The software snagged a purge all worm and notified her that most of the files – any of the ones that had anything of interest or value – were encrypted. After the scan finished, she began another to decrypt the files. The progress bar clicked along with excruciating slowness, but Alyx was hardly going to rush the process. She finished her second cup of coffee while she waited it out, grabbed a bathroom break on her way to getting a third cup, and smoked through a couple cigarettes before the decryption finished. With the prep work finally finished, Alyx turned her attention to the flash drive’s precious contents.
The drive was damn near filled to its eight terabyte capacity with files. Spotting a folder listed ‘Video Surveillance’, Alyx wasn’t all that surprised. She skipped over the folder for now, doubting there would be anything of value on the footage, and went to the more technical looking things.
Alyx skimmed through the files, trying to decipher them. The decryption software had done its job without flaw, but it didn’t do much to translate science nerd lingo into real words. Pushing aside the risk of an impending stress headache, Alyx pressed on. A lot of the stuff seemed to involve the inner workings of the lab; an entry log, regulations for the self-sustained life support and power regulation systems, an inventory of the stocked supplies as well as the protocol for requesting replacement supplies. It was all highly technical and highly boring shit. She closed that file down and pulled up another.
Personnel files. Again, not a whole lot of valuable information, but it did give Alyx the first hints as to what the lab had been used for. Astrogeology and mycology.
“The fuck’s a mycology?” Alyx muttered to herself, pulling up a dictionary program installed on the computer to check. She let out a satisfied half-laugh. “So that’s what they call people who study fungus.” She put that together with the astrogeology and let it roll around in her head for a few moments.
So space fungus? Images of the lab’s state filled her head and she let out a shudder. Apparently, they weren’t all that good at cleaning up their messes, if that shit was what they were playing with. Oh jeez, I got bukkaked by space fungus. Fucking gross. Trying to push that particular memory of ickyness into the back of her mind, Alyx continued to skim through the personnel records. Curiosity blended with a small dab of jealousy led her to the file of one Madison Davis. She took a long look at the photo ID attached. “So you’re the bitch my boyfriend had to bang to get those access codes?” She rolled her eyes and closed out the record. “I’m totally hotter than you. Suck it, loser.”
The rest of the personnel files were mostly boring. A bald guy named Gordon who worked for CyberWolfe, an older dude with curly grey hair and a beard named Carmack, another chick named Caine who looked about the same age as Madison but with her hair pulled back into a tight bun, a fatherly looking black guy named Fredricks, and a cute Asian girl named Isaacs. The only thing Alyx took from the rest of the files – aside from their professions – was the comfort that Gavin hadn’t decided to seduce Isaacs instead. The girl looked entirely too damn perky. Thank fuck for small favors, she thought before going onto a new folder of data.
“Jackpot, bitches,” she said with a sigh of relief as she spotted the first thing that looked remotely like research data. The big words threatened to send Alyx into a cross-eyed state, but she picked up enough of the details to know it was definitely worth the excursion to the lab. As the concept of space fungus settled into her brain, she cracked a wide grin. “Fucking aliens, man. Small, squishy, gross aliens. But aliens all the damn same.” She imagined the blank check that came with the evidence of extraterrestrial life – regardless of what kind it was – and her smile grew. She lit up a fresh smoke and took a long drag, feeling an excited tingle between her thighs.
Where the hell is Gavin?
* * *
“Yea, baby,” Gavin groaned as he clutched the soft brown hair of the stripper kneeling before him. “That’s the spot.” His hips bucked forward, forcing his not inconsiderable length down the young woman’s throat. She gagged around him and – while the sensation was pleasant – he pulled back a bit to keep from choking the stripper with his cock. “Anyone ever tell you that you totally look like Justice Beaver?”
Erin Moone pulled her lips free of Gavin’s moist prick. She lifted an inquisitive eyebrow at him. “What the hell’s a Justice Beaver?”
Gavin shook his head. “It’s not important,” he told her before guiding her mouth back to his dick. “Just don’t stop. You swallow, right?”
