Storm Surge (Cyborg Shifters Book 2) Page 11

  The shriekers were following them.

  She didn’t know how, but the wails they emitted had yet to lessen with each tree they crawled to, that Stryker jumped across. Norah gritted her teeth and kept silent.

  The rope dug deep into her tired muscles. She had learned something: she hated water as much as she loved it. They were drenched and every fiber of her being wanted to beg him to stop so she could peel off her clothing again just so she wouldn’t have to feel it anymore.

  She clenched her eyes shut as Stryker poised to jump again. If he were human, she was sure he would be experiencing pain where she clung to him with her vice-like grip.

  All she could do was hope she had placed her trust well and was truly safe with the Cyborg she clung to.

  I want to tell you how I feel.

  The rain hit her. The wind tore at the trees. The deluge continued.

  The lightning flared and the thunder was as common as her heartbeat.

  Norah lifted her eyelids, burdened by raindrops, to the world around her. Stryker jumped. She winced. She noticed the light first, and then that she could see beyond the rain just enough to notice the trees all around them. The Giants interspersed with canopies of leaves, open pods appeared and vanished below them. Waterfalls were everywhere.

  It was gloriously beautiful in a destructive, terrifying way. The planet was flooding. It was flooding over to create an orb of water. An ocean to cover the world.

  And it did it to get rid of the humans.

  Norah looked down, expecting to see a thousand floating bloated corpses staring up at her, swaying and following them over currents that had a mind of their own.

  “How are you holding up, love?”

  Love?

  She blinked the water from her lashes. “Painfully. But well,” it came out as a cough.

  “Want me to stop?”

  She lifted her head to see that they clung to a tree with only Stryker’s fingers holding them up.

  “No.” Norah shook her head. Her curls were stretched out by water and plastered to her face.

  Her snake. Her savior grunted and shifted under her butt to coil around the thick wood. She closed her eyes again as they swirled up and around the trunk.

  She knew what a snake was even though they no longer existed in the wilds of Earth.

  It took everything in herself, the part of her that had grown up on a dying planet, the part that had left her family behind so many years before, and the part that believed in improbable circumstances when she was a child to accept the bizarre creation that was ‘Stryker’.

  Man-made. Regardless of what he was. He’s man-made. How could she love something so suddenly, in such an inopportune situation? Norah didn’t even think she felt love for her family.

  It was her past.

  Everything in her screamed at the absurdity of her feelings. A war raged inside her mind, and her heart was the sacrifice. If she survived this ordeal she would analyze her feelings for the Cyborg, write them down in a lab notebook, and check all the variables.

  Her mouth filled with blood as her teeth sank into her lip after a rough jump. Norah licked the trail of it off of her lower lip.

  “Stryker,” she whispered. I love you.

  Thunder blared.

  “Yeah?”

  I love you…

  She shook her head. “How much longer?”

  His head leaned back and she rested her cheek against his metal band. “Not much,” the rain pinged over his mask. “Barring any more catastrophic surprises, we could be in the sky within an hour.” Stryker swung them up on a nearby ledge and perched to open his bag. He lifted out a ration and handed it to her.

  “I’m not hungry.” Not in the least.

  “Humans need to eat several times a day. It’s been over twelve hours for you. You need to eat it.”

  “I would rather wait until I’m surrounded by the metal walls of the EonMed ship,” she sighed, but peeled back the plastic and took a bite of the ration in spite of herself.

  “Rather than be surrounded by me?”

  She heard him laugh as she swallowed.

  “Yes,” she said as she chewed. “Obviously, although I’m pretty sure I was the one ‘surrounding’ you back there,” she shot back.

  “You wound me, love,” he teased her. “I can’t blame you though.”

  “Stop calling me that. Why are you calling me that?” I don’t like it. Norah stopped eating and tilted her head, shuffling over him despite the rope to look in the corner of his eye. “You can’t call me love.”

  “It feels right.” He shrugged.

