by David Burke
“Okay then you are forgiven, but you still owe me and I intend to collect.” Amelia’s voice shifted from soft to sultry and he shivered in part at her sexy smile and in part at the foot she started to work up against his groin under the table.
“Whoa there,” Jay said.
“What don’t you like it?” Amelia asked seductively.
“Hell yes, I like it,” he replied as he looked from girl to girl. “But shouldn’t we finish our conversation first?”
“Tsk tsk,” Amelia said. “And here I thought you were gonna stop being afraid of going after what you want.”
“Fine you asked for it,” Jay bellowed as he flipped the table up to the side and flung it onto one of the beds, ripping it right out of the floor. Despite the show of strength and intensity he was still careful to make sure that it didn’t hit any of the girls. Even going so far as to use his Kinetic Dampening field to guide its flight. “You want the alpha, you get the alpha.”
Jay surged forward and took Amelia in his arms, smothering her face with a kiss.
Behind him heard Meikiyo say, “Oh but wait, I wanna hear about the two other things that you needed to tell us.” Jay heard her but wasn’t paying much attention as Amelia had one leg up and over his thigh as she tried to grind herself up against him.
“No seriously, you two, we need to talk about this.” Meikiyo said. Then just as quickly as Jay had ripped up the table, Amelia slid out of his arms in her ectoplasmic form, moving back just out of reach.
Jay growled out a low, “Grrr…”
Amelia laughed as she reformed. “God, you are so hot when you can’t restrain yourself, but hot stuff over there is right. We need to finish hearing about these important things you had to tell us. Then we might have something else to talk about.”
Jay saw her mouth moving but the words barely registered with him as he went to take a step forward. “Talking can wait.”
She just danced further out of reach, which was impressive enough given the small size of the bungalow. “Now, now, work first then fun. Anticipation only makes it better. Besides, I told you, you owed me and revenge is a bitch.” That time all the girls laughed.
Jay shook his head and then did the only thing he could do. He shrugged and sat back down on the bench that had been under the table. Huong ran her hand across his cheek making him shiver but then she looked at the ruins of the table and said, “Well at least we know you feel just as horny as we do.”
Jay felt the tension build in him, but guessed that he had this coming. He sat but couldn’t help tapping his foot, a fact that he saw the girls notice. The sly smiles on their faces convinced him just how much they liked messing with him.
Or maybe it wasn’t really messing with him they liked. They liked to know that they were on equal footing with him. Which made sense to him. No one wants to be the person in a relationship who is desperate for the other person while the one they are chasing is ambivalent. He mentally determined to make sure they knew just how much he thought about them. Besides that would probably lead to a lot of fun.
They were all sitting on the benches now without the benefit of a table. Jay just ignored that though as he thought about how lucky he was.
“You had other stuff to talk about, Jay?” Huong asked.
“Yes a couple but before the most important part, I need to tell you about Jessie.”
“What about her?” Amelia asked suspiciously.
“Well nothing happened, but she found me on the way to this bungalow. She kinda tackled me and held me up against the wall with my feet off the ground.”
“I will burn her to a crisp if she attacked you,” Meikiyo declared.
“Nothing like that. She didn’t hurt me. I think that her beast control power has expanded. Now she can take on the traits of various animals.”
“That would line up with some of what I observed last night,” Huong said. She had that look like she was doing calculations in her head.
“So if she didn’t attack you then what was going on?” Amelia asked.
“Well um… she basically was begging to join the team. She cried that it wasn’t fair that you had someone who cared about you so much and she had no one. I think she is just crazy from the aphrodisiac, but she more or less tried to get me to take her right there out in the open,” Jay said.
“Oh now, I’m really gonna kill her,” Amelia said.
“I didn’t do anything. So don’t get all worked up,” Jay said.
“Why? Didn’t you find her to be attractive? I know I think she has a certain animal magnetism if you pardon the expression,” Huong mused.
“Um, cause I wouldn’t cheat on the team.”
All three of the women looked at him with the same deadpan stares as if they had rehearsed it ahead of time. After a few seconds, Huong started laughing out loud before looking at Amelia. “I’m sorry, I couldn't keep a straight face any longer.”
“What? What’s going on here?” Jay asked.
“Huong was helping Daphne and Kenzie with healing her after the attack. For a while it wasn’t clear if she would survive and probably wouldn’t have but for her own animal-based regeneration skill. So she kept grasping at Huong’s arm and trying to apologize for trying to take advantage of you,” Meikiyo said.
“Oh so you already knew. Fine, I guess this is part of getting even with me for leaving without telling you all.”
