by Nick Ryder
“She’s a real leader,” Lisa added.
“I don’t think she wears underwear,” Elaine mumbled as a supplementary.
As if she already couldn’t be any more attractive to me.
“What do you care?” Marie said. “Neither do you.”
Neither did any of them. Lisa had found something a bit more substantial after coming to life, and had been the first to really care that she was naked. She’d taken an old army shirt like Marie’s and added it to be a pair of combat pants. She was by far the tallest and most muscular of the three and they didn’t look too big on her.
Elaine had gone in the other direction. Her initial decision to follow Marie’s clothing choice had been reversed and she’d spent some of her spare time crafting new garments. The shirt had been cut and sewed into a tight-fitting cropped thing with a plunging neckline. She’d found some women’s pants that were around her size—perhaps just a little too small—and had cut them off around the knee.
There was a thin and thoughtful smile on Lisa’s lips. I saw her, watched her diligently. I felt close to all the girls, but Lisa didn’t come easy. She demanded respect. I liked that about her.
“We gave them a hell of a scare,” Marie added. She gathered a pile of gray fur out of her little animal minions. The four rats nestled close together wherever Marie was and needed constant reassurance they were still her favorites, all of them, equally.
For Marie there seemed to be a constant urge to make sure she kept eye contact with the cameras in the facility too, as though reassuring me I was still her favorite. The cute rat woman was definitely the most personable out of them, maybe even the most loyal to me too. But the truth of that would be proven only in time.
The girls all went to visit my human body often, but Marie the most. She would sit with her legs crossed in front of it, staring even though the progress was too slow to see changes.
There was a lounge on the first floor of the base. A round room with a circumference close to fifty feet, with soft lighting, carpeting and long curved couches made for slumbering and relaxing. I had one camera in the room, and I wanted to just lie next to the vast white wolf that folded its front paws and coolly watched the others.
“She doesn’t have any real power within the community.” Lisa’s offhanded comment meant her lingering thoughts were on something that she hadn’t tried to share with the group.
“What do you mean?” Elaine said. “You saw what she did. That takes a lot of skill.”
“But she might have been lucky,” Marie said. Napping in a warm pile of huge rats must have been like sleeping on furry bean bags. She barely kept her eyes open.
The room didn’t have any windows. I felt Lisa had a caged spirit, once she was outside, she was in charge. She wanted to stay out forever.
“If you wanted to go out and collect DNA samples from close around the base you could,” I offered to her, but was wary of sending anyone out too far and for too long.
Her ears perked up. “You don’t mind?”
“Of course not. We need to start making more soldiers. The village isn’t going to leave us alone forever.”
Lisa stood and stretched. Her shirt lifted just above the top of her pants, revealing a small band of white fur. I itched to know if it was as soft as it looked.
“I’ll go too,” Elaine said.
Marie shook her head when they looked at her. “I’ll get some of the other rooms ready. We need some barracks, I suppose, if we’re making soldiers.”
I watched as they parted ways and ached to help them. My whole life I’d helped physically, been the manpower, and now I was stuck behind a screen watching as my girls did all the heavy lifting.
I hated it.
Deep in the dark bowels of the base, something clicked. After an eternity of minutes, something took a breath. Hot, fetid air rolled through space. A chain rattled, and the smallest chirp of a computer terminal started flashing.
Chapter Thirteen
I watched Elaine and Lisa by the camera by the solar panels until they were out of view. I hoped they wouldn’t go far— it was still dangerous out there, and there were only two of them right now while the soldiers gestated in their tubes.
I was creating cats because we already had four rats and I was wary of Marie losing control over them. The cat’s stats were higher, too. I was holding off on the wolves for now. Ego had warned me that the wolf’s genetic makeup was harder to alter than the others when it came to obedience. I didn’t want to create a deadly predator that wouldn’t listen to my commands.
Hopefully the girls would find DNA for more creatures on their trip out and the options for soldiers would increase.
For now I watched Marie at work, though. She had left the rats to sleep in their normal room and moved through the second level dusting off apartments and making sure there were areas to sleep in even if they weren’t beds. We were creating cats for now, so she dragged large pillows and blankets into the rooms that would be comfy enough to lay down on.
When she did that for three rooms, she sunk down into the middle of the pillows and took a deep breath.
She looked exhausted. I was surprised to see her lay here like she was going to sleep rather than going back to the rats. She normally used them as her pillows.
I expected her to fall straight to sleep, but her face was scrunched up as she turned over again and again, trying to get comfy.
From my spot in the corner I could see straight up her shirt, at the curves of her ass as she lifted one leg higher and nestled down further into the pillows.
Then I saw a hand slip between her legs.
I wanted to swallow as she started rubbing, deftly avoiding scraping her claws on herself.
I would have been better for that job. I could have replaced her fingers with my clawless ones and had her coming in minutes, if I had a physical body.
