Terminal (Visceral Book 4)

by Adam Thielen

  Cho’s hand wandered to the table, finding the butter. She plunged her fingers into it, then moved back to his buttocks, where she crept around his cheeks, pressing her middle finger against his sphincter. He made a short surprised groan in response, then moaned as she eased it inside.

  “Not where I expected this would go,” he said, following with a deep moan. “Nice and slow, Brando.”

  She looked up at him, but her mouth was too full to reply, her mouth and her throat. Cho moved her mouth faster now, and he helped her along with a tight grip on her head. While distracted, she moved a second finger into him, then pushed them both further inside. His hips began to thrust forward, driving himself deep into her.

  Tsenka moved her fingers in and out, increasing in speed, and Diego cried out, holding her face against him while he came. His moans took on a rhythm while his hips made short, quick drives forward. He did not notice, or perhaps did not care that Cho was now pushing him away, but after he was sure he had expended his load down her throat, he came to his senses and let her go.

  Tsenka gasped and sniffed and wiped her mouth, then gazed up at him with a victorious smile. She stood and ushered him to the bed. “Now we can get started,” she said.

  After a few minutes of foreplay, including his own much less effective attempt at oral, he hardened again and Tsenka waited to see what position he would put her in. But to her surprise, he slid between her legs and lay flat on top of her, missionary style. His embrace was warm and he gently penetrated her. He kissed her as they made love and at first, Tsenka found herself annoyed. Her eyes moved to the ceiling, to his shoulder, to his hair, and then she looked into his eyes as he had been staring back at hers.

  His tenderness created a level of intimacy she had not felt since turning, and despite her penchant for rough and dirty, she found herself aroused. He snaked his arms behind her back and around her shoulders, and his movement went from smooth and soft, to jerky and strong. They came together this time, eyes still locked. She felt like it was more than sex to him, like she was more than just a conquest.

  They lay together long after, making out and cuddling, until falling asleep in each other’s arms. Tsenka woke a few hours later to see Diego in a deep slumber on the other side of the mattress. She snuck out of bed and took an unsupervised tour of the suite. Next to the bed, Gimon had a small bookshelf with old science fiction novels and history textbooks. Cho ran her finger along the spines then moved to the blank wall opposite the bed. She waved her hand in front of it, waking the smart screen. A two-dimensional login screen greeted her. She held her hand up and balled it into a fist. The wall turned blank again.

  The vampiress looked back at Diego, worried what he might think if he caught her snooping around. He had not moved. She threw on her clothes and waved his door open, watching him. A sound sleeper, she thought as she stepped outside. Cho sighed, having almost hoped he would wake and stop her from leaving.

  She strolled around the habitation pod, watching the other nocturnals talk and laugh. It was day, and so the commons seemed large and empty, and the air was still and quiet. Cho walked past the vendor section, with many of the shops closed or tended by limited AI systems. She passed the section of the pod where Matthias lived, and looked up at his door. She imagined him asleep and imagined herself sleeping next to him. She remembered what it was like to be with him, and the thought upset her. Cho picked up the pace heading up the stairs and hurried to her room, her sex-induced tranquility now broken.

  But even with walls of rock and stone separating her from the two men, her unease followed her into bed, and a wave of sadness crashed into her as she hid under the covers, feeling hollow and alone. Then she thought of Daria, the strange girl back in India, smitten, quirky, and excitable. She held the image of the girl in her mind, and it lifted the cloud just a little, allowing Tsenka to drift off.

  * * *

  Anne Courtemanche’s eyes moved from one face to the next, both the three sitting in the conference room with her and to those represented through suspended particle holograms, appearing as ghostly versions of themselves while Broadus and Ajay stood in the corners of the room behind her.

  “Is there any way this could be faked?” asked councilman Leo Khan, present in the room.

  “By the seer?” asked Anne. “No. By me, sure. Verify it yourselves when we get done, but assume for now that it’s legit.”

