Keeping With Destiny Page 3

  His head was turned up and she could see the flare of his nostrils with each turn of his focus. Then out of nowhere his head snapped in her direction, locking down on her location as if he could see her right through the black cloth tied around his eyes. His tongue darted out from his lips, licking, as if he were tasting her scent on the air molecules; a red fanciful tongue that licked her scent then brought it in for registry.

  Aari swallowed hard and let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. That’s when the man smiled, a predatory smile that was proclaiming its target victoriously. Her heart skipped a few beats and she swallowed again. She needed to get out of there. There was definitely something about this man. But if They expected her to help him, she sure as hell hoped he wasn’t going to put her identity at risk. Because, just now, she felt like she wasn’t the only one in the room who knew what that was.

  Aari turned and headed across the lobby as quickly as she could without drawing attention to herself. Though she felt the man’s focus following her every step all the more. She bolted through the double doors, darted to the right, then down the hall towards storage. Once in, she slammed the door shut and fell back against it and sucked in a long deep breath. She closed her eyes and willed her heartbeat to settle. She felt her Symbiotai shift inside her back, sending out warm pulses to relay its own need. “Knock it off,” Aari murmured, but the Symbiotai parasite that lived inside her seemed reluctant to comply, and it caused her to shudder once more.

  Aari’s Symbiotai wasn’t usually a squirmy one, but at the moment it seemed to be just as rattled as she was, which added to the warning going off inside her head that helping the prisoner was going to bring a heap of trouble on her.

  Drenn with the man’s destiny. If They wanted him freed, They can do it themselves. She planned to stay as far away from him as possible. He’d be dead soon anyway. The prisoner would be turned over to the Department of Internal Security and once the lieutenant had extracted the information she wanted out of him, they’d have no use for him. It’d be off to the death pits for him afterwards. The base wasn’t keen on keeping prisoners fed and housed long term.

  After a few more breaths to steady and regain her wits, Aari helped herself to a second gun from the stock, along with two clips of ammo. She snatched an additional charged cell for her pulse pistol, then headed back out into the night where it felt a lot less crowded— for her at least.

  WHY YOU ARE HERE

  Tannin sat on the floor in the center of his ten by ten holding cell, rather impressed with its design. It seemed his hosts had put some thought into upgrading the prison sector. His cell being of three concrete walls plus the movable wall that he’d been brought in. A retractable stainless-steel wall, set in grooved tracks on both sides, making it hard to pry out of place if one were inclined to try. Not that he was looking to. Not after going through all that drenn to get here. Not yet, at least.

  In addition to the near seamless walls, there was a true mattress on a cinderblock bed platform and he even had a working lavatory bowl, but no window, just the air vent overhead. He had to wonder if the quarters for the men and women stationed in the old military base of old-world had it as good as he did. Even if it wasn’t very homey. Better yet, he detected no hum of a surveillance camera hidden anywhere in the cell, which gave him more privacy than usually granted to a prisoner.

  He waited, sitting cross legged, just as carefree as if he’d been sitting at his fire camp. While he would have rather been there, at least now he understood why his Symbiotai had been so adamant that he allowed himself to be taken hostage.

  “You could have just said you wanted me to come here to find her, old man, instead of offering me in this quagmire,” he spoke out loud as if there might have been someone to answer when there would be none. Symbiotai didn’t have the ability to talk. Then again, he’d never realized they could be such emotional creatures either. He’d never taken the time to consider that a sym might even have feelings or emotions of their own. The hosts he’d met while growing up didn’t exactly get chatty with him about their personal bonds. As for his own, it’d been only eight moons since he acquired his and not by any conventional or proper means either. It was only a random design of fate, the Symbiotai had chosen him when its original host lay dying because there was no one else. Tannin had accepted. What he got in return was astounding, despite its emotional onslaught that he also had to get used to dealing with. That and the fact the creature had one hell of an insatiable appetite for sex. That in and of itself was both good and bad. Hard to be discreet when his well-endowed organ was standing at full alert and pointing at every female he came across. There just wasn’t enough to time to satisfy them all.

