Siren, p.7
Siren, page 7
“I was wrong. Takes after his father,” Jason murmured under his breath, loud enough for Steele to hear. Steele wore the same unperturbed smile—though it grew wider—as he gazed at his son with loving amazement.
Talking everywhere ceased as the Xeno Sapiens all turned their heads toward the baby. Jason winced, knowing they wanted to come running but were afraid to incur Robyn’s wrath for spoiling the baby.
Lily’s teenage friend Mellow came darting around the corner. “Want me to take him to Robyn’s office, Steele?”
“I’d appreciate it.”
She hefted the carrier up, carrying Kaden away. His cries stopped, either with the movement of the carrier or the sound of her voice humming. It was just weeks ago that she’d been with Lily everywhere on the compound. He wondered how Lily would adjust to not having that friendship because like it or not, the relationship had changed. She’d either stay grown-up part time or remain an adult full time.
“I’d hoped he would get hungry before the training. I really want to see how far Tempest has come. She seems to learn something new each time she fights.”
“Shawn is amazing. I didn’t just leave her stranded, you know. He’s a professional trainer. I’m lucky I was able to steal him away from the military. He was one of the few not ready for an early retirement.”
“I’m not sure Tempest appreciates him,” Steele said wryly as the three of them made their way outside.
“That’s part of Shawn’s charm. Lying low until you forget his presence, yet he’s quietly manipulating you from the inside out, forcing you to learn, to work harder.”
“He’s got his hands full with our stubborn Tempest,” Beast said with a grin, joining them at the bleachers they’d constructed.
“Where’s Sunny?” Renegade asked.
“Patrolling the wall,” Beast said with a scowl. It was known by everyone that if he could prevent her from being seen by humans, he would. Unfortunately for him, Sunny had a mind of her own.
Just then, Blaze came up. “Which doctor’s on duty?” he asked, scanning the people filling the bleachers.
“I think it’s Dr. Eric.” Renegade winked.
“Aww, shit,” Blaze said. “I’m gonna get my ass kicked. I only volunteered for this day because Irina was supposed to be working.”
“You picked to fight Tempest on a day I’d be here? Why?” Irina came up behind him.
Blaze whirled around. “Oh, uh...because you’re my doctor, so I thought it would be great if you were here and I needed you.”
“Any doctor can treat you, Blaze,” she said, walking with him toward the caged-in pit. “Of course, if you don’t feel healed enough from your last accident, you shouldn’t be in the fights.” Her voice chided and he hung his head.
“Poor guy can’t catch a break.” Beast laughed. “That wasn’t cool, man,” he said to Renegade, who shrugged. Renegade knew Dr. Eric wasn’t the one on duty.
“He’s further along than I thought he’d get,” Steele said as they made their way to the bleachers.
Irina sat in front, her eyes on the stretching between Blaze and Tempest. Shawn was instructing them. Steele, Jason, Renegade, and Beast squeezed in next to her, dwarfing her. She looked a bit alarmed with big men surrounding her. Beast smiled, showing fangs.
Her eyes widened, and she focused past him onto Blaze.
From inside, a bell rang as the two opponents came from opposite corners. Blaze was on offense, attacking Tempest who deflected his strikes.
The beauty of the two fighting Xeno Sapiens was amazing to watch, almost like the scene was choreographed, yet Jason knew it wasn’t. The crowd waited patiently, knowing that eventually Tempest would tire.
When she tired, Blaze’s fist struck her in the center of the chest. She flew backward several feet. She paused for the briefest second before rolling up and out of the way for his second approach.
Jason winced. It had to hurt, and by Irina’s gasp, she knew the force Blaze expended in that sucker punch. Shawn was yelling instructions, and Jason knew it was aimed at angering her. He wanted her to learn to control her movements with her temper activated.
But Tempest’s movements became harsh and jerky as her anger escalated. She glared at Shawn as if he distracted her.
