Storm Surge (Cyborg Shifters Book 2) Read online

  Thick waves of black hair, dripping with crystal held his eyes, calming him.

  “Do you...do you sense a lot?” she asked and didn’t move.

  “Everything.”

  “There are creatures, very dangerous ones in this jungle, carnivorous, venomous, do you see anything in your tech around us?” Stryker watched her lift her eyes and look around, not for the hundredth time.

  He held her leg as he ran his eyes over everything in their vicinity. The movement of countless creatures twisted and twirled around them. The insects that bit him were dead around his legs, killed off by his nanobots. God damn it.

  The water continued to rise.

  “Norah,” he looked back up at her. “Can you trust me?”

  Her almond eyes widened. “Yes? Maybe?”

  “I need you to come down.”

  His girl licked her full lips again, his tongue licked his own behind his mask.

  “Is it safe?”

  Stryker tensed. “Do you doubt me?” They stared at each other, a tension spiked out and enveloped them in something that almost stung. A minute passed and another centimeter of water rose over his skin. Alien water bugs continued to nibble his flesh.

  “Okay.” She eventually relented.

  Stryker turned his back and grasped both of her calves. “Just slide off and onto my shoulders.”

  “Can you carry me and the packs? I can wade through the water.”

  His pride bristled. Stryker tugged and caught her without answering. Fingers gripped the short waves of his hair with a gasp and rustle, and he started moving before the girl was even settled. His muscles tensed, his manhood questioned, his perfection on the line. He held her legs, keeping her feet above the water line.

  “Norah,” his voice was hard; he headed back toward the lab.

  “What?” she held on, slumped over his shoulder.

  “You never have to doubt me.”

  “I–I don’t.”

  Stryker pulled her feet through the straps over his chest and recovered the gun in his hand. They held her as he held it.

  She continued, “I’m scared.”

  “I know, babe.”

  “–and so tired.”

  He picked up the pace. “We’ll be safe soon,” he reassured her and tightened his grip on the handle of the gun.

  Chapter Six:

  ***

  Stryker shifted his lower body, waving his tail under the water, propelling them forward. The heat signatures didn’t follow them.

  But that didn’t stop him from keeping a part of his hardware focused on them. His breath hissed between his teeth. Norah’s heat bore down on him. The part of him that was a man, a Cyborg, acknowledged that her cunt was pressed up against the back of his neck.

  And it only made it worse, knowing how close it was to his lips, his tongue, when she questioned his manhood.

  His nostrils flared as he took in the scent of her sweat and desperation. His dick hardened in his suit, pushing away from his shifted lower half under the water.

  The bugs continued to bite him. Stryker paid them no mind.

  He adjusted his grip and pressed her harder against him. Part of him that wanted to give into his baser instincts grew within his head. The harder his dick became, the heavier it was. His enhanced, nanocellular blood pooled between his legs.

  It started to shift, his erection, releasing his secondary one from his body. It snapped him back into his own mind. Stryker locked himself down. He loosened his hold on his gun.

  He made it in record time to the building. The facility, half flooded, appeared from between the thick foliage.

  “You said you had a vehicle?” Stryker swallowed and ran out into the open where there was no cover from the rain.

  “Go to the right.” He followed her directions until a four-person lift came into view. A drop-ship. Half submerged but still landside. “It’s still there,” she sighed over the top of his head. His other head strained against his nanosuit.

  Stryker ran to the vehicle and unhooked her legs. Norah lifted off of his shoulders as she climbed to the roof of the land-craft.

  “Do you know where your spaceship is located?” he asked as he grabbed the handle and slithered his mind into the drop-ship, terra vehicles controls, overriding its systems and taking control of its software. The click of the door handle unlocked under his palm.

  “South, it’s south from here, if you follow the...clearing. Is it working?”

  Stryker pulled on the door, against the water pressure, showing off his strength and letting the front footrest flood.

