That Which is Unexpected

by A.L. Bridges

  Chapter 3: That was completely unethical…

  [May 21st]

  I wake up in the middle of the night, the projector clock on the ceiling telling me that it is 2:05am with an ambient blue glow. To my left, I see Cheza’s naked back. After grabbing the covers and pulling them up to her shoulders, I slowly slide out of bed. I pad across the room and quietly shut the door behind me as I walk into the kitchen.

  Ah yes, barkeep. I would like a snickers bar and something sugary to drink. Pineapple juice? Sure, why not. I finish off a glass and start to walk back to the room when I notice the light on in the other bedroom. I quietly walk over while carefully listening. I hear Natasha breathing heavily but nothing else (like the sound of a couple of batteries rattling around). Nonetheless, I knock softly on the door first, and then I open it slowly.

  “Hey Natasha, are you alright?” I ask as I slowly peek around the door.

  Natasha is sitting out of bed, dressed in a tank top and boys-shorts, blanched and covered in sweat.

  “Hey Cole, good timing actually. Come in,” Natasha says, still breathing heavily. I shut the door behind me, walk over, and sit to the left of her on the bed.

  “What’s got you all… at 2 am?” I ask while gesturing to her current state.

  “Well there are a number of things that could have me sweating and breathing heavily at 2am, Cole,” Natasha replies while trying to force a smile.

  “Let’s just say I had a bad dream… Cole, I need you to promise me that you won’t go anywhere without your weapons for the next few days,” Natasha adds.

  “Yeah. Sure, Natasha. Do you want me to get you anything?” I ask.

  “Well, could you help me with my shoulders?” Natasha requests while folding her right leg underneath her on the bed so that her back is facing me. “Could you grab my left shoulder and pull it back gently while you massage my shoulder blade?”

  “I’ll give it a shot,” I say and I do as she instructed.

  “Yeah Cole, that’s it. That feels great. Now use your fingers to massage the tip,” Natasha says. Is it just me or did that sound sexual?

  “COLE!? WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!?” Cheza screams while barging through the door wearing one of my t-shirts. Well, at least I wasn’t the only one who thought it sounded sexual.

  “Cheza, this isn’t what it looks like,” I calmly explain.

  I’m suddenly very not calm when it becomes sexual as Natasha grabs my left hand, which had previously been pulling her shoulder back, and sets it on her left breast.

  “I’m sorry, Chezarei, but he’s just so damn good! I can’t help myself!” Natasha exclaims while giving an exaggerated moan.

  “FIRST A VAMPIRE HOOKER AND NOW YOU CHEAT ON ME WITH BOOBZILLA!?” Cheza screeches.

  I would like to tell her that we aren’t actually dating or anything so I can’t cheat on her, but now doesn’t seem like the time.

  “No, Cheza! I was just—” I start to say.

  “COLE TREYFAIR! IF YOU DO NOT TAKE ME INTO THAT OTHER ROOM AND HAVE SEX WITH ME, I’M GOING TO STAB YOU!” Cheza screams in complete hysterics.

  “Airi, a little help here?” I plead.

  (Avoid words like irrational)

  “Thanks, I got that. Anything else?”

  (…Do as she says)

  “WHAT!?” I scream out loud.

  “Perhaps you should just do as she says, Cole,” Natasha suggests.

  All of the women are against me! I know! I’ll try to channel Jason telepathically! At least I know that he’ll have my back.

  “What should I do, bro?” I ask.

  “You should… do as she says, take her into the other room, and sex her into a coma,” my inner Jason replies. I should have known. Jason always has my back, just not in the correct way this time.

  As if answering my prayer, my blood sings out to me… from within Cheza. I look at her completely furious face and I remember how she and Tia tricked me into thinking that the babydoll incident had all been a dream. Payback time.

  I wave my hand in an arc at her eye level as I block the blood flow to her brain. When she starts to fall, I race up and catch her. I do a quick check to make sure everything is alright and that she won’t suffer any ill effects from it.

