Chapter 17
Ari managed to beg water and a small amount of fruit and flat bread from a passing Scav woman. Since JI had fallen into what, in a person, would be called a deep sleep, she couldn’t easily leave the area. If only there’d been fewer Scavs around and more time to try bashing the anchor point with something...actually there was nothing within reach she could’ve used anyway.
A metal bar would’ve been good.
So, she waited. Her vow to look small and fragile and as if she’d given up trying to escape would be best achieved by doing nothing suspicious. Lull Sawyer into complacency then pounce like a jungle predator.
The sun had fallen below the high horizon and the shadows had cooled and darkened before Sawyer returned. The carcasses of various small kills hung from one of his hands. Blood smeared the ground when he dropped them. He propped his long gun against a broken wall, then unslung something else from his back.
When she’d sat to eat and drink, she’d settled with her back against the building’s base, alongside JI, though her butt constantly throbbed from bruises, reminding her what Sawyer had done. Stiffly, she rose to check this odd trophy of Sawyer’s. JI stirred.
“What is this, Sawyer?”
“A mechling, JI. I thought I’d let you look at it. Can you tell me anything? Why it might be here? Why it’s dead?” He laid the defunct thing between JI’s outstretched legs.
Since nobody objected, Ari stepped closer and leaned her hands on her knees to study it. Unlike JI, this little mech was a blank. Even when she prodded it with a finger it sent nothing to her senses. “Dead.”
JI, on the other hand, sent an uncoiling lead into the mechling, plugging it in and then seemingly listening to whatever he found.
“Very dead. Powerless.” A moment later he’d popped off some part of its casing and looked inside, holding the small thing up to his head sensors. “All its power cells are gone except one. They did as I thought. The Mekkers sent the sun mad out of the swathe, but crippled them first.”
“Why?” Sawyer put his hands on his hips. “What are sun-mad mechlings anyway? I recall the term.”
“The ones who change into sentient creatures are what the Mekkers call sun mad. It has zero to do with the sun, Sawyer.” JI angled his head then closed up the mechling. “The ones on my back are mechlings that are not sun mad. This little one was self-aware, intelligent, and it was made to die. They were jettisoning them from the ship before Emery and I escaped.”
“I see.” He scratched his chin, and Ari noticed the scruff growing there. Dark as Sawyer’s hair and his hair was a lot shorter, and sticking out in uneven bits. The man might’ve been through a storm that’d eaten his hair.
“When your sister was stabbed, mechlings were sent out at the same time. I had arranged for some of them to be loaded with a doctor program, and I asked them to find her if they could.”
The stunned expression on Sawyer’s face spoke volumes. He was an abominable man, except where his sister was concerned. Grudgingly, she gave him that one positive.
“My god. I owe you double, JI. I know you said you’d tried...but thank you.”
“Alas, I do not know if it helped her.” He shook his large head. “I do not.”
“You tried. I appreciate that.”
“Of course I tried. I like humans. I like people, mostly. Mekkers...only Mako impressed me, which is why I allowed Emery to go with him.”
A likeable Mekker. That was a first. An idea occurred to her. The mechlings on JI’s back must have brain space. JI needed brain space. A simple solution. Those were often the best. When she’d healed him inside, she’d used her power to stretch what healthy brain he had and to weave new brain into the dead spaces where it’d died from pressure. She could use that...
“To answer your other question, Sawyer. I do not know why this one came here. Perhaps it wandered until it died of power loss?”
“Aren’t these valuable to the Mekkers?”
Ari stepped forward, wanting to tell JI her idea, but she waited for them to stop conversing. If this worked...she could help JI, maybe save him?
“Very, which is why this is a puzzle. I had thought they would scoop them up once dead.”
“Maybe they do... Maybe this one was missed.”
Now was the time. “JI, I may have a solution to your problems. You understand that your mind is too complex for the space in this baby mech?”
“Yes, Ari. I know this.”
She grinned. “We have more space.”
“This one?” He studied the dead mechling. “I do not think –”
“No! No. I mean the ones on your back. If we can place them near your baby mech brain...up there on your neck? We just need to grow a connection and I feel certain I could help you learn to use –”
“No!”
Sawyer looked from JI to her and back. “Why is this, JI? She has some sort of solution to whatever ails you.”
She set her mouth in a straight line. “He’s going insane and eventually dying from trying to cram too big a mind into too small a brain space.”
“I am sorry. I will not permit you to use my mechlings. They are potentially people, just like you or I.” His blue sensors flared brighter. “This discussion is done.”
“You’re dying, JI?”
