Page 79 of Caged

She’s wearing far more muted colors than me, dressed in a pair of pants and a comfortable looking jacket. Her tail waves gently from side to side.

“Hey! Why aren’t you dressed like this?”

“Have you ever seen a Cirmos in a dress?” she retorts. I have to admit I have not. “This will get me in anywhere.” She continues, “Wait and see.”

Haxrix buckles on a set of plasma blasters under her coat and looks me up and down.

“Good choice. Plenty of space for what you’re going to be carrying,” she says, handing me a set of pistols and a couple of bands.

At her direction, I slide them up my thighs, where they draw in tight, and I snap the pistols to them. The flowing fabric actually hides the things from view.

Haxrix hands me a small black button. “This is to put the pistols into stealth. Press it and they’ll be undetectable by any scanner.”

“Really?”

“Probably,” Haxrix purrs. “If not, run like a Jiaka who’s just stolen from a Bognarok.”

SYLAS

Medius smiles nastily as his shadow soldiers size me up. There are five of the hulking things, more machine than flesh and more enhanced than either of those things.

They are what the Zavaro do best. My memory fires into life with the briefest flicker of searing pain as my body is subject to an incredible force.

The shadow soldiers are the end point in the “enhancement” process. Killing machines, designed never to let up, to never stop until their target is eliminated.

And this nova-day, their target is me.

But it’s not the shadow soldiers who interest me, it’s Medius. He seems to have shed the personal forcefield he was using outside of the dome, presumably because he feels safer with his soldiers at hand and me in restraints.

“Sylas.” He states my name like an epitaph. “You made it. Your opponents are here and…do you remember much more than before?”

“I remember you’re a vrexer who can’t be trusted and that I should kill you at the earliest opportunity.” I shrug. “Where is my mate?”

“The human.” Medius looks down at his hands, which flicker to pincers and back again. “Sweet and tasty, aren’t they, humans. It didn’t strike me that they would make mates for the Gryn but then I know very little about your species.”

My heart is torn in two. What has he done with Alex? And how does he not know about the Gryn when apparently I was one of a cohort the Zavaro attacked on an outpost?

Pain sears through my head and I wince.

“Ah, the memory is coming back, isn’t it?” he says with a snarl, his features morphing before snapping back.

“You could have just left me here to rot,” I growl.

“And you could have done me the courtesy of not escaping, stupid Gryn,” he retorts. “Do it,” he snaps at the Habosu with the smashed nose. “Do it now, and we can get this over with.”

I open my wings, but Medius fires a razor thin line at me from a blaster. It wraps around my feathers and my body, binding the wing to me and sending me off balance. The stuff is like Zio silk but sticky. I can’t snap it even if I want to, making flight impossible.

But flight isn’t everything. I unleash my claws, and with a roar, I snap my bonds as the Habosu lifts another blaster and lets rip with it. I freeze in anticipation of the blast, but instead there is a rush of air almost as fresh as Chohan and instead, unable to help myself, I inhale deeply.

“This should be interesting,” I hear Medius say from what seems like a long way away.

The whole room looks like it’s melting. The rough stone runs in rivulets around me. The shadow soldiers, the Habosu, and Medius elongate like they’re being pulled apart.

It is fascinating as I watch them spring back to what they were, for the floor to stop being lava and instead become crystal.

One of the Habosu is rather close, so I bat him away with the back of my hand like he is nothing, and he spirals away to the stars which have come out above me.

Such beautiful stars, they remind me of the night in the forest with my mate. A thought which has my cocks stirring as I bat away another Habosu.

---