  “No it doesn’t, Stryker, we don’t even know each other. It doesn’t feel right. What we feel now might not be what we feel when we’re safe.” It scared her.

  “So you feel it too.” His hand came up and caressed her wet cheek. Norah closed her eyes. “It’s okay, babe, when I get you back to my ship, we’ll talk. Rest your heart and take a deep breath, I don’t want you getting sick again.”

  She guffawed. “You seem so sure of yourself. We’re not even out of the jungle yet.”

  “I sense the ship. Even a Cyborg can feel good when the end of a successful mission is on the horizon.”

  Norah felt a laugh rise up her own belly. “I’ve never been called a mission before, or love; you take a lot of liberties, Cyborg.” She smiled to herself. “What’s your payout for completion?”

  She felt the giddy little beginnings of tingles in her stomach, her heart, her throat. She fed off of the Cyborg’s cocky self-assurance. He had enough for the two of them.

  “You, Norah Lee. How can you even ask that?” Stryker scolded her and tangled his fingers into the mess of her hair.

  “So now I’m a prize too?”

  She couldn’t rest her heart, it raced in her chest, running toward a finish line that was nowhere in sight. She slipped back down his back and settled back into the restraints that kept her safe. The half-eaten bar was plucked out of her hands and deposited into the pack.

  “You’re perfection.”

  Perfection.

  Norah didn’t notice when Stryker cocked his head and stiffened, or that his nostrils flared and his eyes flashed. She couldn’t imagine the possibility that what they felt for each other could ever last when they were off Axone. But for the first time since her feelings exploded for him, she felt good. Hopeful.

  She didn’t notice the crackle in the air.

  She felt happy.

  Nor the curse, the scream, the sudden jerk to the side.

  It wasn’t until the smell of burnt flesh and the snap of rope that she realized she was falling.

  A scream tore out of her throat just as her back hit the water and she was submerged.

  Chapter Thirteen:

  ***

  Her pack saved her from the stab of hitting the water. She screamed only to inhale the liquid. Norah choked and hacked only to take in more of the flood around her. The current picked her up as if she weighed nothing and carried her over the jungle floor.

  Water. I need to get out of the water!

  She opened her eyes to the burn of the dirty swamp. Norah flailed as she tried to right herself and find air only to have her body slam up against a tree. Once again, saved by the crash with her pack.

  Drowning wasn’t her first concern–the shriekers were. And if anyone were to ask her why at that moment, she would tell him that it was her fear that trumped all else. The fear flooded her veins despite the restriction of her lungs.

  Norah struggled to find the surface, her legs kicking beneath her, her arms flailing everywhere, anywhere, to lift herself above the rush or to find something to latch on to.

  She couldn’t see. She could only feel the pain as she sucked in water and her mind clouded. The pain crushed her senses and yet her fear remained.

  I need to get out of the water.

  Her body slammed into a rock, jerking her in her last moments of consciousness. Norah slipped her pack off of her shoulders and graspe
d for a handhold on the surface that her body continued to scrape across. Each muscle screamed as her nails grappled at the hard barrier until she found a piece to clutch.

  Darkness descended around her and the fear vanished. She pictured Stryker’s eyes.

  She trembled as she fought against the current with her last ounce of strength. Her fingers slipped.

  Something grabbed her hair and yanked her above the water and away from the undercurrent. Norah felt her back slice across the jagged edge until she was lifted completely out of the water. The hand in her hair continued to haul her over the slick, muddy ground.

  She coughed and twisted. Rolled and vomited. Her entire body wrenched, it still thought she was drowning.

  “Stryker,” she croaked and then coughed some more. The rain splashed her face. Norah fought against it as she blinked away the piercing blindness. Her neck was yanked. “Stop.”

  It came out as a wail.

  Her body was a rock. She looked up into the downpour to see clouds.

  They’re purple. And grey. The sky seemed to open up like a mouth filled with lightning teeth and bit at the air. A dull light, so bright compared to the shade of the jungle canopy that a spark of realization flooded her mind.

