Page 71 of Xara and the Xenobeast

“There you are.” Dravak’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Still impressive, I see. The years haven’t dulled your edge.”

The Xenobeast straightened to his full height, towering over the Zarkari commander. He said nothing, but his silver eyes blazed with cold fury.

“Silent as ever,” Dravak noted. “Some things don’t change.” He clasped his hands behind his back, adopting the stance of a superior addressing a subordinate. “You’ve caused quite a problem for us, Seven. We thought you dead—hoped you were, actually. It would have been cleaner.”

The Xenobeast remained motionless, assessing. The guards were nervous—he could smell their fear, hear the elevated rate of their hearts. But Dravak was calm. Too calm.

“Then a research vessel goes missing,” Dravak continued. “A valuable cargo disappears. And the tracking beacon leads us here—to a quarantined death world. To you.” He tilted his head. “Quite the coincidence.”

The Xenobeast’s tendrils twitched. Research vessel? Cargo? Xara.

“She wasn’t meant for you,” Dravak said softly, reading his reaction. “The female. She’s a resource, nothing more. Valuable genetic material. We’ve been studying her species for some time now.”

The beast within him snarled, straining against its leash.

“You’ve been playing house,” Dravak continued, his tone mocking. “Playing at being something you’re not. You were engineered for war, Seven. Not domesticity.”

“My name,” the Xenobeast growled, his voice rusty from disuse, “is not Seven.”

Surprise flickered across Dravak’s face—quickly masked. “It speaks. How novel.” He took a step closer. “You don’t have a name. You have a designation. A purpose. One you failed to fulfill.”

“I chose differently.”

“You malfunctioned,” Dravak corrected sharply. “And now you’ve taken something that doesn’t belong to you.”

The Xenobeast’s claws extended, his tendrils flaring with bioluminescence. “She is not yours.”

“No?” Dravak raised an eyebrow. “She’s a specimen, Seven. A test subject. Valuable, certainly, but ultimately replaceable. We’ll do better controlling her genetic potential than letting a failed weapon breed with her.”

Something snapped inside him. The careful control, the strategic patience—all of it vanished in a red haze of fury. With a roar that shook the trees, the Xenobeast lunged.

The guards fired, but he was already moving—a blur of lethal speed. He caught the first guard across the throat, ripping through armor and flesh in one savage swipe. The second managed to get off another shot before the Xenobeast seized him by the neck and slammed him into a tree with enough force to snap his spine.

Dravak had retreated, drawing his own weapon—a neural disruptor designed specifically to incapacitate Zarkari bioweapons. The blast hit the Xenobeast square in the chest, sending lightning pain through his nervous system.

He staggered, dropped to one knee. The pain was familiar—training exercises, punishment protocols. His body remembered, even as his mind rejected it.

“Still responding to basic commands, I see,” Dravak noted clinically, adjusting the settings on his weapon. “Some programming runs too deep to override.”

The Xenobeast fought through the pain, forcing himself back to his feet. His tendrils whipped forward, knocking the weapon from Dravak’s hand.

Surprise registered on the commander’s face, followed by a flicker of fear. “Impossible. The neural override?—”

“Doesn’t work anymore.” The Xenobeast advanced, his silver eyes glowing with cold rage. “I am not your weapon.”

Dravak backed away, reaching for a secondary weapon at his belt. “You are exactly what we made you to be. Nothing more.”

“You’re wrong.” The Xenobeast lunged again, faster than Dravak could track.

The commander fired wildly, the shots going wide as the Xenobeast seized him by the throat and lifted him off the ground. Dravak kicked, struggling against the iron grip, his face contorting with effort.

“You can’t kill me,” he gasped. “The Dominion will send others. They’ll find her. Take her. Study her.”

The Xenobeast tightened his grip. “No one will find us.”

“She doesn’t belong here,” Dravak wheezed, his face purpling. “With you. You’re an aberration. A mistake.”

“The only mistake,” the Xenobeast growled, “was thinking you could control me.”

---