Ben Esra telefonda seni bosaltmami ister misin?
Telefon Numaram: 00237 8000 92 32

A Prince of the Nobillo

Chapter 16: System Violation

***Author’s note: Due to some content issues, lines from this chapter have been omitted to better comply with site guidelines. In book form, they will be there. The missing lines do not greatly affect the content as they are mostly in the body horror vein and one slightly more filled in description of the activities of the first chamber. However, this chapter still has difficult content dealing with the worst crimes of slavery, eugenics, and vivisection, and contains a case of infanticide as well as fetal corpses. This is a worldbuilding chapter and does not contain sexy scenes. While this chapter is important to the plot, skipping it would not render the rest of the story unreadable. If these things are triggers for you, the author encourages you to use your best judgement as to whether to skip this chapter. ***

Lindsay and Rivuk left the palace accompanied by two of Lindsay’s Birds of Paradise, Sivi and Nerisa, as well as Carak, her legally mandated shadow. Not that she wasn’t glad of his presence, but three guards seemed like overkill. It was only because they were Nobillo and Carak wasn’t and for some stupid reason, that mattered. Only Nobillo guards were allowed in the temple.

“I still don’t think it’s fair Carak can’t just accompany us into the Temple,” she whispered to her husband.

“I know, but Children of the Immortal aren’t allowed past the courtyard without invitation, and, even then, that is only reserved for those selected to be breeders,” Rivuk said.

Lindsay shuddered. “Breeders. That’s such a disturbing way to put it.”

“Then the tone is properly set, though it is probably even worse than you are imagining.”

“I doubt it.” Lindsay wasn’t sure how it could be worse. She was torn between two images, in one male and female Children were paired off in curtained rooms to have sex, the other was something similar to a factory farm where the “breeders” roamed in a large pen until they mated. She didn’t imagine there was much love to it, or even attraction. “I hope Nerisa and Sivi are up to it. It’s only the second time I’ve taken them out,” she said, looking at her two guards.

Sivi had pale skin of a light copper sheen, long tawny hair, and dark purple eyes. She’d been one of the girls whose wings had been mutilated so badly by Boz, she would never fly again. Fortunately, since Carak also walked, having her accompany them seemed a fitting addition. Even though she’d only been in training a few iuna, she showed great talent with a spear. Lindsay had high hopes for her despite her fear of enclosed spaces.

Above them flew Nerisa, watching the crowds for danger. Nerisa had white hair and a silvery sheen to her skin, giving her the appearance of being perpetually covered in snowflakes that refused to melt. Nerisa was the resilient type. She wore her lip scars like a badge of honor and spoke openly of what happened to them. She wasn’t without her dark moments, but neither did she feel Boz should be spared because of her shame. She reminded Lindsay a bit of Nol. She secretly shipped them as a future couple… when the war was over.

Lindsay stared at the silvery dove above her. “Rivuk, why does Nerisa have white hair and silver skin? Is she like an albino or something?”

Rivuk shook his head. “No. Those traits are just more common in the southern cities than here. There’s even the occasional gold or amethyst coloration in the west.”

“Is that where Elihim got his blond hair?” She had always wondered. She hadn’t seen any other blonds except for him since she’d arrived.

Rivuk laughed. “No. That’s quite a different story. You see, all Nobillo babies are born with blond or black hair, since our hair is actually a form of fine afterfeather, which probably seems strange to you. I admit your hair was quite odd to me, as well. Anyway. After their newborn stage the yellow down falls out, but in Elihim’s case, being severely inbred, it didn’t. His wings are the same and, because of that, he powders them white and can’t fly especially well.”

“I never even noticed,” Lindsay said. She ran her fingers through his hair, paying close attention to the sensations at the scalp. Yes, those were definitely feathers. “That is so weird!” She kept running her hand through his hair. “I can’t believe it. How did I not notice this?”

Rivuk caught Lindsay’s hand, pulled it to his lips and kissed it. “You had best stop before you force me to stop you.”

“Does it feel good?”

“Very.”

Lindsay’s eyes shined as an evil grin spread across her lips. “I’ll have to remember that for tonight.”

“I hope you do,” he said, then looked up at the colossal white columns; even from a mile off, they seemed to loom over the little group. “Though I doubt either of us will be in the mood tonight.”

