Dark Hysteria (Cyborg Shifters #8) - Naomi Lucas Page 0,1

the edge off. She placed her load on a shelf and locked it into place, scanning the barcode attached to it.

Inventory updated.

It wasn’t something she needed to do. The ship was high-tech enough to have an artificial intelligence programmed into it to keep inventory on everything up to date, but she did it anyway. She moved to the other resources and scanned them as well.

She didn’t trust anyone else’s data. They were often wrong. Her lack of trust had saved her ass on several occasions. If she trusted Elyrians, she’d still be in the slums. If she trusted the police on her home planet, her father’s death would go unavenged.

Why else did women not get degrees in her field of study? Because they were discouraged—sometimes aggressively—to do so.

Women, and only women, were welcomed within the Trentian-controlled space sectors. If a woman owned and piloted her ship, what would stop her from leaving Earth’s jurisdiction and cross over? What would stop her from smuggling other women across?

Trentians suffered a breeding disease—their society had few women left because of it—and those who remained had trouble reproducing. Trentian males and females could reproduce with humans, though, and with the lack of Trentian females having babies, or even being born, Trentian males sought human females to replenish their ranks.

Human men don’t like the competition, especially not from a species that had warred with them for over a century.

The Earth government couldn’t afford to lose women to the aliens. They want to have the biggest dicks in the universe. Keeping women landlocked was what the government sought to do instead.

There was talk that the Trentians grew their young now in labs, but that was speculation and rumor. No one actually knew. She didn’t. Breeding politics meant nothing to her. She had no interest in having kids with a human man or an alien.

Hysterian’s demise was all she cared about.

Which was Alexa’s driving force to degree-up because she didn’t have access to money any other way. If she was going to kill a Cyborg, she had to be competent, smart. She had to know more than what she could learn in the slums. She knew Hysterian wouldn’t remain on Elyria forever. Traveling through space was expensive.

Though Elyria was different from most Earth territories. It was easier to do as you pleased, even as a woman. Breaking the law was commonplace.

Yet another reason why she didn’t trust easily.

The medical examiners said her dad died of a drug overdose—their equipment verified it. They were wrong.

Dad hadn’t overdosed on drugs. There were no needles, no marks on his flesh. There was no sign of vein bulge from Elyrian Sky, or excessive sweating from Scarlet opioids.

He was murdered.

All they found was an abnormal substance on her dad’s hand, nothing more. The substance neutralized all their tests—it responded to nothing. Benign, they decided. They took a sample of his skin and put it in a container to cryopreserve it. But when she followed up with them, the sample had miraculously gone missing.

It wasn’t missing. Someone stole or destroyed it. Why else would it have gone missing?

She scanned another container. Words flashed above her wristcon telling her what it was: grain.

“There you are.”

Alexa saw her coworker walking into the room. Raul, her menagerie maintenance partner. Middle-aged and muscled, Raul was a decent-looking human man. With thick black hair that was cut short and curled around his head, he always appeared as if he’d spent his morning sitting in front of an industrial fan. What with his five o’clock shadow covering his jaw, Alexa was certain he had.

He could’ve spent that time shaving instead. He was dressed in the same form-fitting uniform she wore. Unlike hers, his vest wasn’t zipped to his neck, which left a peek of his white undershirt showing underneath.

His name tag was displayed prominently on the right side of his chest. Raul Gilmartin.

All of her crewmates were well-built. One had to be in peak condition for a job such as theirs.

With a pallet under his arm, Raul moved past her and set his load down, locking it in place. She went to his side and scanned it.

Tranquilizers.

A lot of them. Alexa licked her lips. When she looked up, Raul was watching her curiously.

“You do know there’s more to load, right? You can scan them in later,” Raul said. “It’s not like we’ll have a ton to do between requisitions.”

“I needed to get out of the heat for a bit.” She held up her rag still scrunched up in her