Feral Empires: First Spark

by Stephen L. Hadley

  “Don’t brag about that,” he said. “You treat her with respect, you hear?”

  For a moment, Liam felt like arguing. Why should Scott care if he respected a girl who’d almost killed him? Swallowing his retort, Liam simply nodded. Apparently satisfied, Scott settled back and folded his hands over his chest. Within seconds, he appeared to fall back asleep.

  Liam slipped out of the hut, surprised by the fact his brow still ached. Had he overexerted himself or was the pain simply so insignificant that his body hadn’t bothered trying to heal it? Regardless, it had vanished entirely by the time he reached the creek again.

  There was no sign of Jenn. Frowning, he glanced around, half-expecting to find her hidden in a tree, waiting to ambush him. Not that he expected her to attack him, it just seemed like the sort of thing she might find funny. Only he didn’t spot her there, either. Had she gotten tired of waiting then?

  “Took you long enough,” called a voice from the reeds. The exact same spot, he realized, that he’d hidden in earlier.

  Liam craned his neck, trying unsuccessfully to spot her. The plants grew thick enough that he couldn’t catch even the faintest glimpse of skin or hair. Amused by her coyness and gratified by his own choice of hiding spot, he made to join her.

  “Wait,” Jenn said. “Take off your clothes.”

  In an instant, complete and utter panic gripped him. Liam backpedaled amid the trees, one hand drawing his knife while the other grabbed at his chest. His heart pounded furiously beneath his fingers. At the same time, his mind was practically screaming at him.

  Run. Run. Get away. Run. They’ll hurt you. They’ll hurt you. They’ll hurt you, again.

  “Liam?” Jenn said.

  He was dimly aware of her head poking out from the reeds. Then the next thing he knew, she was crouching beside him. He was curled into a tight ball, arms wrapped tightly around his knees as he sucked in breaths between them. Visions and memories drifted through his mind, as vivid and real to him as the sight of the creek in front of him. More real, in fact, and the sensation of needles and blades against his skin made the warm pressure of Jenn’s arms around him feel almost insubstantial.

  He saw faces, gaunt things in surgical masks. Heard a woman’s voice barking orders. Felt countless hands restraining him. They’d haunted his daily nightmares for the past month. Even now, knowing that it was all in his head, his heart felt like it would burst from the terror of it.

  It was difficult to judge how long he remained there. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, but it felt like hours before he was able to stretch out his legs. Jenn remained beside him, arms cradling him gently from the side.

  She was still naked, Liam realized suddenly. His cheek rested against her breasts, the warmth of her skin becoming almost painfully hot with that revelation.

  “I’m okay,” he muttered. “Sorry. I’m okay now.”

  He closed his eyes to avoid staring at her nakedness. It felt wrong somehow, almost a violation, to use the intimacy of that moment to satisfy his insatiable curiosity.

  “No,” Jenn murmured. Her lips brushed his ear as she spoke, raising the hair on the back of his neck. “No, Liam. I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t mean to… to make you remember.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “They’re just memories.”

  She squeezed him tighter and Liam shifted awkwardly as he felt her breasts squish against his shoulder. They stayed like that for a time, until his heartbeat slowed.

  “They used me to grow food at the Institute,” Jenn said softly. Releasing him, she sat beside him and rested her head against his shoulder. “It started small, with just one or two plants. By the time I escaped, I could bring an entire room of seeds to harvest within a day or two. I guess it’s something you get better at with practice.”

  Liam said nothing, but all his attention was on Jenn’s words. He’d known there were other subjects, but if he’d met any of them it had been when he was young. Those recollections were vague, shadowy impressions closer to half-remembered dreams than true memories.

  “It wasn’t a great life, but at least I had plenty to eat. And the… the Occs used to praise me when I was done. It made me so happy. One time, this woman even gave me a doll and let me play with a few of the others. There was this one girl, Nora, I think her name was. She used her enhancement and set off all the fire alarms. The Occs were so mad at her. Made me laugh so hard I almost peed myself.”

