Silk City Vixens

by Noah Rain

  “Cool,” she said.

  “Um,” I said again, and Carmen looked at me. “Like, spar spar?”

  “Spar spar,” Carmen said as Nina gave me a look that made me feel immensely stupid while Darla giggled again. “If I wanted to fuck, I’d ask you to fuck. I mean, not that I’m not asking. Oh, yeah. I probably should have asked if you were down with anal before I blurted that out last night. Felt weird about it all morning.”

  If I had been drinking anything, it would have been all over the table, and all over Carmen. Of course, picturing her drenched in coffee or orange juice quickly morphed into picturing her drenched in something else, and I shook my head and cleared my throat.

  “Oh, no, no,” I said. “I mean, don’t worry about it. I’m not. I mean. It’s cool.”

  Now all four women were staring at me. Carmen looked confused by my reaction. Apparently sex wasn’t even close to a taboo around these parts. Not that I should have been surprised.

  “You don’t like anal, then?” Carmen asked. She kept such a straight face that I couldn’t tell whether or not she was joking.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then you do like it,” Scarlett reasoned in a deadpan voice.

  “Me too,” Carmen said.

  “You don’t want any of Carmen’s ass,” Darla said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Carmen asked, sounding offended.

  “If Scarlett was able to wear him out enough to drag him here, what would your Latina hips do to him?” Darla asked and Carmen smiled.

  “Wear me out?” I said, looking at Scarlett, who was now blushing almost as dark as her namesake. “Is that what you told them? You girls do remember that I was fucking drugged, right?”

  “Obviously,” Nina said, but Carmen and Darla only burst into laughter, Darla’s robe coming loose enough to draw my eyes as I watched the cream-colored tops of her breasts bounce.

  I could either argue over how much Scarlett had to thank her hips or a horse tranquilizer for rendering me weak and vulnerable or join the Silk City Vixens in their fit of laughter. I settled for an awkward chuckle.

  A metallic latch and clang announced the doors, and the Vixens scrambled, stood and pushed their chairs out in a mix between military precision and abject panic. Darla did it so fast one of her tits actually spilled loose. Nina fixed it for her and shot me a dark look.

  When Sascha rounded the bend, I stood as well, stepping away from the table. The Vixens’ apparent matron stopped in her tracks, eyeing me and her girls like a mother wolf trying to decide between adopting a lost pup and tearing his throat out. She was wearing a black suit that seemed to be made more of cloth than leather, though there was plenty of that. It could have doubled as a business suit or a biker’s getup, but the golden dangling earrings and white high-topped shoes led me to believe she was returning from official daylight business and not covert operations.

  “Girls,” Sascha said. “And boy.”

  “Hi,” I said, earning that icy stare dead on. I swallowed and looked down, folding my hands behind my back.

  Sascha nodded once and the girls sat back down hurriedly. Sascha gestured for me to do the same, and then the discomfort grew even worse when she sat in the only empty seat right next to me.

  The leader of the Silk City Vixens launched into an exhaustive, extremely easy-to-follow treatise on her latest dealings and intel from every Guild in Silk City, every Suit in their growing network, every Pearl attempting to install roadblocks on their operation and every Syndicate she felt they should keep on what she referred to as their ‘Friendly Fire’ radar.

  The girls listened with rapt attention, their expressions caught somewhere between religious zealotry and soldiers’ loyalty. It was then that I knew the Vixens were just as dangerous and capable a Syndicate as any. Perhaps more so. It was almost enough to make me forget that I had already fucked two of them and come mighty close to doing the same with the others. And listening to Sascha’s address, with its clear authority and direction, made me view the revealing portrait in her chambers in an entirely new light. I found myself considering her more mature allure as she spoke, and her blue eyes flickered to me once or twice, forcing me to look away. I thought I saw her smirk the second time.

  One group in particular seemed to have Sascha’s back up that morning.

  “Fucking Calisto,” she said. With the rest of the Guilds, Syndicates and corporations, Sascha had kept her emotions in check, operating like a robot. With this, she gritted her teeth and shook her head.

