Page 1 of The First Omega Made (Scales and Tails of Fate #2)

Doc

Murdoc Bradford.

I stared at my ID, the warped plastic a long-obsolete thing. Petroleum was hard to come by in space.

I looked different than I once had so long ago—a dark-haired and brash boy with a bleeding heart.

Hell, I looked different than I had a year ago.

I glanced up and caught myself in the reflection of a window—pale hair, paler eyes.

The eyes, aside from the pupil, those were the same, at least until the green seeped in.

A stark reminder that we could change, too. Nothing was permanent.

From a small cryo freezer beneath a cabinet, I unloaded a delicate vial, the contents within smoking with cold.

The few milliliters within would thaw in minutes as I gathered a sterile syringe from the radiatory purging chamber—RPC—a rather nuclear alternative to the autoclave.

I recalled disposable syringes once upon a time, but once again—no petroleum.

No polymerized hydrocarbons that were safe for medical use—and a major burden on waste.

Not to mention the hell that microplastics weighed on air filtration systems.

I dutifully assembled the plunger to the barrel and locked in the hub to a needle made of a synthetic titanium diamond amalgam. It was the only thing that could pierce hybreed skin reliably. Normal needles had been enough for me not too long ago.

With a careful grip, I warmed the mostly thawed tube in my palm before drawing the contents into the syringe.

A small air bubble hovered in the barrel around the 1.

5 mark, and I ignored it. It was too small an amount of air to do any damage.

The little bubble was far less likely to cause an embolism than a misplaced injection.

I popped the syringe by the flange into my mouth, dropped the hip of my pants to the side, and grabbed the needle.

“Doc, is this like, a good idea?” Merriel’s tinny voice rang out, ever my voice of reason and occasional conscience—I’d never claimed the ship to be a good one.

“As good as any, Jimmeny.” I took the syringe and plunged it into my hip, depressed the plunger, and hissed. With a harried capping, I disassembled the syringe and tossed it into the RPC for cleanup.

“You used to only need a top-up every few solar rotations.” Merriel’s tone held a note of caution.

“That was before Noel.” I rubbed the injection site while shuffling to the holochamber, where people assumed I went to jerk off. They were wrong, and I preferred it that way.

Once in, the walls melted, and the floor reshaped into a disheveled bed.

Old worn blankets piled atop a delicious full-sized mattress.

In my memory, I could still smell it—the funk of youth, real meat cooking somewhere in the house, the quiet creak of the hallway floorboards as my family’s live-in housekeeper puttered about.

I never programmed the hologram to go beyond the bedroom, so opening the door would only yield vacuous space up to the laser-array wall.

The moment the kanoik venom had burned its way into my flesh and Noel had licked my wound clean, part of my innermost biology woke.

The changes it brought were frighteningly fast. My hair had lightened, skin smoothed.

I’d almost earned my first wrinkle, but even that was gone after a few days.

So much for being able to die of old age!

So, when I’d been given permission to draw samples from Noel and forgiven—I cultured some for myself.

Being under 10 percent Naleucian didn’t mean you stayed that way.

It meant I had to maintain it. The gods that had come to Mater Terra so long ago and left only their genes in their wake had left us with an ever-evolving problem. Fucking space lizards.

Noel is rubbing off on me…

I’d had to maintain it for so very long that my human life seemed but a distant memory.

I had a great-niece and nephews far older in appearance than myself, sucking the family trust dry.

Not that I cared. I’d been cut off ever since TAOD, or TOAD as I’d like to call it, had declared that hybreeds over 2.

7 percent were bearers of sin. And the very parents that had paid for and consented to my gene therapy cut me off.

“You should have died with dignity!” My mother’s words echoed in my head, praying I’d let myself die rather than continue gene therapy.

I stared at my hands, bending fingers that weren’t really mine.

After the radiation poisoning, I’d been burned so much that had I lived, I’d have been a human potato.

I’d lost my fingers, parts of my hands, ears, lips, legs from the knees up.

Fuck all, they’d been in talks of amputating more.

I barely remembered it as they kept me in semi-stasis.

It’s what I get for helping people.

As a young man working aboard an experimental vessel doing my residency post medical school, the ship I’d been on went into a nuclear meltdown.

In my haste to help evacuate that part of the ship, I acted fast. I’d been called a hero.

Many survived due to my efforts. Many didn’t, despite my best. The invisible heat had blasted me in a wave, skin doing unspeakable things as I shoved the last half-conscious person from the room and sealed the chamber.

Had the door stayed open, half the ship would have died.

Memories between then and meeting Vil were hazy, all convoluted as my limbs regrew while I floated in a liquid stasis.

I’d been permitted to go to my family home on Mater Terra during the last days of the planet’s livability to recoup.

Those months were simultaneously my most painful and comforting.

With every deep breath I took while folded in my blankets that had been abandoned on an inhospitable planet for two-hundred solar rotations, I felt a little better, even as the pain twisted within me.

My head ached, teeth stung, and skin prickled with itchy spasms. Scratching it didn’t even make it feel better because my nails ached, too! Didn’t stop me, though.

Fuck! Itchy—ugh. “Merriel— you know what I need.”

“Flea collar?” the smarmy voice piped up.

“Don’t be a smart-ass.” I glared at the ceiling until Merriel responded.

“16.4,” he said—tone somber.

