Exquisite Possession: A Dark Scifi Romance (The Machinery of Desire Book 4) Read online

  Book 4

  THE MACHINERY OF DESIRE

  series

  by

  Cari Silverwood

  This is a dark series and is written to be disturbing.

  This book contains adult language and situations only suitable for adult readers.

  * * *

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  If you missed the previous books in the series,

  here they are

  ACQUIRED POSSESSION

  CLAIMED POSSESSION

  BRANDED POSSESSION

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  Glossary and Characters

  About Cari Silverwood

  Acknowledgements & Copyright

  Prologue

  JI carefully and with great attention to how each of his fingers and thumbs moved, removed his hands from the woman’s neck. Horrified at what had happened during the past few morsels of time he sat up. A glitch – it must be a programming glitch.

  She choked into the sheet then struggled to turn over while pushing herself away from him, worming up the bed until she hit the wall with her back. Naked, she was naked, so was he, and he’d been having sex with her. Something bad had gone wrong with his hands.

  Eyes wide, she continued to use her heels on the mattress, scrabbling fast. Sound ramped up again from the ringing silence, and her inhalations and exhalations rasped, squeaked now and then when her swollen throat must be having problems and shut down – refusing to allow air past the obstruction.

  “I’m sorry. This was unintentional.” He slipped off the bed and stood, held his hands up, palms out. “I can help you? Get a physician?”

  “Go!” Whispered but understandable. She coughed a few times. “Go, you asshole scav!”

  And go he did. He dressed, exited, paid at the desk with his apologies and some extra cash, and then he left.

  Aunt M saw his dismay and queried him but when he said nothing she clattered beside his riding jagg, her metal limbs spinning into place as she rolled along.

  He could have killed that woman.

  But he had not.

  Nighttime, so no one noticed them leaving the village. The two moons above lit the road. If anything or anyone attacked them, it would be only justice. Though he and Aunt M could deal with any threat smaller than a landship or a full warband.

  Plus the jaggs would eat the remains. Weaning them off meat was not going as well as he’d hoped.

  It took a few hours of riding before he said anything to the mech. “I think this humanoid has some bugs in it. Next time I do this, have sex, I will get you to observe. A safety precaution.”

  “Certainly.”

  As a JI-mech war machine he’d had none of these glitches.

  * * * * *

  ABANDONED MEKKER COMPLEX

  With the hands of his blessed men winding it, the two-story-high doors slowly winched back. Judge Ormrad stepped forward. The spotlights they’d trained through the gap illuminated a treasure that made his heart almost cease to beat. An immense canyon lay below, reached by a winding zigzag of metal stairs that hugged the side.

  A vast, shallow dome of red metal lay in the center of the bottom level. Though faded by dust and time, the inscription on the chassis said everything. The judge had not known these existed. No one remembered them.

  Below was a KI-mech 01. It was an enormous mech, no doubt dreamed up by some overly ambitious mekker to crush the last people of Aerthe.

  Instead it’d been entombed for more than a century.

  Everything until now had suggested this was a debrained JI-mech. That would’ve been good, instead the stars had answered his most fervent desires.

  The men who’d ventured down there the previous day had checked it out, carefully. The KI-mech showed zero obvious damage. A small power charge had made its peripheral lights turn on.

  The judge rubbed his chin. He stood at the top of the steps, legs spread evenly, his white shirt, dark pants, and boots grimed with the orange local dirt, like his men’s clothes.

  Months it’d taken, to get past the cave-ins from past earthquakes. The evidence of a plague of strange beetles had also slowed progress. Their legs were still wrapped over the skeletal remains of the men of the previous workforce.

  He’d crunched over such corpses in his boots to show courage and had one man lynched. They’d worked faster.

  The plague would be from Aerthe. Other disasters had sealed the route inward. The world had been determined to destroy these ancestors of his.

  “This must have been one of the first plagues – else mekkers would never have dared to create this place, Tygorn.”

  “Yes.” His engineer stepped up to his shoulder, peered over the side of the ancient railing. Lean of face and figure, and perfectly presented in a dark blue suit with no embellishments. Tygorn did his job without fanfare. “That war machine is a third the size of a small landship. If we can get it functioning again –”

  “Nothing could withstand us. I’d have power over every person out there – scav, grounder, and mekker. The king would need me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then find out precisely how functional it is. If it’s anything like the other machinery, you’ll have it walking out of here soon, yes?”

  He turned and smiled at Tygorn. The man blinked in the glare of the spotlight.

  “Sir, we still need the brain.”

  “I know this. We discussed using our mechlings to search. Reprogram them.”

