Storm Surge (Cyborg Shifters Book 2) Read online

  She’s in pain.

  She trembled as he lifted his hands to her forearms and waited. “Are you okay?”

  She’s sick.

  She dragged the back of her hand across her nose. “Yeah, I’m okay.” She stepped away. The rain beat hard upon them, as if the drops were pebbles.

  Stryker scanned his surroundings again and discerned the heat signatures of several others in the building.

  Strangely, they hadn’t moved from their locations since his initial scan. Not an inch. Nor a breath.

  “Where’s the entry to this place?”

  “On the other side,” Norah answered him with a cough. “But there’s a door around the corner.”

  They rounded the building, his hand remaining on her arm as they traversed the mud until he found it and broke in. Stryker closed it behind them just as a nearby tree exploded from the touch of lightning.

  He examined the interior with his light. Four heat signatures were within, still unmoving. Stryker looked back at Norah and placed his finger over his mask, signaling silence.

  She didn’t need to be told. Her pistol was already within her hand.

  “How many others were there? When this place was attacked?”

  “Four, maybe five. We were packing up to leave before the tempest. Half the team was at our ship. They didn’t answer my distress call. I don’t know if they were attacked as well,” she whispered.

  “Attacked?”

  Norah wiped her face, pushing her drenched brown hair off of her cheeks. “The lights went out and the sprinklers went on. Robert and I were finishing up in the lab, putting together my last box of samples.” She sniffled and rubbed her nose again. He reached into his bag and found a piece of cloth to hand her. “We were leaving. It was the last day.”

  “Why?” he asked. The facility was built soundly, the piping, interior, and overall build were composed of some of the best materials on the market for otherworld colonization. Who would leave all this behind?

  The wind shook the metal door. That’s why.

  “Our data was...not encouraging. Too many dangers, too much water. Axone is rich, uncharted, and quite beautiful, but with the aggressiveness of the environment our efforts were halted. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess,” she answered softly, shrugged and looked up with a blank stare out into the dark hallway. Her voice lowered, “I didn’t see what took us down, it was sudden and we weren’t prepared. Almost everything we had been given for an emergency situation had already been packed up.”

  Stryker watched as she wiped her face off with the cloth, then her hands, trembling with sickness throughout. Her honey brown skin fought her every step of the way.

  The more she tried to dry herself the more water trickled from her drenched hair and back over her skin. It was like the water was claiming its right to be on her. It refused to be taken away.

  He took her free hand, having to bend down to reach it, and squeezed reassuringly. “Could it be human?”

  She didn’t tug her hand free.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so? But if it wasn’t, whatever attacked was intelligent. Robert wanted to investigate. I wanted to stay put and hide–hole up.” They began to walk further into the building. Stryker let her continue to talk. Four life forms couldn’t hurt them. “We were immobilized before we could react. There was shrieking,” her voice wavered. “It was horrible. It was like a dagger to the brain and I thought my ear drums were going to burst. There was blood and even though I’m not a doctor, when blood leaks from the ears, and from the nose, it’s not good.”

  The first two heat signatures were just down the hallway and in a room beyond.

  “No. It’s not,” he whispered and placed his finger on her lips. “Be quiet for a moment, there’s something in the next room.”

  The hush that fell was as frightening and as tense as the anticipation before a battle.

  Stryker crept forward without making a sound and Norah, his charge, steeled her nerve and silently followed him. He pushed his back against the wall, his arm-light off. A dagger appeared in his hand, and a pistol was raised in hers. He ducked his head around the corner and peered into the gloom.

  A bedroom. Empty. An empty bedroom with two heat signatures.

  He ran his gaze everywhere at once; nothing clung to the ceiling, nothing hid in the shadowed corners. Only the storm roared outside.

  He stepped inside. He scanned it again. Two red signatures. Norah trailed in behind him.

  “I don’t see anyone,” she said.

  “Is there a basement?” He sensed nothing but packed dirt and cement below but he could be wrong. There could be something... and he had been surprised before.

  “No.”

  Stryker looked around, his flashlight back on. The room had the look of rough, crooked edges. One open mattress, half-soaked, with thick bulgy spots that showed where it was damp with water and where it had dried.

  “There’s nothing here,” he gritted as he scanned it again. He stepped forward and stood right above one signature, outlined as a humanoid body. He waved his hand through the area. Nothing.

  Nothing is error.

  “But you–is something on your radar?” Norah looked at the floor with him.

  His head snapped up. “No,” he lied. “I was wrong. Let’s keep moving.” Something was off and he didn’t think it was his coding.

  Error is wrong. Imperfection. The skin under his mask tightened as his jaw ticked. He heated up his internal tech to evaporate the remaining water on him.

  The silence that fell between him and Norah coiled in his gut. He dropped his bag and pulled out a new cloth and handed it to her. “Dry off as much as you can.”

  He didn’t like the water anymore.

  And he had always loved water. His beast rattled from within.

  Stryker rushed to the other areas with his night vision on, and found nothing. Norah saw nothing. Nothing but blaring color in a spectrum only he could see. They ended up at the front of the facility.

