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Valishnu Rising: Symbiont Wars Saga, #6
Di Chogan Swan
Azioni libro
Inizia a leggereLunghezza: 395 pagine7 ore
- Editore:
- Chogan Swan
- Pubblicato:
- Mar 14, 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781393234326
- Formato:
- Libro
Descrizione
Una has just been born. Will the world survive her advent?
On the outside, Una is a beautiful alien female who can attract men or women with a whiff of pheromones and a flick of her tail.
She's wise in the ways of the world, and her body will live a thousand years.
She seems to have it all together.
But her mind was built from the memories of two damaged castoffs from races whose war with each other has divided and ravaged the galaxy for millennia.
Will she be the peace child?
Or will the wars begin anew?
Lose yourself in the first-movement finale of the Symbiont Wars Saga
Praise for the Symbiont Wars Saga:
5 Stars! First Contact Like No Other!
I could not believe how great this book is! I picked it because of the tail but it turned out that that wasn't the best part of the story.
5 Stars! Spellbinding!
I loved part 1 and part 2 was even better. More wonderful characters, people you get to know and care about. Thrilling action and heart wrenching drama. Can't wait to get the next one!
5 Stars! WARNING this series is addictive!!!!
It had destroyed my sleep schedule for the past week.
Even when I get to sleep I wake up needing to reread something and then end up reading further ... Would you please just go ahead and feed my addiction so I don't have to get help for it?
If you enjoyed Avatar or The Fifth Element you'll love reading this story. If you're comfortable with the notion that a female can be a badass, this book might be part of your new favorite series.
Warnings! Reading the first chapters with the Preview feature can lead to addictive behavior. Go ahead... we dare you.
Parts of this story contain graphic adult situations.
Informazioni sul libro
Valishnu Rising: Symbiont Wars Saga, #6
Di Chogan Swan
Lunghezza: 395 pagine7 ore
Descrizione
Una has just been born. Will the world survive her advent?
On the outside, Una is a beautiful alien female who can attract men or women with a whiff of pheromones and a flick of her tail.
She's wise in the ways of the world, and her body will live a thousand years.
She seems to have it all together.
But her mind was built from the memories of two damaged castoffs from races whose war with each other has divided and ravaged the galaxy for millennia.
Will she be the peace child?
Or will the wars begin anew?
Lose yourself in the first-movement finale of the Symbiont Wars Saga
Praise for the Symbiont Wars Saga:
5 Stars! First Contact Like No Other!
I could not believe how great this book is! I picked it because of the tail but it turned out that that wasn't the best part of the story.
5 Stars! Spellbinding!
I loved part 1 and part 2 was even better. More wonderful characters, people you get to know and care about. Thrilling action and heart wrenching drama. Can't wait to get the next one!
5 Stars! WARNING this series is addictive!!!!
It had destroyed my sleep schedule for the past week.
Even when I get to sleep I wake up needing to reread something and then end up reading further ... Would you please just go ahead and feed my addiction so I don't have to get help for it?
If you enjoyed Avatar or The Fifth Element you'll love reading this story. If you're comfortable with the notion that a female can be a badass, this book might be part of your new favorite series.
Warnings! Reading the first chapters with the Preview feature can lead to addictive behavior. Go ahead... we dare you.
Parts of this story contain graphic adult situations.
- Editore:
- Chogan Swan
- Pubblicato:
- Mar 14, 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781393234326
- Formato:
- Libro
Informazioni sull'autore
Chogan Swan is a subversive, wild-eyed, non-violent neoRevolutionary who lives in the country of the mind in the world of thoughts in the universe of ideas.
In this tiny corner of the space-time continuum, Chogan studied Philosophy and later collected graduate degrees in Business and Systems Engineering from a major US university renowned for its abundant alcohol consumption and passion for a particularly barbaric blood-sport. Go Hokies! :)
These studies, however, led to an interest in Systems Thinking and how to work together to save the world for everyone.
It won't be easy.
(But then what is that's worth having?)
Philosopher, poet, prophet, revolutionary--sentients in various realities have used these words to describe Chogan. Of course, the truth is in the interstices.
The motivating force for Chogan's ... 'messages in bottles' to the multiverse ...
has been succinctly captured by the words of Harlan Ellison …
"Writing is a holy chore.
... the only organism of quiet communication left to us.
In the soft moments when we huddle alone with our thoughts, we turn to words
... And there--in the moment when (sentient beings) choose to reason--we can reach them.
It is a heavy responsibility."
