by Elle E. Ire
It’s going to be close.
Chapter 48: Kelly—Surprises
VICK DESERVES better.
By the sixth day of waiting for rescue, I’m about to lose my mind. I’m not in any danger. The shields are strong, despite the raging electrical storms outside. The power stays on. I’ve got food, water, and I’ve found plenty of electronic books and vids in the computer system that the scientists must use to entertain themselves whenever they are on-site.
But I’m alone. For the first time in years, I’m completely alone. It’s not just Vick I’m missing, which is horrible all in itself. I’m overcome by grief three or four times a day for hours at a time during which I wrap myself in her jacket and burrow beneath the covers on the tiny cot and just cry. But on top of that, there’s no one else. No minds. No emotions. I’ve never been so disconnected from other living beings in my life, and it’s my own personal hell.
I do all I can to distract myself, but it does little good.
Then there’s the fact that Vick’s body is still out there, alone, uncared for in that yacht. She’s my responsibility and I’ve done nothing to put her to her final rest.
Granted, the storms have picked up again, and crossing the clearing back to the ship would be risking getting struck by lightning myself. I also lack the equipment I’d need to dig a proper grave by myself or cremate her. It bothers me that I don’t even know her last wishes. She wasn’t religious. What would she want?
I shake my head, recognizing that I’m letting my thoughts run away with me while I stare out the window. The distant shape of the crashed yacht is visible in the darkness only when the lightning strikes. When the rescue team comes, they’ll know what to do. They’ll have her preferred final arrangements on file. Every Storm member has to submit them as part of the employment agreement. Until then, I have to wait, alone.
Another flash lights up the meadow. It glints off something fast-moving and metallic arcing across the sky toward the research facility, then disappearing in the ensuing dark. Thunder rumbles in the distance. I lean toward the reinforced glass, pressing my nose against it, willing another strike to occur. When it does, the metal object has hit the ground, about halfway between the yacht and the building I’m in. But it’s too small to be a rescue vessel. It looks more like an escape pod of some kind. Could another ship have been brought down by Elektra4’s crazy weather systems? Could the pilot have bailed out in a pod?
Maybe I’m about to have some company after all.
I watch and wait, frustrated that I can only see intermittently. It’s not close enough to be picked up by the facility’s exterior lighting. Even when the lightning flashes, it’s so blinding, it allows me mere seconds of visibility before I’m blinking away the aftereffects of the brilliance.
As if watching activity under a strobe, I see the pod open. Flash—a shadowed figure emerges. Flash—it lights up the individual’s all-white clothing, casting all its other features into darkness. Flash—the figure races for the science building. Flash, flash, flash—the lightning seems to pursue him—her?—across the meadow like the weather has a personal vendetta against the newcomer.
I catch my breath and hold it, wondering if I’m about to see another victim of a lightning strike. The rain picks up, driving hard, obscuring my vision further. Heart pounding, I watch the figure dart between bolts that strike the ground, tossing up dirt and rock in their wake. There’s something oddly familiar about the lithe, agile movements, but I shake off the strange feeling, chalking it up to the adrenaline rush. One last flash and the new arrival disappears around the corner of the building to approach the entrance. I breathe a sigh of relief. This close, the lightning rods on the roof should offer protection.
Whoever they are, they made it, and I should let them in.
I leave the lounge-area window and hurry along the corridor to the door, skidding on the tile in my borrowed socks. I’m reaching for the locking mechanism when my personal comm beeps with an incoming text. It’s a short-range comm. The only person in range is outside the door. And they have my personal comm code.
I pull the device from my pocket and read the screen.
Open the door. Please don’t freak out.
That odd feeling returns. The hand holding the comm begins to shake. Using my thumb, I swipe across the screen, searching for the sender ID.
The comm clatters to the tile, screen up, so it doesn’t break. I brace myself against the nearest wall. The ID blinks up at me. Vick Corren.