Lindsay felt a bit queasy. He’d been warning her about the place for days now, but it never felt real to her, until now, that she was almost there. She fought her nerves erzurum escort back. They were going and whatever she was going to see would be what she saw. It couldn’t be worse than Corlan’s camp after the Nobillo attack. Nothing she would ever see could be worse than that.

They stood at the foot of the steps of what looked like a recreation of one of those Greek or Roman temples teachers always showed videos about in fifth grade. She stared straight up, her mouth agape. She had severely underestimated the size of the building. It had to be at least eight city blocks long and four blocks wide. She couldn’t even guess how tall it was – at least seven stories. It just seemed to go on forever in every direction now that she was standing in front of it. All around, people bustled in and out of it. Mostly Korsuch and Nobillo, but there were a significant number of Children of the Immortal, as well. The Korsuch paid their party little heed, but she noticed a number of glances and whispers from the Nobillo and Children.

“Ah, welcome Prince Rivuk and our dear Princess Lindsay,” a man said, stepping down from the top of the staircase to greet them.

He was squat and blond, hardly the impossibly perfect human-like creatures she was used to seeing in his race. He seemed to try to smile, but his skin was a bit too tight to make it convincing. His head was oddly squared in shape and his eyes appeared slightly longer than normal human eyes with a light line on either side of the eye, that, with the sudden depth of the sides of the eye, gave the impression the sides had been pinched in and surgically made smaller.

“Dr. Lucian, to what do we owe the honor of your company?” Rivuk’s face and tone were all charm, but Lindsay could tell he was uneasy.

“There are some delicate matters I wished to discuss with you both. It is only fitting that I, as the head of the Temple of the Immortal, be the one to speak with you, rather than one of my subordinates – given your positions. Though, after the tour, of course.”

“Of course,” Lindsay said with a fake smile.

“Follow me.” He turned and walked toward the entrance without so much as a wave or glance back to make sure they were following. They quickly fell in behind him as they stepped through the pillars into a courtyard more beautiful than any Lindsay had ever seen.

Sun streamed through the open roof onto the lush green grass of the lawn. All along the walls, vines grew above flower gardens tended by older female Children of the Immortal. Shining stone tile paths led the eye to a sizable rectangular reflecting pool with a fountain in the middle topped by a large statue of a man with a golden crown.

It was a Roman statue! She was sure of it! She’d seen enough of those to be able to have a pretty good idea when she was looking at one, especially when the stone of the statue didn’t match the rest of the fountain or anything she’d seen on this planet.

“This is the Garden of the Immortal. You can leave your servant here.” Dr. Lucian waved a hand dismissively, a note of disgust in his voice when he said the word servant, as though he wanted to say something worse but knew it might offend, given the reputation of his audience. “The others too, you won’t be needing guards in the Temple.”

As they came to the entryway, Lindsay was dazzled by the shimmering stone façade, embedded with tiny precious stones. A pair of large purple pillars framed the door with guards dressed in iridescent green with orange sashes standing in front of each one. The door was a polished bronze, gleaming in the sunlight. For a moment Lindsay felt like she’d stepped back in time as the guards opened the door and they walked through. It closed behind them with a heavy thud.

The light was somehow bright and dim at the same time, with that pale green fluorescent quality that coated everything in a sickly old-hospital shade.

“That’s better,” Lucian said, rubbing his eyes. “Now then, on with the tour.”

But Lindsay wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at the row upon row of nude female Children of the Immortal, lying in stasis chambers that had been stood up on their ends. Not only did the rows extend far back, but up as well, at least a hundred feet above her. There had to be thousands of them!

Without their clothes she could readily see how varied they were. Some had nipples on their breasts, some had none, some had light fur and others, feathers, while others were completely without. All had wings but the number and colors varied. She could see ones with what she assumed were Nobillo genitals as they matched the position of Rivuk’s tessect, but there were also a number that had a vulva similar to hers and, she guessed, a vagina. The sheer amount of variation was stunning.

“I see you are admiring our breeding facilities,” Lucian said.

“Breeding facilities?” Lindsay repeated.