Correlati a Valishnu Rising
Anteprima del libro
Valishnu Rising - Chogan Swan
Author
Dedication
I dedicate this story to you, reader. I may not know exactly who you are, but without knowing you are out there thinking, considering and—I hope—enjoying your time with my characters and thoughts, none of this would be worthwhile. I hope this story helps you on your way, fans the fire in your soul and brightens your life.
CHOGAN SWAN
A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices. – George Orwell
CHAPTER 1 – BENT
HumanaH’s eyes drifted along the horizon as she let the motorcycle slow and drift to a halt alongside the gritty asphalt. Clouds scudded across the moon, sending shadows racing over the desert. Near the ground, the wind was softer, though the gusts still had the strength to lift stinging sand as high as her bare thighs.
The sensation did not bother her. Compared to what the impacts had been like at 200 kilometers per hour a few moments ago, it was barely a tickle. Her body armor would have protected her skin, but she'd left it behind, preferring to have more freedom of movement.
These days there were no police patrolling the roads to object to her lack of clothing or—more likely—to her tail.
She guided the motorcycle off the highway and into the lee of a stand of trees then through a narrow ravine with an overhanging rock ledge. With a snap, she deployed the kickstand into the rocky ground and let the auto-shutdown kill the engine.
The roar of the pipes fell silent.
In the sudden quiet, the engine and pipes of the custom-armored enduro Intruder ticked a soft retardando as they cooled. She dismounted and whipped her tail along her legs to brush away the sand.
Since she’d lost her old self and become HumanaH, physical discomfort—even pain—had become a welcome distraction from her mental torture. At times, it felt as though her mind had never left the cave where DuGwaedH had stolen years of her memories to implant his own.
Even now, after building walls around those dark, foreign intrusions, the walls themselves served as a reminder of what she had lost. And the walls didn’t always hold the dark away.
So now, she found herself taking careless chances. She couldn't let go of the hope of freedom from the horror behind the walls—and death might bring that freedom. Duty was all that kept her tied to life.
... in spite of the pain
... and the dreams.
ShwydH would have chided her for leaving her body armor. He often objected to the chances she took with her life. But then, his own life was linked to hers through the antidote she gave him daily.
He had motive.
Her own motives were tenuous.
Is that why you are doing this? You think to slip the leash of Duty?
Again, she wondered what had compelled her to offer to provide ShwydH the daily antidote for the captivating poison. Tiana had not asked it of her. Perhaps it was only the simple instinct that made a drowning sailor grasp a lifeline.
Keeping ShwydH alive grounded her here when she wanted to slip through the veil and into the dark.
The 4-day supply of antidote she’d left behind for him would no doubt trouble him—now that she was beyond his slight influence on her behavior.
He didn't even know where she had gone.
Settling the pack between her shoulder blades, HumanaH walked away from the bike and into the wilderness. The crèche was only twenty kilometers from here, and she wouldn't risk the sound of the bike leading anyone near it—or masking her own awareness of her surroundings as she approached. After all, it would be more than her own life she was risking.
She triangulated her position and vector into the wilderness from the nearby peaks of the Guadalupe Mountains then slid through a boulder field, moving through the shadows and sporadic moonlight. After a few minutes of walking, she stretched her legs into a stride that would take her to her destination in an easy forty minutes.
Running was good. Perhaps she would push the pace to increase the soothing pain of physical exertion. She analyzed the smells coming to her and detected nothing out of place, so she ran ...
Faster.
Her senses filled up as she moved, absorbing input from: her body's exertion; the starry sky; the calls of coyotes and the constant navigation of obstacles ... all the cacti, boulders, arroyos and poisonous creatures best left undisturbed. For a time, her world was too full of sensation for emotional pain to intrude, and she imagined old friends running beside her—their four legs to her two—until her mind turned back to her self-appointed mission.
Am I doing the right thing?
In her condition, how could she know? One human storybook she had read in 1938 had used a word to describe what she was ...
Bent.
Yes, she was bent, and so was ShwydH
Two wrongs didn't make a right, but two bent boards could be fastened together to make a straight beam.
Did that analogy hold? It was hard to tell. She knew her own judgment was suspect, but somehow she couldn't stop herself from reaching out for ...
For what?
Redemption, whispered the voice inside—the tyrannical voice of hope.
In a short half-hour she was near the crèche entrance. She'd circled behind it first, making sure she could smell any threats, no matter what direction the wind came from.
She was the only sentient for kilometers.
