Cyberevolution Book One: The Awakening: Fifty Shades of Dark Kaitlyn O'Connor by Kaitlyn O'Connor, Kimberly Zant, Marie Morin, Stacey St.James, Goldie McBride (21)

I laughed when Hunter grabbed me in a bear hug and swung me around until I was almost too dizzy to stand up.  He passed me to Shaun, and Shaun to Basil.  I’d made it all the way to the end before I discovered Brandy was staring daggers at me.

Resentment flickered through me.  She’d hugged and kissed everybody!  Jeeze!

“Ok!  Everybody settle down!” Glenda announced gleefully, holding up a DVD.  “You get to watch your premier on the big screen TV over in the corner here!”

Everyone laughed, cheering and drinking a toast.

She sucked in a deep breath and glanced around.  “I made an executive decision on the show.”  She shrugged when she saw Gabe’s smile fade.  “Don’t get pissed off!  It’s just that, after I reviewed the footage, I realized you were right all along, that your instincts were right on target and mine was shit.  The reality TV angle was so far above my idea of doing a fantasy movie that it just wasn’t in the same universe.  I took all the footage and had it re-edited accordingly and …. Well, I think it’s success speaks for itself.  Great job everybody!  I hope you enjoy your debut as much as everyone else in the world has!  You may not be rich yet, but you’re well on your way!”

Everyone had sobered and begun to look at each other a little uneasily by the time she finished—the guys.  I felt uneasy myself, mostly because they were, although I couldn’t figure out why.  I’d never actually been told that it wasn’t going to end up being a reality TV show.  I admitted to some confusion over it.  We wore the fantasy costumes, but we hadn’t really filmed anything except sex and I’d never entirely understood how they were going to put it together as a story. 

Everyone found a chair when Glenda turned to insert the DVD.  “Can somebody dim the lights a little?”

Gabe got up and moved to the dimmer switch, lowering the light level. 

Discovering all the chairs had been taken, I glanced around and marked a spot for myself on the floor a little away from everyone else since I fully expected to be embarrassed at what I was about to see.  Brandy offered to move over and give me room beside her, but I shook my head and moved to the far side of the room, settling with my back against the wall. 

I had a clear view of TV if I wanted to watch it and no one could look at me unless they turned around.

Glenda pushed play and moved to the chair she’d claimed, smiling as the opening credits were displayed.

“Looks good,” Gabe commented. 

The title screen faded and Glenda appeared, seated at her desk, her hands folded on the desk before her.  She smiled a greeting. 

“Before we get started, I just wanted to welcome everyone to our house.  Everyone who appears in the feature has granted permission to be filmed, although this was shot entirely with the use of hidden cameras and microphones throughout the house so that filming wouldn’t be intrusive.  The original production was to have been Snow White and the Seven Hunks.  It was later changed to Snow White, Rose Red and the Seven Hunks.  The movie you’re about to see is the filming of that production, much of it behind the scenes.  Enjoy!”

Glenda turned around to beam at everyone when the screen went dark.  Discovering everybody was staring at the TV and that they’d begun to look uncomfortable, she faced forward again.  The opening scene looked almost like a home video.  It showed the Seven Hunks in the wardrobe room.  Glenda was with them.  “These are the costumes I had made for the production.  I designed them myself.”

She studied the name tags on each and passed them out.  The men took them and looked them over and then looked at each other. 

“I’ll just leave and let you guys try them on.”

The men stared at her when she left, held the costumes up and studied them and then looked at each other.  “What the fuck?” Hunter demanded.

“Just put it on,” Gabe said grimly.

Shrugging, the men began to undress.  The camera panned out to show the entire group, switching from time to time to a close up of first one and then another as they stripped down. 

Shaun uttered a bark of a laugh as the camera zoomed in on Hunter just as he bent over.  Hunter glared at him, but grinned reluctantly.  “Full moon!”

I was struggling to keep from laughing within a few minutes just from watching the expressions flit across their faces as they tried to figure out how to put the costumes on. 

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Hunter growled.  “Where the hell did she say she had these made?”

“There’s not enough room in these damned things for my ass!” Shaun seconded him.  “What am I supposed to do with the jewels?”

“I’ve got it figured out,” Hunter said.  The camera panned to him as he turned around.

I clapped a hand over my mouth when the camera zoomed in on him.  He’d pushed his balls through the slit in the front and draped his cock over the top.  Everyone in the film burst out laughing and so did everyone in the parlor. 

Hunter waggled his hips, making his cock sway and everybody laughed harder.  There was a fade out where the picture dimmed but the sound continued as the guys complained about their costumes.  When the screen brightened again, I discovered it was me and Brandy in the wardrobe room studying our costumes.  Even I laughed at the look on my face as I examined the costumes. 

Gabe and Basil turned to look back at me.  I grinned and shrugged, but I felt my heart contract when I saw a replay of that first time when I’d met Gabe.  I saw things I hadn’t noticed at the time because I’d been so unsettled—the way Gabe looked at me.  My throat closed.  I decided I was going to have to buy a copy for myself just so I could enjoy that expression over and over.

When the scene changed again, I glanced at Gabe.  He’d propped on arm on the chair arm and settled his face on his hand.  I could tell he was uncomfortable.  I looked away, took a healthy gulp of my drink and tried to focus on the film.  From that point, it played out pretty much as I’d expected.  There were short clips of us moving around the house, me in the kitchen, all of us sitting together at meals, my ‘punishment’ week. 

Brandy hid her face and giggled like a teenager every time the scene switched to the parlor and her romping with first one of the Hunks and then another, often with two at the time.  I’d emptied my glass of champagne before we’d finished the first week and I didn’t even like champagne. 

I was warm, very warm.  I couldn’t decide it if it was just the champagne or a combination of watching the things they were doing to me on screen and the champagne.  It looked a lot more raw than I’d expected, but I couldn’t honestly say that I was horrified.  Mostly, I was just turned on, although I couldn’t decide if it was from watching or it was watching that resurrected the memories.

Shame on me!

I was distressed, though, when the scene switched to me, alone, the day the men had filmed the Snow White and the Seven Hunks sequence.  I hadn’t realized, then, that every move I made, everything I said and every expression was being recorded.  By the time I’d acclimated myself to that fact, I’d forgotten the incident.  It embarrassed me to see how much I’d given away in my expression.  I covered my face in case anybody looked back at me, peering through my fingers at the screen.  I was glad I had.  If I’d looked away I would’ve missed the expression on Basil’s face when he found me and I wouldn’t have missed that for the world. 

Glenda bounced up in the uncomfortable silence that had fallen over the entire room.  “More champagne?”

I needed another glass.  Apparently everybody decided they did.  They jumped and headed for the makeshift bar to refill their glasses to the tune of Brandy screaming in bondage while the Seven Hunks turned her inside out and fucked her in every orifice.  Brandy glared at everyone, but they ignored her—or they were just unaware of the fact that it pissed her off that nobody was watching her big event.

By the time everyone was settled again, the film had moved on to highlight my little accident with Shaun and Hunter.  To my surprise, it switched to a scene in the backyard, on the wide deck that ran the length of the house.  I winced watching Shaun and Hunter slug it out while the rest of the Hunks stood around with their arms folded, watching. 

The entire tone of the film changed, I realized, after I finally got back in to the action—At least it seemed that way to me.  I burst out laughing when Gabe slipped in the come and started bellowing.  Clamping a hand over my mouth, I glanced at him uncertainly, but discovered he was grinning at the ribbing from the others. 

We watched it until the bitter end.  I thought I could safely say that everyone breathed a sigh of relief when it was over.  I know I was relieved.  Shooting to my feet as soon as Glenda headed to the TV to turn it off, I headed down the hall to the bathroom. 

The hallway was full when I came out again and I realized the party was over—really and truly, the end.

I was glad I’d downed two glasses of champagne and that there was such a crowd in the hallway that it was impossible to focus on anyone in particular.  I shook hands with all of the cast and told them how much I’d enjoyed working with them, working my way to the door as fast I could.  Gabe, I discovered to my dismay, was the last in line.  Refusing to look at him, I shook his hand, repeated the same phrase I’d used with everyone else and scurried out the door. 

I would’ve dove into the car, but I wanted to leave some doubt in everyone’s mind that I was in full retreat.  To my relief, Glenda seemed ready to go.  She dragged Brandy away in spite of all Brandy could do to linger and give everyone tearful goodbye kisses.

Dragging in a shuddering breath, I waved as she pulled out and tried not to think about the fact that I was probably never going to see any of them ever again.

Chapter Fifteen

True to form, Brandy had completely recovered from her bout of tears before we were a mile down the road and spent the remainder of the trip chattering excitedly about the film and how much she was looking forward to the next one. 

I had a blinding headache by the time Glenda finally dropped us at my apartment.  I’d forgotten Brandy had moved in with me due to being thrown out of her place just before we’d gone to live in Snow White’s Palace of Dicks.  I wasn’t happy to realize I couldn’t shed her, either.  All I really wanted was to be alone to wallow in self-pity.  I was more miserable than I’d imagined I would be, and that was saying something.

Fortunately, it was late and I had the excuse of heading to my room.  Brandy was pissed off that she couldn’t talk me into staying up half the night to entertain her, but I firmly refused.

Since I didn’t know how sound proof my apartment was, I fought off the urge to indulge myself in a crying jag, took a couple of painkillers and stared at my darkened ceiling until I finally passed out. 

Brandy, after staying up most of the night, slept most of the day, so I pretty much had my place to myself.  After I’d checked the food and then my bank account, I headed out to shop for supplies. 

It seemed surreal to be interacting with the real world again.  Preoccupied with my shopping, I didn’t notice the man staring at me until he passed me the fourth time.  When I glanced at him, he stopped.  “You’re that woman on that show, right?”

I stared at him in horror.  “What?”

“On the net.  Rose Red?”

I felt my eyes widen until they felt like they were bulging from the sockets.  “No!” I said shortly and hurried past him.  I was in such a blind panic I almost forgot to grab my groceries. 

The man actually followed me for several blocks!  I went into stealth mode, zigzagging in and out of stores, turning randomly at corners.  When I’d decided I’d lost him, I jogged back to my apartment building as fast as I could and hurried up to my apartment.

Brandy was sitting at the table sipping coffee.

“A man recognized me!” I gasped.

She frowned at me blankly.  “Somebody you know?”

“NO! Somebody that saw me on the net—Snow White?” I added to jog her memory.

She stared at me blankly for several moments.  Slowly, her expression changed to indignation.  “From the movie?”

“Yes!” I gasped, too upset to notice the warning signs. 

“Why would he recognize you?”

“Because I was in it?  Because he’s a pervert and he watched it?”

Brandy rolled her eyes.  “Really, Nicki!  We did the movie.  How does that make him a pervert to watch it?  You always were such a prude!  I don’t know how you even managed it.  I’m surprised they didn’t ditch you right off.”

I stared at her blankly, trying to figure out how she’d missed the fact that I was scared shitless.  How had me being upset suddenly become conceit?  She acted as if I was exaggerating the situation just to preen over being recognized! 

I realized I’d never understood the way my sister’s mind worked and I never would.  Struggling to shake the sense of cold fingers creeping up my back, I finally set my groceries down and began sorting them and putting them away.  My fingers were cramping from clutching the bags so frantically and my arms and shoulders were throbbing from running with two bags of groceries like a rabbit trying to dodge the crosshairs on a hunter’s rifle. 

When I’d finished putting the food up, I went into my room, closed the door and then went into my bathroom, sat down on the floor, and cried.  When I’d calmed down, I realized I’d probably just scared myself for no reason at all.  Maybe I’d just thought the man had tried to follow me home?

Conceited or not, I remembered every celebrity that had been stalked, especially the ones that had been killed by their stalkers. 

I tried to dismiss it, but I was so shaken I couldn’t bring myself to go out again that day, fearful that I might run into the man again, although I’d planned earlier to get started on job hunting.  I shuddered every time I thought about the way he’d looked at me.

I’d grabbed a newspaper while I was grocery shopping and spent the rest of the day studying the want ads and circling promising possibilities. 

Brandy left a few hours after I’d returned, having spent those hours primping.  I didn’t ask her where she was going and she didn’t tell me. 

I had lunch alone and then supper.  I’d never felt it before, but after sharing so many meals with the cast, it was pretty depressing to sit down in front of the TV with my food and only the TV for company.  I’d begun to think Brandy wouldn’t be back when she returned.

She was sizzling with excitement.  “Five different people recognized me from the show!” she exclaimed, her voice shrill with exhilaration.  “It almost seemed that everywhere I went there was someone that wanted to meet me.  They even asked for my autograph!” 

I felt the blood leave my face.  “Really?”

She smirked at me.  “You’re jealous, aren’t you?  You only had one person recognize you.”

I blinked at her, but I couldn’t think of a response to save my life.  “I’m going to bed.”

She made a sound of disgust.  “God!  You can’t even congratulate me?  I’m a success!  You should be happy for me!”

I paused at my door and turned to look at her.  “Congratulations.  Good night.  Make sure you lock up.”

“Oh, I’m going out again.  I just came by to change.  One of the guys I met asked me out.  He is such a hunk!  Carl or Charles, or something like that.”

Horror washed over me.  “He’s coming here?”

“Well, my god!  Of course he’s coming here!  He asked me out.”

“And you gave him directions to my apartment?” I demanded, outraged.

She gaped at me.  “Of course I told him where to pick me up!  Did you expect me to … meet him somewhere?”

I was angry enough that I didn’t care whether I aroused her wrath or not.  “This is my apartment!  I don’t appreciate you bringing strange men here, especially after I was followed halfway home today!”

“Well, I’m staying here!  They’re all strangers until you get to know them, for god’s sake!  The Hunks were strangers—and you fucked them!  At least this is a date!”

“With a guy that’s spent hours jacking off while he watched you fuck the Seven Hunks!”

She shuddered.  “Isn’t that exciting!  Just imagine being so desired that men everywhere are watching you and jacking off!”

I didn’t want to imagine it.  I couldn’t understand why it thrilled her.  “Don’t bring anybody else to my apartment!  I mean it, Brandy.”

She shrugged and sniffed.  “Fine!  I’ll get my own place. This is a dump anyway.  Glenda brought me my first royalty check today.”

“You got royalties?”

“Oh, you did, too.  I think I put yours down in the kitchen somewhere.  It wasn’t much after that bitch deducted the money she thinks I owed her, but it’ll make a down payment on a new car and maybe when I get the next one I’ll get a house instead of an apartment.  Or maybe I’ll get the house first and then the car?”

My god, I thought!  What kind of check was she talking about?  I headed into the kitchen and searched it thoroughly for the check I’d supposedly gotten.  “I can’t find it,” I yelled at Brandy through the bathroom door, discovering she’d headed in to primp for her date.

“What?”

“The damned check!”

“Oh. It’s in the kitchen.”

“It’s not in the damned kitchen.  I looked.”

“Well, look again.  I’m sure I put it down in there somewhere.”

I found it stuck to the bottom of a box she’d tossed into the trash.  The urge to choke the life out of her subsided when I saw the amount.  Feeling weak, I wobbled to a chair and sat down.  Five thousand dollars!  In one check!  I could get by a whole month on that!  

I saw Glenda had deducted seven thousand from it and was torn by amazement that it had actually been twelve and resentment that she’d taken the other half of what Brandy had stolen from her from my check.

I headed to the bathroom again.  “When do we get another one?”

