Lost control? He shook his head, but he had such clarity of thought, like nothing he’d ever experienced. Eve must be confused. His control continued to grow, not fade. Control wasn’t something he’d lost.
“We’re just playing! Eve, It’s amazing. I can do so much. I know how to control things much more effectively. Watch!”
With a gesture, Jason changed the chemical composition of the wall to form tentacles which writhed and wrapped over Ephrom’s wrists.
Eve can’t see how clear things are now, he thought. He’d become so superior, she couldn’t conceive of his changes. Powerful, and in control of everyone around him. His every thought a cocktail of sex and strength—and his mind continued refining his control more with each moment.
“Jason, you’re hurting him! Let him go! And Jenn . . . oh my god! Jason, she needs medical attention. She’s going to die!”
He laughed at how silly Eve was behaving, then he kissed Ephrom. He ordered the manacles back into the wall and dropped Ephrom to the floor as he turned toward her.
“Eve? Don’t be ridiculous. I’m perfectly in control. It’s amazing! Ephrom isn’t hurt, see? I let him go. We were just wrestling, and I’m learning my strength, but he’s fine. And Jenn?” He frowned. He’d forgotten her. “I’m giving her pleasure beyond words. We were a little rough, but I’ll heal her. I think—” For a moment, he was confused. Jenn’s nannies simply weren’t responding rapidly enough. They were older, antiquated technology. They couldn’t keep up with his own. He had a solution, right? He could replicate his enhanced nannies into her. Take over everything down to the cellular level. She’d heal. He frowned at this, but then lost interest as another surge of hyper-sexual desire demanded his attention. His thoughts became increasingly foggy, filled only with emotion and desire.
“Jason, please listen! It’s me, Eve! You said you trusted me. Whatever is happening, you’re confused. Think about how you’re acting. It’s not you, and just look at her! She’s broken and terrified! I’M terrified!” She rushed to Jenn and cradled her head. She struggled to lift her but then settled onto the floor with her.
Jason was growing tired of being thwarted. If everyone could just see what he saw, it would be easier. “Eve? There’s no reason to be afraid. I can help you understand, make you understand.” He snared her emotions before she could protest, flooded her with comfort and attraction. She stared at him a moment and he felt a massive surge of adrenaline as she tried to resist him. Then, overwhelmed, she smiled and abandoned Jenn, walking toward him invitingly. Ephrom rose from the floor behind him and began kissing Jason’s shoulders, running his fingers down Jason’s bloody torso. Jason shuddered in delight, the blood from his now-healed head wound sticky in his matted hair. He turned and rewarded Ephrom with a deep kiss, tearing his shirt off. He experienced the same sense of being someone else, of experiencing the pleasure of Ephrom. It was as if he was kissing himself. He pulled Ephrom to him roughly, sliding his hands down to his butt and massaging it.
“Yes, see? I will teach you just how much your body can do, Ephrom.” The feeling rushed through him, and he felt Ephrom’s male organ straining against his pants. With another deep kiss, he made Ephrom orgasm with so much force the man sagged against him involuntarily. Jason held him up, as he thrashed, kissing his neck, enjoying the shared sensations.
With another laugh, he turned and picked up Eve, who stared at him, and set her on the counter alongside Jenn, intending to take Eve as he’d taken her. Jenn weakly repeated “Nuh. Nuh. Nuh,” as her body struggled vainly to survive blood loss and the filling of her lungs. She radiated pain and deep desperation to be saved, fighting for her life.
Before he could tear off Eve’s clothing, the door opened, and Emma Garbine walked into the room. She carried a briefcase. The look on her face was grim, determined. Angry.
“Jason, it’s me, Emma. Do you recognize me?”
He smiled sensually at her. “Of course, Emma! Come in. I have discovered so much. I can control everything. Everything! Even the materials in this room are treated with nano-technology and can be commanded to obey.” The counter shaped itself around Eve, cupping her toward him so he could enter her more easily.
Ephrom watched Jason with sustained longing, absently running his hands over his own torso. “Please!” he begged. Jason dominated his nannies, and Ephrom desperately needed attention.
Emma moved toward the center of the living room, then into the edge of the dining space. “Jason, you’ve lost perspective. You aren’t in control of anything, least of all yourself. Look at Jenn, for god’s sake!”