  Jenn let out a shaky breath and it was only then that Liam realized she was trembling. Acting on pure instinct, he reached down and took her hand in his. The woman glanced up at him and gave a sad smile before returning her head to his shoulder.

  “Then, something changed. I don’t know why. Everyone started getting angry. At everyone. They yelled all the time. Hit me when I didn’t make the plants grow fast enough. Or, sometimes just because they could. Eventually, one of them snapped and told me I was going to be made into a Hunter, just like all the others.”

  She snorted.

  “I don’t think he was supposed to tell me that,” she said. “Or, he shouldn’t have, at least. I broke out that night.”

  She fell silent and Liam was suddenly aware of the silence between them. He knew he ought to say something. But, for the life of him, he didn’t know what it could be. How were normal people supposed to respond to hearing something like that?

  “We need to destroy it,” he said, finally. The notion was so absurd it was laughable, but something about it just felt right. “We’ll burn the Institute to the ground.”

  The next thing he knew, Jenn was kissing him. The contact was so unexpected that he nearly fell back. But, the longer he felt the warmth of her lips on his, the more he understood. Just like his pledge to punish those who had hurt them, something about kissing her just… worked.

  That didn’t make it any less surprising when the woman climbed into his lap. Straddling him, she guided him back to the dirt. Her eyes were closed and her hands gently cupped the sides of his face, but there was an intensity about the way she did it. An intensity that proved infectious. Liam mirrored her and savored the moment as long as he could.

  When at last the kiss ended and he opened his eyes, Jenn was smirking down at him.

  “Burn the Institute to the ground?” she echoed, a bit of teasing in her tone. “You sure know the way to a woman’s heart.”

  She kissed him again, passionately, until Liam was nearly out of breath.

  “Is that what you wanted to teach me?” he asked. At Jenn’s confused expression, he gestured vaguely at his lips.

  She burst out laughing, doubling over from the force of it. Once again, it was full of the same gentle mocking that he couldn’t quite bring himself to resent. Instead of recovering, however, she continued to laugh and laugh until she was wiping tears from her eyes.

  Liam didn’t mind; her fit gave him a chance to watch the appealing bounce of her chest.

  At last, when her laughter had dwindled to delighted giggles, Jenn leaned in and give him yet another kiss.

  “No,” she said, eyes twinkling. “We haven’t even started. I’m going to teach you everything I know.”

  ***

  Despite the intimate moment they’d just shared, there was still something deeply unnerving about disrobing in front of Jenn. Every time he’d been forced to do so at the Institute, without exception, there had been pain that followed. And even though he trusted her to be different, there was no escaping the fact that she had tried to kill him that very morning.

  Of course, for what it was worth, he had tried to kill her too.

  Still, Liam had to pause twice during the process to allow his rising panic a chance to subside. He didn’t understand the reason for it—he’d bathed several times while Scott kept guard, after all—but Jenn proved understanding. She even offered to turn around after the second instance.

  He had declined, of course. But the mere fact that she offered was rea
ssurance enough for him to strip down completely. Once he had, he’d carefully folded the garments and hung them over the lowest branch of a nearby tree. The clothes that he’d fled the Institute wearing had long since been torn up and used for washrags. He would probably have done so even if Scott’s spare clothing hadn’t fit him so well, but the gift had left him cautious, nevertheless.

  As he turned back around, however, he found Jenn studying him with a hungry expression. It vanished the moment he spotted it and raised a brow, replaced by a blush that colored more than just the girl’s cheeks.

  “Sorry,” she said, rather quickly. “I was just, um… bath?”

  Liam shrugged and moved to join her. Jenn didn’t wait. As she vanished into the reeds, Liam was struck once again by a sudden feeling of vulnerability. It was bizarre, all the more so for being involuntary, how he felt more exposed being naked alone, than with another person. Of course, he could explain part of that. Jenn’s presence and alluringly unfamiliar body were distracting enough that he didn’t notice how certain parts of his anatomy had a tendency to flop around as he walked.