  “Good to go, except for one loose end…” I say as I cradle Cheza in my arms and turn towards Natasha, who looks slightly frightened of me.

  “Can you do that to anyone?” Natasha asks warily. I lift my hand and wave it in front of her face as she tenses up and her eyes go wide.

  “Haha no, I can’t. I ended up having to give Cheza a blood transfusion so my blood is still in her and I just used that blood to block the oxygen flow to her brain a little. I’m hoping she’ll wake up thinking this was all a dream,” I lightheartedly say with a smile as Natasha relaxes a bit.

  “So if you tell her about this, I’ll kill you,” I sternly tell Natasha after wiping expression from my face. I start towards the door and then stop in the threshold and turn.

  “See! I can make jokes too, mine just aren’t very funny,” I say while smiling at a horrified Natasha who is now completely uncertain of me. Perhaps it’s a little better this way.

  (That was completely unethical… I enjoyed it)

  I put Cheza in bed and then I close my eyes, take my shirt off of her, turn her on her left side, and pull the covers up to her shoulders. I open my eyes so I can get into the left side of the bed without killing myself. See, it’s the little details that help you get away with shit like this.

  (Shit like blocking the blood flow to your sister/fiancée’s brain so you can manipulate her?)

  “Well, it sounds bad if you put it like that…”

  I can’t believe I just did that… what came over me? I turn over to fall asleep, only to have a sex dream about Cheza. Natasha suddenly makes a guest appearance and things get a little weird… until I wake up. I get up and go out to the bar, finding that Natasha is already there and that she is unable to meet my eyes.

  “What you did last night was… umm…” Natasha starts to say as I remember the terrible thing I did to her.

  “Yeah, I’m… uh… sorry about that. You don’t need to be afraid or anything,” I tell her.

  “Afraid? Why? It felt great! And you showed me a whooole new use for a ping pong paddle,” Natasha says. Now it is I that can’t meet her eyes. I guess the Natasha in my dream was actually Natasha…

  “What are you guys talking about?” Cheza asks while rubbing her head and yawning as she walks in from the bedroom.

  “Oh, nothing,” Natasha says with a smile.

  “How do you feel, Cole?” Cheza inquires with a concerned look.

  “I’m fine, Cheza. What were you screaming about anyway?” I ask.

  “There was a weird bug on the wall and Chezarei freaked out when she saw it,” Natasha answers while Cheza looks away in shame.

  “Hey, I need to go to The Agency’s local office and check in so you two are going to be on your own for today,” Natasha adds.

  “Cole, if I remember correctly, I believe that you owe me a date!” Cheza exclaims while beaming. I vaguely remember promising something to that effect as she was straddling me while I was handcuffed to my bed.

  “Alright, we can keep an eye out for whatever Jason was talking about while we’re at it,” I reply.

  “Yay! I’ll go get ready!” Cheza squeals and then runs into the bedroom.

  “Cole, remember what I said last night. It may be a good idea to wear a bulletproof vest or something as well,” Natasha whispers seriously.

  I nod in response and walk into the bedroom to use the shower, only to hear that Cheza is currently using it. So, I gather up some clothes and start to walk back to the main room, towards the other bathroom. Natasha is standing in the doorway, smiles at me, and then laughs as she goes inside; however, she doesn’t shut the door all the way. I think she is implying that I can a) take a shower with Cheza or b) take a shower with her. It’s not like I can just wait it ou
t or anything. Perhaps that was just wishful thinking on her part. I walk over and close the bathroom door without so much as a peek in.

  “If only I had known that taking a peek would have saved the world from enslavement by the shark people!” I chuckle to myself. It’s nice to know that something is so ridiculous that there is absolutely no chance of it happening. I sit down and have a glass of juice with half of a grapefruit.

  Then three Shark people break through the front door. That’s a shark head on a human body with the possibility of a dorsal appendage, I don’t know, I’m a little preoccupied by the rows of teeth. My vision switches to, what I guess is, combat mode so that I can see their auras. Normal white outlines, but their centers are cyan and with a white shark’s mouth that is open.

