She bit her lip, thinking as the storm hammered the landscape around us. When she turned to me, her look was far from scared. There was heat in her eyes as she put a hand on my chest, fingers trailing lightly up my neck. “Do you have a woman?”
“No,” I told her. “I have two.”
Her smile was coy, then sensual. “I’m not afraid of competition.”
She pulled at my pants, angling under me as her body unfolded on the blanket. Her skin was smooth, still dimpled from the chill, and perfect. I edged her over with my arm, settling against her with the warmth of my body as she pushed up against me, hungry for more than just a warm place to fall. As the thunder cracked, I kissed her, then again, her tongue playing a lazy eight as she reached down and slipped me inside her, the muscles tight, her thigs flexed as she wrapped around me like we were forged as one.
I moved, then she responded, languid motions that were unhurried despite the chaos of the skies just outside the safety of our cave. Her breasts were astounding; defiant and soft all in one, and responsive to my touch as she leaned up to nip playfully at my ears while her first orgasm began in a series of tiny quakes, each moving along her thighs like a message that it was my time as well.
“What competition?” she said, her voice rough with lust and satisfaction.
Moments later, I answered the only way my body would let me, her legs locked around me once again in a movement that was familiar and new all at once. My new body answered the call as I slipped a hand behind her back, pulling her ever higher as she let loose a torrent of little gasps. It was time for her, so it was time for me, and we shook together for what seemed like forever, collapsing as one while outside, the first ray of sun breaking through in the distance.
The storm was ending, and as I kissed her one last time, I knew the pleasure was over. It was time to deliver some pain.
9
We emerged into brilliant sunlight and steaming heat. “Holy shit,” I said, utterly stunned by the scene. The desert had been transformed. Everything had been scoured and reshaped by the furious storm, with rubble piled up against rock formations as water streamed downhill everywhere, rivulets carving and remaking the landscape even as we watched.
“You said it,” Chloe muttered. She held a hand over her eyes, flat to block the scorching sun. The wind was light but humid, and to the east, a black bank of clouds still roiled, moving away too slowly to discern with the eye. “I think I know how to find the power plant, by the way.”
“You do? Did Rowan tell you the exact location?” I asked her. All we knew was south, as he’d been careful not to share too much with us other than vague hints about the secret location.
Chloe smiled, then pointed past me to the southeast. “Maybe that will help?”
“What did the storm—” I stopped to put my hands up in mock thanks to the fleeing clouds. “I guess we did catch a break, after all.”
“What did you break?” Mira asked, sending me into a spin, gun out instantly.
Chloe just grinned, then waved to the two women walking toward us on the remnants of a concrete path, now revealed by the erosion of wind and rain.
“No wonder you were quiet,” I said. The path was arrow-straight, leading to the cave, but broken from the years. “Glad to see you survived that batshit crazy weather.” I holstered my weapon and willed my heart to slow down, then pointed to Mira and Silk, who stood regarding me with bemused smiles. “Chloe, these are, as you said last night, your competition.”
“Oh really?” Mira and Silk said in unison, their brows shooting up.
Under the combined weight of their stares, Chloe coughed politely and managed a grin. “It was stormy. We were alone. You know how it goes.”
“Oh really?” Mira repeated, but Silk just laughed, then grew serious.
“Let them bask in it. We have news, and not a lot of time if I’m any judge of how fast things will dry out,” Silk said, her beautiful features turned grim. “We saw men on a mission, making good time heading north. They were a team, and there’s no way they won’t see sign of our trail in this muck. Even over hard ground, a child could follow someone, and I say this as a woman who ran a whorehouse for years. We’re in danger, Jack.”
“Chloe. You say the plant is south?” I asked her, all humor gone from my tone.
To her credit, her response was instant, serious, and direct. “Look over your shoulder. That’s where we’re going.”
I did, and saw what she noticed earlier. A highway.