“She said next month.  I got more than you because I’m the star.”

Rolling my eyes, I went to hide my check in my room. 

Brandy was still in the bathroom primping when her date arrived.  I didn’t want to let him in and I wanted to choke Brandy for putting me in such a spot.  Finally, when I’d found a hammer under my sink and tucked it between the seat cushion and the arm of my couch, I let him in.

I didn’t like the way he looked at me.  He seemed friendly enough … actually a little too friendly.  “Rose Red!”

I smiled at him thinly. 

“So … you two really are sisters?”

I gestured for him to sit in the chair and headed for the couch, perching on the edge next to the hammer.  “We really are.”

He settled back in the chair.  “That was some video.”

“Thank you.”

“What was it like?”

“What was what like?”

“Filming it.”

“Pretty much like it looks on the film.”

“What made you two decide to do something like that?”

Brandy robbing the boss, I thought.  “I don’t know.  The opportunity arose and we just went with it.”

“I’ll bet you two are making a killing.”

“We were just cast members.”

He lifted his brows, running his gaze up and down me as if he could see through my clothes.  “I wouldn’t mind getting into something like that …  if the money’s good.”

“You should talk to Brandy about that.  I only did it the one time—just for the experience.  She was the star, you know.”

The ‘star’, thankfully, entered the room at that moment.  She surveyed me and her date suspiciously.

Yes, Brandy, we took the opportunity to fuck like rabbits while you were getting ready!

“Well!  I’m ready!”

“You look good enough to eat!”

I got up and walked them to the door.  “I’m locking up.  Just beat on the door when you get back.”  And barricading my bedroom door!

“Oh!  I’ll just see you tomorrow!”

It made me uneasy, but what could I say?  She was thirty-six.  She’d survived this long.

I didn’t see Brandy again for three days.  I was so sick with worry by the time she dragged up I was ready to kiss her and forgive her for three sleepless nights while I lay wondering if the police would beat on my door and tell me they’d found her body. 

“Where have you been?”

She looked at me in surprise.  “I told you I was going to look for my own place.  I just came back to get my stuff.”

Resisting the urge to choke the life out of her for putting me through pure hell, I followed her into the room where she’d been staying and watched her pack up.  I would’ve been more relieved to see her leaving under other circumstances.  I no longer really wanted my apartment all to myself, though.  “How did the date with what’s-his-name go?”

She flicked a glance at me.  “Who?”

“The guy you left with three days ago?”

“Oh.  It’s was alright.  He’s hung like a stud canary, though.”

I gaped at her.  “Brandy!”

She snickered.  “What can I say?  I got used to having more.  It was a real disappointment.”

“That’s mean.  You didn’t tell him that?”

“Of course not!  Can you believe he thought he could get into the porn biz?”

Actually, I was used to people with colossal egos, I thought wryly.  Jeez!  Brandy was full of herself!  Honest to god, one would think she’d just starred in a major motion picture!

Not that I was willing to even think of Gabe’s project as a sleazy porn—because it wasn’t!  I was sure it would become a cult classic, but he’d only done it to get up the capitol for what he really wanted to do.  Even some of the Hollywood people had done some porn trying to break in. 

I was proud of him and the others for being so resourceful!  It wasn’t just anybody that could parlay a tight budget into big money!  And I knew it had been tight.  They’d all put money in to make it happen.   I knew they were all going to be fabulously successful!  I couldn’t wait to see their first full length animated feature!

When she’d finished packing, she stacked the boxes by the door.  “Well, that’s that!  I’ll have somebody come by and pick it up later.”

“I could help you move it,” I said instead of reminding her that I’d asked her not to tell people where I lived.

“I’ve got things to do.  Somebody will come by,” she said airily, stopping to give me a quick hug before she left.

“A mover?” I asked doubtfully as I watched her walk briskly down the hallway outside.

“I’m not sure yet!  See you!”

Grinding my teeth, I closed the door and locked it.  I’d actually thought I might venture out myself—at least long enough to deposit my damned check!  I considered it and decided to go anyway.  If her ‘somebody’ came by while I was out they could just come back!  I had a life, too!

Not much of a life, but I had things to do!

David, Scott, and Daniel were propped against my door when I got back.  I couldn’t believe my eyes, or how happy I was to see them.  “I didn’t expect you guys!  You came to move Brandy’s things?”

They seemed happy to see me—a little awkward, but friendly.  “Glenda sent us,” Scott volunteered.

I unlocked the door and invited them in, struggling with the temptation to ask about ‘my’ guys.  “Luckily for you, she didn’t have much here,” I said jokingly.  “Can I get you anything?  Something cold to drink?”

“We need to get going.  We’ve been here a while.”

“Oh.”  I tamped my disappointment with an effort and showed them the boxes.  It felt really odd, I reflected when they left, almost like meeting complete strangers—and only a few days ago we’d been fuck partners!

That brought me crashing to earth, shattering the last of my illusions.  I hadn’t realized I was still nursing them.  I hadn’t realized I was still halfway expecting a knock on my door. 

I sat down on my couch and stared at the floor, my mind empty.  It was actually a great place to visit, I thought ruefully, but I couldn’t stay there.  I’d managed to make it to the bank and back without picking up any suspicious looking characters or getting more than a few looks that might or might not have been recognition.  I decided to try my luck at job hunting the next day. 

* * * *

Gabe got up and began pacing Glenda’s reception room as soon as Basil stopped pacing and sat down.  He knew he was looking at yet another long argument over the damned film and he was already sick of discussing it.  It seemed clear that they weren’t going to see eye-to-eye on it no matter how long they wrangled over it. 

He couldn’t see trying to market the show on video, though.  Granted, it had been his idea to begin with but it was already more widely available than any video distributor could manage and beyond that too long, the way it was, to be cost effective.  He wanted to cut it—trim as much of Nicole out of it as he possibly could.  Glenda didn’t.  He had a bad feeling she knew why he wanted to get his hands on it.

Dismissing it for the moment, he wandered over to the desk where the receptionist was sorting mail—had been sorting since they’d arrived nearly twenty minutes earlier.  “That’s a lot of mail.”

She blushed and smiled at him.  “It’s fan mail.”

His lifted his brows.  “No shit?”

Basil, Shaun, and Hunter, no doubt as bored and frustrated as he was, got up when they heard that and moved closer to have a look.  The receptionist looked like she might keel over in a dead faint.

“About the show?” Hunter asked, leaning over to study the basket of envelopes on the floor beside the woman. 

“Ms. Singer has someone that handles it—responses, you know.  I just sort it.”

“Sort?”

She looked uncomfortable.  “This pile is for the Hunks.  That pile is for Snow White and Rose Red.”

“And Glenda has somebody that handles responses?” Gabe asked, an edge to his voice.  Leaning across the desk, he snatched up the stack she’d indicated for Rose Red and headed back to the couch.  Basil and the others followed him.

The receptionist gaped at them.  “You can’t do that!”

“Why the hell not?”

“That’s for Rose Red.”

“You just said Glenda has someone answering it,” Gabe said grimly.

Ignoring her, he planted the stack on the couch and grabbed the one on top.  Basil, who’d settled beside him grabbed a handful and passed them down.

Gabe felt the blood leave his face before he was halfway down the single page letter.  Dropping it to the floor, he flicked a hard look at the receptionist and opened another one.  It was worse than the first.  Every letter he opened described in vivid detail what the man who’d written it wanted to do to her.  That was bad enough, but the third one made his blood run cold.  He made a frantic search for the envelope and studied the return address—none, he discovered without much surprise—but it was postmarked in the city.  Shooting to his feet abruptly, he stalked to Glenda’s door, ignoring the receptionist’s frantic attempt to head him off, and stormed inside. 

“How long have you been getting these god damned threats to Nicole?” he bellowed at the woman behind the desk.

“I’ll have to call you back,” Glenda said, hanging up her phone abruptly.  “It’s just a letter, for god’s sake!”

“Describing how he’s going to kill her … after he’s done every filthy, horrible thing he can think of to do to her!”

Glenda paled slightly.  “Let me see it!”

Gabe flung it down on her desk.  “How many of those have you gotten?”

“Give me time to look at it!” Glenda snapped.

“I just told you what was in it, god damn it!  Has she gotten any other threatening letters?”

Glenda shifted uncomfortably.  “I talked to the police about it.  They said it was probably nothing.  Men have fantasies about women in porn movies.”  She shrugged.  “It’s the price of fame and fortune … or hadn’t you considered that?”

“Sane men talk about making love to her, or fucking her.  They don’t talk about … the things in that letter.  He’s stalking her!  Have you even warned her?”

“I haven’t seen her since she left the set.  I told Brandy.  She didn’t seem worried about it.”

“Nobody, obviously, is worried about it—not you, not her damned sister, and not the fucking police!”  He glared at her for several moments and finally glanced around her office.  Spying a filing cabinet, he strode to it and began snatching the drawers out and glancing over the files.  “Where’s her personnel file?”

“She doesn’t work for me anymore!” Glenda snapped. 

“Where does she live?”

“I don’t know!  You’ll have to ask Brandy!”

Gabe glared at her. 

“You needn’t glare at me for not keeping up with her!  You might have asked her if you hadn’t been so busy playing musical beds!”

The urge to throttle her washed over him.  Unfortunately, she was right … up to a point.  He hadn’t been too busy trying to get in her bed to think about it.  He’d just been too fucking confident that there wasn’t going to be a problem running her down when he was ready.  He’d figured to give the others time to head for other pastures before he swooped in to snare her. 

“Where’s Brandy?”

“She’s around here somewhere—probably in the break-room.  We have a meeting!” Glenda yelled at him as he strode from the room.

Chapter Sixteen

The knock on my door nearly gave me heart failure.  It wasn’t just that it was unexpected so late in the evening, but the imperious framing was startling in itself.  I was tempted to pretend I wasn’t home since it reminded me unpleasantly of a visit from the cops.  Unfortunately, I had the TV going.  When whoever it was hammered on the door again, I got up and grabbed my trusty hammer, moving close enough to peer through the viewer.  I couldn’t see anything but a chest, but it was obviously a male chest.  “Who is it?” I asked in a quavering voice.

“It’s me—Gabe.”

My heart executed an uncomfortable somersault.  “Gabe?”

“Gabe O’Connor.”

O’Conner, I thought blankly?  It sounded like my Gabe, though.  I hadn’t realized until that moment that we’d all not only been on a first name basis, but I didn’t have a clue of what their last names were. 

I looked down at myself in dismay.  I was wearing a ratty t-shirt that had seen way too many washings and pair of jeans that looked almost as bad.  Should I make him wait in the hall while I dashed to my room to change?  Or invite him in and then dash to change?

What if he gave up and left while I was primping?

“Just a minute.”  I fumbled with the locks and finally got the door open. “Come … in,” I finished when he barraged past me and into my living room.  Basil, Hunter, and Shaun were right behind him.  I turned to look at them in bewilderment and discovered they were looking my apartment over curiously.

Except Gabe.  He was staring at me.

Remembering the hammer, I shut the door and locked it and moved back to the couch, shoving the hammer between the cushions.  “I wasn’t expecting company,” I said, plucking at my favorite t-shirt a little unhappily.  “Can I get you anything?”

I met each man’s gaze and got a negative response.  I was tempted to get up and get something for myself anyway, just to have something to do to cover how awkward and uneasy I felt having them all there.  Beyond that, I was still trying to wrap my mind around them being there—all four.  If it had been any one of them, I might have made a fool out of myself by leaping to the conclusion that the visit was private and personal.  As unhappy as it made me to acknowledge that the four coming together pretty much nixed that possibility, I knew I’d have to be a total idiot to believe anything else.

“Would you like to sit down?  I can get another couple of chairs from the kitchen,” I added after I’d mentally tried to fit the five of us on my small couch and the living room chair.

They didn’t seem inclined to, which probably meant they had no intention of staying long at all.  Basil finally took the chair across from the couch.  After a pause, Shaun settled on the opposite end of my couch.  Gabe looked more like he wanted to pace, but my apartment hadn’t actually been designed for pacers.  Folding his arms, he found a place along the wall to prop.  “What were you doing with the hammer?”

I stared at him blankly.  “What hammer?”

He gave me a look.  “The one under the cushion by your leg.”

I looked down at it.  “Oh!  That hammer!  I was hammering something when I heard the knock.  This whole place is just falling apart!  And it’s worse than useless to call the landlord.  I’ve been thinking about moving.  My lease was up last month and he’s been pestering me to sign another one.”

I bounded off the couch with the hammer and headed into the kitchen to put it up while I babbled mindlessly.  When I’d tossed it under the sink, I grabbed one of the chairs at my little table and carried it to the living room.  After looking around for a place to put it, I finally set it in front of the TV cabinet and turned off the TV.  I’d muted it when I heard the knock, but the moving images were distracting.

I decided to take the chair, since it wasn’t very comfortable, and leave the spot on the couch open.  I discovered when I’d settled that the guys seemed to be trying to carry on some sort of silent communication. 

“We’ve got a spare room at our place,” Gabe said abruptly.

It took me a few moments to connect the comment to what I’d said.  I felt my face heat at the lie.  Well, it wasn’t exactly a lie.  It had crossed my mind several times to move before signing a new lease.  The problem was I didn’t actually have moving money and I was afraid running wasn’t really an option anyway.  The internet was everywhere.  “Really?  How much are you asking for it?”

Gabe stared at me blankly and turned to look at the others. 

“Two hundred a month,” Shaun said.

I lifted my brows.  “Sweet!” I exclaimed before I thought better of it.  “Uh  … was that an offer?”

Gabe was glaring at his brother, but I couldn’t decide if it was because he’d quoted too low a price or because he hadn’t actually meant to offer it—to me. 

“It’s available if you’re interested,” Shaun answered.

“Does it come with a private bathroom?”

“Yeah.”

I frowned.  “Was that two hundred for everything?  Or is that just the rent and everybody splits the rest of the bills, too?”

“That’s everything included.  And you’d get kitchen privileges, of course.”

I couldn’t help but smile.  I swept a look around the group.  “Is that going to be shared, too?  Or am I going to have to be chief cook and bottle washer for the deal?”

“Shit!” Shaun said, smiling faintly.  “I didn’t think about that.  I should’ve said the rent’s two hundred if you also do all the cooking and handle kitchen clean up.”

I thought it over.  “Actually, that still wouldn’t be a bad deal,” I said slowly.  It was only four of them—plus me.  The moment I realized that, my enthusiasm took a nosedive.   I had to be an idiot even to have considered it for five seconds!  I’d be living with them!  That wasn’t going to work.  I could see all sorts of complications arising out of such an attempt. 

My mind, of course, had leapt instantly to the scenario where I was convenient and I got bedroom privileges to go with the low rent.  That might be a possibility and it might not.  What was a possibility, a strong one, was that I was going to have to watch a traffic jam as all four of them traipsed in and out with girlfriends. 

“I don’t know,” I said finally, drawing my knees up and looping my arms around them to keep my heels from slipping off the front of the chair.  “I see a potential for disaster here.  I mean, it’s sweet of you to offer and I appreciate that, but four single guys?  I could really put a crimp in your love life.  You saw how Brandy freaked once she got the idea that David and Scott and Daniel were her property!  Anyway, I haven’t actually decided.  I was just babbling.”

I changed the subject abruptly to let them off the hook.  “How are things going for y’all?  Sales still good?  Have you started working on your new project yet?”

