Taking Flight

by Tabitha Rayne

“I don’t see why I have to redo all my research when you already have access to the results. It took me years to compile all of that information and most—in fact over ninety-nine percent—of the experiments were failures. This is a complete waste of my time.” Her cheeks bloomed to a ferocious heat as anger and frustration at her situation came to a head. “If you’d bothered to read my papers, which I know you possess, you’d know where the best focus for my work would be.”

  “I have no such access to your papers.”

  “What?”

  “All research labs were burned to the ground and the homes of scientists ransacked. Any papers were destroyed.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying. You’re only alive because of your little excursion into the forest.”

  “So who…”

  “The Archmatria government.”

  “How?”

  “They have a secret breakaway group to carry out their plans. If the toxins are left to carry on killing off most of the population, there will be enough food for a small, elite portion of society to continue until the world begins to revive itself.”

  “But how will they procreate and make future generations if they don’t know how to counteract the poison?”

  “Oh, they know. They’ve known what the causes and the cures are for a very long time.”

  “What?” Deborah felt sick. She wobbled slightly and managed to catch the arm of a nearby chair, easing herself into it before she fell. “I don’t… I just don’t understand. What about the lab I worked at?”

  “You mean the lab you pretended to work at?” The governor eyed Deborah carefully as if trying to read her thoughts. “Did you never wonder why none of your successes was acted on? Or why you never had a team to carry out the more menial of your research tasks?”

  “Well, actually…” Deborah felt like a haze was lifting, and fragments of the conversation between her and Hazel that night by the bonfire flickered into her memory. “Yes.” Her brow furrowed as she thought about how best to converse with this woman. “But I had nothing to compare it to. It was my first research job after university. I didn’t know what to expect.”

  “That’s what they were relying on.”

  “Who?”

  “The government.” The governor walked around the front of her desk and took a chair next to Deborah, leaning in intently to continue. “It’s all a sham, a cover-up.” She took Deborah’s hand. “They had to let the people believe a cure was being looked into. They had to give us hope, while they were actually accelerating the growth and spread of the toxins, all the time keeping a vaccine for themselves.”

  Deborah snatched her hand away and rubbed it defensively. “And just why should I believe you?”

  “You probably shouldn’t believe anyone.” The woman had turned cold and stood up primly, making her way to the corner of the room. “Tea?”

  Deborah nodded. “So what of my colleagues?” she asked, trying to remain stoic while a tremor shuddered through her.

  “Dead, I imagine. Sugar?”

  Deborah shook her head and the woman brought the cup over to her. “So what is this place?”

  “It is a prison. You are still a prisoner.”

  “Under what charge?”

  “Well, you posed a problem as you were meant to die in the fire alongside the others. When you showed up hiding in the woods with your boyfriend, it must have felt like a gift to the government. They had a valid reason to lock you away for harboring a male, no questions asked.”

  Deborah was reeling from the force of all these revelations. She’d only come in to get the focus of her research changed. She was completely confused.

  “So why are you telling me all this, and why have you set me up with a lab? I just don’t understand.” She slumped forward and held her head at her knees, slopping tea onto the carpet.

  “You’re a decoy.”

  “A fucking decoy? What are you talking about?”

  “Well, while the government goes about the business of ‘finding out’ who destroyed the labs, they can continue to look as though they are intent on also finding a cure.”

  “By using me?”

  “Yes. Think of it, a criminal, locked away, our only hope for the future survival of our species.” The woman rolled her eyes then sat close to Deborah once more, taking her hand. “You’re practically a celebrity already, Doctor Regan. You’re actually very lucky under the circumstances.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sure there was some speculation as to why you went missing when you did—just as the fires were starting…”

  “People think I was part of it?” She remembered the hostility from the escort guard who had brought her to this facility. She had thought it was just due to her abandoning her research, not destroying laboratories.