“Yes. We’ve been fortunate to amass such a fine group of brood females given denizli escort only about 25% of Children of the Immortal are fertile and capable of reproduction.” He swiped his hand and pictures appeared in front of Lindsay like some sort of body-horror slide show of genitals that had formed horribly wrong. Just horribly. This was his idea of a tour? Lindsay wanted to look away, but didn’t want to appear squeamish. He was probably hoping to use that against her.

“Unfortunately, the combining of human and Nobillo DNA leads to a great degree of possible variation, very little of it compatible with life or the production of life. While we are capable of producing new Children from DNA recombination, we possess significantly less human DNA than we did in the past and we’ve found we can’t synthesize it or even grow it without fatal mutations occurring. Thus, we created the breeding program which matches fertile female Children with compatible male Children, like that one you brought with you – N-6134 if I recall. He was one of our top breeders with a high compatibility rate of six different females and almost 100% viability of offspring. Until he was retired to go into service of the palace.” There was a note of bitterness in Lucian’s voice.

A child of the Immortal man walked down from a doorway, through the hall of females. He was completely naked with his tessect hanging out, the telson engorged.

“Oh good, you’ll get the chance to see the breeding process in action. This is J-5481. He has two compatible females.” Lucian made a few motions with his fingers, pulling up images of two women, one had a red box around her. “Ah, it appears it is F-3615Q’s fertility cycle. Now, how the process works is simple.”

A slideshow of images began playing as he spoke. Was this supposed to be part of the tour? Lindsay thought with disgust.

“First, our computer systems alert us when one of our females is fertile.”

A picture showed a female in a stasis chamber with an alert at a computer.

“We then send for our breeding male. When he arrives, he is injected with fertility hormones that allow him to produce the maximum amount of felous or sperm while becoming artificially aroused.”

A picture showed a pair of gloved hands injecting a needle into a very sensitive area of a very human-looking grey part. Lindsay winced.

“After a short wait to ensure production is complete and arousal has occurred, the male goes to the main floor and proceeds to inseminate the female. I know what you’re thinking – why don’t we cut out the males and use artificial insemination instead?”

That was not at all what she was thinking.

“We did try that, but we found it had such low rates of success as our artificially constructed germ cells often just couldn’t combine correctly that we eventually abandoned the project. Further, with the females possessing Nobillo-style genitalia, we found it was very difficult to effectively replicate the two-step fertilization process. When the telson is trapped and presses against the inner entrance of the reproductive chamber, it produces a specific chemical necessary for fertilization. We found we lacked the ability to replicate the process without harming the reproductive ability of the female.”

“So, you’re saying you accidentally sterilized the women?” Lindsay asked in disgust.

Lucian was either unaware of or simply indifferent to her reaction. “Yes, that would be one way to put it. But that is scientific progress for you. Oh, there he goes.”

“Is she even awake?” Lindsay cried.

Lucian pressed on the image of the woman on his screen and read quickly. “No. She has decided on a Do Not Awaken order. She won’t be revived until her reproductive viability has finished. Many of our females choose this option, it keeps them from developing attachments. They merely join the program and go to sleep, then in nine to ten lancs they wake up and retire to the Garden of the Immortal as if they only slept one night.”

And wake up thirty years older with a body ravaged by pregnancy, Lindsay thought. She turned away. She couldn’t stand to watch; it was making her sick.

“Of course, a number of them do choose to be awake, especially if they have a famous compatibility partner – we even have a special section for that they can select. We do our best to respect our breeding females’ wishes here.”

“But you force them into it,” Lindsay said.

“Oh no, not at all.” It was that blonde Korsuch woman from before. Where had she come from? “Fertile females are allowed to choose whether they wish to be part of the program. We would never force any female to join against their will. If a female Child is found to be fertile, she is given the choice to join the program or to donate her reproductive organs to the Immortal and join the rest of her kin in the workforce. Of course, some do slip through the cracks,” she swiped up a picture of Lindsay propping up the pregnant Child, “which is unfortunate. iskenderun escort This poor Child was impregnated by her owner. We did our best, but the baby simply wasn’t viable.”

A picture flashed on the screen; Lindsay immediately turned away from the horribly disfigured infant.

Rivuk wrapped his arms around her. “That’s quite enough,” he said.

“My apologies, sire. We just wish to demonstrate why we do what we do. Oh, Lucian, I thought I saw something in the third row, fourth from the right. Might you have a look?”