Blaze continued to bait her, landing blows. Shawn had told him how to attack, Jason realized. He was working on Tempest’s control and wanted Blaze to aim at disrupting that.
Tempest lost her cool and fought back, kicking Blaze in the jaw. His head jerked with the impact, spraying blood on the dirt ground.
Shawn was still yelling when Blaze tossed her like a doll through the air. When she landed, he grabbed her by the arms, holding her back against him, her tender belly exposed. All it would take was ramming her into a jutting branch to end it.
But Tempest twisted slightly and Blaze froze.
Shawn blared the whistle, entering the pit angrily.
“What’s happening?” Irina whispered.
It became obvious as Tempest moved away from Blaze. When she’d twisted, she’d broken a piece of rib and sent it sailing into his side.
He grabbed his side, blood flowing onto his hands.
Next to him, Irina stood and rushed into the pit, taking the medical bag he hadn’t even noticed at her feet.
Shawn yelled at Tempest, his tone biting.
“Brilliant,” Renegade whispered to him. “See what I mean? He knows she feels bad for failing and slicing Blaze. The wound is just a nick. But instead of coddling her, he’s ripping her a new one. It’s the only way she’ll learn. A normal trainer would have told her to try harder next time. Shawn knows this is the longest she’s lasted before cutting someone.”
“I agree,” Steele said. “He knows exactly what he’s doing. I wasn’t sure at first, thinking he was wary of Tempest. Now I realize he was studying her, letting her react in her natural habitat so he could break her of the patterns.”
“But she’ll come to you and demand better training.” Beast grinned. “She has no idea Shawn has her right where he wants her.”
“Each of you that fights her knows you’re going to take a bone to the gut?”
“Yup,” Beast said cheerfully. “Why do you think Blaze jumped to volunteer today? Irina’s on duty. She’ll fuss over him.”
Sure enough, Irina was on the field with Blaze, cleaning and bandaging his wound.
The Xeno Sapiens began to disperse from the bleachers. Jason rose when the others did.
“Jason!” Tempest called from the pit. Next to her, Shawn looked frustrated. Jason understood. It was hard to control her when she kept running to someone over him.
He walked toward the pit but stayed on the outside of the fence.
“Please tell Shawn that I won. I stayed in the fight longer than anyone has, and I stopped my assailant in the end.”
Her head was regal as she held it high.
“You lost,” he said flatly.
“Wha—”
“Listen to your trainer,” he snapped. “If your objective was to end the fight quickly, you won. If your objective was to avoid breaking your own bones, you lost. What was your objective set by your trainer, Tempest?”
“To deflect his blows, which I did.”
“You stabbed him in the gut.” Jason’s voice was harsh. “You lost.”
He turned on the ball of his foot and left her standing with her mouth agape. As soon as he was a distance away, he looked back.
Shawn and Tempest were huddled together. Shawn’s demeanor had gentled somewhat, and she was responding.
She was actually responding.
Chapter Eight
Jason hung his head in his hands. There wasn’t anything he could do but wait. Lily was in a light sleep with the medications pumping through her to keep her that way.
The door behind him opened. Robyn and Amanda both walked in as he immediately stood, hair mussed.
“Are we ready?” his sister asked. She moved up to the small monitor that tempered Lily’s drip line. “Robyn’s going to monitor her brain. Well, I guess the computer part of her brain, mostly. That’s how we can tell so much more than normal human brain wave activity. She reads the implanted chip. I’ll start the medication that will take Lily under into the deeper delta waves. She’ll have no recollection of the memories as she wakes. But, the pathways will be open. She’ll remember then.”
“I don’t understand.” Curiously, he watched Robyn as she strapped Lily’s arms and legs lightly. “What is that for?”
“It’s a precaution. We’re unsure if she’ll change while dreaming of her memories. She’s going to experience them as she goes under. When she finally reaches the delta state, she’ll be pretty zen, at last. It’ll be a struggle to get there. That’s when her brain will heal, her personalities of teen and woman coming together. When she wakes, she’ll have no recollection of the horrific things she’s actively remembered. She’ll just be aware they happened. Basically, she’ll remember them without having to experience them again, like she will when going down into the delta waves.”
