by Scott Rhine
She giggled as she climbed down with a container of honey. “I’m only being mean because you left during my performance.”
“That was rude me. I had a fire to put out,” he said offhandedly.
She chuckled throatily as she poured a liberal dose of honey into each cup, “A hot one, I hear.”
“I’ll leave,” he said, sounding downcast.
She put a hand on his good shoulder to push him back into his seat. “You haven’t given me a proper apology. I’m still offended.”
The Japanese heiress sat on the counter and fixed him with her eyes as she sipped from her cup.
He bowed his head in the Japanese way he’d seen Daniel do over comm-links to avoid staring up her skirt. “You have such a beautiful voice, why do you feel you have to distort it?” He sipped. As she’d predicted, the honey was a perfect addition. “I hadn’t heard the gate song before. It was enchanting.”
She smiled, drinking more. “It’s new. I’ll sing the entire thing for you later if you like. After you suffer through, I’ll consider the apology complete.”
“It won’t be suffering,” he said, draining his cup to avoid her predatory gaze.
“Speaking of pain. Why didn’t you go to the clinic after that truck hit you?”
“I’ll be fine. They would’ve asked too many questions.”
“Jealous boyfriend?”
“Close enough,” he admitted.
She touched his shoulder and he bit back a shout. Sojiro poked his head in. She shook her head. “You have a serious knot here. The pain is reinforcing itself in a cycle of tension.”
“Told you,” said Sojiro.
“I’ll help you work it out,” she offered.
Zeiss started protesting until the artist told him. “She’s very good at sports massage. Since this was a false alarm, I’m going out to finish my meal.”
“Thanks,” Zeiss said, waving, but that action hurt, too.
The tall woman shook her head. “But first you’ll need some muscle relaxants.”
“When I talked to Dr. Marsh about my upcoming page, he said no drugs till Monday.”
“Piffle. Every girl in my pod takes muscle relaxants for their cramps. They’re very mild, and you need something for that knot.” She took out a tin with the name of a well-known feminine product on the outside and white pills inside. “I’ll consider it one of my two favors.”
He sighed and popped the meds in his mouth. By the time she said, “I’ll get you more tea,” he’d swallowed them dry. “Well, aren’t we the manly one.”
“You can’t stop skiing or hockey to get water.”
“I meant because you took three. Put your head down on the table and let me do my magic.” As she kneaded, the back of his scalp tingled. He moaned and his hat clomped to the table. “I’ll take that,” she said, putting the hat on her own head.
With her left hand, she placed the badge on the still-warm electric stove-top. With her right, Kaguya released a pulse of psi current into his pleasure center to cover the action. Then she tsked. “This isn’t going to work. You need background music, hot oil, and a chance to lie down so I can work the kinks out of that leg.”
“Okay,” Zeiss whimpered.
“My room has everything we need,” she suggested, reinforcing the request with her Empathy talent.
He did the unthinkable and refused. “That could damage your reputation.”
“Where else are we going to do this?”
“The guard for the faculty gym lets me in all the time and keeps quiet. I give him leftovers from the supper club and I’m always with Sorenson. You can use your phone for the music. But keep your video cam going so you’re protected.” He enunciated clearly for anyone who might be listening.
“Okay. Start walking. I’ll get my purse and catch up.”
As soon as he exited, she locked the back door behind him. Then, she scooped the badge into the sink with a hot pad. Once the frame was cool enough, she popped out the chip and put the warped plastic back into the hat band. Poking her head into the other room, she whispered to Sojiro, “He fell asleep a few minutes into the massage.”
“Happens,” Sojiro said. “He’s had a hard day.”
“I’m locking up and heading home. Can you make sure no one bothers him?” she pushed just a little with her talent.
“Sure thing. No one gets by the wall,” Sojiro bragged.
After she locked up every door and left through the front in plain view, Sojiro called in a report, “Our boy went out like a baby during a massage. Confirm that the back door is locked. We’re going to be here a while.”
“The board says all secure.”