  “It’s working.” He lifted Norah off the top and cradled her in his arms, setting her down on the passenger side. He followed, shifting his body back to normal, and shut the door against the encroaching tide. He threw the packs on the seats in the back. “Keep your legs out of the water,” he instructed, sinking his own feet onto the footrests.

  The back of his neck remained hot with loss. He had never had a woman so close to his mouth before. It unnerved him. The fact that he was having sexual feelings at all worried him.

  He suffered from bloodlust and violent tendencies like most Cyborgs, but never like how he felt toward Norah. Stryker steeled his nerve and adjusted his position. It was unlike him to react. He gripped the wheel and forced his thoughts elsewhere.

  He flooded the land-craft with his own power reserves and shot it into the air. It hovered just above the bog. Stryker swung the vehicle around and headed south.

  Music blared, Norah screamed and buried her head into her knees. Heavy metal wailed until he found the knob to turn down the volume. “Just music. Just really bad music.”

  “Just music…”

  “Yeah.”

  She laughed. Stryker glanced at Norah as he urged the flyer into a steady speed, maneuvering it between the trees.

  “It’s just music.”

  He smiled under his band. “Ever heard it before?” he teased.

  “Music?” Norah lifted her head off her knees.

  He chuckled, “Yeah, music.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard it before.”

  The clouds swirled overhead, thickening until it looked like a rotten marshmallow paste. Silence fell between them.

  His mouth kept opening to speak, only to close again, not knowing what to say. He wanted to hear her voice. He wanted to hear the hopeless hope that tinged every one of her words.

  “What kind of music do you like?” The downpour veiled them from the jungle. He slowed down, keeping south.

  “Ever hear Wee Sing Sillyville?” her voice shook.

  Stryker checked his database but found nothing of the like in his mind. “No. Is it silly?”

  He wished his voice didn’t sound so hollow behind his mask.

  Norah twitched. “Yeah, very much so. Nursery rhymes mostly, old, historic nursery songs.” He glanced her way as her eyes lifted to look at him. “My parents used to sing ‘em to me and my brother when we were kids. I love them and hate them. They get stuck in your head, for hours, days, your entire life.”

  Stryker didn’t know what she meant, having never experienced a childhood nor the songs that went with having one. He knew little about the youth of humans.

  He had been engineered as an adult and was treated as such after his creation. Once tested and approved by his mothers and fathers, he was sent straight into the battlefields of space.

  What would it feel like to have something stuck in your head? Norah’s distress call replayed over and over. Was it the same?

  He peered through the rain and scanned the area, trying to find the ship Norah said existed. “Will you sing me one?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve never heard a kid’s song before. The songs I know, personally, aren’t silly.”

  The roar of distant thunder stifled the silence. His eyes kept looking away from the jungle and toward her wide, numb ones that watched the rain slip across the windshield.

  She whispered minutes later, tonelessly,
“Down by the bay…”

  “Down by the bay?”

  What?

  She’s singing.

  “Down by the bay, down by the bay, where the watermelons grow, where the watermelons grow, back to my home, I dare not go, for if I do, my mother will say: have you ever seen a–a fish spinning a dish?”

  Stryker smirked. “Spinning a dish?”

  “Down by the bay.”

  “You live by a bay growing up?” He reached back over his shoulder and readjusted his pack.

  “No, I lived in a high-rise on Earth. There was no water near us. At least nothing natural, not like here where you’re surrounded by water.” The rainfall picked up. “You?”

  Me? You don’t want to hear about me, beautiful. “No natural water near where I was created,” he answered honestly. “The only water we had came from faucets.”

  “I loved water growing up but the oceans of Earth were gone, replaced by sewage. Giant puddles of sewage but I had seen so many videos and pictures of what it used to look like. It’s why I went into chemistry.”

  “Oh? Why not oceanography or marine biology?”