  Nausea pooled in her solar plexus and Deborah rocked back and forth, clutching herself. That would explain her apparent power over the women in the lab earlier. And all these weeks of reworking dead-end samples and experiments was just aiding the demise of humanity. Her stomach lurched again. “But why are you telling me this? Why?”

  “Because I think you do know what you’re doing. Something about you tells me you had made some kind of discovery, and the fact that you burst in here today the way you did is making me more confident about that.”

  “But who are you working for then?” Deborah studied the woman intently as her eyes scanned the room suspiciously. She felt like laughing in her face—if anyone was listening to this conversation, they would have already gotten what they’d come for.

  “That doesn’t matter for now. You just assume I’m alone in my thoughts.”

  “How can I trust you?”

  “You can’t.” The governor smiled with genuine warmth at Deborah and got up, urging her to do the same. “You don’t have to trust me. All you have to do is what you’ve been doing in the lab—all the work you’ve already done—and record it however you do, but, alongside that, I want you to continue the line of investigation you think will reap the most rewards.” There was a sparkle in her eyes now and her voice went up a pitch. “I want you to find a cure, Deborah. I want you to fix this world. I will help you. Let me know what you need and I’ll get it for you. Just pass two notes to Jane, one official and one for my eyes only. Jane knows how to be discreet.”

  Deborah snorted. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” She smirked at the governor. “For example, she let it slip that you have a penchant for curly-haired drivers…” She watched as the blush rose on the woman’s chest and neck, flushing all the way up to her cheeks and cherry red lips.

  “Yes, well.” The governor self-consciously touched the corner of her mouth and Deborah found it almost endearing. “I wanted to make sure you were paying attention, so I asked her to do that.”

  “Fucking hell, is everything contrived in this place?” Deborah suddenly felt very trapped, as if her ally in Jane had been whipped away from her.

  “Listen. Please, if you never trust me, please know that you can trust Jane.” The governor reached out and gently cupped Deborah’s cheek. It was her turn to blush as the action made a bubble of anticipation rise in her chest. “Everyone needs to trust someone, Deborah,” she whispered, then very slowly leaned in and kissed her softly on the lips. “Now, remember, anything you need.”

  She turned Deborah toward the door and pushed her gently forward with her hand at the small of her back. As she left the room and returned to Jane’s custody once more, she turned and caught the eye of the governor who had a look of deep pleading on her face, as if it was her dying hope that Deborah was to be her savior. No pressure then, thought Deborah as she was guided back to her cell.

  “Aren’t I supposed to be working?” she asked, and Jane stopped.

  “I thought you wouldn’t be feeling like it after all that,” she said.

  “No, I think I should go to the lab. I have a lot of research to be getting on with.”

 
Jane smiled broadly and took her by the arm, as if she were a dapper gentleman taking a date to the opera. She deposited her in the cool, white glow of the makeshift laboratory.

  Chapter 18

  Excitement coursed through Deborah as she started her work with renewed vigor. Picking through the contents of the box she’d thrown to the floor, she realized what an enormous task she had been given. To save the world. All well and good, she thought while sorting through vials and pots, but it will take forever just to do the required logging of materials. She took out a sheet of paper and wrote the first required item on her list for the governor.

  1 – an assistant

  She chewed her pencil for a moment, then went back to ordering the chaos. Once all the bottles had been sorted and lined up, Deborah sighed and sat on a low chair, lifting her feet onto the high desk. Her neck cracked several times as she twisted it this way and that, a smile forming on her lips as she remembered the last day she’d worked before her exile. That was the day she’d made the discovery. The real line of investigation she had to follow.

  The bubble of excitement that had been awakened in the governor’s office shot down between her legs as she remembered Marcus’s voice feeding instructions through the big, old phone. The memory of the resistance and then the slip-slide of the test tube she’d pushed inside herself as Marcus listened and urged was so clear, her pussy twitched as though it really was dancing at her opening. Tentatively, she let her fingers roam down to that perfect center and cupped her mound through her tunic, undulating her hand and feeling her own warmth grow and rise.

