Enduring (Valos of Sonhadra Book 8) Read online

  To My Captain

  ENDURING

  Valos of Sonhadra, Book 8

  By Marina Simcoe

  Warning: Enduring is a FMM sci-fi romance that contains sexual situations and graphic descriptions of intimacy. For mature readers only.

  Copyright © 2018 Marina Simcoe

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please contact the author.

  Marina Simcoe

  [email protected]

  Facebook/MarinaSimcoeAuthor

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of author’s imagination. Locales and public names are used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Naomi Lucas and Cameron Kamenicky

  Edited by Two Horses Swift

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Valos of Sonhadra

  About Marina Simcoe

  THANK YOU FOR READING!

  When an orbital prison is torn through a wormhole and crashes on an unknown planet, it's every woman for herself to escape the wreckage. As though savage beasts and harsh, alien climates aren't enough, the survivors discover the world isn't uninhabited, and must face new challenges—risking not only their lives, but their hearts.

  Welcome to Sonhadra.

  The Valos of Sonhadra series is the shared vision of nine sci-fi and fantasy romance authors. Each book is a standalone, containing its own Happy Ever After, and can be read in any order.

  Chapter 1

  Darkness. Utter silence. An eerie feeling of weightlessness. I was where I longed to be. Darkness was my happy place now. Here I felt nothing. Without darkness, there was pain.

  I couldn’t see or move. Then the silence began to dissipate. Gradually, I could hear voices around me. After a while, it registered that the voices belonged to Dr. Zukov and one of his numerous assistants.

  “Not sure how much more she can take, Doctor.”

  “We can’t afford any doubts. I need to present some definite results.” Dr. Zukov’s tone was icy, clinical.

  “We have results. She’s fluent in more than a dozen languages now. And she understands animal noises. We proved it last week with the rats.”

  Are they talking about me?

  “Rats? Don’t be ridiculous! I promised them telepathy, not an ability to converse with rodents. The immortality team had a complete success, even if with some unexpected results. And Dr. Travis will be presenting her work on invisibility soon. How will that make us look?”

  “I heard Dr. Travis’s team suffered some setbacks—”

  “So did we, Jason!” Dr. Zukov’s voice was sharp and cold as his scalpel. “We need to move forward. I want you to have her ready for the final protocol tomorrow.”

  “The final protocol requires another invasive surgery, Doctor. She won’t survive it.” Jason’s tone was calm and indifferent.

  “That’s fine. I’ll need to do an autopsy on her brain anyway to collect information on the results of the experiments. Just select another subject from the ones I have preapproved for the next series of tests.”

  “None of them have the same aptitude she does. Their natural abilities are pretty average.”

  “We don’t need a subject with the same abilities.”

  They are talking about me.

  Memory slowly filtered though the drug-induced haze. I was aboard the Concord, prison spaceship and state-of-the-art laboratory, where I had been transferred after Dr. Zukov’s petition. He had visited me in prison on Earth, expressing profound interest in my ability to learn languages quickly. The tests, surgeries, and laser procedures started right after my transfer. In between was an endless fog of interchangeable periods of pain and darkness.

  “We have enough data collected to replicate the results in anyone. In fact, I would prefer to work with a new subject at this point. A fresh, undamaged brain. A blank slate, so to speak. We’re unable to move past this stage with her. It’s evident we can’t advance her to the level of telepathy. She’s useless now.”

  Useless. That’s what Aunt Judie, my only family, called me that one and only time she came to visit me in prison. Useless, just like your mother. Even though I hardly knew my mother and spent most of my life trying to please Aunt Judie.

  Now, Dr. Zukov thought me useless as well. I knew this should make me feel sad, scared . . . something, but I had little emotions left in me to care at this point.

  ‘She won’t survive this.’

  Despite the pounding headache, I thought I understood the meaning of these words. The finality in them brought unexpected relief. They meant that tomorrow the pain would finally stop and I would remain in the darkness forever.

  IT WAS THE LAST DAY of my life. Whatever feelings I still possessed had been numbed again. After the initial sense of relief yesterday, the fear of dying shook me all morning. Now, however, all emotions remained only as a distant echo at the back of my mind.

  I had been prepped for the surgery to administer the final protocol. My hair was shaved off in small areas just above my ears, the location of today’s invasive procedure on me. The rest of it was enclosed into a surgical gel cup that hardened to hold hair out of the way.

  Drugs started to pump through my body as I stared at the ceiling of the pre-surgery room. I was secured to the table by a number of wide rubber straps, even though the drugs had effectively immobilized me.

  ‘So nice . . . so soft . . .’

  The words were not English. Neither did they belong to any human language I knew. The series of hisses and clicks were animal noises. The creepy tone of them made my skin prickle with repulsion.

