“Because your opinion is the most important.” His brow furrowed and he came to her, lifting her fists before his face until she released the nails from her skin. “Because you need control back in your life.”
A forked tongue slithered out from the bottom of Stryker’s mask and lapped at the drips of blood on her hand before it slithered up her fingers and over her nails.
“Gross,” she choked.
He laughed and his tongue vanished behind the metal on his face. “I know.”
Norah wiped her hands on the medical lab coat and looked back at the clouds. Everything in her wanted to go back into the storm but reason beat out her emotional stupidity. Stryker’s hands gripped her hips and pulled her against him.
They both had a job to do and it was up to Stryker and her to return to those that they worked for.
“Let’s go find your ship.”
Chapter Seventeen:
***
Stryker checked the anonymous missive sent from Ghost several times over. It wasn’t because he didn’t know what it meant, it was because he just wanted to get on with his job.
Now that he was off the swamp planet with Norah alive and breathing by his side, the preservation of his pristine record returned to the top of his priority list.
When he had Matt within his sight he was going to throttle the alcoholic and drop him off at the next port. If his record was broken because of him the pain he would inflict would indescribable.
He wasn’t about to go down in EPED’s records as the Cyborg that got bested by a drunk. The chance of that even happening was enough to bring out the viper under his skin.
Stryker looked up at Norah and felt his rage diminish. His tongue dipped from his mouth and he let loose a low hiss behind his mask. It had taken everything in him to not claim her in the medlab when she had stripped off her damp clothes and revealed her shades of mahogany and cinnamon.
Now that the murk of Axone was behind them, and a calm had snuck its way back into their lives, he could finally scent Norah’s true smell. Every breath he inhaled and released, even though it was behind his mask, her perfume invaded his senses.
A perfect blend of vanilla and clove with the infused odor of medical serum. It smelled clean, pristine, and dangerous. Stryker sucked in another breath of air.She smells healthy and safe.
She’s finally safe.
He glanced at her as he ran scans and sent a message to his ship. If it connected, he would have its coordinates, unlike Ghost’s, where everything was channeled through a super server that the captain of the city cycled on a daily basis. And that didn’t include the impenetrable shields.
Norah’s hair had sprung up around her head, an explosion of slick curls that tempted his fingers. She stared at the stars outside the bridge’s window, her eyes hooded and vacant. It made him want to wrap her up within his embrace and bring life back to her gaze.
The flutter of her heart stopped him. It had yet to settle within her chest.
Humans are so strange.
Stryker disconnected from the signals he had weeded out around them and put all his attention on his scientist. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She didn’t look back at him but answered anyway, “I don’t know. I think I might be in shock, but that doesn’t make sense does it?” The EonMed ship picked up his own ship’s signal but he ignored it. “I have this overwhelming need to go back, I feel like screaming, and yet at the same time I’m terrified.” Her eyes widened and glazed as she continued speaking. “I don’t understand what’s happening inside of me and I–I feel so torn. I feel so much and yet I feel numb. I can’t stop asking ‘Why’? Why did those creatures attack us? What happened during those last few moments that changed everything? Why did I survive and no one else did? I don’t understand it and that makes me uncomfortable.” Stryker had never heard her ramble before.
“It’s the scientist in you that’s talking. Look,” he reconnected to the ship and uploaded the images he had taken of the creatures in a visual feed before them. Each image lined up and enlarged and made him feel like he had never left them behind. “What do you see?”
The glare of her blank stare vanished as she broke out of her hypnosis and looked at the pictures.
“I see the very thing that I want to eradicate from all existence,” Norah muttered. “The creatures that ruined everything.”
Stryker canted his head, “That’s how I feel when I look at the aliens, the Trentians.”
“How do you stop yourself from acting on your impulses?”
“I do my best to bury that need inside me. Deep. I remind myself that I rule my own wants and needs and not the programs and DNA inside me. It’s...” he hissed through his teeth, low and deep, “It’s why I’m so focused on perfection. If I wasn’t, why would I want to continue living? Everything about me iswrong,I was created for a war that ended. I’m outdated. Someday I’ll be primitive.” He reached his hand out and took hers. “It’s why I work for the EPED and try to use my skills elsewhere because...we may never war with the aliens again. Everything, eventually, changes.”
He smelled the tears budding in her eyes before they formed and caught in her lashes.
