I answer with a gasp. I can’t think of anything to say. My knees are trembling and my face is already dappled in a thin sheen of sweat. Every single touch feels ethereal, and when my exploring fingers finally wrap around the full firmness of his erection, the sense of weightlessness triples.
“Penny,” he moans again, thrusting into my hand. Yet another noise I’ve never imagined him making, yet now will never be able to forget.
The skin of his cock is soft, the head silky smooth as it slips over my palm. I curl my hand into it, but he knocks me away with a mischievous little smirk.
“Funny,” he whispers against the skin of my cheeks, his his hand guides his length back toward my entrance. The blunt tip rests against my now naked folds. I’m completely bared to him, open and inviting, and I’m burning for it. I need it. I need him.
“What’s funny?” The sheets seem to envelop me as I stare up at him.
“You,” replies Oliver, distantly. “I never dared to believe you’d ever think of me like this. I had no idea.”
His smile is the last thing I remember seeing as his smooth, blunt sex breaches my barriers. He plunges into me, driving me down deeper, deeper, deeper, until the plush quilt swallows both of us whole.
I'm spat back out into hot, damp reality, tangled in blankets and drenched in my own sweat. Alone.
Oh my god, I did not just, I did not just…
But I did. The sleep fog lifts and dissipates, abandoning me with the memory of my subconsciousness’ deepest, darkest desires.
Sunlight streams through the camper’s windows. According to the LED clock, it’s already late in the morning. In the kitchenette, I hear the telltale rattle of a spoon stirring sugar into a mug.
Apparently not alone.
“Morning,” Oliver greets me, cheerful and unaware. The purple mug he’s now adopted as his own is clutched in one hand, brimming with milky pekoe. “Sleep well?”
I’m not entirely sure how best to answer that, and I’m even less convinced of my ability to vocalize at this point. He chuckles at my silence, shakes his head, and disappears out the side door into the crisp summer air, blissfully ignorant of my horror and shame.
Oh. My. God.
With a simpering groan, I sink down into the blankets, burying my face in my quilt. While it’s far from the filthiest dream I’ve ever had, those were definitely the dirtiest thoughts about Oliver to ever cross my mind, conscious or unconscious.
And now? It’s probably going to take an absolute miracle to distract me enough that I’m able to talk to him again, at least for the next few hours. A miracle, or a mission I simply can’t turn down.
16 Oliver’s Skepticism
My watch shift starts as always at ten o’clock, though I must admit, even as the most paranoid member of the team, it’s beginning to feel more than a little unnecessary.
Today is the seventh day since the Switchboard went up in flames. Despite our obsessive diligence in monitoring both local and national police departments, we’ve found nothing. While Alfie is content to cling to the belief that ‘no news is good news’, radio silence over a matter so public and so high-profile is mighty suspicious.
Our inability to locate the captain or any member of the active team is another reality which sadly doesn’t play to Alfie’s logic. Even Penny, through all of her stubbornness, is starting to realize they were likely located and taken down in very much the same way as the rest of the base.
“We’re off down the Globe tonight,” Duncan reminds me as I hand him his sugary black tea and we trade off shifts. “It’s that darts and killer pool night the eejit won't shut up about.”
“It’s fine, we can have a proper meeting tomorrow to discuss it all,” I say. A glance down at the KING newspaper folded on the picnic table tells me Duncan did his crossword but left me the sudoku as is the norm, and I smile despite the pounding of my headache. “It’s probably part of their mind games, I’m sure. Or maybe they legitimately think they successfully stamped all of us out.”
“Aye, wee-yin. Don’t let it do its work on you.” Duncan ruffles my hair, which I wish he wouldn’t do. Coupled with his little nickname for me, it makes me feel like a child. On the other hand, it’s almost like I have a big brother, and I’ve always wanted a big brother. “I'll be in back a-kip if you need ought. Just holler.”