  The scientist coughed behind him, her steps faltered as his silence wore on.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  The rain beat at the double doors like bullets. Stryker turned around and lifted her poncho hood back over her dripping spirals of hair. “Nothing.” Is my tech corrupted?

  “There were no bodies,” she said what was on his mind. “There was no blood.”

  “There were also no immediate signs of a struggle.”

  “They were taken?” Then quickly added, “I’m not making this up.”

  “I don’t think you are, it didn’t even cross my mind. If the bodies were taken, there would be a trail...something to suggest a path, but there’s nothing, nothing but water.” And he hated himself for it. Stryker rested his hand back on her shoulder. “We need to–”

  An ear-splitting shriek rose up from where they had just vacated. Norah jerked and he pulled her behind him.

  The screech increased and the water from outside began to flood the hallway, the shadows thickening at an alarming rate. It rose in pitch until the wires inside his head strummed.

  Stryker turned and held Norah up as he broke open the front doors and entered the downpour.

  They ran into the thick tree-line. The muck of the alien jungle sucked at their steps, and the wails faded within the drums of thunder.

  He put an arm around Norah and pushed her through the sludge, while her palms pressed into her ears and her nails dug into her scalp. A shroud of mist enveloped them.

  Stryker connected with his ship, his eyes forward, ignoring the branches and vines that snapped at his frame and the wind that whistled in his ears. He programmed the flyer to start but his connection deadened until it went away entirely. He didn’t like that.

  “Stryker, there’s a terra vehicle,” Norah yelled over the wind, her hands still over her ears. She tripped over a branch but he held her up and they kept moving.

  “No time, babe.” The creatures that jumbled his
wiring were pursuing them. He picked up speed despite the rising water level.

  “But the others?” Her poncho sealed against her clothes, her hand now over her eyes. Stryker pulled her closer into his protective embrace and propped her up as her feet began to catch in the muck. Her body molded into his side.

  He gripped her and stopped as a tree erupted in front of them, static electricity ignited the air and flooded his circuits.

  Norah was shielded within his arms as the branches crashed around them. Whatever fire that sprung up died out within seconds.

  She trembled in his embrace.

  “We can’t go back.” He squeezed her into him, soaking up her fear. “They’re coming.” Stryker loosened the straps on his rifle.

  “I’m scared,” she said into his buckles, whispered with a twitch, and not meant to be heard.

  “I know.” The last branch fell, making a splash.

  He released her and they continued their retreat.

  ***

  Norah couldn’t breathe, and in fact, could barely speak; her words were caught up in her mouth and every time she opened it, rainwater would flood in.

  They were running through a forest she had been in a hundred times, through water that reached up to her shins.

  She knew where they were, but when the land sloped she wasn’t prepared for it. It didn’t matter–the Cyborg held her up.

  Without him, she would have fallen face-first, twisted an ankle, and left crawling through the mire. Actually, she would’ve still been within her lab, waiting for it to flood enough that she could swim to the top.

  The rain lashed at her face. But her fingers remained clawed into his side; she clutched the buckles at his chest as if the wind was tugging her away.

  “Fuuuck me,” Stryker’s hollow voice shot out. Norah looked up as they jerked to a stop; she stumbled against him.

  Her eyes caught what his had.

  A singular planetary flyer that was sinking into the same wet soil that they were. The ground slurped it up, eating it whole, and took it for its own. The vehicle was half submerged.

  Norah glanced down at her own legs and found the water had risen to just below her knees. Her boots were flooded and she could no longer see her feet within the brackish currents.

  Stryker let go of her and went to what was left of his flyer; it visibly bubbled and sunk a foot more as if to spite them. She trudged to the nearest tree and clung to it as the wind blasted her from every side.

  Norah couldn’t even muster an emotion as her only hope vanished, again, before her eyes. A bolt struck the tail of the flyer, sending a blast of light through the hazy green of the jungle.

  The Cyborg gripped the side and pulled.

  Her mouth fell open. The several ton vehicle shifted and squelched, pulled up for a moment before it began to sink again.

  Impossible. That kind of strength is...wrong.

  Her fingers sank into the bark, the grime settled under her nails. Stryker pulled again, leveraged against nothing, and made an inch of progress. It stopped its descent for a moment, for a shriek to sound in the distance, before the mud took it back.

  Stryker turned around, his eyes slitted and dark, baring his anger and strength down on her. Norah lost her breath again, her lips parted as he came toward her, his gait intent and filled with rage. She braced herself against the alien tree.

  “I need to strip.”

  What?

  “What? Why?” she asked as he began to peel off the weapons on his hips, thrusting them in their packs. His buckles came next, a vest, a thick armored shirt, before he reached for the straps of his pants.

  Norah couldn’t bring herself to look away. She didn’t even bother to pretend to be coy. It didn’t matter with the situation they were in.

  “Need to lift it up from the bottom,” he barked over the thunder. “My armor hinders me.”

  There was a thin under-suit he wore that outlined every muscles and curve of a body dripping in rainwater and mud. Norah’s belly fluttered. “You’re crazy. You can’t go in that.” She waved her hand at the mud. “You’ll die. There’s no possible way you can get under it.” She let go of the tree and grasped his hand. “Please don’t. Please! You won’t be able to breathe or see. What if you get caught underneath?”