“The storm scoured it clean. I’ll be damned,” I said, my eyes roaming the length of fractured pavement. It was far from pristine, but good enough for walking, and most importantly, it was drier than the surrounding Desert. We would gain an enormous amount of time using it for travel. I turned to Silk and Mira, motioning that we should start walking. “We can talk and walk. Chloe was a prisoner, and Rowan discovered nanobots. That’s why he wanted the needles. He and his captain have been dosing themselves with ‘bots, and the effects are mixed.”
“How?” Mira asked.
We were picking our way down the concrete shards toward the highway, our feet squelching in the muck between sections of stone. The desert began to give the rains back under the sun’s gaze, and in moments, I was dripping with sweat. The heat and humidity were brutal, and despite our pressing need, I knew we could only go so hard. If we arrived gassed and sunburned, then we would be in no shape to prepare the plant for an assault.
“Lyss—the captain—seems to be handling the ‘bots okay, but there isn’t much of an outward sign that they’re working in her blood. Rowan is another story entirely. He’s strong, and his appearance is varying from day to day. I don’t think he’s stable. His mind might not be stable, either.”
“How do you know he isn’t from your time? Maybe he’s just confused, and the process didn’t take?” Silk asked.
“Because of what he asked me to do. He handed me a document from my time, and he couldn’t understand it. That means he’s form here and now, and Hightec is as alien to him as the idea of slavery is to me. That’s why we can’t let him reach his goal,” I said.
We were walking four abreast on the road now, our steps eating up space as the cave fell away behind us.
“What’s his goal? More Hightec?” Silk asked.
I shook my head before answering. “Not just Hightec. The Hightec, as far as we’re concerned. He found evidence of something developed after I went into the tube. Portable power, water driven, and designed to run forever. If we can find it, save it, and use it?”
“You think this single device can make the oasis safe? And—more like your world?” Mira asked. Her tone was cautious.
My answer was soft, because I was lost in memory for a second. “The best parts of it, maybe. If I have the courage to do what’s right and find people who think that way.” I returned to the present, my smile widened by possibility. “Since Rowan doesn’t know the truth of the power plant, we could find anything there. The reactors alone are worth risking anything, but the unseen value? We need to lock this place down, at any cost. That patrol you saw will go to the plant. They aren’t looking for us, not really.”
“Then we need to get there. Chloe, so you know anything more than just south? It’s a big desert,” Mira said.
“It isn’t just south. It’s directly south, past a small gorge leftover from an earthquake when I was a little girl. There was a bridge, but I have my doubt it’s there after what we just went through,” Chloe answered.
“How big a gorge?” I asked.
“About fifteen meters. Pretty steep. Cut right into rock from a big shaker. It was filled in with gravel and dust, but . . .” She shrugged rather than repeat the obvious. The gap would be scoured clean by runoff, which meant I was going to test my body in a new and exciting way.
I would jump the gorge.
“Double time, then. You look pretty good for having ridden out that beast,” I said to Silk and Mira.
“We didn’t ride
anything out. There are more caves tailing away to the west along this ridge. It got a bit rough overnight, but we were dry. Closest thing to danger was a lightning strike that blew up the only cactus still standing after the first hours,” Mira said.
“I could do without that kind of excitement for a while,” Silk said.
“Sorry. More to come. We need to find and fortify this plant, and the only way to do it is to get there. This road is clear enough to trot. You game?” I asked.
They all answered by taking off at a reasonable pace, packs swinging in unison as we made our way onto the road proper. The going was erratic but decent given the age of the road, and in less than twenty minutes, all three women were breathing in the pattern of people who are working hard but not being pushed beyond their limit.
I trotted alongside, weapon up and eyes alert as the battered landscape unfurled before us. “What a disaster.”
“I see ruins everywhere. How much sand was carried away?” Mira asked.
“Has to be ten meters or more? I see what you’re saying. There are bits of concrete and—is that a girder? Old metal, I think. Must have carried away a thousand years of dunes. We’ve got a lot of scavenging to do before the next storm covers it all up,” I said.
