by David Burke
Her statement brought about an immediate clamoring from almost all the girls. Only Miguel and the girls with him were silent. The team members were all inundated with questions and finally Jay said, “Stop. Everybody just stop.”
Once he had all eyes on him, he asked Meikiyo, “You said you knew why she was trying to… uh… well you know.”
Before Meikiyo could answer, Mia said, “Why she wanted to screw you. Sometimes you are so cute. You are hot, brave, and kind. Every girl here wants to get with you. I thought you were coming to terms with the new reality here.”
Meikiyo jumped in then, “It was more than that. She wanted to do it to take control of Jay. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and her insistence on getting alone time with Jay. It finally dawned on me. Her powers manipulate emotions not thought. And when is a man least likely to be thinking clearly?”
More than half the girls giggled and the other half all had grins on their faces. Even a couple of Miguel’s girls were nudging him. Charlotte answered though, “When he wants to get laid.”
“Yeah, or right after he gets laid,” Madison echoed.
“We’ve all heard it. Guys who profess their love for you after finishing. It is the time that a guy is most pliable and will say almost anything to make you happy. They might even mean it at the time. So what if you had a power like Jasmine’s? She wanted him vulnerable and open to suggestion,” Meikiyo said.
“Good thinking, Meikiyo,” Amelia said.
Huong looked thoughtful before she added, “Actually, I guess that makes a lot of sense. It probably also explains why that is always happening in those dreams of yours. You are in a heightened state of awareness but also more open-minded.”
“Wait, what dreams?” Emma asked.
“Something for us to discuss later, now can we talk about how Jasmine has sucky tentacles coming out of her hands?” Amelia asked.
Jay looked around at everyone. “I am not the only one here. I propose a vote for leadership. One that we can have without any influence from Jasmine. The last vote for me may have been tainted so let’s clear the air.”
“Okay, that sounds fair. I just want to say though that we should have an election every year. Whoever gets voted in doesn’t get to stay there forever. I also think we should vote in the advisors rather than letting the leader pick them,” Charlotte offered.
“So you want a council again?” Mia asked.
“The question is if we ever had a council in the first place, with the way that Jasmine manipulated everyone,” Charlotte responded. “But no I am not proposing a council. This is more like a military thing. There needs to be a firm chain of command. I just think maybe we should elect a leader, and a couple of advisors.”
“Okay, and then, no matter who the leader is, we take a vote on what to do with Jasmine,” Jay added.
It didn’t take much time at all for the entire group to vote for Jay. A couple of Miguel’s girls threw his name out but when he said he was voting for Jay it quickly became unanimous. The votes for advisors were much more hotly disputed and even came down to yelling and name calling at one point.
Jay had to step in and calm everyone down. There was obviously tension between the girls who were part of Team Jay and those who had not been. In the end even with his support the only core member who was named an advisor was Meikiyo. The way she stood up to Jasmine carried weight with many of the girls.
They ended up naming two other advisors, Charlotte and Samantha. He didn’t know Sam all that well but it helped that she had an ability which could force people to tell the truth. It was actually a little shocking and scary as an ability.
Once the elections were over, the rest of Team Jay seemed a bit miffed that they wouldn’t get to stay with him and Meikiyo while Jay and the advisors discussed what to do with Jasmine. He did at least find a moment to talk to Amelia. “I’m sorry about knocking you over. I just didn’t want you to do something in the rush of the moment that either you would regret or would cause problems for you with everyone else.”
She looked up at him and he marveled again that he had such a beautiful girlfriend, or fiancée or whatever she was. He had only known her for a few weeks but if this was the rest of his life he was gonna get busy living it rather than holding back. Amelia finally sighed and said, “It’s no use. I can’t seem to stay mad at you. I get why you did what you did. I wouldn’t have felt any regret but maybe it would have caused problems if people thought I was murder happy.”
“Thank you. I really had your interest at heart.”
“I believe that, but I also believe that you have a thing for Jasmine. Let’s just say that it is the lingering effects of her emotional manipulation.”
“Maybe, I don’t know,” Jay said as he shrugged. “What I do know is that I will always have your back.”
Amelia threw him off guard when she suddenly switched gears. “I watched you fighting that thing, what was wrong with your pre-cognition? Why didn’t you see it was gonna shoot you like that?”
Jay frowned at her. “You were supposed to be running and hiding, not watching me.”
“We already discussed this and don’t try to avoid the question.”
“Okay, fair enough. I don’t know to be honest and it has bothered me but I haven’t exactly had much time to think about it. Now are you gonna forgive me?”
“Oh,” Amelia said with a purr. “I don’t know. I guess it depends on how hard you work to make it up to me tonight.” Then she smiled, winked, and walked away.
