He has a point…this is hot!
Then, Keegan’s mouth connected with Quinn, who surrendered to the bliss of the moment. One of the lightbulbs on the nightstand popped and the lights at the party below flickered and flashed without explanation.
❖
When the boys were finished, they snuck out of Aaron’s room and spotted the bathroom across the hall. It was unoccupied, so they took a moment to splash water on their faces and freshen up.
“I’m so drunk in love with you,” Keegan said, gently swaying as he rubbed his face with cool water.
Quinn smiled. “I can tell, babe.” He wiped the water off his face and stood up.
Keegan frowned. “You don’t look drunk. Was the drink not strong enough?”
“Oh, it was strong enough,” Quinn replied, chuckling. “Apparently, I can’t get drunk. All I felt was a short-lived buzz that went away just as fast as it came on.”
“That sucks,” Keegan said.
Downstairs, the sound of glass breaking and a few shrieking girls made Quinn become concerned. “Maybe we should think about leaving. The party seems to be getting out of control.”
Keegan shrugged. “Can we wait and see? It’s just a glass.”
“Yeah, but we have plastic Solo cups,” he replied, picking up and holding his blue cup aloft. “That means something else broke. Aaron could get into serious trouble for throwing this party.”
“Doubtful. Have you seen the house? His parents are connected, and they’ll sweep it under the carpet like everything else he’s done.”
“Wait what?” What are you talking about?
Keegan’s eyes bugged open. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“You have to tell me now. Boyfriend confidentiality is in place.”
Keegan glanced to the open door and when he didn’t see anyone, he whispered to Quinn. “We used to be close friends in junior high and freshman year, but he got into a lot of police trouble that his dad basically paid off to keep Aaron from getting a juvenile record.”
“Oh wow. I had no idea.”
“Exactly, and very few people do. So, even if the police show up, Aaron will only get his hand slapped unless he does something really bad like murder someone.”
“Wow.”
Footsteps approached, and someone knocked at the door. “Hey! What are you two lovebirds doing in here?”
It was Aaron.
“Um, it got hot downstairs and we came up to cool off,” Quinn answered, trying to sound convincing.
Aaron smirked knowingly at them. “Uh-huh. I’ll bet that’s all it was. I hope you didn’t leave a mess for me to clean up later.”
“We didn’t,” Keegan said, grabbing his blue cup from the bathroom counter. Then, he took Quinn’s hand and led him out of the bathroom.
“Bye,” Aaron said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head.
When the boys returned to the main floor, they walked around to see what was going on. Ravone and Loren were laughing with some of their classmates in the living room. A bunch of the guys from the track team were chatting in the XBOX room with Darien, who simply nodded at him.
Holy crap, maybe he has turned a new leaf.
Peter and some of the other guys on the football team had migrated to the kitchen table with some of the girls and were playing spin the bottle. They all cheered when the bottle stopped and Luke had to kiss Amy. When the deed was done, it was Peter’s turn to spin the bottle and it stopped at Luke. The boys all laughed and cheered while Luke and Peter looked at one another sheepishly.
“Hey Keegan, why don’t you show Peter and Luke how it’s done?” Scotty asked in fun.
Keegan looked at Quinn, who shrugged. “Why not?” A moment later they kissed deeply, and the table cheered. They stopped and smiled, gazing into one another’s eyes for a moment.
“You gotta do it like that,” Scotty said. “Do it, do it, do it.” The friends at the table joined in the chant, and Peter and Luke shrugged and smirked.
“It’s doesn’t look that bad,” Peter said.
“Shut up and kiss me,” Luke said with a mischievous smile.
Peter closed the distance between them, put his hands behind Luke’s head, and pulled him in. Then, the two senior boys kissed.
Holy shit, that’s hot!
The crowd cheered and cups were raised in a toast as the football players broke away and laughed, each wiping their lips with the back of their hands. A moment later, Peter’s hand was spinning the bottle and the game resumed.
“Do you want to play a few rounds?” Keegan asked.