“If you pay me enough, I do,” Erin shot back with a smirk before sucking Gavin back into her mouth. She fluttered her tongue along the underside of his cock. Her hand came up to gently stroke his balls as his fingers dug into her hair and held her head steady so he could fuck her face with harder pumps. She relaxed her throat, but it was still a struggle to keep from gagging. She didn’t usually do much more than light groping with the customers she took into Fallen Angels’ private rooms, but Gavin was cute, insistent, and – maybe most importantly – had a wallet even thicker than his cock. All the same, Erin didn’t like to think of it as whoring. More like doing whatever she could to keep the power on and her college tuition paid. It wasn’t as degrading as it could have been, but it wasn’t all that great either.
“Shit, I wish my girlfriend knew how to suck a dick as good as you do,” Gavin muttered.
Fucking cheating asshat, Erin thought as she pulled her head back to drag her tongue around the head of his dick. As charming as the guy was pre-blowjob, she was quickly regretting her decision to give Gavin head. At least he doesn’t taste that bad, she thought as her tongue flicked over the tip of his prick to lap up his pre-cum. All the same, the faster the act of pseudo-prostitution was over, the better, as far as Erin was concerned. Unfortunately, it looked like Gavin had other ideas. She cursed his stamina and continued to suck while considering a change in professions.
* * *
Alyx gave up on waiting for Gavin to get back when her stomach growling got loud enough to hear over the music drifting from the computer’s speakers. She gave her flat tummy a poke with her finger. “It is officially grub time,” she muttered to herself. And Gavin can get his own damn chow, she added internally. She shut her music off and got up from the computer, heading back to the bedroom to get dressed in proper clothes. She kept it casual, mostly because there was very little in her wardrobe that wasn’t. Also, Mickey’s Diner-o-rama wasn’t exactly a formal wear type of place. But they did have a damn good Rueben and that was what Alyx’s belly was craving. Slipping her sneakers on, she grabbed her keys, wallet, and cell phone on the way out and made sure to lock the door behind her.
Taking the elevator down to the ground floor, Alyx took to the street and headed for the hole in the wall diner. Mickey’s was affordable and tasty, so as far as Alyx was concerned, the health code violations were worth the risk. Her stomach continued to gurgle as she went. Now that the hunger had hit her, she felt ravenous. She decided to up her order to a Rueben with fries and as big a strawberry milkshake as she could get. And a side of cheese sticks. Fudge sundae for dessert. With sprinkles. Confident in her soon-to-be epic meal, Alyx – and her grumbling gut – felt a bit better. She picked up her pace and darted across the street, spotting the familiar sign for Mickey’s only a block away.
It was barely ten o’clock in the morning when she ducked into the diner, perfect timing between the breakfast rush and the lunch crowd. Alyx’s empty belly let out a cheer of joy at seeing how empty the diner was. She headed to the back, sliding into the booth she normally sat at and waited not-so-patiently for the waitress to come get her order. When the girl made her way over, Alyx gave her the long list of her order. “And if you get it out here fast enough, I will leave you a huge tip. Like, triple digits huge.”
While Alyx waited for her grub, she slipped her cell phone out of her pocket and sent Gavin a text.
“At Mickey’s. Getting food. Where the fuck are you?”
She dropped
the cell phone on the table and leaned back in the booth. Her phone buzzed a few moments later, signaling a return text from Gavin. She checked it.
“Passing off samples to Falcone. Be there in a few.”
Alyx sighed and sent her own reply of, “Fine.” Even if he was showing off the fancy drugs they’d swiped from the lab to Falcone, she doubted he’d been doing that all damn morning. Which left the question of what he’d been doing before meeting up with their drug-dealing friend. Probably off getting his dick sucked by day-shift strippers again, she thought moodily. The waitress brought over Alyx’s strawberry milkshake and she thanked the young woman before popping the straw in her mouth. She sucked the chilly, sweet substance into her mouth. I should be way more pissed about his indiscretions, she told herself. Even ignoring the whole cheating on his girlfriend thing, it’s just gross. I mean, seriously, Gavin? Fucking day-shift strippers? They’re the worst.