“Can we get her into the delta state quickly?”
“We’re not sure, Jace,” Amanda said. “We’ll try as hard as we can. But her brain has been trained not to achieve deep healing sleep. It may fight the medications.”
“What about the computer chip portion?” He looked at Robyn.
“That doesn’t help us at all in this case,” she said.
He took a deep breath. “Dammit.”
“Taking her under,” Amanda said. “Three...two...one...”
She calculated the medications and it was a few minutes before anything happened. Then Lily began to moan. He looked up, but both Amanda and Robyn were impassive. Under the straps, Lily started to thrash.
“She’s in pain,” he snarled.
His heart broke when she screamed and tried to close her legs. What the hell was happening to her in her sleep?
“How much longer?” Robyn asked Amanda.
“We’re not even close,” Amanda swore, and it was unusual for his sister. “Her levels are not dropping fast enough.”
Lily began to beg, tears streaming down her face. “No,” she whispered. “Please no. No more. Stop.”
“You heard her!” Jason yelled.
“Jace, we don’t know what she meant. She could be speaking to an unknown person in her dream—“
“I want it stopped!” It was obvious she was being violated in the most horrible way.
Lily was crying hard, whimpering, and began to shriek, bucking her body.
“I said no more!”
Amanda looked at Robyn, shaking her head. “We’re not even a fourth down yet. Abort.”
Robyn nodded and Amanda reversed the medication in the drip. Jason leaned down, rubbing Lily’s pale arms. “It’s okay, baby. I’m here.”
“Jason?” she whispered, her voice weak and broken.
“You’re all right,” he said. “I brought you back to Xenia.”
“Go away!”
He blinked. “What?”
“Get out. I don’t want you here!”
“Lily, I—“
“Get out!” she screamed. “Don’t come back. Ever.”
With a sharp inhale, he rose. The spikes on the monitors were angry, striding across the screens and setting off warning alarms. Jason wanted to tell her he loved her. That he’d never leave her. But she must have remembered their last time together. She resented him for making love to her. As well she should. He was nothing more than an animal.
He was the reason she dreamed of sexual assault. Goddess, he’d have castrated himself if he’d known one of those bastards had touched her as a child. Even though she’d forgotten her treatment, he brought it right back full circle.
“I want him gone,” Lily sobbed, in a full out panic attack.
Jason wrung his hands, confused and helpless—but guilty as hell.
With a nod of her head, Robyn pointed toward the door as Amanda soothed Lily’s screams. “Give us a minute,” she mouthed silently.
He turned and left, the door closing behind him and silencing Lily’s sobs.
It was all he could do. Protect her from him.
“IT’S OKAY, LILY. HE’S gone,” Robyn soothed. “It’s just us. Me and Amanda.”
“I almost hurt him,” Lily sobbed. “I forced him to...”
“Shh,” Robyn soothed. “It’s okay. He’s fine. You’re fine. There’s been no harm done.”
“I could have killed him. I can’t control this...beast inside me. And then I manipulated him—“
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Amanda said sharply. “It’s Jason. He’s fine. He’s been through much more than that.”
“You don’t understand. I don’t want to hurt him,” Lily whispered.
“You won’t. What caused you to change last time?”
“I don’t know. I was in the pool when it took over.”
“Pool water. The safe house had a salt pool. So, saline.” Amanda looked at Robyn and motioned toward a bottle on the counter. Robyn reached for it, uncapped it and poured a stream over Lily’s arm.
Her skin hardened, thickening.
Amanda gasped.
“See? I told you,” Lily said. “I can feel it, so close to the surface, wanting to take over. When I’m me...like this...I can control her. But when my mind isn’t as free, when I’m younger mentally, I don’t have the same control. I can hurt him. I’ll kill myself if I hurt him.” Her eyes begged for them to understand.
“Why Jason?” Amanda asked.
