On the one hand, I worried, feeling like I was sitting on a ticking time bomb that could go off any moment with a single loose word. They had all said initially that it wouldn't matter to them, but at that time it had been just theoretical, they might feel very different in practice. Was I being arrogant in assuming that all these gorgeous guys would be jealous of each other over little old me? Or was I being incredibly selfish in jeopardizing the future of the human race just because I was a bit horny?
On the other hand, concerned though I was, I was also tremendously impressed with myself. I tried not to be, but looking at the impossible perfection of the three male specimens I was breakfasting with, and knowing that I had had them all, it was hard not to feel that the impending demise of mankind had a serious upside, as it had brought them into my life.
"I don't like it at all," Nico stressed. "It's dangerous."
"More dangerous than Zeus wiping out the human race?" I asked.
"I'm just saying, there must be another way."
"Not that I can think of."
"Swimming with a killer whale." Alexei's tone was dubious as he shook his head.
"It could cut you in half with one bite," said Christoph. Like Alexei, he wasn’t saying I should or shouldn't do this, just pointing out the facts to make sure I knew what I was getting myself into.
"There are worse things."
My mind still dwelled on the horrors of last night's dream. Fun with the guys was all well and good, but there was a point to me being here, and that dream had underlined how important it was. Of course, it was risky, but the consequences didn't bear thinking about. If I didn't swim with Porthos, then the world would burn, and everyone I loved with it.
"How?" asked Alexei.
"Yeah, it's not like they just let people jump in with the exhibits," pointed out Nico, still hoping I would reconsider.
I grinned. "I think this is a job for Tony the Tiger."
"Another of your aliases?" asked Alexei.
"Not this time."
Chapter 12
"And then there was this other guy - the waiter, I guess - and he's got to be a struggling actor or something, some other job he's got and he's just doing this for spending money in the meantime. But anyway, he looked just like you. But smaller. I don't just mean height smaller, I mean, like, body. You're huge. I mean, like, huge. And this guy was a rail. Still looked like you, though. I mean, maybe not that much but enough that, like, - say he joined a gym and started taking those protein powder things twelve times a day; in six months he'd look like you. The face, you know? I'm in."
I had met Tony “the Tiger” Martin when I was dropping off a donation at a local shelter about five years ago, and he had been talking ever since. He was now sixteen years old, and the most gifted hacker I had ever met. He was a really useful person to know, provided you could tolerate his one little idiosyncrasy. It was not just that Tony was able to talk more or less non-stop, it was that he managed to do it while simultaneously executing complicated wizardry on his computer. His mouth seemed to work entirely independently of his brain - which might explain the stream of consciousness nonsense he talked while working - and yet he was unable to work without talking. There was a strange symbiosis between brain and mouth that I had never been able to fathom. But, interspersed into the random spilling forth of words, you could pick out phrases like “I'm in” that meant something.
"You've got access to their mainframe?" I interrupted the flow.
"Easy as pie. It's not like an aquarium's security system is up there with Fort Knox - which I've dipped into, by the way. Why do you suppose they say easy as pie? Is pie easy? Have you ever tried to make a pie? I've tried and the pastry was burned while the filling - I think it was cherry - was still frozen. Or, I mean, not frozen, ‘cos you don't put it in frozen to start with, but still cold. Nothing easy about pie. You ever try to make pie?"
"I've tried to make pie." Of all the guys, Christoph was the last one I had expected to engage with Tony, but they were always surprising me.
Since he had hopped into the car with us and begun working and talking, I had sensed a veil descend as my companions tried hard not to listen and not to yell “shut up” or punch him in the face. Tony had the power to drive the nicest people in the world to acts of uncharacteristic violence just to get a few precious moments of silence.
"What kind of pie?" asked Tony - credit to him, he enjoyed conversation as much as soliloquy, it was just that people so seldom were willing or able to join in.
"I think it was apple," said Christoph. I had known that he was a bit of an amateur cook, but would never have guessed apple pie as one of his specialties. There were layers to Christoph I wasn't close to discovering.
"It was apple," chimed in Nico. "It was nice."
"Really?" said Tony, genuinely interested. "You didn't have any trouble with it?"
Christoph shook his head. "No. Maybe cherry is harder."
"I suppose I should be grateful I didn't try a meat pie," chattered Tony, his fingers a blur across the keyboard of his sleek, black laptop. "I mean, if that was undercooked inside I'd probably get food poisoning."
"Not something you guys have to worry about, I guess. Vegetarians, yeah? How do you get the protein to stay that big if you don't eat meat?"
Given Tony's habit of asking questions, it was inevitable that he would ask why I wanted him to hack into the mainframe of a Connecticut aquarium. And it would have been a pretty reasonable question at that. Since I was obviously not going to tell him the truth, I had come up with a good cover story that I was helping out a group of environmental crusaders who were trying to get hard evidence that Porthos was living in poor conditions. It was a story that checked out, although it did mean that Tony had to buy the guys as eco-warriors, which was a hard sell, but we were making it work.
"How'd you get into this, Cat?"
