Jupiter's Rising, page 1
Jupiter's Rising
Earth United Chronicles, Volume 2
C.R. Jones
Published by C.R. Jones, 2024.
Jupiter’s Rising
C.R. Jones
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 C.R. Jones
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9798223606116
DEDICATION
For the gays, girls, & they’s <3
For my friends, family, and biggest supporters, here is to book two!
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Trigger Warning!
Prologue
Chapter One | Emhos
Chapter Two | Jones
Chapter Three | Home
Chapter Four | Trust
Chapter Five | Walls
Chapter Six | The Farm
Chapter Seven | Wren
Chapter Eight | Theories
Chapter Nine | The Seeress
Chapter Ten | Kisses
Chapter Eleven | Live Free!
Chapter Twelve | Amplifier
Chapter Thirteen | Guardian Bond
Chapter Fourteen | Tattoo
Chapter Fifteen | Inner Demons
Chapter Sixteen | The Colonel
Chapter Seventeen | Unrequited
Chapter Eighteen | Cassie
Chapter Nineteen | Logical Love
Chapter Twenty | Ka’ed
Chapter Twenty-One | Free Will
Chapter Twenty-Two | Girlfriends
Chapter Twenty-Three | | The New Lieutenant Lyon
Chapter Twenty-Four | Dream Warrior
Chapter Twenty-Five | Mental Elasticity
Chapter Twenty-Six | Love Bubble
Chapter Twenty-Seven | Downgrade
Chapter Twenty-Eight | Public
Chapter Twenty-Nine | Facing Dan’Trell
Chapter Thirty | The Trial
Chapter Thirty-One | Discovered
Chapter Thirty-Two | Empathy
Chapter Thirty-Three | Denial
Chapter Thirty-Four | Shields
Chapter Thirty-Five | Service Award
Chapter Thirty-Six | Saturn
Chapter Thirty-Seven | Betrayal
Chapter Thirty-Eight | Spirit King
Chapter Thirty-Nine | One for the Many
Chapter Forty | Bargain
Epilogue | | Jones
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sign up for C.R. Jones's Mailing List
Trigger Warning!
This book dives into dark places, such as depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, sexual assault (SA), and emotional, sexual, and physical abuse. Please use caution before deciding to read this story.
Help is available for anyone who needs it: https://988lifeline.org/
Resources available globally: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1417269125743673
Some of this content contains fictional conversations with a therapist however, a therapist did not write this book and the words are not a replacement for a licensed professional. Please seek help if you are experiencing any thoughts of self-harm or suicidal thoughts.
Your life is yours to live and you are valuable. Don’t live for others. Live for yourself. Love yourself, learn to set boundaries, and the harder lesson – learn to enforce them.
Prologue
The chill seeped into my body, freezing my aching bones on the metal bed the General had me strapped to. She had me in the same barren bright-white room where I’d made my first mistake three months before. Every few days, after I had healed up enough to withstand more torture, they would bring me back for more.
Today, the General had decided to layer my naked body with electrode patches. Many were in sensitive areas like my armpits, my nipples, and the back of my knees. Francis, the sweet yet timid medic, had convinced her to not put one over my labia, thankfully.
Sighing the General agreed, “Fine, but put one of the pads on each of her feet and on the heel that isn’t broken.”
Francis obliged, unwilling to meet my eyes as she fit everything as directed. Her hair always stayed the same length and style. It was a short straight bob with wide bangs framing her large forehead. She chose to accessorize daily with different patterns and colors painted on her face. This morning, her eye makeup was done in vibrant shades of green. She had small designs drawn in a dark green liner across her eyelids and down her cheeks. She’d found a way to make her blush appear in a grid-like pattern across her cheekbones. Oddly, it was stunning on her pale skin.
Chills raced up my body as she peeled another pad and put it over my bare foot. Soothingly, she pressed her hand tight over my foot ensuring it stuck. Her dark eyes darted to mine as she mouthed an ‘I’m sorry’ to me.
I couldn’t figure out the odd dynamic between the two of them. It was clear Francis had no power over her dictator and even if she did, I wasn’t sure she’d have the courage to wield it against her. On rare occasions, she was firm with the General and then the deep voice of her leader would halt, and my tormentor would storm out, commanding the frail girl to clean me up and get me ready for the ‘next time’.
Thankfully, Francis’s hands were warm and after the cold of the pads pressed into my skin, she’d press her large hands against me, warming me up as much as she could. When she finished, she kindly grabbed a thin sheet she had heated from a rack and draped it over me. I shivered under it but did my best to suck up as much of the warmth as I could. Once the General took up her post, the jerks my body went through would make the sheet slip off me.
She loosened up my wrist holds, but not enough for me to break a bone and pull out of them like I had the first time. I wanted to tell her it wouldn’t matter anyway, my body ached severely each day and night. Now, I barely had the strength to make it to the toilet and back to my bed. I knew today would be the day I willed my body to give up, stop fighting, and die already. Somehow, they always knew when to stop before that happened.
