“Yes, ma’am.”
It was amazing how much the promise of sex shattered the millions of thoughts racing through my skull.
That’s one of the things I like most about getting lucky; it’s an ultimate form of escapism requiring physical effort that’s rewarded with a nearly indescribable, but amazing, full-body sensation.
And sure, better writers than I had put in their due diligence to describe exactly what an orgasm feels like, but if someone who had never experienced an orgasm read about it, could they really understand what it felt like?
Could you say having an orgasm was like having the rug swept out from beneath you and falling into a galaxy of vibrating dandelions?
“Quiet, Writer Gideon,” Grace said as she thrust against me even harder. “And you aren’t tipping me.”
I glanced at the duffel bag that contained all the cash and then back to her. “Are you serious?”
She raised an eyebrow at me, and as she did, her facial features began to morph, settling on a hot Latina with braided hair. She bent forward, kissed me, and bit at my lip as she pulled away.
I cleared my throat. “If you want to get tipped, you’re going to have to get off my lap so I can get the cash.”
“Stay where you are.”
She stood and went to retrieve the cash for me, making sure I was thoroughly focused on her movement as she left the bedside. She returned with the duffle and dropped it at my feet. I quickly reached down and got a stack of hundreds.
Grace morphed back into her base form, her long blonde hair, blue eyes, soft skin, incredible body. “What do you want me to wear?”
“Is ‘nothing’ an answer?”
“You can’t tip me if I don’t wear anything.”
She stuck with the outfit she’d been wearing the entire time: a fishnet halter top and a thong. She turned, looked at me over her shoulder, and as she did, I put my first hundred in the side string of her thong.
“Is this a good fantasy?” she asked as she raised her hands and placed them behind her head.
“I, yeah, sure, it’s … unexpected.”
Her form rippled slightly, her back still facing me, which I took to mean that she’d changed her appearance, but hadn’t adjusted her body size very much.
“Your mind is too busy,” she said, looking over her shoulder again before turning to face me once more.
I silently toasted HBO as she climbed back into my lap, her knees at my sides. She thrust her hips forward, grinding against my hard-on.
“You like it?” she asked.
Daenerys Targaryen, or better, the actress who played her, bent forward to kiss me. She pressed away just as her form morphed into a sexy cosplay version of Mystique.
“This is who I’m like, correct?” she asked, her skin blue and covered with ridges, her orange hair slicked back.
“No, I mean, yeah. But different.” Rather than fumble on any more words, I slipped another hundred-dollar bill into her panties. As she changed back to her base form, she started unzipping my pants.
“Ooo, I know who I can be,” she said, and her features morphed into Natalie Johansson’s. “Can I?” she asked as she got to her knees.
“Please do.”
A couple things need to be addressed: No, I never thought my writing career would involve penning a passage about a blowjob. I also was unaware – and quickly became hyper-aware – of just how much porn I had consumed and how it affected Grace’s understanding of sex.
She’d only seen sex in movies before meeting me, and then she was able to tap into my mind and its deep vault of porn. By 2030, watching porn had become as American as apple pie, if apple pie was something consumed in secret – more so by men than women, but still by a good majority of the population.
You could blame a change in morality over the last thirty years, or you could blame the real culprit: the internet. Either way, it was a common thing in many people’s lives.
If someone wanted to watch porn before the internet, they had to go to an adult store, rent or purchase a video, and either use one of those sticky-ass private rooms to watch it, or take it home and figure out a time to watch it when their spouse, roommates, and/or kids weren’t around.
Of course, some people were more progressive and watched it with their significant other, but my point remains: it was a little bit more difficult to get it at that time.
Then, the internet.
And I was Generation Z, the post-internet generation.
Porn has been around me in some shape or form for my entire life, whether it be a classmate at school showing me something on his smartphone, the presidential pee tapes, subscription movie services increasingly pushing the boundaries, or the Two Girls One Cup reboot of 2025.
All this to say, Grace started by giving me a pretty sloppy, hardcore BJ, all thanks to the porn I’d seen.
And my reaction wasn’t what I would have expected or fantasized. My first reaction was to push her away. I had created a monster. She took that to mean I wanted her to go harder, which was not the case!
“You can’t …”
“I can’t what?” she asked, looking up at me. “I thought you wanted this.” Confusion swept across her face as she tuned into my thoughts.
“Do you see what I’m thinking here?”
She nodded.
“I guess I’m trying to say … you shouldn’t look in my mind and believe the things I’ve seen are normal. Because they’re not normal. Then again, maybe nothing is normal. Well, maybe they’re normal to some people, but no, don’t look in my mind for those types of things.”
“So no blow job?”
I nearly slapped myself. “Of course, blow job, but just take it easy. No reason to get … um … too hardcore.”
She wiped her mouth and shrugged. “You seem to have watched a lot of that.”
“It’s become a norm in pornography.”
“Why’s that?”