I settle at the picnic table with my tea and the paper, casting a glance around the site. It’s a glorious morning. Even though it’s early in the season and the park isn't anywhere near at capacity, I can hear other families’ activities from several different directions. A green plastic fence around our pitch offers a humble amount of privacy, but the openness and communal atmosphere of the place is actually rather pleasant.
Maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad spot to hide out in for a bit longer, I muse, as a soft breeze picks up and tousles my hair across my face. It’s been a long and arduous road to traverse for me, all of this change, but I’m fully immersed in the light at the other end of the tunnel now, and I didn’t expect it to be so radiant. It’s an unanticipated but welcome surprise.
“Morning, nerd.”
“Hey-up.” Blush floods my cheeks at the recognition of Penny's voice, and I greet my lieutenant in a much more Northern manner. I try to avoid staring at her (or at least making it obvious that I'm doing so) as she nestles down opposite me, all blonde bedhead and last-night’s mascara. She’s as jaw-droppingly stunning when she's just rolled out of bed as she is the rest of the day.
I’m thrilled she can’t hear my thoughts, because despite the attention she’s been showing me over the past few days, I doubt she feels anywhere near the same about me. I’m probably just the kind of bloke you kiss and cuddle, not the kind of bloke you, well, you know. Shag.
She found the mug of tea I made her, which she knew to look for next to the kettle upon waking up, and is now gripping it in one hand. The other slides the second laptop we’ve been sharing this week onto the table: a piece of illegally imported computer hardware from America, a four-year-old WrightTech Airbook. We favor heavily WrightTech in B.L.A.Z.E.; a number of nifty features in the coding of their systems makes them easier to bolster against the Sovereignty’s security software.
This was a model her father left in a storage facility in the town center, along with a pair of walkie-talkies, a hand-crank AM/FM radio, and several flats of purified water and canned food. Duncan remarked as he and Penny returned from collecting it all that Stephen Starling was clearly a man obsessed with the idea of an oncoming apocalypse.
Penny was quick as a whip to remind him that we’re already practically living one.
“I know things have gotten a bit sexy between us recently,” she says as she sits down at the picnic table, her manner so carefree it’s almost a turn-on in itself. But Penny’s so good at hiding her true feelings in front of me, it could easily be an act. “But I don’t suppose you'd mind if I make it all about business again for a bit?”
She flips open the laptop, checks the tab, and spins it around to face me.
“What’s your read on this? Honestly?”
What she’s showing me is a compiled list of all phoned-in 999 tips regarding Anomaly activity, an auto-populating database I helped to code. We've been monitoring it religiously all week, but other than the initial underground explosions and the odd ridiculous entry (such as one of Duncan's favorites: “Surrey Police are responding to 60 Neptune Street, Guildford; resident reports the border collie he adopted from a shelter six months ago just turned back into a human and fled the premises”), nothing has really caught our eye.
Until now.
“West Sussex Police are responding to a third sighting,” I read aloud, struggling to process it all, “of a white male in the Selsey Bill area who fits the description of Stephen Starling: see NCA’s Most Wanted List.”
Oh my gif.
I hardly dare to peer up at her. I know what I’ll see when I do: pewter-blue eyes hot with fire, alight with hope, waiting with
bated breath for my keen assertion.
I can’t do it. I can't be the one to break her heart.
“Honestly,” she repeats herself, and this time, her tone is milder. I suck in a shaky breath to steady myself and answer her—honestly, as she wishes.
“It’s a bit too good to be true. And a bit too convenient. Fifty-eight thousand, three-hundred square miles of land, and your father is spotted in the same village as you a week after we’re hit by Branch 9?” I wince. “My biggest personal concern is that someone’s maybe tipped them off that you’re here, and this is a ploy to draw you out. It’s not like your visual likeness isn’t known to the Sovereignty.”
Penny frowns. “For them to connect me and my dad though?”
“It means they probably know your real name, or your real identity.”
Her frown tightens, and I don’t miss the way her eyes dart down toward her left wrist. The faint, circular outline of the disc beneath her skin is barely visible beneath the B.L.A.Z.E. ‘A’ tattooed overtop of it.