  “Very impressive work,” said a ghostly woman. “How soon can it launch?”

  “Hold on,” said a ghostly man. “Are we sure this is what we want?”

  A fleshy man spoke up. “It’s what we’ve been working toward for years.”

  “Actually,” replied the ghostly man, “this is not our goal, this is a means. But not every means is worth it.”

  “Don’t get soft on us, Trag,” said a councilwoman present in the room.

  “This may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said another councilman.

  “How soon, Ms. Courtemanche?” repeated the ghostly woman.

  “The engineers want three days to prepare,” said Anne. “Shall we put it to a vote?”

  Four of the six raised their arms in support.

  “Thursday then,” said Anne. “How does three p.m. sound?” The others nodded and murmured agreement. “Good, I will see you then.”

  The holograms dissipated and Courtemanche turned to Ajay. “I need you to lead the follow-up strike.”

  Pisha raised his eyebrows and looked to Broadus then back to Anne. “Me? Why?”

  “I trust you to get it done, that’s why,” she answered.

  He sighed. “Very well.”

  “Am I still going?” asked Broadus.

  “Cleanup will be easy,” said Courtemanche. “I need you here. Securing the launch is priority one.”

  “Understood.”

  Episode 16: City of Monsters

  “Think blue,” instructed Taq Jones, sitting on the cement floor in front of Daria Cretu. Abriham leaned against the wall and watched the training. “Harder.”

  “How tha feck do I think blue harder?” asked Cretu, her eyes closed.

  “More blue,” demanded Taq. “Your world is blue, everything you see is blue, you are blue. Up to your neck in blue.”

  “Blue, blue, blue,” she repeated.

  “It’s working,” he said. “Incredible. Now, remember the images I showed you, exactly as I showed you.”

  “Do I have to keep thinking blue at the same time?”

  “Just the spell,” said Taq.

  “Kay, trying.” Daria pushed her palms outward. She groaned and Taq watched sweat bead on her forehead.

  “You can do it, just keep trying.” He sat patiently without giving further instructions.

  A streak of purple light ran horizontally in front of her palms, slowly forming a blade.

  “Open your eyes.”

  Daria looked to see her first successful conjuration. “Holy sheet, dude.” She grasped one end of the blade and twirled it around, then brought it next to her face to stare. To her disappointment, it faded away moments later. “Ey, what the heck.”

  “You must hold the spell in your mind to keep it active,” explained Jones. “Not easy at first, but something all mages must learn.”

  “So, if I can change my aura, can I be every kind of mage?” she asked.

  “Possibly any kind of awakened,” said Taq. “As well as whatever the white aura is that seems to let you interface with electrical systems and siphon Ether from nearby auras.”

  “I’m a new kind of mage.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Electro-mage,” she said.

  “I don’t think we have to come up with a name,” said Taq. “Might not be a mage, really.”

  “Hack-mage.”

  “Would you like to try another exercise?”

  “I got it,” she said. “Tech mage.”

  “Well, alright,” said Jones. “But the label ‘mage’ is usually reserved for the schools like evocation an
d conjuration and the like. There are body mages, but now they are just warlocks. Psionic mages are just psions or seers.”

  “Then I’m a techno,” she decided.

  “Eh, it’s not bad, I guess.”

  “Slayer,” said Abriham, still watching.

  “What’s that?” asked Taq.

  “After she murdered a hobo she thought was a vampire—”

  “Muthafucka, he wuz one!”

  “—we started calling her vampire slayer, which she then took seriously.”

  Daria growled.

  “Techno was starting to grow on me,” said Taq.

  Cretu’s expression changed from annoyance to contemplation. “Ya know, slayer does have a nice ring to it. Scary, too. You don’t want to feck with a slayer.”

  “But they might want to dance with a techno,” countered Jones.

  “Slayer mage it is,” she said. “I’m a slayer mage.”

  “You can leave off—never mind,” said Taq. “Want to try shifting to something else, or maybe try another spell?”