His brows narrowed with confusion. Someone else had mentioned her. He could not remember who. “Jenn?” He glanced at her broken body for a moment, recognizing her wounds. “Jenn? What? Don’t worry, Jenn. Your nannies will fix the hurting.” He smiled and commanded her nannies to repair. However, once again they were inadequate. They were already attempting to minimize the bleeding and close the wounds, but they simply weren’t designed to help her in the way she needed. They were barely keeping her alive.
Jason mentally dismissed the issue. “I’ve ordered her to heal, so she’ll be fine. I’ll adapt her so she can accommodate me, love me. Her body just needs to be rebuilt. I’ll rebuild everyone, so they can receive my love. Everyone should experience this incredible feeling. I’ll give everyone the treatment so they can adapt. We have solved it! We can give the immortality drugs and new nannies to people.”
He ignored Jenn and smiled, satisfied his commands had been transmitted. He forgot about her in moments, turning his attention back toward his own physical needs, which were overpowering. Ephrom, driven beyond control by his imposed desire, pressed up against Jason, begging. Worse than any addiction, Jason dominated every pleasure and reward system in Ephrom’s brain.
“Jason! You’ve nearly killed her! Stop it. Turn off your emotions, your elevated hormone levels. Your body is controlling your actions, not your mind. Your judgment is clouded and out of control. Shut them down!”
The conversation was irritating him. Even so, he decided to prove he was in complete control. “No! It’s not that at all.” He stepped out of Ephrom’s embrace and around the corner toward her. “Emma, it’s amazing! You don’t understand. My body, my ability, it’s so incredible. The feelings during sex are so intense, so overwhelming, and they don’t have to stop. It is bliss. I can keep going and going, and I just need to help others experience the same thing. It’s pure ecstasy, and I can help you have it too. Your body will adapt. I’ll help you.”
He moved forward and reached out to control her nannies, but he suffered a shock. There was nothing there. If he closed his eyes, he couldn’t sense her at all. It was like she was invisible to him. If he didn’t see her in front of him, he’d have thought she wasn’t even in the room. He cast out again with more force, seeking to find her nannies. Surely she’d been treated. Everyone in society had nannies in one form or another.
“What—”
“I’ve got a suppression device, canceling out all signals around me. Very simple, but it should keep you from forcing me to do something I don’t want. Jason, listen! I don’t WANT you to take over my mind, my body. It’s wrong. Think! You’d know this if you just concentrated. What you are doing isn’t you, Jason. You’re becoming the monsters from the failed experiments.”
He laughed and tried to seize control of her again, having already forgotten his failure. “You’re making such a huge deal of out this, when it’s really just about pleasure. It’s wonderful. I’ll show you.” He started forward.
Emma pulled out a gun. Where had she gotten a gun? They were forbidden unless issued by the government. He laughed at the absurdity of it. A gun. Against him? “Let me show you,” he repeated.
“No, Jason. What you are doing is raping people. Even if you change their emotions to appear willing, it isn’t what they wanted before you changed them. You’re forcing yourself on them, against their will.”
For a moment he lo
oked at her, stunned and confused. Against their will? But his will became their will, he reasoned, and they wanted him. Even now, he could feel Ephrom and Eve behind him, as they yearned for his attention. He could feel Eve’s nipples harden, her loins clench. He could feel Ephrom’s male organ straining against his clothing. He rewarded their desire with pleasure akin to orgasm and they both shuddered. He felt their feelings as his feelings. The more he could capture their nannies, the more he could enhance his own sensations. “Emma, please don’t be so hysterical. Look.” He motioned for Eve and Ephrom to join him, and they did so eagerly. “They want me, want to be with me. I’m not forcing them by controlling their bodies. They are moving on their own. I just helped them know how much they wanted me. If anything, they are suffering because we are wasting time here.” He ran his fingers up his bare stomach, dried blood flaking off. “I’ll show you, too. You need to see.” He moved toward her again.
“Stop right there. I’ll shoot. I am telling you flat out. I don’t want you to come near me. I don’t want you changing me.”
