“Who are you?” His voice was calm, not a hint of nervous bravado or fear, as if we were two friends having lunch at the park. And the voice was his. I’d heard other Hive speak, their voices stilted and strange, referring to themselves as “we” instead of I. “Tell me your name. You are not one of us, yet I can sense you. I feel your softness inside my mind.”
The creature stared at me as if he were looking at a miracle, as if he—no it—found me desirable. His features were symmetrical, distinctly humanoid, except the odd color. He was a darker blue than the warriors I’d seen from Xerima, but if he hadn’t been Hive, I would have said he was actually handsome. Which was creepy. And wrong. So wrong.
And what the hell did he mean? I feel your softness inside my mind. That was just fucking creepy.
“What are you?” He tilted his head like a curious puppy and I had to shake my head, force myself to remember he was a brutal and efficient killer. A mass murderer. A leader of the creatures that hunted and killed millions and billions of people all over the universe. He blinked, slowly, and studied my face. “You look like an Earthling, or perhaps Trionite?”
He settled on his knees and waited patiently for my answer. The creature’s skin was a dark blue, like a moonlit sky at midnight. His eyes were deep, colorless pools of black. His skin was flawless, smoother than the burnished metal of his silver-and-gray uniform, the silver so polished I could clearly see my reflection in the curved piece covering his shoulder.
“What are you?” I countered. I’d never seen anything like him. As far as I knew, no one had.
“I am Nexus 9.”
I shook my head, my neural blaster aimed at his face. “No. What were you before?” I asked the question before I could think better of it. I wanted to know. Curiosity killed the cat and all that, but this creature was darkly fascinating. Disturbing. Like a mangled body lying next to a car wreck. I just couldn’t look away.
“I have always been what I am. But you have not.” He blinked, his dark blue eyelids covering the hypnotic depths of his eyes just long enough for me to regain some fucking common sense. I stepped back in time to see a bright flash of light travel through the neural fibers at the base of his skull.
“No, I have not.” The buzzing in my head intensified, as if in response to this creature’s nearness. No, I wasn’t like him. I stepped closer, curiosity drawing me to him. The neural link that Doctor Helion had implanted in my head buzzed with a strangely hypnotic tone as I looked into his black eyes. Brains didn’t have ears, or eyes, or anything like that, so I had no idea what the hell was actually happening to me, but I took another step, felt like I was drunk. Spellbound.
“You summoned me here.” He—it—smiled at me then and I took another step, my hand reaching for his cheek. I wanted to touch him, the blue of his skin looked so smooth, so perfect. I wanted to touch him, just once. Then I’d kill him and take his helmet and neural implant back to Helion.
His eyes. They were so dark, completely without color or depth. They were like an abyss, no light reflected from them. The other two, the weaklings outside the cave, had silver eyes. Repulsive.
Why had I thought that? Somehow my own thoughts were mixing with the thoughts of this Nexus and it was difficult to differentiate between the two.
The beast outside the cave made more noise, killed another Hive, and this time, when the Nexus before me twitched with pain, I felt it, too.
Loss. Agony. Despair. Like my own leg had been removed.
I collapsed to my knees as pain flooded my body. The Nexus creature before me rose and walked to me.
He was huge, almost as big as the beast outside, but he came to stand before me and I felt lulled by his presence. My pain faded, replaced by a humming in my mind that blocked out all thought, all feeling. There was nothing but my link to the creature, the connection he offered. I would never be alone again. Never be afraid. I would belong…to him.
A dark blue hand reached for my cheek and I allowed my eyelids to drift closed, unable to move away from his touch.
I wanted him to touch me, knew without it I would feel…empty. Alone. God, I was so alone inside my head. The isolation opened up inside me like a chasm and I sobbed, choking on the pain. Like a god, his mind reached for mine, offering me solace, comfort, belonging…
No. No. No.
I shook my head, trying to clear it as his fingers made contact with my flesh and sparks of power flashed through my body. I gasped at the strange sensation, like he’d somehow managed to get his fingers inside my mind and was actually stroking my soul.
It didn’t feel bad. I liked it, in fact. Began to crave it.
A thunderous sound came from the mouth of the cave. Before I could turn my head, the creature before me was gone, buried beneath the rage of an Atlan beast.
Like a spell being broken, my mind kicked back on with abject horror at what I’d done, what I’d thought. I almost rolled over like a dog and showed the Nexus my belly. I wanted to curl into myself and huddle on this cold cave floor and just…disappear.
How could I? I was about to let that thing caress me. I had actually wanted it to touch me. I’d liked it.
Oh. My. God.
I had to get the fuck out of here. Helion and the Intelligence Core would just have to send someone else to lure one of these fuckers out of hiding next time. I couldn’t do this again. No way. My head hurt like I had a chainsaw buzzing inside and I couldn’t turn it off. He’d touched me, not just my cheek, but in my mind, too. I felt dirty, gross. Violated.
And alone. So alone. Not the usual loneliness that crept around inside me like poison, this was so much more. Like I’d die if that thing didn’t stand back up and touch me, like I’d fade into nothingness, into mist, and float away on a breeze. Like I wasn’t real. My body wasn’t real. Like I wasn’t really here…
Had that creature done something to me? To the implants Helion had put inside my head?
Fuck. I rubbed at the back of my neck, the base of my skull where the small lump of the implant was hard and unforgiving beneath my fingertips. I had to get out of here, back to the medical unit and Doctor Helion. He had to take the implant out of my head. Now. Right now.