by Meli Raine
A cluster of babies cries again.
“Come on, Kina. Do what you do best. Be a substitute mother.”
I blink.
And just like that, I elevate.
I have to.
25
Callum
I hate shopping malls.
The second I park in the huge lot outside a major department store, I press my forehead against the steering wheel, the impulse cut short as I pretend to look for something under my feet. Even micro-moments of stress relief like that could be monitored. Under no illusions about my own surveillance, I make sure my behavior is aboveboard.
This shopping trip is part of my mission. It was quite a drive to get here.
I'm under orders from Svetnu to make fashion choices.
Kina is on my mind one hundred percent, and that's a direct order. I’ve been given a shopping list, her clothing sizes, and her measurements. I ride the escalator up to the couture section of this high-end store and approach the female salesperson who looks the most like Glen.
“Hello,” she purrs, looking me up and down. I've dressed the part today, in a bespoke navy suit, white shirt, Hermès silk tie, and Gucci loafers. My watch is a Rolex. This is the same place where Glen was outfitted a few years ago for her rise through Harry Bosworth's administration.
“Hi,” I say with a grin that's intended to flirt just enough to make her feel special, but not so much as to make her think I'm genuinely interested. “I'm here to buy some clothes for my wife.”
Her smile drops a little, but not too much. “Lucky wife.”
The requisite chuckle from me makes her grin rise again. “I'm the lucky one,” I murmur.
“Stop!” She laughs as she touches my wrist. “You're too perfect. I hope she knows what she's got in you.”
“Actually, that's why I'm here,” I say in my best sheepish voice. “I insisted we fly commercial yesterday. Couldn't get the jet ready in time. Pilots these days,” I add, my nonverbal signals designed to get her to agree, even if she has no idea what I'm talking about.
“Mmmm. That's awful,” she says with a nod.
“And the airline lost her luggage.”
Pure horror gapes back at me. “Oh my GOD!”
“It was full of Chanel, Vuitton, her favorite Manolos...”
I think the sales clerk is about to have a heart attack.
“And now I'm in big trouble.”
“You bad, bad boy!”
Another wrist slap, this one with a wink.
Mission accomplished.
For the next hour, I show Liz Kendall, the personal shopper, pictures of Glen's suits. I explain that's what my wife needs most, for meetings with philanthropists as she funds a new non-profit designed to help bring organic foods into schools and camps.
When I show her Kina's sizes and measurements on my phone, her face falls.
“Damn. The perfect man gets the perfect woman, huh?” Recovering quickly, she winks at me, her smile professional and a little salacious. She's performing for me, an art form designed to feed the egos of the rich in order to get their crumbs of money. Probably works on commission.
I've been on plenty of missions over the last few years where my morality was tested.
We've been taught by Stateless leaders that Liz Kendall is a victim of a corrupt, unjust, and unfair system. That the combination of hypercapitalism and democracy creates a dangerous state of imbalance and alienation. That the masses are human drones, going through the motions, worshipping government over people.
Our philosophy says that rule by a handful of powerful figures in regional areas, a modern feudal state, allows the people to connect to both their leaders and their fellow citizens; that a system of decentralized, local government helps individuals to maintain an identity rooted in civil society, not personal gain. Leaders are best chosen by other leaders, not by the common man.
Philosophy doesn't matter to Liz as she works to pay her bills.
And philosophy no longer matters to me when it comes to protecting Kina.
But by the time we're done, I have two suits, four shirts, a skirt, two dresses, a coat, and three pairs of high heels.
Not to mention a veritable cornucopia of accessories.
I only needed one suit, two shirts, and one pair of shoes, but the credit card I'm using has no limit and if it makes Liz happy, it's worth it.
“What about shapewear?” she asks as we wind down. “With that skirt, she'll need it.”
I imagine Kina's undressed body, the way muscle defines her glutes, how her tight abs quiver when I touch her.