He hesitated. Conversation became difficult, annoying and disruptive. “But you will. You will want to, I promise. You’ll want it more than anything else. It’s so simple. I can’t—. Stop talking! You need to see.”
Emma fired the gun. She hit him in the chest and fired again, destroying his right leg.
He collapsed, screaming in outrage. Before she could fire a third time, he commanded the floor under her to shift upward, throwing her off balance. With a cry, she fell backward. As she fell, the material around her arms and legs changed at his command, snaking forward and binding the right side of her body. He couldn’t control the material on the left side, since the briefcase had fallen too near and continued to cancel out signals, but he’d restrained her enough to keep her from reaching for the weapon, which skittered across the floor and landed against the wall.
He yelled again in pain, but his wounds were already closing, healing. His heart staggered, faltering from the destruction of his chest. In moments, the nannies formed a latticework, covering the wound and repairing enough of the damage to stabilize his blood pressure. He knelt, head bowed and arms barely able to hold him up. The pain felt incredible, amazing. He savored it and laughed as it fled from his body. In minutes he had healed completely. Finally, he stood, his body whole. He felt weak, however. He needed food badly.
“Hungry,” he mumbled.
He staggered to the replicator, gorging himself, eating whatever he could grab as soon as it was produced for him. He got much of it on himself, spilling food down the front of his body as he forced it into his mouth. The sensation of eating was incredibly pleasurable in itself and he moaned between bites. Finishing quickly, he moved to the sink, drinking greedily from the faucet. Briefly, the thought that a bigger mouth would make it easier.
Emma yelled in fright as she watched in horror, trying desperately to turn enough to grab the briefcase handle and drag it toward her. “Jason! My god, stop it! You’re turning into a monster.” Then, through frightened tears, she pleaded with him. “Please! I’m your friend!”
In between gulping water, he looked at her. “You shot me. How could you?” He giggled, rubbing his healed leg. “It hurt.” Oh, but it had felt amazing, too. “Emma?” He shook his head. Pleasure and pain overlapping in his mind. He needed more of both. Food?
“Jason, you’ve got to stop. Let me get you out of here, to the lab. We can stall the process before you destroy yourself and hurt anybody else. Remember what happened to the others!”
Hadn’t he already talked about this, dealt with it? What others? He moved around the counter, his leg supporting his weight as if it had never been torn. He began to swagger toward her. The floor writhed around her arm and leg, holding her fast. Sex. Then food.
“Please, Jason, stop!” He sensed her fear. “Help! Please! Somebody get in here! I can’t stop him!”
He reached the briefcase and kicked it out of the way, feeling a momentary loss of signaling from his leg as it passed through the dampening field. “Filthy thing. Poison.”
He felt her nannies now that the briefcase lay out of range, and it made him smile.
He kneeled over Emma, able to sense her fear through her primitive nannites, seeing what she saw that evoked this terror. Subconsciously he recognized he appeared as a nightmare come to life, a mess of food, blood, and with sexual urges run rampant. He ran a finger over her cheek, with a rush of anticipation as he thought of what he could do to help her see him as an object of desire, not one to be feared.
That’s not me. She’s not seeing correctly. I’ll fix it. She will see me as I really am.
She screamed and thrashed against him. Through Emma’s eyes, having rudimentary communication with her nannites, he was given a picture of himself as a monster. Eyes wild, lustful and dangerous. Grinning horribly. Covered in grime and bodily fluids. Like seeing a reflection. One he would change. She would see him as powerful, beautiful, desired above all things. With glee he threw his will against hers, intending to convert her as he had the others.
To his shock, his commands to overwhelm her were cancelled. The door opened and he staggered back under an onslaught of complex instructions to his own nannies. Reacting on instinct, he threw his hands over his face protectively and countermanded the foreign instructions, which were designed to entirely shut off his ability to send and receive communication through his system. He felt his control, all the power he commanded, slipping, being cut off.
Sector Seven strode into the room, a look of concern on his normally impassive face.
Tarien! For a moment, Jason felt sane. Then Jason resisted the instructions to shut down his control with all his might, desperately trying to keep the window of his own power from closing on him. He screamed in rage at the Tech, “Stop! What are you doing?”