“Of course, Diana.” He began swiping and pressing buttons as a camera zoomed in on that location.

Diana continued talking, “Fortunately, that young female has decided to join our program and has been matched with a compatible Child.”

“So now she gets raped by some rando while she sleeps instead of her owner. I bet you didn’t even put the guy in jail.”

Diana tilted her head. “Why would we? It’s not uncommon for female Children to be used for release purposes by their male owners. They’re prepared for that likely eventuality from an early age. It’s simply an extra service they can provide. It makes up for their lesser strength.”

Lindsay’s mind immediately went to the ornament store clerk. Was he doing that with the Nobillo woman she’d seen? She swallowed back the vomit. How could they not see how wrong this was?!

“Don’t.” Rivuk’s voice warned from inside her head.

“Why not?” she replied mentally, her mind afire with rage.

“Because the same laws of Child bodily autonomy that the Nobillo men who would do that exploit are the ones the Korsuch fought to create.”

“Why?!”

“You’ll come to know soon enough.”

“I don’t want to.” Something in her fell at those thought words. Wasn’t she the Queen of the Bonat? Wasn’t she able to fight an army of Children? Hadn’t she seen things in the horrors of war that were far worse than these?

But, at the moment, she was Lindsay. Lindsay who just wanted to go home, to her real home on earth and sit in front of the tv with a cup of hot cocoa with her fuzzy-socked feet propped up on the coffee table while her sisters fought over something stupid in the background and where all of this was just a horrible dream.

“We can go home if you want. I can even take you to the portal if you want,” she heard Rivuk’s voice say inside her mind.

So, he’d seen her thoughts. “It doesn’t disappear if I do, though. It’s not a dream. The only thing that happens if I go is I’m gone and they keep doing this.” She closed her eyes, fighting back the vision of her house. She could see her mom and dad waiting for her. Tears burned her eyes. Her mind was fighting her hard this time. “I’m staying!” she shouted to her thoughts, almost aloud. The visions disappeared.

Rivuk wrapped her hand in his.

“Ah, there it is.” Lucian focused on a stasis chamber, spreading his thumb and forefinger to zoom in.

“Is that a baby?” Lindsay asked, looking at the little thing hanging below its mother.

Lucian frowned. “She wasn’t due for induction for another week. I apologize for this interruption. Don’t worry, it’s only momentary.”

The stasis chamber dropped to the main floor. They gathered around it as the chamber door opened. The baby looked up at them with large, round eyes on its almost chimp-like face. Rivuk’s grip tightened on Lindsay’s hand. Lucian picked it up, turned it over, gave it one more quick look in its face, and crushed its skull with his fingers.

Lindsay charged at him but was held back by Rivuk’s steely grip.

“What the hell did you do that for?! It was just a baby! It was alive!” she shouted, straining against the powerful fingers that held her back.

“It was a genetic regression and its wings weren’t properly formed.” He turned the tiny corpse over to show her as if that explanation and the little curling wings would somehow justify what he’d done. “There was no purpose it could serve in life that is greater than what it can do in death.”

“You’re disgusting!”

Lucian shrugged. “Prince Rivuk, I suggest you control your wife. We wouldn’t want an incident to come between our peoples.”

“Of course, doctor.”

Suddenly, it felt as if cold water had been poured over the fire of her mind. She was in their place with Rivuk, standing before him. She rushed at him, pummelling his imaginary chest with her fists.

“Why didn’t you stop him?! You knew what he was going to do! He crushed that baby’s skull!”

“Do you want to go home?”

She stopped hitting him, looking up into his copper eyes. “No.”

“Then what can I do to help you?”

She smashed herself into his chest and began sobbing as he stroked her back, the minutes passing as seconds outside their world. “It’s all this bad, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and it’s made worse by their absolute indifference to what they do. They don’t see the Children of the Immortal as people, only flesh-based tools they have created. You must remember that. Nothing you do or say here will change it.”

“I can see why the Olaru blew up the gates, if this is how they treat life.”

Rivuk looked to the tiled floor.

“What is it? There’s something you’re not telling me,” Lindsay said.

“You weren’t the last human through the gate,” Rivuk said.

Ben Esra telefonda seni bosaltmami ister misin?
Telefon Numaram: 00237 8000 92 32