“I don’t think she needs, uh, shapewear. But do you have black panties? With lace? And a matching bra?” I ask, working to keep emotion out of my voice.
“I really like the way you think.”
By the time I'm done, Liz has told me all about her horrible second husband, how he committed financial abuse against her, how he was a monied narcissist, and that men like me are a needle in a haystack and if my wife can't appreciate me, come see her.
I get the woman's card tucked into my breast pocket.
“The suit pants need hemming. I've already called the tailor, and it turns out they have an opening right now. Do you have an hour to wait? There’s no charge.”
“Thank you, yes.” I slide the credit card to her. “I'll be back in an hour.”
The total is approximately the cost of a new car. I sign the slip and hand it back with a hundred in cash as a tip. As I leave, she calls out, “Am I dreaming?”
Part One of the plan is in place.
Overcooked caramel, cheap cologne, and industrial chemicals assault my nose as I walk into the main part of the mall, the department store its own overpriced oasis in a sea of mass consumerism. I've spent plenty of time in malls, though less than most people. College students flocked to identical places for clothes in the Midwest, where I went to school, though less and less as time passed.
On a weekday, the mall is filled with retirees and mothers pushing strollers. I don't exactly blend in, dressed like someone's fantasy of a billionaire, but there are a handful of men in suits coming out of clothing and jewelry stores.
A detour into a “beauty bar” lets me buy the products we think Glen uses, an over-eager clerk with more makeup than a circus clown loading my selections into a fancy bag. Even Glen’s perfume is included, an English brand with a light herbal/citrus scent. A few hundred dollars later, I head to the boring chain pharmacy.
For a thirty-dollar haircut kit and a pair of reasonably good scissors.
Kina's transformation needs to be swift. She cannot be seen in public until it's done–even the barber at the compound can’t know about this. For years, she’s worn her hair long and simple, and that won't do if she's impersonating Glen. First, we have to get her to look enough like her twin to make the transition off compound. Then we can get a professional cut from Glen’s DC stylist.
Of all the things I've been trained to do by Stateless, being a hairstylist is one they neglected to tackle.
Hunger kicks in as I walk past the food court, a sushi bar calling my attention. Another swipe of my credit card and six pieces of tuna and rice later, I'm ready to pick up the hemmed pants.
Ready to face Liz again.
“Van!” she calls, using the first name on my credit card. Swooping in for a hug, she lingers a little too long. The other hundreds in my wallet begin to feel a magnetic pull.
“Thank you so much,” I say, sincerity easily faked. My hand finds its way to my pocket. “Please give this to the tailor,” I add, giving her a hundred I know damn well will never make it past Liz.
The long drive back to the compound smells like smug wealth. Liz sprayed the clothing bag with some new scent from a celebrity who's been paid seven figures to slap their name on a chemical that marketing will turn into a phenomenon.
I roll down the windows.
Kina knows I'm coming. She's been informed of the change in plans, and that Svetnu ordered it. When I arrive at her
apartment, her hair is wet, cascading around her shoulders, and she's nervous.
Her eyes go straight to my pocket.
I reach in there, not for a hundred dollar bill this time, but for the jammers.
“Leila is Angelica's daughter,” she whispers. “She's been assigned to watch my every move.”
“Not tonight,” I whisper back. “In a few hours, she’s going back to her home camp. Told her she needs special training in computer security penetration techniques. Her goal is to be a cybersecurity specialist. She hates working with you.”
“She's great with the babies,” she says, hating that truth. “At least, as far as I can tell. Every second she can, she’s in with the newborns.”
“She’ll be gone soon, Kina. We can do this.”
“Why did they assign her to me? Who assigned her to me?”
“I don't know. Svetnu wants you in The Field to be a double for Glen. Someone else wants you tomato-staked by a nineteen-year-old. None of this makes sense.”
She nods, removing the jammer.
“Let's get started.” I hand her the shopping bags.