“Roger.” The artist pulled out a pad and started sketching another episode.
****
By the time they reached the gym, Zeiss was staggering drunkenly. The high speed of the island was generating heavy winds, and he could hear the clank of a metal clip slapping against the flagpole. Kaguya had her arm around him and was holding him up by the waistband of his pants. She put a finger to her lips and winked at the guard, who shook his head in wonder and opened the door.
As soon as they got inside, the former TA bumped into the wall. The tightly dressed woman smiled. “You’ll fall right off the massage table and I won’t be able to lift you. Let’s step into the women’s locker room.”
“I don’t think—”
“Nobody’s going to walk in on us, and they have yoga mats.”
She led him the next few steps by the waistband of his pants, flipped a mat off the wall, and let him collapse onto it. Shielded against Professor Sorenson’s influence, she could work on him for at least a shift with no interruption. She texted her team to have the front guard replaced immediately: no one in or out till further notice.
Turning on mood music from her phone, she put down her purse and hid the hat. She placed a small camera atop the lockers where the view angle could capture them both. “Personal video record: on. While I get the oils ready for your back, you take off your shirt and shoes.”
He managed the shirt but the latch on the sandals puzzled him for a moment before he slid them off, too. When he looked back, she ripped the miniskirt off with the sound of Velcro tearing. His eyes bugged out until he hid his face in the mat.
She purred, “Relax. Oil stains don’t come out of clothes. Ask anyone who gets a massage from me.”
As he lay facedown on the mat, she began rubbing the warm oil into his neck and back. “Oh, that’s the spot,” Zeiss advised.
“So, you’re still unattached?” Kaguya asked.
“Huh?”
“Team-wise.”
“Red just put me in this shape, what do you think?”
“Good. Because I wanted a chance to pitch my team, where we know how to take care of a star performer.” She caressed his muscles, gently at first but with increasing firmness.
The base of his skull began to tingle. “Go on,” he murmured.
“You could have this kind of treatment every week.” As she released the tension in muscle after muscle, she listed the people on her side who were the best at what they did. If Red didn’t get there first, this woman would reach the artifact. However, Kaguya had a better chance because this would be her final year at the Academy.
Zeiss lost track of the songs eventually, unsure whether two or four had played. The knowledge that his friends were listening on the badge was all that kept him from falling asleep. Zeiss felt the need to speak so they knew he was okay. “I could listen to your voice all day. When you’re CEO of Mori, your speeches will be like music videos.”
Kaguya knelt on his back; the heat and weight caused him to groan. “Aren’t you full of compliments?”
“’s true.”
She leaned over and tickled his ear with her breath. “We’re a lot closer than I thought. I’ll skip the rest of the pitch and go straight to the important issues. Where’s the future of space: companies or governments?”
“Companies,” h
e admitted. She stroked the back of his neck and pleasure exploded in his brain. His body couldn’t arch because she was holding him down.
“Elias Fortune understood that, which is why my father joined him in this venture,” the Japanese woman reasoned. His eyes were closed in bliss. “If we wait for the UN, we’ll never see the artifact.”
“Agreed,” he mumbled. Next she touched his right shoulder and all trace of the pain vanished.
Her voice continued to massage the base of his brain. “Catering to them is like holding Grandma’s hand as she dies, and Grandma’s senile.”
“That’s going a little far.” His left shoulder went next. He was floating in peace.
She feather-stroked the base of his spine. The tingling dragged a loud moan from him and his body responded in ways he hadn’t intended.
“Miss Mori, stop. I . . .”
“Shh,” she said, slipping her hand around the right hip to do the same. But this touch did nothing. “You agreed to let me have my way with you.”
She had touched the psi-shield stress ball, and it had blocked the effects, Zeiss deduced. But psi-shield only prevented one thing. “Out of Body talents,” he blurted, unable to stop the flow of words. As she flipped him face-up, he recited, “Your biological father was one of the scouts from London office, the Japanese one. He mastered the whole page, which includes psi bolts: pain touch and direct cortical stimu . . . stim . . . You paralyzed the quantum candidate so he’d fail his splash test.”