  Snorting at himself, Liam made a mental note never to fight naked. It would be terribly inconvenient.

  The moment he stepped into the water, Jenn was there once more, among the reeds and cattails. Her arms found his, pulling him close against her and guiding his head down into another kiss. This one was different, somehow even more passionate than the one they’d shared after his suggestion that they destroy the Institute. Jenn’s breath came in gasps as she pressed herself to him and her tongue slipped out to trace the outline of his lips and down along his neck.

  The passion was far from one-sided, however. As the seconds passed, Liam found himself more and more engrossed. An unfamiliar hunger had welled up inside him and he sought out Jenn’s lips more and more. Everything about her was intoxicating, from the warmth of her body to the silky softness of her skin to the lingering floral aroma that seemed to permeate every inch of her. And the longer they continued, the more desperately he craved it. The muscles in his back and shoulders seemed incapable of relaxing and he had to resist the urge to use them as he held her.

  “Wait, wait!” Jenn exclaimed in a breathless laugh as their most recent kiss broke apart. She eyed Liam up and down, eyes alight and face flushed.

  Inhaling deeply, Jenn closed her eyes and reached out her arms. A single, visible tremor ran through them, lingering for a moment in her fingers. Then it vanished, or so it seemed. A second later, an identical tremor shook every reed that surrounded them. And, as if a sudden gust of wind had descended from above, the stalks nearest to them suddenly swayed and slumped outward in a circle, down to the waterline. There they remained, while those on the outside of the cluster remained untouched, creating a private nook that was simultaneously spacious and hidden.

  Liam glanced around at the spectacle, thoroughly impressed. It was one thing to see what Jenn was capable of in battle—and a painful thing at that—and quite another to see it in a context where it could be properly admired.

  All in all, he definitely preferred the latter.

  “That’s better,” Jenn said. “Go ahead and sit down.”

  Liam hesitated, then did as she requested. The water wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t exactly warm either and he shivered once, as it enveloped his lower half. This close to shore, the tops of his thighs poked out of the water even if he pressed his legs flat against the bottom of the creek.

  To his surprise, Jenn did not sit opposite him. In fact, she didn’t sit at all. Rather, she made her way behind him and dropped to her knees. Once there, she pressed herself against his back and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

  He didn’t move. It was partly because he didn’t have the faintest idea what he should be doing, and partly because he could feel the stiff tips of Jenn’s nipples squished against his back. Contrasted with the much softer skin around them, the sensation was… distracting.

  “I wasn’t born at the Institute, you know,” Jenn said, startling him from his reverie. “I had a home, parents, even friends. After I escaped, I tried to go back. To find them.”

  She exhaled a shaky breath, and even without seeing her face, Liam could tell how strained her expression must have been.

  “I didn’t find them. I don’t even know if I found the right town, to be honest. I only sort of remember the name, and it’s been at least ten years, so…. Anyway, the town was gone. The Occs burned it to the ground. Maybe it happened right after they took me. I don’t know.”

  Liam didn’t know what to say. He never seemed to know what to say around this girl. So rather than speak, he reached up and gently took hold of her hand. To his relief, Jenn’s fingers tightened around his so he guessed he’d made the right decision.

  “After that, I just sort of wandered back here. Even when I saw people, I couldn’t really talk to them. You never know who’s going to turn you in to the Occs, right? But I was so tired of being alone I couldn’t help myself. So, mostly I just followed them. Watching from trees and stuff. Turns out, you can learn a whole lot when people don’t know you’re listening.”

  Jenn’s fingers tightened against his and, as she rested her brow against the back of his head, he could feel her start to tremble faintly.

  “It seemed like everyone was only ever talking about one thing: The Occs. What they were doing, where they were going, and whether or not the war was going to start again. Then people started getting quiet. They stopped walking through the woods. I thought maybe the war had started and that was why. So I decided I would do what I could to get back at the Institute. I promised myself that if I ever got the opportunity, I would kill as many of them as I could.”