Kina goes into her bedroom. Minutes pass, and then Kina and comes out as Glen with no haircut and no makeup. Only a slight wobble of her ankles reveals that stilettos are new to her. The clothing fits like a glove, the heels jutting her ass out, emphasizing her hips, taking her muscular, tight body and transforming it into a luscious object of desire.
My body responds, blood rushing where it needs to be, my arousal connected to my mission now.
“Kina,” I hiss, brain on fire.
Body, too.
“What? It doesn't work?” Looking down, she returns to herself, all traces of Glen gone in her nonverbal cues, the shift startling.
“Oh, it works. A little too well.” I don't want to be attracted to Glen. Kina is Glen right now, a hybrid I can't make sense of, my body wanting to be on her, in her.
Spilling myself inside with a triumphant shout.
And yet–I can't. Not when she's Glen.
A cold evil flickers in her eyes as she seems to read my thoughts.
Languid movements, her walk designed to roll her hips, Kina comes to me, fingertips gripping my lapels, her lips seductive as she brushes them against the curve of my ear. She's tall in the heels, though I'm still taller, and I go stiff.
In every way possible.
“What's wrong, Callum?” she says in a lower, slower, more sophisticated voice. “Don't you like what you see?”
“You–” I cough, then rasp. “You sound exactly like Glen.”
“Isn't that the point?” Her eyebrow arches, face a mask of insouciant condescension.
And then she kisses me, slow and sultry, the kind of kiss that makes every part of your body feel known. Plumbed. Explored.
Mined.
Kina started it. Now I'm going to finish it.
“Take the clothes off,” I order as our mouths touch, her hands on my ass, the immediate passion too great to fight. We're probably being watched but I don't care.
“Why?”
“Because I can't sleep with you if you're wearing clothes.”
What I want to say is, because I can't make love to you when you look like Glen, but that remains unspoken. It has to, because it’s based on pure emotion. If anyone caught that on video, we'd be sunk.
She does as told, not a word spoken, undressing and then standing before me completely naked, the heels left on.
I pounce.
The seconds it takes to move from Point A to Point B and have my hands on her are wasted time, a pile of time tossed into the years we were apart. In the grand scheme of life, those seconds are an afterthought, but as my palms warm her chilled nipples, her hot mouth pressing against mine with a haste that matches my own, those seconds mattered.
So does this kiss. And this one. And the next.
As I take her nipple in my mouth, my palm cupping the underside, the weight of her breast a luscious form of gravity itself, I sigh, my breath leading her to shiver, the palpable reaction to my touch making me even harder.
A pull deep inside takes hold, yanking me to elevate, my heart shutting down like a factory with breakers, one by one snapped up. Fighting the training is hard, but as Kina moans and leans into my suckling, her hands on my shoulders, her fingers gripping me, pulling me close, I tug harder.
I pull away.
Not from her.
From them. The people who made me this way.
Choice is relative. When we talk about human behavior, we think in terms of choosing. Free will is a given, and yet so much of what we call a decision is pre-programmed by outside factors. We act out of instinct, but what shapes that?
Education. Role modeling. Culture. Training.
Pushing back against our years of being explicitly taught to be sexual sociopaths is as hard as holding back an orgasm at the point of no return.
Can a person do it? Yes.
Will they fail many times trying? Also – yes.
“You're thinking,” Kina whispers into my ear, her head bent down, fingers stroking my ribs, moving up to splay her hands against my waist, riding up the contours of my back before burying in my hair.
I stand up, all the way, forcing her hands to drop, her eyes still below my gaze even in heels.
“Yes.”
“Elevating?”
“No. You?”
“Not yet. Not ever, if I can manage it.”
Pupils wide and deep, she's transformed into a huntress, a goddess, acres of beautiful skin waiting for me to connect with her, to ride into a world where nothing separates us, where the greatest good is to make her call my name at the peak of making love and to answer it with her own.