Oh shit. I went with the first explanation that came to my lips. “My guess is that the more men lose control over the world, the more they look to entertainment that shows them a side of masculinity they assumed they once had. It’s all a false representation though. Shit, I’m not trying to ruin the moment here.”
“You aren’t,” she told me. “Your wild mind is interesting. It has seen so much but experienced so little. It’s hard to separate the differences sometimes because I don’t quite understand the memory.”
“That’s why you shouldn’t be reading my mind. Look, Grace, just be yourself, and forget what you see in here.” I tapped my temple. “Because I am a product of my generation.”
Shut up, Gideon! You’re ruining the moment. A voice inside my head hissed. This was definitely my voice – well, that or the voice of my penis.
“Just, yeah … sorry. Take it easy. Don’t read my mind. I thought that was a rule.”
“Don’t read your mind, don’t turn into Veronique, don’t shift in public, don’t turn into your mom, and don’t give you sloppy hardcore blow jobs.” Grace laughed and climbed back onto my lap. She pressed the fabric covering her crotch aside so that my quickly hardening penis was now pressed against her wet mound. “Any more rules?”
I chuckled. “Let’s keep these rules to ourselves, how’s that? Especially that last one.”
“I like you, Writer Gideon,” Grace said as I slipped inside her.
“I like you too,” I told her. “A lot.”
Chapter Eleven: Veronique’s Stats
Get your head in the game, was my first thought when I awoke the next morning. There were a ton of things I needed to handle, and I had no idea how I would compartmentalize them.
So rather than relive the slightly awkward yet badass bit of lovemaking I’d been privy to the previous night, I decided to make a list of current issues that needed to be addressed.
I sat up in bed, grabbed the pen and paper on the nightstand, and started jotting things down.
1) Find out why my picture was on Grace’s dr
ive. To shorten this note I wrote: Picture Grace Drive.
I knew I didn’t have superpowers, even if I felt that way when Grace was next to me controlling someone, and I was simply giving commands. Regardless, there was more to this story, and I didn’t want it to become an unfinished plotline.
2) Decide if you will use the code Ken Kim gave you to supposedly upgrade Grace and Veronique’s abilities, written as: Upgrade, yes/no?
It could be an attempt to track us.
I wasn’t certain where I stood on the Ken Kim front. After all, Dorian did show up within hours of our first conversation. For all I knew, his interest in our situation was a ruse meant to get close to me. I decided to forego using the code for now.
3) Figure out what to do with Dorian, or as I wrote it: Dorian.
If we let her heal up, was there any possibility she would join us? Or would she be like Angel, dedicated to her role even if she’d eventually be decommissioned? Since her abilities allowed her to instantly move away from us if given the chance, freeing Dorian, even briefly, could be a terrible decision on our part.
4) Come up with a plan to handle the Austin situation became simply: Austin.
We would definitely need to meet David Butler in a public place. I was starting to second guess meeting him at all, but getting to the bottom of the Mother situation would help me better tell the story of the secret program that created Grace and Veronique. Which lead me to my next point:
5) Mother, aka: Mother
If she really was as powerful as Veronique claimed, then getting to her wouldn’t be easy. And this begged the question: What would we do after we got to her? What was our endgame?
Our endgame is stopping these experiments and uniting the subjects that care to be united, Grace said in my head.
Ah, so you’re up.
I am.
“I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a moment,” I said aloud. Grace still had the blanket up to her neck, and her eyes were closed, which made talking to her in this way even stranger. “What good will destroying the facilities do?”
It will prevent them from torturing people like me.
“I get that reasoning, but what happens if they just build more facilities?”
That’s why we have to go after Mother too and anyone who decides to work with her. Doing so will prevent them from creating more of us. You are over-analyzing this, Writer Gideon. We find, we destroy.
“You’re sounding more and more like Veronique.”
With her eyes still closed, Grace’s face began to morph into Veronique’s.
Maybe it is better to be a warrior than a thinker.
“Point taken.”
She reverted back in an instant, clearly toying with me.
Go get cleaned up. It’s time to write. Will you finish your next novella today?
“I don’t know. I’m inspired, but I still need to write at least ten thousand more words.”
Then do it and get inspired. Look at your sales. People are enjoying this book. You probably have more emails too. And the cover is also nice.
“Got it.” I slipped out of bed and went into the long bathroom connecting our two rooms to find Veronique sitting on the counter completely nude, her nipples erect and a devious look on her face. “Sorry,” I said as I started to turn back.
“I was waiting for you.” The door shut behind me and locked.
“This is not a great time …”
She got down and took two steps closer to me. “I need new clothes,” she said once she was about a foot away from me.
“Okay …”
“I don’t like the country clothes.”
“That’s fine; we can get you new clothes.”
“Why are you so nervous around me?” she asked, placing a hand on my chest.
“I think you know why.”
“When you’re ready.” With that, Veronique moved away, glanced at me one last time, and stepped out.
