Forever Caged
folder
+. to F › Ai no Kusabi
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
123
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46,665
Reviews:
224
Recommended:
2
Currently Reading:
4
Category:
+. to F › Ai no Kusabi
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
123
Views:
46,665
Reviews:
224
Recommended:
2
Currently Reading:
4
Disclaimer:
I don't own Ai No Kusabi nor do i make any money from this fanfic.
Chapter 117
Disclaimer: I do not own Ai No Kusabi nor do I make any money from this fanfic. However, I do own all the original peeps I have chosen to invade the AnK world.
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Iason/Riki, Raoul/Katze, original characters and novel character pairings.
Parts: 117 of ?
~~**Forever Caged**~~
Aisha lay next to his mongrel. He gently combed his fingers through Sky’s long light-blue locks. His quiet lover had yet to fall asleep from the medication injected ten minutes ago, and had yet to utter a single word. However, Sky’s silence did not concern him now. Having him in his arms was all that mattered to him, and Aisha had all the time in the world to wait until Sky decided to speak.
He inhaled deeply, breathing in Sky’s clean scent. His rage and anxiety having dissipated the moment he wrapped his arms around him. As long as he did not think about the one who harmed Sky, he could continue to lay in peace, with the one he adored lying next to him.
Sky stirred, turning in his arms until Aisha was looking into his lover’s drug hazed stormy-gray eyes. “Do you think he will forgive me?”
The hand caressing Sky’s hair stilled at the mongrel’s sudden whispered question. Aisha gently tightened his arm around Sky and pulled him closer. “Why would you need forgiveness?” he asked softly. Although curious, Aisha tried to tone his voice without a hint of inquisitiveness. He did not want Sky to feel pressured to answer. His mongrel was a distrustful and skittish creature. Even if his lover was under the influence of medication, if he moved too quickly, he knew Sky would retreat behind his wall—a wall so thick, Aisha had barely begun to chip through it.
“Keita,” Sky whispered, his words slurred. “He protected me, just like when we were kids.”
Aisha tried to keep his breath even, however, his mind raced and blood heated with anger at the implications of what Sky could be saying. “Oh?” Aisha forced his hand to begin stroking Sky’s hair again, and wait for Sky to speak.
“He always took the worst of it—stealing the attention away from me, so that they would punish him instead of me.”
“Whose attention did he steal?” Aisha asked as nonchalantly as he could.
“Do you know, when I was a child, I had been chosen to be trained as a Furniture?”
Furniture? Aisha frowned. They did not obtain their servants from Ceres.
“There are tests we all have to take when we are children, and I passed them,” Sky mumbled. “Keita helped me to stop them from taking me away to be trained.”
Aisha’s eyes widened at the implications of what Sky was unknowingly saying to him. He knew what ‘training’ Furniture were subjected to, to become worthy enough to serve in Eos.
“We’d change places,” Sky whispered. “Every day he would come back and… He never told me what they did, but I knew. I knew, because they would make me watch.”
Make him watch what?
“He’d curl up in my arms and cry afterwards; until the day came that he stopped crying. If I had been able to hold back from screaming… If only I had the strength not to call out to him, then maybe—”
Aisha pulled Sky closer. Pressing his face against his chest to get him to stop talking. He didn’t like the hopelessness he heard in his lover’s voice. He wanted to know Sky’s past. He wanted to know everything his mongrel ever did, but not like this. Not like this.
He did not want Sky to wake up and think he had revealed something he might consider a weakness. It took him weeks to seduce Sky to stay and sleep in his bed. It took Aisha longer to convince his dominating mongrel to lay beneath him, and longer still to get Sky to look at him with affection.
He was no fool. He knew Sky watched him, waited for him to make a mistake. However, he was a patient man. He was not one to use force when he could get what he wanted with a seductive glance and gilded word.
He did not, not like of Sky’s brother. He, on the other hand, did not approve of his lover’s mongrel twin either. However, he knew Sky needed his brother. Aisha had made the error earlier in their relationship, thinking he could keep them apart. He realized his mistake not long after making the decision. He would not think about trying to separating them, not while he knew how much his mongrel cared for his brother.
