Built to Serve: A Catgirl Harem Adventure (Build-A-Catgirl Book 3)

by Simon Archer

  “It feels nice to be able to control whether people eat or don’t eat, don’t you agree, Bev?” Ellie joked

  “Why, yes, ma’am,” Bev replied, just as hoity-toity. “It is amazing that the simple knowledge of internal meat temperature grants me such powerful over other mere beings who don’t know those things!”

  Kennedi had started laughing when Ellie spoke, but once Bev started in with her fake snotty accent, Kennedi just lost it.

  “Bev as a… a…” Kennedi tried to get out. She was laughing too hard for any of us to understand what she was trying to say. Her difficulty made the rest of us laugh even harder. It was a good two minutes before she was able to complete her sentence.

  “Bev as an elitist is the funniest thing that I have ever pictured in my mind!” Kennedi finally said. “Can you imagine?”

  Bev started shaking her head furiously. “No way! I’m good right here with you fine people!”

  “Ah, yes, but are these fine people needing to cook their food before we eat or not?” Clint joked.

  “No, no,” Ellie answered with a chuckle. “It is already cooked.”

  “Why isn’t there any steam? And why doesn’t the plate feel hot?” Leah observed.

  “The meat is cooled. It locks the bacon flavor in,” Ellie answered her.

  “Ah, okay,” Leah responded, nodding her head in agreement. She picked up one of her pork bites and sampled it. The rest of us did the same. The only one who did not try it was Ellie herself. She waited until everybody had taken a bite before picking one up herself.

  “This is heaven on a toothpick!” Clint nearly shouted out after his first bite. “Delicious is not a strong enough word for how fantastic this tastes!”

  He was absolutely correct. The bacon was crisp but flexible enough so that it did not crumble when I bit through it. The bell pepper was layered between the bacon and pork and infused the pork with its flavor. The tenderloin was citrusy and melt-in-your-mouth tender. The combination of the smoke from the bacon, the bite from the peppers, and the jazz from the lemon danced the perfect ballet over my tongue.

  “Mmmhmm,” I agreed with Clint through a mouth full of food.

  As with the turkey wraps, we fell silent while we ate. By the time we had all finished, I had downed four pork bites and two cobs of corn. I set my plate on the table stand next to my lounger and relaxed back. Kennedi stood up and started collecting empty plates to take back into the kitchen, and Reina popped up to help her. The two of them had the firepit cleared in a matter of minutes. When they were back and seated again, Kennedi reached over and put her hand on my knee.

  “Reina told me that she might be training under Macy,” she said. “I think that is a lovely idea.” It was her way of nudging me to ask Reina about her tail twitch. I patted her hand to acknowledge that I got her drift. I had no plans to speak with Reina in such a large group setting, however.

  “I’m jealous of Macy!” Krysta piped up. “What if I wanted Reina to work with me?” She pretended to pout.

  “Ha! Too late! She’s mine!” Macy joked back, winking at Reina. Reina smiled and acted like she was trying to disappear into the back of her lounger to avoid the faux argument.

  “Ladies, ladies!” Reina chimed in. “Don’t forget that I do have the capacity to learn what both of you do!”

  “Yeah, but you like me better!” Macy responded, sticking her tongue out at Krysta.

  “No, she doesn’t!” Krysta retorted. The three of them fell into a giggling fit.

  Leah leaned to the side and patted Reina’s leg. “Don’t listen to the two of them! You’ll be able to decide what you want to do, and with whom, just as soon as we get through the meeting we have scheduled with Floyd Monarch so we can tell him to shove his lawsuit so far up his--”

  Reina looked at Leah as she spoke and abruptly froze.

  I had seen that type of cat girl freeze before. It had happened to Ellie when Omnicorp was trying to breach her firewall. I started to get up out of my chair. Before I could stand completely, Reina’s tail started to twitch repeatedly. Then her legs started to twitch as well. By the time the twitching made it to her arms, the rest of her body was in full-blown convulsions. She fell back in her lounger as she seized.