Quinn’s eyes popped open in alarm. “Um, no, definitely not. Why, do you?” I don’t want to kiss a girl. Oh my gosh, what if your answer is yes?
“Nah, I’ve got the only set of lips I want to kiss right here with me.” Keegan said. Then, he grabbed Quinn like Peter had done with Luke and pulled him in.
“Guys, I’m out,” Ravone said, tugging on Quinn’s shirt.
“Really?” Keegan asked, abruptly stopping their kiss. “But the party is just getting started!” He swayed as he spoke.
“No, the way this party is going, the cops will be here soon.”
“Yeah, you know how it goes around here. We’ll all be hauled into an assembly at school for underage drinking,” Loren said.
“Well, it is illegal,” Keegan said, sipping his drink.
Loren rolled her eyes. “Says the seventeen-year-old with the spiked drink in his hand. Come on, girl, let’s go.”
“Wait, who’s driving?”
“I got an Uber. It’s pulling up now.”
They hugged goodbye and the girls grabbed their coats from the couch and made their way out of Aaron’s house. The boys made their way into the living room and sat down on the love seat.
“I’m drunk,” Keegan said, putting an arm around Quinn.
“Yeah, I’m not.”
“Do you wanna get out of here?”
“And do what?”
“I dunno, go back to your place? My place?”
Eek, going over to your house will be…awkward right now. I don’t want to see your parents after the whole Grandpa’s in The Order fiasco.
“We can go to my house,” Quinn offered. “I think my dads will be happy to see I’m not a drunken mess.”
“Okay, I’ll text my mom and say we’re going to your house because the party is lame.” Keegan pulled out his phone and stared at the screen. Then he turned the phone around to show Quinn something.
A message from Ravone was on the screen: The Uber drove us away from the house and two blocks away we passed a number of parked police cruisers. I think they’re going to raid the party. Get out.
Shit, we gotta go. Where’s Aaron? I should warn him.
Aaron walked down the stairs with two girls trailing behind him. Quinn grabbed Keegan’s phone and made his way through the crowd to their host. He grabbed Aaron’s arm.
“Hey man, you threw a great party. But, I just got this text.” He showed Aaron the phone, and his face turned white with panic when he read the message.
“Dammit. Thanks, man. I’ll kick everyone out.”
“Make sure the drunk ones don’t drive,” Quinn said. “You’ve got some pretty drunk people here.”
“Yeah, I can make it look like some friends are staying over instead of a party. We’ll stop the music and put on a movie or something. The rest will have to get Ubers or taxis. Thanks for the tip, I owe you one.” Aaron moved off to shut down the party.
Moments later, Quinn found his and Keegan’s coats and when they had bundled up, they snuck out the back door. Quinn wrapped his arms around his boyfriend and gave him a peck on the cheek. Keegan smiled and swayed like a palm tree in a gentle breeze. The music inside stopped as people scrambled to clean up the party and convert the event into a harmless movie night with Aaron and ten of his closest friends—the students who drove but couldn’t drive because they were intoxicated.
“I love cuddling with you,” Keegan said,
resting his head on Quinn’s shoulder. Out front, Quinn could hear students walking away from the house and leaving the party.
“Don’t freak out when we turn invisible.”
“Whatever you say, babe,” Keegan said.
“Are you falling asleep?”
“I dunno, I just feel good in your arms.”
“Are you drunk?”
“A little,” Keegan admitted. Then, he giggled. “This was a stupid idea.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re good.” Quinn focused and turned himself and Keegan invisible. Satisfied they wouldn’t be seen, he lifted off and ascended until he was thirty feet over the house. Down the street, his super vision spotted four police cruisers parked in a haphazard manner in front of one of the homes on the street. He watched a fifth arrive on scene.
I can’t show my face…Daddio was right. This was a really weird place for me to be. Shit, I just wanted normalcy for a few minutes. Instead, Darien tried to make up with me and Kyle and Tony accosted me. Ugh. Well, at least their days of being stupid are at an end.
