Binding Foxgirls II

by Simon Archer

  “Mr. Joch,” he said warmly when he answered the phone. “It’s good to hear from you.”

  There wasn’t the same kind of concern or fear in his voice as there had been in Oris’s, but he still didn’t sound quite like himself. He was smoother, more distant than usual, almost as if he were playing a part.

  The same part he’d played back in the Parliamentary chambers.

  “Care to explain?” I said shortly, sitting back down in my desk chair and tapping my fingers furiously on the tabletop.

  “Explain what, Mr. Joch?” he asked airily.

  “You know damn well what,” I snapped.

  “If you’re referring to the motion I introduced, I assure you it was made in good faith,” Gersen said, still calm as ever, almost a false calm. “I do appreciate all you’ve done for me and for our mutual district, Mr. Joch, but I have found that we simply disagree on this issue. As you always say, it’s important for us to think independently of one another.”

  I bit my lip, angered that now two of my own people had used my words against me. “You know full well that I didn’t mean we should disagree on this.”

  “Ah, so we’re only allowed to disagree when you give us permission? Is that how this works?”

  Well, he had me there.

  “No, that’s not what I meant,” I said, giving an exasperated sigh. “What I mean is, how on Earth can you disagree with something so fundamental? I don’t understand it. The whole point of this new Parliament was to remake Termina, make it better for everyone.”

  “And I stand by that worthy goal, I just have a different view of how we ought to achieve it,” Gersen said, and then he hung up on me.

  He actually fucking hung up on me. The gall of him. Unbelievable.

  I stared at the holovision for several moments with a vacant expression on my face, in shock. How had this all gone so horribly wrong in such a short timeframe? Just last night, all indications were that everything was going according to plan, and perfectly so no less.

  The images on the holovision were a recap of the meeting. I saw Oris and Gersen and everyone else over and over again. I didn’t unmute the thing because I didn’t think I could stomach it. After several minutes of this, I dialed for the Prime Minister.

  “Mr. Joch,” Halit said, and he sounded even wearier than he had looked on-screen, “I thought you’d call.” He gave a long, deep sigh.

  “What just happened?” I asked, shaking my head. “Why didn’t you tell me? It seemed like you knew!”

  “I assure you, this only came together very shortly before the meeting in chambers,” Halit said. “I didn’t have time to contact you.”

  “You’re in charge of the damn meeting! You could’ve pushed it back,” I exclaimed. He didn’t respond. “What the fuck happened?” There was a long pause.

  “I… I just think everyone had a change of heart, as I’m sure you saw,” Halit said, his voice breaking much like Oris’s had.

  “I could damn well tell you weren’t on board with that shit,” I pressed. “Don’t lie to me, Halit. I will find out what happened, so you might as well just tell me now.”

  “Nothing happened other than what you saw, I assure you, Mr. Joch,” Halit said hastily. “I’m not lying to you. What you see is what you get, just like I’ve always told you. I simply had a change of heart, as did everyone else. You always told us we need to be separate from you, right? That we shouldn’t be beholden to what TelCorp wants, even though you helped us get where we are.”

  “Okay, you’re the third person in half an hour to tell me some variation of that same bullshit,” I scoffed. “Who put you up to this? Who is it? What happened? Tell me!”

  “Perhaps that is merely because it’s true that you said that to us, Mr. Joch.” Halit sighed, and he sounded more tired than ever. “I’m sorry, my friend, but I assure you there’s no big conspiracy here. We just have a difference of opinion, and we have to move forward. The Parliament is separate from TelCorp now. There’s nothing else to be said or done unless you can convince someone to bring forward another motion. There’s nothing stopping that.”

  It could’ve just been wishful thinking on my part, but Halit almost sounded hopeful on that last part, like he wanted me to find someone else.

  “And if someone else did bring a motion, how would you vote?” I asked him pointedly.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Joch, I suppose I would have to see how things played out in the chambers.” Halit sighed again and sounded more dejected than ever. “Now I really must go. I’ve gotten interview requests from every known media outlet and then some.”

  And with that, he clicked away just like the others, leaving me sitting there staring at the holovision in disbelief again.

  “I don’t understand,” I murmured, shaking my head as Halit appeared to be interviewed on the news. I unmuted it briefly, but he didn’t say much. Just a more cheerful variation of what he’d told me.

  There had to be more to this story. There was no way every single one of my hand-picked members of Parliament changed their minds that fast and in that way. It just wasn’t feasible. Not unless they were threatened, coerced, or something like that.

  Or I’d been played big time and in a long-ass game. Maybe all of these people had been planning this all along, and there weren’t really that many people who cared about the foxgirls and binding rights in Termina.

  I supposed that was possible, but it was hard for me to believe, especially when I’d had Malthe do all that research on every single one of them. No, there was something else going on here. Something more nefarious, something even Malthe couldn’t find.

  And I was going to get to the bottom of it.

  3

  I messaged the foxgirls and Malthe that we needed to meet at my place, pronto. It was safe there, hidden away from everything, and no one knew where my apartment was except for a select few. I was worried that whoever was behind this whole thing had eyes and ears at TelCorp. As much as I wanted to trust everyone on the board, the only people I was absolutely certain about were Cindra, Kira, Kinley, and Malthe.

