Rescued: A Catgirl Harem Adventure (I Rescued A Catgirl Book 1)

by Jack Truxton

  Annie blinked a few times as she parsed my ‘orders’ before her smile practically split her face. As she began to skip forward towards me, I couldn’t keep up the serious act anymore, breaking down into laughter. Annie started giggling as well, a purr dancing behind the lilting sounds as she hugged me about the waist, resting her forehead against my chest.

  I put my arm around her shoulders and held her close, careful to avoid the bandage still over the nasty bump on the back of her head. It felt good and right, her warmth against me, and my eyes drifted towards the clock. I’d be counting the minutes until the delivery arrived.

  “Thank you,” she said at last, pulling away from me. “I’d be more than happy to make myself a proper meal, as long as you wish me to do so.” She gave me a little wink of understanding, and that’s what confirmed for me that Annie, probably every Wonder Kat, realized just how deep Katsukami’s controls in them were. “After all, you know what they say, right?”

  I arched an eyebrow. “I want to make some sort of cat reference, but I think I’d be wrong.”

  Annie raised a finger. “Physician, heal thyself! Which in this case means …”

  “Eat some damn breakfast,” I said with a chuckle.

  With that, we shared a knowing smile as I stepped aside to let the Wonder Kat work her domestic magic.

  7

  The static-filled chime of my doorbell broke the companionable silence that had fallen over my apartment. Like most things about the building, my landlord had been reticent to fix the doorbells, arguing that it still worked, didn’t it? It would cost more for him to replace it when it broke completely instead of fixing it now, but short-sighted assholes never looked at the big picture. That made me wonder if the executives at Katsukami were the same as my landlord, or were they the dangerous, big-game sort.

  “I’ll get it, Jake,” Annie announced brightly, her head poking out from the door to the bedroom.

  After taking care of herself in a culinary sense, Annie and I had decided that, with our limited funds, that she should alter some of my clothes to better fit her instead of bankrupting us for a new wardrobe. Thankfully, I did have a sewing kit, my bare bones budget meant that taking care of my old clothes was a necessity. As I got up from my own work on the formula for the Wonder Kat cure, she bounced out into the main room, wearing an old button-up of mine now adjusted to better accommodate her magnificent rack and some seriously out of fashion jorts that she had tailored into Daisy Dukes that left little to the imagination.

  At least they weren’t slipping off her hips, thanks to the newly added tail hole.

  Before she could get halfway across the room, I was already in her way, moving far faster than I ever thought possible, well, for me. It was the same sure-footed feline grace of the Kats themselves and was just further confirmation of my theories. Annie stopped in her tracks as I raised a warning hand.

  “It’s probably the delivery drone,” I said in hushed tones, “but it could be someone from the company or even the police.” That made Annie’s eyes go wide as she nodded, her tail lowering as the white tip started to twitch. Thumbing towards the side of the room that would be hidden by the opening door, I continued, “Wait over there until we know for sure.”

  Her little nose wrinkling up as she gathered her courage, Annie padded to the side as I went to the door itself. Taking a deep breath and trying to make myself act casual, I rued the fact that the landlord also had failed to replace the pinhole camera on the front of the entrance. With another reminder that there was a hell of a lot that had to change in the future if we were going to be safe, I opened the door, ready for anything.

  A sigh of relief escaped my lips when I was greeted only by the gold, white, and blue of a Lightspeed Shipping delivery drone, hovering in place under the power of six whisper-quiet hover fans. A Styrofoam package that looked more like a cooler than a shipping box hung from the underframe, secure in its rubberized clamps. An LCD display mounted on the front from of the drone’s body came to life, displaying a cute anime girl’s face with an Lightspeed cap perched jauntily on her emerald hair.

  Yeah, everyone was chasing after the Katsukami cute offensive these days.

  “Hello, Mr. St. Clare,” the drone-girl chirped merrily. “I’m happy to be delivering your package from …” There was a brief pause as the drone’s programming pulled the right information. “Genetics Universal! Could you please display an appropriate form of identification or would you rather present your biometric information?”