  Her trembling worsened.

  “Then I saw that man, um, Scott? I saw he had a gun and I just assumed he was one. I’m… sorry. I’m so sorry, Liam.”

  Liam shifted awkwardly, wishing he could turn around and see the girl’s face. He understood why she’d wanted to explain things this way, though. It made it so much easier to think clearly. And, in that sense, he was grateful for it too. He couldn’t blame Jenn for what she’d done—not really. If their circumstances had been reversed, he would probably have done the same thing too.

  Everything was just happening so quickly.

  Jenn’s fingers tightened around his and he was suddenly reminded that their circumstances had been reversed before. He’d knelt over her, knife at her throat, screaming that he would kill her for what she’d done. If Scott hadn’t stopped him… if he had passed out a few seconds sooner—

  Jenn twitched against his back, then again. It wasn’t until the sound of her muffled sobs reached Liam’s ears that he realized she was crying.

  “Please,” she whispered, sounding as if she was on the verge of choking. “I don’t want to be alone. Not again. I’m sorry for what I did. Just please don’t leave me behind.”

  Liam had heard enough. He twisted around, brushing aside Jenn’s weak protests, and scooped her up into a forceful embrace. The sound of her sobbing had triggered something in him, as powerful as the memories that had left him panicked on the riverbank a short time earlier. Only these were compelling where the others had been debilitating.

  Don’t leave me alone. Don’t leave me alone. Don’t leave. Please. Not now.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he assured her. “We’re not going to leave. You won’t be alone anymore.”

  It took a long time, several minutes at least, for Jenn to compose herself. Once she had, she drew back in obvious embarrassment and wiped her eyes with a laugh.

  “Pretty pathetic, huh?” she said, splashing her face with a handful of water from the stream. “I drag you out here to try and seduce you and wind up crying the whole time.”

  “Seduce me?”

  “Yeah. You know, like…” she trailed off. Shaking her shoulders, she gestured at her swaying breasts and adopted an exaggeratedly masculine persona. “You’ve got so
me great tits, Jenn. Why don’t you stick around?”

  “Tits?”

  She laughed. “Okay, now I know you’re just making fun of me. I mean, unless—” Her expression darkened with sudden worry and she cupped herself with her hands. “There’s nothing wrong with them, is there?”

  This time it was Liam’s turn to laugh. Seized by sudden boldness, he reached out and replaced one of Jenn’s hands with one of his own.

  “They’re fine,” he assured her, too distracted by the feel of it against his palm to consider his lackluster choice of words. “At least, I think so. I’ve never seen any before, so I assume.”

  “Wait, never? Oh, right, you just got—but, then. So, you’ve never…?” she fell silent and finished with a hand gesture Liam found indecipherable.

  “Never what?”

  “Done anything? You know….” Blushing, Jenn reached forward and reached into the water to grasp him. “With this?”

  Liam stiffened in more ways than one. The pressure of Jenn’s fingers around the base of his manhood sent electricity through him in ways he hadn’t even thought possible. The feeling only grew as she delivered a slow, purposeful stroke up and down the length of his shaft. Every muscle in his legs seemed to be flexing all at once and he sucked in a breath through his teeth before shaking his head.

  Jenn pulled her hand back, pressing it to her chest with an enraptured look.

  “It all makes sense!” she whispered, almost beside herself. “I thought you were just being funny. Or polite. But this is perfect!”

  Liam frowned. Despite the way his body continued to react, or perhaps because of it, he knew he was being kept in the dark on something important. And the frustration of that fact was beginning to grow.

  “Care to explain?” he asked, a bit of a growl creeping into his voice.

  Jenn didn’t even blink.

  “Okay,” she said, the same ravenous gleam entering her eyes. “I’ve seen people do this but I’ve never tried it personally. Just bear with me.”