  A new series of hissing clicks brought a sharp wave of horror and disgust.

  ‘I wanna fuck you in every hole, and I have an arm of just the right size for all of them . . .’

  I could not escape the tentacles that slid over my body, slathering a generous amount of tepid slime on my skin. I shuddered inside, as I recognized who it was.

  He called himself Squid, and he was a product of another series of experiments conducted by Dr. Zukov and his medical team in an attempt to create intelligent life.

  Dr. Zukov had proudly explained to me that Squid’s DNA was spliced with that of a number of other species. Squid was also forced to undergo a series of brain surgeries and intensive drug therapy.

  I’d had to participate in a test to assess Squid’s level of intelligence, as he was not cooperating in standard tests. Since he didn’t speak any human language, electronic translators couldn’t be used to communicate with him verbally. They suspected he coyly evaded any responses that would label him a sentient being on
purpose, and my assignment had been to translate the noises that he made.

  The things Squid said to me during the test were lewd, crude and utterly revolting. Painfully shy by nature, I blushed violently and couldn’t repeat anything he said out loud, which undoubtedly was his intent all along.

  Squid was most definitely sentient and self-aware. However, no one in their right mind would call him intelligent.

  ‘I know you can understand me, and I bet you’re dying to be fucked.’

  All I could do was cringe inside, helpless to stop the assault of slimy tentacles, slithering along my arms, legs and stomach, slinking under the rubber strips that bound me to the table.

  I heard a splash of water from Squid’s tank, which must have been positioned next to my table. More tentacles joined the ones on my body, covering every inch of me in the thick, lukewarm slime.

  Was this how the Universe intended for me to spend my last hours in this world? Covered in slime and molested by a mutant octopus? I would have laughed if the feeling of complete helplessness weren’t so horrifying.

  The inability to move, to stop the assault, threatened to send my mind into a downward spiral of panic, when I heard a click and the swishing sound of the door sliding open. Squid quickly retracted his tentacles, and I exhaled with relief.

  A lab technician fidgeted with the tubes attached to me for a few moments, and then the table was being wheeled to the operating room.

  As they inserted the table into the surgery capsule and sealed the glass door behind it, the drugs completely kicked in, and I no longer felt the cooling slime on my skin.

  All emotions had melted away, including any last remnants of fear and repulsion. The last thing I felt was an unexpected wisp of sadness and regret for my short life, before the familiar floating sensation overtook me and the blissful darkness came.

  Chapter 2

  For what felt like the millionth time, darkness made way for agony. Again? I wasn’t supposed to feel anything anymore. Why was I still alive?

  My whole body was sore. A dull headache pounded against my skull, and I knew from experience it would only get worse.

  A sharp, cutting pain in my leg was the most puzzling.

  What did operating on my brain have to do with my leg?

  The thought seemed hilariously funny to my still-drugged brain, and I giggled.

  Other things began to register. Distant noises that sounded like animal cries but were too far for me to understand their meaning, a light breeze on my face, the cool sensation of slime on my naked body, pale light filtering pink through my eyelids . . .

  I forced my eyes open, only to shut them immediately as the light blinded me. I threw my arm over my face for a good measure. My arm? Yes, my right hand was free from restraints. I tried to move my other arm and my feet, but they still felt immobilized by something, and the sharp pain intensified when I shifted my leg.

  Slowly, carefully, I opened one eye halfway. Clear, blue sky greeted me through the glass ceiling of the tilted surgery chamber. Tall trees with pretty, dark-purple leaves swayed in the gentle breeze. A paradise. I gaped at it through cracked glass.

  A glance down revealed I was still strapped to the table by the remaining rubber bands. The capsule seemed to be embedded into the ground at a forty-five degree angle. One side of it was shattered, and some of the glass was missing altogether. The surgery capsule was designed to withstand a number of atmospheric pressures, and I wondered at the power of the impact it took to cause this damage.

  I noticed a narrow shard stuck into the table next to my leg. The sharp end of it had scratched the skin, and every time I moved, the edge would dig deeper into my flesh.

  I held still and took a more thorough inventory of my surroundings. Nothing made sense. Did they toss me out of the Concord after the surgery? Were we that close to Earth that I had landed in some national park? How had I survived the fall?

  Should I sit here and wait until the authorities found me and freed me from the restrains? Did I really want them to find me? All they’d do would be to give me back to Dr. Zukov.

  Something landed on the cracked glass above my face. It resembled a purple flower, with long slim petals—like a chrysanthemum. Then the petals moved, all in one direction, taking the flower across the capsule ceiling. Suddenly, a bright-pink spiral sail opened on the back of the thing, and it flew up into the air as the sail rotated on top like a propeller.

