Nascent Decay (The Goddess of Decay Book 1) Read Free Page B

taking a good look at the room she was in. She needed a way to escape, but there didn’t appear to be any. It was a wide room, with a low ceiling and gently rounded walls. She couldn’t tell where the bright, sterile light was originating from. It seemed to come from everywhere, yet nowhere.
    Against the walls were clean white tables, with what appeared to be several dozen translucent video and monitoring screens hovering above them in an odd assortment, resembling a patchwork quilt. She could see herself on several of them. The images on them were three dimensional, as if she could reach into one of them and touch herself, but vanished when viewed from the side. There didn’t seem to be any other way out than through the vanishing door the soldiers had used to enter.
    She raised her left hand between herself and the troops to show that she was unarmed, and realized it was covered in dark red blood. Her hands trembled violently as she fumbled to wipe them off on her jacket.
    The guards began to advance on her with their slender black rods, and she pushed herself backwards, trying to crawl away from them the same way the alien had tried to crawl away from her. Her legs still weren’t working well, and they flailed uselessly as she tried to push herself across the floor.
    She had just reached the cryostasis pod when she felt a jolt on her back, between her shoulder blades. All sensation and control fled her body as she collapsed forward, sliding lifelessly down the side of the pod.
    She was lifted up between two of the guards, still fully conscious and aware of what was going on around her. Her head lolled uncontrollably as they turned and marched through the door with her. Slumping forward, all she could do was watch the floor as they carried her down a brightly lit corridor to another, smaller room and laid her down on a table.
    One of the things spoke, a barking rasp that was more abrasive than either of the two in the previous room had been. The clicks were sharp and grating. Harsh. The other one produced a small device that generated a hooked blade, similar to her own multi-tool.
    He began to cut the uniform from her body with it, tearing it away roughly with his other hand. He left scratches and abrasions on her with his sharp nails and rough, scaly skin, but she couldn’t feel them. He didn’t stop until she was completely nude, and covered from the shoulders down with welts and scrapes.
    Rhylie wanted to cry and scream. She wanted to protest, to kick and fight against the thing. But her body was unresponsive, and she was trapped within it, an unwilling spectator.
    Bands of a flexible white material slid from the table and bound her at the wrists, elbows, thighs, ankles, and neck. She stared at the alien in horror as it towered over her with its hulking form. She had never felt so vulnerable in her entire life.
    His eyes were an intense gold, veined with black and had a slit pupil dividing them. The scales covering his face were blazing yellow with pitch-black horizontal streaks.
    She tried to struggle against her bonds, but her body remained unresponsive. The alien kept his eyes locked on hers, emotionless yet threatening. The face was handsome otherwise, in a rugged sort of way. Two others stood in the room with them, but she could not take her eyes off of those burning golden pools that stared down intensely at her.
    The door swirled open and a woman seemed to glide into the room. His golden, soulless eyes snapped away from Rhylie, over to her. She was dressed in flowing, opaque, white robes trimmed with a glittering golden piping. Around her waist was a transparent golden sash that seemed to sparkle with an internal luminosity. He inclined his head respectfully towards her and stepped back. Rhylie tore her eyes away from him to look at the figure in white.
    She would have been a beautiful woman, if not for the scales, and her eyes. Her features were soft, almost girlish. Inviting in a way. Her lips were plump