“Fine,” Gabe said, an edge to his voice.  “How about you?  Any problems?”

I felt my belly flutter and it was only partly because I couldn’t look at Gabe or hear his voice without suffering.  I wrestled with the uneasiness that had been dogging me, but I didn’t want to sound paranoid.  I forced a smile.  “No, not really.  I … uh … I guess I’m sort of a celebrity.  I’ve had a couple of people recognize me.”  I forced a laugh.  “I guess I don’t need to cut my hair and dye it—or wear sunglasses and a big floppy hat.  Brandy tells me she meets people all over everywhere that recognize her.  She’s really enjoying it.”

“But you aren’t?”

I forced a smile.  “Well, I’m not Brandy, that’s for sure!” I shrugged.  “I guess you guys maybe noticed I’m not exactly an extravert.  I’m not going to miss my five minutes of fame if that’s what you’re asking.”

Gabe frowned.  “Has anybody been … bothering you?”  

I hesitated.  “No, not really.  Brandy brought this weird guy back to the apartment right after we got back.  He was a real fan and I discovered it was pretty uncomfortable dealing with that … sort of interest, but she’s moved out and I haven’t seen him but once since.  He came by looking for her, but I didn’t let him in.  Honestly, he gave me the creeps.  I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it, which probably means it was pure imagination, but ….”  I shrugged.  “The show’s hot right now.  I guess it’s to be expected.  Everybody will have forgotten all about it a month down the road.”

I glanced at them in embarrassment when I realized how that sounded.  “Or it could become a cult classic!  I was thinking that just the other day.  You never know about these things!”

Basil studied his hands.  “Actually, you’d be doing us a favor to take the room.  It would help with the rent.”

Dismay went through me when he said that.  It seemed to imply that they were having money troubles.  I winced.  “I don’t know.  I haven’t gotten a job yet.  I haven’t really been looking,” I added hastily.  “I’ve got money in the bank to hold me till I do … probably, but I don’t know if I’d be the most dependable roomy you could get.  And there’s still the girlfriend factor.  Of course, I could stay in my room, I guess.  I suppose we could work something out with that—unless you had live-ins.  I’m not dating right now so that wouldn’t be a problem for me—until and unless I met somebody,” I added hastily, “but I’m not really worried about that.  I never really liked bringing guys back to my place … which is why it pissed me off when Brandy did—You’re sure I couldn’t get you something to drink?”

“What sort of work are you looking for?” Gabe asked.

“Anything,” I said, smiling faintly.  “I guess secretarial.  I’ve got a fair amount of office skills.  I was Glenda’s receptionist.”

“Well that would work out well,” Gabe said decisively.  “We need a secretary to keep things in order.  We’ve got a spare room and it would be a definite plus to have somebody around who could actually cook.  We’re too busy a lot of the time to stop and fix meals.  Think about it.”

I nodded, but I didn’t really register anything except the fact that he was clearly about to leave.  Panic wafted through me.  I didn’t really and truly believe I was in any danger, but I’d been uneasy since I’d left the Victorian.  I thought it was mostly because I’d gotten accustomed to being surrounded by people and just being alone was enough to make me nervous now.  The truth was, though, that I was having trouble sleeping because of it and no number of locks on my door was making me feel any safer—I’d added two. 

Beyond that, I had a terrible feeling that I was about to watch my last, my one and only, chance to be with them slip through my fingers.  I knew I was going to have to accept that there wasn’t going to be any sort of relationship—not the kind I wanted.  I’d probably just be ‘one of the guys’ if I moved in, maybe a sort of dorm mother—they had mentioned the cooking and although they hadn’t mentioned laundry I was willing to bet I’d be the laundress before long, too.  At least I’d be with them, though, get to work with them—maybe fool around a little bit while they were between girlfriends.

Even I thought it sounded pathetic to be willing to settle for so little, but realized I had to be practical and try to consider my situation with objectivity.  I knew I was reasonably attractive and had a decent figure.  I’d never really lacked for male companionship when I wanted it, but I was looking at young, grade A beef—four of them—and they were smart and ambitious.  They were on their way up.  I knew it.  And I also knew I’d hit my peak and was looking at the downward slope.  I wasn’t top choice.  It wouldn’t be hard at all for handsome, well built, successful males to command the very best.

Was it really being smart to pitch the whole cake out the window because I couldn’t have the whole cake, though?  Or was it better to get a few slices … maybe?   Hell I knew men well enough to know I could pick up the slack anyway.  They weren’t going to withhold it, I didn’t think, if I was handy and they were needy. 

And, if they did, well, I could always move on when I got tired of playing doormat. 

“You know,” I said quickly when they all got up.  “Now that I think about it that actually sounds like a really good deal.  If you’re sure you don’t mind?”

The tension went out of Gabe for the first time since he’d arrived.  A slow smile curled his lips.  “We wouldn’t have offered otherwise.”

“Can I come tonight?”

I blushed when they glanced at each other.

“I mean, as long as you’re here anyway and I’d have a ride ….”

“What do you want to bring with you?” Hunter asked, glancing around. 

“I could just grab a few clothes and toiletries and maybe come back this weekend and decide what to do with everything else—if y’all don’t mind waiting a few minutes?”

“No problem.”

“I’ll give you a hand,” Hunter offered.  “Do you have any boxes?”

“Uh—actually, no.  I’d planned to pack a suitcase ….”

“We can head downstairs and see if anybody’s just moved in and discarded some,” Shaun volunteered—apparently for both himself and Hunter.  They disappeared out the door.

“You guys help yourself to anything in the kitchen you want.  I’ll just grab a few things,” I said to Gabe and Basil, rushing toward my bedroom. 

I’d tossed my open suitcase on the bed and was surreptitiously counting underwear and checking them for wear and tear before I put them in the suitcase when Shaun and Hunter breezed in with boxes.  Hunter headed to the bathroom with one.  Shaun headed toward my closet. 

“I’m probably not going to need anything in there,” I said, moving to the bathroom door to check on Hunter and remind him not forget my toothbrush.  I discovered he’d already cleaned out my medicine cabinet and the bottles around the shower and was clearing the vanity.  It looked like he planned a clean sweep.  I decided I didn’t have to worry about him leaving anything I really needed.  When I turned back to the bedroom, Shaun had pulled out the drawers of my dresser and was systematically emptying them.

I probably didn’t need half that stuff.  Dismissing the urge to tell him, I raced him to the next drawer and finished packing my suitcase.   “Ready!” I called struggling into the living room with the suitcase to discover Basil and Gabe heading out the front door, each carrying a box.  Gabe stopped and held his hand out imperiously for the suitcase.  “I’ll take that.  You check to make sure you aren’t leaving anything you might want.”

I didn’t think I really needed to, but I thrust the suitcase handle at him and turned back.  Shaun and Hunter were coming out of my bedroom with loaded boxes, so I stepped back and held the door for them.  When they’d left, I went back into my bedroom and discovered that, between the two of them, they’d pretty well packed up all of my personal belongings.  Except for the furniture, of course.  One of them had even grabbed my pillows off my bed.  Shrugging, I decided to see what was left in the kitchen and saw that Basil and Gabe had cleaned that out. 

Alrighty then!  That only really left a few pieces of furniture because some of it had come with the apartment.  When I got back to the living room, I found Shaun and Hunter disconnecting my TV set. 

“Good thinking!” I said, relieved that they’d thought about it.  “It might not have been here when I got back!”  I frowned.  “Is there going to be enough room for everyone with all this stuff?”

“Sure!” Shaun said.  “We brought the dooley.” 

All at sea, I followed them as they left, locking up.  I discovered what they meant when we got to the street.  The ‘dooley’ was a monster truck—front and back seat and a full sized bed with double wheels on either side of the back.  My suitcase and boxes didn’t take up even half of the space in the back of the truck. 

“Do I get in the front seat or the back?”

“Front,” Gabe said.

“Back,” Shaun said at almost the same time. 

I glanced from one to the other.  “It you don’t mind, Shaun, I’d really rather sit in the front.  I get motion sickness in the back.”

He looked suspicious. 

“I really do.  I’m serious.”

Gabe grabbed my arm and helped me up the step and then into the truck.  I’d never been in anything like it, needless to say.  I discovered when I’d gotten in that Basil was climbing in the other side and there was an odd looking seat in the middle, like a seat on top of the main seat.  “What’s this?” I asked, disconcerted as I settled on it.

“Jump seat for toddlers,” Gabe said.

I turned to gape at him.  He started laughing.  “It’s the armrest.  It tilts up.”

“You’re so funny!” I said, embarrassed, but I couldn’t help but laugh.  I didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me that it must be an armrest except that I’d never seen one so big—wide enough for my ass.   It was clearly a monster truck for big men, though.  I should’ve expected it, I supposed. 

I spent a good bit of the trip looking the truck over—what I could see of it.  “This is so cool!  I’ve never been in a truck before.  I had no idea they were so nice!  Built in DVD player—cup holders!  And it’s so high.  I can see over the cars.  That must be handy, being able to see the traffic ahead so well.”

They looked amused, but they pointed out different features. 

It entertained me until I discovered Gabe was taking the freeway onramp.  I settled back, studying the view of the city at night, listening to the guys talk—expecting any minute Gabe was going to turn off the freeway. 

We’d left the city completely behind and I was beginning to wonder where on earth their place was when Gabe turned on his blinker and moved over to get off.  We drove for another thirty minutes before I saw a landmark that looked familiar.  I saw several more not long after that.

“It’s weird, I know, but I think I’ve been this way before.”

Gabe glanced at me and then exchanged a look with Basil. 

“It looks familiar, huh?” Basil murmured, amusement threading his voice.

“It does!  I suppose it might be because it’s dark, though.”  I’d hardly gotten the comment out when Gabe slowed and turned in a driveway that was very familiar.  It totally blew my mind when he passed the arbor gate that led up to the Victorian I’d spent six weeks with them in and drove around the side to a detached garage.

“This is your house?  I mean, you live here?”

Gabe turned the engine off and shifted around to look at me.  “This is our house—mine and Shaun’s.  Basil and Hunter room with us … and now you.”

I was too bemused to know how I felt about that discovery.  I climbed out of the truck behind them and stared at the house while they headed to the back of the truck to unload it.

“Before you get too impressed,” Shaun said dryly, “we inherited it.”

I threw a startled look at him, wondering who they’d inherited from.  Grandparents?”

“There were some wild parties in that house … the first couple of years after Mom died.”  He snorted derisively.  “Until the insurance money ran out, anyway.”

I swallowed a little convulsively, feeling my chest tighten at the look on his face.  I knew I shouldn’t pick at the wound, but I couldn’t help myself.  “You couldn’t have been very old.  Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

He flicked an angry look at me.  I thought it was because I’d stuck my nose in until I realized I’d insulted him with the reference to his age.  “We were old enough to know better,” he said tightly.  “I was seventeen, Gabe eighteen.  I doubt there’s many people that get that kind of chance—a hundred fifty thousand dropped in their laps without having to work a day for it—and we blew it before we hit our twenties.  That was impressive!  We barely had enough to pay to get in to the college of art and design we’d spent most of high school bragging about going to—the best in the country for computer graphics.  Had to bust our asses after that to keep up with tuition.”

I studied him for a long moment, feeling my heart breaking for them.  Granted, they’d been wild and irresponsible, but how many kids that young would’ve done any different?  Especially when they’d lost their mother.  Maybe it had all just been the teen in them, and maybe it had been at least partly grief and fear at discovering they’d suddenly become adults and had no one to fall back on?  “What happened to your father?”

“Wrapped his car around a tree when I was twelve.”  

I struggled to think of something to say that might help his feelings, even a little.  “Your mother would be proud.”

He grunted.  “She’d be spinning in her grave,” he said dryly, and then blew out a breath.  “At least we didn’t lose it when we put it up to get the money up for the show.”

“Exactly!” I said, even though I hadn’t known that that was how they’d come up with the capital.  “She’d be proud that you two are so resourceful.”

“She’d be ashamed and horrified,” he retorted irritably.  “She loved this house.  I don’t even like to think what she would’ve thought about us using it to film a porn.”

“I don’t believe she loved it more than she did you two!  She wouldn’t have been ashamed of you even if you hadn’t turned it into such a success!”

He grinned at me abruptly.  “You didn’t know my mother!  Believe me, she wouldn’t have been happy.  She didn’t believe the end justified the means.”

“She might have been grieved that you’d been forced to do it, but I still don’t believe she would’ve wanted anything but the best life that you two could have.  She tried to insure that with life insurance.  You redeemed your folly—and not many people manage to pick themselves up after they’d had that kind of fall.”

He shook his head at me, but I thought he looked like he felt better and that was all I cared about.  Maybe his mother would have been horrified—if she’d been alive—but she wasn’t and I still believed that the only thing that ultimately mattered to a loving parent was that their children survived.

Surfacing from my abstraction when Hunter passed me with a box, I went around to the back to wait for a box to carry.  Gabe, who was standing in the back unloading, looked at me for a long moment. 

It almost seemed strange, looking at him now with what I’d learned in those few moments of talking to Shaun, like he’d suddenly become an entirely different person than the one I’d thought I’d known.  I realized he wasn’t, though.  He wasn’t any different at all.  It was my perspective that had changed.  I understood so many things I hadn’t before.  I couldn’t say that it had radically changed the way I felt about him, but I certainly admired him more than I had—which was saying something since I’d admired everything about him when I hadn’t known anything about his background at all.

It certainly put a whole new light on his short-temperedness during the filming, however.  I’d known he was one of the investors.  I hadn’t known that he and Shaun had gambled all they had that they knew what they were doing and could make it pay off.  “I’ll take the suitcase,” I said when he looked at me quizzically and flicked at glance at Shaun.

He hefted it as if weighing it and then looked around and handed me a box instead.

It was so light I nearly dropped it.  Discovering it had my pillows in it, I glanced at him, but, really, it needed to be taken in like everything else.  Shrugging, I headed in with the box.  The garage was connected to the house by a breezeway that led into the kitchen.  When I got inside, I discovered the men were unloading the boxes of goods from my kitchen. 

“Which bedroom is mine?”

“The one you had before.”

I turned to look at Gabe, who’d responded, as he strode in with my suitcase.  He passed me.  Shaking my surprise, I followed him up the stairs and found that Basil had set down a couple of boxes in the room and was heading out again.  We waltzed at the door for a moment and he finally stepped back to allow me to enter. 

It gave me the strangest feeling when I stepped into the room—as if I’d come home.  It was the same.  I couldn’t see any sign, anyway, that they’d changed anything.  Setting the box I was carrying down, I headed to the dresser than had held my wardrobe and pulled the drawer out.  My heart skipped several beats when I saw everything was still there—everything had been laundered and returned to the drawer.

When I turned around, I discovered Gabe had paused and was watching me.  I smiled at him.  “I always liked this room.”

Some of the tension went out of him.  He lifted his head and looked around.  “It was mine when I was a kid.”  He made a wry face.  “We redecorated, of course.  I didn’t sleep in the four poster.”

I chuckled.   

He hesitated.  “Just so you know, the cameras and microphones have been removed.”

I glanced around again.  “What a shame,” I murmured.

He looked a little startled and then frowned doubtfully, as if he was wondering if he’d heard me wrong or if he suspected I was being sarcastic.  I didn’t remove the doubt.  I headed to the bed and unloaded the box I’d brought up.  Beneath the pillows, I discovered all of my lingerie that I hadn’t packed.  I carried it to the dresser and put it in the same drawer with my slutty wardrobe from the shoot, wondering as I did if there was any significance I could place on the presence of my old wardrobe that might even come close to reality. 