Amelia had her hand up against her face with her fingers curled into a fist like she was hiding the smile creeping onto her lips as she nodded. “Mhmm.”
“I probably deserved that, but I wouldn’t cheat on you. I mean not with anyone who wasn’t on the team.” Jay paused while speaking. “It’s sorta weird saying I won’t cheat on you when I’m sleeping with all three of you.”
“Not to us it isn’t. We have come to an understanding with each other. We’re sisters of a sort now,” Meikiyo said.
“The sisterhood of Team Jay,” Huong added.
“Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have been cool with this back home. We all know I don’t play well with others, but this isn’t Earth,” Amelia said.
Huong interrupted her by saying, “Clearly,” but shut up when Amelia glared at her.
“The rules are different here. For all intents and purposes we might as well be Adam and Eve,” Amelia continued.
“And Eve,” Huong said.
“And Eve,” Meikiyo chimed in.
Jay’s eyes got big as he heard what they were saying. He really was a lucky man to have such a great team, even if they had to fight for their lives. Maybe something about the way that he smiled at them worried Amelia because she quickly added, “Not that I’m planning on populating a new world anytime soon.”
A spike of terror ran through Jay. He covered it with a shrug. It wasn’t that it would be the worst thing. It was just that he had only been thinking about the fun parts of playing Adam and Eves, not the ultimate responsibility.
“On that note, in case you didn’t overhear, nothing happened from our little indiscretion,” Huong added.
“I heard. I assume you are happy,” Jay half said, half asked.
The Vietnamese beauty smiled at him. “I would have been fine either way, but it is probably for the best. This isn’t a very safe place.”
“Speaking about that, I had another dream. You know one of those dreams.”
“Where your own voice speaks to you out of the mouth of a half-naked woman?” Amelia asked.
“Well yeah, but I was more focused on the warning part,” Jay answered.
“Okay but who was it this time?”
Jay blushed a bit. He would have thought he was past that with everything that had been going on but he still knew how Amelia felt about Jasmine. Finally he croaked out, “Jasmine and Daphne.”
“Her again,” Amelia mumbled.
Huong said, “You promised to at least vote on letting her join the team.”
Jay ignored that statement and said, “Yes but I think I disc
overed something else about it.” He waited a second before continuing, “I’m pretty sure that they were the same two girls from my dream before I was taken.”
“How is that possible? I thought you said you hadn’t met anyone from here prior to being taken.” Amelia asked.
“I hadn’t, so it leaves two possibilities. One, this is all a dream that I am having and you all are just figments of my imagination, but I can’t imagine a dream this detailed. Either that or I’m getting messages from a future version of myself,” Jay said.
“Oh, oh time travel is so cool even if no one really knows how it would work,” Huong said, revealing her inner geek.
“There is another possibility.” Amelia said with that critical tone she adopted at times. “We could all be plugged into a machine somewhere living in a virtual world and our brainwaves got jumbled just enough that you thought you dreamed about them before in the virtual world.”
“I don’t think you really believe that and I know I don’t, but even if it is true, we likely can’t change it. This is our new reality and we need to adjust to it,” Jay said.
As critical as she could be, Amelia was ultimately pragmatic, and she nodded in agreement a moment after the other two did. Jay then filled them in on the dream and what he thought the messages meant. Ultimately they agreed on parts of the dream and were confused by others.
They all agreed it stressed the importance of growing in power and descending in the dungeon. If they assumed that the message was from his future self, which seemed possible given his locked skill of Temporal Manipulation, then it was clear that the voice was trying to get him to do something different.
“It’s frustrating, why can’t you just tell yourself what to do differently?” Huong asked.
“I don’t know but I get the sense that future me is under a great deal of stress. Maybe even trying to send coded messages,” Jay answered.
“So then we have to figure out what it means by unforeseen dangers unless you think it was those creatures from last night,” Meikiyo said.
“I think that has something to do with the figures that smashed through the sky in beams of light, but beyond that I have no idea. Even that is only a guess. It is just that those creatures last night for all that they were tougher did not inspire the fear in me that I got during that part of the dream,” Jay said before asking, “What do you make of the ‘cycles unsure’ part? In the past it has always given a number of cycles remaining.”
“Something has changed and we don’t have as much time as future Jay expected. At least that seems the logical conclusion,” Huong said.
Amelia who had been uncharacteristically quiet during their discussion then said, “I want to know what, ‘Find the behind’ means.”
“Yeah, I keep thinking of Oz when I remember those words. Do you think that there is some kind of scam going on?” Jay asked.
Amelia scoffed. “I always think that, but I’m not so sure it is that simple here. I think there has to be more going on than some cosmic human farm.”
