Chapter 55
Ryker
Silently, I listened to Tetra as she meticulously discussed her ideas for training. As the seconds turned into minutes, I felt the tension in my body slowly melt away. The shock of having my bath invaded by an ultra-hot naked space demon lessened as the reason for her intrusion became evident. Tetra only cared about pushing herself and growing stronger. After listening to her describe her sparring needs and expectations, I realized we may look different, but at the core, we were not so different.
Her explanation continued, and around the thirty-minute mark, I felt the steady cadence of her voice and the penetrating warmth of the bath begin to take hold of me, and I slowly let my eyelids drift closed. A few seconds later, I realized that Tetra had stopped talking, and I heard her quietly stand up and leave the room. Afraid I had insulted the woman, I let out the water and stepped out of the bath. The second my foot touched the floor, my suit crawled up my leg and covered my body in seconds. A plume of steam was released by the material, and I was completely dry.
I walked into the bedroom and found the closest side of the bed turned down with a handwritten note lying on the pillow. I picked it up and read content. “Ryker, I apologize for not realizing your apparent state of exhaustion and have excused myself for some solo exercises. Rest well.”
I set the note aside and crawled under the covers. I felt a sensation like a wave of warmth and coolness fluctuating throughout the bedding till it settled into the most comfortable temperature I could imagine. Everything about the bed was shifting, softening, or firming to adjust to my body perfectly, and after just a few seconds, I felt myself drifting off to sleep.
I opened my eyes and found myself laying in the exact same position I had been in when I fell asleep. I felt completely rested and had no lingering sleepiness trying to keep me in the bed. I threw off the blanket and turned, placing my bare feet on the ground. Immediately, they were encased by my suit, and I stood to leave the room. I called out to Red and said, “Red, can you lead me to Tetra, please?”
Wordlessly, Red overlayed the floor with the green arrows I had quickly grown to love and took off. I was led down the stairs and deeper into Tetra's home where I found an open archway that led to a gymnasium of sorts, bigger than the entire simulation that had hosted me until now. After looking around the room for just a moment, my eyes locked onto Tetra’s blurring form, and I marveled at her.
Tetra was in the center of a large wooden floor, spinning a metallic quarterstaff around her body while effortlessly maneuvering across the floor faster than a regular human could run. She would occasionally execute a flurry of kicks, flips, and staff blows while never stopping or slowing. Her lethal grace was something to behold, and when she finally came to rest, I involuntarily started clapping my hands as I approached.
Hearing my applause, Tetra was pulled out of her training fugue and snapped her head in my direction violently. She paused before recognizing it was me and frowned as she said, “Ryker, I thought you were going to get some rest?”
I smiled in appreciation of her concern and responded, “Yeah, the second my head hit the pillow, I was out. I must have gotten my eight hours because I feel great.”
Tetra’s concerned frown deepened, then she said, “Eight hours? I left you in the bath 45 minutes ago.”
I didn't try to hide my disbelief and said, “Red, is she right? How long did I sleep?”
Red’s tiny form rose out of the floor, and she bowed her head, saying, “She is right. Funny enough, this is the first time you actually slept since the integration. Apparently, your body no longer needs such an inordinate amount of sleep as it once did. We had hypothesized this outcome but didn't expect such a drastic drop in required downtime.”
Tetra walked over to me and carefully examined me from head to toe. After making two full orbits, she stopped and said, “This must have something to do with how you healed from your injuries so fast after our duel. I know that the Vren habitats can accelerate the rate of recovery by a substantial amount but nothing like this.”
I glanced to Tetra’s left, Silvar and Ruby both appeared at the speed of thought. Tetra noticed my drifting eyes and turned her head, finding open air. She gave me a dubious look then said, “What are you looking at?”
I studied her expression and looked again to my companions for guidance. Silvar was the first to break the silence and leveled a baleful glare on me, saying, “Boy, I'm done watching you flail around aimlessly. This little game of cloak and daggers needs to end. If she is going to be your mate, you need to be honest with her, or you're going to have problems down the road.”
Inadvertently, I yelled, “She’s not my mate!”
Silvar raised one eyebrow and said to Ruby, “I think the girl needs a little demonstration.”
Ruby smiled evilly at me and then at Tetra before saying, “I agree, a little demo for Rykers MATE could lessen the blow for our reveal.”
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Listening to Silvar and Ruby’s interaction gave me an ominous feeling that worsened when Red stepped up and said, “Sorry.”
Before I had a chance to protest, the arms of Ruby’s suit stiffened and pulled away from my torso, leaving me standing in the shape of the letter ‘T’. As I stood there, Tetra watched on in curiosity as a training robot in the corner of the room activated and made its way over to my location and stopped before me. As I began to protest, the fabric of my suit around my stomach parted, revealing my bare skin underneath. I watched on in horror as the six-armed robot lifted one arm and drew it back. As the arm settled behind the head of the metallic spider-like chassis, a blade resembling a spearhead slowly pushed its way out of the arm and flashed forward in a blur. Tetra leapt forward to intercept the blow with her staff but was too slow, and the blade plunged into my abdomen.