“Same. I don't want to elevate. I want to be with you, right here, with you in my arms and your taste on my tongue.”
“How do we do this, Callum?”
“One kiss at a time.”
Her hand moves between my legs, the touch making me groan. “One stroke at a time,” she echoes.
“One orgasm at a time,” I rasp as my own hand seeks the sweet spot between her legs and finds her wet, wanting, her hitched breath a sound that urges me on, our tongues tangled like our legs, her naked body a pleasure display before me. Her scent wafts up and I have to taste her, the need too strong to fight.
And why would I fight it? All I want is to give her pleasure. To feel her lose control.
To make her feel with her body what I know she feels in her soul.
Feel.
Ah, how that word brings a sharp stab with it inside me. We can fight all the ways that we've been programmed, but it's always that – a battle. Emotional combat in regular life is hard enough.
Engaging in it inside ourselves while trying to be intimately connected to another is a level up. An unfair one, at that. Beastly and insidious, it forces me to give a piece of myself to the inner conflict, a piece Kina deserves.
But like battle, if I don't spread my assets properly to fight the war on all fronts, I'll fail.
And this is one fight I refuse to lose.
Her bed is small, and we take up all the room, the pillow sliding to the floor as if graciously making way for us to do what comes naturally, my mouth on the soft spot between the valley of her breasts, my hands on her knees, my face drawn between her legs because oh, how perfectly ripe she is.
No panties, no barriers, no boundaries.
Just Kina, my tongue, and time.
That pull inside me tries its best to draw my mind into a no-man's-land where emotion is crushed, but it's in the distance, a fog rolling in between us, giving me the buffer I need as I taste her sweet juices, tongue making her arch her back, my name moaned in a loop that makes me smile against her sweet flesh. Hands in my hair, she moves her calves against my shoulders, toes pointed as I lick and lave until she's pulling me closer, begging, pleading, going tight then soft – turning herself inside out as her body tries on all these emotions that come from physical connec
tion.
I want to give her thousands to choose from, to slip into, to test for the right fit so she can find the ones that work.
Together and apart.
Tailor made.
Tense knees clap around me, burying me in everything that is her as she rides high on a climax, her writhing the only victory I need. I want to be in her, but this is so much better for the split seconds she's transcendent, Kina's full attention on herself. Every breath, every move of her hips, the scrape of her high heels against my spine, each brush of her calf against my ribs is a new kind of training, a curriculum made of tongues and tastes, of kisses and sighs.
I am her most obedient student.
“Callum,” she whispers as I look up to find her hand in her own hair, arm flung over her head, breasts stretched up, the nipples pointed to the heavens.
“Mmmmm?” I ask, crawling up her body, my cock hard and ready as she looks at me.
And smiles.
No.
No, no, no.
A cold wave of nothing washes over me, swooping in like a drone that alters electrical fields, the frequency set to neutralize emotion, my skin turning to wax.
Heart, too.
“Damn,” I mutter, climbing off the bed, erection pointing up like it's part of a police line-up and I'm being accused.
Of what?
Transgression.
The crime of feeling.
“Oh, no,” she gasps, knowing instantly what's happened to me. “Callum, I'm so sorry.”
I grunt. It's the only sound I can conjure.
Tears well in her eyes. “I... I let that happen. I broke. I don't know what I was thinking.”
Broke?
“What?” As I inhale, I will myself to re-enter my skin, instead of watching myself like an objective bystander.
“I let you make me feel... everything.”
Snap!
I'm back in my body. My heart. My arms and legs are mine again, buzzing with purpose, filled with energy and empathy.
For her.
Only for her.
“That was the whole point!” I nearly shout, tempering my words at the end, dangerously close to losing my shit in a very vocal and public way. We've already pushed every boundary imaginable, and while I'm not certain we're not being recorded, our chips are sending biometric info into a database somewhere.