My arm was still broken and in a thick cast again since the General had rebroken it last week. My once-twisted ankle was fractured from our last session and my windpipes had healed again but she always found ways to damage them whenever I angered her too much. Francis had refused to put a pad over my throat, telling her boss that it would shred my vocal cords beyond repair. The thought should have terrified me. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. Nothing does.
Before I could slip further into the melancholy of my thoughts, the General stepped over me; her dark coils sprinkled with spatters of grey shined against the harsh bright lights, “Are you ready child?”
I didn’t bother to meet her dark eyes, there was no point anymore. I also didn’t know if the words were for me or Francis. Instead, I closed my eyelids, refusing to look at anything around me, none of it matters. If I could get my body to give up, I would die today.
“General, weren’t you bringing... ummm... the... erm...” Francis’s voice trailed off.
It was as though she was trying to say a name or title without revealing anything to me and the General’s deep tones bounced around the room, “I asked her to come a bit later so I could prep our guest,” her words twisted darkly on guest and the bile in my throat threatened to push its way out of my mouth.
“Now, my little Lyon cub, open your eyes or I’ll force them open,” her voice shivered down my spine.
I debated for a second before choosing to do as she commanded. She often followed through on her promises of punishment. On days I’d refused, she’d held my eyes open with sharp metal tools that bit harshly into my eyelids and clamped onto my jaw. Each time I’d scream in pain, the tool would pull my lids wider, and that was torment I couldn’t handle right now.
She turned on a screen above me. Images of my squad, broken and in pieces flickered across the ceiling. I wonder if I look like that or worse. The images, while disturbing, didn’t bother me because I knew they were all safe.
Even though my mother hadn’t been able to confirm it verbally when I’d asked about them on her first visit, it had been obvious from her body language that I was the only one being tortured.
The images rotated and it took me a few pictures to discern where they could be identified as fake. Jordain was supposed to be lying on a table in a setup like mine, but her knee was at an angle that wasn’t possible for lying down. Edited, as though I would fall for these. I kept my lips tightly pressed together out of bitter annoyance.
“If you tell me what I need to know today, I’ll let them go,” she cooed down at me.
My eyes betrayed my eagerness to be done, and they flickered toward her dark ones, “What’s your bonded mate’s name?”
On my second day in this torture chamber, I learned the term they had for Dan’Trell, my ex-lover, was bond mate or bonded. Apparently, our ceremony had done something that helped protect my mind from them and their devices. Francis had inadvertently revealed that the device she’d used on my first day could read my brain’s images and thoughts. Since I had a barrier of protection from my previous lover’s connection and my own... racial heritage, as my mother had called it, they were unable to pull what they wanted out of me. This is why I was brought into the persecution chamber every few days.
When I failed to answer her questions, sharp knives pricked both of my armpits. I bit my lip to try and keep myself from scre
As a snarl was uttered toward Francis, I closed my eyes, “Don’t get soft, up the voltage.”
Quickly, I forced my eyes back open, knowing she’d be turning back to me, “Come on you weak half-breed, what Sergeant or Lieutenant were you fucking?”
I didn’t react as I stared at an image of sweet, tiny Amada in casts in a hospital bed and was awarded with pain behind my knees. I sucked in a breath and pushed my lips together. I won’t give her the satisfaction of a fraction of my voice today.
“He doesn’t love you,” she whispered harshly into my ear as the currents burned through my legs.
My calves and thighs flapped against the restraints, I didn’t have the strength to try and support them. While she’d gotten her sex wrong, the words still stung. I’d been tossing the phrases around my mind for months now.
If she did love me, we wouldn’t have been in the position we were, right? We would have waited and built a friendship, not a situationship. She knew she still loved her wife when she pursued me. I shook my head, not in defiance of the harsh words the General had spoken aloud, but at mine. I knew, right? I knew what I had signed up for. I own as much of the blame as she does, as Serena, and Jordain do. We had bent our moral compasses and destroyed a family. Love, no, she hadn’t loved me. I’d felt her love for Serena, and I didn’t hold a flame to that power.
“No? No, he does love you?” The General snapped angrily at me.
“Think again girl, if he loved you, he’d feel half of the pain you feel. No bond mate would allow their love to struggle in this much pain for months. Unless he’s a worthless little human, he’d have found his way here,” spit landed across my face from her bristled words.
I felt the pain hit my nipples and the scream I’d been holding back was ripped from my lungs. Her grin made me want to throw up. It had taken me a few nights of not being in constant agony to piece together the clues my mother had left me, mixed with the words of my oppressor to understand what she’d meant. My mother had implied we were a part of the extraterrestrial race and since the asshat beside me insisted on continually calling me a ‘half-breed’, it meant my father was a human. My half-breed status was something these aliens despised. They were even more upset that I’d stumbled upon something sacred to them.
Some days I agreed with them. If I could give up the bond, would the pain end? Would I be back to my old self? Confident, capable, and not falling to pieces? Even if I could let her go, I deserve the pain for all we’ve done.
