by Glen Frost
"Why?" Now it was Anya's turn to be curious.
"Because my dear, according to the lore of the arcane, a revenant's power and vitality is tied to its need for revenge. Becoming one usually requires negotiating a deal with the darker powers, one which you have already admitted to having made. On the one hand, the prospective revenant is granted the gift incredible physical attributes, not the least of which being their resurrection from bodily death; but on the other, once the focus of that vengeance has been killed, then it's time to pay the piper." Walsingham eyed her intently. "Revenge fulfilled means that the revenant goes, not to put too fine a point on it, straight to Hell. So I must confess to being curious, Anya, as to why it is that you are still walking around with the rest of us. Did you exact retribution from your murderers?"
"I did. But one of them survived."
"How extraordinary." The academic looked at her, his face agog. "You were unable to catch him?"
"Oh, I caught him alright. Caught and crippled him. He won't be breeding in this lifetime, Professor, mainly due to the fact that he'll be pissing through a catheter for what remains of his miserable existence." She went on to describe in graphic detail just what she had done to Piotr Blinov, her former pimp and erstwhile murderer. "I want to see my daughter settled safely in America, here by my side. I cannot do that if I am in Hell, and therefore I cannot kill that filth Piotr no matter how much I may wish to tear him limb from limb."
"I see. You need him in order to fulfill your purpose. A higher goal."
"Exactly."
"Mr. Blinov has been taken into custody by Supervisory Agent Padilla's team." Hubbard was browsing through some kind of document on her tablet. "He has been taken to our secure medical facility in Anchorage, Alaska, where he will receive care on a twenty four/seven basis. Said care consisting mostly of regular sedation, something for which he really ought to be grateful, considering just how effectively Ms. Kurlyenko worked him over."
"Remind me never to get on your bad side, Anya." Walsingham offered her a slightly nervous smile. "I'd hate to think what you could do if you were really angry..."
"I am as you Americans like to say a pussycat at heart." She batted her eyelashes at him in a way that had worked on practically every john she had ever fucked. "Just so long as people are nice to me, I am nice to them."
"Oh, I promise you I can be perfectly nice..."
Watching the exchange carefully, Gina butted in: "Anya, don't even think about it. Here at The Agency, we do NOT shit where we eat."
"I really don't know what you mean." The Russian girl feigned innocence. Gina's eyes narrowed.
"Really? With your past and your specific skill set, Anya, I find that more than a little hard to believe...and don't pout. It doesn't become you."
"OK, FINE." Anya pouted anyway, crossing her arms. She had been flirting with the professor just to prove that she still had it. It wasn't as if she found the old man genuinely attractive. He was more than twice her age for starters, and besides, beards always made her want to puke.
"At the risk of sounding rude, Ms. Kurylenko — Anya — would you have any objection to cooperating with me on an informal little study? I would like to find out more about your remarkable capabilities. As, I am sure, would you."
"No objection, Professor. Assuming, that is, that Director Hubbard has none."
"None here," Gina said, before adding a note of caution. "Just don't work too closely together."
We "Well, naturally." Niall cleared his throat. "We'll begin as soon as you get into the swing of your training..."
CHAPTER TEN
When compared to what the typical Agency recruit went through, Anya's training regimen was way out there in left field. There was no point putting her through the hours of brutal calisthenics, route marches, long training runs, and Crossfit workouts that the instructors routinely inflicted upon the flesh and blood recruits.
Fortunately, Training Director Hubbard recognized that Anya was a special case, one that would require careful handling if she was to be forged into the kind of weapon that could truly maximize her potential.
With that in mind, Gina decided to bring in her top instructor. Commander Neil Wilson was out of uniform when he walked into her office, but despite the business-casual khaki pants and polo shirt, there was no mistaking him for anything but a military man. On detachment from the Navy, the SEAL officer had served multiple tours overseas, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in more than his fair share of eastern European covert ops. Gina knew that she was damned lucky to have gotten him for this secondment, which was a show of just how much influence The Agency had in the upper echelons of Washington's political elite.
"You asked to see me, ma'am?" Wilson was tall, close to six-three, and his 220-pound frame was all muscle, completely devoid of fat. He wore his hair slightly longer than the typical military buzz-cut, but it was still high and tight and well within regulations.
"I did, Commander. Please sit down." She gestured to a chair opposite her desk. Wilson took a seat. "Would you like some coffee? Water?"
"No thank you," he demurred. "What can I do for you, Director?"
"I have a special project for you, Neil." Now that the formalities had been observed, Gina was more than happy to speak person to person with him. She liked the big SEAL, finding him to be warm, outgoing, and as honest as the day was long. "A new trainee. One that would benefit greatly from your personal attention."
"Sounds intriguing," he said in a neutral tone of voice.
"Oh, she's all that and more. Recruit Kurlyenko is unlike anything you will ever have dealt with before."
She went on to expound upon Anya's backstory. The SEAL listened in silence. In a couple of places, his eyebrows climbed to full mast. There had been a time when Neil Wilson would have dismissed a story this outlandish as something that Stephen King would conjure up. His year on detachment to The Agency had taught him that some of the stuff of Hollywood nightmares was actually all too real.
