—————
“What the fuck, guys?” I yell at them.
“You really drowned me!” I shout.
They look at each other, surprised and shocked at my outburst.
“You, but, we,” stammers Bone, pointing at me and Karl.
“Rachel, we weren’t intending to hurt you, you know that!” exclaims Karl.
“You both know what the fuck I am talking about, you assholes!” I say to them.
I am livid.
“You fucking drowned me!” I shout, again.
“Umm, not really,” says Karl with a smirk.
I smack him, on the shoulder.
Hard.
It makes a satisfying, meaty thud, and a cracking noise.
“Ouch! Hey, watch it! I think you might have broken something!” he cries out, obviously in pain.
Good.
That asshole!
Bone steps out of the jacuzzi, his giant cock swinging between his athletic legs.
His chiseled abs and marbled muscles gleam with droplets of water, and a small slick trickle of his jism falls from the tip.
He gets a towel and begins to dry himself.
He knows what he looks like to me – an Adonis.
A god among men.
My heart does that silly flip-flop it always does when he’s naked in front of me.
In spite of all of it, I truly do love that idiot.
Sigh.
—————
“OK, what the fuck is this?” I ask.
“Why am I not dead?” I ask.
“And, no thanks to you two wise-asses,” I mutter.
Karl, Bone and I are sitting at the table out on the penthouse roof, sipping some coffee.
It soothes my sore throat.
It’s a really good blend, something Columbian, and maybe a bit of rain-forest free-range beans tossed in for luck.
The steam condenses on my sunglasses, and I just smell the aroma for a minute.
The two men look at each other, trying to telepathically get their stories straight.
They drink their coffee, trying to delay the inevitable.
They know I am probably not going to react well to their answer.
“It’s part of the OCTAVIUS project treatment,” says Karl, finally.
He puts his cup down.
The set is fine bone china.
Very expensive and exquisite.
It’s funny to see these big, hunky men, frightened of me, and drinking their coffee from these dainty cups!
My fine Bone sips Columbian coffee from his fine bone China cup.
Is that haiku?
Nah, too many syllables…
He grins, and my anger melts a bit more.
“That’s just right,” he says, providing Karl with some cover.
“The OCTAVIUS project…” he begins to recite.
I slam my cup onto the table, and it crashes apart.
“God DAMN it! What kind of freak did you fuckers turn me into?” I scream.
“We saved your life,” says another voice, from behind me.
Stephan walks into the room.
I feel something, and like it.
It annoys me that I like it.
“I assume you’ve all had your fun?” asked Stephan.
Karl and Bone grin and Stephan tries to look stern, but fails miserably.
He sighs, sitting down next to us.
A server appears from nowhere, bringing fresh coffee, and cleaning up the mess I’ve made.
We sit quietly as the server, a nicely appointed young lady, gathers the wreckage of the coffee cup, and removes the entire set.
Then, she returns with fresh table linens.
She changes out the linens, while we stare off into space, filling the silence with even more silence.
Finally, she leaves the room and then returns with a silver cart, another bone China service set on it.
She pours us all fresh coffee, knowing exactly how each of us prefers ours.
“Thank you, Janet,” we all say, in an unintended chorus.
“Ma’am, Sirs,” she says, and leaves.
We wait until she is out of the room.
—————
“Stephan, I know what the Old Man, I mean Admiral Decker, told me and showed me the other day at the farm, but what the hell happened to me?” I ask.
“How can this even be happening? If what you’ve all told me is true, then why wasn’t I killed in that explosion? Poor Randy was…” I say.
Randy had died from the blast at the hotel, trying to protect me.
His best friend, Travis, still was in mourning.
They were both members of Derek’s Navy SEAL Alpha Team.
“Well, Rachel, to be perfectly blunt, you were killed,” Stephan says.
Bone looks shocked, and Karl eyes Stephan with a very hard and angry face.
“Stephan, I thought we’d all agreed to not tell…” begins Bone.
“Tell me what? That I was, or am, dead?” I say.
My voice is trembling.
Am I dead?
Those orgasms sure didn’t feel like I was; they rocked my freaking world!
“You were dead, for about thirty-two minutes, according to the records, Rachel,” Stephan informs me, clinically.