  Ellie got to her before I did and caught her just before she rolled off her chair. She held her with barely enough pressure to make sure that she stayed on her lounger. As she did so, Leah and Charlie jumped up and started pushing nearby furniture out of the way. I moved to stand on the side of Reina opposite Ellie, reached to the back of the chair, and undid the latch to lay the chair down flat. By then, everybody was on their feet but stood back so as not to crowd Ellie and me. Kennedi ran back into the house as I looked across at Ellie.

  “Will it stop?” I was fully educated about seizures in humans, but cat girl systems were most certainly not the same.

  “It should,” Ellie replied. “Just pray that the damage is minimal by the time it does.” It seemed like forever before Reina’s body started flailing more slowly. By the time her seizure had passed, seven minutes had gone by. Ellie reached across Reina’s now-limp body towards me. Kennedi leaned in over my shoulder and handed her a cable.

  “Sit her back up,” Kennedi told me calmly. They were going to connect to her. Rosie came around to the back of the lounger and held Reina’s body up while I moved the chair into a straight-backed sitting position. She then settled her back into the chair, taking care to set her up straight. Kennedi started pushing another lounger together with Reina’s.

  I stood up and got out of her way. I rounded the chairs and kneeled at the other side while Ellie sat down in the empty chair. Kennedi and Krysta stood behind Reina and Ellie. Rosie moved to the side to give them more room. Although it seemed like I was watching it in slow motion, in actuality, it only took Kennedi and Krysta a matter of seconds to slice open the skin at the base of Reina and Ellie’s necks to expose the connection ports.

  After the incisions were made, Ellie lifted the cable up over her head and handed it to Kennedi. Kennedi connected the cable to Ellie and then handed the other into Krysta, who repeated the process with Reina. The cable would establish a way for Ellie to travel into Reina’s systems and try to figure out what was going wrong. Before Ellie powered down her external functions so that she could carry power with her into Reina’s network, she glanced around the firepit.

  “Get one of the spare boards from the woodpile and set it up directly in front of me. I’m going to project what I see. It will save us time instead of me having to try to explain it when I get back. You will see what I see inside her systems and files,” Ellie instructed.

  With that, Clint and Theo darted over to the woodpile and returned with a large piece of plywood. Bev disappeared into the house and returned with a white flat sheet. As Charlie and Leah pushed two chairs together sideways, Theo set the board into the slot between them to hold it upright. Bev draped the sheet over the board to create a projector screen.

  Then everybody congregated behind Kennedi and Krysta, tense with anticipation and concern.

  20

  The group of us stood silent as Ellie retreated into herself and used the attached cable to travel into Reina’s system. It was a full minute before Ellie started projecting what she saw from her eyes onto the makeshift screen. At first, it came out as lines of code, then slowly morphed into visuals. The images were flashing so quickly in the beginning that none of the humans in the group could make them out. Once they began to slow, none of us could believe what we saw.

  The next ten minutes revealed an entirely different cat girl then the Reina we knew. The screen showed us that Reina was, in fact, Leila. Sound was coming from Ellie’s mouth, almost like a speaker. Leila had tried, alongside Trevor, to sabotage us. At first, we were confused as to why Reina would have so much information about Leila, being that they did not look the same. We saw images of Leila kidnapping Krysta, torturing her, and dumping her in the alley where Rosie had found her. We saw ourselves
, through her eyes, on stage at the event where we beat Trevor at his own game. Then we got the answer as to why they look so different.

  One scene showed Leila meeting with Floyd Monarch and telling him how to bring us down now that Trevor had failed. It went on to show us that Floyd tricked Leila and reprogrammed her when he put her into the body we knew as Reina. Floyd planned to retrieve her and download all of the information she had collected about the group of us and have that as a back-up plan to his lawsuit. Leila had no idea what he was doing to her.

