Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

let her emotions come out to play. Although it lasted only a mere second or two, her pause to take in the victory against one as evil as Sofia, and to allow the throng of hostile humans to back down, had cost her everything.

Don Luis appeared at her side and back like a tango dancer, and where his right hand should have caressed the curve of her back had they been dancing, he stabbed her cybernetic spine with a fistful of severed, snapping, live electrical wires.

Her cybernetic body never felt pain, though it was designed to send reports of damage and malfunction to her brain, so her internal computers and servos could re-direct power and react accordingly. This time, however, the signal that she had been hit didn’t even make it up the channels to her brain. The electricity had done its job most effectively, resulting in nothing less than a full and complete short-circuit. No messages were going anywhere, up or down the channels.

She was in what she called full S-Dep, total sensory deprivation, completely cut off from the world outside her consciousness. Still, Lucy knew something bad had happened. She was still aware, still conscious, though her body had shut down, taking with it her vision, her tactile sense, and her hearing, all fully cybernetic. She still had some sense of smell, the nose-olfactory combo being the only sense organ that was linked directly to the brain, allowing it to bypass the backed-up traffic and circuitous byways of the nervous system. But her lungs were nothing more than mechanical intakes that filtered the air in the environment and delivered the oxygen that her organic brain still needed oh-so-badly, and they’d gone down with the rest of her systems.

Shit, was the only distracting thought that ran through Lucy’s mind, and then with no more effort than it would take a fully organic human to act on the decision to get up and move, Lucy sent signal after signal in vain to her absentee body in an attempt to get her emergency systems back up and running. She could survive without breathing for thirty minutes, for her body always stored oxygen in its reserves and was ahead of the curve when it came to filtering in the oxygen. But if the motors and servos that powered her reserve system were shorted out too, then her brain would die from oxygen starvation, and soon…

“What a lovely sight!” Don Luis Fernando laughed aloud and tossed the electric anaconda to the side. He looked down at the helpless cyborg and smiled. One of the vampires at the edge of the mob moved in fast, his body language revealing his intention to rip Lucy apart. King Fernando crouched over his kill and bared his fangs, hissing. He was the alpha wolf; this prey was his. The other stopped in his tracks and, lowering his head, began to take steps backward away from his king. Satisfied that his pack knew their place, he returned his affections to Lucy. He kicked her clubs away with a brisk brush of his boot and smiled, his lips pulling back over his elongated canines as he bent down and picked up her BFG.

“Oh, mami. I like. It’s mucho grande. Like me.” He grabbed at himself obscenely as he mocked, holding the massive pistol up and turning it from side to side. “But I like mine better,” he added, putting Lucy’s sidearm into the waistband of his pants, then withdrawing his antique chrome laser pistol from his hip holster. His informants had done him a solid by reporting to him his wife’s intention to betray him, though now he would be using the weapon to burn the new wife, and not the old.

“You see, the Aztec club thing? I don’t get it. It doesn’t do it for me,” he explained to himself, not knowing that Lucy couldn’t hear him. “Honorable and traditional. What a bunch of crap. Granted, I love being close to my prey when I kill them. I want them to see it in my face, the triumph. I want them to see me. Do you see me, bitch?” He squatted back down and got close enough to kiss her. His left hand grabbed her chin and rolled her head back so he was looking directly into her face.

“Now a good gun, on the other hand…” He licked his fangs and brought the pistol flush against Lucy’s forehead. “It’s like a strong hard cock, no?” Don Luis duck-walked back two steps and probed down Lucy’s prone body with the muzzle of the pistol in his right hand, tearing away her black battle fatigues with his left. “Fucking cyborg bitch. Why would you go and remove your only useful part?” He sneered in disappointment and stood back up.

“When I have the gun, you know that I have the power. When I have the power, you respect me. You fucking disrespect me, I teach you a lesson.” Don Luis continued like this, his brief thoughts of rape already forgotten. This was his favorite part. This was why he’d worked for the same cartel that had killed his father. This was why he had sold his soul to the devil. This was why he had crowned himself king. He loved the feeling he got when people needed him, or feared him, or otherwise acknowledged and lent credibility to his notion that he was better, richer and more powerful than them. He was a born leader.

Don Luis quit his ranting and again crouched down near Lucy, this time sitting on her chest. He held his left hand out and willed his nails to grow into sharp claws. Even over the chaos of whatever was happening behind him on the stage—the Lily Sapphire bitch would be next; she wasn’t going anywhere soon—he could hear the creak of the transformation. He reached out and dragged the pointy tips of his dagger-like nails down Lucy’s cheek with just enough