“Damn,” I muttered when I caught a glimpse of her ass as the door shut.
Veronique would be the death of me.
A quick shower, a visit to the breakfast buffet with Grace, and two cups of coffee later, I was ready to write. Books are all about pacing and keeping the reader reading. This is the exact opposite of what it would be like to describe writing.
So, I’m going to gloss over it a little.
Rather than tell you about how I got off to a late start because I couldn’t figure out how I wanted a certain passage, or how I confused what happened in chapter ten with what should have happened in chapter nine, or how it took me at least fifteen minutes to install updates on my new laptop, I’ll just report back that I was able to get about four thousand words written.
I had headphones on at that point, listening to a YouTube super intelligent brainwave frequency track for focus.
I’d hit a roadblock.
There was a section I needed to fill in regarding Veronique’s abilities, but since she hadn’t let me check her drive, I was still missing that section.
I could hear her and Grace in the other room, watching yet another home improvement show, and I figured she could spare a moment.
For the sake of literature?
That line might not work on her, but then again, it wasn’t very long ago that she was threatening to kill me if I didn’t write a book in two days.
So, I tried it.
“Hey, Veronique,” I said as I went into the other room.
I glanced from the two women on the bed to Dorian, who still sat in the chair with her eyes closed. It was a weird visual, and I tried not to look at her too much because it was like staring at a corpse.
“Can I help you?” she asked, without looking away from the TV.
“I know we’ve been putting it off, but I need to go through your stats and abilities again. It’s for the book. I should be finishing today, and I’d like this stuff to be in its own section. It’s important. It’s for the sake of literature.”
She shrugged. “Okay. Tell me what happens,” she said to Grace as she got up and joined me in the other room.
I had to laugh. “I’ve been asking you about doing this for days, and now you just say ‘okay’ and come in? We could have done this way earlier.”
“I don’t know how I feel about you plugging into me, but you said it was for the sake of literature, so we’ll see what happens.” She narrowed her eyes at me.
“I promise not to mess with anything, I just wanted to examine the grayed-out sections of your abilities menu.”
“Grayed out?” she asked as she lay down on the bed.
“Last I checked, portions of your abilities were grayed out and I couldn’t adjust them.”
She shrugged. “I don’t really want you adjusting them.”
“That’s fine, but I need to know what you’re capable of and I might be able to make you stronger by seeing them. I won’t change anything without your permission, how’s that?”
“Okay.”
The air conditioner clicked on and I glanced at it.
“Did it scare you?”
“No, just not used to always hearing that thing turn on and off by itself.”
Once I plugged in, I went straight to Veronique’s abilities.
“This will only take a minute,” I reminded her, “so relax.”
Interesting, I thought when I saw that the grayed-out options were now visible.
As it turned out, Veronique only had one overarching superpower, and to my surprise, her vampire-like ability was actually an extension of that power.
Main: Metal Absorption and Modification
Wielding Capacity: 5
Adaption Speed: 6
Alloy Integrity: 4
Blood Metal Conversion: 6
Blood Metal Conversion? I read the description again, impressed.
Veronique wasn’t draining a person’s life per se; she was absorbing any and all of the metals in their body, which eventually killed them because it increased the toxicity o
f these metals as they moved out of their bodies.
“And it’s also what you feed on,” I said, looking up at her. “You convert this metal into sustenance – or more specifically, your body does.”
“So now you know. Happy?”
“If you want me to play around with adjusting any of these abilities, let me know. For example, increasing your Alloy Integrity might make the structures you create stronger and better. Not that they aren’t already good. The thing is, your abilities are all around the mid-level, ranked from four to six. Wielding Capacity, Adaption Speed, Alloy Integrity, Blood Metal Conversion. They’re all mid-level.”
She thought about that for a moment, still staring up at the ceiling to avoid messing with the cord sticking out of her neck. “And Wielding Capacity would allow me to modify larger objects, right?”
“I believe so.”
“See what happens if you turn that one up.”
Turning the Wielding Capacity dial up increased Alloy Integrity, but doing so brought Adaptation Speed down.
I played around with the settings for a moment until I leveled them out somewhat. Now they looked like this:
Main: Metal Absorption and Modification
Wielding Capacity: 7
Adaption Speed: 5
Alloy Integrity: 5
Blood Metal Conversion: 6
“I think we’ve done enough for today,” Veronique said. She unplugged the cable herself and sat up.
“Yeah, no problem,” I said. “I mean, it’s up to you, but I hope we can do more later. I know you’re sensitive about your drive, but there’s a lot I’d love to play with.”
“I know you want to play with my drive,” she said, holding my gaze. “And maybe you’ll be able to soon.”
She got off the bed and left the room, leaving me to my laptop.
Chapter Twelve: A Day in the Life of a Fugitive
I reread the newest message from David Butler.
Where the hell are you? I thought you’d be in Austin by now. I have important details to show you and I’m waiting for you to get your ass here.
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