Jay could only stare. Gah, how did she do that to him? Worse, how did they all do it to him? He was such a lecher, but he was gonna embrace it and be the best lecher he could be.
“Can we get down to business, Jay?” Charlotte asked. Jay followed the rest of them up to the top of the ziggurat where they had decided to meet. It was clear that Charlotte was going to be a handful. She was as direct as the arrows she shot. That brought a smile to his mind as he thought about shooting his own arrows at her.
“I will just say that I think she is too dangerous to keep alive,” Charlotte said as soon as they had all sat down.
“You may be right, but what if we could banish her to a floor of the dungeon or something?” Samantha asked.
Before Jay could say anything they all felt a stabbing pain in their heads as they received a notification. Jay looked at it as soon as he wasn’t seeing stars.
Forced Download-
Failure to move into the dungeon immediately will result in certain death. Upper floors have been breached. Security can not hold the safe zones. The dungeon entrance will be sealed in three minutes. Barriers between floors will be erected to try to slow outside incursion.
Descend or die.
As soon as he finished reading the message, the countdown began.
Interlude 6- Tests Within Tests
D’varn hated to violate the protocols of the test, but sending the message to the hoomans was the only option he could come up with. Almost universally the remaining clusters had stayed still and sat around discussing what to do rather than acting on it. He could not figure out these hoomans.
Even after centuries of studying them they confounded him. They were impetuous when caution was called for and yet slow to act on urgent issues. The first message should have sent them all scurrying down into the dungeon.
Their failure to act had cost many of them the ultimate price and come close to utterly ruining his experiment. The attack by the Forlorn was already causing disastrous problems. The council’s response had resulted in his test subjects becoming the last of their species. The Earth was now completely unsuited to life and would require either seeding or hundreds of millions of cycles to evolve any sapient races.
He scanned the various clusters and found it was as he feared. Time and again they had been wiped out. Most of the clusters had been slain completely without any survivors by one or two Forlorn. The soldiers were higher than the drone units that most of the enemy race consisted of
, but below the commanders which were below the overminds.
They now had at least 50 of the soldiers on board the leviathan. This ship, in fact all of the A’snkarnt ships, had been built with other purposes than combat. It wasn’t really in the nature of his race. Oh sure they had made some cruisers that were fast and loaded down with weapons, but even then his people were more scientists than fighters.
Security units consisting mostly of robots were being dispatched to deal with the Forlorn but experience taught them that once on board a ship it was hard to dislodge them. As long as no more ships appeared they would eventually be able to do so but it would take time. He just hoped that they had been able to successfully jam any outgoing signals.
Final sensor readings were tallied and his worst fears were confirmed. There were just under 1000 hoomans left. Less than 1% of his experiment had survived. Ironically they had killed as many of themselves in battles for dominance as the dungeon or the Forlorn. Maybe S’vanth was right, and they weren’t worth saving let alone placing any hope on.
At that moment a hooman expression came to his mind as his hover pod’s sensors detected the approach of another A’snkarnt. He thought it went something like, “Think of the devil and he shall appear.”
Rotating his pod around, he saw S'vanth enter his lab. “What brings you down here? I would have thought the council would have you performing more important tasks during this time of invasion.”
“Why would you think that? I am the science liaison. Military matters don’t have anything to do with me.”
“Then what brings you down here. Can’t you see that I am busy? The Forlorn have been slaughtering most of the remaining test subjects.”
“And that is exactly why I am here. We can’t allow that to happen. You still have important work to do.” S’vanth gave him the A’snkarnt equivalent of a sly smile.
“You have been opposed to this experiment from the beginning. Why the change of heart?”
“It is not so much that I have been opposed to the experiment. I simply didn’t believe that it had any merit. I have done my duty to you. You might even say that I have played both sides and you should be glad.”
“What is it that I am supposed to be thanking you for now?”
“I had two different labs running different tests on some of your subjects and by putting their work together with yours, we think we have a more promising outcome for this experiment. That is if you can keep enough of your test subjects alive. Oh and by the way have any of them successfully bred yet?”
“No, all of the pregnant females were killed by the Forlorn. Why does that matter?”
“That is unfortunate. They got here before we were ready.”
“What do you mean by that? And I will ask you again. Why do you care if the hoomans are breeding?” D’varn demanded as sternly as his race was wont to do.
“Oh, nothing. It was just a stray thought. As to breeding, it turns out that is the only true purpose that these hoomans have.”
“Explain yourself.” D’varn felt his intracranial pressure rising in a way that only S’vanth could trigger.