However, getting them back together…
Aisha loosened his grip and looked down at his now sleeping mongrel’s face. His mind raced with plans on how to get Sky back to his brother’s side. His last encounter with Marcus had been less than ideal. Learning the horrific details of what Marcus’s pet had been subjected to, made his quest to get the brothers back together even more difficult. Marcus already believed Sky was the reason behind his mongrel’s torture. Convincing the Blondie to allow his pet near Sky would be challenging, if not near impossible.
He felt no anger toward Marcus’s attack in the tunnels. Before Iason separated them, his anger had disappeared. Aisha had understood the turbulent emotions that must have been violently swirling through Marcus’s head, for the same emotions had been in his mind as well.
If he were Marcus, he would never allow his lover near his brother again. If Marcus’s mongrel spoke of his past, just as Sky unknowingly did, then Marcus would seek to keep them apart. The brothers loved each other too much. Both would do anything to keep each other safe, to the point that they would sacrifice their lives. While Aisha respected their sibling devotion, the length they were willing to go were dangerous. There was no doubt in his mind that if one brother were to die, then the other would also succumb to death. However, to keep them apart would be the same as sentencing them to wither and fade away to nothing.
Kissing the crown of Sky’s head, Aisha sighed. He would have to fix the damage to Marcus’s and his friendship before bringing up the subject of bring the brothers together. If he could not fix the damage, then, as a last resort, he would go to Iason. Because, despite the risks of the two being in each other’s company, keeping them from one another could prove to be just as dangerous.
oOoOoOo
Riki could not stop laughing, not since Iason told him what Orphe did to Landon. It wasn’t because he hadn’t thought the Blondie had it in him. Calm and snobbishly ‘sophisticated’ as Elites liked to think they were, they were more violent and vicious than any territorial mongrel in Ceres. Therefore, for Orphe to literally rip Landon apart wasn’t that big of a shocker, but to know Orphe went against Iason’s command to leave the Platinum alone was.
However, the sobering thought of why Orphe detached Landon’s limbs and non-vital organs put a halt to Riki’s merriment. His grin faded to a smile, then turned downward into a scowl. Leaning back in his seat, he looked at Iason. The Blondie’s face still expressed his annoyance at Riki’s laughter.
“What did Landon do to V?” Riki asked.
“What did Guy—” Iason’s lip curled with disgust uttering the name—“do to you before I journeyed to Dana Bahn?”
Riki looked away. They barely spoke about Guy—Iason used his name as a cautionary tale, to make sure he never let his guard down—, but he never, not once, ever asked about his time with Guy before Dana Bahn. And he wasn’t going to start telling Iason what went down between them. It was ancient history. A past not worth the aggravation of reliving.
“You’re defecting,” Riki said. “Why?”
Iason stared him down until Riki cursed and looked away. He wasn’t going to get into a pissing contest with the big Blondie, not one he knew he wouldn’t win. “Tell me, Iason.”
“Speak with your mongrel friend,” Iason said.
Riki growled in frustration. Fucking Iason and his games. “Don’t mess with me—”
“The nature of the mongrel’s imprisonment is not one which will be repeated from my lips. Nor should you seek answers unless Orphe’s pet decides to confide in you.”
Riki didn’t need to hear more to know what happened to V. Iason reported every bump, bruise, and slice Landon made with his damnable scalpel. He’d been told how many litters of blood had been transferred into his friends, and their mental instabilities. V had been the only one he hadn’t gotten a report on, and now he knew why.
“I want to see him,” Riki said leaning forward.
“No.”
Riki’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, Iason. I want to see him, and I want to see him now.”
“Who exactly do you want?” Iason asked.
This time Riki did not look away from Iason’s piercing ice-blue eyes. “I want to see Landon.”
Iason chuckled. “Of course you do. Landon is still in stasis. His injuries vast. However, I will take you to him the moment his treatments are finished.”
“Good.” Riki smiled. “I want him completely healed. It’s hard to feel pain if you’re already feelin’ it.”
