Deep Penetration; Alien Breeders I (2 page)

The room they were in, she discovered
from her new perspective, was empty except for the contraption
she’d climbed out of. It shouldn’t have been a surprise considering
how small the room was, and yet it seemed to speak somehow more of
a lab setting than a medical treatment room. She wasn’t certain why
unless it was the thing that had contained her itself—which didn’t
rule out the possibility that it was, in fact, a medical facility.
She might’ve been confined in it for any number of medical reasons.
Unfortunately, no firm sense of ‘why’ occurred to her.

The dark one studied her with patent
interest as she moved toward him. He waited until she’d halted in
front of him questioningly—several moments past that, in point of
fact—before he turned and led the way to the door. It slid open
silently, disappearing into the wall beside it and Emerald saw a
corridor outside. Rather than directional light, the walls,
ceiling, and floor seemed to glow, although the light wasn’t
phosphorescent but white. Emerald looked around curiously as they
left the room, but there was not only nothing to see, there was
nothing the least bit familiar about it to jog memories.

The two men fell into step alongside
her. She glanced up at them and discovered they were taller than
she’d thought, closer to seven feet than the average six of a
human, for she wasn’t a short woman even though she wasn’t
particularly tall for her own species. She felt short beside
them—dainty, in fact. She couldn’t decide whether she liked the
feeling or not, but she was inclined to think not. If they’d been
attractive human males—maybe—but she wasn’t sure she would’ve liked
it even then. In her current situation, it only seemed to emphasize
her disadvantage.

Thankfully, the trek wasn’t a long
one. She’d felt weak and heavy and awkward from the moment she’d
gotten up. She was tired to the point of dizziness by the time they
halted at another door. When it opened, she saw a room almost as
stark as the one they’d left. It contained a real bunk, however,
and a table and two easy chairs. Ignoring the bed, she headed to
the closest chair and plopped into it weakly.

“
Do you remember your
name?”

Emerald sent a sharp look at the dark
haired alien. “Why wouldn’t I?” she asked tautly.

He frowned and sent a wry look at the
other man. “I’m Tariq.”

“
My name is
Koryn.”

Emerald glanced from Tariq, the dark
one, to Koryn, the fair ‘slender’ male, wondering at her reluctance
even to tell them her name. What was the sense of ‘wrong’ nagging
at her, as if she was supposed to keep everything about herself
‘secret’? Shaking it after a moment because it seemed more
imperative to convince them that she had her memories, she
responded, “Emerald.”

Both of them looked surprised. “This
is the name of stone considered precious, correct?”

Emerald felt her face heat. “It’s
still my name,” she said stiffly.

“
For the color of your
eyes?” Koryn asked.

Emerald glanced at him, searching her
mind. It was dismaying that she didn’t know. She hadn’t even known
her eyes were green. She glanced down at the question, though, and
stared at the lock of hair across her shoulder. It was red, a dark
wine red. How could she know that, know what wine was and the color
red, when she couldn’t seem to remember anything at all? “I’m
Irish,” she said, the words tumbling from some deep recess of her
mind without any attempt to draw them forth. “Of Irish descent,
anyway. It’s a trait of my Irish heritage—the green eyes and the
red hair.”

Tariq tilted his head curiously. “What
else do you remember?”

Nothing! Instead of yielding to the
panic, she took the offensive position. “I don’t remember how I got
here and I don’t know why I’m here! Am I a … prisoner?”

The men exchanged a look she found
hard to decipher. “No,” Koryn said tightly after a prolonged
moment.

“
Then I can
leave?”

“
Where would you
go?”

Emerald threw a frightened look at
Tariq at the question. His expression tightened but she had the
sense that he was more annoyed with himself than her.

“
You’ve been … asleep for
a long time. We’re just trying to discover what you remember,”
Koryn said soothingly.

Emerald swallowed a little
convulsively, her mind taking flight at that and scrambling madly
again for memories that weren’t there. The suggestion, it seemed to
her, was that she’d been in a coma and that suggested something
awful had happened to her. She looked down at her lap, trying to
remember if she’d noticed any scars when she’d seen she was naked.
Nothing jumped out at her, but then she’d been too unnerved by her
nakedness to really search for healing scars. Still, she didn’t
feel anything that suggested healing wounds or even the tightness
of a scar, or muscle that didn’t work quite right. She lifted a
hand to her face.

“
There are no scars,”
Tariq said, his voice almost harsh.

She flicked a glance at him, relieved,
but still dumbfounded. “I don’t understand. Why was I asleep so
long?” She frowned, thinking. “Was I in stasis for some reason?
Traveling in space? Is that I how I got here? This is a ship, isn’t
it?”

“
We’re on Earth. We found
you here.”

Why couldn’t she remember being found
then? “You? You mean you and Koryn?”

He seemed to hesitate. “The …
androids.”

He’d meant to say something else. She
stared at him, trying to figure out what he’d almost said, but she
came up empty. “Why are you here … on Earth?” If that was actually
where they were and she found that they’d been elusive enough in
their answers that she didn’t trust either one. She didn’t feel as
threatened as she had at first. They didn’t seem to mean her any
harm, but that didn’t necessarily mean they didn’t.

The men exchanged a look she found
impossible to interpret. “There are some things that it will be
better for you to take your time and remember on your own. We’ve no
desire to influence you, when the end result, perhaps, would be the
development of false memories due to suggestion,” Koryn answered
finally.

It disturbed her that they knew she
had amnesia, but what he’d said seemed to suggest they weren’t
responsible. Could she trust that, though? “So you’re saying you
can’t, or won’t, tell me why you’re here?”

