Kat’s eyes filled with rainbows as the body was lifted away. She caught a hold of Markoss just before he unsheathed his diamond scythe and she went blind. He gripped her shirt and half threw her back behind the metal cone, berating her, “A pregnant woman should be nowhere near a battlefield, Katalina.”
When her sight came back, it came with the spray of blood, and a dozen aliens dead beside her.
Dazed, she barely comprehended the alien’s words. They were crazy. Dommik must have lied to the Trentian so they wouldn’t abduct her. She didn’t look back at the Space Lord, still blinking out the blindspots she incurred. Her hands found the dagger and ran back to Dommik. She covered him until the battle cries vanished and a chant she couldn’t understand replaced it.
“It’s going to be okay now,” she said, protecting his shell. Markoss and a band of aliens appeared, the crystal scythe once again put away. Kat held up her dagger. “If you want him, you have to go through me first.”
The Trentians stared at her.
“You have beautiful green eyes.”
Chapter Twenty-One:
---
Markoss and several of his guards carried Dommik into the ship. Kat led them up to the medbay, using his metal frame to open the previously locked doors.
She didn’t trust the aliens and watched them warily. They set Dommik on the medical slab, where the Bins began to work on his broken metal, repairing him piece by small piece.
A compartment opened up at the back of the room for the Bins, housing everything a Cyborg could need for emergency assistance, down to low-grade replacement limbs and circuit boards.
Kat got to work cleaning his wounds, stripping him of his dirty suit, and sewing up the deeper gashes. She ran a cleaning cloth over every inch of him, every piece and part of his eight limbs, all while Markoss sat and watched her from the corner. Silent and eerie.
It was hard for her to breathe with him drilling his eyes into her soul.
This is not what I imagined.
One of the androids opened up a box, spilling forth a writhing flower and a bug that skittered across the floor. Kat jumped back as the flower crawled to her.
“What the…”
Markoss picked it up and examined it. “An O'lia flower, a real one. How intriguing.”
Kat looked at the bloody thing in his hand. “What do you mean a real one?”
“We harvested them to extinction centuries ago, Katalina.”
“I don’t understand?”
Markoss found a container and placed the flower within, slicing his hand to drip blood over its roots. Intrigued, Kat watched as the thing drank it and bulged up. Markoss placed a top on it.
“Katalina, Lina, the real O'lia were thought to be extinct. The stuff on the market now is a cheap imitation to satisfy the ritual. But this one is real, Katalina, very interesting.”
“You knew and you didn’t tell us?”
“Why would I?”
Yeah, why would he?Kat counted to five. Then counted to five again.
She followed the roach with a sigh and trapped it within her hands, placing it within the container that jailed the vampiric flower. She watched as it settled on the stem before wiping her hands clean. Her attention returned back to Markoss, the alien, where he hovered at her side, towering like Dommik.
“I don’t know if I should thank you or kill you,” she said.
“Neither. I deserve neither.” He bowed his head and went back to his spot in the corner.
Kat moved to sit at her Cyborg’s side and settled in to watch his body heal and the androids work their magic. When there was nothing left to do but wait she found sleep with her head resting on one his arms.
Her eyes fluttered open sometime later, feeling movement under her cheek, she lifted up to a body crooked and aching with pain and a stomach full of cramps. The first thing she noticed was Dommik’s limbs shifting, the second thing was that Markoss was gone.