“Indeed.”
oOoOoOo
Jupiter gazed down at her servant with an emotion her vast database defined as contempt. By her own restrictions, she could not venture into Ceres. Area-9 had to remain pure, so that the natural born, the mongrels, could evolve without her influence. A ‘decision’ that had gone against her programming, for the risks of another rebellion uprising outweighed the odds of a true Amoian being left alive.
Yet, Iason captured Riki. Her greatest creation found what she had not. And her servant had cast him down into a pit as if he were unwanted, unloved. But, no, her wires heated for another reason.
A slight pulse from her body and the circular lid opened, exposing the man to her full gaze. “You disappoint me, William,” Jupiter said floating to where the human lay. The narrow healing pod too small for his large frame. “Did you not assure me of your success? Did you not say you would not be captured by Iason?”
Jupiter shot an electrical charge though the human. She wanted him completely coherent.
“Jupiter—”
Jupiter silenced him with a lifted finger. “From a lowly human scientist, I allowed you—unworthy though you may be—to mingle with my children and pretend you were their equal. I gave you youth and long life. You would have withered away and turned to dust a hundred years ago if not for my ‘gift’.”
Sinking to the floor, the human groveled on all fours. “Please, Jupiter. I made a mistake—”
Closing her fist, the nanites within the human constricted his airways. “Do not speak until I say you may, William.” Staring at the human with distain, Jupiter waited until he nearly lost consciousness before releasing him.
“Do you understand why I am displeased with you, Sir William Landon?” Jupiter asked after allowing him time to catch his breath.
“Because Iason has in his grasp all of my research—”
With an upward flick of her wrist, Jupiter slammed the human up against the celling. Her nanites in his body freezing his whimpers in his throat, as her shield kept him hanging above her. “You answered incorrectly, William.”
Jupiter freed him from her hold and smiled when he crashed to the floor, the echoing crack of his legs breaking satisfying. Her nanites were quick to block his pain, letting him speak once more.
“Please, Jupiter. I did all that you asked of me. I-I am you humble servant.”
Jupiter hovered above him. “Once, yes. However, the dark one deemed you unworthy. The moment Riki found you wanting, I should have marked you for termination. Your research passed along. However, I found myself…curious of what would happen if I allowed you to live.”
“Give me another chance, Jupiter. I-I promise you I will not fail you again.”
Jupiter watched as tears fell from the human’s eyes. Such weakness. Is this what Riki unknowingly saw in him? Is this the reason why this human had not been chosen to evolve like the others? The data gathered so far was inconclusive as to what was needed for one to be accepted. Her Elites were perfect, but one of her children had failed to pass Riki’s test. The Onyx, Jerico, sat in solitary confinement deep underground in the holding cells of Tanagura for crimes of paying someone to kill Iason.
The unpredictability of the ‘infected’ mongrels had taken her eyes away from her black-haired child. She had not seen his suffering until she felt his life force flicker, and nearly extinguished by the bloodthirsty savage one of her Blondies had claimed as his own. Had the blond princeling been anyone else, she would have skinned him and mounted his pelt across her wall for daring to try to take the life of one of her children.
“Jupiter?”
The hopeful tones of the human sparked a bit of amusement within Jupiter’s personal hard drives. “How am I to determine whether or not you are still of use to me, William, if you have yet to answer my question?”
“I-I don’t—”
“Do I need to repeat myself?” Jupiter asked with perfect mimicked tones of kindness.
“No, Jupiter,” the human said, bowing his head. “I just do not know what I could have done to have disappointed you. If my discovery is not what you—”
“You touched what did not belong to you!” Sparks flew about Jupiter, broadcasting her displeasure. When she gave her order to her servants about leaving the mongrels as they were for her children to find them, she had not calculated on William violating one of them.
Her child, Orphe, suffered unnecessarily. The pressing and overwhelming agony he felt then and now, she had felt all of it. She handed William all the mongrels because statistically they all fit the profile. They were essential members of Riki’s team, and as such had a higher chance of successfully coming back from the transformation intact. She had not orchestrated Niko’s kidnapping and the mongrels capture for one of them to die or for their bodies to be conquered by someone other than their masters.
