by Noah Rain
I frowned. “They said it was—“
“Autoimmune, I’m guessing,” Nina said, raising her eyebrows expectantly.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Nina repeated. She seemed to hold more disdain for the League physicians who had diagnosed me than she did for me. “Well, it wasn’t either. What you’ve got,” she stretched up onto her tippy toes, her shirt riding up to expose her toned belly, and tapped on my temple, “is up here.”
“Brain injury? Great.”
Nina shrugged. “From what I can tell, whatever shots you took didn’t do anything to your fine motor skills—balance, coordination and the works. That suggests it also left your cognitive abilities alone. So, you’re just naturally this dense.”
I smirked, and Nina accidentally mimed me. She did have a sense of humor, after all. It was just a matter of drawing it out and then recognizing it before it beat a hasty retreat.
“Seriously, though,” I said, dropping all pretense. “What’s wrong with me?”
“That’s no way to talk about a gift,” Nina said. She didn’t seem to be making fun of me. When she saw my best, most earnest look, her green eyes softened a bit. “I don’t know, Konnor. But my best guess is that there’s been a change to your brain-body connection. The weird thing is, you’ve got full control of your muscles. In fact, based on my hypothesis, you’ve got even more control than you did before. Without pain receptors activating as normal, and without tension warnings, your brain seems to have removed physical limits.”
It all sounded rather science fiction-y.
“That’s not to say you have no limits,” Nina said, stepping back behind the steel table with its oversized bus or tank battery, which I was presently attached to. “Like you said, if we hooked you up to an electrical source—a bigger one, I mean—your heart would stop, although,” she tapped her chin thoughtfully as she watched digital numbers slide by on a screen on the box in front of her, “I bet it would last longer than is statistically average.”
“Oh joy,” I said. “So it might take a few extra seconds to electrocute me than your average Joe.”
“Probably several more seconds,” Nina said. “And not just your average Joe, but your Olympic-level, peak human Joe as well.”
“Some consolation,” I said. “A charred corpse is a charred corpse.”
“True,” Nina said, “but, if we take a slightly less extreme example, that statistically-significant difference in threshold turns into something rather much more impressive.”
“I’m listening.”
“You’re hard to kill,” Nina said. “Your muscles don’t seem to know their own limits, and—we’re going to test this in a few minutes—I’m theorizing that you’re also immune to shock. Your brain is hyperactive, but only as it relates to proprioception—your ability to control your body with precision and speed. If you get poisoned, or sick, your body is going to fight it faster than most. If you get stabbed, you’ll start clotting faster. If you fight, you’ll take longer to get tired, since your lactic acid is going to be processed more quickly. But … the downside to all these gifts is the fact that, if you were pushing the red line, you might reach a point of no return before you even knew enough to pull back.”
I must have been staring slack jawed.
“It’s a lot harder to hold your arms out straight for this long than most people realize,” Nina said, nodding at me. I hadn’t realized I was still in a T-pose. I lowered my arms to my sides, feeling foolish.
“Can you explain that last bit again?” I asked sheepishly.
“If you push your body too far, you might incur permanent muscle damage without even realizing it. You have physical sensation—we tested that last night—but nothing negative. That’s good right up until it’s not. If your muscles separate from your bones, you won’t know it until you can’t lift a coffee mug. If your heart bursts, you’re not going to know until you fall over.”
I swallowed, no longer eager to call out the fact that Nina had quite quickly passed over the ‘tests’ she had run on my pleasure systems last night.
“This test isn’t about the mind control formula, is it?” I asked.
Nina gave me another withering look. “Obviously not.”
“Gave up already?” I teased. “Even after one measly test? That’s not very scientific, is it?”
Nina paled, and then her tanned face blushed beat-red with anger and embarrassment. She had one hand on a dial on the electronic doohickey, and I realized I probably shouldn’t be taunting her while she had me hooked up to what I could only assume was a death device.
“I didn’t say I’d given up on the formula,” Nina said through gritted teeth. “I only need to run some more calculations before trying again.”
“Any idea what went wrong?” I asked, trying and failing to dispel the tension I had caused.
“Oxytocin,” Nina said. “Not enough of it. All other factors—adrenaline, interleukins, pheromones. It was all perfect. The only missing piece was the oxytocin.”
“I’m not sure that’s a ‘me’ problem,” I said. “Maybe next time, you and Darla can—“
Clearly I had gone too far. We’ve been over the fact that I’m highly resistant to pain and overall discomfort several times now, but an electrical current would still shut anyone up.
Nina twisted the dial on her torture device and my whole body went rigid, jaw included. I let out a moaning, growling sound as I tried to regain control of my body, but Nina turned the dial up higher. I managed to look down, and saw the muscles of my chest expanding, my abs popping out so my stomach looked like an oversized cheese grater.
“Can you take more?” Nina asked in a wicked voice. I felt the current surging through me, and thought I would smell burning flesh any given second. But after a few long, tense moments, I found that I was able to move my arms, and lift my chin. I looked up at Nina, assuming she had turned the current down, and now it was her turn to stare, slack jawed.