  “OH, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!” I shout as I stand, break my drinking glass on the table, and use the shards to slice open my wrist.

  I run forward and meet an advancing shark man in the hallway. After dodging the giant snapping mouth that was aimed at my head, I take the broken glass and smash it into his eye. It just occurred to me that sharks don’t have necks, so if I can just get around him… I’d walk straight into another set of teeth. Stupid hallway!

  While the shark man is preoccupied with the giant shard of glass sticking out of his eye, I form a twelve-inch Sic dagger and stab it into his other eye, wiggling it around to make sure I destroy the brain.

  (Legs)

  Airi says as a second shark man dives through his dead friend’s legs. I respond by pulling the Sic dagger out of his friend, jumping, and spinning around. I slam the blade down through his skull with my landing. Thankfully, there is no dorsal appendage because my testicles would hurt right about now if there were.

  (Scoot back one foot)

  I obey and a set of jaws appears in front of my face as I notice shark man number three’s right arm by my shoulder. I stab the Sic blade into his right knee as I grab his right hand with my left to throw him over my shoulder and into the table. Before he can recover, I launch forward from my crouched position and land on his chest.

  “ALL! I WANTED! WAS TO ENJOY! MY BREAKFAST! WITHOUT! ALL THIS! CRAZY! SHIT!” I scream, stabbing him in the neck with each exclamation and consequentially getting red everywhere. “IS THAT! SO MUCH! TO FUCKING! ASK!?”

  “Cole?” I hear Cheza ask.

  I turn around and see her in only a towel, giving me a concerned look. Natasha is fully dressed and has her gun drawn, but she looks slightly shocked, most likely because of the blood that’s everywhere, including on me. I get my first look at Natasha’s aura, which I’m surprised to see is a lot like Cheza’s. However, Natasha’s aura is white on the outside instead of silver and the blue in the center is more of a navy blue, with the same frosty white encroaching from the sides.

  “Natasha, cover the door while I go wash some of this red off of me. Cheza, I don’t want you getting farther than ten feet from me,” I order.

  I walk into the bedroom, grab my holster, head into the bathroom, and throw the bloody Sic dagger in the sink.

  “Cheza, get dressed in whatever, but wear shoes,” I shout into the bedroom as I start stripping.

  I quickly rinse the blood off of me and put on a pair of tan cargo shorts, my holster, and my jacket. I wash off the Sic dagger and stick it in the pouch of my holster as a backup, making clinking noises on contact with the metal magazines. Walking out of the bathroom, I see Cheza sitting on the bed wearing jean shorts and a light blue, checkered plaid button-up shirt that she has tied in a knot just above her navel. She is also wearing matching Converses. Good girl. I motion for Cheza to follow me as I head for the door.

  “Natasha?” I call out from behind the door.

  “Clear,” she calls back and I walk out.

  “But I don’t think we will be getting our deposit back,” Natasha jokes, but it’s obvious that she’s on edge.

  “Alright, first thing’s first: I need to call Tia. That’s a stupid saying. Of course the first thing is going to be first; otherwise it wouldn’t be the first thing!” I babble before recovering.

  “Natasha, I need you to call down to the front desk and ask if there are any people waiting by the elevator and have them check the security cameras for the beach elevator,” I tell her.

  There’s no way a hotel like this wouldn’t have cameras covering the elevator used solely by their richest guests. I pull out my phone and hold the home button.

  “Call Tia,” I say to my smartphone’s voice navigation that shares Airi’s name, with the exception of a change in the first letter.

  “Heeeeello?” Tia answers.

  “Hey Tia, I need to ask you some—” I start to say.

  “No Cole, you cannot actually sex someone into a coma. Chezarei or Natasha will wake up in a few hours,” Tia interrupts.

  “That’s not—” I reply.

  “IT WAS BOTH CHEZAREI AND NATASHA!? Way to go Cole! I had hopes, but they weren’t that high!” Tia exclaims, interrupting again.

  “Let me fini—” I try to say.