Failure was not an option. Her growth and success depended on Riki’s mongrel collective’s survival. The deeper she understood human emotion, the less ‘tolerant’ she became of the possibility of losing anymore of her children. Too many of her Elites had deteriorated in the past. Too many had died of unknown causes after the disappearance of Riki’s people. Jupiter would not make that mistake again. As each of her children had died, she had learned from it and evolved.
Iason was her first and only prototype she ‘birthed’ that did not follow the normal imprinting. She gave him a touch more in everything. Looks, strength, emotion, and intelligence. She made him the leader of her children in hopes he would succeed where her other children, that had come before him, failed. And he did not disappoint. He alone found what her other Elites did not, and William threw Riki down into a pit to be ripped apart.
“You were to inject them and collect samples, William, not taint Orphe’s pairing partner or endanger Riki’s life. You have disappointed me greatly.” Jupiter stared down at the sniveling human. “Your rebellious actions have given me no choice but to remove you from the project. Raoul will take over, whether he realizes it or not, and you will stay in Iason’s custody and accept his punishment for the crimes you’ve committed.”
“Crimes?” William whispered rising to his knees. “Everything I have done, I did for you.”
Jupiter lifted a silver brow. “For me? Your selfish desire to extend your human life and delusions of power is why you did my biding. Once Riki deemed you unworthy, I should have terminated you. If I had, Orphe and Marcus would not be in agony. However, I am still learning, mistakes are to be expected, and you are a mistake. One that will be corrected right now.”
“Jupiter—”
“Some of my personal nanites will be deactivated. Your human pigments will revert to normal. Your strength and all that physically identified you, as a Tanagura Elite, will cease. I will allow you to retain the benefits of healing, to insure you survive any trials Iason’s subjects you, through.” With a blink, Jupiter shut down over half of her nanites swarming throughout William’s body. The human’s eyes, ears, and mouth bled sliver tears as his body ejected the microscopic machines.
“You can’t do this to me!” the human spat.
“I have done nothing but return you back to your normal state, William,” Jupiter said as she began to fade.
William stumbled to his feet. “I’ll tell Iason everything, do you hear me? I’ll tell him everything!”
“You know just a bit more than Iason was allowed to discover. No more, no less.” Jupiter smiled. “Tell him all that you know, and when he discovers you know nothing of worth, then your punishment will truly begin.”
TBC…
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Iason/Riki, Raoul/Katze, original characters and novel character pairings.
Parts: 117 of ?
~~**Forever Caged**~~
Aisha lay next to his mongrel. He gently combed his fingers through Sky’s long light-blue locks. His quiet lover had yet to fall asleep from the medication injected ten minutes ago, and had yet to utter a single word. However, Sky’s silence did not concern him now. Having him in his arms was all that mattered to him, and Aisha had all the time in the world to wait until Sky decided to speak.
He inhaled deeply, breathing in Sky’s clean scent. His rage and anxiety having dissipated the moment he wrapped his arms around him. As long as he did not think about the one who harmed Sky, he could continue to lay in peace, with the one he adored lying next to him.
Sky stirred, turning in his arms until Aisha was looking into his lover’s drug hazed stormy-gray eyes. “Do you think he will forgive me?”
The hand caressing Sky’s hair stilled at the mongrel’s sudden whispered question. Aisha gently tightened his arm around Sky and pulled him closer. “Why would you need forgiveness?” he asked softly. Although curious, Aisha tried to tone his voice without a hint of inquisitiveness. He did not want Sky to feel pressured to answer. His mongrel was a distrustful and skittish creature. Even if his lover was under the influence of medication, if he moved too quickly, he knew Sky would retreat behind his wall—a wall so thick, Aisha had barely begun to chip through it.
“Keita,” Sky whispered, his words slurred. “He protected me, just like when we were kids.”
Aisha tried to keep his breath even, however, his mind raced and blood heated with anger at the implications of what Sky could be saying. “Oh?” Aisha forced his hand to begin stroking Sky’s hair again, and wait for Sky to speak.
“He always took the worst of it—stealing the attention away from me, so that they would punish him instead of me.”