Actually, and perhaps a little insultingly, the harder thing for Tony to buy had apparently been me doing something altruistic. In fact, I'd had to tell him that they were paying me for my grifting skills before he believed me. It was irritating to learn that I came across as someone who only thought about number one, especially as I was currently saving the world for no financial gain. But; whatever it took to get him in the car.
"I met Alexei in a bar and we got to talking. Turned out, I could help them."
Tony shot Alexei a look. "Your type, huh?"
I had sometimes wondered if Tony had a little crush on me. But then, I had also sometimes wondered if he was gay. The only relationship in Tony's life I was aware of was that with his computer; a love affair that was set to last forever. The problem with that was that he had little understanding of human relationships and his mouth could get him, and those around him, into trouble.
"I'd have thought Christoph was more your speed."
Involuntarily, I blushed as the conversation touched into areas I wasn't comfortable discussing.
"Oh, looks like I touched a nerve." Tony grinned. "Christoph, I think you're in."
"Good to know," said Christoph, his face betraying nothing.
The worries of this morning came back to me; if the guys didn't know that I had slept with all three of them, then this was not the ideal way for them to find out.
"You're being very quiet here, Nico."
"Tony, how about you focus on the task in hand?" I suggested. Fortunately, it was always easy to get Tony to talk about something else. "What have you been doing since the Reno job?"
"Oh, that was sweet. Good times. We don't do enough work together, Cat. You, me and Remi - we'd be a dream team. Where is Remi, anyway? Not sold on the eco stuff?"
"Not entirely."
"Nice guy."
"The best," I said with feeling.
For three hours, we drove with the constant accompaniment of Tony's chatter. For the guys, it became like white noise after awhile, but I kept talking back. Motormouth though he was, I loved Tony, almost like a little brother. We had a lot in
common and it was nice to see him doing well and making a name for himself. He could pull down serious money for the work he did, but Tony always had time for his friends.
Reaching our destination, we found somewhere to have dinner until the aquarium closed and night started to settle across Connecticut.
"Let's move," I said.
"Let's move," Tony imitated me.
"It sounds more gangsta when I say it."
"Doesn't everything?"
For traditional criminals, the fact that the whole world now works by computer and in “the cloud” is a pain in the ass. Smashing a lock doesn't work like it used to. I guess I fall into that category, but I am willing to move with the times enough to hire someone like Tony. As we approached the aquarium from the back, the camera that watched the staff entrance executed a brief pirouette and then drooped downwards. Shortly after, the coded entry to the door beeped out and the lock snapped back. No alarm sounded as the five of us crept in.
Tony showed me the screen of his laptop, on which was displayed a map of Ocean World.
"We are here."
"Where's Porthos?"
"Over here. Hey, look."
"What?"
"The seals do a display at two."
"Cool. Oh no, wait; we missed it."
The larger animals were kept in adjacent pens overnight, backed into the open-air pools in which they spent their days, and we made our way through the park towards them. An aquarium is an odd place to be by night, the fish act differently when there's no one watching. It's a different kind of creepy to a haunted house; there you feel like maybe you're being watched; here we were definitely being watched.
Alexei pointed up ahead through the darkness. While everyone relies on computer-controlled security these days, you still need some good, old-fashioned flesh and blood people to back it up. A computer can spot you breaking in but it can't do much to stop you. Outside the large-animal pens were a pair of uniformed security guards, pacing up and down in the measured walk common to security guards the world over.
Tony looked around at his large companions. "This one's all you guys. All you."
"Don't hurt them," I added.
Alexei looked at me with a frown. "Did you think we would?"
"Maybe. Saving the world is more important than two guys.”
I felt Alexei's hand on my arm. "One thing we've realized since meeting you, is that the whole world isn't more important than one person - the whole world is one person. And the next and the next. But if you don't care about one person, you don't care about any of it."
Had I taught them that? I warmed at the thought. Maybe I wasn’t as shit at this as I had thought.
"What did you mean 'saving the world'?" asked Tony, as the guys stole off into the night, silent as assassins.
"Metaphorically," I explained. "Saving a whale is saving the world."
Tony nodded. "One day, Kitty Cat," the nickname he had given me when he was just eleven, "you're going to tell me what tonight was all about."
I wondered if that would ever happen. I wondered if we would both be around for me to have the chance.
As Tony and I watched, we saw Christoph and Alexei leap out from the shadows on one of the security men and he dropped to the ground. His comrade spun around upon hearing the noise but, before he could go to his fellow's aid, he was enveloped in a bear hug from Nico behind him. I couldn't see what happened next but he, too, hit the deck.
Tony and I hurried over.
"What did you do to them?" Tony asked.
"Pressure points," explained Alexei. "They'll be out for twenty minutes or so."
"That is boss." Tony's self-imposed isolation, hunched over his computer, did mean that his understanding of current street slang was on a par with that of the average grandmother.
"Let's move," I said.
"Let's move," Tony parroted. I had no idea I used that phrase so much. I started to worry that it made me sound like a dick.
"Hold up." A thought had occurred to me. "Tony, these can't be the only security people in the whole park."