  “Is …” I started. “Is Calisto a Syndicate?”

  Sascha took a long drink of bitter black coffee and slammed her mug down on the glass, threatening to chip one or the other.

  “Calisto is a she,” Sascha said. “And she is part of a Guild. And that fucking Guild is the only one we don’t have bent over a barrel right now.”

  I was somewhat surprised she had answered me at all. Part of me had expected another palm strike across the jaw. But hey, if you’re going to invite a stranger to breakfast, expect a few questions.

  “Why?” I asked.

  I felt pressure on my leg and looked down to see Scarlett gripping my knee through my jeans. Her knuckles were blanched. She must have been squeezing hard, and for a few minutes.

  “Why what, Konnor Kayde?” Sascha asked with a sickly sweet smile.

  “Why don’t you have Calisto over a barrel yet?”

  “We don’t have the Silk City Swans over a fucking barrel yet, Konnor, because … I don’t fucking know why, actually.” She switched her ire from me to the girls, who flashed me dangerous looks. “Maybe they just don’t like pussy.”

  Darla blushed. “I’ve tried, Sascha,” she said. “Pheromones, tits and all. Maybe I’m just not their type.”

  Sascha and Darla both looked toward Scarlett.

  “No,” Scarlett said.

  Finally, Sascha rolled her eyes and looked at Nina.

  “A female-centric formula isn’t as simple as doing the opposite of the formula I have,” she said. “It’s going to take time. Besides, why don’t we just send Carmen and Scarlett in to do some damage. Send a message the old fashioned way.”

  “Oh trust me,” Sascha said. “I’d love to do nothing more. But as much as I hate those prissy little Swans and their righteous indignation, they’re smart, and they’ve got a few good fighters of their own. A house call might not go over well—“

  “We’d be fine,” Carmen said, and Scarlett looked hungry to prove herself as well. I had stumbled into the middle of some all-ninja-girl turf war in Silk City.

  “In any case,” Sascha said. “The Swans haven’t moved against us yet. Not openly. They’re trying to get some of the compromised Suits on their side. They’ve already got some of the Pearls. If they get enough, all the blackmail in the world isn’t going to stop them.”

  “We need the Syndicates,” Scarlett said. The look that passed between her and Sascha indicated that it was a well-worn groove in an ancient argument.

  “Why don’t you ask Konnor here how reasonable the Syndicates are to deal with,” Sascha said.

  Scarlett looked my way, and suddenly I felt like I was in the middle of a domestic family argument.

  “In fairness,” I offered, “I did sort of try to turn the leader of the Shockers in to a Silk City Guild.”

  Sascha did not look amused, but Scarlett nodded at my answer.

  “It’s time to put the call out,” Scarlett said. “Show the Syndicates what we have on the Guilders and the Suits. If we have them ready to strike once we release the files to the public, from credit PINs and laundering schemes to Darla’s escapades, we should have plenty—“

  “Plenty to what, Scar?” Sascha asked. She was demonstrating more patience than I would have thought she had. “The people of Jaxton know all about the Suits’ corruption. That i
sn’t what our blackmail is for. We can’t hand the system over to a people who have grown apathetic and lethargic. We have to take it for them, by first taking it for us. Taking the system down is like burning the forest down to save the trees.”

  It was a good analogy, and it sounded very close to what I had found myself saying to Scarlett regarding her anti-system radicalism. The sentiment was understandable, but radicalism was only good at destroying, not building.

  Scarlett dropped the argument, and Sascha examined her afterward for an uncomfortable length of time.

  “So …” I said. “Where do I fit into all this?”

  Sascha sighed. “You’re in the middle of a war, Konnor,” she said. “A real one, now. Not that glitz and glamor cage-fighting shit you wasted the early part of your life on.”

  I frowned.