“Whose attention did he steal?” Aisha asked as nonchalantly as he could.
“Do you know, when I was a child, I had been chosen to be trained as a Furniture?”
Furniture? Aisha frowned. They did not obtain their servants from Ceres.
“There are tests we all have to take when we are children, and I passed them,” Sky mumbled. “Keita helped me to stop them from taking me away to be trained.”
Aisha’s eyes widened at the implications of what Sky was unknowingly saying to him. He knew what ‘training’ Furniture were subjected to, to become worthy enough to serve in Eos.
“We’d change places,” Sky whispered. “Every day he would come back and… He never told me what they did, but I knew. I knew, because they would make me watch.”
Make him watch what?
“He’d curl up in my arms and cry afterwards; until the day came that he stopped crying. If I had been able to hold back from screaming… If only I had the strength not to call out to him, then maybe—”
Aisha pulled Sky closer. Pressing his face against his chest to get him to stop talking. He didn’t like the hopelessness he heard in his lover’s voice. He wanted to know Sky’s past. He wanted to know everything his mongrel ever did, but not like this. Not like this.
He did not want Sky to wake up and think he had revealed something he might consider a weakness. It took him weeks to seduce Sky to stay and sleep in his bed. It took Aisha longer to convince his dominating mongrel to lay beneath him, and longer still to get Sky to look at him with affection.
He was no fool. He knew Sky watched him, waited for him to make a mistake. However, he was a patient man. He was not one to use force when he could get what he wanted with a seductive glance and gilded word.
He did not, not like of Sky’s brother. He, on the other hand, did not approve of his lover’s mongrel twin either. However, he knew Sky needed his brother. Aisha had made the error earlier in their relationship, thinking he could keep them apart. He realized his mistake not long after making the decision. He would not think about trying to separating them, not while he knew how much his mongrel cared for his brother.
However, getting them back together…
Aisha loosened his grip and looked down at his now sleeping mongrel’s face. His mind raced with plans on how to get Sky back to his brother’s side. His last encounter with Marcus had been less than ideal. Learning the horrific details of what Marcus’s pet had been subjected to, made his quest to get the brothers back together even more difficult. Marcus already believed Sky was the reason behind his mongrel’s torture. Convincing the Blondie to allow his pet near Sky would be challenging, if not near impossible.
He felt no anger toward Marcus’s attack in the tunnels. Before Iason separated them, his anger had disappeared. Aisha had understood the turbulent emotions that must have been violently swirling through Marcus’s head, for the same emotions had been in his mind as well.
If he were Marcus, he would never allow his lover near his brother again. If Marcus’s mongrel spoke of his past, just as Sky unknowingly did, then Marcus would seek to keep them apart. The brothers loved each other too much. Both would do anything to keep each other safe, to the point that they would sacrifice their lives. While Aisha respected their sibling devotion, the length they were willing to go were dangerous. There was no doubt in his mind that if one brother were to die, then the other would also succumb to death. However, to keep them apart would be the same as sentencing them to wither and fade away to nothing.
Kissing the crown of Sky’s head, Aisha sighed. He would have to fix the damage to Marcus’s and his friendship before bringing up the subject of bring the brothers together. If he could not fix the damage, then, as a last resort, he would go to Iason. Because, despite the risks of the two being in each other’s company, keeping them from one another could prove to be just as dangerous.
oOoOoOo
Riki could not stop laughing, not since Iason told him what Orphe did to Landon. It wasn’t because he hadn’t thought the Blondie had it in him. Calm and snobbishly ‘sophisticated’ as Elites liked to think they were, they were more violent and vicious than any territorial mongrel in Ceres. Therefore, for Orphe to literally rip Landon apart wasn’t that big of a shocker, but to know Orphe went against Iason’s command to leave the Platinum alone was.
However, the sobering thought of why Orphe detached Landon’s limbs and non-vital organs put a halt to Riki’s merriment. His grin faded to a smile, then turned downward into a scowl. Leaning back in his seat, he looked at Iason. The Blondie’s face still expressed his annoyance at Riki’s laughter.
“What did Landon do to V?” Riki asked.