  Mud sluiced over her neck, back, and butt. The hand in her hair twisted. She felt the soil enter the opening of her clothes and slip over her skin.

  The sky.

  I can see the sky.

  Norah looked above her and screamed. Robert?

  She kicked her legs and dug her boots into the dirt beneath her, her heels slipped, she reached up and clawed at the hand clutching her hair. Her nails sank into wet, loose flesh. Everything went into overdrive as the use of her limbs came back. Norah fought the hold on her hair. An animalistic violence, a raw energy possessed her. I’m so over this!

  The monster hefted her up and over a solid floor of concrete and the sky vanished as the ship loomed above her. Her hands found the sag of flesh and pulled, she felt the skin rip in her hands just enough to make the ghoul pause and adjust.

  Norah reached down and pulled Stryker’s dagger out of her holster.

  She stabbed and sawed at anything and everything that kept her attached to the shrieker dragging her across the platform. Something wet and thick gushed out over her scalp and over her face as she kept slamming the knife above and over her head.

  A shriek pierced the air.

  The weight lifted.

  Norah twisted and vomited up a stomach full of water, ration, and bile. She flinched as the thing beside her continued to screech.

  Her eyes lifted to see Robert floundering about, dancing a frenetic death dance. She squeezed the hilt of the knife in her hand, wishing by-god that she still had her pistol. The hand that had held her captive was stabbed and slashed to bits but there was no blood nor bone.

  She launched at the beast and stabbed at the flesh suit it was wearing.

  “Look what you’ve done,” she screamed as her knife went in. “You can’t have his body.” Black liquid spilled out everywhere, wet and fluid as water.

  Norah ignored the migraine that was coming on and battled the ghoul to the ground. Empty eye-sockets stared up at her, thick and bulged out until a pair of glassy, glazed eyes appeared. She pressed her blade into the shrieker’s fake chest. Robert’s chest. And popped it a new opening.

  A white, clawed, thin-fingered hand ripped out of her former co-worker’s neck and grabbed her throat. She didn’t have time to gasp as she was launched into the air. Her back hit the ground with a snap.

  Norah groaned and lifted her head. She lifted her hand and felt the warm spew of blood at the back of her skull. Every fiber in her screamed to give up but her mind kept reminding her to get out of the water.

  She struggled to her knees, holding her head, poised to defend herself–to the death–if it came to that but saw no sign of her assailant. Only the blur of white as it vanished over the ledge. Her fingers tightened on her weapon as she watched the spot where the ghoul had disappeared.

  Norah sputtered and hitched, her body shook but she remained tense and ready, every instinct in her ready to fight. Several minutes passed but she searched and waited for the creature’s return.

  Her eyes scanned the area, her ears filled with the roar of the storm, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. Anticipation kept her rooted and waiting.

  Stryker had given her the chance to live again but it was up to her to stay alive.

  She counted the lightning in her head, she counted the pulses of thunder, she was aware of her heartbeat. It wasn’t until she felt the warm drip of blood trickle from her nostril that she realized she had been standing perfectly still in a place that could cost her, her life.

  Norah wiped the back of her hand over her mouth only to lift it before her eyes. Blood. Of course. She slowly rose up onto her feet and grinned. And heaved over in a horrible laughter she couldn’t contain.

  She glanced at the ship next to her, a beacon for a hundred bolts, and gradually made her way around it to the entrance. Her ears prickled but she didn’t hear another shriek. The ruined palm of her hand slid across the wet metal of the ship’s exterior until she faced the panel that held the keypad.

  All of this for water.

  Norah pushed up the dashboard and leaned her forehead next to it, her cheek slid while she took a breath and rested against her salvation. All of this for fucking water. She typed in the key code and closed her eyes.

  The door zipped open next to her just as tears drifted from her eyes. She gripped the dagger in her hand and shuffled to the entryway, her eyes blinded by the interior’s bright LED lights. Her boots squelched. Mud and blood dripped down her body.

