o ed4c3e33dafa4d72 by Sylvie Pepos Read Free Book Online Page A

quickly .
    "Captain?"
    The light was piercing white, filing his head with the worst pain he could ever
    remember experiencing.
    "Why wasn't she here?"
    "Captain?"
    He tried to focus. Someone shook him gently, spoke his given name. Fog, thick and
    numbing was clouding his vision and he couldn't move, couldn't find his way out of the
    mist.
    "Why wouldn't she come to him?
    "Captain Cree!"
    The voice was more insistent, but it was not her voice.
    He could smell his own sour sweat. It was distasteful to him and it filled him with
    shame. Reapers did not sweat. He had never smelled like this and it offended his sense of
    honor.
    "Captain Cree!"
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    His vision cleared and he found himself looking up into the beautiful green eyes of the
    woman for whom he had been searching in his nightmare world. She was leaning over
    him, her face concerned, those beautiful green eyes filled with tears. "You are back in
    your room, Sir," she told him.
    He turned his head away. "What time is it?" he mumbled.
    "Fourteen hundred hours," she replied.
    An hour? He'd been in that demonic place only an hour? It had seemed like an eternity
    that he was lost there. Despite his inability to remember what had happened in the
    treatment suite, he instinctively knew it had been much worse this time.
    "When?" he forced himself to ask.
    Bridget reached out to push a lock of hair from his forehead. "Eighteen hundred," she said gently.
    "Every five hours," he whispered.
    "I'll stay with you until—"
    "Go away." The command was bitter. "You weren't there when I needed you and I don't want you here now!"
    "I beg your pardon?"
    "Go away, woman!"
    When the door shushed to behind her, Cree's face crinkled with hopelessness. He had
    never once doubted his bravery, his ability to withstand whatever the world, or the
    Empire, threw at him, but this? This unspeakable torture was beyond his understanding
    and he found himself dreading every ticking minute, every passing nanosecond that
    brought him closer to the room at the end of the hall.
    Falling...water...fangs...fire.
    Helpless...hopeless...defenseless...useless.
    "Why had she left him alone?"
    "He is experiencing the four most primitive, primal fears there are," the woman in the gallery explained to the others. "From deep within the human part of his subconscious, all those elemental emotions dredged up to frighten and violate a man's mind have survived
    civilization, breeding, education, and conditioning. No amount of neuro-manipulation can
    either erase or negate them. The drug invading his system is simply magnifying those
    emotions Reapers have been conditioned to ignore."
    "What exactly are we talking about here?" Barif asked.
    "He is experiencing his imminent death in a variety of forms. That is the one thing
    every human man fears most, for it is the end of self, the end of existence. To a Reaper,
    death is an enemy to be overcome; to a human male, it is something more meaningful. It
    is the human part of him the drug is attacking."
    CREE'S SILENT scream filled his head. The pain—he thought as his flesh split and
    sloughed off, his bones turning black as they charred—the pain was so horrific, so
    invasive, so utterly intense, he longed for the surcease of life. But just as soon as the flames had enveloped him, blistering his flesh, then burning deep through the epidermis,
    past the coris, into the muscles and nerve bundles, dissolving capillaries, splitting open veins and arteries and flashing into the very marrow of his bones; just as the pain
    became so terrifying that he had began to beg for death, she was there holding out her
    hand to him.
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    "Come, Kam," she whispered. "Come to me and the pain will stop."
    He held out his hand, striving to touch hers,