I sit there, flabbergasted.
“And, you died four more times during the next few weeks, as the OCTAVIUS nanobots worked on you,” he says.
“The nano-whats?” I ask.
Stephan leans back in his chair.
Karl and Bone and he share a look.
Then, they stand.
Bone and Karl take off their robes and stand there, naked.
Their tattoos seemingly make a pattern of some sort, when they stand a certain way.
Stephan quietly rises and strips off his clothing.
He’s every bit as fit and hard as Karl, and wiry like Bone.
His cock is enormous but different than the ones his brother's sport.
Wiry, black hair surrounds it, as it dangles between his muscular legs.
He joins his brothers, standing between Karl and Bone, and it’s incredible!
All of them are tattooed across their arms and chest,
The pattern starts with Karl and then traces across Stephan, and finally, ends with Bone.
It seems to be a giant beast of some sort, maybe a dragon or chimera.
The naked trio looks at me, then at each other.
Then, they touch fingertips.
Bone touches Stephan, who touches Karl.
Their tattoos glow dimly.
“How, what the hell?” I ask, stunned.
The three men remain there, their skin gleaming.
There is a purple tint on Bone, a green one on Karl, and a red one on Stephan.
“What is this?” I ask, again.
“Rachel,” Stephan commands, “Come here.”
I rise from my chair and walk over to my weird, glowing stepbrothers.
“Take off your robe, Rachel,” says Karl.
Bone grins at me.
“Don’t be scared, Baby Doll!” he laughs.
I stick my tongue out at him and drop the robe to the marble tile floor.
I stand there, in front of them, my nude body lit by their tattoos, and notice a tingling in my skin.
My own tattoo is reacting, somehow!
Bone’s fingertips touch mine, and suddenly I am part of them!
I scream.
—————
Everything comes rushing into my mind at once.
I can see memories, know things I can’t possibly know, browse the entire Internet, taste foods I’ve never eaten, drinks I don’t know the names of, and then there is an endless flood of sensations.
It’s like being in the middle of the ocean, drowning, again, but this time, from the remembrances of things past, the intimate experiences of others.
I cry, I laugh; there is joy, sorrow, pain, sadness, ecstasy!
; I know now what the Mandarin Connection is, and who many of them are, and why we must stop it.
I know what OCTAVIUS truly means.
I weep with gratitude and understanding, and love for my stepbrothers.
—————
A while later, I come to my senses.
It’s difficult.
The Melding, as they call it, is a side-effect of the OCTAVIUS treatment.
It’s not really well understood.
I know it’s like an empathic telepathy, but that doesn’t explain it completely.
Some of the things that happen, like browsing computer systems, is just total science fiction.
Nobody knows what makes it occur, and few can truly control it.
It’s as if there were one giant over-mind or something, and we were a part of it when we Melded.
All the feelings, the emotions, of Melded OCTAVIUS operatives, come flowing across our neural pathways if we allow it.
There are these myriads of streams of consciousness, cascading through all of us.
It’s overwhelming.
It’s weird.
It’s supernatural, it seems.
I wonder how my stepbrothers can deal with all of that.
—————
“Walter Reighland and several of his colleagues came up with much of the technology behind OCTAVIUS, Rachel,” says Stephan.
We are all sitting in a conference room, our clothing tastefully restored.
Karl is smoking a briar pipe.
Bone is flipping one of those funny ‘fidget-spinner’ toys around, like a yo-yo.
Stephan is nursing a G & T.
“Ocaba Bien was his attempt to incorporate it into a type of Xanadu, an escape resort for the rich and powerful. He used it to try to convince these movers and shakers to join him in following the precepts of H.G.Wells and others who promulgated the ideas of a Free Love movement,” says Stephan.
He sips at his drink.
He smacks his lips together, obviously enjoying the G & T.
“Damn! That’s mighty fine gin!” he says to no one in particular.
“When Walter Reighland presented the prototype nanobots to the ‘proper’ authorities, he was shocked that their first thought was to use them for the manufacture of weapons,” he says.
“He was a bit naïve that way, but not too much so,” he continues.