* * *
By the time Gavin arrived at the diner, Alyx had already torn through her cheese sticks, the fries, and was mostly finished with her Rueben. “Hungry much?” Gavin asked as he slid into the booth beside his girlfriend. He reached for the half of the Rueben Alyx hadn’t devoured yet, only to have his hand slapped away.
“Fucking famished, bitch,” she snapped. “So get your own damn chow.” She picked up the half of the sandwich Gavin had reached for and took a big bite out of it. She chewed her food slowly before washing it down with the lingering remnants of her milkshake. “Have fun getting your pipes cleaned out by Bubbles or Bambi or whichever damn stripper you persuaded to go down on you this time?”
“Her stage name’s Misty,” Gavin said as he waved over the waitress. “And she’s actually pretty cute for a day shifter. You’d like her. She’s gotta bubble butt, too.”
“And we’ve both had your dick in our mouths,” Alyx added, sarcasm dripping from her words. “We’re almost like the same person.”
Gavin ordered a burger and fries for himself from the waitress. He waited until the young woman had left to continue the conversation, conveniently shifting it to a different topic. “In other news, Falcone is definitely interested in those drugs. He said he’ll do a forty-sixty split with us on it, which even at forty percent, we’re bound to make a good stack of cash off of the exchange. Did you get a chance to look over those computer files yet?”
Alyx sighed and decided to let the whole stripper thing go for the moment. “Yes, while you were getting your rocks off with some bitch who wasn’t me, I checked out all the data.” Well, maybe I’m not going to let it go entirely. “I’m nowhere near smart enough to know exactly what we got out of there, but I am exactly smart enough to know that it’s worth tons. More than your forty percent drug cut with Falcone, for sure.” Itching for a nicotine fix and finished with her meal, Alyx scooted her way out of the booth. “So now, we just have to find someone with deep enough pockets who might be willing to pay for the goods. Which, if I remember correctly, is what you bring to this little partnership of ours. I’m gonna grab a smoke. You got this covered, right?”
Not waiting for a response from Gavin, Alyx got up and headed for the exit.
* * *
Alyx grabbed herself a fresh pack of cigarettes on her way back to the apartment, leaving Gavin behind to eat his meal and pay the bill. She entered the somewhat rundown apartment complex and hit the button for the elevator, waiting for it to come down to the ground floor. What the hell am I doing in this damn relationship? It was a thought that popped into her head more and more the longer she was with Gavin. Sure, he was charming enough and had a nice cock, but the problem was, he couldn’t keep it in his pants, even when seduction wasn’t necessary for the success of one of their jobs. She’d thought she loved him. She wasn’t so sure anymore. Because underneath his suave personality and general good looks, Gavin was kind of a dick.
Which would mean an instant bail on this whole fucked up relationship, she thought as she stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the fourth floor. Except for that whole working together thing. And the fact that, despite his general dickishness and inability to maintain anything even resembling monogamy, I do actually care about the asshole. She sighed and ran a hand through her short, spiky dark hair. The whole working together thing was a bit more problematic. Even if they didn’t blend well as boyfriend and girlfriend, they blended magnificently as partners. Their personal strengths and weaknesses melded together to make one hell of a dynamic duo. Gavin was an idiot around the tech, Alyx was an idiot around the people. And while she’d been making decent scratch as a straight up hacker, her profits had more than doubled since teaming up with Gavin.
So we keep working together, she decided as she stepped off the elevator and strolled towards their shared place. But no more fucking. I don’t wanna catch herpes second hand off some stripper. Gavin wouldn’t like it, but Alyx didn’t really give much of a shit. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t find more than enough pussy to keep his overactive libido satisfied. Alyx wasn’t looking forward to the oncoming forecast of drought between her legs. Her shitty people skills didn’t make finding fuck buddies all that easy. But my fat bank account makes ordering sex toys online super easy, she thought, trying to cheer herself up. Somehow, the thought of riding a rubber cock to climax for an untold number of nights didn’t exactly brighten her mood.