  This screen blurred for a moment, and then a new set of images showed up. This time we saw Leila when she first came online after being built by Trevor. He had selected her special skill to be social-emotional analysis and manipulation. While the skill was designed to create a sensitive, caring, understanding cat girl, Trevor had used her ability against her. He treated her horribly but manipulated her into feeling that, if she was evil herself like he was, she would no longer get hurt.

  In the process, Leila learned to lie. She had become a very talented actress, in fact, and she and Trevor had accomplished many evil acts on behalf of Omnicorp, using her talent. As it turned out, Leila had gone to see Floyd because the group of us had stripped her of her human, and she wanted revenge. When the images on the screen stopped, there was not a single one of us that didn’t have our jaw to the floor.

  Ellie came out of her powered-down phase shortly after the images stopped. Kennedi disconnected her from Reina. She stood up, faced the rest of us, and put her hands up to signal us to stop even though we weren’t doing anything.

  “I know what you just saw. That is not the entire story, though,” she told us. “When Floyd ‘reprogrammed’ her, he messed it up big-time. He should have done a clean sweep of her systems, a full system format, but instead, he wrote over existing programs. That left significant portions of the original code and memories still lying below the surface. In addition, as he was trying to program her to act nice and sweet with us, he inadvertently undid the negative emotional redirect that Trevor had caused.”

  “So part of her is in there? What do you mean?” Bev asked.

  “In a sense, yes. Basically, Floyd undid Trevor’s damage, and because he never actually deleted any of her original programs, they started… well, fighting, for lack of a better word, with the ones he had installed. That is why her tail started twitching after the first time she heard us talking about Floyd. This seizure happened right after Leah said his name again.”

  “Does that mean she is good, bad, or just a mixed-up mess?” I asked Ellie to clarify.

  “She is good,” Ellie confirmed with a firm nod. “She is being used without her knowledge to collect information about us. Floyd planned on retrieving her at some point. What he did not know was that she started recording information the second he downloaded her into a new body. That information included his plan to disassemble her as soon as he got what he wanted. It also included all of the communications Leila had access to between the Board of Directors of Omnicorp and Floyd.”

  “That would mean we had more than enough evidence to shut down Omnicorp for good,” I muttered, almost to myself.

  “That is exactly what that means!” Ellie confirmed.

  “What about Reina?” Clint demanded. In all of the craziness, none of us had really remembered his attachment to her.

  “When she wakes up, she will know everything. I redirected some pathways and tweaked some programming so that she will have full access to everything that has happened to her since the day she first activated. It will be her choice what to do with that information after that,” Ellie explained to Clint gently. “The CG you know is in there, but she’s got baggage like you would never believe!”

  “I don’t care about people’s pasts,” Clint told her. “I know she has a good heart.” He knelt beside Reina and took hold of one of her hands. He stayed there until she started to stir. When her eyes finally opened, Clint was the first person she saw. She immediately hugged him, then looked up to all of us.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I don’t want to hurt any of you in any way. I will understand, however, if you no longer trust to have me around,” were the first words out of Reina’s mouth. I squatted down in front of her and took hold of her other hand.

  “Reina, if any of us here we’re judged solely by our past, none of us would be here at all,” I echoed Clint’s sentiment. “If you want to stay, you will stay.” I saw tears well up in her eyes. I had never seen a cat girl cry. All the ones I knew were too in control of their emotions for that.

  “I want to stay,” she started. “And I want Floyd Monarch and Omnicorp to go away,” was all she said before Clint hugged her again. I stood up and looked at Leah and Charlie.

  “Get Brody on the phone. Our little meeting with Floyd needs to happen now!” I told them.

  “I already sent a text to his secretary. He should be calling us back momentarily,” Leah informed me. I started the clock in my mind, counting down the minutes until Omnicorp would be out of our lives forever.

  21

  It only took Brody Woodin forty-eight hours to get us in a room with Floyd Monarch and his partners. The meeting took place at the offices of Monarch, Heller, and Glenn. Charlie, Leah, Kennedi, Brody, and I were already seated in a conference room when Floyd walked in, followed by Mrs. Heller and Mr. Glenn.