Tarien walked toward him, sending a set of signals completely incomprehensible to Jason and vastly more complicated than he could hope to understand. An interwoven skein of these instructions snared Jason’s mind and Jason could barely remain in control of himself as he fought. He lost ground, unable to fend off the attack. Even if he would normally have had a chance, his mind had grown too clouded by lust and emotion. He couldn’t process the sheer complexity and speed of thought coming from so many directions. Jason tried to rise, to physically overpower the other man, but the moment the thought of physically resisting occurred to him, Tarien overcame his attempt. Jason’s body would no longer obey him when he tried to push forward. He resorted to backing away and Tarien moved in step toward him, eyes never leaving Jason’s face.
He staggered into the wall and then Seven had him, gently resting both hands on his shoulders as he allowed the nannite battle to continue. With surprising gentleness, he took Jason’s head in both hands. “We don’t wish to harm you, Jason. Please stop resisting us.”
Jason stammered, “I can’t—ugh!” His jaw clenched in concentration. “Stop it! I need—” With a groan, he sagged. “No!” But he simply wasn’t capable of resisting. Tarien’s ability vastly eclipsed his. He might as well have been a mosquito trying to outmaneuver a space-fighter. Even so, he fought with every ounce of willpower.
Tarien sighed in resignation, a look of deep concern flashing through his eyes as Jason’s nannies were ripped out of his control and stopped obeying his commands altogether. The pain of losing his systemic control tore at Jason and he thrashed involuntarily against Tarien, who pulled him into an embrace, cradling his head against his chest. Tarien’s strength matched that of Jason’s, even as enhanced as Jason had become, and Jason couldn’t pull away. The sudden loss overwhelmed him, and he sobbed.
“We are sorry. Sorry . . .” Tarien put his cheek on the top of Jason’s head as he held him.
Jason felt himself normalize. His hormones and emotions no longer controlled him. Without realizing it was coming, he started screaming in horror as his conscious mind reasserted itself. He shook with sobs and would have fallen to the fl
oor if he hadn’t been firmly held.
In moments, his innate concern for others surpassed his own trauma. He looked up at the Tech. “What have I done? Jenn! We’ve got to get her help. She’s, oh Tarien, I think I killed her. What is happening to me?”
A team had already rushed in to treat Jenn as well as to help the others. They had begun a blood transfusion.
“She is greatly harmed, Jason. She will be aided, but her damage is extensive. Her body will survive, but we cannot discern the injury to her mind. We do not know how to gauge the extent of ruin or her probability of recovery.” He paused, still forcing Jason to look at him and not around the room. “We need you to reverse the changes to your friends.”
Jason gaped. “Why don’t you just do it? You’re infinitely more in control of technology than I am.”
Seven shook his head. “We lack understanding of emotional and hormonal controls and cannot restore them properly. You have changed them. We can stop you from communicating, and easily cancel or redirect communication, but we do not understand emotional control or the body and its complexities. These things are the province of those with medical training.” He stepped back, letting Jason support his own weight. “You must do this now. We will re-establish your links for this purpose, if you can remain in command of your senses.”
Jason looked at him a long moment, shaken. “I . . . I don’t know. What if I can’t? I thought I remained in control. My thoughts were so clear, but the desire grew too strong, too confusing.” He shuddered. “My . . . desires were too strong. You may have to shut me off.”
Emma cried out for help, her arms and legs still encapsulated by the flooring.
He nodded. “We will help you. We have frozen you as you are, so you will not be able to issue additional changes to your body until we are sure of you. Do you know how to temper your internal feedback so it doesn’t control you? We will release you now. Ready?”
Jason took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded. Suddenly, it all came flooding back in a wave. With a groan, he clenched his teeth and fists, felt his eyes rolling back in his head. His massive chest rose and fell and the cord of muscle around his neck tightened. He panted, resisting the desires that coursed through him again. Acutely aware of Tarien’s presence, his statuesque perfection and the danger those thoughts represented, Jason used that as a mechanism to control himself. He wanted to reach out, to embrace the Tech and ravish him. With agonizing slowness, he negated the incoming signals, cancelling them and regulating his body to something more normal. He couldn’t stop the desire, but now he was wiser, more in control. He knew the danger of such powerful allure.
Sector Seven Page 23