“She wants him.” Lily took a deep breath. “I want him. She and I...we’re one and the same. But I don’t trust her not to hurt him.”
“Okay,” Robyn said. “Let’s focus on getting you better. Put everything else aside for now.”
As she calmed, her wet skin began to change back to the pale color and thin texture she was used to.
“That’s it. Deep, calming breaths. We’re going to learn how to control the siren inside you,” Robyn said. “Repeat after me. She’s a bitch.”
“She’s a bitch!” Lily snarled.
Amanda sniggered, Robyn laughed, and Lily felt a bit lighter.
“We’ll get you to grow up the natural way, Lily.”
“How long will it take?”
“It could be a few years,” Amanda said, her voice guarded. “But at least it’s safe, honey.”
A few years of avoiding him. She would surely lose Jason by then. Perhaps she could apologize. Get things back to the way they were.
They discharged her from medbay the next day, without her ever seeing Jason. She’d gone back to her old quarters that she shared with the other teen girls.
In her room were immature reminders of Jason. A scarf he’d given her. A picture she’d taken of him, well creased with all the times she’d loved on it. A stub of a ticket from when he’d bought her lunch during their excursion to the mall. She avoided her quarters...and her heart had broken when she realized her roommates avoided her. They were wary of her. She looked and sounded like a grown up most of the time. She didn’t see the humor when they giggled over a Xeno Sapien’s half-naked body or caught someone kissing. She didn’t fit in.
In the days that followed, Jason avoided her. She’d cornered him once and begged his forgiveness. He smiled easily as if it weren’t a big deal, but then tweaked her on the nose like a kid and left as soon as Tempest rolled around the corner.
Tempest. The most beautiful Xeno Sapien of them all. What the hell was he even doing with her? Why was he paying so much attention to her all of a sudden? Had he replaced Lily with his attentions?
Lily had daily visits with Robyn and medical checkups with Amanda. After a few awkward run-ins with people she knew—especially her best friend, Mellow—she’d talked to Dr. Robyn. She helped her request her own housing so she had a small cottage in the woods. Everyone understood she didn’t really fit in anywhere. Not anymore.
The Xeno Sapiens were kind, of course. But baffled. Lily understood. She never knew when she was going to be an unruly teen spouting off from a woman’s body. And the teens that she had been hanging with? They’d paired off since she was gone, now that the numbers were three boys and three girls. Petty jealousies arose with the boys staring at her newfound breasts and the girls making snide comments about change. That was the awkwardness in the room she had first sensed.
Through it all, Lily was terrified to go swimming. Robyn had agreed it was for the best for her to avoid the water on the property. It would be no problem if she changed while by herself. But what would make her change back? And what if someone else were to enter the water while she was there?
So Lily spent a lot of her days hanging out by herself, sitting on the rocker on her front porch. A day like today, beautifully colored skies, air smelling fresh from recent rains. Her kitchen was stocked with sandwich fixings because she was spending less and less time with others. Even the crowded mess hall felt awkward. She’d taken to avoiding it, too.
“Hey, kiddo. How long are you going to lock yourself away?” Shawn’s voice came from the wooded area beyond Lily’s cottage.
She’d been daydreaming and missed his approach. Otherwise, she’d probably have slipped inside and hid in her room.
She casually shrugged even though her heart pounded with anxiety. She so desperately wanted to be away from everyone who reminded her of Jason. Jason and Tempest. “I’m out in the open.”
His boots thudded as he walked up her front steps, taking a chair on the porch with her without being invited.
“Jason misses you.”
“Jason hasn’t come to see me.”
“Maybe he’s trying to get you to come out of hiding. Maybe you’re sinking further into said hiding.”
“I’m not hiding. I go to Systems four times a week.”
“You go in for your appointments and never hang around. You dart in and out and run back to the safety of your cottage. You’re not even eating out anymore, and I know because I’ve been looking for you. Why don’t you try interacting with someone? You might find you enjoy it again.”