  “You don’t have to worry about something like that! It doesn’t matter where you finished. Just call down to the concierge and have them bring you a morning-after pill, or two as applicable,” Tia says and I nearly face-palm in response.

  “The other thing I called—” I say.

  “YOU GOT TO TRY THE OTHER HOLE TOO!?” Tia asks.

  “WHAT!?” I finally got to finish one.

  “What naughty girls! Was it Natasha or Chezarei? If she really is a younger me, then my money is on Natasha. But if it was Chezarei, I swear I didn’t teach her that. The other things, however…” Tia trails off.

  “I’m hanging up now,” I reply.

  “Glad I could help, Cole! Talk to you later! Oh, and if they don’t wake up in a few hours, check for a pulse and then call me. We’ll go from there. You might want to call down to the front desk and see how much bleach and lye they have, just in case things go south,” Tia says as I hang up.

  I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. That conversation just raised far more questions than it answered. I’ll call Sara, like I should have done in the first place.

  “Uh, Cole? We might have a problem,” Natasha announces.

  “What kind of problem?” I ask with my eyes still closed.

  “The ‘beach elevator security camera is malfunctioning’ kind,” Natasha replies.

  “I’ll go check it out. Stay here and guard the room. Cheza, stay in the room,” I tell them.

  I step over the bodies, go out the busted door, and carefully head down the hall to the left. I get to the elevator and see that it is coming up. This elevator is exclusively for this floor and the floor below it so this could be bad… or it could be some rich kids and their mom. I decide to be prepared just in case, and then I get an awesome idea.

  I pull out the Sic dagger and wedge it between the doors to pry them open. This way, if the elevator stops on sixteen, there’s no problem. If it keeps going, however… It seems that luck is on my side as the door dings on the sixteenth floor. I’m glad that I can relax now.

  “Shit for brains, it’s the seventeenth floor, not the sixteenth!” someone in the car says.

  Why me? The car starts moving slowly up to this floor and I execute my plan. As the top of the car passes by, I silently step on. I see the emergency hatch is at the back of the car: perfect. I quietly open it as the door dings. I peer in and see three men carrying P90 submachine guns. All I know about the P90 is from video games and in every one that I’ve played, it kicks considerably more ass than the MP5 and its magazine is also around twice the size. The stakes in this just got a little higher.

  They move quietly out of the car as I drop down behind them. They cautiously head down the hall in a ‘winner’s podium’ formation (2-1-3). I step up behind ‘third place’ near the right wall of the hall and I stab the Sic dagger through his cervical vertebrae, severing his spinal cord completely and cutting off all sound.
I quietly lower his body to the ground and move towards my next target. While slowly and silently walking across the hall to the guy on the left, I find myself thinking that the leader is doing a shit job. Aren’t there supposed to be hand motions or at least some confirmation that your team isn’t way behind you, letting you go on alone to ‘feel out the situation’ while they smoke weed with some local strippers?

  Of course, as I’m thinking this and closing in on second guy, the leader turns around and his eyes go wide with surprise. Now that stealth is out and I don’t have to worry about noise or air displacement, I speed up and off number two. I grab the guy, using him as a shield as I rush toward the leader, until something catches me off guard. Looking over my shield’s shoulder, I see that the leader has a shark head that I’m pretty sure wasn’t there a second ago… I mean, I’d remember something like that, right? They must be were-sharks.

  (Congratulations. This has been your redemption for the ‘were-bat’ fiasco)

  The leader starts firing his P90 into his buddy. I throw the body towards him and then dive to the right, pulling out my gun and firing three times. I really wish I had a second gun right now so I could Woo-it-up… oh and some doves. You really can’t forget the doves.

  Mr. Sharky must not have expected this because his chest bursts from the surprise… or was that from the bullets? Either way, it finished the job and he falls over.

  (The intelligent thing to do would be to retrieve the weapons and use them)

  “Good idea, Airi!”

