Creations 2: Creation's Control Read Online Free PDF Page B

have a choice about our natures. Our traits aren’t environmentally stimulated, but programmed.”
    “I know,” Ryen said quietly.
    “My generation looked promising. We appeared normal. We even acted normal, for the first few decades of our lives. Then, I’m afraid, science proved, once again, that man shouldn’t tamper with things best left in the gods’ hands. Many of my line became homicidal. Those that didn’t killed themselves.” He remembered too clearly the deaths of his friends. Watching Mertan kill his Creator before he understood what he’d done and killed himself.
    “Drekk?”
    “Death and madness descended,” Drekk said in a hoarse voice. He cleared his throat, aware Ryen watched him without blinking. “I managed to escape with a few others who’d retained their sanity. My only regret is that I failed to kill my Handler. My Creator didn’t fare so well.”
    “Good.”
    “Once I escaped, I tore through the System looking for a place to hide. The hungers, the need to destroy filled me for years. Like the rest, I was tainted with warring desires. The relief I craved wouldn’t come.” What he’d done before he’d found salvation still haunted him. “Then I happened upon a planet in the outer rim. A man unlike any I’d ever met showed me how to deal with my feelings. How to make the pain go away.”
    “Another Creation?” Ryen asked.
    “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me anything about himself, not even his name. He told me to call him Master.”
    Ryen frowned. “Master?”
    “Distasteful, but he was kind, nice, pleasant. He drove me fucking nuts.”
    “Tell me about it.”Ryen’s sarcasm wasn’t lost on Drekk.
    “I tried to kill him several times. To my surprise, he overpowered me. He looked like a Mardu, or even a Nebite. He had pleasing features but not the brawn or overt strength to overtake me, so I thought.”
    “A weaker man conquered you, and you enjoyed it?” Ryen’s distaste showed Drekk what he’d suspected of the larger male. Ryen didn’t know what it meant to truly submit. In the labs he’d been forced to endure, to lose to those weaker than himself. Which was why he constantly chafed at Drekk’s decision not to fight him. Ryen didn’t understand yet, but he craved submission—freedom. Until he resolved those conflicting parts within himself, he always would.
    “That’s just it, Ryen. Master wasn’t weaker. His internal strength showed me how to control myself. How to adjust to accept who and what I was. Through Master’s teachings, I learned to be myself. To love women and men. To see without prejudice.”
    “A lot of bullshit.” Ryen shook his head. “Come on, Drekk. Admit it. You got your ass handed to you by somebody stronger and he broke you.”
    “You don’t understand. But you will.” Drekk stared at Ryen’s cuffs.
    Ryen tensed. “Explain.”
    “When Glaia brought you to bliss, what did you feel?” he asked, avoiding a direct response.
    Ryen looked as if he meant to argue, surprising Drekk when he answered. “At ease. Her mouth took me to bliss. The rage I normally feel wasn’t there.”
    “Exactly. Like your time in the labs, sexual surrender relieved you.”
    “It’s not surrender.”
    “You physically release and a part of you that hungers is fed. In the labs, how else did you find a measure of sanity? By fighting, as you’d been bred to.”
    “I fuck and I fight. Easy answers.”
    So why haven’t you found that same peace here on Mardu? “Let me ask you something else.
    In the four months of limited freedom you had from the labs before they found you again, were you happy?”
    “What the hell kind of question is that? I wasn’t free. I was on constant guard defending Anin. You think I have issues? That poor girl could barely function without my guidance. I helped her to decide for herself, to live with a measure of independence, before they found us again.”Ryen narrowed his gaze. “I still want to see her. How do I know