“You’re good,” she admired. “Even doped to the gills, you figured that out. And you took three pills. Solomon was right about you.”
“Penguin!” Zeiss shouted to the hidden microphone in his badge. “What was it? Ecstasy? LSD?”
“My own special blend. We use it in religious ceremonies.”
“Your face is glowing!”
“That’s not the pills; you’re seeing me as I truly am—your goddess.”
“How (pant) infected? Wasn’t sex.” Her face filled his view.
“Yet. But all it takes is a little DNA exchange. There was me in the honey; me in the tea. You’re becoming Active.”
Zeiss began hyperventilating. “Sojiro!”
“He can’t hear you,” she sang, placing a curved headrest behind his neck. When he filled his lungs to shout, she gave him a jolt of pure pleasure to the neck so intense that he couldn’t breathe.
“Since you’re still awake, and you’re the first, we’re going to skip to phase two.” She pushed a button and changed the background music. “Since my mother’s experience, I’ve done a lot of experimenting with Theta conditioning and bonding. The coolest technique I’ve developed is called an akashic recording. We’re going to burn our own six-minute video in your brain. For the rest of your life, you’ll flash back to this recording whenever you hear . . .” The music said the words at the same time she did. “Enter the gates of my heaven.”
He shivered when she said the phrase, but he had to stall. “Six minutes doesn’t give enough time for you to participate. I’d want to remember the joy on your face.”
“So sweet! Mother was right about you. In all the times I’ve done this, you’re the first one to consider me. Don’t worry; as an empath, I can fully participate in your experience. This recording is for you. We can discuss variations later. Every time I want to reward you and can’t be there in person, you just have to see my picture and hear my voice saying those words.” She slid his pants off. “You’ll do anything for me.”
“Please, not like this!” he whimpered. “You haven’t hurt anyone. They’ll be lenient.”
“Shh,” she put a finger on his navel and he felt the exquisite tingling. “The recording is going to happen; even I can’t stop it now. All I can do is let you choose what you want me to do to you. If you refuse to bond with me, I’ll call a few of my boyfriends and they’ll break every bone in your body. You’ll remember that sensation every time I want to punish you. Most people end up in Ward Seven after the first day of pain treatment. The effect is the same. You will obey me. It’s just a matter of whether you get a fantasy or a nightmare.”
Kaguya put her arms over her head and slid out of her top, revealing the shining glory of her body. “Choose.”
Concentrating on her face, he said, “You’re going to need to get a damp towel for what I have in mind.”
She smiled knowingly, rose, and walked to get a towel from the shower area. When she turned back around, Zeiss had limped away.
****
Red waved to Sojiro as she bounced into the cafeteria. “I just have to tell Z something. Control said he was here.”
The artist dropped his pad as he leapt up. His windbreaker filled like a sail as he intercepted her. “Wait! He just got over your last meeting.”
She opened the kitchen door and asked, “Where is he?”
“He didn’t go past me.”
Shifting into combat mode, the girl tapped her goggles. “Taggart, where does Z’s monitor say he is?”
“It’s quiet. He’s sleeping.”
“No, he’s not,” she said, her voice cracking. “Where’s the badge?”
“No reading. We’ll power cycle. It’s probably just a glitch. Sometimes if it’s in one place too long, tracking will freeze up.”
“Find him!” Red ordered Sojiro.
The Japanese man defocused, visualizing connections her eyes couldn’t see. “The cameras are being upgraded along half the main loop. I’ve got nothing on the whole forward section of the island. He walked out the back door like a zombie and off my scopes. I only know he didn’t go in the women’s dorm, or airport.”
“And he can hide from me. How are we going to find him?” Red extended her special senses on the off chance his concentration was disrupted by pain. “Holy Cow!” She ran out the door of the cafeteria with Sojiro following close behind. Calling Trina, Red stammered, “We have page flare! It’s got to be Z. Help me find him.”
