Book of the Dead: AESLI-00: (A reverse harem, post-pandemic, slow-burn romance) (The JAK2 Cycle, Book 1)

by V. E. S. Pullen

  Azzie: I told you I had a ride. You can go home now, stalker.

  Me: I wanted to make sure you weren’t going to bike home. It’s late and those bags looked heavy.

  Azzie: Mmmhmm.

  Me: For real.

  Azzie: You don’t have to lie to me, I know you want to get a piece of this sweet, sweet dungeon mASStery. Sorry, I’ve got enough playas in my life.

  Me: You’re such a dork.

  Azzie: Hate the player, not the game.

  Me: I’m ashamed of you for that.

  Azzie: Don’t you wish you could get a taste of my THACO?

  Me: Everything about this is wrong.

  Azzie: True beauty is all in the eyestalks of the beholder.

  Me: Honey b, just give me a chance. I’m like a Magic Missile, I always hit my mark.

  Azzie: Hah! You’re about as subtle as a fireball.

  Me: That line was a nat 20, and your save was a critical fail.

  Azzie: Maybe a dirty 20.

  Me: I’ll dirty your 20.

  Azzie: You’re making me blush the color of an ancient red dragon.

  Me: You’re no chromatic, honey b. Metallic all the way. Pure gold.

  Azzie: Stop with your flattery, I don’t lich you.

  Me: You’re mindflaying my ego here. Give me a chance?

  Azzie: For realz, I have to stop. I’m laughing so hard that I can’t breathe and Mouse is yelling at me for ignoring her.

  Me: I gnoll how it is. I’m as hot as faerie fire over here. Until next time, my own sweet Sune.

  Azzie: Damn. You’re good.

  I made a few more terrible D&D puns, but she didn’t respond, and I wondered if I’d gone too far comparing her to the beautiful, red-haired goddess of love and beauty. It wasn’t subtle, at all, but if she thought I was only saying it to get into her game then that would really suck — I may have started off trying to charm her into an invite, but somewhere around the beholder joke, it became something more.

  Just a distraction, I reminded myself.

  We’re only here until we get what we need, then we’re gone. No attachments.

  It doesn’t matter that watching her behind that screen was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen, that she makes me laugh more than I have in years, or that she can hold her own against a roomful of soldiers as easily as the Evil Twins.

  I failed my saving throw and now I’m under her spell. I’m so fucked.

  Two hours later, I got a text.

  Sune: One of my players had his shift change. If you can be free on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 4 to 8/9, then you can join my game. It’s a big commitment, I know how you pretty boys like your nights free, so don’t commit unless you mean it. You miss a session for anything that isn’t life or death and I boot you.

  Me: I can’t think of anything I want to do more on any night than play with you.

  Sune: We’ll see.

  Me: I have a couple characters I rolled on the advice of a guy at the store. What does the party need?

  Sune: Now is not a good time, I’m in the middle of something.

  Me: Okay, sure. Talk tomorrow?

  Sune: Maybe.

  Me: Okay, well, goodnight then.

  Sune: Night

  Chapter Thirteen

  Azzie

  “What did you do to my brother?”

  Tai rolled on his chair to my right, reaching for the dull needle Mouse had laid out for him. She was letting him do my phlebotomies today, under her guidance, so he could “get a feel” for the depth and angle of the buttonholes she was cultivating — so he could literally feel the give of my flesh and veins against the different needles. It was such a precise technique and one screwup could destroy weeks of work so she didn’t want his first time poking me to be unsupervised. Her words.

  “Argued with him several times, called him names, acknowledged we are sworn enemies, and let him hug me like the dirty old man he is,” I responded, smirking when Tai fumbled the collection tube. “Oh, he didn’t tell you that part? Yeah, there was hair sniffing and a boner involved.”

  “Oh my God.” His look of horror was priceless, but I chickened out. I didn’t want him to think less of his brother, at least not about this. Mouse was uncharacteristically silent, watching this play out like it was her favorite movie being reenacted in front of her.

