Instead of settling down, she only seems to become more intensely aroused. Her inner thighs are slicked with wet discharge, her eyes are glazed, and there is a strange rattling quality to her breathing.
Her lips have a curious blue tinge which I have never seen in a human before. How strange…
“Silver?”
As I say her name her eyes roll back in her head and she falls limp, her sensuous form suddenly no more sensate than a rubber glove.
“MEDIC!”
“What’s wrong with her, Hermes?”
I feel guilty asking the question. I know exactly what is wrong with her. I came in her mouth and she swallowed it like the greedy little fuck pet she is.
“How many times have you spilled yourself down her throat?”
I did not expect such a crude question. Hermes is very restrained and quiet, for a scythkin. His horns are almost perpetually laid back against his head and his eyes do not so much burn with fire as smolder like red embers in his skull.
“I don’t know.”
“Think. It is important. In the last twenty-four hours, how many times has this human being swallowed a dose of your come?”
“Four, maybe five?”
“Figures,” he says, tapping a vial of somethingorother. I don’t know what half the contents of his apothecary station are. He is more than a medic. He is an artist. What Hermes cannot do with medicines is not worth doing.
“Tell me what the damage is.”
“In simple terms,” he says, looking at me with what I think must be disapproval. “She overdosed. You cannot allow your human to consume so much of your fluids. Scythkin come can have a euphoric effect on some humans, but it can also be toxic in high doses. You need to be more careful with her, unless you want to kill her.”
“I don’t want to kill her. I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Well, you’ve definitely hurt her,” he says, sort of absent-mindedly. I don’t think he realizes what he's saying. Hermes has a habit of telling the truth and not noticing the effect it has on those who are hearing it.
“Is she going to get better?”
“I’m going to treat her with fluids and some other bits and pieces, and she should feel better in a few hours.”
“I’m going to stay by her side.”
“It won’t make any medical difference, but sure, if it pleases you. You can sit by her bed and watch the treatment diffuse into her system.”
I sit and I wait. Two days she’s been on this ship, and we’re already in chaos. The IHPZ warned me about this. They told me that things simply start to unravel around Silver, like she’s some kind of one woman anomaly. Maybe they were right. Even lying in bed more or less comatose, she has an incredible power over me. I would never admit it to her, or anyone else. I can barely admit it to myself in the privacy of my thoughts — but that does not stop it from being truth.
Eight hours after Hermes’ treatment, her eyes open again.
“Ella,” she says. “Ella…”
She blinks, confused, and looks at me with eyes which do not really see me, so much as they see into some distant past or other place.
“Where’s Ella?”
“Who is Ella?”
“My daughter, of course,” she mumbles, messing with the sheets as if something is lost in them. “Where is she? I saw her a moment ago.”
“She’s still coming out of the sedation I put her under,” Hermes explains, appearing on the scene at just the right moment. “She’ll say all sorts of things.”
Silver lets out a wail of what I can only describe as despair. It is a sound which hits me in the very pit of my belly and makes my stomach churn. That is the sound of pain, of anguish.
“Ella, my baby!”
“What is she talking about?”
“Her baby, it would seem,” Hermes mutters, injecting her with something which makes her go quiet. The screaming has stopped, probably temporarily, but the anguish has gone nowhere. Silver is stuck in some memory of a time we never shared, looking for someone she must have loved very much.
“You think she has a baby?”
“She could have had a baby some time ago. There’s no evidence of a recent pregnancy, but she could quite easily have had a baby a decade or two ago. She would have been sufficiently fertile and old enough for that time.”
“She’s never mentioned a baby,” I murmur to myself.
“Have you asked?”
“There hasn’t been a lot of talking.”
“No. I don’t imagine her mouth has been free to do much in the way of talking,” Hermes smirks.
“Don’t talk about her like that.” There is an edge to my voice. I do not like her distress, and I do not like his disrespect. But I am the one I am really angry at. It is my fault she is in this state. I did this to her. I made her miserable, and I let her overdose on my seed, and now I am seeing the pain she has been hiding.
Humans do not go rogue the way Silver has without having a reason for it. This baby she’s whimpering for. I have a feeling that must be a clue.
“Can you give her something to settle her?”
“A baby?”
“No. Some kind of medicine to stop her from panicking.”
She’s crying in her sleep. There are tears running down her cheeks, rivulets of misery which speak to the intensity of her loss. Her shoulder shake and her cries grow louder.
“A gag?” Hermes suggests.
It is all I can do to stop myself from putting his head through his shiny medical terminal.
The Missing
Warden
Silver recovers over a period of days. Three, to be precise. Three days in which I try to get more information on her and come up empty handed. The IHPZ only have the details of her arrest, and a brief record of associated rumors. The Q’Ren did not keep records of their operatives, so she is a mystery — one I intend to solve now that Hermes has cleared her to return to incarceration.
When I see her again, I want to wrap her in my arms and hold her close. I want to apologize for hurting her, and promise her that I’ll never put her in harm’s way again. But those are not things a warden can say to a prisoner, so I settle for a question.
“Who is Ella?”
Her expression turns vicious. It is like watching a shadow pass over her emotional being, something dark and disturbing and ultimately tragic. It astounds me how much humans give away with the little motions of their face.
“How do you know her name?”
“You were calling it when you were sick.”
She shakes her head briskly. “Don’t ever say that name again.”
“Why?
She looks at me and there is nothing but hatred in her eyes. The kind of hatred which cannot be broken. I have seen this look before in the gaze of a matriarch who anticipates a threat to her clutch. It is a look of such complete loathing and utter viciousness that even I, in all my scythkin might, feel the pang of it inside my chest.
“Ella was my daughter,” she hisses. “You killed her.”
I assume she does not mean I personally killed her. I assume she is using the generic collective ‘you’ which applies to all scythkin. Either way, I am confused.