“Reighland put in a method to ‘safe’ the nanos so that they would not be able to harm other humans, especially if they were not ‘Amplified’,” he says.
“The Old Man, I mean Admiral Decker, he told me I was ‘amplified’,” I say.
“Rachel, when the bomb exploded, it pretty much tore you almost in half,” said Stephan.
“Stephan!” shouts Bone, alarmed at how his brother is so callously telling me all these gory details.
“Seriously, bro, ease up a bit,” adds Karl.
“She deserves to hear the entire story, and also know the truth!” Stephan exclaims.
He puts down his drink and walks over to me.
He puts his warm hands on either side of me, gripping my shoulders gently.
I know, from the Melding, what he feels about me.
I feel slightly embarrassed since Bone and Karl and I have fucked.
But, I’ve never fucked this man, who loves me so deeply.
I am beginning to understand the depth of the feelings I have for him.
I know why, whenever he’s around, I feel safe, and oddly at ease.
“Rachel, you know how I feel, how we all feel about you,” he says.
I look at the other men, who are looking at me with their own loving eyes.
“Stephan, I don’t know what to say, to do. I am so confused by all of this,” I say.
My tears are close.
“Rachel, you were nearly dead. Bone insisted that we perform the OCTAVIUS procedure, so as to save your life. But, there is a cost,” he says.
“I know that Stephan,” I say.
“Bone agreed that the shock of the procedure might alter you, or harm you in other ways, that might have made it easier if we had let nature take its course,” he says.
The tone of his voice is dark and serious.
“This decision was not easy for us to take, Rachel,” he says, peering deep into me with his intense gaze.
His eyes are boring their way into my soul.
I find myself drowning, again, but this time it’s from Stephan’s hypnotic, dark look.
I cry, my tears hot, and he hugs me to his broad chest.
I can feel him breathing deep, strong breaths as he crushes me against him.
I love how he smells.
Like the forest.
I look up at his handsome face, his love for me so strong and evident that I am frightened.
My tears course down my cheeks, and splash on the tiles below.
“What am I, Stephan?” I weep.
“What was done to me?” I cry, once again burying my face into his massive chest.
—————
The Old Man had told me only part of the story, during my convalescence at the Facility.
He’d told me that the OCTAVIUS Program was formed to provide the United States and its allies with the most advanced and cutting-edge solutions to the problems of military and law enforcement.
It was made up of hundreds of moving parts, he’d said.
The Old Man explained that the part of which I benefited was a result of the development for methods to increase the endurance and performance of soldiers.
A method to discretely communicate, using forgotten skills or techniques, the ways that humanity depended on before technology hid them from us, were tested.
The practicality of these methods was tried on thousands of soldiers, volunteers, and animals.
He told me that the outcomes were not always pretty.
Many errors were made, and test subjects had to be quarantined or destroyed.
My horror at the implications of his statements grew.
There was always an element of grave danger, but the consequences of inaction outweighed the risks, he’d said.
Criminal factions and organizations, such as those that comprised the Mandarin Connection, made it absolutely necessary that OCTAVIUS continued its research.
For decades, progress was slow.
But there were major breakthroughs with the advent of supercomputers, and the understanding of DNA and other biological advances.
The bravery and dedication of men like Om and Karl led to a better understanding and the ability to create the soldiers our country needed to fight the overwhelming war against a treacherous, age-old enemy.
When the nanotechnology was perfected, it was the men of the Jaeger family who unceremoniously and quietly volunteered to become the recipients of its benefits.
They formed the initial component of a unique cadre of secret warriors, men, and women who would die for the preservation of freedom for their fellows.
—————
“It’s too much, Stephan,” I cried, still pressing my face into him.
“All of this, it’s too much for me to take in!” I say.
My body is trembling, from fear, and the knowledge of what had been done to me, and the after-effects of the Melding.
“What am I going to do?” I weep.
“Where does this go? When will it end?” I say, hugging Stephan.
I hold onto him as though I will fall into an endless pit if I let him go.
Karl and Bone sat at the table, watching us.
I can’t judge their emotions, even though we’ve just shared an emotional connection unlike any I’ve ever felt in my life.
Boned 3 (Mandarin Connection Book 6) Page 3