“They knew Copeland’s identity, too,” she says bluntly, and we both know the extreme lengths he went to in order to keep it safe.
“That—that doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means there’s a chance they could hone in on me. It means there’s a chance the scramble you’ve done on my Bit won’t be enough to fool the system any longer.”
“Penny…”
The general direction of this conversation is making me uncomfortable, and it isn’t even my body and my identity on the chopping block. The flinch of fear on my face is a stark contrast to the determination and sheer doggedness hardening the pretty lines of hers.
“I’ll do whatever it takes,” she says calmly, resolutely. “Whatever it takes.”
The frightening thing is that I know, from personal experience, she’s not all mouth. She’ll back it up with her trousers, too. When it comes down to our war with the Sovereignty, at least for Penny Starling, the ends quite often justify the means. When it comes to her personal health and safety, anyway.
“Duncan and I want to have a team meeting tomorrow, anyway,” I say, in an effort to steer our chat in a bit less of a depressing direction. “So, why don’t we bring it up with the guys and see if they want to investigate? It’s probably a lure of some sort, but even still, if everyone agrees we should look into it, then we should look into it. You know we’d all be more than willing to do that for you.”
Penny smiles with an exhale of laughter, but the façade seems weak. “Any time?”
“Any time.”
“Brill.” Closing the laptop, she stands and collects her mug. “Thanks for the brew, by the way. I’m going down the gym for my workout, won’t be longer than an hour. You all right here on your own?”
“Alfie’s out cold?”
“Sleeping off a savage hangover, yeah. I imagine Duncan’ll be out soon, too.”
“He said as much. I’ll be fine, I’ve got lots of work to do here before all the revelry tonight.”
Penny nods, sternly. “I cannot wait to establish my dominance as the King of Killer Pool, you have no idea.”
“I can’t believe you haven’t gone out in over a week.”
“Oh, naff off.” She pulls a face at me, but regardless of the comical way she twists it, she’s completely unable to make it unattractive to me. Hilarious, yes. Unattractive, it doesn’t seem entirely possible.
“Hey?” I say as she’s turning to leave, and she rotates on the spot, glancing back.
“Yeah, love?”
I’ve never been a master of facial expressions, but I do everything in my power to gift her with the warmest, sweetest, most genuine smile I’m able to conjure up.
“Don’t go mad thinking about this. We’ll find him, Penny. I promise.”
She returns my smile before wandering back into the van for her workout gear,. Even if I were sharper at reading others’ emotions via their expressions, she’s so good at hiding how she feels I wouldn’t be able to tell if my words were any comfort to her whatsoever.
17 Penny’s Stolen Chance
My bat slides easily into its makeshift frog, sitting snug in its leather strap across my back almost in the fashion of an archer’s quiver. I’ve found through trial and error, it’s the simplest weapon to carry on my person, given its relatively commonplace appearance and its versatility when coupled with my Anomaly Magicks. The idea of transmuting a wooden bludgeoning item came to me after a friend loaned me his cricket bat at a protest march, a la Shaun of the Dead—an iconic British film from back before KING Entertainment controlled everything we watch and read and hear. But I’ve found the baseball bat offers a comfier grip and a more aerodynamic swing.
Alfie and I were reunited two years ago via B.L.A.Z.E.; the instant he laid eyes upon my weapon of choice, he practically pissed his pants. “Laugh it up if you want to, mate,” I told him, short and blunt, and once he had seen with those same two eyes the havoc I can wreak with this sucker, he stopped judging me. And it.
My morning workout at the camp site’s gym (nae, large awkward echo chamber with dumbbells and mats) provided me with an hour of alone time, which I used to reflect upon my online discovery. What’s the possibility all of this is a trap? If Branch 9 were able to recover information about me from the Switchboard and cross-referenced with what they already knew about me, there’s a strong possibility they already know my name.