“I don’t know if it’s good or bad.” I lifted the hem of my shirt and traced my fingers down human flesh until the light transition of flesh-colored scales reflecting a tinge of blue caught on my fingernails.

They tingled when I stroked them, so fresh and new, as if they were a mere few layers of unshed skin beneath.

A few more layers until I’d have to admit what was going on.

Noel had forgiven me, right?

I hadn’t even asked for consent to use them on myself. I’d taken again—albeit without harm. But that wasn’t right, either.

“16.5,” Merriel said. “And climbing. What was in that last dose?”

“Just enough to keep my regeneration going. Noel’s practically virulent.

” I sprawled out over the bed and lay there for a few minutes, staring at the plastic stars stuck to my bedroom ceiling.

Legend said that in the beginning, before their old gods had created the heavens and the earth, the trinkets glowed.

Light pollution had grown by the time I’d matured so badly that I’d never seen stars until I’d broken the stratosphere for the first time and lost myself in a world of twinkling lights that no picture or planetarium had ever done justice. I preferred the stars, but part of me yearned for a home.

In any case, earth had pollen and trees. Fuck trees. Dirty little sperm-spewing dendritic chlorophytes!

The door to the chamber opened with a harsh creak, a feature , not a bug of design. I looked around for something to throw. “Hey! I’m masturbating.”

“No, you’re not.” Sarge’s gravelly voice broke the silence of my mind. The poor guy rubbed at his worn face, dogged and jaded, shuffling in before flopping next to me with a huff. “I could change that, though.”

I snorted and rolled onto my front then side, making room for Sarge to snuggle in with me. “Maybe I just finished?”

“Or maybe you’re in here trying to sweat off another round of progenitor.” The judgmental tone made me cringe.

“I couldn’t wait any longer. The rash got worse.” I lifted my shirt to show off my bare stomach then higher to reveal the pocked and bruised flesh pulsing over my ribs.

“Better than my rash.” Sarge unbuttoned his pants and pushed the hem down. The start of bruised flesh came into view only for a fraction of a second before I reached over to stop him. “What? You’re a doctor. This bothers you?”

“Yes! If I could treat it, I would. Otherwise, it’s just showing off. Is there even anything left down there?” I turned my gaze away as Sarge buttoned his pants and relaxed.

“If I said yes, would you believe me?” Sarge’s tone went soft and almost mournful. His plight was nothing new. He’d been suffering from it for the better part of two solar rotations.

“No.”

“Hmm. Good call, then.” Sarge wrapped his arms around me and scooted in, adjusting us to where I was the little spoon. My favorite. “So, I think I have another solar rotation or two left. Not going to be a fun span.”

“I seriously think Vil would help you if you asked.” I rested my head on his arm, taking in the sweet scent of him.

“He’d throw me out of the airlock, more likely.” Sarge snorted.

“Maybe not? It’s not like you’ll infect us.”

“How does he know that?” Sarge clutched tightly to me, his hands bunching at my belly, fingers wandering to stroke my new scales.

“He’s known you for forty solar rotations.”

“And hasn’t noticed I’ve not aged appropriately.” Sarge sighed.

“I can talk to him if—”

“No. He may eventually warm up to it, but the rest of the crew?” Sarge pulled his hands from my waist. “It’s just my time to go.”

I reached for him as he pulled away and rolled over atop him, snatching his wrists. Ordinarily, he’d be able to pin me, but my strength had been growing. “I need you.”

“You say you need me, but I can’t satisfy you. I can’t even—” Sarge turned his face from me, lips bunching up as if he were fighting tears—ones he couldn’t shed. His tear ducts had broken down solar rotations ago. Barely anything of his body worked right anymore.

“I wish gene therapy worked.”

“It might, if it weren’t fucking Naleucian.” Sarge sighed, and I forced my face down to his, capturing his mouth with mine. I hated the mustache, but it tickled and was, at that point, part of him. Part I’d learned to like. Maybe even love.

Sarge fought it at first, but he slowly relaxed, letting me press our lips in—no tongue. He always drew the line there, but he let me continue. He even pursed his lips and sank into the sensation.

“If you won’t, let me try for you. What about for me? I can experiment.” I pressed my nose to his and stared him down until he met my gaze.

“Let me think about it.”

“Shouldn’t be anything to think about.” I slipped my hand to the side of his face, down his neck to his chest. His heart didn’t beat, but the rhythmic pulse of something told me he understood.

“Want my opinion on this?” Merriel broke the moment, earning a sigh from the both of us.

“No,” we said in unison as I sat up and tucked my hair into place.

“But want me to tell you where your limiter switch is so you can synthesize drugs again?” With any luck, we could keep Merriel’s mouth shut for a little longer. I smiled up hopefully and earned a long silence.

“No bueno, my dudes. Noel needs me to keep an eye on Nexus, and I can’t do that if I’m high.”

“Fuck.” Sarge rubbed his temples. “Any chance—”

“What happens in the holochamber stays in the holochamber.” A pitiable beep preceded silence that stretched for several seconds. Merriel said no more.

“Do we trust he’ll—” I stared at the ceiling.

“Who the fuck knows?” Sarge tucked his clothes into place and hurried out, his face a mask, as if all control to it had been shut off.

I wanted to hope and pray to the progenitors that one day he told Vil, that they took it well, and found a solution.

Because as it stood, Sarge’s body was dying.