“What?” I asked in a shivering voice. “I can take it. Pump up the juice again.”
“I … haven’t lowered it,” Nina said.
“Huh.”
She seemed immensely surprised by the fact, and then she smiled again, looking more excited than anyone should be under the circumstances. But then, I suppose scientists were all just psychos hiding in plain sight, waiting to pull things apart in order to see how they worked, never worrying about how to put them back together again.
Nina turned up the dial, and I couldn’t help but to growl again. This time, I squeezed my eyes shut and attempted to feel the current surging through me. It wasn’t pain that I felt, but the more current Nina pushed through me, the more I did feel … something. It was almost as if the electrical current had reanimated nerves that had lost their connection to my brain. It didn’t hurt, nor did it feel good, necessarily.
After a few seconds or maybe as long as a minute, I was able to regain control of my arms and legs. I spread my feet shoulder-width apart, and curled my arms up, fists clenched along with my jaw. I stopped my teeth from chattering, and focused on my core, willing my abs to relax some, and concentrating on my breathing. In and out.
In. And out.
In.
Out.
Finally, I opened my eyes, and saw Nina staring at me with an expression that could only be described as open awe.
The current was still surging through me, and I was smiling. But then, I felt a slight pinch emanating from my heart, and it put me in a panic. I lost control of my breath, and my muscles seized up again. I fell onto one knee and planted a palm on the cement floor, and tried to speak, to tell Nina to turn the machine off. I knew if I felt a pinch, my heart was feeling a whole lot more.
“Nnnnnn,” I growled. “Niiiiiinaaaaa! Off!”
I managed to bark the sounds out, and while Nina was caught in a moment of shock for a
smidge longer, she blinked, drew in a sharp, worried breath and twisted the dial back the opposite way.
The relief was immediate, and as my muscles relaxed, I felt like my whole body had turned to jelly as I fell onto my stomach and let out a long sigh.
“Konnor?”
Nina was pushing against my back. I could feel her hand sliding over the sweat that was finally free to rise out of my pores, her fingers tracing lines between the nodes and wires she had stuck to me.
“Konnor? Are you okay?”
“Sure,” I managed. I actually felt relaxed. Very relaxed. But I had a sneaking suspicion that meant I had come dangerously close to death.
“I … I can’t believe it.”
“What’s that?” I asked, rolling over onto my back. Nina was looking up at the black box, her eyes reflecting the blue glow of the indicator screen. She watched stats go by, and seemed to be running calculations, her lips moving without issuing sounds. “Nina?”
She blinked and looked down at me, her eyes tracking from my face down to my heaving chest and shaking abs. She prodded at me, scientifically at first. Coldly, even. And then a little more soft. A little more suggestive. I had the impression she wasn’t trying to get anything started, but that she was just caught in a spell of fascination. I also had the distinct impression that she preferred me decked out in a mess of rubber wires and copper endings. Not sure how I felt about that.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said.
“Well, thank you very much,” I joked. “But, just so we’re on the same page, we are talking about the test, right?”
Nina didn’t even have the wherewithal to respond with something snarky or derisive. She nodded slowly, continuing to run her hands along my chest, my stomach. Each pass got a little lower. She even licked her lips at one point, but I don’t think she noticed. Nina might have been attracted to me, but I didn’t think so. She was attracted to the numbers on that screen, and whatever they had said about me.
“What kind of test were you running?” I asked, genuinely curious. “I mean, aside from trying to fry me like a toad in a lightning storm.”
“Muscle limit test,” she said. “The electrical current stimulates muscle contraction, while the pulses stimulate expansion. Typically, the voltage I passed through you would have resulted in muscle tears at best, and cardiac arrest at worst.”
“Think I came close to the latter,” I admitted. “And besides, I’m sure I’ve got some tears in the old muscles, here.” I looked at my arms, and joined Nina in prodding at my chest. “Not that I’d be able to tell. I don’t feel sore, but that doesn’t really mean anything.”
“No,” Nina said, shaking her head. “You’d know. I’m not talking about micro tears like the kind you get after a tough workout or even a fight. I’m talking about real tears. Tears that would make it impossible for you to move right now.”
“Ah,” I said. “Right.” I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to help Nina with her testing. I guess a part of me had hoped we were going to escalate the previous night’s particular round of examinations.
“Your muscles can contract more severely than a peak athlete,” Nina said. “By a factor of three. And they can expand by a factor of two.”
“Not bad,” I said, nodding.
Nina seemed to snap back into reality. She looked at me. “Do you know what that means, Konnor?”
“I mean … isn’t it self-explanatory?”
“It should be,” Nina said. “But. Still. Do you realize this means that your … your condition. It makes you more than twice as strong as you should be, even with all of your training, conditioning and experience. Add that to the fact that you’re highly resistant to pain and even musculoskeletal damage, and I don’t know that I’d pick anyone to beat you in a fight, weapons or no weapons.”
“Guess the League was right to ban me, then,” I said with a shrug.
