Zero Factor: A Cybershock Story

by Stacy Gail

  Locke frowned after her, and it wasn’t until the door closed behind their hostess that he realized he was now destined to spend another night alone with Via.

  God help him.

  Chapter Eight

  Via hadn’t realized just how much of a buffer Cedrine was until she was no longer there. As the silence descended upon the room like a smothering blanket, she slid Locke a covert glance, only to find he had already turned away from her.

  This was getting ridiculous.

  Via toyed with the idea of touching him, just to see if she could pick up anything that was in his mind, despite the fact that her psychometric abilities were far from telepathic. In the end, her hands remained at her sides. At that moment he seemed like the most unapproachable human being who had ever drawn breath, and she’d have better luck reaching for the moon than Locke.

  Besides, she didn’t want to invade his privacy. Not only did she fear discovering that he couldn’t stand to be around a psionic freak like her, she wanted to respect the privacy of his innermost thoughts, so—

  “I’ll be sleeping in the bathroom tonight.”

  Screw respect. Now was the time for blood.

  “If Fynn doesn’t wind up killing you, I think I’ll give it a shot,” she seethed, hopping to her feet while he turned to look at her in surprise. “You’re going to have to give me a clue as to what I did wrong, Locke. I’ve never sexed it up before, so as a noob I’m lost on the rituals that take place after the deed is done. Are we both supposed to act like flaming jackasses now? Because I think I can be pretty good at it. Not as good as you, you’re obviously a master at this sort of thing—”

  “You have my deepest apologies,” he said, his scarred face so stiff it looked like a lifeless mask. “For everything.”

  “I don’t want your apologies, I want to know why you seem so hell-bent on making me miserable. What did I do to offend you?”

  “You didn’t do— Wait.” He took a surging step toward her only to come to an abrupt halt, as though he’d gone nose-first into an invisible wall. “You’re miserable?”

  Seriously, the man did not know when his life was in danger. “Yes, I’m miserable, you asshat! That should make you happy, since you seem so intent on making the misery happen—”

  “Right. Hold that thought.” Taking her by the shoulders, he propelled her backward to the edge of the bed, then sat her down.

  What the hell…?

  “Okay, now touch it.”

  She stared at him. “Touch what?”

  Instead of answering, he took her by the robe’s sleeve to coax her hand to come into contact with the bed. “Well?”

  Anger morphed into bewilderment, edged with the first stirrings of alarm. What was his damage? “Well, what?”

  “Are you still miserable?”

  “I think misery is my lot in life, if I have to deal with you when you’re like this.”

  That seemed to catch him wrong-footed, as he did a little double take. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re acting as gaga-loco as Fynn is trying to make you out to be. Maybe you should sit down.”

  “Colonel Fynn’s attempts at misinformation are nothing more than a zero factor, but sitting’s a good idea. That way I can take this to the next level.”

  The alarm was for real now as he settled next to her. Never once had Via imagined Locke would snap under pressure, but suddenly she wasn’t so sure. “Take what to the next level?”

  “My experiment.”

  Shyte. “What experiment?”

  “Are you still feeling miserable?”

  She stared at him. “If alarm and frustration along with a dash of fear fall into the category of miserable, then yes, I guess I am.”

  The smile that blazed across his face shocked her. “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “What about now?” He lifted a hand to brush over her hair, feather-light, before retreating. “Feel anything different?”

  “Locke—”

  “Or now?” His hand curled around her knee and slid in an agonizingly slow caress up her leg, the pads of his fingers hot on the flesh of her inner thigh through the thin veil of the robe, the only article of clothing Cedrine had left behind. Via’s pulse began to thump the moment Locke had touched her, something she had worried he would never do again. The thumping turned to frantic hammering as the unhurried pace of his hand moved centimeter by centimeter upward. A delicious heat coiled between her legs, an aching anticipation of the touch she’d come to crave like a drug. “Do you feel anything now, Via?”