The pounding of my pulse in my ears grows louder. I’m light-headed and dizzy. The device seems to think the message was sent from the comm unit embedded in Vick’s implants.
Which is impossible.
Unless, maybe VC1 has returned somehow? Come back to the facility’s computer system? But then….
Who is outside?
The comm beeps again, a new message. I’m guessing my ID is showing. Don’t be scared. I can explain. Please, Kel. I’m cold and wet and the implants are too overtaxed to decode the lock. Please open the door.
One more beep.
I love you.
I open the door.
Chapter 49: Vick—Connection
I AM uncertain.
I brush wet, stringy strands of my long hair out of my face just as the door slides aside. A blast of frigid air-conditioning raises goose bumps across my flesh, and I’m very aware of my soaked white clothing that has become transparent. I shouldn’t have concerned myself with any of that.
Kelly stands in the open doorway, more disheveled than I’ve ever seen her: red-rimmed eyes, rumpled clothing, pale skin. It’s been six days, and I swear she’s lost ten pounds or more. Guilt tears at my insides for what I’ve put her through and what I’m continuing to put her through. She stares at me, her mouth working but no sound coming out. She’s breathing too fast. I’m afraid she’ll pass out, but I’m also afraid to move any closer.
I hold still, not wanting to scare her any more than I already am. “Hey, Kel.”
Nothing.
I reach a hand out to her loosely, not like I’m going to grab her or anything. She flinches and takes a step backward. That hurts. “Hey, it’s me. I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.” I speak softly and slowly, like a rescuer trying to calm an abused animal. “Really, it’s me. Can I come in? It’s cold.” I can see the whites all the way around her eyes.
“H-how? How?” She can’t manage anything else.
God, I want to hold her. “That’s a very long story. I promise I’ll tell you everything I know, maybe over something hot to drink? Please, Kel, I’m here, but I’m not doing so well.” I’m not either. This body is too new to exertion. I spent six days in the medical transport ship, eating ration bars and drinking bottled water, insufficient nutrients for someone who’s been in a stasis box for… years? I don’t even know how long ago Dr. Alkins created this clone. Upon arrival, we scanned for other ships and found none. The Sunfires must truly have believed both Kelly and I died in the space yacht crash, and the Storm rescue ship had not yet arrived. Then VC1 programmed the medical transport to return to the Storm’s secret research facility on autopilot and had me launched to the surface of Elektra4 in an escape pod, which is essentially the size of a too tight coffin, not what I needed with my tendency toward claustrophobia. But escape pods are extra shielded, and it could reach the surface without suffering damage from the almost constant lightning.
Regardless, I’m shaky and exhausted and dehydrated, my electrolytes are way off, and I need to get warm.
I reach out my hand just a little farther toward her, palm up, offering. She stares at it for another long minute; then, as if she’s scared my touch will burn her, she lifts her hand and places it carefully in mine.
The impact is unexpected and immediate. There’s a flash of blue that seems to encompass us both, so powerful that despite having no Talent of my own, I can see it through Kelly. Then comes a rush of emotions flowing back and forth between us, so intense we sink to the fl
oor together: love, grief, fear, guilt, a touch of anger mixed in for good measure. I’m so caught up in just feeling all that is Kelly, that I’m blinded and deafened by it.
Holding her hand isn’t nearly enough. I pull until she’s in my lap, wet clothing be damned. Then my arms are around her, holding her so tightly and so close she might as well be my second skin. We’re both shaking with the emotional onslaught.
Eventually hearing returns, and I become aware that she’s saying something.
“It really is you. It really is. The bond recognizes you. But it broke. It vanished. You—” Her voice catches. “You died. I don’t understand.”
So I tell her.
She holds me through all of it. I’m hesitant when I confess that my body is cloned, worried she’ll reject me after all as something inhuman, even though she’s been the greatest advocate for my right to call myself part of humanity. She must pick up on my fear because she says, “What makes you you isn’t the exterior. It’s the thinking, feeling, caring, remembering part that’s inside, the part only an empath can truly see that signifies who you are. At least to me.”