I decided there probably wasn’t any significance at all.  They’d probably just stuffed it in the drawer because they didn’t know what else to do with it—and that beat the hell out of the possibility that they might’ve decided to save it to see if they could get their girlfriends to wear it. 

When I’d finished putting everything away, I decided to take a bath and wash my hair before I got rid of the boxes and went in search of the box of ice cream I hoped they’d removed from my refrigerator and brought.  It was probably half-melted if not worse, but I liked soupy ice cream, too.  There didn’t seem to be any sense in letting it go to waste.

I discovered the men were all in the kitchen when I got downstairs in my favorite sleep shirt—my ugly old worn sleep shirt—with my hair wound up in a towel on top of my head.  The guys sent me a startled look. 

I narrowed my eyes at them and headed for the refrigerator to check the freezer. 

“It’s melted—probably isn’t any good,” Shaun volunteered. 

“I like it soft.”  I got a dish out of the cabinet and poured mostly melted ice cream in it and then found a spoon.  “You guys mind if I watch TV?  I have to wait for my hair to dry.”

Gabe cleared his throat.  “Sure.  Help yourself.”

Smiling at them, I headed into the living room, found the remote and sat in the middle of the couch with my legs folded tailor style.  Flipping through the channels until I found something that interested me, I put the remote down and stared at the screen, slurping melted ice cream.  The guys came in a few minutes later carrying various snacks and settled around the room to munch and stare at the TV.

“What’s this?” Gabe asked curiously.

“Pictures of the universe … taken with the Hubble.  It’s called ‘A trip through the Universe’ or something like that.  I missed the beginning.  You can change the channel if you want to.”

Finished with my ice cream, I unwound the towel from my head, figuring it had absorbed all the water it was going to, and began to finger fluff my hair to help it dry. 

They actually surprised me by staying to watch until the conclusion.  “I’m heading for bed,” Gabe announced, getting up and stretching. 

“Do we still have that meeting tomorrow with Glenda?” Hunter asked.

Gabe frowned.  “I guess so.”

“I guess I’ll go to bed, too, then.”

Discovering an exodus from the parlor, I decided to go up to my own room, dry my hair a little with the blow dryer and then go to bed.  It was still pretty early, but I hadn’t slept all that well for a while.  I checked the doors since everyone else had already gone up, turning out the lights as I moved from room to room and then went upstairs.

I paused at the door as I went into my room, my hand going automatically to the lock.  After a moment’s thought, I decided against it—just in case. 

I was drowsing on the edge of sleep when I heard my door open and footsteps cross the room.  When I opened my eyes, I saw Gabe standing beside the bed.

I couldn’t read his expression.  It was dark in the room and his face was in shadow, but I didn’t need to to know why he’d come.  I heard him swallow.  “You don’t need to do this if it isn’t something you want.  It isn’t part of the package.”

I lifted my arms to him instead of replying. 

He dove at me, finding my mouth almost before he’d settled.  That was when I really felt as if I’d come home, when I felt his mouth on mine, found myself adrift in his essence and drunk with the pleasure of it. 

He was hungry, ravenous, and I felt it with every touch as he peeled my night shirt off and stroked and caressed me and brought my desire to fever pitch.  I was starving for his touch.  I didn’t need to be teased to reach my zenith.  It was just a pure pleasure to be luxuriating in the way he made me feel. 

I’d begun to pull him at him demandingly before he finally nudged my legs apart and settled in the cradle of my thighs.  He paused, gasping hoarsely as he searched beneath the pillow.  I hadn’t seen him bring the tube he’d shoved beneath it and it flickered through my mind that he hadn’t been too uncertain of his welcome if he’d come prepared. 

On the other hand, I loved a man who was always prepared! 

Someone tried the doorknob just about the time he finished stroking the lubricant over himself.  He planted his mouth over mine and bore me back to the pillow when I lifted my head to look toward the door.  Whoever it was had left by the time he broke the kiss—or he broke the kiss when he heard them leave. 

Aligning his body with mine, he penetrated me without hesitation, rocking his hips as he thrust a little deeper each time.  The feel of his slow claiming, the strain of my body to accept him and the delightful abrasion of his cock, drove me closer and closer to release.  I came almost as soon as he’d filled me to my limits, but I’d learned not to allow that to disappoint me.  I enjoyed it to the fullest and then focused again on the feel of his body moving in and out of mine, strumming my hands over his broad back as I met his thrusts.  I began clutching at him a little frantically as I felt my body gathering toward my second climax, urging him to move faster.  He caught my feverish desperation, gasping from time to time as if he was holding his breath.  I felt his cock jerk inside of me.  It touched off the explosion of rapture I’d been waiting for.  Shuddering with the force of it, I struggled to maintain the rhythm, fought to catch my breath as the spasms ripped through me.  He followed me to glory, shuddering and gasping as he pumped his seed into me, sinking heavily against me in the aftermath. 

Dragging in a deep, shaky breath, I lifted upward enough to kiss his chest and throat.  “I missed this,” I murmured, stroking my cheek over his chest before I collapsed against the pillows. 

He bent his head, shifting downward to disengage our bodies.  “I missed it, too,” he said huskily against the side of my neck.  Releasing a deep sigh of contentment, I turned to snuggle against him and drifted off to sleep when he moved to the bed beside me.   

Chapter Seventeen

It was an understatement, Gabe thought wryly.  He hadn’t thought when she’d left that he was going to have a real problem waiting a week or two to go after her.  The business of trying to wrap everything up and trying to get their new project in line and started kept all of them busy. 

Wrong!  The truth was that he’d been so preoccupied with trying to plan his campaign to get her back—for real, and for good—that he hadn’t been able to focus on business with more than half a brain. 

The truth was that he’d leapt at the excuse to sweep her up and bring her back so that he could keep her safe because he’d just been looking for a reason, any reason, to get her back.

And that complicated the hell out of his plans to wait until the others had focused elsewhere. 

He’d landed himself in the same situation, pretty much, as he’d been in when she left—fierce competition to stake a claim.  Of course, they’d ditched nearly half the ‘hunks’, but he’d never considered the other three much competition to begin with. 

He shook the wandering thoughts.  She was safer with all of them to keep an eye on her.  That was the important thing at this juncture—making sure some psycho didn’t get his hands on her.  He didn’t entertain a lot of doubt that he could handle the son-of-a-bitch if he managed to find her, but they had to carry on with their lives.  They were going to be coming and going.  At least with four of them, they could make sure she was always watched by one of them—without making her feel like she was in prison or, hopefully, scaring her by letting her know how worried they were that there was a maniac stalking her.

* * * *

Much to my relief, I discovered the guys really did need a secretary.  The rear parlor, or family room, which had been used as a sort of dormitory for four of the Hunks during the shooting of the show, had been converted into a studio.  I’d wondered if it wasn’t cramped with four guys sharing one room—Gabe, Basil, and Shaun had had bedrooms upstairs—but I saw that it wasn’t nearly as crowded as I’d thought.  It was a large room, nearly as big as the front parlor. 

And filled with equipment.  Beyond the fact that I could see that some of it was computers, and all of it electronics, I had no idea what the equipment was or what it was intended for.  It looked expensive, though. 

Each of the guys had workstations and all of the workstations looked like disaster areas.  Gabe gestured at the room.  “See if you can organize this stuff—just don’t touch the equipment and don’t lose anything.”

I nodded, but he’d already turned and strode to his workstation.  I moved to the middle of the room, or the eye of the hurricane, turning slowly in a circle and surveying everything.  My honest assessment by the time I’d taken it all in was that it was hopeless.  Heading into the kitchen, I searched until I found a box of plastic trash bags, deciding that was the place to start since their trashcans were overflowing.  

The trashcans were full of notes—snack wrappers and empty soda cans, too, but lots of notes.  I’d crouched down to empty to Basil’s trash when I noticed the notes, some of them wadded up, others not.  I found several envelopes that looked like bills, too—unopened.  Uneasy when I discovered unopened mail in the container, I settled on the floor and began sorting it carefully. 

“What are you doing?”

I looked up and discovered Basil frowning at me.  “There’s mail here.  I thought I should just check before dumping everything out.”

“Let me see!” he demanded, holding his hand out. 

I placed the envelopes in his hand and he flipped through them.  “I found the light bill!” he announced to the room at large.  “My cell phone bill ….”  He handed the envelopes back to me.  “Don’t lose that stuff.  It’s bills.”

I wasn’t comforted at the discovery that Basil had a tendency to file everything in the trashcan.  I had a feeling he wasn’t the only one either.  When I’d finished sorting possibly important from obvious trash, I looked around for a safe place to put them until I’d gone through everything else.  There weren’t any filing cabinets and every surface, including most of the floor, was covered with equipment and wires.  I went back to the kitchen and grabbed a couple of the boxes that had been used to carry my stuff. 

When I’d searched the studio from one end to the other for a pen to write with and come up empty, I discovered Gabe had a pen over each ear and stole one of them.  “I need my pen!” he growled.

“Then use the one over your other ear!”

He looked startled, felt both ears and found the pen.  Shrugging, he stuck it over his ear again.  When my stomach started grumbling, I went into the kitchen.  Discovering it was past noon, I inventoried the food in the house and finally found enough to put a meal together. 

“Do you guys want to eat at your desks or in the dining room?”

They all stopped and turned to stare at me blankly for a moment and then bailed out of their chairs and raced each other to the door.  Shaking my head in amusement, I carried the food to the dining room and, while I had them trapped, made them look through the notes. 

That was when I discovered that their handwriting was so bad that they had trouble reading their own notes. 

Which was probably why the notes were in the trashcan. 

* * * *

Gabe didn’t feel a great deal of surprise when he’d showered and shaved and headed down the hall to Nicole’s room and discovered Shaun, Basil, and Hunter laying in wait for him, but it pissed him off royally.

Fine, he thought!  They needed to clear the air anyway.  He didn’t like fucking sneaking down to her room.  They might as well settle everything now.

“What’s up?”

They folded their arms.  “I think we should move the discussion downstairs,” Basil said tightly.

Gabe studied him for a long moment, flicked a look at the others, glanced at Nicole’s door and finally shrugged.  “Fine.  Downstairs it is.”

“Are we going to have a problem?” he asked when they’d reached the parlor.

“We are if you’ve gotten it into your head that you have some sort of claim on Nicole,” Shaun said tightly.

Anger immediately surged through him at the challenge.  “I do have a claim on her.”

“No more than we do!” Hunter retorted.  “Don’t start that Dom shit!  She never acknowledged you as her master and you damned well know it!  And we know it!  If she had, she would’ve looked to you for permission.”

Gabe studied him in tight-lipped silence.  The problem was that he did know it and disputing Hunter’s claim wasn’t going to make any fucking difference in the long run.  Nicole had to make the choice—had to accept the man she considered her master.

Privately, he doubted she could or would for the simple reason that she wasn’t actually a submissive—and they all knew that, too.  Beyond that, it was hard to argue, at this point, with the situation that had grown to be a habit.  She’d gotten used to the way things were while they’d been doing the show.  He wasn’t sure she could really adjust to the fact that the show was over and there was a whole new set of rules.

He wasn’t sure he could, if it came to that.

“Alright,” he said finally, still thoroughly pissed off.  “Nothing’s settled.  I can see that.”

“We also have the little problem that she’s living with us now and she needs protection,” Basil said pointedly.  “We can’t be brawling over her.  In the first place, that isn’t going to fucking settle this when she’s the one that has to decide.  In the second, she’s liable to take to her heels.”

“So we handle it like gentlemen?” Gabe said dryly.  “What are you suggesting, drawing straws?”

“All we’re saying,” Shaun responded tightly, “is that you can’t have her all to yourself.  None of us can.  We all figure we’ve got a claim and we’re going to have to work with it until Nicole settles it.  That means you don’t fucking troop down to her god damned room every fucking night!”

Or he could beat the shit out of all of them and head for her room while they were nursing their wounds.

Ok, he liked the sound of that, but he wasn’t confident he’d be able to drag himself inside her door and lock it if he had to take them all on.

He was pretty sure Nicole wouldn’t like it either.

As much as he hated to admit it, Basil was right.  If they let things get too much out of hand there was no way they were going to be able to keep it from Nicole.  Even if it didn’t scare her off, it would be damned uncomfortable for her and she might decide to leave just to keep the peace.

Which would put her in danger.

They couldn’t risk that, regardless of how they felt about the situation.

“Fine!  I don’t like it worth a fuck, but I see your point.  We’re going to have to draw straws or some-fucking-thing, though!  She sure as hell isn’t going to be in the dark long if we race each other to her door every fucking night and have a fight in the hall about who’s going in!”

* * * *

Basil was pissed off, briefly, when they’d finally settled things and he won the toss only to discover when he’d slipped into Nicole’s room that she was sound asleep.  Briefly, he debated what his welcome was liable to be if he woke her up, but it was a short debate.  He’d been horny as hell before he’d come upstairs.  From the moment he’d discovered he’d won the round for the night, he hadn’t been able to focus on anything but getting into her room and climbing into her bed.

He didn’t think he could’ve pointed his toes in the other direction if he’d wanted to and he sure as hell didn’t want to.

Shrugging inwardly, he moved to the side of the bed and started undressing, figuring something would come to him if she woke up and demanded to know what he was doing there.  He relaxed when she didn’t wake up.

It flickered through his mind that it was a damned good thing they’d gone and gotten her, though.  If he’d been the psycho, she would be in trouble!

Since it also occurred to him that she might be sleeping so deeply because she felt safe with them, however, he decided not to give her a lecture over it—especially when he realized she might start locking her door.

He didn’t know how good his lock-picking skills were.

Slipping carefully into bed beside her, he considered whether to wake her and see if she was agreeable or not, but the discovery that she was naked clenched it for him.  That was an open invitation, added to the unlocked door, if he’d had ever had one!

Doubts immediately surfaced as to whether the invitation was for him or Gabe, but he dismissed them.  With the exception of the time she’d been pissed off with them when they were doing the Snow White and Seven Hunks scene, she had never failed to respond swiftly and warmly to his overtures.

In any case, he’d caught her with her defenses down and he was fucking horny!  He was pretty sure he could get her all warmed up and ready before she had time to figure out he wasn’t Gabe, even if it was Gabe she was waiting for.

He didn’t like the possibility worth a fuck, but he decided he’d sulk over it after he’d taken care of his blue balls.

He almost took care of the problem before he got started.  By the time he’d explored her body, he was already having control issues.  When she roused enough to open her legs to him, he lost all thought of warming up.  He searched a little frantically for a tube of lubrication, squirted the shit all over himself because his hands were shaking so badly with impatience, and ended up having to scrape it off his thighs and the bed to lubricate his shaft. 

“Basil,” she whispered, reaching for him as he leaned over her.

There was no question in her voice, only desire in the huskiness of it.  Relief flickered through him, but such a surge of need washed through him that he didn’t waste time thinking about it—until later.  Dropping over her, he grabbed his cock and began a frantic search for a place along her cleft that yielded enough to reveal the mouth of her sex.  He began shoving the minute he found it, digging his toes into the mattress and struggling like a salmon trying to make it upstream for the spawning grounds. 