  “Um, yes.” A shivery breath escaped her, loud in the still room. “I’m definitely feeling…something.”

  “Outstanding. How about this?” He leaned in, his face nuzzling aside her hair so his lips could slide along the column of her neck. Her eyes drifted closed when his mouth opened to allow his tongue to draw hungry whorls over her sensitized flesh. The edge of his hand brushed the juncture of her thighs, and she opened them in mute invitation for a more deliberate caress. “What are you feeling now?”

  “Hot,” she said, no louder than the shallow breaths shaking her body. “Wet.”

  “For me?” With his free hand he slid the backs of his fingers along the robe’s silken lapel, then palmed her breast through the veil of the robe. He sampled the weight and shape of it as though delighted with its feel, before gently squeezing the tightening tip between forefinger and thumb.

  “Oh…dayum.” A shudder bloomed deep within her belly, a small release of pleasure that was a bright promise of things to come. “Locke.”

  “You haven’t answered me.” With his wrist he parted the robe barely covering her lap, and at last he slid his hand all the way up her leg and touched her in a way that made her gasp. He moved, a slow, deliberate grinding against her pleasure center until he wrenched a broken moan from her. “You hot and wet for me, Via?”

  “Ah…” Spreading her legs wider, she couldn’t help but grab his hand and press it harder against the rocking of her hips. Sweet pleasure tightened with maddening torment, a lush delight she chased with a wanton desire that felt too right to shock her. “Yes, oh…yes…!”

  “I need to be sure of that.” His voice was rough, almost unrecognizable, and it shook with an emotion she couldn’t identify as he slid from the edge of the bed to his knees in front of her. “I don’t know why it’s so important to me, but I need you to feel me. Only me. I want to be the only one who makes you moan. I want to be the only one who makes you hot. I want to be the only one you’ll ever want inside you.”

  “You are,” she breathed while he caressed her thighs as though he couldn’t get enough of the feel of her. He settled himself between her knees and searched out her molten core once more. The rough pad of his thumb rubbed a merciless rhythm against her most vulnerable point until the mercurial pleasure his masterful touch ignited had her muscles clenching in helpless, involuntary motion.

  “Locke.” Via licked lips dried out by the shallow panting she couldn’t seem to stop, while his teeth gently bit the inside of her thigh. “What are you…doing to me…?”

  “What I should have done from the beginning.” His breath fanned along her overheated flesh, an intoxicating caress in itself. It only heightened the exquisite delight of the ever-quickening rhythm he set for her, a rhythm that made her stomach muscles coil in time with each maddening stroke. “I’m seducing you, Via.”

  She wanted to tell him he didn’t have to. She wanted to tell him she wanted him, just him. She wanted to tell him that at last she understood his strange behavior, and she could now control her psionic gifts at least to the point where she was no longer under its influence. She wanted to tell him not to worry, that he was the only person in her mind now.

  But at that moment, Locke placed his mouth where his hand had been and coherent speech became impossible.

  She could not endure this. No one could, surely. Her head fell back with the force of her cry, her arms barely able to brace her as
her muscles quivered with the strain of overwhelming delight. It was as though her every nerve had become attached to that singular point framed by the oh-so-gentle grip of his lips and teeth while his tongue mercilessly abraded the nub. The pleasure bordered on a cruel torment, convulsions of mind-shattering bliss rippling deep inside her belly, growing with ever-increasing power until she could no longer control the fevered writhing of her body. She couldn’t take this. She couldn’t possibly take this…

  Via shuddered as mindless whimpers grew to cries of helplessness. Her throat grew raw as a tide of terrifying pleasure swelled out of the darkness, only to fold in on itself like a collapsing star. She gasped in near fright as the pressure of it threatened to crush her into nothingness. Then, before she was ready for it, that unbearable pressure at last released as though going supernova, unleashing spasm after endless spasm of a pleasure so pure it was excruciating to bear.

