Chapter 1
Year 20,500
I didn’t know I’d find my mate through my darkest instincts, or that I was even on that path since the beginning of my instinctual journey.
Usually everything was so simple here on Earth – it was only difficult if you didn’t obey.
Technology organised the chaos.
However, humans were still spiritual with unpredictable ties to the dark matter of the universe, so we had to organise that too... well, kind of.
Humans had evolved to survive by perfecting Our Technocracy in the Universe to co-exist with each other and all other planetary systems who were in contact with us.
We also called our beloved human government system simply; Our Tcno.
Free will power was kept through the declaration of the Dark Light Constitution.
The Light was the enlightened choice through the Tcno’s intelligence. The Dark was instinct. Either option had to be recorded on your file, but nothing was recorded post-decision if you chose the Dark Path.
To keep Tcno basic rather than overbearing, only nine major life decisions were monitored by the Tcno, and all these decisions were made when you were 12 years old.
You would note Dark or Light.
Decision One. Privacy. [ Dark ] [ Light]
Decision Two. Health. [ Dark ] [ Light]
Decision Three. Education. [ Dark ] [ Light]
Decision Four. Social Circles. [ Dark ] [ Light]
Decision Five. Super Powers. [ Dark ] [ Light]
Decision Six. Philosophy. [ Dark ] [ Light]
Decision Seven. Mate. [ Dark ] [ Light]
Decision Eight. Taxes. [ Dark ] [ Light ]
Decision Nine. FDW [Final Death Wishes]. [ Dark ] [ Light ]
The most common Dark decisions were for 6, 8 and 9. Light for all the others ensured a fulfilled life with limited danger and maximum safety.
To be a Dark Three – choosing three dark choices over enlightened choices – was normal. 75% of the population chose these set principles.
To be a Dark Four, Five, Six, Seven or Eight always had inconsistent data. There was no annual statistic that matched the previous year. We didn’t really understand the inconsistent data, but it did prove, to most, that we had free will because of the constant inconsistencies in choice.
However, one statistic was finite. To be a Dark Nine was impossible. No one was a Dark Nine, because if you were a Dark Nine you were removed from Our Tcno.
There was nothing on the outside.
Nothing.
No one.
You were marched outside the walls of Our Tcno and never heard from again.
Your rights vanquished, so even if you were executed, nothing could stop it – as you lost all your rights in the system.
There is one small loop hole, however, to leap from the Dark Eight, into the Dark Nine category, choosing instinct over Our Tcno’s intelligence.
It’s the loop hole that comes with Decision Seven.
It was the only decision you had to make twice.
Your mate.
It was only a preliminary decision at 12, hell, because you were 12, noting whether you wanted Tcno to choose the mate for you later on in your life, or whether you would choose on instinct alone, could be flexible.
Of course, choosing a mate happened at all kinds of ages into adulthood. And for me, today I was 21 years old, standing on a directed physical path way that split between two doors.
I was already a Dark Eight in Our Tcno system.
I only chose Light for who would be my mate, as it was the only loophole in the system to get out of this place alive.
Technically, through gene analysis, personality data and more – Our Tcno could match you with someone you could consider a soulmate. A near perfect match.
But if you chose the Dark.
Or if you chose to be a Dark Nine in adulthood– something very different happened when you were thrust outside the city limits.
You were not killed. Rather, you were sold for profit, usually to an intergalactic planetary species who desired human companionship for whatever reason or value it would bring to them.
I was looking to be sold for a different reason.
I genuinely believed I owed the Kors my life.
The Kors resided on the Dark Ninth, their unique planet.
When I was a week away from turning 12 years old, I fell ill with the virus everyone seemed to get when they were a few weeks off from turning twelve and receiving the Dark Light Constitution.
The only way to be healed from this age-related virus, was to enter into the health system and receive the cure. Our Tcno did not hide that they developed the virus specifically to convince you that you needed their superior health protection, as it was their direct, open and honest way of proving they could engineer a cure for literally anything, hence, securing your long and prosperous life.
By some miracle, I healed on my own from a Kors Herb called Jace.
How I received it, I have no idea, all I know is I had it at the time, I consumed it, and I got better.
It healed me to full strength – only because it didn’t kill me. And it also gave me a special superpower. Enhanced Instincts. Sounds lame, but it was pretty cool. I’d tell you all about it later.
Right now, I had to make my last decision on the seventh choice.
“Choose the Dark or the Light, sister,” Brie asks me to choose, a helpful Tcno government employee running the Mate Sort. I was next in line.
I walk forward now toward two doors, light or dark.
Behind the light door, is a helpful lure – a glass panel allowing me a look into Our Tcno’s choice for me.