Quinn spotted students leaving in groups of three or four. They seemed to be stable and not drunk, which meant the cops probably wouldn’t interfere with their leisurely walk home.
“I’m cold,” Keegan said.
“Sorry, babe.” Quinn summoned warmth and heated Keegan’s body.
Minutes later, Uber and Lyft cars arrived and picked up a number of students from the house. The police cruisers hadn’t moved, but Quinn noticed police walking the neighborhood, casually observing the students. A few minutes later, the students had dispersed and the neighborhood was quiet. Only the flashing light of a television appeared behind the drawn curtains of Aaron’s living room. When the police gathered in the front yard, they decided to walk away after a few minutes of casual observation.
Shit, he got lucky. I bet the cops were listening for dance music. If this was a summer party, we’d be screwed.
“I want to cuddle with you,” Keegan said. “Can we go? Hey where are you? Holy shit!”
Keegan panicked and jumped but Quinn held onto him.
“We’re invisible. I’ve got you, babe.”
“No way!”
“Did you just sober up or something?”
“Um…not really,” Keegan said, calming down. “This is so cool.”
Quinn started moving through the air with Keegan in his arms. “Come on, let’s get home and shower off this depravity and then cuddle in bed together.”
“Can we shower together?”
Quinn smiled. “If my dads are in bed and it’s not awkward, sure.”
“I love you, Quinn.”
Quinn grinned. “I love you too, Keegan.”
❖
The boyfriends embraced under the warm stream of water after satisfying each other’s urges and basked in the intimacy of their rekindled romance.
“I’m turning into a prune,” Keegan said, checking out his fingers.
“Me too,” Quinn replied, chuckling. “But it’s so warm and nice in here. I don’t want to get out.”
Keegan nodded against the side of Quinn’s head. “I know, but I’m tired. It will be so nice to fall asleep in each other’s arms again, won’t it?”
It was Quinn’s turn to nod. “Absolutely.”
When they had toweled off, brushed their teeth, and dressed in some lounge pants Quinn had provided, they climbed into bed together and cuddled. Keegan laid on his back and Quinn snuggled into him for the night, planting soft kisses on his boyfriend’s neck as Keegan put his arms around him.
“I love you, Blue Spekter,” Keegan whispered.
“I love you too, Keegs.” Quinn exhaled a long breath and relished in the reassuring comfort of Keegan’s sleepy embrace. As he relaxed, the night’s craziness slipped away from his mind, and before long they both drifted off to sleep.
❖
Victor
“You wanted to see us?” Miguel asked as he and Arik tapped on Victor’s open office door and stepped inside.
“Yes, come in and close the door.”
Arik tapped the door controls and the office door slid shut behind them. The two technicians moved to Victor’s desk and sat in the two chairs that faced it.
“The situation has changed, and I need to know I can count on you.”
Arik and Miguel looked at each other with quizzical expressions then nodded at Victor. “Of course, Hegumen. You know where our loyalties lie. You can rely on us, absolutely.”
Since Dr. Madison could have implanted the micro bug in him without their assistance, he decided to trust them until he had a reason not to. “Good. The time has come to take Project Artifice to phase three and finish what we started.”
The technicians regarded one another with interest. “The first two phases are complete?”
Victor nodded. “Blake has…was converted to The Order and fulfilled the design I set before him to eliminate the Archimandrion Council. Now, it’s time to ensure no one stands in our way, even if it means sacrificing one of our sites. Target and deploy the weapon against Seavey Island; the facility is lost and we must show those who would oppose us what we are truly capable of.”
“You want us to…use the crazy cannon on our own facility?” Miguel asked. The phrase crazy cannon had become the unofficial, internal designation for the weaponized version of the orgone-based weather manipulation system that was designed to generate unpleasant psychotic effects by over-saturating a populated area with unstable orgone energy.
Victor nodded. “The facility is lost. We need to destroy it before The Order is further compromised.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” Arik said ruefully.
“Explain.”