“God, I love you,” I whisper, overwhelmed.
And then I’m kissing her for all I’m worth, exhaustion and hunger and dehydration and anxiety forgotten, wet clothing forgotten, the fact that we’re on a tile floor forgotten. Still seated, I press her back against the corridor wall, my body tight against hers, and don’t stop kissing her until we can no longer breathe.
Reason eventually takes over, and she grasps my hand, gets unsteadily to her feet, and gives me a little tug. “Let’s take this to bed,” she says.
I’ve never heard a better suggestion.
Something rough rubs against my fingers, clasped in hers. I look down, suck in a sharp breath, and pull her to a stop, lifting her hand so the diamond-and-emerald engagement ring on her finger catches the overhead fluorescent lights in a dazzling display of sparkle.
“I heard you, you know,” I say softly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t finish the proposal. I tried. But I heard you say yes before I died. I heard you, and I wasn’t scared.” I pause, searching her face. “Did you mean it? It wasn’t just something you said to comfort me?”
Kelly punches me once, lightly, on the bicep. “Of course I meant it. And I don’t care about the legalities. I only care about you.”
I didn’t think I could want her more. I was wrong. We don’t make it all the way to the sleeping quarters, instead opting for the closer lounge and its plush couches. She stops me in the center of the room. “First, off with those wet clothes.” She peels up the soaked tank top and tosses it into the corner with a plop. Her lips zero in on my erect nipples, fingers trailing over my rib cage and making me shiver even harder as she alternates between first my left and then my right breast.
I tangle my hands in her hair, head thrown back in pleasure, her tickling, teasing tongue darting all around, her teeth scraping the tips and making me groan with need. “God, Kel,” I breathe. It’s intense and dizzying, and the small part of me that can still think wonders if I’m more sensitive to it all because it’s this body’s first time having intimate contact.
This body. Oh, that’s going to take some getting used to.
Another thought occurs. I freeze where I stand, so abruptly that Kelly breaks off and looks up with concern. “Are you okay? Is it a flashback? I didn’t feel it—”
“No, it’s not that. I’m… fine. More than fine. I just, well, I have a pretty strong suspicion that this body is, um, intact.”
Kelly blinks once, then breaks into a fit of giggles that erupts into full-blown laughter until tears run down both cheeks. “You mean you’re a virgin. Again,” she gasps when she’s able to speak. “Maybe third time’s a charm?”
Third time. Yeah. Only now I can remember my first, a pretty butch softball player. I was a senior. She was a junior. We went to prom together. The same prom for which I had to tie my first bow tie. We left the dance halfway through and spent the night in the back seat of my hovercar—tight squeeze, since it was a sports model. Neither of us minded.
I’ve also got vivid memories of my second time being a “virgin”—so vivid in fact that I’m wondering if VC1 is enhancing them instead of giving me the organic brain-faded version. I was with Kelly in North Carolina, and while my body was far from virginal given the extensive number of partners I entertained in adulthood, my damaged brain couldn’t remember any of them at the time. We figured it out. Together, since I was also Kelly’s first. The replay has me panting and wet from more than rain.
Kelly’s giggles fade away, shifting to a soft moan. “You’re remembering our first time, aren’t you?” she says, reading my arousal through the bond.
“Yeah, and this virgin remembers a lot of sexual experiences, positions, and techniques, all of which I intend to share with you.” My voice is a low growl. I guide her to the couch and press her down to sit upon it.
“Mmm,” she says, fingers working at the drawstring on my soaked white pants. She manages the knot, then lets them fall to the floor. While I kick them and the ridiculous booties aside, she slips off her own sleep shorts and pulls her shirt over her head.
I pause a moment just to take in how breathtakingly beautiful she is, skin flushed pink with excitement, hardened nipples, eyes bright and shining. Wait. “Kel, are you crying?”