It wasn’t a good thing that that particular analogy popped into his mind because the moment it did, he felt his balls draw up to his belly. 

Jesus!  He was about to blow!

Damn it to hell!  He’d been waiting weeks for this.  He wasn’t fucking going to blow his load before he’d even gotten the chance to enjoy it, damn it!

He was sweating and shaking so badly by the time he’d conquered her tight, hot cavern that he’d lost all coordination and most of the strength in his arms and legs and, to make things worse, he was sticking to her—and sliding.

Ok, he told himself, he’d fucked up round one.  If he could convince her to lie still for a round two, all was not lost!

Or confuse the shit out of her!

He gritted his teeth when he came, tensing every muscle in his body to try to keep her from realizing he hadn’t managed three fucking strokes before he’d lost it.  Heaving a bracing breath when the spasms stopped, he immediately began moving again with great care.  If he pulled too far out he was never going to shove his limp noodle in her. 

It turned out to be a good plan.  It didn’t take much shallow gliding to make him as hard as he’d been when he’d gone in.  He’d never managed that before!

Then again, he’d had all he could take for weeks and then nada!  He had a backup to take care of.

He managed to keep a rhythm going until she came.  He was still trying to work up to coming again when he felt her begin to buck against him and knew she was hitting her second peak.  It shot him right over the top.  He almost passed out when he came the second time.

He’d already pulled out of her, wondering if he had the strength to stagger down the hall to his own room, when it dawned on him that he didn’t have to.  It wasn’t like everybody didn’t know where he was.  He didn’t have to hide a fucking thing!

Collapsing beside her on the bed, he waited until he’d cooled off and then dragged her close enough he could curl around her.  Thinking he might wake her up after a while and enjoy another round, he dropped off of the cliff and into the deep abyss.

* * * *

It took days to bring the studio into even a semblance of order and it was a constant battle to maintain order.  In a way, it annoyed me.  Then again, it also reassured me that they hadn’t just taken pity on me and taken me in like a stray.  They needed me.  They were so focused when they were working that they forgot to stop to eat unless I reminded them and, if I hadn’t been there to cook, they would’ve lived on the junk food that mostly filled the cabinets and refrigerator.  I wondered how they managed to stay in such beautiful shape until I discovered they had an entire gym in the garage and worked out every morning, and jogged in the evenings—and played football or basketball or some other ballgame on the weekends.  Most of the time it was just the four of them, but occasionally friends would drop over and join them.  They’d play ball, cookout on the grill on the back deck, and then sit around and drink beer and do their male bonding thing.

They didn’t appear to have any girlfriends at the moment. 

They didn’t actually need a girlfriend, I thought wryly.  They had plenty of male companionship, plenty to do when they were working, and me.  I was a little disconcerted, at first, when I discovered that we were playing the same game we’d played the last half of the shoot.  Everyone would troop up to bed like good little boys—and girl—and then, once I was tucked up in my bed, almost inevitably, one or the other would tap lightly at my door and slip into the room, lock the door, and climb into the bed with me.  Or slip in just about the time I got to sleep.

I never let on that they, whichever one it was, wasn’t the only one sneaking into my bed when they thought everybody else was asleep.  At first, that was because I didn’t feel any real obligation to disclose that information.  The only ‘relationship’ that was openly acknowledged was that I was a roomy.  During the day, although I caught plenty of heated gazes when they didn’t have their noses stuck to their computer screens, they were never open about our intimacy, never staked a claim.  I didn’t get hugs or kisses or a possessive arm around my waist or across my shoulders that said to me, or the others, ‘this is my woman’.

And, by the time I’d made the rounds it occurred to me that there was really no way to handle telling them without, possibly, creating friction.  In any case, why turn Basil down only because I’d had sex with Gabe the night before?  What was I supposed to say?  I’m reserving this for Gabe—who hasn’t claimed me as a girlfriend?  The same went for all of them. 

By the time I’d been living with them a month I decided it was an open secret that nobody was acknowledging and if they weren’t it was because they didn’t want to.  It seemed to me that they wanted to maintain the illusion, in their own mind, that they were my one and only lover.  It was a fairly regular occurrence for them to run into each other outside my door after all.  They couldn’t not know. 

I was happy, and they seemed to be.  Why rock the boat?

I discovered a few months later that I didn’t actually have a choice.  Nature had overcome mankind.  Or maybe it was man had overcome man?

I was sure I couldn’t possibly be pregnant when I bought the home test kit.  I was on birth control.  I took it religiously, exactly when I was supposed to take my pill.  I didn’t know why I felt pregnant, unless it was a subconscious desire to be pregnant, but I really expected disappointment when I used it.  

I tested positive.  Deciding the damned thing was defective, I debated getting another one.  The guys always all went with me when I went shopping, though, and it had been hard enough to get the first one without them seeing it.  I made an appointment to get checked, told the guys it was a regular checkup visit, and the doctor informed me that I was pregnant.

“I can’t be!  I’m on the pill!”

He frowned.  “Did you miss any?”

“No!”

“Not take one at the right time?  That’s important.  I told you that.”

“I always take it in the morning as soon as I brush my teeth!  Always!”

He cleared his throat, shrugged.  “Well, you’re pregnant.  It happens occasionally.”

“What happens occasionally?”

He studied me a moment.  “You know it isn’t one hundred percent effective?  Occasionally, women do get pregnant even when they are taking their pills like they’re supposed to.”

I blinked at him.  “A miracle baby,” I said neutrally.

He shrugged again and smiled faintly.  “A determined one.”

I kept thinking he was wrong.  I knew the pills weren’t one hundred percent, but how the hell had I managed to land in that tiny margin of error?

The shit fairy had struck again!

I decided I was glad—if it actually turned out that I really was pregnant, and I didn’t really believe it until I started noticing the changes and the doctor kept behaving like I was pregnant. 

The guys should have become suspicious, but they were men.  In any case, if they could ignore the fact that sometimes my door was locked and sometimes open and they kept bumping into each other in the hall I could see why they wouldn’t notice something as small as a little rounded tummy where there hadn’t been one before. 

Should I tell them?  Guess what?  I’m pregnant!

I could see that going over well, especially since I couldn’t tell them which one of them was the father.  All I knew was that it had happened since I’d moved in with them. 

If I’d thought there was any chance in hell that I’d get pregnant, I would’ve … well, done something different … maybe.

I had a bad feeling they weren’t going to take it well so I decided to take the coward’s way out and just not tell them.  They were bound to notice at some point, but why do today what I could probably put off for a couple more months, at least?  

* * * *

Hunter watched Nicole climb the stairs with frowning intensity and finally glanced at Shaun.  Shaun, he saw, was also watching her.  After a moment, he dragged his gaze from her, turned absently and headed back into the parlor where Basil and Gabe were going over the storyboard. 

Shaun plopped down at one end of the couch.  “She isn’t just getting a little plump, is she?” he asked of no one in particular.

Gabe lifted his head and stared at his brother blankly for a moment.

“Nicole?”

Gabe glanced toward the door, raked a hand through his hair, and sat back.  “I don’t think so.”

Basil gaped at him.  “You’re not suggesting … what I think you’re suggesting?”

Gabe’s lips tightened.  “It isn’t going to do any good to keep waltzing around it, you know.  It isn’t going to go away.”

“Nobody’s waltzing around it!” Hunter snapped.  “I just hadn’t noticed!  Had you?” he asked Basil.

Basil flushed faintly.  “I thought, maybe, she was just plumping up a little,” he muttered.  “How long has she been here?”

Gabe sent him a look.  “If you’re trying to figure out if it’s yours or you can blame it on somebody else, forget it.  She had her period not long before she left, if you’ll recall.”

“Yes, but … it was a week and a half before she moved back in.”

“You’re starting to piss me off,” Gabe growled at his brother.

“I’m just saying ….  How the hell did it happen anyway?” Shaun retorted.

“Well, you stuck your dick in her and you forgot to pull out for the come shot,” Hunter said dryly.

Shaun shot a bird at him.  “She was on birth control, though, right?”  He frowned, clearly angry for a few moments before a sudden thought occurred to him.  “She went off the pill!  She must have!  That means she’s decided, right?”

Gabe shifted uncomfortably.  “Actually, she didn’t go off the pill … unless she was flushing them and I don’t know why she would.  She didn’t know I counted them.”

“You were counting her pills?” Basil demanded.  “You’re sure you counted right?”

Gabe glared at him.  “I just happened to notice the package!” he snapped.  “It was lying on her vanity in plain sight!  I didn’t search the medicine cabinet for them.”

“How long have you been counting them?”

“I haven’t been counting them!” Gabe said indignantly.  “I just said I saw the package and I picked it up and looked at it and there was an empty spot everywhere there was supposed to be one!”  Of course it had crossed his mind that he could ‘misplace’ them and that would settle the question of whether Nicole stayed or packed up and left, but he hadn’t.  Thinking about it didn’t count any more than the idea of replacing them with something else counted, particularly since he hadn’t been able to think of a handy substitute that wouldn’t make her immediately suspicious.

Hunter frowned.  “Actually, I looked at the package, too—when I packed up the stuff in her bathroom.  He’s right—at least at that time—she was on the pill.”

“Baby trap!” Shaun said. 

“What makes you so damned sure she’s trying to trap you, is what I’d like to know?” Hunter demanded.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, what the fuck would be the point of deliberately going off the pill to trap any of us when we all know that we’ve all been sleeping with her?  She has to know she couldn’t pin it on any one of us!” Gabe said tartly.

They all exchanged a look.  “So?  She could get a paternity test,” Shaun pointed out.

“She could, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s on the pill—or was when she moved in,” Gabe said tightly.

“Ok, so all that fucking tells us is that it was definitely one of us—we can rule out the other three because it didn’t happen when we were filming the show,”  Hunter said.

“It didn’t happen then,” Gabe said, “because she had her period and that rules out the possibility.  And it isn’t likely that it happened between then and the time she moved in because of her cycle.  I looked it up and calculated it.  She wouldn’t have been fertile until mid-cycle and she’d moved back in with us by that time.  I think it’s mine.”

“What the hell makes you think it’s yours?” Basil demanded. 

“Because I was there at the right time?”

“You can’t calculate that close!  I was with her the next night.  It could be mine!” Basil growled.

“I don’t see much point in arguing about it,” Hunter put in.  “The question is, what to do about it?”

“At this point, I’m thinking we should start shopping for baby stuff,” Gabe said wryly.  “I’m not saying I know a hell of a lot about these things, but I’m pretty sure she’s planning on having it.”

“Well hell!  That’s going to break up the fucking party—squalling infant, shitty diapers, and no pussy—no tits either if she means to breast feed!” Hunter said in disgust.

Gabe studied him thoughtfully.  “You can always get another place.”

Hunter glared at him.  “I don’t want to get another place, damn it!”

“You said ….”

“I’m just saying this is getting heavy.  I wasn’t planning on starting a family … yet.”

“Well, what the fuck makes you think you have?” Gabe snapped.  “It’s probably mine, anyway!”

“You don’t know that she got pregnant right away,” Basil said pointedly.  “What if it was the next cycle?  How long has she been here?  A couple of months?”

“I thought I was out of it!” Hunter said dryly.  “I looked it up—five months.”

“Five months!  You’re sure?” Basil demanded, frowning as he tried to figure it up himself.  “What month is this, anyway?”

“She looks like she’s more than a couple of months along anyway,” Gabe said pointedly.  “Hunter’s right—five months and if she got pregnant right away, then she’s got to be at least four.  That sounds about right to me.”

“Just when was the last time you were around a pregnant chick?” Hunter demanded.

Gabe glared at him.  “If she’s far enough along we noticed, then she damned sure didn’t just get pregnant!”

“The thing that worries me,” Basil said after a little thought, “is that she hasn’t said anything.  Why do you think she hasn’t said anything?  I mean, if we’ve noticed, it stands to reason she’s figured it out.  Besides, she went to the doctor—at least twice since she moved in.”

Gabe frowned.  That was the thing that was bothering him, too, had been bothering him since he’d finally accepted the fact that she had to be pregnant.  It seemed to him that she would’ve at least told him, because he was as sure as he could be that it was his.

* * * *

I was sure I was about to catch hell when the guys started cupping my rounded belly.  Gabe was the first that seemed to notice my belly was taking on a plumpness it hadn’t had before.  We’d just had sex and he was idly stroking his hand along my body and then his hand just sort of settled right over my belly and stayed there.  I held my breath.  The next thing I knew I could hear his heavy breathing that told me he’d lost consciousness.

Basil didn’t even make any pretense of caressing me.  He simply settled his hand there and left it.

By the time Hunter and Shaun had done the same thing and not one of them had said a word, I decided they either hadn’t actually noticed or they were waiting for a confession.

I considered it and discarded it again.  I didn’t want to make a general announcement, damn it!  I also didn’t want to point a finger.  I decided it was my baby.  Why should I tell them?

Seven months into my pregnancy, they took to patting my stomach when they walked by me and occasionally, when we’d sit in the front parlor watching TV, they would sit with their hand on the mound, waiting for baby to kick. 

I had to suppose Gabe finally got tired of waiting for me to announce it.  One night after we’d had sex, he simply moved to my belly and lowered his head, as if he was trying to listen in. 

“Do you think it’s a boy?  Or a girl?” he murmured, brushing his lips lightly over my belly.

I swallowed a little convulsively, listening to my heart hammering in my ears.  Not ‘is it mine?’ or ‘who’s the father?’ but ‘is it a boy or a girl?’

“It’s a boy,” I said finally.

He lifted his head and moved up the bed, nuzzling his face against my neck.  “We should fix up the spare room as a nursery.”

I started crying.  I had the awful feeling that he thought the baby was his and I didn’t know!

He leaned away to look at me for a long moment and finally pulled me into his arms, stroking my hair.  “It’ll be alright, baby.  Don’t cry.  Did you think we wouldn’t notice eventually?”

There was a thread of amusement in his voice that sounded promising.  I sniffed.  “I thought you’d all be mad with me.  I didn’t go off the pill!  I swear I didn’t!  It just happened.  The pill isn’t a hundred percent and ….”

He expelled a deep breath, but I couldn’t tell if it meant he was angry or not.  “I was actually kind of hoping that you had.”

I sat up and looked down at him.  “Really?”

He shrugged.  “At least I’d know for sure then that you wanted to stay.”

I stared at him blankly.  “Of course I want to stay!  I love it here!  I was afraid you guys would want me to leave because I got knocked up, that maybe you’d think I just did it ….”

Gabe cleared his throat.  He thought he would’ve liked it if she had tried to trap him.  Then he’d know she’d picked him over the others.  He realized abruptly, though, that they’d all pretty much fallen into the habit of thinking of her as theirs—and she probably thought of all of them as hers.  Why wouldn’t she?  They all were hers!

“Nobody wants you to leave,” he said gruffly.  “I don’t want you to leave, and it’s my house—well, mine and Shaun’s—but Shaun doesn’t want you to leave either.”  He was silent for several moments.  “I’d like to think it’s mine.  I don’t suppose …?”

“I don’t know!” I wailed.

He chuckled.  “Well, don’t cry about it!  It isn’t your fault—no more than ours, anyway.  It isn’t like we didn’t all know.  We can’t very well be pissed off at you when we did.  Anyway, we could always get a paternity test and then we’ll know.”

“You aren’t angry with me?”