  “Fine, I might have licked his neck a few times before the hair sniffing, and the boner stemmed from me saying I like how he tastes and want more.”

  “Jesus,” he shook his head, eyes closed as if in spiritual agony. “He’s your teacher.”

  “Oh, come on. We both know he’s not really a teacher.”

  Tai rolled his shoulders, looking pained. “Technically, he is. He picked up a certification before he enlisted, and he has to renew it next year or get a higher level one, but that doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Oh. I feel a little bad for messing with him now. I didn’t realize that having to enlist killed his dream.”

  “It didn’t. He didn’t have to enlist, he chose to, and he doesn’t want to teach, especially now that he’s had a taste of it. At the time, it made sense, but the world has changed.”

  Mouse approved the needle position, and he pushed it in. “You’re too slow,” I winced. “Go a little harder so it doesn’t hurt as much.”

  “Yeah, Tai-Tai. You’ve really gotta shove it in quick even if it hurts her. It’ll hurt less eventually.”

  “Mouse!” I snapped at her, face flaming, as Tai froze in place with a needle partially stuck into my arm. “Shut the fuck up! Tai, shove that fucker in before I start to bleed. Yes, I realize how that sounds, and if you end up with a boner because of this conversation, I’m never speaking to you or your brother again.”

  He glared at my arm, poking the needle in decisively and taping it down. “The two of you need to get laid. Not everything should be turned into an innuendo.”

  I winced, glad he wasn’t looking directly at me, and my eyes met Mouse’s. She gave me a small, sad smile. She didn’t agree with me but she understood, and because of that, she knew Tai’s comment cut deep. “Don’t ruin our fun,” she fake pouted at him, distracting him further while I tamped down all the feels.

  “How long do you have left on your enlistment?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “I’m done unless I re-up,” he said, almost gratefully. “I went in right after high school, even before the whole world-ending pandemic. I loved all the science classes in school, and after Basic, I immediately went into Combat Medic Specialist training while Spider went to college.”

  “How come you didn’t go to med school?” I asked, not thinking.

  He stiffened and his expression went cold. “No money,” he said abruptly, distant now as he changed out the collection tube to test my blood density and walked away with it.

  “DUDE!” Mouse whisper-shouted at me and I sank into my seat feeling like an asshole.

  But then I got mad. “No!” I snapped at her, sitting up straight again. “No, I’m not going to shut up. It really pisses me off that people like you and Tai — who should be doctors and researchers — are fucking lab techs when people like Kane got every goddamn privilege and assistance possible. She’s a fucking idiot!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a lab tech,” Mouse snarled back. “And I don’t want to be a fucking white coat. I’m happy with the work I’m doing, and it’s fucking meaningful.”

  “It’s not fair!”

  “Life isn’t fair! The world isn’t fair!”

  “LIKE I DON’T FUCKING KNOW THAT?” I roared, completely forgetting anyone else was in the lab. “There’s nothing GODDAMN FAIR about my life, I’m a fucking cow! That’s all I’ll ever be, but you should be recognized—”

  “Aez!” she barked at me, gesturing to where Tai stood in the doorway to the processing room. I snapped my mouth shut.

  “Don’t stop on my account, it was just starting to get interesting,” he said blandly, returning to his stool and swa
pping out the full tube with an empty one. “You’re at 62%. Still too high. I’m going to take a full pint.”

  “FUCK!” I cursed, hating everything. My stomach rebelled, acid churning, and a wave of nausea slapped me in the face.

  “You need to reduce your stress,” Mouse’s brow furrowed and she stared off at nothing.

  “I need to eat some solid fucking food and get a full night of sleep, is what I need,” I grumbled, staring at my feet. “I need people to stop fucking with me at school, and I need Rachel to tell me who those goddamn men are in the black sedan.”

  “What are you talking about?” Both of them were now fully focused on me and I winced.