The thoughts of Gavin, her unhealthy relationship, and whether or not she should fork out the extra cash on express shipping on her scheduled sex toy order disappeared as Alyx stepped back into the apartment, replaced by overwhelming nausea. Snapping her mouth shut and clamping a hand over her lips, she scrambled through the cluttered one-bedroom living space to the bathroom. Along the way, she banged her knee against a box of hard drives, tipping it over and spilling the storage devices onto the floor. She winced and limped her way through the pile, not wanting to add soggy Rueben chunks to the potential damage she’d already done to the drives.
Shoving the bathroom door open, Alyx dropped to her knees and skidded towards the toilet. She yanked the seat up and ducked her head into the bowl, opening her mouth to allow the burning stream of vomit to spew out of her. Her stomach flexed instinctively as her large meal made its way up from her unsettled stomach, through her throat, out of her mouth, and into the toilet. Her eyes clamped shut as tears streaked down her cheeks and her fingers clutched the rim of the toilet for all she was worth. There seemed no end to the purging. As one stream came to an end, another followed it almost immediately. Flecks of puke splattered back up from the tainted water to land on her flushed forehead and cheeks.
Goddammit, Mickey’s, she thought as she puked. I fucking trusted you. And in return, you give me goddamn food poisoning.
She puked until there was nothing left in her system. Then she puked some more. She lifted a hand to flush the toilet a couple of times, sending the disgusting slop in the bowl away to the sewers. She heard the front door of the apartment open and let out a groan. Gavin was back. She didn’t want him to see her in her current state. She pushed herself up and turned to shut the door, but a fresh wave of nausea had her head back in the toilet bowl a moment later. It was nothing but stinging liquid bile at that point, but it didn’t make the experience any less unpleasant.
“Alyx?” Gavin called from the other room. She could hear him making his way over to the bathroom. “You alright, babe?”
She lifted her head and blinked the tears from her bloodshot eyes as she looked over to Gavin, now standing in the bathroom doorway. “The health inspector was right,” she forced out, her voice hoarse from all the puking. “That goddamn diner is a fucking death trap.” And with that, she resumed the forceful purging of her soupy stomach contents. She flinched when Gavin’s hand touched her back, surprised by the touch. She calmed down as he began to rub her. Maybe he’s not a complete dick, Alyx thought as the nausea slacked off enough for her to catch her breath. “Never eating there again,” she proclaimed. “Fuck Mickey and his stupid Diner-o-rama.”
>
Once her stomach decided to play nice again, Gavin helped Alyx get undressed and into the shower. The warm water helped to refresh her, but the marathon puke session had left her feeling incredibly weak. Which was only one of a number of reasons why there was no repeat of the previous night’s shower time nookie. Alyx remained in the shower until the water cooled down then shut it off and got out. She toweled herself off before slipping into a fluffy pink robe and shuffled her way out of the bathroom. She felt better, but not good. Her throat still ached and she felt as if she could take a two week nap.
“Here,” Gavin said as she exited the bathroom. He handed her a glass of water and a couple of pills – a little round yellow one and a cylindrical white one. “These should help.”
Alyx gave the pills a hard look. “What’re you dosing me with?” she asked.
“Pain killer and anti-nausea,” he replied. “Got them out of the stash we swiped from the lab. Take them both and then go lay down. Drowsiness is a side effect.”
Alyx nodded and popped the pills into her mouth before downing the glass of water. “And with that, I declare it nap time, bitches,” she muttered before turning around and shuffling her way to the bedroom. She shrugged out of the robe and flopped onto the bed, pulling the sheet over herself. Burying her face into her pillow, Alyx let her eyes close and was snoring a minute later.
* * *
It was dark by the time Alyx woke up, but she didn’t give a shit about that. She was too preoccupied by the stabbing pain in her gut. Her shriek stirred Gavin from his slumber beside her. She flailed underneath the sheet, legs kicking it away from her as her hands went to her throbbing midsection. The sheet clung to her body, soaked through with her sweat enough that she had to peel it away from herself. When she finally got a look at her grotesquely swollen gut, Alyx released another scream, this time from uncomprehending horror. She looked nine months pregnant and if the sharp stabs of agony streaking through her were any indicator, she was going into labor. Except none of that made any damn sense.
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