  It’s happening, she thought with a gasp as, at last, arousal flooded her senses. Her legs tensed and her toes pointed up to the window as she rocked on her hands. These weeks of frustration welled and raged through her veins and she knew it would be quick—too quick. She tried to slow her pace, let herself fall fully into it, but her body was too hungry for release. She squeezed her thighs and clamped her hands to her pussy, rocking and humping fast and hard. Sweat prickled over her shoulders and brow and the fabric gathered at her sex dampened. Every muscle in her body rose and stilled, all breath stopped for that sweet agony of a second, then the wave engulfed her, breaking out into a shuddering climax. She could hear her own groans as if from far away. Breathe, she told herself, as her peripheral vision began to dim. She inhaled as if for the very first time and it ignited the passion she’d been lacking, carrying it through her network of blood vessels to the very tips of her being.

  Deborah felt light and airy, as if she could just float away. Knowing she didn’t reach anywhere like the meeting point didn’t worry her for now, she was just glad to know her frigidity wasn’t permanent. Smoothing out her rumpled tunic, she made ready to work in earnest. Looking at the huge task that lay ahead of her, she took up her pencil and added two more items to her list.

  2 – another research assistant

  3- more test and boiling tubes—assorted sizes

  She grinned from ear to ear and folded the list once. Filling it out was going to be fun.

  * * * *

  Marcus was still reeling from his sudden bout of doubting. He’d continued with his work, but it was mechanical, and the light had faded from his eyes. The clients had also begun to notice.

  “Hey, honey.” The curvy redhead underneath him clawed for his undivided attention. “I’m paying for the best, so a bit of focus, please?”

  Marcus felt used and cheap. He withdrew from the woman’s clutching, desperate sex and stared at her. “Don’t worry, you’ll get your money’s worth,” he said, and slithered his way down between her legs.

  Her pussy glistened with a fiery halo of hair and Marcus’s body responded to the sight. His already hard cock stiffened further and his mouth began to water with the anticipation of feasting on this ruby jewel. The arousal didn’t make it to his mind, though, and he fell onto the woman, lapping and twisting his fingers in and out until the tell-tale shuddering began without taking his usual satisfaction from the act. The woman bucked and shrieked, engulfing him in molten liquid while her fleshy walls spasmed around his fingers.

  “Oh yeah, that’s more like it, honey,” she said in a dramatic, breathless voice and twisted her fingers into his hair, pulling him out from between her thighs. “Now fuck me harder than you’ve ever fucked.”

  The fire Marcus had just swallowed seemed to intoxicate him with ferocity. He did as the woman bid and threw her over onto her front, yanking her hips high to expose her pouting pussy. He took his cock in one hand and guided it to the slippery entrance, rolling it around the edges while she twitched and suckled, trying to catch him and pull him inside.

  “Stop teasing,” she snarled, and backed her ass onto him.

  He watched his cock disappear up into her suckling depths and he grabbed her hips once more, pushing her roughly off him, only to slam in a split second later. If she wanted to be fucked, then that’s what she would get. Thrust after thrust, harder and harder, until she squeezed him so tight in her quivering cunt that he exploded and came just as she wanted—right into her. He held her there for a moment or two before withdrawing as she sank further into the chaise longue, mewling and purring like a satisfied cat.

  It was the strangest orgasm he’d had in a long time—purely mechanical. It was fulfilling in a physical way but was nowhere near the satisfaction he usually got when searching for Deborah in the ether of the meeting point. He got up and watched as the woman righted herself and pulled on her luxurious robe. She was obviously very used to demanding and getting exactly what she wanted.

  * * * *

  By the time Deborah was escorted back to her cell she had organized every last sample, shelf, drawer, and record in the laboratory. Now she knew that her work did have a purpose she’d gone at it with renewed vigor. She was exhausted.