  I already had a swathe of incoming messages from everyone else on the board, as well as every media outlet I could think of and then some. Lin and Clem were both freaking the fuck out, naturally, but as much as I wanted to trust both of them, for now, I had to keep this to my inner circle. We’d assemble a board meeting sometime soon to address everyone else’s concerns.

  I also had messages from Malthe and the foxgirls, predictably, but I’d talk to them soon. The girls, no doubt, felt every bit of my frustration, anger, and determination in our bond, just as I felt their fear and confusion.

  I took the elevator down to the ground floor and moved to walk out onto the street and back to my apartment, but I was blocked by what seemed like an army of reporters and cameras.

  “Mr. Joch,” the one nearest to be yelled, stuffing a microphone in my face. “Do you have any comment on the motion that passed this morning in Parliament?”

  “What? I… I…” I stammered. I’d been hoping to hold off on making a statement until I talked to my friends, but then again, I probably should’ve realized that the press would be waiting for me outside. I was really out of sorts today, not that there was another way home.

  Well, it was too late. If I ran away, then that would be all over the news. I had to make a statement now.

  “Well, as you can probably guess, I’m deeply disturbed and dismayed by what happened in Parliament this morning,” I said, putting on my deep, grammatically correct professional voice. “Of course, I stand by the fact that Parliament is an independent entity, as it should be, but I really thought that we were ready and willing to change for the better here in Termina. It is deeply troubling to discover that apparently, we’re not.”

  “But what about the concerns Member Gersen raised about the city’s economy?” another reporter asked, shoving yet another microphone in my face. Cameras flashed, and dozens more microphones stuffed themselves in f
ront of me. I couldn’t even see the street or the sky past the throng of people blocking my exit from the TelCorp building.

  “I believe I’ve addressed those concerns many times in the past already,” I said calmly, blinking a few times from all the camera flashes. “Still, I’m happy to address them again. We here at TelCorp have been investing considerably in the city’s infrastructure, especially on the south side. This has brought in a steady and hefty stream of new revenue that we hadn’t had before. Additionally, the binding industry is actually up in growth according to our internal estimations. More people understand how helpful and fulfilling consensual bindings can be in their lives, and they’re jumping at the opportunity to partake in them. These are entire demographics that were previously untapped in the binding industry, at least in this era.”

  “What about the other binding corps?” a third reporter asked, pushing his way to the front of the horde. “Member Gersen said that their business is suffering considerably.”

  “Only because they refuse to move into the future.” An edge crept into my voice now. “They’re stuck in their old ways and don’t want to put in the work to make their money the ethical way. If they even tried to invest in these other markets, they’d see dividends almost immediately, I can guarantee it. But they don’t want to do that. They don’t care about people, just profit.”

  A ton of the reporters talked at once then, swarming me and trying to ask me more questions. Well, that was it. I was done playing.

  “Hey, hey!” I screamed, holding up my hands. “Let me through, or I’ll force my way out, goddammit!”

  They all parted at that, probably knowing full well exactly what I was capable of with my binder training.

  “Thank you,” I said with a huff, straightening my jacket and making my way through the part in the crowd.

  Everyone kept yelling questions at me as I walked, but they didn’t obstruct my path forward anymore. Though there were tons of them, I put on a brisk pace, and the mob of reporters fumbled over each other to fail to keep up. As soon as I broke away from the crowd, I ran into a dark alleyway, just one of many in Termina. I didn’t want these people following me all the way to my apartment. Any anonymity I had left would be completely blown then.

  Privacy regained, I scaled the side of the building next to me, then utilized my well-practiced free running skills to my apartment to avoid detection. It didn’t take long since my building was nearby, but it was still a relief to get back up on Termina’s rooftops. The feel of the air rushing through my hair and clothes as I jumped from building to building, and the thrill I felt in the pit of my stomach as I fell, was priceless.

  It was the best stress reliever in the world.

  But the relief was short-lived when an especially pushy reporter made his way literally up onto a rooftop near my own apartment building, probably having seen me on the holonet and figured out where I was going and what I was doing based on my past behavior. Most weren’t so brazen or dedicated. But there was always that one, I supposed.

  He pulled up a camera and tried to snap my picture, popping out of the entryway from the top floor of the building and up onto the roof.

  “Any comment on…?” he started to ask, but he started me so much, and I was already so on edge, that I instinctively ran at him and defended myself, flipping him over onto the ground and knocking his camera out of his hands and across the concrete roof.

  I didn’t even realize who he was at first, other than some random guy who jumped in front of me and obstructed my path, so I went in for the punch. And he fought back, I’ll give him that. I didn’t expect so much from a guy like him, but he wrestled with me across the flat roofing, rolling around with me until we both edged up against the side of the building, which was mercifully tall.

  He managed to land a punch across my cheek, push me up against the railing, and try to make a run for it, but I recovered quickly, scrambling up and after him.

  “Oh no, you fucking don’t,” I said, having realized by then who he was and what he was doing. I ran after him and tackled him down onto the ground, but this time I was prepared and kept him down, leaning on him with both of my knees.

