Page 10 of Invasive Species (Outcasts of Oloria #2)

Reaching around her back, she grabs a long cord behind her and pulls.

Her new skin parts with a hissing sound, each side separating, and she tugs and pulls it free.

Underneath, she wears tight fitted clothing baring all her curves to me: the rise of her chest, with twin perfect mounds, her strong shoulders, nipped in waist and hips.

As she rolls the fabric down her thighs, she bends low, backside presented to me.

And I can’t breathe. Gripping onto my hands behind my back, I force myself to take deep and even breaths through my nose. Her scent coats my tongue, salt and cinnamon, warm and sweet, lacing into my brain like a drug.

I dig my fingernails into my scales. How is she doing this to me?

Diving for the pile of clothing, she throws on her thicker coverings and slides her tiny delicate feet into fluffy boots with a sigh. “Ah, that’s better.”

“Are you cold?” I fire up my core, pushing out heat around me.

“Mm, a little. My drysuit keeps me warm enough during a swim.” She rolls up the black fabric, then glances at me.

Me, staring at her.

I look down quickly. “What… what material is that? ”

“Oh, this is a drysuit. Keeps me warm during winter swimming, but also bone dry.” She hands it to me. I turn over the thick spongy folds, stroking a rubber layer on the outside.

“This material could be helpful for Arture,” I muse, my brain finally getting back on mission.

“Ooh, yeah. For swimming?”

“For day to day. His mechanics need regular maintenance, which we can’t perform here.

I might be able to replicate what he needs, but I…

I can’t access Olorian records anymore to treat him if he needs it.

I need to study how his arm works and fits together, and I’d rather preserve as much as I can than be faced with an emergency. ”

“Right. You’re always super prepared. Very smart.”

My scales heat, and it’s nothing to do with me warming them.

She tips her face up to me. “Want me to buy a drysuit for him?”

“That would be… extremely generous, but I can scan the material and replicate it.”

“Oh, yeah, do that for sure. I, uh… I don’t know how much money I have left anyways.” She chews her lower lip. Hard. Too hard. I resist the urge to tell her to stop before she splits her skin. Again.

And what does she mean money? It translates as credits via my nanites, but she's a female. Credits are for clones.

Arture and the Parthiastocks arrive, having walked down the hill in a statelier manner than my headlong dash. Dom glances from me to Arra-bellah, then toward the waters of the lake.

“Arture, come here. The rest of you can start your exercises,” I tell them.

“Please,” Arra-bellah chimes in.

I blink at her. “Please what?”

“Arture, come here, please,” she emphasizes. “I thought you were only a sourpuss with me, but I guess everyone gets the Gara glower.”

Gara glower? I touch my face. I’m not frowning all the time… am I?

“If you’re wondering if you frown all the time, I need more data,” Arra-bellah says, grinning as she rocks onto her heels and stands. She waves Arture to sit in front of me, and the bewildered pilot obeys without hesitation.

“Is there a performance issue you need to discuss with me?” Arture asks her.

“Nope. Gara’s going to make you a dry suit to cover your… wow.” Just like that, she’s enthralled by Arture’s replacement right arm, a masterpiece of betrillium struts and minute hydraulics. “How does it work? What's it made out of? How'd you lose your arm? Wait, not that last question, I'm sorry.”

Another apology. It rocks through me. Her constant questions might be viewed as attacks, but instead they seem born from… curiosity.

Arture looks as confused as I feel. “I don't recall how I lost my arm. All I know is I'm proud to serve: data from my prosthetics is used to aid females should they need a replacement arm.”

He flexes his fingers. The sleek metal framework houses advanced neural chips which mimic sensation so precisely, he can feel the ghost of a breeze against the alloyed fingertips.

Pulling out my scanner, I run it over Arra-bellah’s suit. Arture is yet another example of a perfectly indoctrinated clone. I'll never know his true feelings, whether he really is pleased to be used as a test subject. Not with Dom around policing us.

I point the replicator beam at the grass next to us. “Avert your eyes to protect them,” I warn. My eyelids film over with my protective lens so I can monitor the beam as it rearranges local molecules from basic elements into complex hydrocarbon chains.

Once the beam's finished, I pick up the sample of fabric, just as pliable as hers.

“Wow,” she breathes at my shoulder. Her scent washes over me again, spicy and sweet. I pass the fabric to her, and she grins.

I start fitting the newly made material over his arm. “I'll need some kind of seal at the shoulder, and I'll need to somehow allow for your digits so you can still use them,” I muse as I work.

“Are you a seams…master? Good at sewing?” Arra-bellah asks, hunching close.