“We all are, Sawyer. We all are. If you will excuse me. I do feel better.” He stood, scraping bits of wall away as he clutched it and rose. “I will go examine some of this city. It is a hobby of mine, collecting antique knowledge. Unclip your girl, please.”
Your girl. It felt as if JI was ignoring her, maybe insulting her. Had her solution wounded him so deeply?
After Sawyer released the lock and retrieved the end of her chain, JI began to walk away. “I am sorry, Ari. I know you wish me well, but we all have our crosses to bear and I would rather not add another one.”
“What did that mean?” she muttered, watching him depart.
“Crosses to bear? Must’ve got that from Emery. It means a burden.”
“Ahh.”
How did a mech get those?
“He really is dying, and you really think you could’ve fixed him?”
“Yes to the first,” she said absentmindedly. “The other, maybe. I’m not certain.”
“But you healed him a bit, today? He looks healthier.”
“I did, yes.” She was better with this mech, more reliable, than she’d ever been with people, and she didn’t even know what JI’s brain was made of.
Not that she really knew what was inside a person. Ari found her forehead wrinkling as she puzzled through this. It didn’t matter, she decided. Results mattered.
“You can heal mechs. You are quite the prize.”
She found him watching her intently. Her nipples tightened, rising. Being under his scrutiny had never been good. Scary, but not good.
“And JI likes you.”
She simply had to wreck his happy mood. “JI likes you too. You can’t use that as a measure. Obviously, he doesn’t have very good taste.”
He looked evil all of a sudden and as if he was thinking.
Oops, forgot about the lulling before pouncing.
“You know how to gut these and cut them up for meat?
She screwed up her nose. No matter what she said he was going to get her to do this. “No.”
Ick. Blood.
“Slaves did this sort of thing for you?”
“Yes.” He knew that. She straightened. She’d weather this. Learn how to do it if he wanted her to. Hells, it might help her when she escaped if she could skin and gut and all that.
“Never shot an animal for dinner then?” He picked up the dropped kills then gestured at the long gun as he walked to her. Then he slung the carcasses at her feet. They slid, tumbling, a mish-mash of floppy limbs and fur, and blood.
“No.” Truth.
“Good to know you can’t shoot, girl.”
Well, she could, just she’d only shot at targets, hundreds of times, with very high accuracy while adjusting the guns Uncle sold to the Scavs.
Couldn’t be that hard to shoot a man.
“One problem. I don’t trust you with a knife.”
Ahh. “There is that.”
He undid the buckle on his belt and unslipped the belt from his pants, doubled it over, smacked it on his hand.
“You really shouldn’t have insulted me, now should you? On all fours, girl.”
Her bruises throbbed anew. She’d walked into this, hadn’t she?
Lull him – remember that this time?
Face hard with a determination not to show cowardice or that he bothered her, she slipped to her knees then to all fours, felt the brush of the belt on her ass as he moved her skirt upward.
Not again.
Not screaming was difficult when the smack of the belt hurt so much, but she kept herself still and suffered through ten strokes. Quivering by the end, she waited in position, nose-breathing, teeth ground together, and hoped he was done.
When he walked around her then stopped before her head, she hissed out a slow exhale through teeth to tell the pain to go away then raised her head.
“Do you think you’ve had enough?”
Ari swallowed to lessen the chance of choking on her words.
“Yes?” Where had that questioning intonation come from? “Yes.”
“You think I should be done with you?”
Wary, she raised her gaze from his legs and upward, only to stall when she saw his cock was out and erect. And covered in blood. Oh no. No. She tried to crawl backward but he caught her hair.
“Going the wrong way. Look what belting you has done. Open your mouth and keep it that way while I fuck it. Shooting things has given me an appetite for throat fucking you.”
Blood coiled luxuriantly over his cock and a droplet squeezed from the tip then stretched down to drip to the floor. She could smell blood on the hand in her hair.
Resigned, grimacing, she opened her mouth. He fucked it slowly then vigorously before coming inside. The gush at the back of her throat had her gagging then retching.
“Watch your tongue in future. Nod if you understand.”
Though still choking, while spitting out blood and cum and drool, she nodded. That her defenses were no longer working appalled her and fascinated her all in one mind-bludgeoning moment. If they worked, he couldn’t get a hard-on. If they worked, he couldn’t...wouldn’t fuck her.
Of course now he’d wasted it in her mouth, and she didn’t know what to think of that, because it’d both revolted her and turned her on.
The possibility of that inside her, of his cock covered in blood fucking her, even though she might hate it and protest, she wanted to put her hand to herself and masturbate.
He flicked the leash. “Come.”