“It turns out that if we can evolve them sufficiently that newly bred hoomans can be taken and their higher brain functions wiped while still allowing them to keep their genetic memory and access to the strange powers they manifest. Then as unbelievable as I find it, the test results strongly suggest that if the hooman is advanced enough, an A’snkarnt mind could be downloaded into their brains.”
“What... those experiments were abandoned centuries ago. None of the lesser races can hold one of our minds. Even the Forlorn have not been able to integrate us, which is part of why we are such a threat.”
S’vanth said, “It turns out that the potential you saw all along was there, just not in the way that you thought. Now you just need to push your test subjects further. We aren’t sure how far they have to advance but the thinking is the minimum of the sixth threshold. There is no more time for you to coddle them. You must push and do everything to protect the more promising. I shouldn’t need to explain this to you but remember we only need a dozen males or so as long as we have enough females for them to breed with.”
Suddenly so much made sense to D’varn. Yet what he knew and what he could prove were not the same thing. More time was needed and S’vanth was right about one thing. If the hoomans were going to survive, they would need to increase in power, and rapidly.
Chapter 28 - Fleeing into the Dungeon
Jay wasn’t sure if he could reach all the girls telepathically but he sensed that his bond with Mia would allow him to reach her virtually anywhere. He hadn’t had a chance to explore the bond since the notification had called a partial fusion. Whatever had happened though, he felt her ten times as strongly as he had before.
“Mia, get everyone here as quickly as possible.” So sure was he of their connection that he didn’t even question whether she had gotten the message.
As he ran out of the ziggurat, he yelled to the advisors, “Samantha, make sure everyone goes into the second floor. Meikiyo and Charlotte, go and guard the entrance. Don’t go too far into the desert and hopefully you won’t be attacked, but protect everyone as they come in. If necessary try to combo your powers into flame arrows to keep the beetles away.”
Jay then spent the next minute running around at maximum speed and getting any of the slow-moving girls into the ziggurat. He took to carrying them up in a single leap. It had been a while since he felt a strain in his muscles but he was definitely pushing himself to his limits.
Then he grabbed Emma and Jasmine and started running them up to the top. The disturbance was fortunately enough that it woke Emma out of the trance. He set her down and Samantha directed her to the dungeon. When she tried to protest about Jasmine, Jay just shook his head.
Jay had to make the hard decision of ignoring Miguel’s group. He needed to be harder and more focused if he was going to survive. He told himself, leaders can’t afford weakness. It still made him glad to see Miguel running into the ziggurat at the one-minute mark with the last of his team.
Jay stopped Daphne and Huong from going down the stairs, while sending Samantha scurrying down. “Heal her as much as you can in thirty seconds and then run for the dungeon.”
The girls at first acted like they wanted to argue with him but one quick look at his stony expression apparently changed their minds. With Daphne boosting her, Huong started healing the fracture in Jasmine’s skull. A quick touch of Life Sense told Jay that her natural regeneration must be significant because it had already halfway closed the wound.
When the timer ran out, Jay ordered them to run for the dungeon saying he would be there on time. He then lifted Jasmine up as he boosted his Iron Will as high as possible.
“I know you're awake. You have 15 seconds to convince me why I shouldn’t leave you here.”
Jasmine’s eyes opened up and her expression instantly went so sweet that she would probably rot your teeth. “I’ll make you so happy. I know you want me. I can feel it. Just take me and make me yours.”
He tensed up and all too sadly she reached out with her power and tried to push a rush of desire into him. Well he had tried. He could act with a clear conscience. Without another thought he flung her hard enough against the inside wall of the ziggurat that she bounced off.
Jay immediately sprinted down the stairs to the second doorway but not before he heard her screaming, “You’re mine. You are ruining everything.”
Then he was inside the dungeon with seven seconds to spare. He stood guard to make sure that she didn’t follow but doubted that she had the necessary speed to do so even if she tried. A grinding sound soon followed and the world seemed to turn slowly as the doorway was sealed, but not up and down like normal. Instead it seemed that the desert he was standing in was revolving and the opening to the door slowly disappeared to the side.
Jay did a quick survey to find that everyone was still gathered near where the door had been and
while weapons were out and powers were active, there hadn’t been any attacks. He quickly called everyone together. Miguel and his group stood off a bit away from the rest.
“Dude, this isn’t gonna work. If you are gonna be part of the cluster here, then you have to be part of the cluster. Yes, you have your specific group but you all voted for me as the leader and these girls as the advisors. For the next year this is not a democracy and I need to know that you will obey orders.” Jay’s words were clearly directed at Miguel but he also looked around and made eye contact with anyone who would look at him.
“So you aren’t gonna hold it against me that I went along with Tyler thinking he could take over?”