  “We’re gonna have to work on this communication stuff, old man. It’s starting to be a nuisance. Perhaps you could take up a skill or two on writing.” Tannin rubbed the erection he was suffering from since he’d gotten a whiff of the breeder. “And, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in prison. So how about you back down on the yearning for now so I can think.” But despite his hopeful commands towards his sym, Tannin couldn’t break his own thoughts away from the fragrant scent of the female he’d picked up on when his captors brought him in.

  He licked his lips, still savoring the taste she’d left in the air when she came so close. Just a touch of arousal in her. By Destiny, she had smelled like honey pollen in spring. He pressed the heel of his palm harder against his thickening member and let out a low growl as he chewed on his lip, just wishing he’d gotten a little more than that faint taste. She’d been too far away for him to feel the heat of her body and the blindfold kept him from getting a look at her. But she was here. The last surviving Symbiote breeder. The one he’d been looking for these last four solar cycles was here. That too, in itself, was perplexing. How and why in the hell, a Symbiote living right inside the Skaddary Militia Base where the Guillotine Hunters were stationed, was beyond any answer he could come up with. A breeder living amongst the very hunters that were trained to hunt and kill all Symbiote. He would never have thought to come here on his own.

  “You knew this all along, didn’t you? This is where you and Kacek were heading when he got attacked.” Tannin’s thoughts went back to the man he’d been traveling with for a few cycles. They had each had their own agenda, but both meant to bring the Blood Lords down, cripple them enough that the colonies had a fighting chance to over throw the tyranny each lord bestowed. Then— nine moons ago, Kacek announced, without explanation, he had to go it alone.

  Tannin heard the locks of the gates out in the hall beyond his cell, the very same one he’d just come through. He followed the sounds and the smells of humans as they passed through each one. The steel wall in front of him clicked then began to slide up, opening up to an extension to his cell. Only instead of another solid steel or concrete wall, the far end was closed off with nothing more than typical jail house bars.

  Standing on the other side of the bars was his welcoming party.

  Tannin pushed up to his feet but did nothing further. “Visitors. And so soon. You should’ve sent word; I would have tidied up.” His visitors didn’t appear amused.

  The group was made of a single woman and three men. Each dressed in casual combat attire: pants with lots of pockets, and cotton shirts in the requisite muted colors of dusty beige, grays, and dull greens for these parts. The tight fit of the cotton on the woman was distracting. One had to struggle to keep his eyes off her breasts and the impression of hard nipples seen through the material of her shirt. No under garments. One might say it was deliberate, but then baggy clothes had a tendency to get snagged, and snagged soldiers had a tendency to go down first. The fitted shirt simply worked to her favor; she could get a cut in with a sharp knife before he grew wise of his own distraction. She was tall and slender but built like a tank. She also wore the most number of stars on the collar of her make-shift uniform jacket, making her the boss man.

  “Step forward,
prisoner,” the woman barked at him.

  Tannin let his gaze float over her body, taking in more of her shape. For her, he played interested, but in truth, he was sizing her up for something entirely different. Her hips were accentuated with gun holsters on each one. There was probably a knife strapped to her ankle inside her boot. If not, she was foolish. Her blonde hair was cut nearly as short as the men around her, buzzed on the sides with just a bit of spiking length on top. And she wore a near permanent leering expression on her face. Bet she’s just a barrel of fun in the hay.

  “I said, step forward,” she pressed.

  Ooo-intimidating, he mused.

  Tannin took one full stride forward, and given he stood a full fathom and two hands, one stride was all it took. If he took another, he’d be able to touch the bars with his nose and at his towering heights, being that close, perhaps might be pushing the comforts of proximity for the time being. Even if done so under command.