  “Sure thing,” I replied as I pulled out my much-abused wallet from my pocket. Thank God it had lived through the explosion, even if it was likely a lot of the ID and cards would be useless once my supposed death worked through the system. “Here’s my identification,” I said as I held up my driver’s license.

  Fortunately, none of my nosier neighbors, even Mrs. Patrusky, decided to snoop at the sound of a delivery. A quick optical scan of my license later, the drone relinquished my package to me, and with a merry “Thank you for using Lightspeed Delivery,” it flitted off down the hall. With what might be the most precious delivery I’d ever received in my arms, I quickly slipped back into the apartment and closed the door with a swift little kick.

  Annie was at my side in the blink of an eye, her tail up and happy once again, her hands gripping my arm in eager anticipation. “Oh, Jake, I still can’t believe it. That’s really it, isn’t it? Freedom in a party cooler!”

  “That’s one way to put it,” I agreed with a smile. “But we’re not done yet. We’ve got to formulate the genemod, something I’ve already started on, and then we have to give it to you.” Frowning a bit, I looked deep into Annie’s shimmering blue eyes. “I know I don’t need to tell you this, but this isn’t without risk. If the mod is done wrong, it’s going to change some other snippet of your genetic code. There’s no telling what it might do. Maybe nothing, maybe—”

  To my surprise, Annie was the one to cut me off, even though she saw me as her Master currently, shaking her head as her tail started to swish. “It doesn’t matter, Jake.” She raised a finger. “Firstly, it’s a risk I must take. I can’t … I can’t turn away from the chance of being free.” A second finger shot up to join the first. “Secondly, I’m not even worried. You’ve already saved me once, and you’ve designed some of my sisters. If anyone can do this, it’s you.” As if it were a last-second impulse, she darted up and gave me a quick peck of a kiss. “I trust you utterly.”

  She flashed me a wink. “Besides, I’ll be helping you. Nurse Annie has never lost a patient!”

  I laughed and returned the wink. “Okay then, but considering we’re playing with the basic building blocks of life, I think that makes me more Dr. Frankenstein and you my incredibly cute Igor.”

  It took Annie a moment to process that as if she was dredging through all the knowledge packed in her brain by Katsukami to figure out the reference. When she did, she grinned from ear to ear, using that incredible cat flexibility to curl up one shoulder as she followed me to the workstation, miming a humpback as she dragged one foot behind her.

  “Yeees, Mahhhster,” she said in a perfectly Igor-esque tone, assuming Igor had the lilting voice of an angel, but she could only hold it for a moment before she broke down in giggles.

  “Not bad at all.” I smiled broadly as I plopped down in my computer chair. “If you weren’t already a nursing Kat, I’d say you had the potential for a starring role in the vids.”

  Annie dropped the hunchback act and sketched into a graceful curtsy. “Well, thank you, Jake!” she replied before elegantly planting herself on a threadbare Ottoman next to me. “I’m ready.”

  “Then let’s do some mad science.” Handing her the box of supplies, I made a show of cracking my neck and knuckles before letting my fingers fly across the keyboard.

  Most of my colleagues in the biotech field would argue that designing a genemod, hell, any kind of genetic engineering, is a science, pure and simple. Put gene marker A into protei
n chain B, and then you get result C. Sounds simple enough, which of course it isn’t, not with the genomes of animals being more complex than, well, anything.

  And that’s why I always stood by my assertation that biodesign is as much of an art as it is a science. You can study all you like, memorize millions of facts about what modifications will do which, but if you don’t have a certain instinct for it, a creative spark that just tells you what code to add and what to cut away, it’ll all come out as a mess. Nobody wanted a mauve, three-legged pig, after all, especially if the bacon that came from it tasted rancid.

  More importantly, messing around with the genetic code of a sentient creature who was still living without an appreciation for the art of it, well, that had far worse repercussions. If you don’t listen to your gut and your head, you’ll make that one slip that goes from taking out the genetic limiters of the Wonder Kat you just rescued to giving her not just cancer, but super cancer.

