Rilex & Severine's Story (Uoria Mates IV Book 6) Read online

  The chamber where she had been transformed from the battle-worn hybrid to the woman who had entered the celebration was empty, giving Severine the chance to remove the dress gradually and reluctantly. She didn’t want to relinquish the touch of the airy fabric against her skin and the feeling that it gave her to wear it, but she knew that she had to. She hadn’t yet decided what she was going to do when they arrived on Penthos and the others went back into battle, but she knew that she wouldn’t be able to stay in the blissful, dreamlike state that she had been living in for the last few hours.

  The women had offered her fresh clothing to wear and it was waiting for her on a low seat at the side of the room. She stepped into it and looked into the mirror that she had used hours before to see herself in the dress. It was the first time that she had seen a mirror, the first opportunity that she had had to see her reflection fully. There had been a few times when she had caught the hazy outline of herself in the brushed metal tables or the glass of the chambers, but it wasn’t until the women had brought her to stand in front of the mirror in the ship that she had really seen herself. She didn’t know what to think of herself or the way she looked. She knew that she didn’t look like the other women, but for the first time it didn’t seem strange. Instead, she felt unique and different. As she looked at herself in the slim-fitting pants and shirt, she wondered if she was beautiful. It wasn’t something that she would have ever considered before, but now that she knew what it was like to have Rilex’s eyes on her, she couldn’t help but wonder what he saw in those moments.

  Once she was dressed again and had tied her hair back behind her head, she left the room and started toward the passenger pod she had ridden in as the ship took off. She was nearly there when she heard frantic voices in the hallway in front of the passenger chambers. She recognized one of them as Eden, but the other was too muffled by tears for Severine to know who it was.

  “I don’t know what to do,” the crying woman said. “I couldn’t help him.”

  “You did everything that you could,” Eden said. “You know that.”

  “But I’m a healer,” the woman said, telling Severine that this must be Elianna. “I’m supposed to be able to help people and keep them safe.”

  “You weren’t born a healer,” Eden said. “You are only a healer because of the care that Ciyrs gave you. He was destined to be a healer at birth and even he wasn’t able to give her what she needed. Sometimes that’s just what happens. It isn’t possible to save every life.”

  Severine turned the corner of the corridor and saw Elianna bent forward, her face in her hands as she sobbed. Eden was standing beside her, cradling her baby son in one arm and rubbing Elianna’s back with the other, trying to comfort her. Severine felt awkward standing there. At once she wanted to know what was happening. They were talking about a life that was lost under Ciyrs’s care, and she knew that the Denynso healer was in the vehicle with the most severely wounded and the pregnant women from the breeding facility. She wanted to know who it was and what had happened to them. At the same moment, she knew that this was a private conversation and that she shouldn’t be interjecting herself into it. She was starting to turn away, planning to find another passenger pod for the landing, but she heard Eden call out to her.

  “Hello!”

  Severine knew that it was only she and Rilex who knew the name that he had given her, but she had still expected to hear it come out of Eden’s mouth at the end of the greeting. When it didn’t, she questioned whether she should tell her, but decided against it, knowing that this moment wasn’t about her and that she shouldn’t try to take it over. She turned back to Eden.

  “Hello,” she said. She took a cautious step toward them. “I’m sorry for interrupting.”

  Eden shook her head and wrapped her arm around Elianna protectively while also seeming to try to take a step toward Severine.

  “No,” she said. “You aren’t interrupting. I’m happy to see you. How are you doing?”

  Severine nodded.

  “I’m feeling better,” she said.

  “Good,” Eden said. “Did you have fun at the reception?”

  Severine nodded again, uncomfortable at the way Eden seemed to be ignoring Elianna. She looked at the healer who had taken care of her when they were still in the basement and brought her back from the brink of the death that nearly took her first during battle, and then during the retraining at the hands of the Valdicians.

  “Is she alright?” Severine asked.

  Elianna lifted her face and looked at Severine.

  “One of the women gave birth in the vehicle,” she said. “It was too early and she didn’t survive.”

  Severine felt her breath catch in her throat. They had just managed to get out of the horrific conditions of the hidden facility. The woman had tasted only a few days of freedom, and now had lost her life far away from everything that she had ever known. She would never have the opportunity to see her family again, to explain to them why she had suddenly disappeared from their lives. She would never be able to hold the child that she carried or experience the peace of knowing that that child would not live the life of an experiment or a weapon.

  “Who was it?” Severine asked when she felt like she could speak through the painful tightness in her throat.

  “Her name was Astrid,” Elianna told her.