And of course, I see a tall, waiting man, who I do find extraordinarily attractive. I doubt he is human, but a subspecies, basically an alien able to mate with me. I can tell he is inhuman by the way his skin is slightly dark tan and greenish and sparkly. It’s hard to define but he is definitely not an OG human like me. He is trying hard to keep in a smile of excitement as his eyes sparkle with my initial approach.
However, when I take my first step toward the Dark instead – Brie calls out.
“Mars is your perfect match, Diana. Please don’t disappoint him, he has been waiting for you for some years.”
I ignore Brie, although I do look to see Mars’ face change completely as he notices my feet moving off the path.
His mouth flattens, his dark handsome eyes worry, expressing everything from being invested, concerned and possessive. Wow.
I’ll admit one thing… I kind of like that look. Possessive.
But… I knew this part of the journey would be a challenge, I just had to resist!
I may very well believe he and I would have the perfect chemistry, considering the initial butterflies I feel inside my stomach right now just interacting with him through a glass panel, fifteen feet away…
…but...
The strings forging between us right now, do nothing to absolve the heavy weight inside my gut, telling me to run for the Dark.
I take another step toward the Dark choice.
“Is it because the forbidden option is the desirable one?” Brie asks me, truly curious.
I answer her briefly now, with a single, “No.”
“Why?” Brie now calls out to me with quiet panic.
I don’t look back at Mars, a little scared I might just think twice if we make a longer connection.
I focus on Brie entirely instead as I answer her again, “I should.”
“Should? If it’s a question of morals, shouldn’t you go to the love who will be perfect for you, and he for you?” Brie asks, before going strangely quiet, listening to a voice in her ear, titling her head, she then presses a button on her necklace.
I turn around as what I think should be forbidden – now bursts through the Light door.
Mars is let through, and I get the shock of my life when he stalks for me.
I have to look away as I also realise he isn’t just anyone.
Dressed in Tcno’s Elite-Donor grey on white suit, with black shoes so shiny they almost reflect perfectly like a mirror, I am basically watching a high exec of not just Our Tcno but from the Universal Board, standing in my way.
He was ultimately super fucking rare.
Like, so fricken rare, it was really hard to even possibly imagine how we ended up mates.
I carefully and tentatively look Mars over again, head to toe.
Um. Wow?
My blood is feeling hot and cold all at once.
He holds his arms at his sides, in a relaxed but stiff pose and I can’t look above his pockets, his dark eyes are just too intimidating.
“You can’t stop me choosing,” I remind him, carefully… I get a sudden urge to lock eyes with him, to dare it.
I gulp as I look up to catch his dark, now rather sharpened eyes.
“It’s your choice,” Mars agrees, and his voice is like beautiful poison to my ears – even his natural smell is too damn clean and deep for me to consider all the notes within, without falling, “…but I’d like to think you could choose to stay…”
“Why?” I ask him straight.
“Because it’ll be good.”
Mars holds out a hand for me, even though his tone didn’t sound pleasant or even too sure.
Fuck. Some kind of resolve inside me snaps.
No! I can’t believe this is happening – but I can’t leave him without an invitation.
“Well… I don’t want anything on record,” I whisper that as an indirect invitation; come get me – but not like this. Not here.
Mars’ hand freezes in the air between us, my words must have sent a shock through him, just as much as they sent my own nerves off the deep end.
I side step around him and quickly unlock the Dark.
When I push through the door, I quickly step through and shut the door behind me.
I see what’s on the other side is simply an ET, an express teleportation device.
The location is set to unknown.
Whoever is buying Dark Nines, that’s where I’ll go.
Hopefully off planet.
I step through, walking straight to my next destination.
Just like that – I’m through… and where I end up… is kind of… well… purest luck.
****
I didn’t expect it to be this at all.
I stare wide eyed at the unique dark flora around me, in a green house style palace, or castle, or whatever this place is. I’m in the throne room, staring at all the green.
As a Dark Nine, I’m unironically on Dark Ninth; the planet I always dreamed of going to.
The Kors lived here.
A planet that was always dark, the light only being sent by their three distant moons and the luminescent plants, which all sparkled.
What’s more, is this planet was peaceful.
Very peaceful.
I look behind me but the portal is shut.
There is one more ‘problem’, however.
Our Tcno had the technology to send Mars back through space, back in time if need be – to achieve interception with a target, such as me.
And, well, guess what.
I didn’t expect Mars to be a fucking Kor.
I’m not alone.
He went back in time to beat me back to this location.
Mars is sitting on the throne, at the top of a steep staircase overgrown with purple metallic vines, looking down at me, dressed in tribal Kor clothes, no suit – and all his muscles are pretty much on display.