"So let's make sure I've got this straight," Neil said when the director had finished. He checked off the points on his fingertips while he spoke. "She doesn't need to eat. Doesn't have to sleep. Ditto for urination and defecation. And she doesn't breathe either. Correct?"
"Correct," Gina affirmed. "So the standard physical training exercises would all be a waste of time. What she needs is to learn to think and to act like a good field operative. That means tactical training, weapons drills, demolitions and explosives for starters. But that's only the beginning. We also need her to learn some of the more...subtle skills associated with wet work."
"Let me guess. Social skills. How to blend in with the right crowd, whether it's a high-powered charity fundraiser or a seedy nightclub. Probably some computer skills as well." He grinned. "All of that James Bond shit."
"Precisely. Yes, her revenant status gives her immense physical power. But we want her to be more than a simple sledgehammer. Some precision would go a long way to rounding out her education and getting her to where we want her to be."
"You're talking about a Finishing School."
"Got it in one."
The Finishing School was a term used for the period of Navy SEAL training that came immediately before a new BUD/S graduate was sent out to join his first Team. With the fledgling SEAL already hammered into prime physical shape, the task of the Finishing School was to refine him, knocking off the last few rough edges.
It was a task at which Commander Wilson had always excelled.
"Are you willing to take the job on, Neil?" Gina asked, steepling her fingers underneath her chin.
"I try never to turn down a challenge," the SEAL grinned, "and this sure sounds like quite the challenge. Yes, you can count me in."
"Excellent. You can pick your own cadre of junior instructors, so you don't have to shoulder the entire workload alone. I'll also give you carte blanche on who you want to involve from the civilian world, although there's just one caveat: You have to go to them,
rather than the other way around."
"Makes sense." Neil knew that there was no way they could bring civilians, even those with security clearances, onto The Agency's home turf. "Where can I find her?"
"Recruit Kurlyenko is staying in Room 27 in the accommodation block. It was my thought that giving her her own room would be for the best. She's all yours, Commander. Go get her."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The woman was as dry as a desert down there, and so he spat on his palm and used it to lubricate his stiffened member. Taking a firm grip of the bedrails and locking his arms, McCrudden eased his spit-soaked prick inside her. She didn't flinch. He allowed himself to enter her more deeply, feeling the tight walls of her vagina grudgingly give way.
He let out a low moan, biting his lower lip to stifle it on the off-chance that a fellow guard happened to be passing by outside. Man, but this felt good. McCrudden began to thrust, long slow strokes at first, gradually building in both speed and intensity. The way that the unconscious woman's tits rippled with each thrust turned him on even harder, and he fixated upon them for a moment, the ludicrous image of two bowls of quivering Jell-O springing unbidden into his mind.
So engrossed was he in his depraved sexual assault that McCrudden totally missed the fact that his victim's heart rate was increasing, as evidenced by a more rapid bleeping coming from the cardiac monitor. It had gone from a comfortable 64 beats per minute to somewhere around the mid-80s, and it was still climbing.
He ramped up his efforts to maximum now, until his hips and buttocks were little more than a pasty white blur. His balls were making a rhythmic slap-slap-slap against his victim's perineum. He was grunting with the strain of it now, his arms really feeling the burn of supporting his body weight. Thank God for arm and shoulder days. Without the gym work, Mark would already have collapsed in a sweaty heap by now.
94. 98. 106.
The heart monitor was bleeping in time with his frenzied strokes, like some sort of bizarre musical accompaniment. McCrudden didn't notice. He was too focused on the tightening sensation in his balls, the heady tingling in his prick that told him that orgasm was so close.
112.
He had no way of knowing that five hundred feet away in the prison's medical center, a silent alarm was beginning to sound.
118.
Mark McCrudden may have been a sociopath, but he was by no means a stupid one. He knew the consequences of planting a pussy full of nut butter in the woman. That was EVIDENCE, evidence that might ultimately lead back to him if somebody was sufficiently motivated enough to follow the trail. Making a comatose woman pregnant was, he suspected, the sort of thing that the warden would frown upon.
124.
Biting his lower lip until it bled, he pulled out of the mystery woman just in time. Sticky hot ejaculate sprayed from the end of his prick. Reaching down with one hand to guide it, McCrudden pumped it like the slide on a shotgun, shooting his load all over his victim's pubis and belly. The release felt heavenly to him, utterly blissful, and was made all the sweeter by the pretense that the sedated woman was a newly-dead corpse.
128.
Her right hand twitched, the fingers curling inward. The hand balled into a fist.
He never noticed. McCrudden's eyes were closed, his head thrown back in the afterglow of an ecstasy which was already beginning to slip away from him.
134. Still climbing.
"Fuuuuuuuuuuck," he breathed, panting to catch his breath. "That was so fucking good..."
Prisoner Zero's eyelids opened just a smidgeon, causing the crusty flakes of sleep that had accumulated there to start breaking away. The lids and lashes had gummed together over the past few months, but now a tiny amount of black pupil was visible in between them.
140.