“I just can’t believe you’re really here.” She pulls me down to sit beside her, smothering me with kisses that set fire to my previously chilled skin. Definitely not cold anymore.
I take her face in my hands. “I’m here. I’m alive. I’m real.” I proceed to show her just how real I am. Laying her back on the couch, I cover her naked body with my own. We’re skin to skin all the way. I slip one knee between her thighs, moving it up and down slowly at first, then applying more pressure and friction when I feel her wetness. She moans in response, ratcheting up my arousal even higher.
All the while, I’m teasing her nipples with fingers and tongue, alternating between them so they each get the attention they deserve. Her fingers entwine in my hair, trailing over my scalp in tantalizing patterns. The channel between us is fully open. Everything she feels, I feel, and vice versa.
I trail my tongue down her chest, over her abdomen, and lower. She squirms and her hips buck in cute, uncontrollable spasms of pleasure while she makes the sweetest mewling sounds, appreciating every lick and taste. My regained memories serve me well. I know exactly what she likes, and thanks to our connection, I know when to speed up, slow down, tease, and press harder.
Her hands aren’t idle either. She moves them from my hair to my shoulders, holding me in place, gently at first, then pulling me in as her need intensifies. By the time she’s losing control, her nails are digging into my back. I don’t mind at all.
Sensing her climax is near, I straddle her leg, pressing my sex into her skin and moving with her, matching her rhythm as best I can.
I won’t say there’s no anxiety. The trauma at Rodwell’s hands was too severe to ever completely fade, but while it gives me occasional pause, it doesn’t stop me cold.
You are welcome, VC1 says in my head, startling me so badly I lose my rhythm.
The distraction transfers to Kelly, who raises up on her elbows to look at me. I shake my head, letting her know it’s nothing, and slip two fingers inside her to bring her back on track. She flops down, groaning in ecstasy.
New rule, I tell the AI. Talking to me during sex is not okay unless my life is in danger. Got it?
The snicker I get in response is very, very human.
Chapter 50: Kelly—Nine Lives
VICK IS different.
I wake up three times during the night, trembling and sweating and grasping at Vick, lying stretched out atop me on the couch. Each time she also wakes, then wraps her arms around me and holds me until I calm.
She’s here. She’s real. She’s alive.
“If you get up to use the bathroom, let me know,” I tell her.
“Because if I wake up and you’re not here, I’ll think I imagined the whole thing.”
“I will,” she promises.
So when I hear her voice saying, “You need to get up,” I figure that’s what it is. Then I realize the sound is coming from the speakers in the corners of the lounge area. I nudge Vick, who groans and shifts but doesn’t fully awaken.
“VC1 wants our attention,” I say, stroking Vick’s hair away from her face.
“No.” Her lips are in contact with the side of my breast. When she moves them, it tickles. I stifle a giggle.
“You need to rise, now,” VC1 repeats, a little more loudly.
Vick’s tongue darts out to lick my skin in swirls, turning her head so she moves closer and closer to my hardening nipple. “No talking to me during sex, remember?” she mumbles between licks. “It’s a rule.”
“You have rules?” I whisper, amused.
“Yeah, but it’s kinda like trying to train a cat,” Vick whispers back.
“I can hear you,” VC1 says.
If an AI is capable of sounding put out, she’s certainly doing it. Which is interesting. With all her memories intact, Vick is certainly being more open and expressive emotionally. I wonder if it’s having an effect on VC1.
“You were not engaged in sexual activity when I began speaking,” the AI continues. “And the rule was that I would not interrupt you unless your life is at risk. Which it is.”
That brings Vick’s head up fast. She swings her legs off the side of the couch and sits up. “What’s the situation?” No joking around now, all seriousness. I pull myself to sit beside her.
“The rescue ship will arrive in approximately twelve hours. Between now and its arrival, you must dispose of your original.”
“My—oh. Yeah.” Vick stands, wavers a bit, then catches herself on the back of an armchair.