  This was a slightly desperate move, since they were the only power recharge method available. Unless there were more mechlings stored here.

  He needed that KI-mech.

  The best brain candidates were the JI-mech rumored to be roaming with a scav warband, or the crazy mech from the king’s residence that’d escaped with the King’s Own Lawgiver, Ryke.

  That one had brought down a sniker. He’d need a method of control, if they found it. It’d bypassed its programming, somehow, gone sun-mad, changed its appearance, and added to its structure.

  He almost admired it.

  Already some of his men were examining the engine powering the lift that traveled to the lower level. Industrious. Good. “Send out
the mechlings with instructions. Find me those mechs.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll have to adjust their propulsion also. Some of them will be too slow.”

  “If you don’t succeed, we’re all dying down here.”

  Grim, but probably true. They were the pariahs of the mekkers, the sworn enemies of the scavs. Even grounders would likely turn them in to be tortured by scavs.

  “And find a way to get control over a sun-mad mechling.”

  “You’re thinking of the mech from the king’s residence? That one has killed. Difficult but it’s possible. Whatever is locked in and hard programmed might have lasted.”

  “Your reward for success will be immense, Tygorn. Immense. Do great things for me. Great…things.”

  He strangled the metal rail in both hands, twisting until his fingers hurt, imagining it was the throat of his enemies.

  Chapter 1

  After that last shot was fired, JI was strangely sure he knew where it had originated.

  He paused in his padding journey through the tumbled wreckage of the city. He tapped the heel of one boot against a rock. His boots had been squashing his toes, and he wriggled them to get more comfortable. JI smiled. Pain and pleasure all at once. He was still learning how to be a man. That this combination of feelings was possible only reinforced his notion that humanoids were bizarrely made.

  “Where do you think she is?” he asked Aunt M, as he rolled to a stop beside JI. A wall of weather-eroded brick shielded them from whoever was shooting.

  “The tower,” the dilapidated mech replied. “The tall intact one with the red top.” His mech voice crackled a little but his apparent state of disrepair was deceptive. Half of his mismatched and spindly limbs seemed about to fall off, yet never did.

  “The tower,” he agreed, though there were other possible points, high buildings, where a sniper might be situated.

  “It is Fern?” Aunt M queried, again.

  “Yes. I feel it.” JI went to tap his heart then hesitated. Was it there or in his mind that this strange certainty lay? He sensed a human ahead, up high. They’d been tracking her since leaving Ryke and Gio after picking up her trail where an old grounder camp had lain.

  “I do not sense a human. The distance is too great.”

  “Yes, well.” He shrugged. “I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s to do with your model.”

  “I am more advanced than any JI mech.”

  “And more full of shit.” That sounded like something his body’s previous owner would say. Felt good on the tongue.

  “I disagree. No shit in me at all, unlike a humanoid.”

  “It was a slang term, Aunt M. I just have a better connection to humans. Especially since I became organic.” A flock of birds flew overhead toward where a beach must be, or submerged buildings? He’d seen some of those on the way in. They’d had a circuitous route.

  Was it safe to go on in this direction? Fern could not know he came to tell her of her brother. Could not know of his long association with her people. How friendly he was…or had been.

  All the lies told to him had created a gulf. He’d bridged it somewhat, being with Ryke and Gio. He’d unbridged it too. The bridge was shaky. Humans lied as a matter of their very being. He wasn’t sure he could ever like falsehoods.

  Betrayal and lies. Pain and pleasure. People and mess and chaos. They all went together. Some days his head seemed full of birds flying about.

  The co-ords of Fern’s fall from the landship were known to him. He’d headed there then ridden after the grounders, after checking for graves and corpses.

  If she lived, she’d be with the grounders. Humans were distinctive on Aerthe. Shiny hair and nails, and pussies that guaranteed sex that’d make one scream to the stars, or so they said. A human would be a pretty prize.

  Then they’d come across a new sort of corpse on the trail left by the grounders – dead mechlings. Ones that looked as if they’d been interfered with, as if someone had tried to open them. He had a notion as to why and thought it likely to be Fern’s doing.

  “So, here we are.” He sighed. After Fern they’d go find the judge. After that, he wasn’t sure anymore what life was about.

  Going from being a high-echelon mech to being the brains inside Osta, the ex-leader of a scav warband, had made doubts arise. He’d killed the man because of his lies, because of all the deaths Osta had so casually caused. And because he’d been dying and needed a new body. Osta had been convenient.

  Yet, why did he care about any of this?

  “Why do I feel, Aunt M? Why do I live?”

  “I could describe the state of your brain and neurons, your hormonal influences and physiology, but I won’t. Because you were stupid and acquired a body. Does this help?”