“Slow down,” Trina said, closing her eyes. “Daniel and I can triangulate. It’s not a bright light like normal. We feel almost a heat . . . coming from the faculty meta. I’ll get a medical team and meet you.”
The faculty meta-pod was directly opposite the cafeteria on the circle. Red raced across the campus, around the pool, slamming the door open to the main building. The artist passed her by as they shot past the dojo on the newly waxed tiles. Her sneakers squeaked but Sojioro kept her upright and dragged her with him to the exit. Hurdling the bushes and the steps, they reached the faculty meta-pod. She opened her special senses and felt the blaze originating from the underground gym area. Then something cut off the flare.
****
Zeiss glimpsed some sort of medicine patch on his shoulder, but his arms refused to work from Kaguya’s numbing touch. He would’ve scraped the patch off onto the cement column, but his back muscles didn’t want to obey him either. A treadmill under repair had been turned on its side and he practically fell behind it to hide.
His heart raced like a locomotive out of control as Kaguya clicked her phone into the central music system of the gym. Zeiss wrestled with his own breathing to force it into silence. He tried to meditate and let her mental probes pass him by.
“Let the recording begin,” she announced. The music pounded from the very walls, impossible to ignore. When the singer’s voice said the magic words, his body responded like Pavlov’s dog. Her aura filled the room and threatened to subsume him.
Zeiss had to hide from Kaguya and not bond. He searched for some other presence other than her arc light. The walls in his niche were shielded and prevented him from reaching backward with his new senses. Therefore, he reached down to the other collective pod—the whales. They were huge and alien, but he could feel their warmth and welcome. They were a family and would help him hide from the rampaging goddess. The deep was strange but good.
The second time the song chanted the phrase, he gasped involuntarily. That was enough of a clue for her to track him to his niche. When he
felt the hands on his ankles he tried to escape again, but tripped over the treadmill, landing on his back. His feet were tingling and unresponsive.
Kaguya wore nothing now but her underwear as she sat on his chest to pin him. First she stroked his eyes so he couldn’t blink! Facing his feet, she teased every nerve ending from his toes to his midsection, like a slow-burning fuse. Knowing where this was going, he faced away from her, looking for anything to focus on to avoid her body. Turning his face to the wall, he was presented with a mirror and a full-body view of his attacker.
Flipping his head to the other side, he saw her rabbit tattoo. He reached for the whale community, as the refrain repeated. The fires of pleasure burned the image of the rabbit into his retinas.
She chuckled. “That was close, but you held back. You want to pet the bunny?” Her softness was agonizing to resist. “Once you physically enter the gates of my heaven, you’ll never want to leave.”
“Help!” he screamed and then gurgled as Kaguya paralyzed his vocal cords.
Suddenly, Sojiro kicked the front door open, and Mira ran inside.
Lying on top of Zeiss, Kaguya said in a husky voice, “This is private—adults only, little girl.”
Mira froze, shocked by the scene before her. Almost nauseated, she was about to depart when he mouthed the letters, “OOB.”
“You’re right,” Mira said, narrowing her eyes at the nearly naked Kaguya and reaching out with her discriminatory page sense. “You’re right, she’s an unregistered Oobie. Horvath’s on the way.” She circled to block the door as Mori tried to flee.
When the final verse started, Zeiss panicked, eyes locked on Mira’s face. His emotions swirled with need, distracting the girl. Kaguya connected with Mira’s right arm, causing it to go numb and unresponsive. Red spun away from the next blow. The taller woman smiled wolfishly as they danced in a circle. “You’ve been asking for this for years, bit—”
Sojiro fired his Taser from outside, stunning the Japanese woman. Then he pounced on her with cuffs from the other pocket of his jacket.
Mira ran over to Zeiss’s side. He mouthed the word “closer”, as if to whisper something in the young woman’s ear. As her body pressed against his, he breathed in her scent of cherry and sweat, and scanned her face as if etching it into steel. When she opened her mouth to ask if he’d been tortured, he took it and held his lips against hers until the next refrain.