  A weird type of bird? An insect? It was definitely an animal, only not one I was remotely familiar with. I was a final-year biology student before my arrest, and familiar with virtually all Earth’s animal life. This was definitely not an Earth life form.

  Where am I?

  My heart sped up, and I inhaled deeply, struggling to take control over the rising fear. Well, at least I could breathe normally. Whatever this place was, so far, it seemed a very close approximation of Earth. To my knowledge, a planet that appeared so similar had not yet been discovered.

  Animal noises came again from the distance. High-pitched screeching sounds. Some of them were loud enough for me to catch the meaning this time.

  ‘Kill!’

  Something was hunting out there. And here I was, strapped to a table, like a ready-to-eat meal. The half-shattered glass surrounding me would offer little protection.

  I wiggled in my restraints again, testing their elasticity. Squid’s cold slime still dripping off my naked body made me shiver from chill and disgust.

  The force of the capsule hitting the ground had dislodged me, gravity made me slide along the tilted table. Now the wide rubber band that went across my chest was bunched high under my armpits and the hip band hung loose around my waist. The narrow strips that held my ankles in place stretched painfully over my calves.

  I wriggled my left hand and rotated the wrist, thoroughly lubricating it with the slime. The rubber straps had no buckles or buttons for me to open. They tightened and loosened electronically, following a code entered into a remote control panel, and I knew from experience the rubber restraints had very little give. I’d thrashed against them enough times to know. However, the crash impact had made them just a tiny bit more pliable, which, combined with my gross lubricant, made it possible for me to slide my hand out.

  Gripping the edge of the table, I wiggled my left leg up and down inside its restraint to cover it in slime then jerked it out of the rubber strip with force. It worked.

  The right one was more difficult, as the sharp edge of the glass sliced into my calf with my slightest move.

  I dug my nails into the table, clenched my teeth together and closed my eyes before yanking my right leg up in one quick movement. The glass cut the side of my calf all the way down to my ankle, and hot blood dripped onto my foot. I couldn’t hold back a scream of pain. However, both of my legs were now free.

  I sucked in one more bracing breath, bent my legs and pushed my feet into the table, then pulled myself up all the way to the headspace of the capsule. Aided by the slime, I slithered free from the remaining two bands. I carefully swung my legs through the opening on the shattered side, and then jumped out of the capsule into the soft foliage on the floor of a very alien forest.

  The fact that the place was not Earth became even more apparent as I scanned my surroundings. Everything appeared close enough to my home planet at first, but there were obvious differences upon a more careful inspection.

  The blue sky and the sun seemed normal enough to me. However, the leaves of the trees had an unusual purple tint and were foreign in appearance.

  A column of black smoke in the distance caught me by surprise. I didn’t see it earlier because of the capsule angle. The size and intensity of the cloud pointed toward something large and possibly toxic burning out there.

  Was that smoke actually the Concord? There seemed to be enough of it, not that I had ever witnessed the crash of a spaceship before.

  Why am I still alive?

  I touched my hair, and my fingers encountered the hard cru
st of the surgery cap. I dragged it off and shook the loose pieces of hardened gel out of my hair.

  I prodded my scalp carefully. There were no fresh injuries and the only tender spot was at the base of my skull, right above my nape, left from one of Dr. Zukov’s earlier surgeries.

  It appeared I’d fallen out of the ship before they had managed to do the procedure that would have ended my life.

  Now what?

  I could go towards the smoke to see if there were any other survivors. There could possibly be food, shelter and clothing too. The menacing animal noises seemed to be dying off in the distance now. I assumed whatever predators had hunted there must have moved on somewhere else, probably making it safe enough for me to go back to the ship now.

  On the other hand, if the guards, the crew, and any of the medical team had survived, they would most likely detain and lock me up again. If Dr. Zukov was among the survivors, he would try to finish his protocol on me.

  Naked and alone on an alien planet, I felt better about taking my chances in the forest than going back towards other humans. I’d rather be eaten by some alien beast than endure being operated on by Dr. Zukov again.

  I inspected the capsule for anything I could strip from it that might be useful to me in the alien wilderness.

  I wrenched the long shard of glass from the surgery table and used it to cut all the rubber straps off.

  Using some of the IV tubes still in the capsule, I fashioned the two wider rubber straps into foot coverings then bandaged the cut on my leg the best I could with the narrow ones. I tied my glass knife around my waist with the remaining IV tubes, feeling better about having some kind of a weapon on me. Despite my being ready to die earlier today, now, given the unexpected gift of life, I was determined to keep on surviving.

  I turned my back to the black smoke and headed deeper into the forest, away from the Concord.