After pausing to inspect the entrance from a distance and finding it undisturbed, she leapt across the ten-meter patch of sand to land at the hidden entrance.
Her fingers found the camouflaged touch-pad and tapped in the combination. Then, with a grunt of exertion, she pulled the 1,000-kilogram boulder away from the entrance. Another keypad allowed her through the armored steel door into the crèche.
This is it.
She’d given Tiana the locations and codes for most of the other chambers in the crèche system built over the last 125 years, but this one HumanaH had kept to herself. The reason for that had remained unclear to her over the last three years. But then an idea had taken root in her.
And now she was here.
... on the edge of a precipice.
HumanaH paused before the chrysalis. It was ripe, ready to come forth, only a month away from auto-awakening.
The latest mission Tiana had assigned to ShwydH and HumanaH would take them away to the South Atlantic for months, perhaps years. Now was her only chance.
This morning when HumanaH had awakened—still rattling from her dream of the narrow, water-filled cave in Maryland and electric shocks coursing through the water into her body—her mind was clear on what she should do.
Gamble.
HumanaH shuddered—considering the investment tied up in this still empty branch and the possible consequences if the gamble failed. But then, she straightened her shoulders and strode to the crystal-loading chamber above the chrysalis.
The chamber opened when she stroked her hand over its covering. She removed the first crystal from her bagua and used it to replace the one in the chamber.
She turned the old crystal in her hand. Its purple depths were shadowed like deep water. She'd placed it in the chamber in 1933 when she and Edward had been running from the niiaH’s minions across a country in the grip of the Great Depression. The crystal still contained all her life's memories up until that time.
Now the Great Depression seemed like a vacation.
She tucked away the old crystal and spliced the new one into the matrix. Next, she teased out a new thread from the chamber and connected that to the matrix as well. She removed a second crystal from her bagua—this one contained much more— and more recent—recorded memory.
She set the chamber to reload the crystal after the first had released its engrams into the brain's synapses. Then she set the pod to begin the wake-up cycle after the memories transmitted.
From her middle finger, she fed a single filament into the circuit to run a test, to make certain the connections were good. When both pods returned a positive feedback loop, she closed the chamber.
Moving to the chest against the wall next to the wardrobe, HumanaH opened the lid, removed an envelope and replaced it with another. She added more contents from her pack then closed the chest.
On her way to the shower stall, she took a sharp-tipped marker from a pocket in the pack. She wrote on the door in large nii script and followed the message with the current human date and time. She signed it and left the marker on the ledge of the wardrobe door, but immediately changed her mind and first took it back to the shower to write a postscript.
After a final lingering look at the chrysalis, she left the crèche, locked the door and shoved the boulder back in place.
After erasing the scars of the boulder's tracks through the sand, she turned and leapt to the nearby rocks. She turned again to check. The sand around the opening showed no sign of her passage.
For two full minutes, she paused to listen and let the smells of the surrounding environment drift to her. The sun was not yet up; the desert was cool and quiet. She would take another circuit around the crèche before returning to the bike. Amelie and Darmien would enjoy the chance to stretch their legs.
At least she still had her early memories of them. Seven centuries of their companionship still helped her hang on to a wisp of sanity.
Sometimes they even spoke to her.
CHAPTER 2 – SPLICED
The event stream poured into a mind as yet unconscious: birth, growth, years passing in linear fashion, time filling a mind with experiences and decisions that would shape an outline for character and personality.
An outside observer might reflect on the preponderance of darkness, neglect and cruelty of the events in the stream. But to what else could the mind compare it?
If it were already awake and able to compare.
Things would be as they were ... expected.
The mind continued filling, but still it was unaware. In the crèche, minds did not usually awaken as they filled and the past went unnoticed until the body received the enzymes that ended the torpor of long hibernation.
Then, light or dark, it would bloom....
Sentience.
∆∆∆
ShwydH woke to darkness.
Somewhere skin tickled as something ... some things ... peeled away like spots of slowly detaching tape that tugged upon disengaging. The sensation was startling. He had no notion of what was causing it; just that it was a skinlike sensation. The start it gave him didn't translate to movement from his body—so far as he could tell.
He felt disconnected, as though he were dreaming ... no, not dreaming ... floating in warm water.
He tried to move, to open his eyes, but nothing changed.
Am I blind? Paralyzed?
Now that he thought about vision, he noticed that a sensation—perhaps a promise of light—shimmered somewhere like faint illumination on the outside of closed eyes. But he couldn’t find the switch to open them.
Where am I?