  “I… I’m sorry, Mr. Joch,” the guy stammered. “I didn’t realize….”

  “Oh, don’t give me that shit,” I spat. “You didn’t realize what, exactly? That you were bothering me? What did you expect? You’re just mad you got caught, though I’m not sure what you expected with that either.”

  “I… I’m sorry,” he tried to say again, but I didn’t have it. I grabbed hold of the front of his jacket and rose him up and slung him over my shoulder as I walked over to the entrance that he came up out of. There was a small flight of stairs there leading to an attic.

  I just tossed him down. He’d get pretty beat up, but he deserved it. And he’d survived.

  “Tell your friends to leave me the fuck alone,” I called back over my shoulder over his painful groans. “And everyone else, while you’re at it.”

  My own building had awnings on each floor that I could climb up or down. From the building next to it, I launched myself over to the nearest awning and then swung on it to gain momentum and jump up to the next, and then the next, and then the next. I’d learned these skills in binder training and through my own extracurricular activities. Binders had to go through rigorous physical training just in case something went wrong with a binding, and a client went nuts from a botched manipulation of their soul. At the end of the day, that didn’t happen all that often, but the skills I learned for those emergencies were still pretty cool to have. They definitely came in handy when I was hiding the foxgirls and planning my takeover of TelCorp.

  Once I got to my own floor, taken up by my whole apartment since it was so huge, I banged the palm of my hand on the window as I hung from the windowsill. Soon, Cindra was there, pulling it open and helping me through.

  “Thanks,” I said when I was safely inside, and the window and its shade were back down. I straightened my shirt and jacket, ruffled with all the commotion and climbing.

  The foxgirls were standing clustered near the dining room table by the kitchen. My apartment was vast and sleek, with granite countertops and dark black leather furniture. The lighting was low, just how I’d always liked it, a lot like Termina itself. The carpet was a dark gray color, and the walls were black to match the furniture, which helped with the lighting, too.

  “We saw you on the news,” Cindra said, her brows furrowed together in worry. “Did you have to climb to get away from those reporters?”

  “Pretty much.” I ran a hand through my hair to straighten it, too. “I didn’t want them to figure out where I live if I can help it.”

  “We saw everything on the Parliament holo feed,” Kira said, wringing her hands in worry. “What’s going to happen to us? To everything we’ve worked for?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you, specifically,” I assured them, looking each one in the eye in turn. “I promise. No one can take you guys away. You’re already bound to me, after all. But I’m not gonna lie. This is really, really bad, and I have no idea how it happened.”

  “Did you talk to any of the members?” Kinley asked pointedly. “We put them all there, how could they just turn around and pull this shit on us?”

  “I talked to the Prime Minister, the guy who introduced the first motion, and the guy who introduced the second one, the shitty one,” I said, tallying them off on my fingers as I spoke. “None of them squealed, but it was pretty clear to me that there was something fishy going on with the whole thing.”

  Right then, there was a loud, rapid knock on my door, and Kira nearly jumped out of her skin. I crossed over to the door and looked up at the security camera before swinging it open.

  “I was up here meeting with another client,” Malthe explained as he waltzed right in, not even bothering to wait for me to invite him inside. “I came right over when I saw your message. Saw the whole thing live. I can’t fucking believe it, wha
t the fuck happened this morning?”

  “We were just discussing that,” Kinley said curtly as she pursed her lips. I could feel her anger and confusion through our bond. I could feel Cindra’s and Kira’s, too. Hell, I could even feel Malthe’s, and I wasn’t even bound to him.

  “The short story is we have no idea what the fuck happened,” I said bluntly. “None at all. I talked to some of the Parliament members, and all of them gave me a version of the same story.”

  “Which was?” Cindra pressed. “None of them are really talking, just dancing around the subject.” She gestured at the holovision, where the Prime Minister was stiffly going on about how the new Parliament didn’t want to comment on the inner workings of its proceedings.

  “Bullshit, you don’t,” Kinley spat at the screen.

  I sank down into one of the dining room chairs. “Yeah, I know, I feel you, but I don’t know what to say. The whole thing’s been crazy. What they said was some version of something new coming together last minute this morning before there was any time to call me or get the word out or anything. Then they went on and on about how they changed their minds.”

  “So they admitted they had this all planned beforehand?” Cindra was still gesturing wildly at the holovision. “Absolutely crazy. They’re nuts, the whole lot of ‘em.”

  “And to say that there wasn’t any time to tell you…” Kira’s voice trailed off as she mulled this over. “That just doesn’t make any sense. Couldn’t the Prime Minister have just delayed the proceedings?”

  “That’s exactly what I asked,” I explained, “but they just kept dancing around the issue like they are now.” Oris replaced the Prime Minister on the screen and began spouting off the same talking points.

  “Well, at least they talked to you about it, I guess,” Kira said. “That’s more than they’re doing with the reporters. They’re not even really saying anything at all that I can tell.”

  “Exactly,” I agreed, shaking my head. “Something more coordinated is going on here, I just know it. They can’t possibly have just left it all for the last minute, and they damn well looked like they knew what they were doing while it was going on.”