  “No.” Aunt M had heard this before – his…existential angsting. He wanted to tell him to fuck off. Not a logical answer.

  The sea roared and churned somewhere past a line of toppled buildings – the skyline as ratty as a bone mauled by his jagg mounts.

  Though unknown to him, this city reminded him of the place Ryke and his mekker friends had taken over, further up the coast. That one they’d named New Hope.

  Had this city lost its name entirely? The centuries had altered the memories of those on Aerthe. Paper records were few or buried in rubble. The digital ones in the landships of the mekker swathes had been savaged by this world.

  He hefted his long gun, wrapped his fingers about the living metal, gaining pleasure from the smooth touch, the heft.

  One of the side effects of now being a person and not a JI mech – he felt stuff...and sometimes it was stuff he found incomprehensible or paradoxical. “Do you think it safe?”

  “Not enough data to be –”

  Another shot parted the air, whiplashing his eardrums. Someone yelped and swore up ahead to the right. It’d be a scav they’d followed since the outskirts of the city.

  “It appears not safe,” Aunt M added, eye sockets glowing a nicely diabolical red. “We should have looked for the judge and the JI-mech he found first.”

  JI stared. “No.” It had been his first inclination however. “I owed Sawyer. He was not to blame for the attack on the royal swathe.”

  “Yes. You have said this. Owed does not mean anything to me. Loyalty, yes. The rule you stick to when all else fails. My first priority on the landship was to the king.”

  He grunted. “It’s like that, only temporary. The judge would’ve shot at you too.” A promise given was a line of irredeemable code. He finished what he began.

  Or he tried hard to do so.

  Aunt M rolled forward and poked a limb above the broken wall. “I see nothing new, except…” The limb swiveled. “A scav hurrying back. He limps.”

  “Fuck this.” He put a hand to the top of the wall and leaped over. “Life is never safe!”

  In the second Aunt M took to scuttle up beside him, limbs click-clacking, JI knew this mistake was about to become lethal. There were mechlings in the rubble ahead. They’d seen him, they’d told her, and she had just finished squeezing the trigger.

  How did he know this?

  “Baaaack!” He grabbed hold of Aunt M as he performed a clumsy back flip sort of somersault action, the wind whipping his hair about his face. The shot thwummed past his right shoulder spilling blue threads that coiled and spun.

  He’d seen that coming. Known it. How?

  “That is Fern,” he muttered as he levered himself to his feet, spilling dust.

  The mech raised several of his limbs. “The logical thing to do would be to leave here. Why do you need to do this at all if she is hostile?”

  “Because.” That was it. He floundered. If ever there was an example of a man doing something that made no sense, this was it.

  He hated lies? Being the target of someone’s bullets was worse. He pinched his mouth together, deciding then and there that he also hated humans shooting at him. “You go left. I go right. Zigzag run. That long gun reloads slowly. You, up the wall t
o the top floor. I’ll breech the front door. When I say it, run!”

  “No. As the only smart one here –” Aunt M began.

  JI inhaled a big, long breath then said, “Run!”

  Chapter 2

  Even as she reloaded the antiquated long gun, Fern suffered another memory overload that wrenched her to when the judge had stabbed her. She breathed through it while her fingers shoved in the shoom-powered bullets.

  The thrust of the sword through her guts rocked her back, the force blanking her with excruciating pain. When the judge kicked her into the chute, she uttered a coughed-out grunt.

  Then she was down and sliding, spinning, sluicing blood.

  Freefalling, air fluttering past her, she thumped into the soft, cool earth and a scream ripped loose.

  She’d die.

  Die because of that asshole.

  She clawed the soil with her good, left hand then sighed as she bled the last of her strength. Ideas weren’t life. Revenge wasn’t. She let herself slip. Deep into the beginning of her death, she nudged out a smile.

  She’d escaped from the landship.

  Just that once, she gave up. Once was forever. She’d lost to the bastard. To the asshole. The broken fingers, the abuse, the abuse and humiliations washed from her and she succumbed. The pain went away, and rocked her into sleep, into smothering nothingness

  She’d woken here and there, now and then, to nightmarish scenes where mechlings swarmed over her, holding her down while they plunged claws and grappling hands into the hole made so conveniently by the judge.

  They weren’t killing her, she realized, after a panicked eternity of whimpering, of thinking of batting them away but being unable to move. They were trying to help.

  Fixing you. Doctor programming. Stopping bleeding. The words had swum in her head.

  She’d mumbled a thank you before slipping into unconsciousness.

  The blue-tinted metal the mechlings had used to hold her together was still there, in her stomach. Every single time she bent or stretched, she felt it.