  “Some guys showed up at the house the other morning — suits and unmarked sedan,” I said and Mouse stiffened. “I’m positive Rachel knows what they want, but she won’t tell me. Just says to stay away from them.”

  “You’re coming over tonight,” Mouse said decisively, cleaning up all the biohazardous remnants of my phlebotomy: the sharps, the disinfecting supplies, the used gloves and masks.

  I shrugged and nodded. I loved staying at Mouse’s, and I always slept great at her place. My room had a full wall of aquarium and the hum of the filtration unit and artificial current provided the perfect level of white noise combined with the soothing blue glow of the night-mode lights. “I’ll be done at 4, after I serve my fucking detention.” I stuck my tongue out at Tai since his brother wasn’t here. He swapped out the collection tubes with a bag of fluids and ignored me.

  “Nope, that’s bullshit and everyone knows it. I’ll be there at 3.”

  “You best warn him,” I advised Tai, who shook his head. “You’re going to just let him walk into a showdown with Mouse blindly? That’s cold. Really cold.”

  He grinned. “Consider it your payback for the boner.”

  I made a face at him. “It didn’t bother me, you know,” I said, puzzled that he’d think that. “I was a little surprised, and the running away probably didn’t help anything, but he caught me off-guard and I’m a relatively shy person—” He snorted but whatever. He doesn’t know me. “—so don’t make him feel bad. Besides, when will I ever get a hug like that again?” I asked rhetorically as I gathered up my things to go. I walked to the door, pretending that I was just a regular teenage girl, with hopes, dreams, and expectations. A girl who gets hugged whenever she wants.

  These stupid guys were getting under my skin, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  No attachments. No distractions. I can’t lose sight of my priorities.

  “It did end, you know.”

  Tai’s voice stopped me before I made it through the door. I turned back, and he was sitting on the rolling stool, staring at me, the depleted bag of fluids in his hand. “What?”

  “The world. In here, it doesn’t seem like anything has changed, but out there? It’s not— it ended.”

  “Sure, but life still goes on.”

  “Yeah, that’s true, but we can’t ever go back to what it was before and this place? It’s not real here.”

  I nodded. I know he may think differently, but none of this was a surprise to me. I wasn’t sheltered from things like some people had been. Even if I didn’t know exactly what it was like out there, I’d seen enough to imagine. “Is it—” I hesitated, not sure how to say what I wanted. He waited. “Is it like a mockery? To you, I mean. All of you. Is this place…offensive?”

  He looked away, like he might be trying to figure out how to say what he meant too. After an extended amount of time, I decided maybe he was just done talking and stood away from the door to open it, but he stopped me again. “Not offensive. Not exactly. What becomes offensive is when there are those who don’t seem to realize that what you have here isn’t what everyone else has out there, and they don’t appreciate things. But I think that’s mostly the kids.”

  I nodded again. I saw it too, and it disgusted me, but none of them had the same context I did. None of them saw ghosts overlaying every single person here, now, and realized the price of their indulgences. “Yeah, I get it. Most days… I just— I can’t stand them.”

  “I guess some would say that their innocence is what we should work for, that it’s the ultimate goal of survival.”

  I scoffed, thinking about my peers at school. There’s not a single new world order where being like those jackholes should be a life goal. “Don’t mistake ignorance for innocence. No one who survived the last four years should ever be that naïve, we’ve all lived through too much. And yeah, it sucks what we’ve all lost, but there could be positive things that come out of it — we can’t recreate that world and pretend it never happened. We should be moving forward and creating something new. Better. Learn from it and never forget what we lost, but don’t live in the past. That world is gone.”

  “I can’t decide if you’re incredibly naïve or incredibly cynical. For such a punk-ass kid.”

  His expression was weird, like he was trying to either convince himself or me of something, but I couldn’t get past the sting of getting called a kid. My response may have been a little snarly. “I haven’t been a kid in four years. You’d do well to remember that.”

  His face went blank. “Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear you sprang fully-formed from your dad’s forehead.” I had no idea whether that was genuine or the worst kind of patronizing.