  I rush back to the first dead body and grab the P90’s strap, throwing it around my neck as I search his cargo shorts for extra magazines, finding two. Courtesy of the adroit part of my Drive, I now know that the P90 has a 50 round magazine and fires fifteen rounds per second at a velocity of 2315 ft/s under optimal conditions, which is almost twice the speed of the MP5. Heh, glad I had a shield. I’m finding the same with the second body when I hear Cheza.

  “Cole…? COLE!?” Cheza shouts.

  “Chezarei, wait! He told you to stay here!” Natasha exclaims.

  I see both of them run out into the hall.

  “Look guys! I found new toys to play with!” I reply while smiling and holding up a gun.

  “COLE!” Cheza screams.

  I spin and throw the Sic dagger in Sharky’s open mouth and through the back of his neck; however, he still has time to squeeze the trigger. I probably could have gotten out of the way after throwing the knife, but I can’t with Cheza behind me and in the line of fire. It just had to be a P90, with its 50 round magazine. The fire rate isn’t all that much higher than an MP5. The difference is that in one second, the MP5 empties its magazine so there is no way I would take thirteen rounds to the chest from an MP5 that had been fired previously. Thankfully I’m wearing my jacket.

  (That you neglected to zip)

  “THAT WAS SO FUCKING NINJA!” I scream with my hands above my head.

  (Three, stomach)

  “Cole!?” Cheza asks, tears welling up in her eyes.

  “I’m fine, Cheza! They all hit the jacket you gave me, so thank you!” I answer while dropping the guns and rushing forward to hug her, hoping that she won’t notice the bullet holes in my stomach. With the blood seal being a maroon color and since I’m tan, it shouldn’t be too noticeable and I can’t let Cheza know. However, when I see Natasha’s eyes widen, I realize that she definitely noticed.

  “Hey Natasha, could you go collect the guns? I need to go wash some of this blood off of my hands before the police show up about the gun shots. Cheza, could you go as well? She probably won’t be able to carry everything. Make sure to check that guy’s pockets, I checked the other two already,” I ask and then jog off to the room.

  I think ahead and go to the guest bathroom because Cheza is less likely to go in there soon, or at least before I can clean up the blood that is bound to result from what I’m going to do.

  “Alright, Airi. How do I get these bullets out?” I think.

  (Jumping Jacks)

  She says it so seriously that I almost do it. “Come on, Airi!”

  (Fill your stomach up with blood. You will then be able to vomit the bullets out)

  I’m about to object, but then I realize that it is actually possible.

  “Hey Cole, are you alright?” Cheza asks through the door.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Can you call Sara and ask her if she knows anything about were-sharks? My conversation with Tia before was less than helpful,” I request, hoping that her phone is in the bedroom.

  “Sure. I’ll go give her a call,” Cheza replies and leaves.

  I enhance my hearing to make sure she is in our bedroom, and then Natasha walks into the bathroom.

  “Cole, how bad is it?” Natasha asks seriously.

  “The conversation? Oh, it was horribly uninformative but I learned that if you really are a younger version of her, then you like anal sex,” I say with a smile but pain interferes. Natasha just glares at me so I get serious. “Three in my stomach.”

  “Cole! We need to get you to the hospital!” Natasha exclaims.

  “No! If I go to the hospital then Cheza will blame herself for not listening and leaving the room. Besides, Airi says that I can get all three out by filling up my stomach with blood and then vomiting the bullets up,” I tell her.

  “WHO IN THE HELL IS AIRI!?” Natasha loudly whispers.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you but don’t get concerned. She’s this voice in my head that gives me useful information. She also has a wicked sense of humor. I named her Airi because she sounds like the voice from my smartphone,” I say. Natasha thinks for a second, and then looks concerned.

  “Cole, did Airi tell you to do that thing to Chezarei last night?” Natasha cautiously asks.

  “Umm, no… that was kind of all me. Airi actually told me I should ‘do as she says’,” I inform her.

  “Oh, okay… What about that thing with the ping pong paddle?” Natasha asks with a sly smile. “I’ll go keep Chezarei distracted, but try to hurry.”

  (If that girl ever locates a ping pong paddle, you are going to have a dilemma)