  Severine nodded. Though she hadn’t had much opportunity to interact with the breeding women, she had heard the name. If she thought hard enough, she could vaguely see the face of a woman with thick blond hair and thin, chiseled features. She didn’t know if that was truly the woman that they were talking about or just a composite of the details that she had gathered about the women from the brief times that she had been able to see them, but she chose to believe that it was her. She deserved to be remembered, even if it was only by others who had lived a captive life as she had.

  “What about the baby?” Severine asked.

  The other two women seemed only concerned about Astrid, and while Severine was sad at the loss of the woman, she was thinking about the innocent child who had been born into the world too soon, and who now had no one.

  “Ciyrs says that the baby survived the birth and seems to be doing well, but is very small. One of the other women has tried to feed it, but she hasn’t produced milk yet. They hope to express milk from the mother, but since the baby came so early, she hadn’t yet produced enough.”

  “The baby will need formula,” Severine said. “If it is to survive it will need care very soon.”

  Elianna nodded.

  “He doesn’t know if the baby is strong enough to live. For now, it is breathing and has good color, but none of the other women know what else they can do for it.”

  “Is it a boy or a girl?” Severine asked.

  “What?” Elianna asked, seeming thrown off by the question.

  “The baby,” Severine said. “You keep calling the baby ‘it’.”

  Severine hated the dismissive way they were speaking about the child. It didn’t matter how it had come to be or even how long it might live, this was a living being and deserved to be shown some form of respect and dignity.

  Elianna shook her head.

  “Oh,” she said through her tears, wiping her cheeks as if she were trying to get control of her emotions. “I don’t know. Ciyrs didn’t tell me. He just said that a baby had been born and that the mother died in childbirth. He didn’t mention if the baby is a boy or a girl.”

  Pyra came down the hallway and rested one large hand on Eden’s back. He looked at Elianna, but she was fighting to keep the tears from continuing to fall and he seemed to recognize that she didn’t want to talk about what was happening.

  “The ship will be starting its descent in just a few minutes,” he said. “We need to get into our landing pods. Elianna, they need you in the infirmary.”

  Elianna nodded and started away from them without another word. Severine watched as she w
ent, wondering what was being done in the infirmary to protect those who were undergoing care and those helping them while they were landing. She was sure that a ship of this magnitude, designed for exploration, was properly equipped to handle situations when there would be passengers and crew in the infirmary, but it still made her uncomfortable to think of any of them being in danger, particularly those who had already been through so much. Eden and Pyra turned toward the passenger chambers and Severine followed, splitting away from them and going into the chamber where she had traveled when they first left Earth. She climbed into her pod and adjusted the harnesses before reaching up to grasp the handle on the lid and pull it down into place.

  As soon as the lid clicked closed, Severine squeezed her eyes closed and took several long breaths, willing herself to remain calm. She hated the tightness of the pod. She hated the feeling of being strapped down inside of it. Though she knew that this was the way that the others were traveling as well, and that the shell of the pod, its surrounding padding, and the tight harnesses were designed to protect her during the potentially hazardous ascent and descent portions of the voyage, it felt far too much like the experiments and reprogramming that she had been forced to undergo in the facility. Too frequently she had been closed in spaces that prevented her from going where she wanted to or even moving when she needed to. The harnesses reminded her of being strapped to the cold metal tables of the reprogramming unit, while the lid of the pod made her mind go immediately to the screens that the Valdicians would move into place in front of her face and force her to watch for days on end.

  Severine kept her eyes closed as she felt the slight sinking feeling of the ship starting to lower down. Her mind moved back through the years, dredging up memories that she hadn’t wanted to dwell on since she packed them away in the darkest recesses of her thoughts. She knew what she had to do. It was the only choice. The nervousness and fear disappeared as a feeling of sadness that she couldn’t quite explain settled in.

  Chapter Three

  Rilex felt the slight shift in pressure as the ship landed and heard a long, slow sound that was like a release of air, almost as if the machine itself was relieved that they had finally arrived on Penthos. He hesitated before opening the harnesses that held him still in the passenger pod. He didn’t know what to expect when he finally climbed out of it and stepped out onto this unknown planet. Like many of the other people aboard the ship, he had never been to Penthos and knew nothing about the foreign planet. He didn’t know what it would be like to step out onto the ground of another land and be expected to instantly acclimate as he threw himself into the war that was equally unknown.

  They had no way of knowing what those who had remained on Penthos had gone through in the time that Azra, Ariella, Oro, and Jonah had been on Earth, and what was happening with the hybrid army that they knew was on the planet with those who had been left behind. He had heard those who had arrived from Penthos talk about their unexpected arrival on the planet after leaving Uoria on the way to Earth, and about the hybrids that had surrounded the ship as Ryan’s image taunted them on one of the ship’s screens. Rilex knew that they were there, and that they were likely fighting against those who had stayed when the others had climbed into the stowed-away vehicle and flew to Earth to find help. Knowing that, though, didn’t change the questioning feelings that were building in the back of his mind.