That reminded Jay of what he had sensed when trying to detect life below him. He filled the group in on that and they discussed back and forth what it might mean. Ultimately just as he had concluded it would require further research, and they decided not to go digging down looking for more trouble than they already had, at least for now.
“The last question about the message is what was meant by ‘two together too much’,” Meikiyo said.
“I have a thought about that but not sure,” Jay said.
“Well do tell,” Amelia said.
“You know how Daphne has the ability to increase metabolism powers, but what if she has developed a skill that allows her to magnify other types of powers?” Jay asked.
“Oh, you mean like if she can magnify the bitch queen's manipulation powers?” Amelia asked in response.
“She doesn’t use her powers for bad. You saw last night. She was just trying to bring peace. She wants us all to work together,” Huong said, defensively.
“I don’t see it like that. Even now, I am having trouble disagreeing with her in my head,” Amelia said.
“The sun is coming up soon. We will have to be out of the bungalow in the next two hours, so can we finish this discussion?” Meikiyo suddenly asked.
Both the other girls looked at each other and then Amelia burst out laughing as she said, “Well look who's horny now?”
Meikiyo stood up with her hands on her hips. “Well night time is my turn.”
“Shouldn’t we talk about the stuff Jasmine wanted us to talk about?” Huong asked, ignoring the other two.
Both Amelia and Meikiyo said, “No,” in unison while Jay said, “Tomorrow.”
Interlude 2- Shifting Futures
Over two years later:
Jay woke up from his brief sleep with a spike of pain through his head. It felt like someone was driving a railroad spike through his temple. More than that he felt uneasy, unstable. Looking at his hand it flickered before his eyes momentarily, before settling in. It was almost as though there had been another reset, like in the early days of the testing before their captors had become as much the hunted as the humans were.
Those days were gone and Jay laughed to think that he almost felt fondly about that past as if it had been better times. Certainly he had gotten more sleep back then. Even if he didn’t physically need much sleep anymore he still missed the blissful escape it offered.
The past was what woke him. There must have been another shift. Jay looked around anxiously to see what had changed. Thanks to his temporal manipulation skill he was the only one who ever recognized any of the changes. Even he had trouble sorting through what was what sometimes.
Each attempt that they made altered the universe around them in ways that he didn’t understand. Huong had once warned him that it was called the butterfly effect. That had been before she was killed on the seventh floor by the gaze rippers. It was still painful. He had truly cared about her and she was just another on a long list of those that he had failed, or perhaps not.
As he scanned the room with his Life Sense, he felt multiple humans or at least as human as the awakened could be called. He actually felt that he ‘saw’ better with his Life Sense than he did with his eyes now and some of those presences he felt were familiar if slightly different.
Jay leapt to his feet and ran to where they were. A smile broke out across his face. Huong, Amelia, Meikiyo, Jessie, they were all alive there. Something in the last message, the power he had tried to send, must have made a difference. There had been a change, but he didn’t know what had changed beyond the fact that these women he loved were here now.
He was fairly certain that when he had lain down to rest, there had only been three humans left. Now there were seven of them. The shifting past made his present uncertain. All the others never seemed to realize that there were any changes, but Jay could always tell the difference.
Sometimes it was hard to tell what was real amongst the various pasts that he remembered. He had found that it was best to simply focus on what was in front of him now. Unlike so many of the changes this was a change for the better.
“How are you all this morning? You are such a welcome sight…” Jay trailed off as his eyes fell upon the babe nursing at Amelia’s breast. Those perfect breasts that he had enjoyed so many times before. There was something so right about those breasts being the source of life for his son.
Son, he had a son. Adam. Memories that felt both like his and not rushed into him and he remembered the birth of his son a week ago. Already the boy looked like a month old, but part of the awakenings was that both gestation and child growth were shortened. Not enough though, for the women’s abilities became unreliable while they were pregnant and this was no place for babies. None of them had survived.
Except now he was looking at his son. They had tried their best to stop having kids after the pain of losing the first few, but Amelia kept asking. She was a different woman now. They all
were, and he had never been good at saying no to her, not even under Jasmine’s influence.
The four women looked back at him as he was lost in thought. “Good morning, mate,” Jessie mumbled while her eyes flicked to her left.
Jay followed them and found Jasmine walking over to them. “Good morning husband, how are the concubines this morning?” The tug of emotion that he felt roll off of her pulled his full attention to her as though she were the only thing in the world. He couldn’t help but think about how beautiful she was, how perfect. Why had he been so fascinated in the concubines just a moment before when he had Jasmine?
Inside him a part of him groaned but he couldn’t seem to focus on it. “They seem to be doing well. My son is growing quickly. How are you, my love?”