From there, it doesn't take much brain juice to deduce my parental lineage, especially given the richly-detailed information the Sovereignty stores in its BitID databank. And any wanker with a psychology degree can determine that a child who fights this hard after they stole her daddy away from her is clearly doing it for a reason.
I can’t believe I'm doing this, I think as I head past the brick building that houses the toilets and showers, but it’s a lie. I can. It’s not entirely out of character for me to haul personal responsibility onto my own shoulders in order to avoid leaning on my teammates too much. Though, I note as I catch sight of the humble church peeking through the trees in the distance, I may be taking things perhaps a step too far on this occasion by investigating this lead without the boys at my back.
This area was once neatly-groomed farmland relying on the hard labor of European immigrants, according to the research I did before making the trek to Church Norton, a hamlet just north of Selsey Bill. Once those without English or Welsh grandparents were ‘exiled’, for lack of a better word, and Britain closed off its borders to the rest of the continent (and the rest of the world), the farms went out of business and Mother Nature was allowed to reclaim the acres which had previously been tamed.
A waist-high stone wall marks the entrance to the St. Wilfrid’s Chapel grounds. The Holy Eucharist, declares a rust-eaten blue sign on the wall, is celebrated on or near the following days: Lammas day, St. Wilfrid’s day, All Souls day. The message is half-shrouded in shrubbery, which has also entirely consumed what once may have been a community notice board.
This, I declare silently to myself, always a proponent of stating the obvious, is a balls-old church.
It begs the question, well, gee, Penny, why would your father be taking refuge in a ramshackle old religious building which barely looks sturdy enough to protect itself, let alone a soul in need? Unfortunately, it’s a question to which I currently have no answer, especially as Dad was never particularly spiritual in any way. It may simply be a matter of function over faith.
Built into the stone wall is a large wooden lychgate, entangled in a thick mesh of ivy. One would presume if this area were booby-trapped in any way, the gate would be a confirmed location of a trigger. Instead, I hunker down low and pluck a small pebble from the ground beside me, tossing it up and over the wall.
Other than the rustling noise of years of leaves being disturbed, nothing happens.
The trees all around are abundant with wildlife, and it’s impossible to discern anything unnatural through the Greatest Hits of the British South Co
ast: Avian Cover Edition concert I'm being treated to. My loose muscles flex as my hand alleviates the weight of the weapon from my back. A few slow, steady breaths ease my heart rate down a couple beats per minute.
Solo missions are more challenging than missions where you have back-up, in almost every single aspect: you’ve got to know how to effectively play two or more roles in the same game without dropping any balls, how to take care of yourself with no one at your back, and how to get in and get out again with minimal mess or fuss, because you do not have a clean-up crew of the same magnitude as you would performing the same objectives but with a larger group.
… and I don’t mean any of that sexually.
I vault easily onto the wall and remain crouched, peeking through the tapestry of leaves and branches. An open stretch of about forty or so meters lays between my current position and the stone chapel, if I avoid the pathway and dart directly across the lawn. Not that I have any evidence I would be able to easily access the inside, or that I would even be safer there than I would be outside. From what I know from my research, this is nothing but a run-down old church. But that's the thing about living in a world with Anomalies: nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
My breaths are drawn deep and deliberate as I concentrate on my body. From the tips of my toes within my trainers, ascending my legs to my waist, around my torso, and down the length of both arms to the very apex of each finger. Inch by inch, as if tugging an impervious but invisible catsuit onto my body with my mind. Safety first, I muse with a smirk, the familiar sensation of my skin’s outermost layer becoming taut and rigid signaling the completion of my shield.
No longer fully exposed, I ensure I remain armored as I drop from the wall as quietly as I can to the grass on the other side. See, if the coppers were to come poking about here, I have no doubts my father could evade them without breaking a sweat. I can’t see him trying to evade me—wanting to evade me in the same manner. Which is why, if he’s still here, I have no doubts he’ll show himself once he realizes who’s come knocking.
Blaze of Chaos Page 11