  “I know it doesn’t look like much of a war, yet,” she continued. “It’s not like there are factions battling in the streets. Sure, the occasional territorial tiff between Syndicates in Jaxton, and every once in a while, a Synner-Guilder scrap on one side of the bay or the other. Maybe a pack of Suits throwing one of their members to the wolves, or a high-profile Pearl filing for divorce and shocking the credit rating of her partner in crime. Schemes and machinations. But not war. Right?”

  I found myself nodding, and I had a feeling I’d have been doing so even if I didn’t agree with what Sascha was saying. She had a way about her.

  “This war, between the haves and the would-haves, has so far been fought in the shadows,” she said. “But it’s a powder keg, Konnor, and it’s about to blow. But not before I will it so. After all, you wouldn’t strike a match while you’re standing over the barrel, now would you?”

  I found myself shaking my head. No, ma’am. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught doing that.

  “I see you as a match, Konnor.”

  “Come again?”

  Sascha’s icy blues bored into mine. “I see you as a flickering flame,” she said. I could almost see the imaginary fire reflected in her black pupils. “A candle to be snuffed out in a flash, perhaps. With just a lick and pinch. Or a blazing inferno that ignites the war before its ripe, and takes the city down.”

  Once I was able to tear my gaze away from Sascha, I looked around the table. Carmen, Nina and Darla were all staring at me like they had some kind of premonition. Like I was a mythic figure and not just an ex fighter with a nerve condition.

  “You’re a rare threat to us,” Sascha continued. I didn’t feel like much of a threat. “Aside from your obvious physical talents—“ Darla snorted and Carmen smirked, but Sascha ignored them. “You’re impossible to blackmail because you’ve barely got any credit as it is, and you’re already intent on joining a Guild, making you an enemy in every sense of the word, even if you weren’t a dangerous fool.”

  “I don’t see which one would take me now,” I said. “What, with my shit credit, as you pointed out.”

  “You single-handedly took down Vash and the Shockers,” Sascha said.

  I looked at Scarlett.

  “You could lie,” Sascha said by way of answer. “Any Guild would take you in, once they’ve seen what you can do.”

  “Look,” I said. “I only wanted to join a Guild because, like many of the people in Jaxton, I don’t really have any options, and I don’t fancy the idea of becoming a beat cop, which is to say, a glorified security guard.”

  “So you want to be a glorified commando working for the Suits and Pearls?” Scarlett countered.

  “Not anymore,” I said. “I mean, I don’t know.”

  “Even if you weren’t intent on joining a rival Guild, and if your physical attributes didn’t make you a terrible match-up for my girls, pheromones and all, there’s the small matter that you’re really no use to us, Konnor.”

  I swallowed.

  “Nina wasn’t able to get anything worthwhile out of you, although I’m sure she extracted something.”

  I blushed as Nina stared at me. She spoke up after a long minute of consideration. “Just because the new formula doesn’t work on him doesn’t mean it won’t work on someone weaker,” she said. “I’ll need him to run some more tests.”

  “Good,” Sascha said, and I had the uncomfortable impression that Nina might have just bought me a few more days to live.

  Sascha continued to stare at me. They all did, and I felt like I was either on death row or in the world’s most dangerous job interview. One misstep and it would all go black.

  “Fire can be good,” Sascha said, seeming to speak to herself more than the rest of us. “Fire can be cleansing. As long as it’s aimed right. My father believed in chaos. He knew you couldn’t harness it, but that you could aim it. Fan it. Blow it in a certain direction.”

  So now I was chaos incarnate, apparently.

  “Assuming the girls agree,” Sascha said, “I’m prepared to offer you a choice that is no choice, Konnor Kayde. You’re no friend to the Suits of Silk City, and despite your naivety, you’re not meant to be a Guilder. You’ve got no discernable skills that will allow you to slink into the system and build credit the old fashioned way. As far as I see it, your singular option is to join us. Help us compromise every Guild and every Suit and Pearl pairing in Silk City, until all the credit in the world is rendered meaningless. Help us secure our operation, and insure it. And when skirmishes turn into battles, stand with us, and put our enemies down. And when the war does break out, and the transition of power undergoes its dying throes, help us stamp out the flames we’ve helped spark.”