He considered the last thing he could remember. It had been time for his daily dose of antidote to the abiding poison. He’d come to HumanaH, tilting back his head to allow her easy access to his neck. His libido had stirred, as always, at the smell of her ... like tamarind, bergamot and cinnamon if he were to compare it to earthly scents.
Her breath brushed his throat, like the promise of a kiss then— unexpectedly—her arms wrapped around his body, as though to keep him from falling. The soft popping sensation of her teeth over his vein followed.
Then ... nothing.
What else can I feel?
He tried to find more sensations for what seemed a long time with no results. He couldn’t even stir up strong emotions.
Am I dead.
He hoped not. It would be a boring way to spend the afterlife. But perhaps there was a hell—as some humans thought. If this continued, it had possibilities for hellishness, but it wasn't as though he didn't deserve a hell where he was absolutely powerless. After all, on the scales of justice—even though he'd changed his allegiance away from the galaxy-eating niiaH to the philosophically ethical nii—he wouldn't expect three years of that to outweigh three centuries of murder. No, not when his only other option to changing sides was dying from poison.
When he’d been captured, Tiana had given him a non-eradicable substance that required a daily antidote. One that only she—or one of her branch-sisters—could provide.
Before that, he had survived the brutal niiaH society for three hundred years by learning and using a strategic ruthlessness that planned for contingencies on a longer timeline than those who surrounded him.
But when he'd been shipwrecked on Earth at the beginning of the 19th century—at odds with his superior officer—ShwydH had found himself running out of options.
Stranded on a primitive world without access to the body-jumping technology available in the niiaH empire, ShwydH was sure to die in another six centuries unless he could get back to the empire. But he was almost sure the nii had managed to eradicate the NiiaH Empire. Furthermore, DugwaedH, his superior officer, would kill him long before he could possibly get back anyhow.
So ShwydH had compromised his own genetic material—irreversibly throwing away half of his remaining life expectancy. By keeping DugwaedH from using the DNA to revive the body-jumping technology on Earth, he'd made certain DuGwaedH would die here as well.
Stalemate.
And now DuGwaedH was dead and burned to ash, but ShwydH's ruining his DNA might have been the deciding factor in Tiana's decision to allow him to live.
He might be the last of his race alive....
If I AM alive.
The nothingness seemed to last forever. But then came dreams.
First, he dreamed of a growing awareness in a warm fluid environment like his own memories of the womb, but different this time ... more secure, peaceful.
Then pressure.
Then light.
Eyes open to see, not his own mother and the stark walls of his mother's bedroom and her slave hosts serving her, but a different female somewhere else.
His conscious thoughts faded, but the images ... sensations ... memories continued longer and more lucidly than any dream he'd ever had.
When he woke again, the memories of a childhood not his own filled his mind, and an open-eyed view of a polished stone chamber with soft light filtering down from above filled his senses.
In the memories, the child knew her name to be Riniana Tiana.
Which of the Tiana branches had done this to him?
Am I ShwydH or Tiana?
The memories of ShwydH came first, ergo, he was ShwydH, now remembering Riniana Tiana's childhood. Logic dictated it must be so, like the law of geologic precedence. Without that anchor, he would have been swept away, ensorcelled by the life of a child loved and valued—not to mention one who had a will as vast and strong as a battleship's armored hull.
That meant the awareness who was seeing the stone chamber was ShwydH—a ShwydH who could remember details from another life.
He noted that his view of the stone ceiling scanned in response to his curiosity about the surroundings. Relief followed the realization that he could look around. He tried to move and found that now it was possible.
So he felt for the controls of his body.
Something was different.
ShwydH sat up and looked down.
This was not his body.
CHAPTER 3 – IDENTITY
The act of staring at long, smoothly muscled legs tapering upward from deceptively delicate-seeming springheels and feet was accompanied by spikes of panic. They were admirable legs, but where they joined, something was missing.
Male genitalia.
In the place where one would have expected those organs, a mons pubis framed by hips forming a distinctive feminine curve remained despite all expectations.
A narrow, well-formed hand reached out and explored the small breasts that formed double arches above the ridged muscles of the abdomen.
The nipples were incredibly sensitive.
Darkness eclipsed the view as eyes closed tight.
Think!
Did the laws of geologic precedence that had served before fail as a logical anchor? The notion brought on a dizziness that made the room swirl.
No!
The memories of ShwydH's birth had come before the memories of Riniana Tiana's birth. The analogy of geologic precedence must logically guide, and a guide was needed before sanity failed.