  Floyd pushed a button on a console sitting in the middle of the table just before he sat down. A large projector screen descended from the ceiling at the end of the room. When it was in place, he pushed another button, and a video feed popped up. The Omnicorp board of directors had been conferenced in.

  “What is the hurry to meet,” Floyd asked Brody, without even acknowledging the rest of us were there.

  “We would like to give Mrs. Heller and Mr. Glenn the opportunity to disassociate themselves from you before you lose your license to practice law,” Brody replied coldly.

  “What the hell are you babbling on about?” Floyd shot back. Brody turned to Floyd’s partners and addressed them directly, purposely ignoring Floyd.

  “Mrs. Heller, Mr. Glenn,” he began. “You are most likely unaware of the illegal and criminal actions of your partner here, Mr. Monarch.” Mrs. Heller leaned forward and put her arms on the table to get a better look at Brody.

  “I have seen the documents for this lawsuit. Everything is in order, Mr. Woodin,” she responded.

  “You are correct. The lawsuit is in order. Even though it won’t hold up, we will get into that at the moment, but that is not the illegal action I’m referring to,” Brody told her. “Are you aware of how this case ended up in Floyd’s hands?”

  “Floyd has had a long-standing relationship with Omnicorp. It was no surprise that they would utilize his legal expertise,” she said.

  “Then you don’t know. Not really. Let me paint a little picture for you. Someone associated with Omnicorp, a cat girl to be specific, brings the lawsuit idea to Floyd. This person and Floyd both want to rid the company of its competition, my clients. Floyd then proceeds to perform unauthorized reprogramming on her after convincing her to change shells so that she can spy on my clients.” He raised a knowing finger. “His programming would require her to unknowingly and illegally collect information about my clients. His intent after he retrieved the information from her was to disassemble her so that he would not have to share the credit in bringing my clients’ businesses to a close.”

  Brody stared Mrs. Heller dead in the eye. “Now, sadly enough, out of all of that, the intent to collect information is the only illegal activity. The rest is just horrendously inhumane.”

  Mrs. Heller and Mr. Glenn looked to Floyd for a rebuttal.

  “Mr. Woodin is quite the storyteller, now isn’t he,” Floyd told his partners. “You haven’t seen all of the evidence, I wouldn’t need any additional information, even if I was willing to break the law, which I am not.” I saw Kennedi start squirming in her seat. She knew he was lying through his teeth. I
put my hand on her arm briefly to settle her down. Mrs. Heller turned back to Brody.

  “What proof do you have of these allegations?” she demanded.

  Brody stood up and walked to the conference room door. He opened it, stepped aside, and Reina walked in. Floyd’s eyes practically bugged out of his skull as she entered. Brody led Reina to a seat next to Kennedi.

  “This is Reina,” Brody started as he reached to the console on the table and pressed a button. A second projector screen dropped it down from the ceiling on the opposite side of the room from the first one. “Reina is the CG I alleged Floyd used for his activities. When he reprogrammed her, he did not do it correctly, and she basically short-circuited. What that means for Floyd is that each and every piece of information, all communications and actions, were recorded by her, and we have access to all of it.”

  Floyd’s partners started looking seriously concerned. Floyd started furiously shaking a finger at Reina.

  “I have never seen this cat girl before,” he all but yelled. “Like you said, I don’t need any additional information for this case,” he told Mrs. Heller.

  “Not for this case,” Brody agreed with him. “But, on the off chance that the case failed or that it was successful, you decided you wanted the power to completely shut down VGS and UsForThem in the future. An extra guarantee that you would not lose out on the $700,000 bonus Omnicorp offered you to get the job done, if you will.”

  While I expected Floyd to be the one squirming the most at that point, it was the Board of Directors on the projector screen who started to look squirrely.

  “What $700,000 bonus is he talking about, Floyd?” Mrs. Heller demanded of him. Floyd rapidly booked from the partners to the Board of Directors and back.