“We’ve been transferring and burning through all the available orgone to create super humans. We need time to stockpile more to use the weapon.”
“What about a mega fusion reaction?”
“It’s possible, but we’ll have to daisy chain the energy transfers from our mid-west reactor cores to…”
“Just do it,” Victor said. “And in the meantime, activate all the New England reactor cores and charge them directly from the atmosphere and send the energy to Rangeley.”
Miguel exhaled slowly. “That will create a massive Nor’easter…unlike one we’ve seen in decades.”
“I don’t care. We need to strike before our enemies hit us first. How long will it take?”
“Several days, at least,” Arik replied, his eyes moving through mental calculations.
Victor narrowed his eyes in anger and frustration. “I thought all your fancy work rearranging the panels in the facilities eliminated the time problem.”
Arik swallowed nervously. “Most of the facilities have not been upgraded, Hegumen. It takes days to remove, analyze, and reset the panels. With all the energy we’ve needed over the past few weeks, we haven’t had time to perform the rearrangement outside of Orgonon and Androscoggin.”
“I think you have a bigger problem, Hegumen,” Miguel said softly.
Victor frowned. Miguel hesitated and appeared nervous.
“Speak up. Now is not the time to hold back or be afraid to speak your mind,” Victor said.
“DHS has regained access to the private network. They’ve been sniffing around, and their team of cyber analysts are cracking the firewalls and the data defense algorithms. It won’t be long until they discover where our reactor cores are and begin military operations to capture them.”
Dammit.
Then, a wicked thought crossed his mind.
“I’ll take care of the naval prison. You get the crazy cannon online.”
5-4 | Surprise, Sucker
Quinn
QUINN FINISHED A SET OF chest presses in the family’s basement workout area. Even though he had super strength, lifting weights in winter when he couldn’t run outside helped clear his mind when he needed to think. In order to get a semblance of a work out, he simply grabbed the heaviest weights and did as
many reps as he could until his muscles pseudo-fatigued. He paused when his super hearing detected the sound of the special ringtone he had assigned to Agent Hartman and Lieutenant Doral.
He grabbed his towel, wiped off his sweaty torso and the weight bench, then jogged upstairs to his bedroom where his cell phone vibrated on his desk. Though he had missed the first call, the cell phone immediately rang again and he answered it.
“What’s up, Agent Hartman?” he asked.
“Blue Spekter, we need you to go to the shipyard immediately. We just got word that Victor is back in town and he’s pissed.”
“Yikes, what is he doing?”
“He is currently extricating the USS Thunderchild from the water docks in front of the shipyard.”
“Uh, what is a Thunderchild?”
“It is one of the newest classes of nuclear fast-attack submarines. It’s in the shipyard this month for routine maintenance.”
Someone shouted something unintelligible in the background.
“What?” Agent Hartman yelled. “Are you kidding me?”
“No,” the unknown voice responded.
“So, apparently it’s on fire as well. It’s a nuclear submarine, Blue Spekter. I don’t think I need to tell you how bad that could be for the entire seacoast area.”
“I’m on it,” Quinn answered. “Call Ana Maria while you’re at it.”
“We’ve already left her voice messages. Please be sure to put your ear-comm in because we may need to relay instructions or communicate with you.
“No problem,” Quinn said glancing at the silver box on his bureau. They had given him a number of state-of-the-art micro communication devices designed especially for him to use in the field. Even though he didn’t initially trust the ear-comms, he decided to accept and use the devices. Quinn dashed into his closet and grabbed one of his super suits. Although he was sweaty and gross from his workout, he skipped a shower and quickly dressed. He texted his parents about the attack and then tucked his phone into the protective pocket of the blue pants. Then, he slipped out the back door and rocketed into the sky.
Blue Spekter flew across Portsmouth through the blinding nor’easter snowstorm that descended on New England to the naval shipyard, blue light streaking behind him as he nearly broke the sound barrier. When he arrived, his mouth fell open with surprise at the sight of the submarine’s bow rising out of the water. The top of the boat burned with hot fire.
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