  Gloaming was setting in and she pulled on her nightshirt and clambered up to the window to catch the remaining light. Her fingers trembled as she flicked through the pages of Marcus’s notebook, trying to find a particular entry. She’d committed so many of his words to memory already in the dim light of the moon’s rays during her time in the cell, but she had to see the words and his writing. It was like communicating with him. Since her lack of sexual arousal, she needed something to make her feel connected.

  The pages were soft on her fingertips as she fanned them, sweeping his faint aroma up to her. There, she’d found it.

  I coaxed a quivering, shuddering release from her tonight with only my cock. It was so beautiful to watch it slip inside the pulling flesh of her delicate yet powerful folds. I tried to keep note of the angle, the dip, the force, the depth, but she squealed from her throat in that way that sends me flipping out in fractals of pure want...pure need. I had to just grab her hips as her pussy walls clenched around me and fuck her with all my being. She was so hot, so ripe, so wet, when she came I was engulfed in her pleasure—it blew me away. It threw me into a shuddering, spasming, feral creature and I growled, I growled over her as I fucked her. I wanted to consume her, to tear her flesh from her bones with my teeth. I wanted to have her all to myself, inside myself, forever. When we collapsed onto the sheets together, I’m sure I felt the resistance of our physicality give, just a little, and she slipped into me for just a second…

  Deborah closed the book and held it to her breast. She leaned her head back against the cold brickwork and fell into the memory of that night. It had been sublime. The way he’d taken her with such ferocity had made her yearn for him even while he was fucking her. She understood his words about wanting to eat her up as it was exactly how she felt about him. She’d wanted to tear him apart with the lust she felt for him. The desperate need.

  Breathing hard through her nose, Deborah felt at last the swelling of arousal in her abdomen. She arched her back into the wall and pushed her pelvis out into the night, pulling her nightshirt up over her mound to expose herself to the growing darkness. She spread her legs, shuffling her feet along the metal headboard
she’d been balancing on, and held the notebook between her teeth. Clutching her pussy with both hands, she bent her knees to get a good, hard grip. She pulled her outer lips apart and dipped a finger roughly inside, pulling it out again to smear the juices over her clit.

  She wished she could have seen what Marcus saw—wished she could watch herself open and stretch to accommodate his thick, hard dick. She bit down harder and opened her pussy wider, pushing three fingers into her soaking hole. It wasn’t enough—she wanted to be rammed to the brink of her existence. Still holding tight, she let the book drop from her mouth and pushed herself off the wall, falling on the bed with her fingers still deep inside her dripping sex. She moved her hips, thrusting and humping like he would have, and imagined she was him. Her heart beat wildly as she reached further underneath herself, trying to transfer her copious lubrication up to her anus. She was so turned on by her fantasy that as the tip of her finger reached the peaking ring of muscle, she came, hard and convulsing over her own hands.

  As she became aware of her surroundings again, she could hear the sound of the creaking bedsprings slowing along with her heaving breaths. It was a good, satisfying orgasm and Deborah kept her hands in place until the cool draft of the night air dried her sweat and made her shiver.

  Drawing her blankets up to her chin, she wondered why she hadn’t fallen into the void of spirituality that she usually did. She concluded that she’d had to visualize her fantasy so completely there was no room to trip off on a journey to the meeting point. Her brain couldn’t be split into that many areas. She was a little disappointed but also quite liked the fact that she now knew a possible way in which to control her mind. She could keep herself tethered to this reality if she kept her visual imagination with plenty to do.

  The other positive was the fact that she’d become aroused to the point of climax twice in one day—not bad going after the arid few weeks she’d had. An image of the governor trailing her hand across her jaw flashed into her psyche. She shook it away as quickly as it came—she wouldn’t allow that woman to have anything to do with her newfound want. But her lips tickled with the memory of that tiny, barely there kiss. The heat and sweet scent of the governor’s breath brushing and tickling at the downy hairs at the corner of her mouth. Deborah stopped her fantasy dead. There would be no thoughts of fraternizing. She was there to do a job.