But the control of this body had not come until the childhood memories of Riniana Tiana had been accessed. The knowledge of how to use this body was clearly tied up in those memories.
Thoughts raced through a mind untethered.
Memories had not been invaded. It was not what DuGwaedH had done to HumanaH. All the ShwydH memories were in place, so far as they went. ShwydH's memories, poured into an empty brain. Then—after awareness was established—new memories had been added from Tiana's childhood. Now, both were housed in a nii branch body.
HumanaH had told him enough for an idea of how the nii went about their longevity procedures—methods unlike the cannibalistic tactics of the niiaH who took over the bodies of their own offspring.
There was still the overwhelming question that needed an answer.
Who am I?
At least there was only one awareness.
One.
That was a useful place to start.
Did one have an attachment to the ShwydH identity? Certainly more memories were collected there. The surprise of failing to find a penis attested to an attachment to the identity. Perhaps the answer might lie in the memories.
One opened eyes again and looked around.
In the dim chamber, the straight-lined shapes invited.
One might explore.
The smell of the rock walls suggested they might be limestone. Though the odor—filtered through unfamiliar synapses—was odd. The Riniana Tiana memories—which spanned only a short time—held no formal study of geology, especially Earth geology.
With caution, one put feet on the smooth rock floor, braced buttocks on the elevated stone table and tried to stand. After staggering, one quickly found balance and moved to the nearest object. It proved to be a shower stall.
Though light was dim, one could make out writing, in HumanaH's familiar style, that covered the glass door.
ShwydH ...
Clearly, HumanaH thought one would be ShwydH, but one was not yet convinced.
... the water for the shower is plentiful and drinkable, but read the letter I left in the trunk before doing anything else.
An arrow drawn on the door pointed the way to another straight-lined shadow, lower and near the wall. One continued past the shower to the trunk and lifted its lid. The chamber filled with light. Somehow, a lighting system had activated. The entire chamber, a dry cave, roughly spherical and twenty meters across, was now clearly visible.
An envelope labeled ‘Read First’ lay atop the chest's other contents. One took the envelope in hand and opened it easily. Riniana Tiana must have achieved great small-motor dexterity at seven.
The letter was written on tough ‘stone paper’.
ShwydH, I am sure you have many questions, but I will only answer one at this time: I have not told anyone else about this.
For now, however, you have more immediate concerns. Your body needs sustenance right away, and you may be unable to sense how urgent the need is. You need to follow these directions immediately.
At least 24 hours will have passed from when you first woke, and your body could soon have a dangerous reaction to its lack of fuel.
it will be safe to drink from the shower as you wash off the residue from the crèche. But before you eat anything, insert the gourd-shaped pod that hangs above the bench into the opening of your genitalia. Your body will subsume the contents automatically. After the contents are subsumed, move the pod deeper inside until it is subsumed as well. Do this soon. Your life depends on it.
One put the letter down and looked back at the bench where the pod hung suspended from a lattice network above the body-sized opening at the lower end where one had rested.
The pod certainly seemed large to take inside oneself in the manner described.
Shower first.
One opened the shower door, stepped inside, and turned the handle. Needle-fine jets of water hammered one’s skin, making it tingle as the integument's sensory net hydrated. A bar of soap in a wax-paper wrapper rested in the soap dish. One opened the wrapper and tentatively soaped the female body. It felt as though one were taking liberties that made one want to ask pardon. One hardened one’s resolve and continued, even washing between the legs.
Besides, who could one ask for permission? The childhood memories that had granted one the ability to move perhaps?
As water sluiced over skin into one’s dust-dry mouth and throat, one’s eyes strayed again to the spot above the bench where hung the enormous pod that one would have to deal with next.
Your life depends on it.
One turned off the water, opened the door and—leaving a trail of footprints puddling behind—walked to the pod. It was about the size of a 2-liter bottle, but once the liquid inside had been subsumed, it would hopefully collapse to something more manageable. Placing both hands beneath and on the pod, one pulled, testing the connection to the lattice. The heavy pod popped free of the connection unexpectedly, settling in one’s grip and oozing a milky liquid from the narrower end.
Startled, one clutched the container, in fear it might fall and burst.
Your life depends on it!
One took a deep calming breath. Then—with utmost care—one climbed up and settled on the bench to sit straddling it.
From this vantage point, the pod looked immense, and the body holding the pod in its lap hardly seemed to belong to one.