  She wondered if she had actually made it to the ship or if this was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. She took a step forward into the light, sparing a glance at the bulkhead beneath her.

  I must be alive, she thought, as she saw the dirty tracks she was leaving in the ship.

  Norah paused a couple steps into the ship. Her back stiffened.

  Everything in her told her to seal the door, to save herself, to leave. She knew enough to fly a ship and even if she didn’t...she’d learn–and fast.

  But something was behind her.

  And it needed to die.

  Chapter Fourteen:

  ***

  Stryker felt it moments before it struck him. A lightning bolt, brilliant orange and yellow, arcing between him and the tree. He dodged, but it wasn’t enough, his circuits smoldered as an overwhelming jolt of electricity flooded his systems. It burned his clothes, charred his skin, and lit his hair on fire.

  He seized. Smoke and his own carnage filled his nose. The smell made him gag just as he felt Norah’s weight fall off his back and the tree under them cracked and split in half.

  A scream registered. Norah. And then it was gone, lost amongst the wild storm.

  The branch broke and he followed Norah’s descent into the polluted flood below. Stryker shifted right as he hit the rushing water. He blinked down his second set of eyelids, glazed over, and twisted to search for his girl.

  His head lifted above the surface.

  “Norah!” he screamed. She didn’t answer. The wind whipped his face as he looked around frantically. Stryker fought through the pain that burned through him, the internal technology that had overheated, and the discomfort of brackish water enveloping his wounds.

  Where are you? He spun in a circle, his legs hooked together into a tail that he stabbed into the ground. He spotted his pack drift away in the distance but didn’t go after it. He dunked his head and sped around the nearby trees, searching for her heat signature.

  His processors went into overdrive as he felt himself go into a frenzy. Stryker pushed himself through the thick foliage and bushes that remained rooted below; his metal body ripped through them as he looked for her.

  “Norah,” he yelled again as he came up for air. His voice got lost in the storm. He called out her na
me again and again and was only answered by the chaos around him. He felt things slide by his coiled body, he saw creatures lurking below, he felt the husks of drowned animals.

  But he couldn’t find her.

  He could still feel the imprint of her body pressed into his back and he would do anything to keep that feeling. The metal in his body vibrated as he lost control and the sizzling heat of the strike seared the inside of his flesh but all he could think about was her.

  Stryker felt the fangs of his snake break through his gums and his human teeth pop out to collect and clink on the inside of his mask. He hissed and snapped. His head jerked as he struck out at everything and nothing, his heavy metal tail slashing and destroying whatever it came in contact with.

  He couldn’t find her signature, he couldn’t smell her scent, and try as he might, he couldn’t hear anything but the devil’s storm and the perverse rattling when his tail thrashed in the water.

  Stryker called out for her again as he followed the strongest current.

  He spotted her bag, caught up against a split open tree. It was in his hands in a blink and the smell of Norah came back to him all at once, but it wasn’t from the bag in his hands.

  Beyond the tree was a broken trail up a rocky ledge. It was subtle, but the broken twigs and the foliage were crushed and splintered backward and upward over a precise, flattened ledge that could only be man-made. As if a body had crawled up or had been dragged.

  His nose twitched and he bent over the trail. He could smell a hint of blood and it wasn’t the blood of an animal.

  His hands tore into the pack until it was ripped down the middle and the rest of the emergency supplies plopped into the water.

  And then he heard it, the screeches that could destroy the sanity of a well man.

  He was up and over the ledge before another burst of lightning came down from the sky. His body shifted as the shrieks continued and the armor he wore was forgotten, left in shreds behind him. The snake within him was free.

  The interior structure inside himself broke out and latched onto his mask, until it was a part of his monstrous body. The quiet creep of his body, expanded into a long metal coil that rose up out of the swamp, his head swayed as he followed the screeches. Stryker made his own awful sounds as the metal bands that made up his beast scraped against the stone.