As the arm pulled out its blade, I felt blood begin to pour out of the wound. Tetra was at my side, confusedly trying to help by applying pressure with her bare hand, but I caught her gaze with mine and told her through gritted teeth, “Stand back and watch.”
She must have seen the conviction in my eyes because she nodded her head toward me and looked down in wonder as the blood that was painting the front of my stomach began flowing against gravity and seeping back into my slowly closing wound. Within a couple of minutes' time, I stood before her without a scratch on me or a drop of blood unaccounted for.
I was released from my crucifixial position and annoyingly griped, “You could have just asked, you know.” The robot waved one of its fingers in my direction then turned and placed itself back into its corner.
Turning, I found Tetra smiling from ear to ear. She walked up and placed one hand on my shoulder and without saying a word punched me in the face as hard as she could. I felt my nose flatten and stumbled backward in pain before looking at the woman through tear filled eyes and said, “What the hell was that for?”
She looked on with a childlike sense of wonder as my nose reinflated and assumed its normal anatomical position and I felt a tooth loosen and get pushed out by a brand new one. I spat out the tooth and angrily lashed out with a vicious kick that she easily blocked with one hand. I followed up my kick with a flurry of blows. Despite my efforts, Tetra easily read my movements and lazily was able to neutralize all of my attacks with minimal effort. After letting this go on for a full minute, I finally lost my patience and reached inside and felt the power begin to bubble to the surface. The red energy covered me and my speed and strength increased. I continued my onslaught with almost the same result. The only real difference was when she first tried to block one of my strengthened blows she winced in pain at the point of contact. From that point on, she would either dodge or redirect my blows till finally she had her fill and surgically broke both of my legs and arms in a matter of seconds.
I lay there looking up at my new sparring partner as she walked over to my prone position. She knelt next to me and said, “Are you alright? Do you need me to reset those?”
I shook my head and hissed out, “No, I am sure Ruby would love to take care of that.” The sound of all four of my limbs snapping back into place all at once was disgusting, but Tetra barely even reacted.
She leaned down and grabbed me by the arm and pulled it lightly, and I grunted in pain at the rough treatment and said, “Hey! I get it, it's cool to watch me heal, but that freaking hurts.”
She carefully folded her legs underneath her and said, “Ok, I think there are some gaps in my understanding that I would greatly appreciate you filled me in on.”
I rolled my neck to the side and said, “Red, how can we make it so she can see and interact with the others?”
Red looked to Ruby and received a thumbs up, then said, “Well, since I decided to bring Tetra to see you, we had anticipated that at some point in time we might run into this issue and developed a temporal lobe augmentation that would be able to receive data streamed directly from Mother's implant. This would make it possible for Mom to enable Tetra to see and hear her and by extension, Silvar. There are some other more tactical applications, but that’s for another time.”
I locked eyes with Tetra and said, “Seeing is believing. Are you willing to allow a couple A.I. friends of mine to poke around your brain for a bit?”
A distinctly uncomfortable look could be seen on Tetra's face, but in the end, her curiosity, or maybe desperation, won out. She nodded then said, “I don't think I have much of a choice. My actions have made me a traitor to my kind and an enemy to my emperor. If this will get me answers then so be it.”
My right arm stiffened and extended upwards to Tetra's and I bit my tongue to stop myself from yelling out. Ruby turned over my arm and opened my hand, and a large pill began to form, and Red said, “Simply swallow this and we will handle the rest.”
Tetra reached out, took the pill-shaped ball of nanobots, and threw it in her mouth. Before she was able to swallow, the nanobots dispersed and all began traveling to her brain. After a minute of waiting patiently, Tetra stumbled and fell. I pulled myself over to her side and watched as her eyes fluttered for one second and then the next she was staring past me. I looked over my shoulder and found Ruby and Silvar staring back at Tetra.
Rubbing at her eyes, Tetra shakily rose back to her feet and opened her mouth to ask a question, but Ruby beat her to the punch. Ruby stormed over to Tetra and stood horn to horn with the woman and said, “Listen here, bitch! You better think twice before you get naked in front of my man again.”
Tetra donned an irritated expression and put her hands on her hips before saying, “First of all, that’s my husband. Secondly, who are you?”
Ruby let out a cocky sniff and said, “You may not recognize me with all my grown-up curves, but I am Ruby. Red over there is a modified clone of me that Ryker and I made together. So, I am his baby momma and we had a good thing going before you decided to come along and ruin things!”
More confused than ever, Tetra stared down the A.I. and said, “Well, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would you copy yourself? The fleet doesn’t have enough resources to support two of you.”
A smug look of someone who knew they were superior eased its way onto Ruby’s face and she said, “That’s because I no longer reside in your fleet network. I created my own network of processors inside Ryker's nervous system using nanobot technology of my own devising.”
Tetra froze in place and mumbled dumbly, “Heresy…”
Ruby’s grin grew even larger at her shocked reaction and leaned in close to whisper in Tetra’s ear. “Now you listen and you listen good. If you do anything to get in my way I will have my nanobots in your brain lobotomize your skank ass. Kapeesh?”