  So lost in the rage of pure sensation, Via didn’t immediately realize that Locke was moving, kicking aside his clothes and pulling her off the bed until her knees were straddling his lap. His manhood was rock hard and huge as he sat on the floor, pulsing and glistening with the force of his desire, and for a moment she worried she might not be able to take so much of him in. Then he slid into her still-convulsing depths, filling her with a force that shook her to her very soul.

  Heaven help her. Just when she thought it couldn’t get any better.

  “Don’t want the bed,” he breathed raggedly, gripping her hips with hungry, desperate hands. Helpless moans broke from her when he began to impale her again and again in a furious storm of sweet motion, her hips rocking in wild abandon as she helped him chase the pleasure. “What you feel, what makes you cry out now, should only come from me. Feel me, Via. Feel me, feel what you do to me…”

  He clamped his mouth down on hers, and she could feel him trying to force all the intoxicating sensations surging through him into that one kiss. An overwhelming gush of wild rapture exploded through her, an unending insanity so intense it nearly covered a flow of something much deeper, a rich ribbon of emotion that glowed with the warmth and happiness of belonging. But it was even more than that. Tears swam in her eyes as that ribbon wrapped around her heart, her soul. It was more than belonging, more than completion, even more than the pleasure of sex.

  It was love.

  “What does zero factor mean?”

  Locke’s cyberoptics drifted open, lazily surprised they had closed without his permission. But he shouldn’t be surprised. According to his internal chronometer dawn was only a handful of hours away. While almost every room within the Pleasure Palace was soundproofed, the house still seemed to be cloaked in that special kind of exhausted silence that followed a long night of energetic revelry.

  Glad to see the UNAS government officials took their investigation seriously, he thought with a sleepy snort. But that was only to be expected. If everyone in the house felt half as content as he did now, it was little wonder the place was hushed in peace.

  Content. The hard line of his mouth softened as he drifted a hand down Via’s back. He’d heard the word, of course, but he’d never grasped it in any real way. Until now. This was what it was to be content. Somehow, Via filled every empty space he had inside, completing him in a way he had never dreamed possible. In a world gone mad, she was the only thing that made sense.

  “Zero factor,” Locke murmured, gathering just enough energy to pull her more completely on top of him. Sometime during the night she had assured him she had gained enough control of her psi powers to handle contact with the bed. After spending the night on every single inch of it, he was finally convinced. “It’s a concept we Lifers grow up with. Anything that doesn’t pertain to the mission at hand is considered a zero factor.”

  Her face nuzzled into the crook of his neck. “Like what?”

  “Like sympathy or compassion, happiness or contentment.” He smiled in the dark. “Contentment would definitely be a zero factor.”

  “What a barren existence.” A shiver moved through her, and his arms tightened around her in automatic comfort. “Do you…agree with all those things being a zero factor, Locke?”

  “While on the battlefield, yeah. It’s imperative to the life of your comrades and the success of your mission to stay laser-locked on defeating the enemy.”

  “What about when you’re not on the battlefield?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like now,” she said, and her voice seemed to be getting smaller. “Like…right now. Are there any zero factors now?”

  Locke hesitated while his chest did a funny little clenching, a moved sort of sensation he couldn’t name. “My mission now is all about you. Everything else is a zero factor.”

  He heard her swallow. “I thought your mission was Fynn.”

  “Other than clearing the danger he represents, he’s become a zero factor.” And that surprised the hell out of him. No longer was his focus on the man who raised him, who trained him, who betrayed him. His focus now was a mission as important as any he’d had.

  Protect Via.

  She snuggled closer. “We’ll get him, Locke,” she promised with an absurd conviction which nevertheless filled him with the weirdest feeling. A feeling that no matter what came down the pike, he wasn’t alone. Weirder still, he took comfort in that sense of solidarity.

  Great. First contentment, now comfort. Hell if he wasn’t turning into the world’s biggest creampuff.

  A strangled gasp from Via was the only warning he got before she jerked away.