Her breathing quickened and I’d have killed for a look inside her mind. What was she thinking about? Someone back home? From before? I’d never asked the girls much about their lives before I put their brains into new bodies, because it wasn’t something I wanted to talk about; I didn’t want them to go asking me about my life.
It was too raw a wound for all of us, I assumed.
But maybe not so raw that Marie couldn’t get herself off to it.
She turned onto her back, shirt around her waist by now and giving me a full view. Her cute face was scrunching up as her fingers moved in faster and faster circles.
Then she opened her eyes and looked straight into the camera.
“Oh,” she said softly when she saw the green light indicating I was watching.
Being horny without a body was a tortuous experience. He felt so completely useless, without even a hard on to validate how badly he wanted to touch her.
What made it worse was that she didn’t stop.
She spread her legs further, looked straight into the camera, and kept rubbing herself, teasing me.
“When I get myself a body I’m going to join you,” I said, voice strained.
That pushed Marie over the edge and she arched her back, screwing her eyes shut. “Yes, sir,” she said through short breaths. “I look forward to it.”
I had to find something else to do after that to distract myself from the insane injustice of me being stuck in this camera while a cute woman lay waiting for me.
Elaine and Lisa coming back was a distraction and more torture all at once.
Was Marie the only one who looked forward to me getting my human body back? Elaine and Lisa must have sex drives too, and I was more than willing to watch until I could sate them.
“We brought things back!” Elaine said, voice chirpy, as they entered the lab. She held up a small lizard by the tail.
“Iguana,” Ego said. It had been so quiet since I’d been with Marie that I’d almost forgotten about Ego. Had he been there watching, or had his media files taught him something about privacy?
“Well it’s cute, anyway
.” Elaine tickled its belly.
“It’s not dead?” I asked.
“Of course not! It was so friendly. It didn’t judge my freaky cat body.”
Lisa rolled her eyes and presented a series of very dead specimen. One small bird with a sharp beak, an arachnid of some sort, and a medium-sized snake. “We didn’t want to engage anything too big, and you can make them bigger here anyway, with the blueprint, can’t you? Like with the rats.”
“We can,” Ego confirmed.
“Can you affect living things?” Elaine inquired, releasing the iguana’s tail. The creature came to sit on her shoulder rather than scuttling off like I’d expected. “If not then I’ll just keep him as a pet.”
Lisa wrinkled her nose. “She saved the thing from being eaten by an owl. It must have mutated to have a sense of loyalty.”
“It’s just grateful,” Elaine muttered. “Besides, who would want to live out there when they could live in here instead?”
“We can work on living creatures,” Ego confirmed out loud. And to me, “Though I can’t guarantee it will be successful.”
I looked at the iguana. It would be a very useful blueprint to have. “We should see if we can increase its size,” I said.
“Great!” Elaine said, and then began speaking to the creature that definitely couldn’t understand her.
Lisa stretched. “I’m going to bed.”
I left Ego to instruct Elaine what to do with the iguana and followed Lisa silently through the corridors. She was stoic and strong as she took a long route to her bedroom she’d claimed as her own.
She passed through the room with my still gestating human body and paused for a moment to look at it.
“Soon,” she said, under her breath. “Soon you’ll be able to join us.”
Chapter Fourteen
Making plans and executing orders meant thinking there were receptive and reasonable people on the other end. Cara had none of that. It was only by Sampson’s gentle insistence that she allowed Isaiah and his team to join the expedition to the mountain kingdom.
It was unanimously decided by both groups that Cara was the recipient of the largest treasure cache ever discovered. They debated it. Victor disputed it. But in the end, all the red, except for the three McKinneys, believed Cara had the prize. But like all good things, it came with a price.
Eight went out. Six came back. They came back empty-handed. It all started on a Monday.
“Are you taking the group out today?” Sampson asked mildly. He knew better than to press Cara. She didn’t respond well to forceful direction. Many of the community became her new best friends when news of her find reached everyone.
Everyone in the parish knew she shared her spoils. They all had their hands out. The young girls of the village started dressing like her. Even some of the red team children had blue tartans made out of snakeskin. Most of the adolescent girls dressed in the same casual manner as Cara. Wearing their hair unfettered, minimal clothing, no tunics under tartans, and either shorts or short skirts. Even little Jimmy from the red team dressed in a skirt and halter top. He was eight-years-old, and his parents were very supportive.
It wasn’t that Cara wanted to make any fashion statements; she didn’t want all the layers because it was too damned hot.
The boots were unique. Sampson handcrafted the battle boots specifically for her. It was her trademark, no denying it. Those tall leather boots, short skirts, halter tops, and flowing strawberry-blonde hair only took second place to the voluptuous lips and mesmerizing eyes.
“I’m thinking about it,” Cara finally told her father. It was the same answer she’d given him or anyone else over the last week.
She tired of eating rattlesnake and went back to the garden to find something fresher to eat. The village had rattlesnake for a week after the kill. There were still strips of snake jerky stacked in the pantry.