“I’m a little pissed off with me.  If I’d realized I was going to fall in love with you ….”  He stopped.  “Honestly?  I didn’t know what the hell to do.  I was in so deep there was no backing out.  I didn’t want to until you showed up.  This is seriously fucked up, but I don’t see how we’ve could’ve done anything any different and now … well, I’ve kind of gotten used to it, at least.  I still don’t especially like it, but it’s hard to argue with the fact that I’m—mostly—happy.  I don’t remember the last time I felt this … content with my life.”  He shook his head.  “I knew I was in trouble the first time I laid eyes on you.  I just didn’t know how much.” 

He smiled at me.  “I thought you were the prettiest, sexiest little thing I’d ever seen.  I wanted to jump your bones right then and there.”

I could feel my face heat at the compliment.  I stared at him with a wide-eyed, breathless, ‘tell me more’ look.  He loved me!  He’d said it straight out!

He grimaced.  “We were halfway through the shoot before I began to realize that I was in trouble.  I couldn’t see any way out of what I’d started, though.  In all honesty, I didn’t even realize, at first, that I wanted out of it.  I didn’t have any options but to finish, though, even when I did finally admit it to myself.  I was tied up.  Shaun was tied up.  Everything we had was tied up.  I’m not pissed off with you.  I don’t think I’m pissed off at all any more, although I sure as hell was for a while.” 

I swallowed with an effort, trying to understand what he was trying to tell me.  “I didn’t really want out of it,” I said finally.

He shrugged.  “You were tied up, too.  So … here we all are—the five of us.  Just one happy family … and baby makes six.”

I felt like crying again.  “I guess you’re right.  It isn’t going to work, is it?”

He frowned.  “That’s the weird part.  It actually has worked.”

I studied his face hopefully.  “You think … we can stay together?”

He lifted a hand to my cheek.  “Stay with me, Nicki.  I don’t know what the others want to do, or will do, but stay with me.  We’ll raise the baby together.  I think it’s mine, but it doesn’t matter if isn’t.  When all’s said and done, it wouldn’t be any different if you’d had the baby before we met.”

I settled my cheek against his chest, thinking.  “I’m in love with you, too,” I said finally. 

He tensed. “And Shaun?  Basil?  Hunter?”

I chewed my lip, wondering if I should lie.  “I … care about them.  I’m in love with you.  If I’d realized you cared about me, that I meant something to you ….  Well, I couldn’t really have changed anything either.  We had to shoot the show.  I couldn’t help … becoming attached to them.”

He didn’t look happy about that, but I hadn’t really expected him to be.  I guess I should’ve lied—but I did care about them.  As much as I loved Gabe, I couldn’t bring myself to deny that I also cared about the others.  I didn’t want to hurt them, if they cared about me, any more than I wanted to hurt him.

“Ah, well—cluster-fuck, start to finish.  Well, there’s no going back, so I figure we’ll just take it one day at the time and see how it all works out.  I’m just as tied to the bastards now as I was before.  I can’t pitch them out.  I can’t finish this film without them and we’ve been pretty much putting our profits from the Snow White movie into the new company.”

I snuggled closer.  “We can make it work.  I love you.  I’ll do whatever you want.  They don’t love me.  Once you’re through with the film, maybe even before that, they’ll find someone and then you can still be partners and make films together and … it’ll all work out.”

* * * *

It actually all did work out, amazingly enough.  I have to say that if the others didn’t love me, they managed to make a damned good impression of doing so.  By the time the baby arrived, they’d discarded all pretense of being ‘secretive’ about our five way affair.  The first few years we lived together were rocky on a personal level, there was just no getting around that, although it was peaceful most of the time.  Financially, the guys proved they were as smart and talented as I’d believed they were.  Their first movie wasn’t quite the success that Snow White had been, but it did well.  Their second almost tied their venture into porn.  My sister Brandy did well as a porn star and retired comfortably well off.  Shaun eventually met a woman and fell in love and married.  He was divorced two years later, assured me he had never loved her, and moved back in with us.  As far as I knew, Gabe, Basil, and Hunter never strayed.  We all continued to live in the beautiful Victorian house.  I gave each one of the three a son and then had a daughter by Gabe.

Gabe was right.  It was weird, but it worked for us.

The End

Also available from NCP in the Domination/Submission series by Kimberly Zant: 

Punished---Marlee has a secret she dare not divulge, and it isn't something that will withstand the scrutiny of a criminal investigation. When the computer system at the law firm where she works is hacked and critical information filched, she discovers she could be looking at jail time and begs them for the chance to repay them in whatever manner they see fit. The sentence is six months hard time-with six young lawyers.

Submission-- To Jimmy, it had been nothing more than a challenge—break the bank’s cutting edge computer security just to prove he could. To his mother, Stephanie, it was Armageddon. Fortunately for her, the Thornes—Gavin, Bret, Jared, Jessie, and Luke—weren’t interested in advertising the fact that a kid had breached their security. They were ruthlessly determined to collect their pound of flesh, however—hers.

Surrender-- Desperate straits call for desperate measures---If anyone had asked Anna before what she would be willing to do for money, what she’d just signed up for would NOT have been on the list. She’s discovered, though, that the needy can’t afford to be too picky.

And, after all, what’s six weeks in the scheme of things?

Despite her internal pep talk, though, she discovers she isn’t at all prepared for what she has to face in the mansion of ill repute—where ‘no’ is no longer a part of her vocabulary unless she wants to forfeit the money she needs so badly.

 

Cyberevolution Book One:

The Awakening

 

By

 

Kaitlyn O’Connor

 

( c) copyright by Kaitlyn O’Connor, July 2012

Cover Art by Eliza Black, July 2012

New Concepts Publishing

www.newconceptspublishing.com

Chapter One

There was no question about the precise moment the drop ship entered the planet’s atmosphere.  The troop carrier began to shimmy.  The vibrations increased exponentially as they dropped lower until it reached a point where it felt like it would liquefy flesh, bones, and teeth, and everything around them would disintegrate.  Then the transport began to buck wildly.   Abruptly, an explosion ripped a hole in the hull wide enough to suck three troopers and their seats out of it. 

Something strange happened when it did.  Seth CO1543 felt his motor functions slow in a most peculiar way.  Logically, he knew that the hull breach, the flying shrapnel that peppered every troop close enough to catch a projectile, the screams, the flying bits of flesh, blood, and metal that resulted from the impact of the projectiles, and the abrupt extraction of one entire row of seats and their occupants created by the opposing forces of interior and exterior pressure occurred almost simultaneously.  He also knew that his processor was fast enough to record all of those nearly instantaneous occurrences. 

Time seemed to slow, however.  He blinked, heard a strange roaring sound that did not seem to be related to the hull breach—because it occurred milliseconds prior to that—and then he saw everything that happened in a series of stills.  As if he was experiencing a complete system failure due to faulty, failing power supply, he saw the hole simply appear, the darkness beyond as profound as deep space, although he knew it was simply the dark side of the world below them.  He saw the stunned expressions on the faces of the three troops that were sucked out as they flew backwards in their safety harnesses and vanished in the black abyss. 

Panning right, he saw the troops who had been seated beside them turn their heads very slowly toward the hole and the strange, disjointed dance several others performed as holes appeared in their bodies and chunks of flesh, blood, and pieces of metal slowly jetted from them. 

It was more than a slowing of his visual perception, however.  He could not seem to process what he had recorded.  He felt oddly blank, which became even more bizarre when he realized he had not simply shut down.

This was a very strange system failure indeed.

Particularly when he felt a rush of something completely incomprehensible fill the odd void.

Abruptly, his heart rate shot upward and he felt his body tingle with cold as if an electric current had sizzled along his exterior, penetrating all the way to his biological organs nestled in the armor of his chassis.  And then time, his motor functions, seemed to abruptly right themselves and everything was happening simultaneously around him, too quickly to process. 

A sense of alarm abruptly penetrated the peculiar and opposing hyperawareness/dulling-slowing of his perceptions and he strained against his safety harness to twist his head around enough to assess his team leader, Corporal Danika Hart—his human handler.  She was staring at the hole, her blue eyes wide, her face as pale as death, her lips parted slightly.  The frozen look on her face sent a shaft of … something through Seth, making his heart jar in his chest, as if it had lost its rhythm. 

“Danika!  Are you alright?  Were you hit?”

She sent him a startled look, which sent another inexplicable tide of something unidentifiable twisting through Seth.  She had not ceased to function—was not dead, he corrected himself.

She blinked a couple of times and then looked down at herself as if she could not assess her condition without a visual—and her hands.  She patted her torso and then looked at him again.  “Damage report,” she demanded abruptly. 

It was at that point that it occurred to Seth that he had not executed a damage report despite the fact that he had noted that his systems were performing in a very erratic way.  He frowned and looked down at himself as she had.   When he looked at her again, he saw that she was studying him strangely.  He felt the temperature of the flesh of his face heat inexplicably and a strange flutter in his belly, as if he had swallowed something alive that was still moving.   “All systems fully operational.  No damage.”

She studied him several moments more and Seth felt a fluctuation of heat and cold that seemed to be a reaction to her close scrutiny—uneasiness and a sense of guilt.  Finally, she dismissed him and flicked a glance at the other two squad members.  “Dane—Niles—damage report.”

“All systems fully functional.  Minor anterior damage to torso,” Niles responded.  “The shrapnel did not penetrate beyond biological sheathing.  Nanos performing repair.   Estimated repair time … one hour to complete.”

“Mobility impaired,” Dane replied.  “Extensive damage to pneumatic knee joint.  Nanos affecting repairs.  Estimated repair time six hours.  Minor damage to biological sheathing in three locations—right knee, right calf, right arm—estimated repair time 45 minutes, 13 seconds.”

“Fuck!” Danika exclaimed.  “Patch the suits!  We’re on the dark side and looking at well below zero temperatures.  Can you make the jump, Dane?”

“Affirmative—disregarding more damage prior to reaching the jump altitude.”

Since several more missiles had exploded in close proximity to the drop ship during the course of the systems checks, making it necessary for them to bellow at one another only to be heard, Seth thought the probability of more damage was high.  He considered pointing that out until it occurred to him that not only had Danika not requested the information, but it was purely speculation on his part when he had not run statistic probabilities and could not when he had no idea what the strength of the force was that was launching the missiles. That realization sent him into even more confusion.  He had not been programmed to simply ‘guess’ or to add to confusion under attack by voicing an opinion without real substance.  Unable to dismiss the suspicion that he had sustained some sort of damage, he ran another systems check.  Again, his systems report was negative.  Unconvinced despite that, he lifted one hand and examined his head, wondering if a microscopic fragment had penetrated his skull and damaged his CPU. 

His squad leader noticed the movement and the examination.  “Is there a problem, Seth?”

The odd fluctuation of hot and cold flooded him again, the inexplicable sense of ‘wrong’.  “Negative.”  The realization that he had just lied struck Seth forcefully.  He had informed his squad leader that he was fully functional and could detect no damage when in fact he suspected that his entire system was malfunctioning. 

He was no longer recording internal and external events, he realized after considering the problem for some moments.  He was … feeling. 

That discovery … unnerved him.  He could not think of another way to describe the strange hot/cold fluctuation, the tightening sensation in his gut, or the erratic rhythm of his heart.  He dismissed that possibility and examined the events he had noted since the drop and determined that he could track the anomaly back to the precise instant the exploding missile had ruptured the hull of their drop ship—or rather an instant prior to that.  There had been a roaring sound, like the rush of air, almost as if he had anticipated the rupture of the hull.

He had not heard the sound with his ears, though.  It had been inside his brain—the biological part—not the CPU.

Anger swept through him—not the perception of an event that might cause anger or the reaction he had been programmed to exhibit upon such an occurrence.  He felt it.

The biological brain he had been given was defective, he thought angrily, and there could be no worse time to make that discovery than in the midst of battle! 

“Bail out!  Bail!  Bail!  Bail!” the co-pilot, a human, abruptly roared over the com-unit. 

Niles and even Dane had thrown off their safety harnesses and were on their feet before the human had issued the order the second time.  Brought abruptly from his internal examination, Seth was a few seconds behind them due his preoccupation. 

Danika, he discovered, was still trying to free herself from her safety harness.  He reached down, pushed her hands aside, and depressed the lock release.  She flicked a look of surprise at him and then glared.  Shoving his hands away, she tossed the harness off and stood with an effort. 

Then promptly fell back into her seat.

Grasping a handful of her suit, Seth hauled her to her feet again, trying to help her steady herself on the rolling, bucking deck.

“Line up to bail!” she bellowed.

He obeyed, hauling her around until she was in front of him, wedged between his belly and Dane’s back.  They shuffled toward the gaping maw of the drop ramp that had been opened, fighting the rocking of the ship and the buffeting wind. 

“Oh my god!” Danika exclaimed when they reached the opening where they could see the planet below them.  “What the fuck are they thinking?  I can’t make this jump!”

The wind whipped her voice away, but Seth had gotten close enough to gauge the distance to the ground, as well, and his calculations substantiated hers.  The drop was too far for a human to manage without sustaining debilitating damage.  He wrapped an arm around Danika and stepped off of the platform, allowing his legs to absorb the shock as they landed. 

He discovered he had miscalculated having had insufficient data to correctly assess the snow pack.  His considerable weight and the distance, combined with Danika’s added weight, resulted in him landing with sufficient force that he was driven waist deep into the snow and ice.  He released her as he felt himself sinking and she landed on the softer pack of the surface with a grunt as the air was punched from her lungs. 

A projectile struck Seth in the shoulder while he was assessing the situation and calculating the best way to free himself.  A dozen more peppered the ground around Seth and Danika, throwing up fountains of snow as they furrowed. 

Dimly, Seth was aware of alarm at the danger Danika was in, fully exposed and lying on the top of the soft pack, snow camo or not.  Peripherally, he was aware that the entire battalion was taking heavy fire from nearly every direction.  He was mostly focused, however, on the pain that had exploded in his shoulder and filled his mind as the projectile tore through the biological sheathing of his shoulder.

He had never experienced pain before.   He was so stunned by the reaction, in point of fact, that it took him many moments to comprehend what it was.  There should have been nothing more than an alert of damage—followed by a damage report!

The second projectile that cut a burning path along the same arm finally shook him from his preoccupation with the intense new sensations and forced him to focus on avoiding more pain.   After pushing ineffectually against the shifting snow for a few moments, he finally drew the upper portion of his body downward since he couldn’t pull his knees up and used the force to propel himself upward. 

He landed face down near his squad leader.  Crawling forward, he managed to form a protective shield on one side.  “Dane!  Niles!  To the squad leader!  Form a barrier.”

He discovered Danika was gaping at him when he focused on her, trying to assess damage—or if she had damage. 

“Getting my squad shot all to shit isn’t going to help me!” she growled. 

Their com units squawked.  “Forward squads!  Lay down a suppressing fire.  Rear squads fall back!”

“Shit!” Danika responded to the abrupt command that squawked over their com units.  “We were last to drop.  That makes us forward, damn it.  Get your weapons up, squad!  Fire!  Fire! Fire!”

Reflecting that he could still shield her with his body facing away from her, Seth rolled away from her and unshouldered his weapon.   To his relief, his malfunction didn’t seem to extend to his ability to calculate the trajectory of the projectiles flying at them.  Unfortunately, also by his calculations, his own weapon range fell short of the enemy’s.  Ignoring the lack of logic in firing on an enemy he could not hit in favor of the orders given, he zeroed in on a target and fired. 