The rapist's penis was already starting to shrivel, shrinking until it looked like nothing more than a fleshy white acorn nestled in a frizzy brown bush. Its tip was still dripping semen onto his victim's leg.
McCrudden reached down with the intention of pulling up his pants and tucking it back inside. Something caught his attention — maybe the slightest gleam reflecting from Prisoner Zero's eyes. He froze. What the hell was going—
The punch seemed to come out of nowhere and took him completely by surprise. The mystery woman sat up at the waist and slammed a right uppercut straight into his face. Mark's nose broke on impact, his cry of pain and outrage drowning out the crunch of shattered cartilage. Twin streams of blood began to pour from his nostrils, coursing over his upper lip and chin.
Stunned, McCrudden fell over backwards. Trying desperately to compensate for the loss of balance, he waved his arms in a futile attempt to steady himself. Prisoner Zero didn't punch him a second time; she went for a knee to the crotch instead, smashing his vulnerable, dangling happy sack with the full force of her right leg. McCrudden's bellow instantly morphed into a cry that was better suited to a soprano. He toppled sideways, landing with a sickening thud on the unyielding tile floor at the side of the bed.
His vision swam, and Mark realized that he was seeing double. The fact that he had just whacked his head on landing probably had something to do with that, he reasoned, not to mention the killer headache that was already sending shooting pains arcing from one side of his skull to the other. Blood was running backwards from his wounded nose, dripping down into the back of his throat. He coughed to clear his airway, which hurt like an absolute motherfucker, and blew bloody air bubbles out of each nostril.
The tile floor was freezing cold and pitifully unyielding beneath his naked buttocks. He was rolling around on the floor, one hand pressed gingerly against his nose in a pitiful attempt to stem the bleeding, while the other cupped his screaming ball sack protectively. McCrudden felt as though he wanted to puke, thanks mainly to the knee in the wedding tackle that she had just given him.
She...
Oh fuck.
co shapely legs swung themselves over the edge of the bed, dangling just inches above Mark's face. He saw four feet rather than two. Blinking furiously, he tried to clear his vision. He had a feeling he was going to need it very soon.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Neil's polite knock on the door of Room 27 was answered with a pleasant, "Come in!"
Entering the room, he was struck by just how few personal effects its resident seemed to have. The standard accommodation rooms here at the training facility were pretty spartan in nature, although they were clean and comfortable enough by most people's standards. There was a bedroom containing a single-sized bed, adjoined by an en suite bathroom that contained a wash basin and shower cubicle only, with no bathtub. A small kitchenette was obviously going to go unused by Anya, who didn't need to eat or drink, and so was the toilet. An equally small living space contained a couple of easy chairs, a compact coffee table, and a flat screen TV mounted to the wall. It was currently streaming some Travel Channel show about ghost hunting, from what Neil could see; personally, he detested that kind of shit, preferring a good military history documentary or sports show instead.
Anya was sitting in one of the easy chairs, looking up expectantly at her unexpected visitor.
"I'm Commander Wilson, United States Navy. Sorry, I'm out of uniform today. You must be Anya."
She rose and extended a hand. "Anya Kurlyenko. I am very pleased to meet you." Her eyes took in the SEAL's muscular frame, lingering for just a second too long on certain areas. Nor was she doing it purely for effect, as she had with Professor Walsingham; she found the man genuinely attractive.
His eyes widened just a little as their palms made contact. Anya was getting used to what was becoming a fairly standard reaction to the coldness of her skin. It really didn't bother her much.
"A pleasure to meet you, Commander." She put extra emphasis on the word pleasure. "Would you like to sit down?"
Neil shook his head, preferring to stand. He fell instinctively into a position of parade rest. "Ordinarily when I meet a new trainee for the first time, I'm screaming and
shouting, making them drop and grind out the push-ups. That's obviously not going to happen with you. There'd be little point.
"Your training is going to be challenging, but you'll find it very rewarding if you're willing to persevere. I need you to give it one hundred percent, each and every minute." He searched her face, but found it unreadable. "Are you able to do that?"
She nodded without hesitation. "Yes, Commander. I am aware of the high expectations that Director Hubbard has for me. She has made that very clear. I shall not let her down. Or you."
"I'm very glad to hear it, Recruit. We need good people here at The Agency. Especially ones with the kind of unique abilities that you bring to the table." He relaxed ever so slightly. "I've learned that The Agency does some damned good work, things that the American public never gets to hear about. It's a real privilege to be a part of this team."
Anya watched him in silence. What did he want her to say? She wasn't sure, so she simply opted to say nothing.
After a long pause he finally said, "Your training begins tomorrow morning at zero seven hundred. Until then."
Giving her a polite nod, he stepped outside, closing the door behind him. As he walked back to his quarters, the SEAL was surprised to find that his heart was racing. What the hell was wrong with him? He didn't react like that even during combat, when the lead was flying thick and fast.
Neil tried to analyze his awkward reaction. The girl was attractive, there was no doubting that; in fact, she was what his brother SEALs would have termed "smoking hot." But he'd had more than his fair share of smoking hot women before. It was one of the perks of being a special operator, and probably a large part of the reason why he was a lifelong bachelor.