He is now ten times more drool worthy.
Fuck.
I mean, I did invite him to woo me outside the system, if he so dared… so I shouldn’t be so damn surprised, but here I am… and here he is.
“I guess you don’t like the females on Dark Ninth?” I speak up to him, so far above me, hoping to sound somewhat cheerful.
“Females are forbidden from this place. We are an exclusively male planet. I joined Tcno to find a mate. We can breed with humans,” Mars answers me, with such little words, but so much information, I just gape and try to formulate a question.
Uh –
Um…
“Why am I here again?” I ask, almost forgetting I walked through the portal myself, but the Kors did technically buy me from Earth… so I did ask the right question. Huh. Okay. I did. I just need to remember to breathe.
“We can breed with humans… and –” Mars repeats himself and also talks a bit slower for me, but I already interrupt him, because if he is insistent on breeding, I didn’t want to just bend over like a clueless idiot.
“Well, I’m sorry but I don’t want to be–”
“There is no desire to make you do anything, we do not chase…” Mars interrupts me back, now eagerly awaiting my reply.
“Oh?” Is all I ask, raising a brow back to him.
“The backlog to get to this planet has a waitlist of over a million female subspecies,” Mars half shrugs, “We have no shortage.”
“Why don’t you let that eager lot flood in? You’d have all the choices in the world,” I am also truly curious why this planet is exclusively male… so strange.
“We do let them in,” Mars explains, “But you didn’t let me finish.”
“What? Oh…”
“Our choice sustenance is female kind, preferably of those we mate with,” Mars sounds… amused.
I blink rapidly as I try to process what he just said.
I rephrase it back to him, with a question.
“You want to eat your mates?” I ask, “Like, as food?”
“Some female species consume their mates, sometimes that concept is reversed,” Mars laughs now, deep, dark, and ultra sexy.
Oh… fuck me… my heart beat slows.
I now rapidly find the fact I find him sexy, utterly disturbing.
“Are you trying to tell me, there’s a waitlist of females trying to get to Kors… just to die?” I squeak that last part out. Mars doesn’t seem to want to answer that, looking away and chewing on it. Why am I about to ask this… fuck it, “…raw or cooked…?” I instantly regret asking it, and Mars seems more amused but also refuses to answer that, “Do you, uh, do you eat anything else?” I ask, suddenly my heart is wanting to race, and I rather have some of my fears assuaged.
“Fruit,” Mars answers, nodding as he thinks about it.
“How do you… eat people when… you… sorry, you look human, like an omni –” omnivore, except I can’t finish, because Mars smiles wide for me to show me his teeth, and there’s probably two extra canines on each side, razor sharp – so six shredders… I guess the others are for crushing bone – ew… but also, damn it, how come his teeth look sexy to me?! “What do your kind do if you have a daughter –?”
“We send them away,” Mars explains, quietly and closed off – as if he doesn’t want to discuss that part.
“I’m… confused… am I going to die?” I ask, laughing slightly, while holding my elbow with one hand and twisting one ankle back and forth as my eyes try to slyly scan for exits, knowing damn well I can’t outrun that beast on the throne.
“No?” Mars answers me… just far too late and far too coy.
He even tries to hide his curling smile with his hand as he leans his chin on his palm, his eyes now looking me over slow… calculated…
I saw him do that in Our Tcno.
It was flirty then.
Now it’s something else entirely.
“I’ve never met a Dark Nine,” Mars quickly changes topic, when he sees me looking very hard for the closest and quickest exit.
“I guess that makes me… unique?” I ask, hopefully, “And rare – very rare, probably won’t meet another one, for a very, very long time,” so don’t kill me and maybe you can keep me around just to pick my brain, at the very least?
I ask all the rest of that through my eyes, projecting my feeble hopes out at him.
“Diana,” Mars says my name, distracting me again, “Why don’t you explore this place… the others already know not to touch you.”
“Oh,” I gulp, feeling slightly relieved, “And how many more of you are here?”
“On the planet?” Mars asks, “Nine of us.”
“Nine?” I ask, now just confused by the number.
“Yes, Nine of us,” Mars agrees again, “Venus, Mercury, Terra, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.”
“Are you Gods?” I ask.
Mars shakes his head slowly but still I feel like that doesn’t deny anything.
I start to walk backwards, genuinely afraid to turn my back on him.
I really, really hate it when he answers me with silence or tiny shrugs or shakes of the head… or worse, amused smiles.
I prefer words.
I don’t know how to say goodbye to him so I just walk out the way behind me.
He watches me go, but nothing dramatic happens, he is just curious, I guess?
I guess I can hope that curiosity will keep me alive a little longer.