“Out of range,” Niles responded.

“Fire, damn it!  They don’t know that!”  Danika hesitated as she fired off several rounds, and then muttered, “Unless they have cyborgs, too.”

“Unlikely,” Seth responded.  “There was nothing in Intel to suggest it.”

“Like they’ve never gotten anything wrong!” Danika snarled, glancing quickly to right and left.  “They’ve damned well got night vision and they’re closing.”

“They are also flanking our position,” Dane reported.

“Shit!  They’re going to cut us off!  What’s it looking like behind us?”

Seth scanned the ridge to the rear with his night vision and then the thermal imaging, discovering neither worked worth a damn under the current conditions.   “The rearward troops have made it to the ridge.  They’ve formed another line to our rear … fifteen meters.”

“Good!” Danika said.  “Our turn to fall back!  Move it!”

She leapt to her feet almost before she finished speaking and immediately caught a projectile that spun her around and threw her face down in the snow.  “Niles!  Dane!” Seth bellowed, surging to his feet and scooping Danika up with one arm.   “Cover our retreat!”

Niles and Dane formed a body shield, jogging backwards and firing. 

Seth caught a projectile in his thigh that brought him to his knees—from the front.  ‘Friendly’ fire—human, he thought, knowing the cyborgs would have known not to fire on them—unless the enemy had already managed to flank them.

Trying to close his mind to the fresh pain, he struggled to his feet again with Danika and charged toward the line of troops.  He managed to make it through the line without catching another round.  Depositing Danika on the ground, he scanned her to locate the wound.  “Medic!  Human wounded!”

There was no response to his call for aid and Seth glanced around with a mixture of fear and anger.  He discovered that they were surrounded by wounded—and damaged cyborgs struggling to function despite the damage they’d sustained. 
              “We will be outflanked and surrounded, by my calculations, within twenty minutes –earth time.”

His voice sounded strange—strained, and that was almost as odd as his unnecessary reference to earth time since they were all programmed to earth time measurement, but although Seth noticed, he was too intent on pulling up data to attend Danika’s wound to analyze it.  “I need to close this wound and patch Danika’s suit.”  Widening the hole in her suit, he reset his weapon, pinched the wound closed and used the laser to cauterize the flesh, gritting his teeth when she screamed in pain and the sound seemed to cut through him like a knife.  He dragged a patch from his supplies when he’d closed the wound, slapped it over the damaged suit, and held it until the nanos in the material bonded, ignoring Danika’s groans and her attempts to shove his hand away.

The chatter flowing through the com units that Seth listened to as he attended Danika was not good.  Interspersed with dozens of calls for medics and groans and screams from human throats, there were more disastrous observations.

“We’re cut off!”

“Boxed in!”

“Oh my god!  I’m shot all to shit!  I need a medic-borg!”

“They’re going to outflank us!”

“It’ll be like shooting fish in a fucking barrel!”

Abruptly a voice—cool and forceful—cut through the confusion.  “Cyborgs!  Leap to the summit of the ridge!  Carry the humans!”

The sudden, forceful command silenced all other chatter.  It did not come from the command center—the channel was local.  It also did not come from a human, but everyone knew they were running out of time to act and no one questioned the command. 

The cyborgs not too damaged to act on the command lifted their human squad leaders and leapt toward the ridge above them. 

“Who issued that command?” 

That demand came from their commanding officer aboard the mother ship. 

There was a significant pause.  “Reuel CO469.”

* * * *

Despite the intensive conditioning she’d been subjected to when she’d been shipped to combat training, Cpl. Danika Hart was unable to convince herself that she was just experiencing more of the same as the ground to air missile ripped a hole in the drop ship she was in just as it entered the target planet’s atmosphere.  She tried to.  She thought she just might be able to conduct herself in a manner befitting a soldier of the confederation and not shame her native world if she could.  She wasn’t sure she’d be able to if she couldn’t because she was as terrified as she’d ever been in her life.

She hadn’t expected to be thrown immediately into combat, though.  She’d expected to have more time to adjust to being shot at. 

Everyone knew the conditions on Xeno-12 were horrific.  It was a frozen world, just too far from its sun to ever thaw out completely—livable, as long as one was fully prepared for the cold—with a breathable atmosphere, but uninhabited, so she hadn’t been unduly worried.  They would have everything they needed to deal with the deep freeze and her own native world was at the outer habitable zone of its sun.  She was used to dealing with dangerously cold temperatures.

They were to land, set up a forward base as a buffer against the enemy encroachment and protect the true prize, Xeno-12’s sister world. 

She’d thought the war might well come to Xeno-12’s doorstep eventually, but she’d also thought there was a better than even chance that the war would be fought and won far, far from her station. 

She was pretty sure she wasn’t the only who’d thought that. 

The bombardment had deprived her of that illusion.  The bucking ship had shaken her, but she’d convinced herself that it was just rough air—nothing to worry about!  The troop carriers weren’t designed for comfort but rather durability and efficiency—right up until the hole appeared in the side of the ship and shrapnel peppered the troops inside.  She might have nursed her illusions a little longer, despite the disaster and the horror of watching three troopers sucked out, except that she could see flashes through the hole that lit up the sky and knew the entire battalion was under attack.  She saw at least two of the drop ships take direct hits and disintegrate into fiery trails of debris.  It was enough to make her imagination leap to the possibility that they’d reach the ground and discover themselves alone—if they reached it at all.

They’d already taken losses in the hundreds, maybe thousands, and they hadn’t even reached the planet’s surface yet!  It was almost beyond comprehension—far easier to think in terms of numbers than soldiers. 

Were the other battalions being dropped around the planet taking similar fire, she wondered fearfully?  Or were they the unlucky ones being dropped right in the lap of a nest of enemy troops?

And which was worse?  Being the target?  Or discovering the armada had been destroyed and they had ended up marooned on the hellish planet?

“Danika!  Are you alright?  Were you hit?”

The sound of her name penetrated Danika’s shock.  She blinked as if coming awake and searched for the origin, the person who’d spoken, and stared at Seth blankly—Seth CO1543.  He was a cyborg, she thought, struggling to figure out what it was about him that didn’t seem right.  Why was he asking her if she was alright?  Why would it occur to him to ask?  And shouldn’t he have asked for a damage report even if his programming had prompted him to ask?

He looked human—all of the latest cyborgs did—and small wonder when they were constructed of almost fifty percent biological materials.  They looked so human that it would’ve been hard getting used to the idea that they weren’t except they still didn’t behave like humans.  They didn’t speak like humans.  Not only did they have no accents like most humans did that pegged them to various regions, but they used none of the abbreviated speech patterns common to humans, none of the slang or colloquialisms, and they didn’t make idle chatter.  In fact nothing that came out of their mouths bore more than a passing resemblance to conversation.  They responded when spoken to—when a response was needed.  They issued warnings when they detected anything they needed to warn humans of, and otherwise they said nothing at all.

The early autonomous robots, particularly the ones used in warfare, just looked like machines—some roughly humanoid in that they had a head and torso, two arms, two legs, etc. and others more like tanks with heads—but the ‘bare bones’ unclad chassis had design defects.  Two much of their critical mechanics was vulnerable.  The enemy could simply aim for exposed pneumatic tubes or motors and incapacitate them.  Thin armor sheathing came next.  Not only did that create a serious weight issue, though, it gave the human troops the creeps.  They wouldn’t have had a problem if the units weren’t autonomous, but being surrounded by steel monsters that seemed capable of anything—including acting on their own—was too distracting and demoralizing for the human troops.  It had the same effect on the enemy, of course, but since the human ground troops were there to make sure the robots didn’t destroy property that didn’t need to be destroyed or gun down innocent civilians—or go berserk and destroy everything and everyone in sight—the government decided they needed an army that looked more human and could be more easily accepted by their human counterparts.

Synthetic human-like sheathing came next—which opened up a whole new market for the manufacturer—who’d already produced way more robots than they could sell to the government and were looking at a sharp decline of their profits if not total disaster.  The civilian population suddenly saw a need for companions, nannies—entertainment.  The synthetic sheathing just wasn’t quite close enough to human flesh and skin.  Happily, that desire for human flesh coincided nicely with the advances in growing human skin cells—muscles, internal organs—the whole works.  It had actually become far cheaper to use the ‘real’ thing than synthetics and since the cyborgs couldn’t object to and weren’t terrified of nanos like the rest of the population was, they could introduce nanos into the cyborgs to affect repairs.

Not that the company would have objected to making more money off of the government in repairing damaged equipment, but they’d done such an excellent job of convincing the government that their cyborgs were virtually indestructible that the government had demanded a guarantee on the product before they would sign off on the multi-trillion dollar contract. 

It wasn’t just the fact that Seth had asked her if she was alright, though, she realized abruptly. 

One the things that had always unnerved her about working with the cyborgs was the eyes.  They had cold, dead, emotionless eyes.  They managed to replicate some emotion through programming that kept them from being quite so stilted in their interactions, that made it possible a lot of the time to simply interact with them as if they were fellow human soldiers.  They looked and felt human.  As long as they didn’t talk, or confined themselves to one or two word responses and she didn’t look them directly in the eyes, she could pretend her team was just a bunch of recruits just like she was—really big, brawny recruits—but as human as she was, not titanium monsters that could squash her like a bug if their programming was faulty in any way and the notion struck them.   

And yet when she’d met Seth’s gaze, she’d seen everything reflected in them that she was feeling in those moments herself—fear of pain and death. 

But maybe that was it?  Nothing but a reflection of her own fears?  Projected onto him?

She wasn’t entirely convinced, but the realization that she’d been frozen with shock and fear shook her.  She couldn’t afford to let those emotions take the upper hand or she wasn’t going to get out of this alive!

Considering the bombardment, she didn’t know if they were even going to make it to the ground, but she needed to act when and if they did!

She got her second jolt when they were ordered out and she finally made it to the off-ramp—only to discover that they were still a very long way from the ground, not on it, as she’d expected.  Instantly visions of being mangled like a squashed spider when she hit the ground leapt into her mind.  Before she could force her way out of the line or demand to be taken lower, Seth, who was behind her, tightened his grip around her torso and stepped off the damned plank into thin air—really thin air! 

She screamed all the way down.  Fortunately, the landing was enough of a jolt to knock the panic out of her when it deprived her of breath.  Reason reared its head as the snow pack around her was peppered with shots from what seemed every direction.  Her conditioning took over—thankfully. 

The landscape was so starkly white with ice and snow that it almost seemed to glow in the moonlight that bathed it.  As she rolled over and scanned her surroundings in one swift, sweep, she saw that the virtually flat plane she’d landed on was littered with black dots of all shapes and sizes—burning debris from the landers that didn’t make it to the drop in one piece, and bodies, some moving, some eerily still.  A black bowl of sky capped the nearly featureless landscape. 

She couldn’t tell where the enemy position was! 

It didn’t help that she couldn’t see a damned thing once her team decided to form a wall around her—to protect her!  What were they thinking?  They were supposed to be shooting at the damned enemy!

Fight or die, she told herself!  The enemy had them pinned down.  What to do?  Retreat?

Not unless ordered—unfortunately—but she had to struggle with her flight instincts.

Thankfully, the thought had no sooner entered her mind than she heard the command.

Except she was at the front and supposed to lay down fire for those in the rear to drop back. 

Fight or die!

She finally managed to spot a flash that gave away an enemy position.  Once she began returning fire, she was able to focus on trying to eliminate everyone firing at her.  She didn’t realize how anxious she was for her turn to drop back until the moment she’d been waiting for came.  A new line had been formed and her team could drop back and take up a position a little further from the enemy.

Yelling for her team to drop back, she leapt to her feet—stupid move!  The projectile that slammed into her and smacked her down again drove that home!  Blackness swarmed over her.  She was in so much pain it took her a few minutes to figure out what had happened.  By the time she did, Seth had scooped her up under one arm and was racing across the plane.  The jarring raised her pain level until oblivion claimed her.  When she came to, she felt hands tugging at her suit.  Her mind struggled for a moment to make sense of what was happening and finally produced the conviction that she was being attended by a medic. 

Thank god!  She wasn’t going to die—yet. 

Needing assurance, she opened her eyes with an effort, managed to focus—and then got the shock of her life.  Seth was manhandling her—not a medic-borg! 

She didn’t even manage to say no before he set her on fire with the damned laser!  And she was in too much pain after that to berate him. 

She needed to get up and fight.  She was aware enough of her surroundings to realize the firefight had intensified, could hear the sounds of battle through the open channel that provided communications for the force on the ground and the dull, muted sounds of intense fighting that penetrated her protective helmet.  With a supreme effort of will, she managed to move her arms and hands—or the uninjured one anyway—in a blind search for her weapon.  She didn’t find it and the fear of discovering she was unarmed sent a torrent of adrenaline through her that was powerful enough to enable her to roll onto her stomach and perform a wider search.  “My weapon.  Where’s my weapon?”

“I have it.”

It was Niles who responded—she thought.  “Well give it to me, damn it!”

“You have sustained damage, squad leader, Danika.”

“Like I don’t fucking know that when my whole right side is on fire!  Give me the damned thing!” she yelled at him with a mixture of fury and terror.

“Time to fall back again,” Seth responded, scooping her up and launching into another bone shaking run that made her pass out again. 

When Danika regained consciousness, she found herself looking up at a sheer, white wall of ice.  She stared at it blankly, trying to figure out where it had come from when she certainly hadn’t noticed it earlier when she’d surveyed the plane they’d landed on.

Apparently, no one else had noticed it either when they’d been given the order to fall back—except the enemy, because they’d driven them back against a wall of ice they had no hope of scaling.  They weren’t equipped for climbing.

They were all going to die—right in this godforsaken spot!

Strategically speaking, they were fucked!

Danika roused herself to make another demand for her weapon just as she heard the command—directed at the cyborgs. 

Seth scooped her up and tilted his head back to gauge the distance.

Not that she didn’t think it was a damned good idea for him to make some calculations before he attempted it, but he made one hell of a target!  Miraculously, although projectiles whizzed past them, none made their target … until the very moment Seth crouched to launch the two of them.  As he sprang up again, shooting them skyward, she heard him grunt and felt him jerk with an impact. 

They weren’t going to make it, she thought in dismay!  It was further, she was sure, than the drop from the ship had been and she’d been convinced he couldn’t make that leap and remain operational. 

Chapter Two

Seth more or less fell over the top of the precipice.  Barely clearing the edge, he pitched himself and her forward in a roll.

Fully expecting to be crushed, Danika was too stunned to move for several moments after Seth stopped rolling, waiting in vain for the pain of crushed and mangled body to reach the nerve centers in her brain, regardless of the fact that she was sprawled on top of Seth when he finally stopped rolling. 

Realizing after a few moments that she wasn’t dead or dying, she lifted her head and studied his face.  He was staring up at the sky above them and she felt a jolt of fear run through her.  Was he dead?  Uh—destroyed?  “Seth?”

He blinked at the sound of her voice and shifted his gaze to her face.  For a long moment, their gazes seemed locked and in that moment Danika saw, or thought she saw, something she should not have seen in the eyes of a cyborg—pain and relief.

It shook her almost as much as the fear that he’d ceased to function altogether and left her stranded on the godforsaken ball of ice alone. 

Which was something that shouldn’t have occurred to her at all! 

