Crau: A SciFi Alien Gladiator Romance (Gladiators of Krix Book 5) by Miranda Martin & James D Horton

Author:Miranda Martin & James D Horton [Martin, Miranda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Crau

The pain suppressors have held consciousness at bay, but some change has triggered alertness. Unlike a normal male, I don’t have any in-between state. I’m alert, or I’m not. The moment they come to move me, I’m alert. The moment I’m alert, the pain returns.

The damage to my body and systems is extensive. Possibly too extensive. I don’t think the nanos and healing systems will be able to handle it. Two guards stand at the ready with shock batons while two more work to unshackle my wrists.

I see an opportunity to break free. I marshal my strength for a desperate attempt, but the moment my wrists come free of their bindings, my knees give out and I drop to the floor in a heap. The pain is a white-hot intensity that pushes at all my systems, threatening to overload. Failsafes activate and prevent a system shut down, but barely.

I try to push myself into a sitting position, but my left arm makes a whirring sound, then a whiff of burning plastic reaches my nose. The guards push and prod, ordering me to my feet, but I can’t. All I can do is lie on the floor. They prod me with their shock batons, which stresses my systems even further.

At last they give up and roll me onto a stretcher then carry me out of the torture room. I’m carried down a hall. A door opens with a loud screech of unused metal. They carry me into the small room and dump me unceremoniously onto the floor.

Their footsteps recede then another pair of feet appear next to my head. A man kneels next to me and touches my face. He leans in, inspecting. He touches and prods roughly. When he finishes at last, he stands up.

“I can’t do much,” he says to someone out of my sight. “He’s as much machine as flesh, and I’m not a mechanic.”

“Get him ready to fight,” Batius says from a long distance. “I don’t care if he wins, only that he walks onto the sands under his own power.”

“I don’t think—”

“I don’t pay you to think,” Batius says. “Do it.”

Footsteps recede down a hall. This must be the medicus. I have a file on him that flashes into my memory once I realize who he is. He kneels next to me.

“Medicus,” my voice is rusty and my throat raw from screaming and dehydration.

“Not that the title is going to do you much good,” he says. “I don’t know much about cybernetics.”

“Camilla?”

“What? Who?” he leans in closer, and I repeat her name. “She’s one of the humans, isn’t she? What is it about them that captures all you fighters? They have a pheromone, or what?”

I grasp at him weakly with my right arm. My fingers are numb and it’s hard to tell if they’re responding or not. I think I more paw at his arm than anything else.

“Camilla?”

“The humans are fine,” he says. “They’re treated better than the rest of us. Fucking status symbols is what they are.

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