“Hey Cara,” Maurice called from outside the hut. Still loyal and unburdened by Cara’s sudden fame, he didn’t miss a beat. “Are you going out to the kingdom today? And don’t tell me you’re thinking about it.”
He wandered inside and dropped on the thatched sofa. The brittle wood creaked under him. He made a face at Sampson. “Sorry,” he whispered.
“Let me know what you have planned,” Sampson told his daughter as he wandered outside. “I am going to Widow Barnes’s to help work in her garden.”
When Sampson strolled away from the house, Maurice giggled and said, “Is that what they call screwing now?”
“I heard that!” shouted Sampson from yards away.
“How does he do that?” Maurice made a pouty face at Cara. “When are you going back there? You can’t just put it off.”
“I’m not interested in Isaiah taking over as soon as we leave the village.”
“You know that’s how he is,” Maurice said. He wandered to the pantry and returned to the couch chewing on a strip of meat. “You know if you don’t go back there soon, the village elders are just going to take it away from you. And if that happens, Isaiah gets it all anyway because his daddy will make sure of it.”
“I’m not worried about Victor either.”
“Then what is it?”
Cara thought for a minute. “There’s something in there.”
“Yeah,” Maurice chimed, rolling the strip of rattlesnake meat around in his hand. “A whole lot of loot.” And he jumped from the couch and did a little preemptive victory dance for Cara.
She smiled. “It’s not just that.”
“Was it that rat huge?” Maurice asked. “I know it’s bad, I know I shouldn’t say it, but I would have loved to see the look on Troy Vaughn’s face when that thing pulled him into the hole.” Maurice flicked a thin bone across the floor from the strip. “That guy was an asshole.”
“I’m not worried about the giant rats.” Cara shook her head. She stood up and stretched. Maurice was a human male; he had tastes that didn’t include Cara’s gender for his personal gratification. But she had a body that made even gay men take notice. “There’s just something about the place.”
“You know I can’t believe no one saw it before.”
“The entrance is well hidden. I’ll bet there are access points all over that mountain we never saw. I bet Isaiah and his group probably walked by the door a hundred times and never looked up. It was the fire that first caught your eye, remember? Part of the path that leads to the steel door is destroyed. We couldn’t take a cart up there.” Cara put on the tartan her father designed for her. The molded front pressed against her breasts but helped secure them if she needed to run. She laced the battle boots and took up the halberd. Maurice knew she was ready.
“What I really want is those solar panels. Can you imagine what we could do with a steady supply of power like that?”
Cara led them into the desert around three that Monday. In hindsight, they should have left earlier in the day. When the sun sunk below the mountains, the light ripped from the broad valley, they made camp and started two fires.
Red leader, Isaiah’s group, consisted of Karl, Mercury, and Gemini. They didn’t have last names, or at least when they arrived at the camp, they didn’t share names. They didn’t share history either. Sampson said they were young and frightened, escaping the beasts. Both were in their mid-twenties. If they had more ambition in life, they’d have more points between the two of them.
It was all about the points. Cara didn’t care about the points. But she’d heard over the years some reds and blues didn’t work together, they fought to the death over a saltine cracker. While Cara didn’t know what saltine, or even what a cracker was, she was sure they weren’t worth fighting and dying for, but she was cautious with her opinions. She felt it was better to wait and see and react before something clawed your eyes out. If that meant a few people got lost in the course of action, then it was part of how life singled out people.
Maurice made a fire. It burned bright. He put more kindling and dry scrub brush into the flames. Th
e campfire intensified and grew in strength. A few minutes later, red team’s fire a hundred yards away escalated to match the height. Cara shook her head. Men were always too concerned with comparing sizes.
For Maurice, it was about the added security a big fire meant. He felt critters were less likely to steal away anyone in the night if the light was whopping. He sat teasing the fire with Wilbert in a rattlesnake head sombrero sitting close with his back to the fire and two hands around his sword in his lap. He had night terrors, and Cara was impressed he volunteered to join her team.
She didn’t have to worry about anyone joining her. Even some of the elders stepped up when she asked for volunteers. Everyone wanted a piece of the action. If she died, the mountain treasure was up for grabs. She knew Isaiah counted on slippery accidents and sharp points. She wanted to warn her team, but somehow she felt it came off paranoid if she said to watch out for the red team.
Cara wanted everyone to get along. It made sense to share. It made sense to help each other. But the more she listened, the more she saw how people treated each other, it made her realize people didn’t care.
Once when she was six years old, the blue team returned and everyone was somber. Her father was quiet. But they had more food. He left the hut and returned a short time later with a doll for Cara. The toy, she remembered, came from a shelter of a friend. Sampson and Cara shared their meals with this friend. He allowed Cara to play with the doll at the house, but never to take it home.
It surprised her to see Sampson with the doll. It was now hers. She was happy, played with the toy. But the hut where she shared dinners with her father was dark. The friend left on a trek and never returned. People of the community went through the shed and took what they wanted of the estate. Nothing was left. Eventually, a growing family with enough points to cash in took over the hut.