists. “I don’t need help. I can walk.”

  “You don’t smell bad,” Maska murmured. “Lux is being a bitch. It’s her thing.”

  It was. I knew that. I also knew she said it to put a little normalcy into this tense situation. I opened my mouth to tell them I planned to shower and take Maska off planet, but something held my tongue. At this moment, I didn’t plan to take him anywhere.

  Shock rumbled around in my brain before bowing to the return of exhaustion and humiliation. When Erik came close, I looked up into his blue eyes before closing my own. “I appreciate the help. Thank you.”

  “Killed you to say that, didn’t it?” he muttered. A faint thread of amusement laced his tone. He held out one big hand.

  I let him pull me to my feet, accepted the arm around my shoulders and gave each person in the room a quick glance. “I’m sorry for the disruption.” My look stopped on Kei, and it was hard to meet his gaze because, again, all I could think about was his talk of children. “Thanks for knocking me out.”