  It was a lot to take in.

  “Take the night to think it over,” Sascha said, pushing herself up from the table. “If you’re still here tomorrow, then I’m assuming you’ve either accepted your death at our hands, or you’re joining us on the raid.”

  “The raid?”

  “We’re moving against a Guild tomorrow,” she said, switching her gaze to the girls. “Moving directly. No pheromones. No subterfuge. Old fashioned house call.”

  “Against who?” I asked. “Why?”

  Sascha frowned.

  “We had the leader of one of Silk City’s most militaristic Guilds compromised,” she said. “Or so we thought. But while Barter’s credit took a hit, his Suit covered for him, and now he’s angry. As such, we’ve got to make a house call before he does.”

  Sascha inclined her head to her right, indicating Carmen. “We’ve got plenty of firepower without earning a death sentence for lethal weapons, but we could use a bull to help us rearrange this china shop.”

  I nodded dumbly, not understanding what I was getting myself into. Carmen seemed excited by the prospect.

  “For now,” Sascha said, “help my girls in any manner they see fit.”

  “Any manner, mum?” Darla asked with a playful flutter.

  Sascha didn’t respond. She turned and strode from the room, retiring back to her private chambers. I only hoped I didn’t get some secret summons for the red and black room … or did I?

  “Welcome to the Vixens,” Scarlett said.

  Before I could respond, Nina had taken me by the wrist and was leading me back to her laboratory.

  Chapter 10

  Battery

  As it turned out, helping Nina turned out to be a lot less fun than it had been the night before.

  Part of this was due to the fact that Nina’s attitude had undergone a sharp transition, from studious and alluring, albeit direct to, well, just direct. But the greater part of this had something to do with the diodes she had stuck to my body—arms, legs, neck, basically everywhere—and the fact that I had no idea what she intended to do with them.

  Nina had taken it personally that her would-be mind-control formula, even after being fused with my blood, had done little more than get me drunk, high and horny. That might have been selling things a bit short. After all, I had becom
e rather suggestible, but I had retained enough sense and free will not to hand over my credit PIN. Not that it would be worth a whole lot to the Vixens anyway.

  “Arms out.”

  I did as Nina ordered, sighing in boredom as I adopted a messianic pose. I may have been shirtless once more, but I had managed to keep my pants on, at least for the time being. Nina checked the diodes, fiddling with the wires that were streaming out from under each one and covering me in a complicated trail of red, blue and black. The wires twined around my arms, legs and torso, ultimately feeding to a large, rectangular … thingy that looked like an old car battery, albeit with a lot more blinking lights and indicators.

  “You know,” I said, “if your brilliant plan to mind control involves frying me with a downtown bus battery … you might as well just kill me. I may not feel much pain, but my heart will stop, and then I’ll be dead. No use to anyone.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure …” Nina said distractedly.

  “About which part?” I asked, lamenting the fact that Nina was much more challenging than Scarlett to get a rise out of.

  “About your heart stopping,” Nina said. I was quickly learning that Nina had a tendency to take things rather literally.

  “I’m not a superhero,” I said, not joking this time.

  Nina paused in front of me and gave me a confused, slightly annoyed look. She had her hands on my hips, but there was nothing suggestive about her caress.

  “You really think you’ve just got some kind of numbing disease, don’t you?” Nina said, as if nothing had ever been so stupid.

  “I mean,” I said, “I wouldn’t really consider it a numbing disease. Or. Well, I’ve never called it that.”

  “What, then?” Nina asked, crossing her arms. “A nerve disorder, then?”

  I thought of lying, but it wouldn’t have worked on her. None of the Vixens seemed lacking in intelligence, but Nina was undoubtedly the sharpest knife in any drawer as it was.

  “Yeah,” I shrugged.

  “You’re not wrong,” Nina said. I smiled, and she rolled her eyes. “Not completely wrong, I should say.” I shrugged again. “What happened to you,” she said, waving her hand, “whatever happened to you, and whenever it happened, it wasn’t a nerve injury.”