I hadn’t heard the last questions she had asked, but my feet were aching, and my poor legs were flapping listlessly against the bands holding my ankles in place. My broken ankle screamed in protest the entire time. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep forever.
I did this to myself. I chose this path. My failures and the decisions I made landed me here, in this place. There wasn’t anything worse the General could call me that I hadn’t been saying to myself over the past few months.
After I continued not listening to more of her abuse, all the pads were stabbing me, and my body was shaking with waves of anguish. My screams were so loud I couldn’t hear anything over them. I kept reminding myself to keep my eyes open, but my body refused to follow any directions. When the voltage stopped my body twitched, almost missing the continual shocks. My teeth rattled for several minutes and after they settled, my limbs kept twitching, missing the jolts of electricity. I realized I had missed a conversation in the room.
“I’m getting her, you will continue the shocks and if you don’t, I’ll know!” The General’s bellow gave me a moment to breathe.
I heard heavy boots storming out of the room. If Francis was following directions, I couldn’t feel anything. After the door closed loudly, I heard her drop something metal on a cabinet. Within a minute, her warm hands were pulling my hair out of my face and a wet, hot cloth was wiping off the blood, spit, and sweat.
“I know it’s easy for me to say, but don’t blame her. She is trying to make sure our kind is safe. Your crew landing on this side means there is a breach and she’s trying to determine where it came from. Unfortunately, you’re the only one who might know who,” she whispered into my ear.
I shook my head painfully, “I don’t...”
“Shhh, save your energy. I figured that out a long time ago. It may not feel like it to you, but I have kept the worst from happening. I re-wired all of these so the voltage can’t go up past midway. It would be easier if you told her who you...”
She trailed off when she saw the tears flowing freely down my face. My strapped hands couldn’t wipe them away. Her warm cloth found the streams and she cooed, telling me it would all be okay.
“I have to set the shocks on the lowest setting, as she gets closer, I’ll turn it up so it will hurt a little bit, but not nearly where it was. These pads should at least give you some warmth, like a massage. I will cover you up after I finish wiping off all the blood. Reyna, for what it is worth, I am sorry,” her voice had gone deeper, and not for the first time did she remind me of a child fighting against the restrictions their parents put on them.
In comparison, the warmth was pleasant and could have almost felt like small massages; however, what she’d forgotten to take into consideration was the sharp cuts across my skin. Each roll of the pads passing over a cut made me hiss from the stings they left. She continued to apologize as she cleaned my battered skin.
Seeking comfort outside of the room, my mind drifted off to Dan’Trell and her warm embrace. I tried to recall the scent of warm spices and wood, but the smell was long gone from my memories. I shouldn’t cry for her. I don’t deserve love after all I’ve done. My tears poured out as my heart broke even more. I deluded myself into believing what we had was love. The haze of happiness was nothing but a lie. A lie I had allowed myself to build even when I knew this was going to be the end result. A blink of heaven for a lifetime of pain. Yes, I am where I belong, shivering in anguish and bitterness.
Francis was kindly covering me once again when the door slammed open, “Grab a cart, she’s fainted!”
I heard the small girl’s soft feet slap away on the tile and a loud commotion in the hallway. They’d left the door open. I couldn’t see out, but their voices carried.
“What happened?” Francis squeaked.
“I think it was too much! All she managed to say was ‘stop’ before she collapsed. She must have opened her mind before we got in there and she wasn’t prepared!” It was the first time I’d heard the hard woman sound scared or worried.
This passed-out woman meant something to her, she is important. Perhaps it was why Francis had hesitated on the title or name earlier. This woman was someone they both held in high regard. I realized then that Francis had been kind enough to have stopped the pain before rushing away to assist. My body was finally trying to absorb the heat of the sheet and while I was still shivering, I was only shaking from the aftershocks every few minutes instead of continuously.
The commotion in the hall was settling down. It seemed as though the woman was coming back around. I heard the General whisper a prayer I couldn’t decipher.
“Praveena, do you know where you are?” Francis asked sounding the most confident I’d ever heard her.
“Yes, Francis, dear. I’m okay,” a kind high-pitched voice drifted into the room.
It turned ice cold an instant later, “I am disappointed with you, Stacia. If you do not stop everything right now, you will only succeed in breaking her brain for the rest of her life. There is nothing more you are going to get out of her. Stop searching for black holes where there are none. Now, take me home.”
There was more shuffling, but no one responded to the stern reprimands. I wasn’t sure the woman had been right. I had a broken body, but my mind felt the same as always. Perhaps a little bit more cynical.
Francis scuttled in, smiling lightly, and began the process of removing each of the pads and their leftover goop from my body. It was a tediously slow process, and I couldn’t help the wheezing exhales as each tug pulled the sharp stickers out of my skin. The kind girl would apologize in a soft voice after each yank while she cleaned my wounds before applying a salve and bandages. When my feet and legs were cleaned up, she slipped on socks that were wonderfully warm and brought a pair of underwear over. She unbound my legs before sliding the panties up my lower body. Sagging in relief, I was happy to find them as warm as my toes.