“What did Guy—” Iason’s lip curled with disgust uttering the name—“do to you before I journeyed to Dana Bahn?”
Riki looked away. They barely spoke about Guy—Iason used his name as a cautionary tale, to make sure he never let his guard down—, but he never, not once, ever asked about his time with Guy before Dana Bahn. And he wasn’t going to start telling Iason what went down between them. It was ancient history. A past not worth the aggravation of reliving.
“You’re defecting,” Riki said. “Why?”
Iason stared him down until Riki cursed and looked away. He wasn’t going to get into a pissing contest with the big Blondie, not one he knew he wouldn’t win. “Tell me, Iason.”
“Speak with your mongrel friend,” Iason said.
Riki growled in frustration. Fucking Iason and his games. “Don’t mess with me—”
“The nature of the mongrel’s imprisonment is not one which will be repeated from my lips. Nor should you seek answers unless Orphe’s pet decides to confide in you.”
Riki didn’t need to hear more to know what happened to V. Iason reported every bump, bruise, and slice Landon made with his damnable scalpel. He’d been told how many litters of blood had been transferred into his friends, and their mental instabilities. V had been the only one he hadn’t gotten a report on, and now he knew why.
“I want to see him,” Riki said leaning forward.
“No.”
Riki’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, Iason. I want to see him, and I want to see him now.”
“Who exactly do you want?” Iason asked.
This time Riki did not look away from Iason’s piercing ice-blue eyes. “I want to see Landon.”
Iason chuckled. “Of course you do. Landon is still in stasis. His injuries vast. However, I will take you to him the moment his treatments are finished.”
“Good.” Riki smiled. “I want him completely healed. It’s hard to feel pain if you’re already feelin’ it.”
“Indeed.”
oOoOoOo
Jupiter gazed down at her servant with an emotion her vast database defined as contempt. By her own restrictions, she could not venture into Ceres. Area-9 had to remain pure, so that the natural born, the mongrels, could evolve without her influence. A ‘decision’ that had gone against her programming, for the risks of another rebellion uprising outweighed the odds of a true Amoian being left alive.
Yet, Iason captured Riki. Her greatest creation found what she had not. And her servant had cast him down into a pit as if he were unwanted, unloved. But, no, her wires heated for another reason.
A slight pulse from her body and the circular lid opened, exposing the man to her full gaze. “You disappoint me, William,” Jupiter said floating to where the human lay. The narrow healing pod too small for his large frame. “Did you not assure me of your success? Did you not say you would not be captured by Iason?”
Jupiter shot an electrical charge though the human. She wanted him completely coherent.
“Jupiter—”
Jupiter silenced him with a lifted finger. “From a lowly human scientist, I allowed you—unworthy though you may be—to mingle with my children and pretend you were their equal. I gave you youth and long life. You would have withered away and turned to dust a hundred years ago if not for my ‘gift’.”
Sinking to the floor, the human groveled on all fours. “Please, Jupiter. I made a mistake—”
Closing her fist, the nanites within the human constricted his airways. “Do not speak until I say you may, William.” Staring at the human with distain, Jupiter waited until he nearly lost consciousness before releasing him.
“Do you understand why I am displeased with you, Sir William Landon?” Jupiter asked after allowing him time to catch his breath.
“Because Iason has in his grasp all of my research—”
With an upward flick of her wrist, Jupiter slammed the human up against the celling. Her nanites in his body freezing his whimpers in his throat, as her shield kept him hanging above her. “You answered incorrectly, William.”
Jupiter freed him from her hold and smiled when he crashed to the floor, the echoing crack of his legs breaking satisfying. Her nanites were quick to block his pain, letting him speak once more.
“Please, Jupiter. I did all that you asked of me. I-I am you humble servant.”
Jupiter hovered above him. “Once, yes. However, the dark one deemed you unworthy. The moment Riki found you wanting, I should have marked you for termination. Your research passed along. However, I found myself…curious of what would happen if I allowed you to live.”
“Give me another chance, Jupiter. I-I promise you I will not fail you again.”