It would certainly not do to endanger the body’s survival simply because of ... squeamishness on the part of one that was tied up in the ShwydH memories. The body reminded one of Ayleana. The hands, the legs and all other visible parts were nearly identical. And Ayleana was a person ShwydH had become more attached to than he would have ever admitted to himself when alone with his own thoughts.
But now we are one.
ShwydH had been devastated when Ayleana's gathering memories had given her the knowledge of what it meant that ShwydH had been born niiaH. It had severed their brief friendship and left him with only her disgust.
He should have seen it coming.
One focused on breathing for a few seconds.
Though there was only one awareness, clearly one could be of two minds.
Spreading the body’s legs, one moved the tip of the pod, relying on the memories of a young Riniana Tiana's early bodily explorations to find the path. Three drops fell onto the lips of the bagua at the forking junction during the process.
The liquid lubricated the surface area with tingling warmth, distracting the ShwydH mind from the sensation of the pod's invasion and delighting the young Riniana Tiana mind with the notion of subsuming THERE as the tip, about the size of two fingers together, slid home and the drops of the nectar became a warming trickle inside.
One carefully brought one’s legs together and one’s tail up to steady the pod, balancing it between the thighs. Warmth from sublimation spread out from the center. A quiet well-being permeated the body, seeping into one’s divided mind as sleep fell again.
∆∆∆
One woke to ten more homeworld years of new memories from the Riniana Tiana mind and the resulting mental tools. One now had time-sense awareness, which indicated that a little more than a day had passed since one had fallen asleep. The lights of the chamber—still burning—added to the daylight filtering down from the panel above. The pod was gone. One had the dreamy recollection of one’s body somehow pulling the pod within by gradual stages as it dissolved.
The Riniana Tiana mind's latest memories had ended shortly after her sexual maturation threshold. One pondered the differences between the nii and niiaH cultures' and the ways they structured that pivotal event. The feedback loops from the emphasis placed on the methods of each culture had influenced their societies and resulted in two diverging races.
Nii society guided females through a controlled awakening using moderation and meditation during the sexual joining that brought forth a nii female's first experience with orgasm and the cascade of physical development it engendered.
The niiaH encouraged a more martial approach ...
Feasting, Fucking and Fighting.
One felt a certain dark amusement at the alliteration of the English words that came to one’s mind.
The nii had become a cooperating race of mutualistic symbionts while the niiaH had evolved into a warrior-caste, predatory juggernaut bent on conquest.
The war between them had been inevitable.
One rose from the stone platform and moved to explore the containers in the chamber. Packets of dried, nii-compatible food were scattered across the top of the chest opened the day before. HumanaH's scent lingered on them, recognizable even through one’s unfamiliar senses. One unwrapped a packet and ate the dried food then stacked the rest to the side. The lower layers held four sealed packages of sturdy clothes in styles ShwydH had not seen since the late 1930s. The clothes were custom-tailored for one’s body and included skirts that would conceal tail and lower legs where the springheels would give away alien origin. Custom-made boots lay beneath the clothes in another sealed box.
The next layer revealed old financial documents—likely useless except perhaps outside the boundaries of the United States where currency might still function. The five kilograms of gold coins would still be valuable, though heavy.
At the bottom, ammunition containers held box after box of .45 caliber ACP ammunition and two 1911 semi-automatic pistols. Along with the pistols were two gun maintenance kits.
One would need to make sure the weapons were ready to operate as soon as the remaining containers were inventoried. The guns and a maintenance kit went on top of the crate before one moved to the standing wardrobe.
An inspection of the wooden closet revealed: 5 sealed outfits hanging from hangers, 2 Browning Automatic Rifles with 20-round magazines and .30-06 ammunition in boxes on the floor. A mirror hung on the back of the door. One examined the face and body that held one’s awareness.
A young female nii—much less-muscular than HumanaH—confronted one. The face, not yet sculpted to blend with human norms, swirled with the deep chocolate and red stripes almost identical to the post-adolescent one in the Tiana memories. This was a beautiful young adult, no longer adolescent.
Was that a sense of satisfaction?
Hands touched the face.
Had one willed that to happen?
One might need to work on making it a little more human though ... as soon as Riniana Tiana’s memories of her body controls woke.
One shrugged mentally, a learned gesture from time with humans. The reflection's shoulders twitched.
The mind/body connection tightens, but unconscious movements can display vulnerabilities and must stay under control.
As one closed the mirrored door, an object fell from the ledge, and one caught it reflexively. It was a fine-tipped marker with HumanaH's scent on it. No doubt she had used it to write the message on the shower door. One opened the
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