“Not at all.” I sink back on my heels. Here I am trying to treat Arture, but it strays into areas I have no expertise or experience with. I'm not an engineer or a clothier.

“Always good to learn,” Arra-bellah asserts, and once more she robs me of my thoughts.

She has a point. “I'm a Selthiastock, built to acquire new knowledge. Especially where it'll help my patient.” My fingers flex. I’ll learn what I can to treat Arture, even though it's outside my purpose. A small rebellion.

Arra-bellah’s nose wrinkles. “Built? Do you mean, educated? You talk like you're educated, like, Oxbridge graduate or something. I could totally listen to you reading an audiobook all day.”

The dizzying twists of her mind reminds me of riding a hoverbike through a ravine. Even unshakable Arture gives me a wide-eyed look.

“I was educated,” I answer her. “Through a rigorous process ensuring only the best Selthiastocks survive.” But that came later in my life than for most clones.

My scales harden in a bid to protect me. I can't think about that time of my life; if Nevare overhears me, he'll see everything I’ve tried to keep hidden. What would Dom do then?

I let my hands fall to the cold grass. I shouldn't be straying into mechanics and designing fabrics. It’s not my purpose, and it's too dangerous.

“What’s this?” Arra-bellah points to something in Arture’s bicep.

I respond without looking. “I don’t know, I’m not an Ingenistock.”

“What’s that?”

“A clone built for engineering tasks.”

“Hm, well, you seem to be doing a good job anyway— What’s that? Looks sticky.” Without warning, her tiny fingers dart into Arture’s complex mechanics.

A hundred scenarios burst into my mind, all of them catastrophic for the continued functioning of Arture’s arm and, therefore, his usefulness. “Stop! Don’t!”

She flinches back, a sticky gray substance on her fingers. Flushing, she holds them up to me. “Sorry. I saw this, figured it didn’t belong.”

Slowly, I peel it off her tiny fingers, each digit minute in mine. Her hand goes still and with it, the rest of her body in slow increments; her arm relaxes, then her shoulder loosens, and her eyes find mine.

Green and wide, and dancing, as if the joy she feels constantly bubbles up inside.

I look away from her as I finally get the substance off her and raise it to my nose. The acrid and familiar smell of CNULG overlays her cinnamon scent. “I mustn’t have removed it all before,” I mutter.

“What is it?”

“CNULG, Containing Natural Urges in Low Gravity. I repurposed it to protect Arture’s servos, but it needs frequent maintenance.” Maintenance I’m straying outside my purpose to give, except it’ll keep Arture’s arm.

“Containing natural… wait. Does that mean what I think it does?” Her cheeks go a ruddy color, but her green eyes catch alight.

“I’m not a psychic like Nevare, I don’t know what you’re thinking.” How I wish I did.

Arture’s eyes dart back and forth between us. “This substance contains a clone’s emissions while we’re in space,” he explains, hunkering lower.

A wicked smile spreads across her face. “I see. A condom. Got any more?”

I pull out my tin of CNULG, take out a ball and show it to her.

“This? Looks like a gumball.”

“Massage it between your fingers, and it will stretch and become pliable.”

She does so, the white ball melting over her fingers. She’s fascinated once again, as if eager to explore all the facets of anything and everything, but watching her play with CNULG all over her fingers makes me stir.

I shove the feelings back. Of course they'd program us with carnal urges for females to help tie us to them, and she's pinging them. That's all this is.

“Next topic. Do you guys have… partners? As in, romantic partners, boyfriends or girlfriends.” Her gaze darts up to me.

I can’t answer, my throat too tight.

“We do not,” Arture supplies, glancing at me. “Females form mating bonds with their chosen partners.”

“Ooh, mating bonds. That’s so cool.”

Which shocks me enough out of my reverie to retort, “Mating bonds aren’t real.”

Arra-bellah’s eyebrow raises, her smile fading. “No?”

I grunt as I ease the dry suit tube over his mechanics. “ They’re a myth. There’s no scientific basis for such a bond, no way to measure it. There are no markers for whether a female has a bond or not, she only reports feeling it and the males dutifully fall into line.”

Her shoulders fall. “Oh. I was kind of hoping it was real, it features in… well, some stories I read. That’s all.”

My lips twist. Why does disappointing her make me feel like I’m a failure?

Sending curses to the ones who built me, I focus on sizing the fabric for Arture’s arm, but I can’t help stealing a glance toward Dom. Fortunately he’s exercising and doesn’t see Arra-bellah’s discontent, but that doesn’t ease the weight sitting on my chest.

Nothing will. I’m doomed to only react the way I’ve been programmed to.