Page 83 of Guardian's Legacy
"A clone?" I asked, but even as the words left my mouth, I knew that wasn't what I was seeing.
"Explain!" Sloane's cold voice made us turn to the entryway. She held the Ohrur that had been more than willing to talk to us in her clutches; her blaster was directed straight at his cock. "Who are they?"
"Darlams." The Ohrur said.
Sloane pressed the blaster harder against him.
He swallowed.
"What did you do?"
"We captured them and kept them alive for thousands of years," the Ohrur finally said.
I squeezed Xyrek when I felt a tremor go through his body.
"So let me get this straight. You killed all the females and imprisoned the men?" Sloane's voice was one hard edge.
"Not me. Our ancestors." The Ohrur confirmed with a pleading tone in his voice.
"Then what is all that stuff we saw in the other room? What did you do to the females?"
"There aren't many left," the Ohrur said matter-of-factly, without an ounce of remorse, only fear for his life in his voice. “We were tasked with finding alternative solutions."
"As in cloning Darlams and impregnating women?" Tharaax confirmed.
The Ohrur nodded. "The cloning… posed some problems. The specimens we bred didn’t have the Darlams’ sense of wrong and right. They were… messy."
"Like the ones on Morrakbarr," Vraax said. "I knew there was something off about them."
"They are efficient, but they tend to take pleasure from terminating their targets," the Ohrur said as if it were the most normal thing in the universe to clone other beings and experiment with them. It was as if the Space Guardians were dogs who had failed training.
Xyrek's hold on me tightened, and my heart went out to him. I could hardly imagine what he was going through. I leaned up and kissed him to let him know I was there and that he wasn't alone.
XYREK
It washard to describe all the emotions running through me. There was some relief that I wasn't a test tube baby, mixed with anger and fury for what the Ohrurs had taken from me. A need to avenge Allisaahn's and all the other females' deaths. I felt that it wouldn't be enough even if I were given the chance to kill every Ohrur in the universe. Never enough.
We brought the Ohrur informer to the breakroom of our ship. I’m sure he thought Sloane would let him live if he cooperated. She wouldn’t, of course, but we didn’t let him know that. Everybody was here. They all deserved to hear what he had to say to answer the last of our questions.
Nock stood strangely quietly in a corner, streaming. He had assured us that he would edit everything he had later and run it through us before he cast it. And it needed to be cast. The universe needed to know what the Ohrurs had done. Every one of their atrocities needed to be brought to daylight. The species would have to answer for what their ancestors had started and they had allowed to continue.
"It makes sense now that none of us, except Hannah and Sloane, can remember anything," Nova said when we were together.
"How's that?" Zoe asked.
"Well, we actually died. We are reincarnations, and reincarnations typically have no memory of their past lives." Nova explained.
"I thought Hannah was the High Priestess," Sloane joked. She didn't look quite as tense as she had before, but she was far from relaxed.
"Nova is right," Hannah said. "I don't remember everything, but I do know that I was the Keeper. The Keeper of the ancient gifts the Arkhevari brought us."
"Such as?" Luph fished.
"Things that I remember but can't tell you yet." Hannah smiled enigmatically.
"Fuck, now you sound just like the bastard Zapharos," Sloane cussed.
Hannah's smile didn't falter. "He's an ancient one."