“
You don’t mean to rest
until you have some answers, do you?” Tariq asked wryly, glancing
at Koryn. It wasn’t actually the sort of look that asked
permission, but it was something like that, as if he was consulting
Koryn.

It occurred to her abruptly, that
Koryn must be something like a medic. Tariq seemed to defer to him
primarily when the answer to a question might upset her. What would
that make Tariq, then?

“
She should have food,
anyway,” Koryn said decisively moving to a panel on one wall. When
he’d depressed the button, he spoke into it in a language that was
so clearly not Earthly in origins that it shot a fresh jolt of
adrenaline through Emerald’s system.

“
We are of the Anunnaki,”
Tariq said. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Emerald stared at him, blinking while
she tried to access a memory that seemed to tickle her mind, just
out of reach. She frowned, straining harder to grasp it and finally
gave up. “It almost seems … familiar somehow. Why is that? Are our
people … allies?”

Tariq frowned. After a moment, he
crossed the small room and settled on the bunk Emerald had decided
to ignore. “It’s curious that you used that particular word. It
suggests a military alliance. Are you a politician? Or a
soldier?”

Emerald felt the color leave her face
and return with a vengeance. She bit her lower lip in frustration.
There really didn’t seem much point in trying to support the
pretense that she had memories, though, when they clearly knew she
didn’t. “I don’t know.”

Koryn settled in the other chair.
“It’s alright,” he said soothingly. “I think you’ll find it easier
if you don’t work too hard to remember.”

“
I had a head injury,”
Emerald said abruptly.

“
Did you?”

There was enough curiosity in the
question that it undermined Emerald’s certainty that that was what
had happened to her. Wouldn’t they know if they’d treated her?
“What else would explain the fact that I can’t remember things?”
she asked, an edge to her voice that was more fear than anger. What
weren’t they telling her?

Koryn sent a tightlipped look in
Tariq’s direction. Tariq shrugged, but she wasn’t certain if it was
a dismissal of Koryn’s concern or her question. His next statement
seemed to imply the latter. “There are other things that might
account for the lack.”

“
Like what?”

He smiled abruptly. Emerald felt her
belly quiver, but she didn’t have to search for the reason behind
it. His smile was as beautiful as he was, making it instantly,
abundantly clear why they seemed alien when they looked so human.
They were flawlessly perfect—both of them—and it wasn’t just the
perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth he displayed. His mouth
curled in a perfectly uniform smile and displayed two perfectly
shaped and identical dimples, one in either cheek—in the exact same
spot.

In nature, at least human nature,
there was no such thing as perfect symmetry. “You aren’t … at all
like I expected you would be.”

Emerald frowned slightly. It actually
sounded like it was intended as a compliment, but it made her
wonder how he’d expected her to be—and why he’d had any
expectations at all.

Because he’d been studying her when
she was unconscious and vulnerable.

She had mixed feelings about that that
she couldn’t unravel or understand beyond the fact that she was
flattered and dismayed at the same time.

“
Illness … other trauma,”
Koryn answered her question instead of Tariq.

She performed an internal inventory,
but although she felt weak, that suggestion to account for her lack
of memories didn’t seem closer than an accident. Maybe they’d
zapped her with something that had caused the amnesia?

“
But you think I’ll
remember?”

“
We have great hope that
you will remember at least some things.”

“
Why?”

Tariq lifted his brows but something
flickered in his eyes.

“
I know why I want to
remember. I’m just curious that it seems important to
you.”

“
It’s important to your
peace of mind,” Tariq responded smoothly. “That’s sufficient,
surely?”

It was and it wasn’t. She needed it,
but she had the sense that they needed or wanted her memories as
much as she did and maybe that explained why they weren’t willing
to give her ‘suggestions’ that might produce those ‘false memories’
Koryn had mentioned? She might have pursued that except that the
door opened and a third man entered. He was clearly of the same
race even though he looked a good bit shorter—at least a half a
head shorter, although still tall compared to a human male—and,
unlike them, his hair was close cropped to his head. Military, her
mind supplied, although she had no idea where the thought had come
from.

He brought a tray in, set it on the
small table between the chairs, bowed and departed.

Emerald stared at him until the door
closed. “He doesn’t speak English?” she guessed.

“
He wasn’t programmed to,
no.”

Emerald glanced at Tariq sharply,
considering that. “You’re saying …?”

“
He’s an android. They are
both biological—externally, anyway—and mechanical. They serve
us.”

Emerald frowned doubtfully, going over
what she’d seen in her mind, but she couldn’t think of anything
that suggested he was a machine. “He didn’t look like a machine …
or act like one.”

Tariq shrugged. “Nevertheless, he was
‘born’ in a lab.”

“
Do they have names?” she
asked curiously.

“
That was my
assistant—Roth,” Koryn responded.

Assistant? Did that imply they worked
in a lab? It didn’t seem like the sort of term one would use in a
medical sense. He would’ve said nurse, wouldn’t he? “He’s not a
soldier, then? What does he assist you with?”

This time it was Koryn who smiled and
made her belly shimmy. He spread his hands wide in a gesture. “In
whatever way I require assistance.”

“
What made you think he
might be a soldier?” Tariq asked curiously.

Emerald frowned. “The hair. It looks
like a military cut.”

Koryn removed the cover over the tray
and set it on the floor. “Eat … while it’s hot.”

Emerald’s stomach growled as soon as
the aroma hit her, but she wasn’t particularly thrilled to see it
looked like nothing but broth of some kind. Chicken,
maybe?

How could she know so many things and
not remember anything about herself beyond her name, she wondered
with sudden frustration? What sort of brain damage could she have
that would allow her to talk and think, to identify what most
everything around her was—even to know about things she had no
reason to know about?