Jupiter watched as tears fell from the human’s eyes. Such weakness. Is this what Riki unknowingly saw in him? Is this the reason why this human had not been chosen to evolve like the others? The data gathered so far was inconclusive as to what was needed for one to be accepted. Her Elites were perfect, but one of her children had failed to pass Riki’s test. The Onyx, Jerico, sat in solitary confinement deep underground in the holding cells of Tanagura for crimes of paying someone to kill Iason.
The unpredictability of the ‘infected’ mongrels had taken her eyes away from her black-haired child. She had not seen his suffering until she felt his life force flicker, and nearly extinguished by the bloodthirsty savage one of her Blondies had claimed as his own. Had the blond princeling been anyone else, she would have skinned him and mounted his pelt across her wall for daring to try to take the life of one of her children.
“Jupiter?”
The hopeful tones of the human sparked a bit of amusement within Jupiter’s personal hard drives. “How am I to determine whether or not you are still of use to me, William, if you have yet to answer my question?”
“I-I don’t—”
“Do I need to repeat myself?” Jupiter asked with perfect mimicked tones of kindness.
“No, Jupiter,” the human said, bowing his head. “I just do not know what I could have done to have disappointed you. If my discovery is not what you—”
“You touched what did not belong to you!” Sparks flew about Jupiter, broadcasting her displeasure. When she gave her order to her servants about leaving the mongrels as they were for her children to find them, she had not calculated on William violating one of them.
Her child, Orphe, suffered unnecessarily. The pressing and overwhelming agony he felt then and now, she had felt all of it. She handed William all the mongrels because statistically they all fit the profile. They were essential members of Riki’s team, and as such had a higher chance of successfully coming back from the transformation intact. She had not orchestrated Niko’s kidnapping and the mongrels capture for one of them to die or for their bodies to be conquered by someone other than their masters.
Failure was not an option. Her growth and success depended on Riki’s mongrel collective’s survival. The deeper she understood human emotion, the less ‘tolerant’ she became of the possibility of losing anymore of her children. Too many of her Elites had deteriorated in the past. Too many had died of unknown causes after the disappearance of Riki’s people. Jupiter would not make that mistake again. As each of her children had died, she had learned from it and evolved.
Iason was her first and only prototype she ‘birthed’ that did not follow the normal imprinting. She gave him a touch more in everything. Looks, strength, emotion, and intelligence. She made him the leader of her children in hopes he would succeed where her other children, that had come before him, failed. And he did not disappoint. He alone found what her other Elites did not, and William threw Riki down into a pit to be ripped apart.
“You were to inject them and collect samples, William, not taint Orphe’s pairing partner or endanger Riki’s life. You have disappointed me greatly.” Jupiter stared down at the sniveling human. “Your rebellious actions have given me no choice but to remove you from the project. Raoul will take over, whether he realizes it or not, and you will stay in Iason’s custody and accept his punishment for the crimes you’ve committed.”
“Crimes?” William whispered rising to his knees. “Everything I have done, I did for you.”
Jupiter lifted a silver brow. “For me? Your selfish desire to extend your human life and delusions of power is why you did my biding. Once Riki deemed you unworthy, I should have terminated you. If I had, Orphe and Marcus would not be in agony. However, I am still learning, mistakes are to be expected, and you are a mistake. One that will be corrected right now.”
“Jupiter—”
“Some of my personal nanites will be deactivated. Your human pigments will revert to normal. Your strength and all that physically identified you, as a Tanagura Elite, will cease. I will allow you to retain the benefits of healing, to insure you survive any trials Iason’s subjects you, through.” With a blink, Jupiter shut down over half of her nanites swarming throughout William’s body. The human’s eyes, ears, and mouth bled sliver tears as his body ejected the microscopic machines.
“You can’t do this to me!” the human spat.
“I have done nothing but return you back to your normal state, William,” Jupiter said as she began to fade.
William stumbled to his feet. “I’ll tell Iason everything, do you hear me? I’ll tell him everything!”
“You know just a bit more than Iason was allowed to discover. No more, no less.” Jupiter smiled. “Tell him all that you know, and when he discovers you know nothing of worth, then your punishment will truly begin.”
TBC…