Tony's fingers skittered across the laptop he carried. "No. But they're the only ones in this area."
"Do they check in? Is there a shift change?"
"You understand this magic box in my hands doesn't make me clairvoyant, yeah?"
I understood that it meant we could still be caught. "Guys, stay here." I could have predicted Alexei's frown before it arrived. "You need to find the phone they use to stay in touch with the other guard stations and you need to make sure these two are out of sight. Someone may come looking. Maybe try and fit into their uniforms as best you can." The uniforms were not made for men of such size.
"We're not leaving you," said Nico.
"Tony's with me."
"That doesn't count," said Nico, adding to Tony, "no offense."
"None taken. I get that a lot."
"If we get caught, then none of this is going to matter," I stressed, again seeing scenes from my dream playing horribly through my mind. "And anyway, what are you going to do if you come with me? Punch a killer whale in the face?"
"If I have to," Nico shot back grimly.
"I'm starting to think you guys aren't environmentalists," muttered Tony.
"Hide the guards, find the phone, then - and only then - one of you come find me," I said. "I'm not failing because my nannies wouldn't let me go for a swim on my own."
As I had previously observed, my direct instructions did seem to have some definite weight with the guys. They couldn't disobey, and I thought again of what they had done to my mom, and how responsible they had really been.
"Nico's pretty protective of you," commented Tony, as he trailed behind me, unlocking sealed doors and switching off cameras and alarms as we went.
I said nothing, I had noticed it, too. They were all protective of me, but since last night, Nico seemed more so. I wondered about asking Tony - a man and a disinterested party - what he would do if he found out a girl he had slept with had also slept with his two best friends. But Tony's limited world experience wouldn't have made for the most useful answers.
At the end of a corridor, we found a ladder fixed to the wall. I climbed up, then Tony passed up his laptop so he could follow. Before us was the line of pens where the large animals spent the night. Floodlights from above cut through the darkness, making the scene more eerie rather than less. I could hear sounds from the water, creatures moving unseen beneath the surface.
"What's in here?" I asked, whispering without intending to.
Tony checked his laptop. "Squids, dolphins, sharks..."
"Sharks?"
"Tiger sharks."
"Are they man-eaters?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"I think you just told me."
"Yeah. Probably should have just said no. I read somewhere, more people are killed by tiger sharks than actual tigers. I don't know if that's true but it sounds like the sort of thing that might be. Or, at least..."
"Tony?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut the fuck up."
"Can do."
"Where are the orcas?"
Tony pointed to the tank at the end of the row. Typical. It's strange how, when you walk along a sidewalk, it never feels narrow, but when you walk along a metal bridge, the same width, suspended over tanks of deadly fish - and marine mammals - it suddenly feels like crossing a greased tightrope on a unicycle. To our left hung the buckets used to feed the animals in the morning, and the unpleasant stink of dead fish hung in the air so thick I could taste it as I breathed.
Neither I nor Tony spoke - it was the longest I had known Tony to go without speaking since I had known him - the only sounds were the swishing from the water below, and the creaking of the metal bridge as we walked.
Then - a loud clang. A few feet in front of me, a bucket that had been swinging to itself, slipped from its hook and landed loudly on the bridge, rolling towards me at a speed that seemed wildly disproportion
ate to the basic rules of physics. Panicked by the suddenness, I kicked at it, but as I did so, my foot slipped on the wet metal.
"Cat!" Tony shouted as I toppled over backwards into the tank behind me.
Flailing beneath the water, I saw a torpedo-shaped object move, a dark shadow beneath me that was unmistakable. I was in the shark tank. I really wished I hadn't watched all those damn Jaws films, not least because one thing I remembered from them was that sharks sense movement in the water. A human swimming looks to them like an injured seal, and me flailing about looked just plain delicious.
I reached for the bridge but my hand slipped, even as Tony tried to grab it, and I crashed back into the water. I wasn't a particularly strong swimmer in the first place and the weight of my water-soaked clothes dragged me down. I tried to struggle out of the backpack I was wearing, hoping that shedding weight would help me. Then, I felt something bump against my leg, and the shock drove all the air out of my lungs. I kicked desperately. I knew I was making myself even more of a target, but I had to do something, I had to get out of there. Looking down, I was sure I could see the shadows circling, growing higher, closing in on me, or perhaps it was just an oxygen-deprived hallucination. I opened my mouth and breathed in water.
Suddenly, I felt something touch my collar, and my initial fright turned to relief as I felt the hand tighten and haul me up. With a cry of effort, Alexei dragged me out of the water with one hand, holding on to the bridge with the other, his face strained with effort. I scrambled to safety and lay in a pool, choking up water from my burning throat.
When I looked up, I saw Tony looking pale and shaken, grasping his laptop like a security blanket, and Alexei, looking perhaps a bit too smug.
"Tony called for me," he said. "Should I have punched the shark?"
"Very funny." I clambered back to my knees.
"What happened?"
I related the incident of the bucket. "I guess I just need to be more careful."
Her Immortal Harem Book Two Page 9