  Fuck super-cancer.

  Fortunately, I not only appreciated my work as an art, but I was also damn good at it. Not a brag, not a boast, and not a joke. I didn’t pull to near the top of my class in college because I was hopping into bed with the professors, or because I had rich kid money paying off the officials. It was a combination of a load of talent and a bucketful of blood, sweat, and tears. No way in hell were we getting super-cancer that day.

  And even if I hadn’t been as good as I was, Annie was startlingly capable herself. She could catch any mistake I could have made, and her insights at a few points in the process were keen. I think the only things that prevented her from making a cure on her own were Katsukami’s limiters and the purposefully designed ignorance of her own, or any Wonder Kat’s, genetic code. It was pretty ingenious of the bastards, I had to admit, to produce someone so amazingly good at all aspects of medicine and the biosciences, then hamstring them from helping themselves by removing a few key facts from their knowledge.

  With all that said, it was a difficult, palm-sweating couple of hours before I felt it was safe to hit the compile button. I glanced over at Annie, who was looking over at me expectantly. “I think we’ve dotted every i and crossed every t. You ready to load the sequencer and whip this thing up?”

  Annie nodded, a confident smile on her face as she opened the Styrofoam case, packed with small tubes that were basically little versions of the vats I had seen in Reprogramming. The biodesign workstation itself, the business end of things, occupied the table next to my computer. Unlike the equipment at Katsukami, my unit was all sealed systems, the innards of the system enclosed in a nice, white plastic shell. Open ports along the back of the rectangular shell were for the tubes, while a side panel opened for the insertion for a variety of containers for the finished product. For today’s work, I inserted a genemod injector, essentially a bleeding-edge hypodermic, while Annie slotted the chemicals and synthetic DNA modules we had settled on for the build.

  With everything set, Annie flashed me a smile and a thumbs-up. “We’re ready to go, Jake!”

  The whole process, the actual making of the cure, took three point eight seconds from mouse click to the pressurized hiss of the filled injector sliding back out of the workstation, primed and ready to go. Glancing at each other, I carefully slid the hypo out of the slot and held it up to the light.

  “Okay, Annie, we’re at the point of no return,” I said softly. “If you have any second thoughts, now’s the time to say them.”

  Her only response was to thrust out her left arm, palm up and elbow bent so I would have easy access to the blood vessels at the crook. There wasn’t a hint of worry in her expression, her ears relaxed.

  Without further ado, I injected the genemod into her arm, flooding her bloodstream with the tailored retrovirus that would replace segments of Annie’s genetic code with the one we had devised. Annie didn’t flinch from the needle, but a few moments after the injection, she shivered a little bit. Not from any chill in the air or illness though.

  “I feel … a little light-headed, Jake,” she murmured as she drooped in her chair, her ears flattening back in concern. I caught her before she slumped out of the chair, and she leaned her face into my chest. “Milk and cream, it’s like someone’s doing a tap-dance routine in my head.”

  “It should pass in a few moments,” I assured her, stroking her hair as I held her close. “Not only are parts of your nervous system being readjusted, but there are also changes to your endocrine system to cut off your sensitivity to the control pheromones. That’d leave anyone feeling a bit off-kilter, but you should adjust quickly.”

  She nodded, clutching me as tightly as I was holding her. We stayed that way, huddled together in front of the computer, for several long minutes, the only sound being her shallow breathing and the occasional rattle of my chair when her shakes came on strong. A little part of me was starting to wonder if this was such a good idea when those shakes finally stopped as Annie suddenly took in a deep, heaving breath.

  Alarmed, I pulled her back from me a little so that I could see her face, keeping my hands on her shoulders. Sweat was cooling on Annie’s brow, and her blue eyes were wide but clear as they focused on me. “Annie, are you …?”

  “I’m … Yes, I’m fine.” She shook her head, her ears swiveling forward again. “The spasms, the light-headedness, it’s all passed. In fact, other than feeling like I need a grooming, I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so good.”