  He looked up at her. “Babe, we’ve got no choice.” The man pulled down his pants and Norah’s fear ratcheted up a degree. Her eyes remained glued to him but it was with disbelief. She didn’t want him to leave her, especially to risk his life for her, again.

  “We can go back to the research lab. We can hole up.” She was willing to say anything to get him to stay. “We can go back to the terra vehicle and drive out of the storm. Don’t leave me. Please,” whispering into the wind. He hooked their packs on a branch by her side before catching her face within his hands.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” His dark eyes looked down at hers, holding her fear, her worry, her soul in place. Her hair whipped between them. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Do. Not. Move from this spot. I’ll be right back.”

  He left her before she could react, his body sinking next to the ship he was going to risk his life retrieving. The veil of rain muddied her sight but she caught him pulling off his metal mask and putting it around his neck. Norah couldn’t see his face.

  “Crazy. You’re crazy,” she said to herself.

  But she could have sworn his body shifted, moved and changed into something inhuman before he dropped himself into the water, before he needled his way into the thick mud.

  And then he was gone. And so was most of the flyer.

  Norah became aware of her surroundings then, as the Cyborg faded from her mind, and the shock of the last week settled in.

  Her eyes flew across the small glen, searching for any signs of the dangerous creatures that lived in the jungle: the coilers, the giant birds, a tree nest of bloodsuckers, or any of the numerous poisonous bugs that lurked in the swamps.

  Norah leveraged herself higher up the trunk of the tree.

  Her thick hair flew around her head like a tornado, heavy and moist, and altogether chaotic, distorting her view. Another shriek, a guttural scream just beyond her sight, rose up behind trees that she had just run past with Stryker. It pricked her ears with needles.

  Her eyes flew around, looking for the howler, never having encountered such a subject within the last six months, but her gaze landed on the ship that had only sunk more.

  A mist gathered around her. And then she saw it.

  Saw something that splintered her mind.

  Grey fingers, long and numerous, stretched out from the water reaching for her leg. Horrible and familiar, sharpened claws covered in a thin layer of black skin. More lifted from the waters around her, until the hands of dozens of monsters just below the rising waters came into view.

  Norah lifted her feet and began to hoist herself up the tree.

  Her heart beat like a gong, ready to burst. The wet bark caught under her heels just enough for her to grasp the branch above her.

  Something slithered across her boot.

  Don’t look down. Don’t you fucking look down Norah.

  She clenched her teeth and, with a cry of pain, mustered enough adrenaline to monkey her way to the first branch, hanging off it as things that she wouldn’t look at began to rise from the water.

  DON’T LOOK DOWN. She screamed in her head as her feet climbed up the tree until all of her limbs were wrapped around the first branch. Norah hooked her leg over and with the fear of death running through her veins lifted herself up and began to climb the numerous branches above her.

  Sorry, Stryker.

  Norah couldn’t think of anything but getting away from the things below her. Her climbing faltered as the shrieks picked up again.

  She pressed her back into the tree and buried her head between her knees, lifting her legs up to balance on the branch. Another bolt struck a tree nearby as the hazy light flashed behind her eyelids.

  When the li
ght faded into the murk and the shrieks died away, minutes after her quick scramble up the tree, she opened her eyes and braved a look at the water.

  The fingers were gone, but a dark figure stood directly below her, staring up at her. The ground popped and the last bit of the flyer disappeared below the mud.

  Norah reached for her gun and screamed. She let several bullets loose at the dark figure under her before another rush of fear gripped her. She continued scrambling up the tree.

  The leaves thickened until the ground got lost in the foliage. They were so large, like swaying lily-pads that grew out by feet and not by inches; they offered her cover.

  She kept going until her breaths grew shorter and her exhausted muscles gave out. The leaves draped around her, now even longer.

  It was an Agusto tree; the jungle was full of them. They were one of the species of behemoth saplings, like an Earthian Umbrella tree on steroids. She was protected from the rain but not from the growing cold of nightfall.

  The storm raged and the poncho Stryker had given her didn’t help anymore.

  Norah missed the Cyborg already and hoped he was okay. Hoped that he would retrieve his vehicle.

  The tourniquet on her heart grew shards of guilt as she mourned her would-be savior. She pulled her knees into her chest and sneezed, her pistol tight in her hand.

  She had chosen to trust in a stranger which was unusual for her despite the circumstances. Norah didn’t know why, maybe it was because he had been a blip of light within the nightmare, but she missed him as much as she missed Robert and her co-workers.

  She only hoped that someone else had survived, that the others had gotten off the ground with their ship, that she wasn’t the only one left from the Axone group.

  The night fell in waves of terrible darkness around her. The thunder howled in her ears.

  Norah pulled off her boots and socks, tied the shoelaces together, and hung them on a branch before she settled in. There was nowhere for her to go but up or to crawl laterally to another tree; neither prospect offered her an advantage, so she settled in.

  To die or to live for another day.

  She didn’t notice as her eyes drifted closed and she zoned out, a body quivering with fever.