Hysterian covered Raul’s face with his hand and closed his eyes.
Raul thrashed and tore at Hysterian’s hand. “What the fuck are you doing!?”
“‘You’ll see, Dear. You’ll never want another man between your legs after me. I knew you had a rack to die for hiding under all these layers,’” Hysterian whispered Raul’s words back to him as Hysterian’s glands opened. A dangerously high dose of batrachotoxin, mixed with nanobots to pierce the skin layer, released from his glands.
It was the first toxin Hysterian ever had in his arsenal. The one he was created with. The one his body naturally made, implanted within his systems by the very doctors who built him, enhanced to meet Hysterian’s worst needs.
Raul screamed, kicked, rammed his elbow into Hysterian, but ultimately succumbed. Everyone always succumbed. Within moments, Raul had enough toxin in his system to send him straight into paralysis. His body went limp, and Hysterian dropped his hand from Raul’s face. He hauled Raul’s body onto the bed and laid him out.
Hysterian pulled out a needle from his inside pocket and injected Raul with tetrodotoxin, a counter to his poison. Just enough to keep Raul alive, alive and in misery until he recovered.
Hysterian dropped the needle and crushed it under his boot. He stared at Raul for a time. The ion blocker would be in Raul’s system even with the counter for weeks to come. Hysterian made sure of it.
“You will suffer a day for every second you were touching her,” he whispered into Raul’s ear.
When Raul finally did rise and have full use of his body again, theQuestor, Alexa, and the rest of the crew would be on the other side of the universe.
Hysterian exhaled, tugged his glove back on, and turned for the door. He stepped out to find the headmistress and the sexbot he ordered waiting for him on the other side.
“Is it done?” the headmistress pushed off the wall where she had been leaning, smoking a cig.
“I’m satisfied.” His eyes slid to the sexbot, who retained Alexa’s features. Her black hair, her pale skin. But the eyes were wrong, and the shape of the sexbot’s face. Everything was off. Her scent, her straight nose, even her height. He flicked his eyes back to the brothel’s owner.
“Very good. We like it when our patrons achieve satisfaction, especially well-paying patrons such as yourself.” She ran her hand down his arm.
He grabbed her hand. “Don’t.”
The headmistress smiled. “You still have your appointment.” She stepped back to indicate the sexbot, tugging her hand free. “If you’re in the mood.”
All he was in the mood for now was to get off of fucking Libra and back into space, far, far away from the trouble lying in the room behind him. Killing Raul would make his life easier, but Raul had done nothing personally to Hysterian besides touching what was his. He’d killed Daniels already. His quota for this trip was done. And he still had the body to dispose of. Killing Raul would start a precedent Hysterian wanted to avoid.
He’d left Raphael and Elyria to start a new life, a better one, one he could be proud of having. He wasn’t going to have that life with a wake of corpses floating behind him.
Nightheart could deny him the cure if that happened. If Hysterian fucked up as badly as some other Cyborgs working for his new boss had in the past, Nightheart would lose his shit. It wasn’t worth the risk.
“I’m not,” he told the woman. “But the man in the room behind me will need a place to recover. He’ll need to be taken care of. Do that for me, will you?”
“I think we can manage that.” The headmistress smiled again. She turned to the sexbot. “He’s yours, love. Make him happy, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The sexbot moved to enter the room.
Hysterian grabbed her wrist, stopping her. “Turn back into a blond and stay that way. Are we clear?”
The sexbot nodded, changing the color of her hair and skin back to the way they were earlier. He released her, and she fled into the room. Hysterian nodded at the headmistress and exited the brothel, far more satisfied than he ever planned on being, leaving it.
He stretched his fingers before curling them into his palms. The noise of the port flooded his audio.
He hadn’t felt this good in months.
His head was clear. He may not have fucked, but Raul was gone and Alexa was all his now. Hysterian didn’t have to worry about what was happening when he was busy. Raul was going to pay for touching what Hysterian wanted most.
He had no qualms with the rest of his crew. They were good workers who stayed in line, obeyed orders, and didn’t ask probing questions. They were all a captain could ask for.
Hysterian cracked his neck and made his way through the seedier parts of the port, back toward the shops.
A weight lifted off his chest as his distance from Raul increased.