“Be a while. There are months, maybe years between storms like that. We’ll get more bad ones, but that was legendary. If anyone survived, they’ll pass it down as a story to their grandchildren,” Chloe said, leaning down to pick something up. “What’s this?”
We stopped, since it was a good time for a drink and a deep breath. I took the small piece of stone from her, turning it over in the sun. “Arrowhead, from the people before mine. Three thousand years old, easy.”
“Did you hunt with these?” Chloe asked, before gulping water from her skin.
“No. There were people who lived on the plains a long time ago. When I was a kid we collected their relics. I always wondered if someone would find evidence of my life and ask who we were, and why we were gone. Now I know,” I said, handing the arrowhead back. “Keep it. It’s a connection to the deepest past.”
“I will,” Chloe said. “Ready?”
She was tough. They all were.
“Ready. South it is,” I said. We set out as the sun climbed higher, steaming away the pools of rainwater and leaving the world ever more humid, but we didn’t run for long. A gash in the earth loomed ahead, so deep that the sun reflected of the walls before being swallowed by shadows.
“I take it that’s the gap?” I asked.
“And then some. It’s gotten deeper than what I imagined,” Chloe said, whistling as she leaned over to examine the vertical walls.
If there had been debris, the storm took every bit of it far away, leaving a raw scar in the land, and no evidence that there had ever been anything like a bridge. Or a highway, for that matter. All that greeted me was a roiling, coffee brown ribbon of water that looked fast enough to drown a hippo. Not only was it fast, there were tree limbs and other debris tumbling like jackstraws as the water scoured hard at the land. It was not swimmer friendly, and it looked too deep to wade even with a safety line.
The good news was I would be testing my ‘bots and their ability to power me across a chasm. The bad news was I had no means to get the rest of my team across, unless they too developed the means for low-level flight.
“Well, shit,” Mira said, which just about summed up the entire issue.
I stood, staring at the chasm with a mix of anger and disgust, and it occurred to me that I didn’t just need to test my body. I needed to test my mind as well.
“Not all problems are nails,” I said to no one in particular, “but some of them are.”
“What’s that?” Silk asked. “Some advice from your time?”
“You might say. We’re overthinking this,” I said, reaching into my pack and uncoiling a line. “Sometimes, the solution is a lot more simple than it appears. Do you trust me?” I asked all three women, never taking my eyes from the gap.
“Jack, you’ve had us all in bed more ways that we can count. I’d say we trust you,” Silk answered, spokeswoman for the moment. Her smile was radiant.
My eyes snapped up. She had my attention. “Fair enough,” I said, fighting the urge to blush. It was good to know some things still instilled a sense of shame, like the fact that I was one lucky bastard. “In the words of every terrible dancer, give me some room.”
“You want a running start? Just asking.” Mira said. She looked doubtful and more than a little nervous.
“I’m doing just that.” I cinched my pack tight, line coiled on my shoulder. After a quick survey of the other side, I spotted a clear area next to my target, a log buried several feet deep. The top two meters were exposed and angled away, and from my vantage point, the wood looked solid. “Let’s see what this body can do.”
Since there was no need for ceremony and time was of the essence, I trotted out, away form the gorge, for forty meters. My instincts told me that would yield maximum acceleration, and my body confirmed it with a low thrum in my blood. “Talking back now, eh?” I asked my ‘bots but got no answer other than a general sense of readiness. Exploding into motion, my boots churned the ground as I leapt forward faster than any human sprinter.
And most animals, given the blurred ground.
In seconds I was launching myself in the air, the chasm a roaring brown stripe below me as the wind caught my hair and I reached forward with my feet. The question was not whether I could clear the distance. The question was how hard would I hit, because I was more than three meters in the air and still accelerating as I landed on the rain-soaked ground.