  “I wanna be bulletproof,” she said. “Like one of them…” Daria trailed off, her eyes looking up to see Nina approaching. Her feet, lifted and lowered by prosthetic legs, clomped louder than usual. Behind her followed Sai.

  “Hold on, Neen. Just hold on,” called Sai. “Dammit, shouldn’t have told you anything.”

  “What’s up?” asked Abe.

  Nina walked up to Taq, who pivoted in place to face her. “They’re priming it,” she said. “That fucking rocket. Sai just told me.”

  “Which was a mistake,” the dwarf muttered.

  Jones stood. “As in, they are preparing to launch?” he asked. “How do you know?”

  “I have a source,” said Sai. “And a backdoor into a grid monitor to confirm power fluctuations consistent with the procedure.”

  “How long do we have?” asked Taq.

  “We aren’t doing anything,” said Sai. “Forget about it. It’s far too late to prepare now.”

  “How many people gotta die while you sit around?” challenged Cretu.

  Sai took turns looking at the others. “Five less than if we run out there an’ suicide.”

  “How long until they launch?” asked Taq again.

  “Just tell him what you know,” said Nina.

  “Source says the process will take at least ten hours, and be good for launch for twenty-four after that,” said Sai.

  “Could this be a practice run?” Abriham asked.

  Sai shook his head. “It’s too expensive and dangerous to prime as some part of a routine or test. It’s possible an engineer or something told them they needed to due to some sort of concern or emergency, but even that ain’t likely. We should assume they are launching.”

  “What are they targeting?” asked Jones.

  “Haven,” said Abe.

  Sai nodded. “You wouldn’t know this, but about ten years ago, the Prosperity party made vampires a big bogeyman. They pointed to a few bombings and murders that had been committed around the time. Course they had no evidence it was nocturnals, let alone a specific group, but they turned the old threat of Haven into a new marketing tool for their political platform, promising to rid the UTI of the threat of unchecked awakened.”

  “Haven doesn’t exist,” said Taq. “I spent years searching before Kate got sick. I would have found them.”

  “Ey, you don’t gotta convince me,” said Sai. “All they gotta do is drop that missile somewhere and they can claim mission accomplished. Probably drop it in some desert. Let them.”

  “Sai,” said Neen, stringing out his name. “You know that doesn’t make sense. They’ve spent a fortune developing antimatter containment just to build something designed to pierce deep into the earth. They know. Somehow they know where Haven is.”

  “Then good riddance,” argued Sai.

  “What if it’s not Haven, but another group of nocturnals hidden away somewhere?” proposed Taq.

  “Right, like feck terrorists,” said Cretu. “But you just said it wasn’t them that did the murders, so somebody is gonna die for something they didn’t do. And if it was just a few, why need such a stupid huge bomb?”

  “We don’t know,” asserted Sai. “We can speculate and theorize, but we don’t know.”

  “We need to stop this,” said Jones, folding his arms.

  “There’s no we,” said Sai. “You go, then it’s on your own.”

  “Feck that, I’m goin’,” said Daria. “This can’t be a coincidence. Desre didn’t bring us here to this moment to watch it pass.”

  Sai groaned and Nina sighed.

  “Whether you help or not, we are going to try,” said Taq.

  Abriham pushed off the wall and strutted toward the huddle. “I’m going, too.”

  “Come on, Abe,” said Nina. “This is crazy.”

  The hulking man put a hand on Nina’s shoulder. “I was okay with hiding and scavenging to survive. I still am. But I’ll take making a difference over that any day of the week.”

  Nina stared at the floor.

  “Just stop,” begged Sai. “All of you. We should pack up and head north. We can tell the media, Pakistan, the New Republic. Any attention cast on this will end it quicker than we could.”

  “No one will listen to us,” Nina said quietly.

  “Let’s come up with a plan,” said Taq. “We have a few hours to at least do that much.”