  “I’m Lieutenant Sora,” she started up. “I have a few questions to ask you. Answer them— I’ll have some food and water brought in. Don’t— and your stay here will be living drenn.”

  Tannin shrugged. Neither mattered to him. He was here because he, or rather his sym wanted him here. He’d leave soon enough, and he was taking the breeder with him. “Ask away,” he kept his response smooth.

  “What were you doing at the Sub-Terrain Station Epic-9?”

  “Looking for something,” Tannin offered in short.

  A single brow on Lt. Sora’s tight face went up in a sharp arch. “What exactly were you looking for?”

  “What all thieves look for, something to sell,” he smirked with his response.

  She began pacing on the other side of the cell bars, watching him with every step, “You will be more specific.”

  He could feel the heat developing in her body. He could tell she got off on this stuff, even better that she found her captive was pleasing to the eye. “Not sure until I find it.” He poured out a devious smile, assuring it lit up in his eyes for added effect. She was clearly not a friendly one, but he knew he hit his mark when he sensed her body temperatures go up a fragment of a degree from the suggestive expression he shared with her.

  She continued to pace, turning sharply when she reached the end of his cell. “And what did you find?” She locked her gaze on him then resumed her pacing in the other direction.

  “Nothing. Your men came too soon. Never got the chance,” he lied. He’d been there three days and had already gone through a considerable amount of data on two of the Blood Lords: Scox and Marthim. Finding details to the fortresses they commanded and an underground project of tunnels under one. He would have been long gone if it hadn’t been for his Symbiotai that let out one hell of an emotional rage and even caused him to become sickened every time Tannin stepped for the door. Sif, as he’d named his sym, wanted to stay and as long as Tannin didn’t try to leave, his insides were stamped with emotions of contentment and patience. Emotions that were definitely not his own feelings, Tannin never was one for patience, not until he took in the Symbiotai, that is.

  “What happened to the men stationed there?” The mild and rather boring interrogation continued.

  Tannin shrugged, no sense telling her he killed them.

  “And the men of my squadron?”

  “They weren’t very nice to me.”

  She snapped around to scold him, “You were trespassing on private property. How should they have acted?”

  “Looked abandoned to me when I showed up. That puts it under squatter’s rights.” Of course, he knew why the place only looked like an abandoned bunker— best way to protect a weak link was to not draw too much attention to it. Sub-Terrain Station Epic-9 was too far away from the Skaddary base to protect it well. So, the topside structure that gave entry to the underground location was small, but the value it held was limitless. The mineral ore deep under the ground in that area contained a source of power crystals which, on top of the energy they emitted that was fed back to the base by means of fiber cables buried in the ground, it was also able to hold mass amounts of cyber data. More capacity and far better than the computers of old-world that some engineers had managed to get to a semi-working condition.

  While Tannin knew how to access the data within them, they were still relevantly a gadget Tannin had no personal use for. The data held at the station, on the other hand, was worth more than a thief’s ransom. Which explained why the station was there and the intelligences-information he’d obtained, had been worth the detour.

  “You can’t tell the difference between a military station and a squatter’s house?” The lieutenant quirked up a brow at him.

  “It didn’t look very military-ish. No guards, fences, or drone guns. Out in the middle of no man’s land.” He shrugged again, showing little respect for the lieutenant. “I concluded it just a fancy upgrade to a bunker. Just needed a woman to warm the place up. You interested?” He winked at her as she paced by for the third or fourth time.

  The lieutenant came to a stop, stepping back in front of him, locking eyes. “Watch it, thief, or I’ll have you cut.”

  Tannin leaned forward, slowly raising both hands up over his head, and gripping the bars. He let her have a fully stretched, tantalizing view of his arms and the rippling muscles of his body, pressing through his tunic as it pulled tight across his chest. He locked her under a heated gaze. “I’m already cut. Wanna take a peek?”

  She sucked in a slight gasp, but quickly used it to conduct herself to her role. “Think you’re cute, do you?” Her eyes narrowed, but she wasn’t able to control her breathing which incidentally kicked up a notch.