  “I didn’t care about the land structure nor the creatures that lived within water. I only cared about water itself.” Norah shrugged at the edge of his vision. “Earth didn’t have any real bodies of water anymore unless you went to the national parks but even then, humans couldn’t swim in them. You couldn’t get close enough to experience them and water parks are so fake. The stink of chlorine ruins those places for me.” She sighed. “I studied chemistry so I could be a boring water chemist. I wanted to bring it back to Earth. It’s funny how the smell of chlorine followed me.”

  Stryker found a canister of water and handed it to her. She clutched it between her hands and sucked on the spout. Norah continued to shiver and twitch, seize and wrack with every breath.

  He needed to treat her, he needed to heal her, and he needed to do it soon. But he also needed to get them off the surface of the planet. His priorities warred inside of him.

  “That’s very noble of you.” The hardness of the downpour picked up until it sounded like pebbles hitting metal.

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?” he asked.

  “What did you want to do when you grew up?” Her voice cracked and he stopped the vehicle. “What’re you doing?” she asked as he fished out his medkit.

  “You’re sick.” He pulled out his healing salve, needles, and portable synthesizing system, weighing and pouring the chemicals he needed to help her. He created naproxen, penicillin, and a small dose of caffeine. He took hold of her wrist. “I need a drop of your blood, is that okay?” Stryker bore his eyes into her.

  “Why?”

  “To check your system.” He squeezed her wrist. “Please.”

  Norah yielded her arm to him. Stryker rolled up her poncho and wiped the cloth across her skin. He marveled at her dark velvet limb, silky and slim under his violent grip.

  He loosened his hold, knowing he could break her bones with an accidental squeeze.

  He placed the needle against her vein and slid it into her skin, drawing out several drops of her life-force. The sharp point of the needle entering her sent a shock of arousal through his system and straight back into his loins. Stryker felt himself stiffening, jealous of the needle under her skin. He wanted to pierce her in the same way.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  His horrid thoughts continued despite his disgust. Pierce her between her legs and under my mouth. His mouth dried up with the picture that appeared in his head and his fangs sliced his lower lip.

  His bestial cock curved hard and demanding, painful within his suit. Stryker shuffled the pack into his lap. I don’t want to scare her.

  He put the needle against his own skin and shot her blood into his system.

  “You can’t do that!” Norah took his hand and wrenched. “You can’t, Stryker,” she gasped and fought him, he let go of the needle and she threw it behind them. “Oh my god. What the fuck!” She leaned over him, feverish and terrified, tearing at his arm.

  Stryker grabbed her and hauled her body into his lap. “It’s okay. Your blood won’t hurt me.”

  “You can’t be serious.” She struggled for a moment before her shivers turned to trembles and her energy depleted. He smelled the scent of sweat begin to bead across her temple, between her breasts, and under her arms.

  “I can do that. So can others of my kind. Take your blood into my body and allow my nanocells to extract information from it.” He petted her hair as he ran her blood through his systems. “Once I’m done, my body will clear itself of the alien presence.” Norah was teetering on the edge of malnourishment, fatigue, and she had a fever. An internal sigh of relief went through him. She isn’t sick with something alien. Stryker thought back to the creatures that had attacked the research facility. If it’s a disease...a virus... “Stay still and rest.” He reached around her and found another bottle of water. “Take this, it’ll help you.” He handed her the meds and the water.

  Norah wrapped her fingers around the pallet of pills. “What is it?”

  “Pain killers, and antibiotics just in case, and some caffeine to keep you going.” He pulled out another vial and nodded toward it. “This is a booster, it’ll revitalize you.”

  It’ll kill off anything that shouldn’t be there.

  She relaxed into his embrace and chucked the medicine in her mouth. Stryker lifted the bottle to her lips for her to drink from and watched her throat swallow greedily until the contents were gone. Norah lifted her hand and wiped her mouth.

  Stryker put the excess back in his medkit.

  The wind bellowed outside their craft, a howl as strong as a pack of rabid wolves.

  He sat back and relaxed, for just a moment, and appreciated the woman huddled in his lap. She curled against him and he put his arm around her in a quiet embrace.