I hammered into the soil with a gelatinous thud, flexing deep into my knees as I slid into the mud, only to rise sputtering but whole. Lifting my goggles, I gave a thumbs up, now separated from my team with a torrent, a chasm, and the knowledge that I was no longer just a man. I was something else, and that meant my solution to this problem wasn’t limited by Jack Bowman from my life before.
“Hammer, meet nails.” I smiled, uncoiling the line and tying it around the remains of the ancient tree. It was solid, as expected, so I lashed the rope tight and made a motion indicating the line was coming over.
“You expect me to jump?” Chloe asked, her eyes round with fear. Mira and Silk looked at me with equal suspicion, despite having watched me clear a gap twice what a normal human could traverse.
“Nope. I expect you to fly.” When she wrinkled her face at my answer, I explained, “Tie it around your waist. Run sideways and jump toward the middle. I’ll swing you over.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Chloe asked.
“A little bit, but all in all, I’d say I’m handling the changes of my new life rather well.” I turned to Silk and lifted my hands. “Do you trust me?” I repeated.
I watched her decide. With a terse nod, she took the line from Chloe and began tying it in a double loop. “If you bruise my knees on that canyon wall, I won’t be able to use them for some time.” She winked through her fear, and despite the moment I had to laugh. She was a rare woman.
“Message received.” I braced my feet as she took three steps back, pointing herself away before taking one last look at me, eyes set but nervous. “I have you.”
Her nod was small, her leap, impressive. She ran, jumped, and swung out into clear air while the double loop cinched around her ribs, forcing me to dial back my initial pull as I levered myself against the force and spun her like an Olympian throwing the hammer. When she reached the top of her arc, her feet were a meter over the ground on my side, and I relaxed the bulging muscles in my shoulders to let her land feet first with an impact somewhere between hard and soft.
“I’ll be damned. I’m alive,” she said, releasing the rope.
“Of course you are. You didn’t seriously think—” I began, but she silenced me with a kiss.
Silk turned to shout back across the torrent. “It’s okay, girls. He can do it, and it’s a hell of
a ride. Tie off and let’s get moving.” She was grinning as the adrenaline continued to fire in her own blood.
“There it is,” Chloe said. “Has to be.”
Rather than pause, I grunted, kicking forward with my weapon at the ready. “Now that’s just fucking clever.”
“Why?” Silk asked, breathing heavy. The towers grew closer, hidden partially by a cacti and scrub trees.
“Because that isn’t a power plant. It’s a granary, for farming. No wonder this place kept its secrets. Everything was in plain sight,” I said as the silos rose above us, rust and all. They matched the scrub trees so well, they were little more than hulking shadows in the tangle of wild growth, tucked in a notch between two ridges. “Brilliant. Never would have thought this was the edge of technology, but here we are.”
“Go slow, or go hard?” Mira asked, her voice low.
“Neither. We go steady. Rowan isn’t here,” I said.
“How do you know?” Mira asked.
“Because they would have shot one of us by now,” I said with a grin. “Relax. There’s no way they got around us, and we had the advantage of a straight-line road. We need to find a way in and start making preparations.”
My wish was granted immediately. For all the subtle stealth of the plant, the security was non-existent for someone from my time. We made our way into a steel alcove, the metal scarred and pitted with age, but holding on with a tenacity brought about from dense coating on the prefab sheets. The door was inset, locked from inside, and a single panel designed to slide inward, most likely bolstered by technology that would have died long ago.
Unless there was still active power based on the reactors. I erred to the side of caution and motioned everyone away, then leaned a shoulder into the door, pushing in and over with a single, hard jerk. The door didn’t move, but I wasn’t killed by some passive security measure so I considered it a win.
“Okay, plan B. Let’s loop the ground level and look for another way in. There has to be something, even if it’s ventilation or drainage,” I said with a note of urgency.
Future Rebuilt: A Post-Apocalyptic Harem (Future Reborn Book 2) Page 8