  His gaze glimmered down at her. “And well endowed,” he added. “When was the last time you had your tonsils tickled— from the inside?” He sucked in a deep breath to expand his chest for further display. Bearing down on her with a gaze that wasn’t so much seduction, but a promise he figured a woman of her status just couldn’t turn down.

  The lieutenant rocked her head back, her jaw twisting in retaliation to what the rest of her body was considering. He could feel it, smell her arousal even. It made him nauseous. She wanted it, perhaps bad enough she might chance sneaking back to his cell later, and alone, so to feed the temptation.

  “Perhaps the lieutenant would consider leniency.” Tannin let his head list a bit, “You know— for— good behavior.” He licked his upper lip in, then released it slowly. Her eyes did nothing but watch his tongue slip out and back. The stall in her breath only said she wished it would come back out for another glimpse. The want was pure wanton agony written all over her face. For him, it was just agony. The lure he baited her with robbed him of the sweet taste of his breeder. The fragrant nectar he’d savored just moments ago. And the entire realization startled him. Never before had a woman’s scent agitated him, but it did now. Even more so that it cost him the most tantalizing one he’d ever sampled.

  The lieutenant pulled herself back into tight composure and took a step back. “Which lord employs you?”

  All the amusement and lure left Tannin. The suggestion turning him callous. His posture straightening. “No lord employs me. I’m a Bedouin Native,” he huffed.

  She glanced at one of her men, who answered the unspoken question, “One of the nomad gypsy tribes.”

  “Tribes blessed by Destiny,” Tannin corrected him.

  “Bandits,” one of the other soldiers bit out.

  “Heretians,” another leered at him.

  “Ironic, I call it; you calling me the heretian, yet, I’m the believer of Destiny here.”

  The man who’d called him heretian broached a lunging step towards him but stopped just out of arm’s reach.

  Not brave enough— yet, still falsely wore the face of a successful threat. Despite the seedy attempt at intimidation, Tannin hadn’t flinched. This one was going to be easy to get.

  “That’s enough, Camber,” Lt. Sora warned over her s
houlder.

  Camber, as she called him, bore the sign of the Guillotine Hunters; a guillotine with the blade down and the Letter H on top of it. In the real world, the guillotine was nothing more than a shovel or spade, sharpened down to a blade edge, and used to sever the spinal cord of all Symbiote and the sym with them. The hunters were specifically trained to seek out and kill on sight anyone who happened to be a host for a Symbiotai.

  Tannin’s back began to burn with rage.

  Symbiotai and human hosts— the very union, gifted by the Keepers of Destiny, was meant to help survivors. Now, only a few survived, and those who did, kept hidden.

  It was rare to hear any news of someone getting beheaded by the hunters these days, Clearly, here on base the hunters served other uses when needed. This one, however, had his eyes locked on Tannin, but not with suspicion that he might be a host or with lust as the lieutenant did. Camber’s seemed to be more a personal rage or flat out jealousy. Was he playing bedtime romp with the lieutenant? Or wishing he was and hating that she wasn’t outwardly refusing the propositions from a prisoner?— must be burning his butt something awful— Tannin blew him a kiss just to make him feel better.

  It didn’t have the intended effect, apparently.

  Camber came lunging at him like before, except now he was within reach. Tannin took a quick step back just as the man’s arm came through the bars reaching for him. The offer was too good to pass up. An ideal chance to remind the men what he was capable of. He grabbed hold of Camber’s extended arm, bent over, and twisted, taking the arm with him. The loud pop was followed by the harrowing wail of a grown man.

  Despite the chaos on the other side of the bars to pull their comrade free, Tannin wasn’t done yet. He pitched his weight back, still holding Camber’s dislocated arm, and yanked the hunter face-first into the bars. Next, Tannin sent his foot up through the bars and into the man’s groin.