  Rilex’s thoughts about the hybrid army and the war itself had changed, and he wondered if they had changed for the others as well. When they were still on Earth, hunkered in the basement trying to decide what to do, he knew that they all felt a sense of anger and even hatred toward the hybrids that had attacked them. They saw them as powerful, living weapons that had been created not to think or feel, but only to fight and destroy. When they thought of going to Penthos and fighting the war that had broken out there, they thought of fighting those hybrids and preventing them from eliminating the group that had come together from both Uoria and Earth to defeat Ryan. That wasn’t how Rilex thought of it any longer. These hybrids weren’t weapons. They were living, breathing, feeling creatures that had been given an existence that none of them could imagine. While Severine had told him that there were some who had actually offered themselves into the experiments and took joy and fulfillment in the opportunity to fight, Rilex now knew that this was not the case with most of them. These were not just machines that happened to have heartbeats. They were people and they didn’t deserve what was happening to them. There was obviously still reason to fight, but that reason had shifted in his mind and in his heart. He no longer felt that they were fighting just for themselves anymore.

  The lid to the pod opened slightly and Rilex pressed it open the rest of the way. He climbed out and walked toward the main area of the ship where the others were gathering. As they collected in the open area, he looked around for Severine, hoping to find her among the faces that were closing in tightly around him. He had expected that she would have taken the passenger pod beside him as she had when they first left Earth, but by the time that he came to the passenger chamber to get into his pod, all of the others in the chamber were already taken and she wasn’t in any of them. He hoped that she had found one where she would feel safe, but he wanted to find her before they left the ship. He didn’t know if she knew anything about Penthos and he didn’t like the idea of her being alone on the planet even for a moment. After the conflict with the other hybrids and the Valdicians when they were trying to get to the transportation bay, he knew all too well that Severine wasn’t safe near the other hybrid creatures. He wanted to be close enough to her to protect her if they tried to take her again.

  It seemed that everyone had gathered in the area, waiting to be told what they were going to do next, when he finally saw Severine. Her face was drawn, the sparkle that had begun to appear in her eyes when they were sitting together in the lounge now gone. Rilex started toward her, trying to make his way through the group to get to her, but she stepped away. He continued toward her, but she stepped behind others, gradually disappearing further into the group so that he couldn’t get to her. Suddenly he felt himself swept up among the others and was forced back further away from her as the group closed in more tightly toward the front of the room. Rilex turned and saw Pyra standing on something that made him tower even higher over the rest of them. He was looking out over them sternly, seeming to check each face and take inventory of them to make sure that all but those limited to the infirmary were there. They hadn’t yet planned what they were going to do when they finally made it to Penthos, and now that they had arrived it was time for them to come together and determine what steps they would take next.

  Pyra held his hands out in front of him and the silence rippled through the group until they all stood quietly, staring up at him expectantly. When he knew that he had all their attention, Pyra lowered his hands to his sides.

  “The others have already arrived,” he said. “We landed as close to them as we could safely, but it is still a short ways off. They haven’t yet left their vehicle and are waiting for us to make the next move. We will need to send out scouts to rendezvous with them and then we can plan a mission to locate Maxim and the others.”

  There was a feeling of hesitation in the group, but Rilex took a step forward. He held up his hand so that Pyra would notice him among the others.

  “I’ll go,” he said.

  Pyra looked at him questioningly as if waiting for him to say something else.

  “Are you sure, Rilex?” he asked.

  Rilex nodded. Those in front of him parted, letting him move up through the crowd until he was standing directly in front of the Denynso leader and could see that he was standing on top of one of the boxes of rations from the ship’s supply room. That image was strangely impactful for Rilex, dissipating the thoughts that he had had when they were in the lounge that told him that the ship was primarily designed for comfort and relaxation. The box of rations was an undeniable reminder that th
is ship was designed for those traveling far into the galaxy for missions that were potentially dangerous and could leave them sailing through space for long, even indeterminate, stretches of time.

  “Yes,” Rilex said, nodding at Pyra.

  “You know that the hybrids are out there. There is an army waiting for us.”

  “I know,” Rilex said. “That’s why I think that I should be the one who leaves the ship first to go to alert the others of our arrival and guide them back to the ship.”

  “I don’t understand,” Pyra said.

  “The hybrids were created and trained for a specific purpose. They were sent to Penthos to confront and destroy Maxim and Kyven, along with the Denynso. I’m not a part of that group. Ryan doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know my species. It doesn’t mean that the hybrids won’t attack when I go out there, but they wouldn’t have reason to plan as massive an ambush on me as they would any of the warriors or the more recognizable of your allies. They wouldn’t want to waste the energy or the resources on an attack on someone they haven’t been trained to recognize.”