  “No, dammit, no!” yelled Sai, moving close and looking up at Taq. “Why don’t you piss off instead!”

  “Don’t be mean, Sai,” said Abriham. “If you’re packin’ up, then use your connections to give us a chance.”

  “I won’t be a party to this,” he said, walking backward.

  “If you can jam their coms to keep the heat off, you’d give us a chance to get in and out,” said Jones.

  “I’ve heard enough,” said Sai. “I’m shutting this down and leaving before you get us all killed.” He began to walk away then turned. “Come on, Neen.”

  But Nina did not come. She lifted her chin from her chest and turned to Sai. “If you won’t help them, then I will.”

  For a moment, Sai stared at her. “Come on, Neen. Please? Don’t do this to me.”

  “I thought I knew you,” she said. “But you don’t even want to try.” Her words were a knife through his heart, a betrayal of a friendship dynamic he had become accustomed to for years. “When Jack died, you said we’d get them back—”

  “And we will—”

  “But you didn’t mean it,” she continued. “We want different things.”

  The dwarf blinked several times in rapid succession then swallowed, his anger turning to fear. “You do know me. I want to fight as much as any of you, probably more.”

  No one replied to him while he stood waiting. He sighed. “If I knock out communications, will you leave with me?”

  “If that’s what you want... yeah,” said Neen.

  At that, Sai turned and started up the steps to his platform of terminals and screens. Halfway up, he yelled, “Well, come on, let’s sort this out.”

  * * *

  In her quarter-final bout, Tsenka faced off against the lean, fast vampire named Adrian that Gimon had warned her about. Adrian had been a finalist two years prior, and he kept up with Cho as she backpedaled around the ring, attempting to size him up without expending her own energy or taking risks. He landed a jab to her face, but it had little effect with her neural implant already numbing her pain receptors. He went to her body with a hook as she tried to circle away, but her synthetic skin stiffened, lessening the blow.

  After catching on to his rhythm, Tsenka began to counter with her own jabs, swelling his eyes and cutting open his mouth over a long fifteen-minute bout. He stayed just active enough to escape danger, and Cho cursed herself for letting it go to a decision. Though his face was properly tenderized, she feared he might have a home-field advantage with the judges. To her relief, all three scored it in her favor. Never
again, she vowed, shaking her opponent’s hand.

  Diego waited for her as she exited the cage. She looked around for Matthias, but he was nowhere to be found. Gimon held his hand out and she took it, not to help her out, but simply to hold it.

  “You’re in the semis!” he congratulated.

  They began to walk away from the cage while the crowd continued to cheer, some of them chanting her name, “Tsenka, Tsenka.”

  “There are two bouts tomorrow?” she asked.

  “That is correct,” he said. “Even if you lose, which you won’t, there will be a fight for third place, unless your opponent declines the challenge.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it,” he said. “Want to celebrate?”

  “Well, there is something I’d like to see,” she said.

  “Name it.”

  After some questioning by the security manager, the two passed through a narrow corridor into an open space, larger than the pods, rectangle shaped, and mostly empty. Sensing their presence, lights flipped on with a series of loud clicks. Tsenka looked around in awe, pulling away from Gimon’s hand to explore.

  “This is it?” she said, her voice echoing off the walls.

  “There used to be a lot more equipment,” replied Gimon. “The airship took up almost the entire hangar.”

  “How did you get it out?”

  “Technically, we didn’t,” he said. “But this room is fairly close to the surface because of the slope of the hills above. You’ll notice the chill. The ceiling slides away, with a lot of screeching. A lot of dirt and snow and ice came in, but not enough to prevent liftoff. Left quite a mess and a broken rail.”

  “What’s behind those doors?” she asked, pointing to sliding panels several meters tall.

  “A sort of escape hatch,” he said. “We have a large fleet of off-road vehicles that just sit around in a room like this one, connected to a long tunnel to the surface. Regulation says to check them once a year, but it happens more like every five.”