  I smiled down at her. “Good, I’m relieved to hear it. You’re more than welcome to grab a shower, but I think we need to make sure the cure worked first.” Tilting my head forward, I asked, “If you’re up for it?”

  “Yes, we need to know.” Annie quirked her ears inquisitively. “So, uh, how exactly are you going to test it?” Her ears flattening, she pouted a bit. “You’re not going to spray me with a Control Wand, are you?”

  “Oh, God, no. I’d never do that to you, I don’t care if you’re cured or not.” After what I’d seen, I wouldn’t do that to any Wonder Kat, even if my life was on the line. I’d find another way out if that were the case. “There’s a far simpler way to test this, anyway. I’m just going to, well, give you an order, and I want you to resist it. I know it seems silly, but—”

  “You’re supposed to be my Master now, so I have to do whatever you say because that’s the Wonder Kat way,” Annie said in a sing-song way, finishing my thought with a snippet that sounded straight from Wonder Klass. “So, well, what is it you are going to order me to do, Jake? I will do everything in my power to resist it!”

  I realized at that moment the problem was coming up with something that Annie might not want to do that wouldn’t also be dangerous for her if I didn’t stop her in time. Yeah, I could order her to jump out a window, but if the cure didn’t work and I wasn’t fast enough …

  I’d just have to start with something safe and simple. “Okay, Annie, I order you to balance on your left leg,” I commanded as I crossed my arms.

  She quirked her head to one side, folding her hands behind her back. “Uh, no?” she replied, blinking slowly. After a long moment, she shrugged a little. “I mean, I guess that means I’m cured?” She certainly didn’t sound convinced, and honestly, I wasn’t either.

  “Maybe, but that was a simple command that didn’t have much purpose,” I said with a nod. “I mean, technically, you still shouldn’t have been able to resist it, but the only way to be really sure would be something that has a lot more, well, meaning to it. Something that may not be something you want or would be dangerous to you.”

  Rubbing my chin, I wracked my brain for something safe but also stressful enough to really test the cure, Annie doing the same thing as she began to pace in a little circle, humming the Wonder Kats theme song under her breath. It was a bit of a stumper. I wanted to ensure Annie’s safety, and I certainly didn’t want to command her to do something that would make her embarrassed, uncomfortable, or worse. You know, the kind of crap that quite a few Wonder Kat owners would do.

/>   After a few moments, it was Annie who came to the rescue. “Oh! I’ve got it!” She practically pirouetted around on her left foot, her balance impeccable, before pointing at me. “You need to order me not to do something I want to do! And I know exactly what that is!”

  “You know what? You have a point.” Annie had implied through her actions and emotions that she had some awareness of what came from her and what came from her programming, so her plan was worth a shot. “So, what do you want me to forbid you from doing?”

  Annie licked her lips, her little pink tongue swiping over those cute fangs. “Jake, I want you to forbid me from kissing you.”

  8

  Annie’s request made me freeze for a moment, the implications of it sinking in. I’d been thinking about the taste of her lips ever since she had kissed me before the building collapsed, the desire lingering no matter how much I tried to keep it down. Hell, I had almost slipped, almost considered asking her to kiss me as a test, but my better half kept in control. But now, to ask her to do the opposite? I was almost afraid to say it, in case the cure hadn’t worked.

  But at the same time, it told me that one kiss had been straight from her heart. It hadn’t been automatic programming or even that stupid Wonder Klass. And that, that made all the difference in the world. It made my own feelings feel right and proper, and the chance that the cure had worked one-hundred percent, meaning we could share another of those kisses, gave me the courage to power through my worries.

  Taking a deep breath and putting on my sternest face, I pointed at Annie as if I were scolding a dog that had made a mess on the carpet. “Nurse Annie, I absolutely forbid you from ever kissing me. Not a peck on the cheek, a deep one with all the tongue in the world, not even a kiss on a boo-boo to make it better.”