  “Are you calling me a goddess? Of wisdom no less?”

  He shrugged. “You have your moments.” Then he turned away, breaking eye contact.

  I blinked, then I left.

  Sasha

  She was run down again, almost as bad as that first day when we met.

  She stared dully at her desk waiting for Lit class to start, handed me a pen without seeming to notice she did so, then stared blankly at the teacher as he lectured. I pulled my phone out again and hit record. I’d transfer the file to her later, like last time, and she won’t fall behind.

  Seeing her so out of it gave me a dull ache inside. I know it wasn’t true, but it felt like her disease was getting worse and I had to witness her winding down. I couldn’t do that. It was one of the many reasons I was happy we’d be leaving here sooner rather than later: I didn’t want to be around when Azzie passed.

  I’d thought about it a lot, especially late at night when I was breathing in the smell of coconut and vanilla on my pillow. This wasn’t a world where the sick or frail could survive for long, and Azzie was both. Whoever is making sure she gets treatment now won’t always be so accommodating, and at some point, they’ll either get tired of maintaining those daily appointments and monitoring her diet, or run out of money, or both. And then she’ll start to deteriorate.

  Even here, in this weird Matrix-slash-Pleasantville utopian hell, someone like Azzie’s at a disadvantage. She’s dependent on too many other people and expensive medical equipment — I didn’t know what all her treatments were, but it sure wasn’t two aspirin and a phone call to check-in.

  I like Azzie. She’s smart as hell, she’s incredibly funny in her angry-at-the-world way, and she takes no shit from anyone. I don’t know her story, but it’s clear she’s taken her hits and is still standing, and I respect the fuck out of her for that. She doesn’t whine, she doesn’t complain, she doesn’t ask for anything from anyone, and she doesn’t need to be the center of attention all the time — quite the opposite, she really just wants to be left alone. She’s the weirdest seventeen year old girl I’ve ever met— no, she’s unique at any age, and she deserves credit for that. She’s probably the most interesting person I’ve met outside my family — and the Chandler twins, if I’m being honest — and I don’t think her appeal just lies in her complete disinterest in us, which is the theory Sev keeps floating around. She’s just cool.

  And I don’t want to be here when she dies.

  I don’t even want to know it happens, I want to leave here with her whole and completely herself, and never look back. For the rest of my life, I can think of her like that, imagine her
here living out her days in this place, and it would make me happy no matter what I’m going through out there. Knowing she’s here and safe could get me through any number of dark times.

  She’s my friend. I only want good things for her, and I don’t want to know anything otherwise.

  That means she has to stay healthy until we’re done here, so with that thought, I passed her a note. “What’s going on. You’re a zombie again like Monday.”

  She stared down at the paper like it took effort for her to understand what she was reading, but then she scribbled something down and passed it back. “You shouldn’t joke about zombies when we’re going through an apocalypse.”

  I snorted. She had a point. “Fine, noted. Don’t avoid the question.”

  “My hematocrit test was up again. They drew a whole pint, and I still haven’t recovered from Monday. I think my iron is low. I’m anemic, is what I mean.”

  “Hematocrit test? And what do we need to do to get your iron up? Don’t you just need to eat spinach or something?”

  “Complete blood count measuring the percentage of red blood cells to the overall density of my blood. I was at 64% this morning. And yes on the spinach, as long as its with something with vitamin C to help me absorb the iron.”

  “What’s normal? If you’re 64%, what should it be?”

  “For me, anywhere between 36 to 46% would be normal. I’m usually doing good if I’m below 55% but 64% is like my heart is pumping maple syrup.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “It can be. I’m okay at 64%. It hit 86% when I first got really sick and that’s when everything went bad.”

  “What happened?”

  “Organs started shutting down, I went blind. You know… bad.”

  “You went BLIND?”

  “For about two weeks. At about day 12 I started seeing variations in light, and that was the first sign we had that my vision might come back. It was not a good time for me.”