“Konnor,” Nina said. “If the League knew what your condition really was. Hell, if any of the Suits caught wind of it, they’d be in a bidding war for you—“
“Even if I am some sort of natural or unnatural super commando,” I said, “a fighter who’s twice as strong as the next best fighter isn’t going to make the difference between ruling Silk City and Jaxton with an iron fist and not.”
Nina shook her head. She had already grown more patient with me today than she had been before, but she had her limits, and my daftness seemed to test them.
“It’s not about you, Konnor,” Nina said. “They’d study you. Test you. And ultimately, they’d try to replicate you.”
“Like … a clone?”
I expected Nina to laugh in my face or roll her eyes, but she only shrugged. “Probably too cost-prohibitive, not to mention too slow. The better play would be to try to replicate your condition in other people. Other fighters.”
“What, by knocking them around, and giving them just the right sort of concussion?”
“I’m not saying it’s likely,” Nina said. “Hell, I’m not even saying it’s possible. But that doesn’t mean the Suits wouldn’t try.”
“And … what about you?”
Nina examined me again. She looked like she was blushing.
“I’m more interested in my formula than I am in making another Konnor Kayde,” she said a little too haughtily to be believed. I felt pressure down low, and looked down to see Nina pressing on my boxers. “Maybe we should have another run at—“
The doors to Nina’s laboratory burst open. We both scrambled to our feet like we’d been caught by adults fooling around. I expected Sascha to be framed in the doorway, potentially in her full S&M attire, whip in hand. Not sure how I would have felt about that, but it had my heart racing.
In any event, it wasn’t Sascha. It was Darla. She was still dressed in her robe from this morning, and it looked like she had made no attempts to stop it from coming undone. She looked annoyed.
“Darla,” Nina said, regaining her composure. “What’s up?”
Darla pointed an accusing finger at Nina as I stepped to the side and started pulling the nodes and wires off of me. They were beginning to give me the shivers, and I think it had something to do with the fact that it looked like a human circulatory system on the outside instead of the inside.
“You’ve had him for almost two hours!” Darla shouted. Nina seemed taken aback by Darla’s venomous tone. She looked like a madwoman, her chest heaving, tits looking like they were about to spill out of the soft satin folds. Her hair was spilling out of a black bun. She still looked hot, all things considered.
Darla’s eyes slid from Nina to me, and she winked, which, quite frankly, made me feel confused.
She straightened, allowing the satin robe to fall back in place. Now it had the effect of covering more of her skin, while also painting every curve in exquisite detail, right down to the wide, alluring V of her hips and the raised buttons of her nipples.
“What sort of tests have you been running on him?”
The shift from maniacal to calm and conversational was jarring for me, but apparently par for the course for Nina. She smiled.
“Nothing too fun,” she said. “Yet.”
“Good thing I’m here,” Darla said. “I’d hate to miss out—“
“It’s amazing, Darla!” Nina said, unable to contain her enthusiasm. “Even with enough electricity to kill a dog running through him, his proprioception scores are steady. Less than a ten percent dip! And don’t even get me started on the neurolinking. It’s like the only thing that’s been adversely affected is his pain recep—“
Nina rambled about my brain-body connection, the particular voltage she had sent through which quadrants of my body, and how I had managed not only to, well, not die, but to seize control of my muscles in the midst of the microscopic storm Nina had unleashed on me. Darla and I were equally bored by it, though her e
yes did light up when Nina explained how my muscles had expanded and contracted. She wanted more details about that, and looked at me hungrily as Nina supplied them, seemingly oblivious to Darla’s intent.
Darla waited a few moments before speaking after Nina finished her thesis.
“So then,” Darla said. “You are done with him now, right?”
“Well,” Nina said, looking back at me. She looked much more mischievous than she had before, and far less analytical. “I was going to make another go at the mind formula.”
“Oxypotions?” Darla purred.
“Oxytocin’s,” Nina and I corrected her on the spot, and Nina almost went weak at the knees. I was beginning to pick up on things, after all.
“Right,” Darla said, not caring that she had said it wrong. “The fun stuff.”
“Yes,” Nina said, stepping over the pile of wires and nodes I had left at my feet and curling her hand around my shoulder. “The fun stuff.”
“All in the name of science,” I said, unable to suppress my desire as Darla came up on my other side and slid her satin-coated body against mine as immodestly as you could imagine.
“Now you’re speaking my language,” Nina said. “Besides, I guess you’ve had enough shocks for the afternoon. Sascha’s orders, after all.”
“And we mustn’t disappoint Sascha,” I whispered as Nina rose up onto her toes to kiss me. I felt Darla fishing around, and she closed her hand around my cock, which was already throbbing. Maybe the currents had woken me up before the girls had decided to take their turn.
“Wait,” I said, pulling back from the kiss as Nina moaned and tried to pull me back in. “Don’t you need to make the injection, first?”
Nina blinked at me, while Darla ignored the exchange, pulling the tip of my penis out of the black band of my boxers and running her finger over the head.
Nina smiled. “You really do care about the formula, don’t you?”