  “It’s nice to be out of the rain,” she said.

  “This is nice,” he agreed but not because of the rain. Norah was his self-proclaimed charge and right now she was his. He didn’t have to share her. “How are you feeling?” He rested his chin atop her wet curls. “Has it kicked in?”

  A shiver and a sigh answered him, a yawn and a swallow. Sweat and shallow breaths. “I think so. I don’t feel as hot as I did before. I’m beginning to not feel anything at all.” She laughed softly. “It feels nice.”

  He placed one of his hands over her temple, checking her temperature. “You’re cooling down. Tell me if the medication wears off. I don’t want you to spike again before I can get you someplace safe.”

  “I feel safe now.”

  Stryker stiffened and held her infinitesimally closer. Nothing about this is safe, Norah, nothing. And nothing is...

  “Shouldn’t we keep going?” Norah stirred and the crinkle of her poncho filled his ears, breaking his train of thought.

  We should keep going. But he had never felt more alone in the universe, more complete, surrounded by an impenetrable veil of water and a warm woman in his arms.

  He didn’t want the reckless moment to end because in a fallible moment of clarity he knew that she would always be safe in his embrace.

  But embraces never lasted.

  “The spaceship is only an hour drive from the base.” Stryker didn’t hear her.

  Because when it ended…

  His record would remain perfect.

  And Norah would leave.

  There was a crack, a bellow, and he didn’t have time to move. The vehicle jerked, knocking them at a breakneck speed into the metal and glass door panel, his head snapped. His perfectly imperfect serene moment ended with a blast.

  Chapter Seven:

  ***

  Norah didn’t have it in her to scream, curled up as she was in the warm cocoon of her savior, the one being in all the universe she had ceded some of her power to. A man she was beginning to depend on.

  She was about to ask why he wore his m
ask, why he didn’t take it off, and what was underneath the heavy metal piece when the vehicle collided with something large and horrible, sending both of their bodies into the side window.

  They flew forward when the vehicle dropped back, a mess of flailing limbs.

  Her eyes widened and a gasp escaped her lips. She would have cracked her skull if it wasn’t for the Cyborg that seat-belted her onto his lap.

  “What the fuck!?” He roared through his mask.

  Norah scrambled back into her seat and clicked her safety harness on.

  The drop ship shot back into the air where it hovered, but the storm fought the craft for every inch of progress they made.

  They were hit again, throwing the vehicle off course and into one of the giant jungle trees that was larger than the redwoods. Norah unclipped her gun, the caffeine coursing through her veins, and searched through the downpour for their assailant.

  She was afraid she already knew what it was.

  The window next to Stryker fractured, the sound was audible even over the tempest raging outside.

  “Go up! You gotta get off the ground!” She screamed, seeing the shadow beast move like a bruise through the veil. “It’s a coiler!” Norah’s heart was in her throat.

  “What is it?” He yelled back as he realigned the ship.

  The craft shot up just as the shadow reappeared behind them. “It’s behind us,” she screamed.

  “Babe,” Stryker gritted out, as the monster hit them again, shooting them forward and breaking the back window. “I’m already as high as the terra vehicle will go.”

  Norah peered out with fear but couldn’t see the ground, only moving cloudy water. They picked up speed as a tail, barbed with stony spikes, uncurled and pummeled them again.

  “We gotta get out of its territory!” She climbed out of the front seat and into the back and aimed her gun at the creature chasing them.

  “Trying, babe,” the Cyborg growled. Norah swiped her hair off of her face just as the beast swam out of the rain. She caught it with three bullets before it hit them again. Another tail came out of the rain just before she lost sight of it. They drifted together through the dense forest.

  “We’ve got another one on us now.” Norah checked her clip, seeing her last bullet in the chamber. “Give me one of your guns.” Rain fell through the back window, soaking her to the bone again. She grasped Stryker’s bag and tore it open when a wave of water came up through the shattered window, drenching her.