  He grabbed for the pulse rifle. “Via…?”

  “That medallion around your neck.” Her words seemed to be jammed up in her throat, like they were all trying to get out at once. “Fynn gave it to you, yeah?”

  “Yeah, he…” The light went on. “And?”

  Her eyes glittered in the dark. “We don’t have much time.”

  Chapter Nine

  The star-studded sky was just beginning to lighten in the east when Via slipped like a shadow onto the night-washed patio, leaving the door open behind her. She paused, letting the stillness settle over her like a blanket while her heart tried to beat her to death.

  This had to be the craziest thing she had ever done in her life.

  There was no guarantee their plan would work. There wasn’t even a guarantee her latest vision had been accurate. Despite holding onto Locke’s medallion and pushing hard enough to give herself a migraine, her abilities only went so far—a refusal to show her own fate, as Cedrine had once described. For all their last-minute maneuvering, everything could come to a sudden end, and there was nothing Via could do to stop it.

  Maybe they hadn’t cheated death by escaping the explosion at the distribution center, she thought while her stomach clenched itself into sick little knots. Maybe they had only postponed it.

  A breeze that held the breath of the desert whispered over her as she sat on the edge of a poly-resin chair simmed-out to look like genuine wood. In the predawn stillness, she gripped the agridome khakis Cedrine had at last given back to her. The legendary Madame’s psychic training may have been a little unorthodox, but it had worked far better than Via could have hoped. Removing the shield of her clothes may have left her more than a tad vulnerable within a bordello, but it had forced her brain to learn how to protect itself pretty dayum quick. Along with Cedrine’s guidance, Via had faced the ultimate sink-or-swim training, and come out a winner.

  Now all she had to do was get past the next hour without dying.

  There was no warning. One nanosecond Via was enjoying the soft predawn breeze sliding over her, the next she was jerked backward, her breath squeezing to a painful halt as a powerful arm folded around her neck like a living vise.

  Oh God, can’t breathe, can’t breathe…

  “I knew you’d be the weak link,” whispered Colonel Francis Fynn in her ear, even as she scrabbled uselessly at the arm around her neck. She could just see him out of the corner of her eye—dr
essed in all-black with a camo-painted face, no doubt covered in stealth-refracting technology. “Locke’s been trained not to stick his head out once he’s dug in, but you…” He gave her a little shake, like a dog with a rag. “I knew all I had to do was wait for the bubble-farmer to go stir-crazy for a breath of fresh air. You civvies are so predictable.”

  Dots began to dance like black sparkles in Via’s eyes. Panic bit into her with its jagged teeth, and wild instinct had her kicking out in hopes of knocking something over and making noise. Fynn, however, hauled her bodily away from the furniture she was trying to turn over.

  “Woo, a little fight in the bubble-farmer, yeah? Locke must be thrilled.” The leer in his voice was sickening, while the glittering darkness crowded her vision like the shadow of death itself. She tried to lash out again with her leg, this time with a back kick, a self-defense move she hated herself for not trying earlier, but it was lethargic. She was losing power, losing focus, losing…

  Life.

  “Dayum, what a handful you are.” Fynn’s wiry arms hauled her hard up against him, and he no longer sounded amused. “Farmer, you want to die, you’re going about it the right way. You want to live to see the sunrise, you dial it down. Roger?”

  The loosening of his chokehold was infinitesimal, but it was enough to trickle precious air into her oxygen-starved lungs. She sucked it in with whistling, greedy gulps, until he tightened up again. The pressure of it made the blood behind her eyes pound with the imminent threat of exploding.

  Sadist, she thought, the word drifting through her pounding head as he laughed in her ear. She should have known the bastard was a sadist.

  “Here’s what I need you to do,” he went on as though they were having a chat over Cedrine’s fancy coffee service. “Very softly, very quietly, I want you to call for Locke. You read me?”

  “I…” There was a growing buzz in her ears, so loud she couldn’t hear herself. “C-can’t…breathe…”