Page 14 of Asmodel

“I am not,” came the bot’s terse reply. “I assure you, I will inform you if that changes.”

The steady light shone on the empty cages made of clear walls. Several of the neon sexbots were motionless, either standing or stiffly sitting on the ground with their backs to the walls. He stepped over a badly scratched green one with its eyes plucked out.

All too soon, they came across Abalim and Azazel. Asmodel closed his palm to extinguish the light.

“How did you get here so fast?” Azazel raised an eyebrow at them.

Arakiba grinned with his arms crossed. “Place is just a round hallway with a lot of little rooms like this one. All are empty, just a few droids scattered around like that one.” He pointed at a red sexbot on the floor with its hand extended.

With a chuckle, Arakiba stepped into the room and froze.

Asmodel almost ran into him. With a scowl, he sidestepped around his brother and glanced back, then noticed the man’s frozen expression. Damn. A vision must have caught him. A deep one from the looks of it. “What do you suppose he’s looking…”

He never finished his sentence as a vision captured him as well. He found himself swept into the psychic plane along with his brothers. They were still in the cell on FiPan, but sometime in the past. The force field was up, and five women were crammed into the small room.

“Where do you think we are?” Well, that was stupid. Why ask? He knew perfectly well they’d picked up a psychic thread leftover from the women.

“Where do you think we are, dumbass…” Arakiba stopped in mid-sentence when his focus narrowed in on one woman.

Asmodel frowned as Arakiba’s eyes lost all color. That told him his brother was lost on a deeper plane of consciousness. Caught up in another type of vision that only Arakiba could see. He blinked, then he too was swept into a different vision.

He drew in a sharp breath at the sight of the alluring woman before him, her lush body enveloped in a wispy fog. Her umber-brown hair blended with the warm, smooth olive tone of her skin. Wide, intelligent cognac-brown eyes gazed at him, filled with longing. Her expression was beseeching, arms outstretched, silently begging him to come to her.

“Who are you?” he croaked before clearing his throat. Her apparition yanked at his heart as if his soul recognized hers.

“Where are you?” He clenched his jaw as the urgent need to find her overwhelmed him. Everything narrowed to one instinct—to find her now, before it was too late.

“I’m… sure… but I’m… planet… CeluriaVO.” Each word came out broken, like a cell phone with a poor reception. She dropped her arms and glanced behind her. “Hurry… Krystalii… coming!”

Her misty figure faded.

“Wait!” he yelled, stretching out his arm to grab her. But the only thing he caught was air as his hand passed through her misty form.

“I… am… Izzy…! Please… find me!”

She disappeared.

The haunting image of the terror on her face would torment him for the rest of his life.

“Hey, organic man!”

The metallic voice of JR13 jerked Asmodel to awareness.

“What is wrong with you?” the droid demanded.

Asmodel shuddered and blinked himself back to reality. While the vision felt genuine enough, it wasn’t something that happened in the past. It was more of a premonition. Gulping a deep breath, he glanced at the spider-bot on his shoulder. “I’m fine.” He straightened his shoulders. “Got caught up in a vision, that’s all.”

“Oh?” The voice of the bot rose an octave. “Is that something you normally suffer from?”

Asmodel inhaled through his nose before blowing out through his mouth. He wasn’t used to being questioned about every little thing he did since he escaped Akurn slavery. He had to remind himself that as a newly made bot, JR13 would have a tendency to ask a lot of questions. “Not as much as some of my brothers. But when it involves me directly, I do.”

“Fascinating.” JR13 scuttled to the end of his shoulder.

The bot’s tiny, pointed feet tickled.

“Did you ascertain anything interesting?” JR13 cocked his head, his bulbous eyes roaming over Asmodel as if examining him under a microscope.

Ignoring the question, Asmodel closed his eyes and opened his senses to see if there was anything lurking on the esoteric plane. An image of a dilapidated pub on FiPan came to mind. He sensed he had to go there to find the transportation he needed.

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