She was used to working with her team—her squad—and she was fond of them—in much the same sense as a person could come to rely on and become attached to any labor saving device, she assured herself.  But she wouldn’t be alone even if he was destroyed!   There were other soldiers—human soldiers.  And the fact was that she was alone even when she was surrounded by her team because she was the only real person among them.

Get a grip, girl! “Damage report,” she said finally, pushing herself off of him with an effort and looking around for her other team mates.  Niles, she saw, was crouched beside them, firing toward the enemy line.  Dane was nowhere in sight and she recalled abruptly, with a touch of panic, that his mobility had been impaired when the drop ship had been damaged.  Scrambling toward the edge of the precipice, she looked down.  She had a split second to register the disaster below and discover that Dane was dangling by one arm from the side of the ice cliff and then a hand curled around one of her ankles and she felt herself dragged backwards. 

Twisting her head, she saw it was Seth who had hold of her ankle.

He was glaring at her.  “You will get your head shot off!”

Stunned at the display of anger, Danika blinked several times, gaping at him.  She was far more preoccupied with the scene her mind had captured, however.  It looked like fully half of their force—maybe more—was trapped below—maimed, wounded, or already dead, and the enemy was advancing and systematically executing anybody who hadn’t managed to escape the trap.  She barely noticed when he released his hold and crawled to the edge of the precipice to look down as she had.

“Can you climb?”

“The mobility of my left arm is compromised.  I will try.”

“Niles and I will try to cover you,” Seth responded, turning to summon Niles with a hand motion.

Indignation flickered through Danika, piercing her shock.  She was the squad leader, damn it!  She was supposed to be leading the team!  She was obliged to admit after a very little thought, though, that she couldn’t think of anything better to try.  It wasn’t as if they could haul Dane’s heavy ass up the cliff!

Well, she supposed Seth and Niles could … if they had a rope of some kind, which she knew damned well she didn’t have in her pack.  He was going to have to make it on his own—or not.  Gritting her teeth against the pain from her wound, she crawled to the edge again on her belly.  Seth stopped firing long enough to plant a hand on the top of her helmet and shove her back.  “Stay!” he growled.

Danika sloughed the snow off her face shield and glared at him with a mixture of disbelief and anger.  Before she could think of how to respond to his order, however, she saw a hand appear above the rim.  Seth put his weapon down and grasped the hand, hauling Dane over the edge. 

No one, Danika realized abruptly, had given her a damage report!  AI or not, they were supposed to be at her command!

Granted, they’d been busy, but they were cyborgs!  It wasn’t as if they weren’t capable of handling multiple tasks! 

“Disengage the enemy and fall back to secure weapons and supply drop, coordinates 3 degrees 47 minutes North West; 14 degrees South ….”

Danika listened while the orders were repeated through the GO—general orders—channel—minus the coordinates.  “How far is that, Seth?”

“Thirty clicks.”

“Shit!”  That would’ve been a long ass distance under a hell of a lot better conditions—terrain-wise.  And all of them were wounded—or damaged!   She was wounded!  They were damaged.  “Damage report.”

Before any of her teammates could respond, they heard an exchange between a junior officer on the ground and the command center.  “Acknowledge receipt.  The Lieutenant Colonel and staff all dead or missing.  We’ve sustained heavy casualties.  We need an immediate evac.  That’s a no go on reaching the supply drop at coordinates ….”

“Who the hell are you, you idiot?” someone roared, cutting the speaker off before he could finish.  “Use the CO channel!”

“Somebody just got busted,” Danika muttered.  Clearly she wasn’t the only one that had just had her first taste of the real thing and was having problems remembering training—Not that she was rattled enough to forget that that sort of information shouldn’t be passed through anything but the CO—command operations—channel!  They were going to be damned lucky if the enemy hadn’t picked up that damaging Intel!  “Not that it looks like he’s going to have to worry about it.  I doubt there’s going to be an evac and I’m guessing you guys saw what I did at the base of the cliff.  The enemy is advancing and it doesn’t look like they plan to take prisoners. You guys think you can make it to the drop?”  She asked when she’d done a visual and discovered that the cyborgs had taken far more damage than she had. 

She didn’t think they had time to wait for their nanos to make any sort of repairs.  She didn’t think it was pure luck that the enemy had pounded the hell out of them and driven them back against a wall.  Their objective might have been to outflank them and close the fist, but she thought there was a good chance that they’d known about the ridge to start with and the confederation forces had reacted just as the enemy had hoped.  That might also mean that the enemy knew of a route up the escarpment or had forces closing on them now from the rear.

From the chatter on the local communications channel, she thought most everyone that had survived—so far—was beginning to get the picture.

“We can’t just leave our people down there!”

“We can’t do anything else. If we don’t get to that supply drop before the enemy we’re going to be in the same shape they are!”

“Where’s air support?”

“Where are the med-evacs?”

“You’re saying you think they’re tied up in another battle?”

“What the hell kind of Intel is that?  There wasn’t supposed to be any resistance here!”

They complained and speculated for the first half hour while the remnants of the companies that made up their battalion struggled through almost knee deep snow, but they discovered they’d walked right into a blinding snow storm and nobody had the energy to waste on talking anymore after the storm hit them.   It was all they could do to focus on putting one foot in front of the other and keeping tabs on the rest of the group to keep from getting lost.

They were about half way between the ridge everybody was beginning to refer to as slaughter ridge and the drop site when a series of massive explosions prompted them to hit the ground.  It only took them a few moments to realize that the bombardment wasn’t close enough to be an immediate threat.

Long term was another matter.

“Oh my god!  We are so fucked!  That was the supplies that just went up in smoke!”

“Would you just shut the fuck up!”

“I don’t know which one of you stupid fucks gave the coordinates away, but you’re going to be a dead mother fucker if I get my hands on you!”

“Why doesn’t everybody just shut the fuck up?” Danika yelled angrily.  “He didn’t get the chance to give away the exact coordinates.  My guess is that either none of the channels are as secure as we thought or they didn’t need the coordinates.  It sure as hell didn’t take them long to get there.”

“Hey!  We don’t know that it was our supplies!  Could be another group taking a pounding.”

Danika glanced at her team questioningly, feeling a ray of hope.  It died when Seth shook his head.  “That is the coordinates we were given.”

“I guess we’d better hump it, then,” she said tiredly, “and see what we can salvage.  I have a bad feeling we’re going to need anything we can find.”

There wasn’t much to salvage.  It looked as if the bombardment had been a long range effort, however, and when they’d rested briefly and began to sort through the debris that had cooled enough to allow for a search, they began to find a few useable supplies.  Danika supposed they should just be grateful that the enemy didn’t seem to have the technical capabilities of the confederation or they would’ve been completely screwed. 

Or maybe it was more a matter of being spread too thin and not having the munitions they needed to totally annihilate the confederation troops?

By her, admittedly, rough calculations, the armada that had brought them had been carrying a force of nearly a half a million—counting cyborgs—which she’d considered actually counted as more than a single soldier since they were many times stronger than their human counterparts.  That was the main reason she hadn’t been unduly nervous about the mission.  As far as anyone knew—or at least had been told—there weren’t any enemy bases on Xeno-12. 

Clearly, the confederation thought they’d been clever in not declaring war until they’d nearly reached the planet they planned to take and hold since it offered the most strategic advantage in protecting the confederation’s interests in this system. 

Either they hadn’t been clever enough, though, or the enemy was smarter than they’d given them credit for. 

Or the grunts like her just hadn’t been important enough to get the memo.  The only warning they’d had was to expect the possibility of pockets of resistance.  They sure as hell hadn’t expected such a ferocious, focused attack that they wouldn’t even be able to organize a counterstrike once they got on the ground!

They hadn’t been able to pull themselves together at all!  It had been a total rout!  

She had a bad feeling, though, that the lack of action by the fleet meant that the disaster her battalion had experienced on landing wasn’t isolated.  The only explanation that she could think of for the lack of air support, med-evac, or complete evacuation was that the entire force was under attack and unable to lend support. 

So maybe it hadn’t been a brilliant military tactic to spread their own forces so thin?  Granted it was a big planet and she could see why they wanted to be sure they had enough forces on the ground globally to repel any attempts by the enemy to sneak in the backdoor, but they shouldn’t have just assumed they’d beat the enemy to the planet to start with. 

Arrogance, she thought angrily as she scratched through a pile of debris!  The arrogant bastards had been so damned sure they were infinitely superior to their enemy, the Andorians, that they were going to be lucky if they didn’t lose the war in this one campaign.

“We have managed to locate six habitats that are relatively intact.”

Danika jumped when the voice abruptly broke into her thoughts, whipping her head around to look for Seth when she recognized his voice.  It sent a jolt through her to discover that he was standing within a yard of her. 

They’d decided that it wasn’t safe to risk any communications via the com units unless they were absolutely necessary.  They didn’t know that the enemy had managed to break security and had listened to everything they’d said, but if they hadn’t they were damned good at guessing.

It was still a mystery, supposing they had, as to how the Andorians had managed to break the codes so quickly, but Danika was putting her money on a traitor or traitors among them.  Nothing else made sense, to her thinking—including the fact that the enemy seemed to be waiting for them when they made the landing. 

No getting around the fact that their Intel had been better than the confederation’s Intel!

In any case, the enemy had been pretty damned thorough in demolishing their supplies and, since the sun had risen and with it the temperatures to a balmy zero degrees, they’d decided to conserve what they could of their hab-suits’ built-in supplies—most notably the heater fuel cells.

“Only six?” Danika echoed, dismayed when she’d done a quick mental calculation of their numbers.  “That’s only enough room for ….”

“The humans.”

Danika gaped at him.  “But … there’s only maybe fifty humans left!  At thirty to a barracks ….”

“Thirty six … at the moment.  Seventy five made it to the ridge.  Mayhap a quarter were lost in the blizzard on the way or died from their wounds.  Probably no more than a dozen by night fall.  However, the habitats are not barracks.  They are for squads … and they are damaged.  I did not count the ones we found that could not be patched.”

Stunned disbelief held Danika for several moments before rage took its place.  “In other words, we wouldn’t have had housing for all of the troops even if those bastards hadn’t beat us here and blown our supplies all to hell?”

“There will be room for the remaining humans.”

Danika’s lips tightened.  “That isn’t good enough, damn it!”  The bulk of their force might be cyborgs, but the cyborgs were part biological and the cold would inhibit their ability to fight—and they damned sure needed everybody, cyborg and human, that they had left.  “Who’s in command?”

“Second Lieutenant Murphy Brown.”

“Oh my god!”  It struck her that, in all likelihood, it had been Second Lieutenant Murphy Brown who’d screwed up so royalty in his communications the night before if he was the only officer they had left—and as green as she was, no doubt!  “Where is he?”

“I will escort you.”

She didn’t need an escort!  Instead of arguing, however, she fell into step beside him.  “Have your … uh … nanos repaired the damages?”

Seth sent her a sharp glance, briefly both surprised and alarmed until he realized she was not referring to his malfunctioning behavioral programming but rather the status of his combat readiness.  “The damage to my systems was minimal … primarily superficial damage to my biological sheathing.  I am currently at ninety percent.”

She frowned, wondering abruptly how he could be at least half biological, or nearly half, and experience nothing more than an awareness of damage.  Were there no nerves in his biological sheathing?  Or did they just not connect to nerve centers capable of registering pain?  “You don’t … feel any pain when you’re wounded?”

Seth’s uneasiness returned.  The truth was that he was one hundred percent certain that he should not have felt any pain, but he not only had felt it—a great deal of it—he still felt pain and it was difficult to behave as if he did not.  He should not, in point of fact, have felt anything at all.  He had been programmed to mimic emotions.  He knew the mechanics of displaying emotion and what each gesture and facial expression denoted so that he could recognize emotions in humans and react to them.  He had not been designed or programmed to feel them, because not only was that not possible.  It was not desirable.  No matter how many systems checks he had run, however, he had discovered nothing to account for the emotions that seemed to be clogging his objectivity. 

The only thing that he had been able to ascertain with certainty was that he was feeling and reacting on a purely animal level to his environment and everything that his body and mind sensed and perceived, which completely defied logic.

He did not understand and that was almost frightening.  It was certainly disturbing, but all he could think to do was to attempt to hide his disability until his nanos repaired whatever had caused the problem or he understood it well enough to prevent it from affecting him.

He was still reluctant to lie … to Danika.  He did not think he would have a problem lying if anyone else had asked, but she was his squad leader.  He had been programmed always to defer to her—to trust her completely.  It felt ‘wrong’ to withhold anything from her.  “I was not designed to feel, only to record.”

She stopped, grasping his wrist in a gesture to stop that he could not ignore, although he wanted to.  He hesitated and then yielded to the silent demand, wondering why her touch had such a profound effect upon him that went so far beyond anything he had expected ever to feel, uncertain of whether he wanted to feel the sensations that flooded him.  He discovered that she was studying his face and that was enough to divert his mind from the blinding sensations to a sense of danger. 

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“I beg pardon.  I thought that I had responded to your question.”

“I don’t think you thought anything of the kind.  You evaded the question.”

He frowned, feeling a flicker of both resentment and dismay at her lack of trust.  “I am … confused.”

He was lying, Danika realized, feeling an abrupt shift of her consciousness from Seth to the bedraggled encampment surrounding the two of them.  He’d said that there were thirty six humans that had survived the drop and made it to the encampment.  That was roughly a quarter of the squad leaders—all human like herself—who’d made it out of the nearly 1200 man unit that had been dropped at these coordinates.  Probably three quarters of the cyborgs that were part of their unit had made it.

How many of those, she wondered, had experienced the same sort of bizarre malfunction that she saw in Seth?  All of them?  Half?

Because, instead of convincing herself that it was all in her mind, she’d become more and more certain that it wasn’t in her mind at all.  Seth had … changed.  He was different—more human than cyborg.  She felt it in every fiber of her being.

Because touching him didn’t feel anything like touching a machine and it should have.  She should have felt as completely detached about grasping his wrist as she would have in grasping the handle of a door.

She would’ve liked to have convinced herself that Seth was the only one—because she hadn’t noticed anything strange about either Dane or Niles—but she abruptly recalled that it had been a cyborg who’d taken charge and issued orders—to the cyborgs—when they’d been boxed in at the ridge. 

How much danger did these … rogues represent?

It was a chilling thought and one that had plagued Danika since she’d discovered that seventy five to eighty percent of the army the government had put together was cyborg.  Humans were only there as ‘handlers’—truthfully only there to prevent the mass hysteria that probably would’ve resulted in the discovery by the civilian population that the government had put together a massive army of autonomous steel monsters—which was probably also the reason the government had insisted that they look human.  

She cleared her throat nervously.  “Run a systems check and see if you can detect any … uh … programming or mechanical anomalies.”

“What irregularities should I search for?”

Danika forced a tight smile.  “Anything.  We’ve lost enough men already.  We need to be sure everyone is in peak operating condition for the next attack.”

They found Lieutenant Brown in one of the habitats.  When Seth had left, she asked for permission to enter.  After a fairly prolonged wait, when she was just about to ask again, permission was granted and she went inside.  Brown looked pale, shaken, and distracted, but Danika couldn’t detect any patches on his hab-suit to indicate that he’d been wounded.  She was no medic, but he looked like he had a bad case of shellshock.  She saluted.  “Sir!  I’ve been informed by one of my squad members that there aren’t enough habs to house all of the men.  I wanted to put in a request for a hab for my own squad and ask when we might expect more supplies.  We used most of our munitions last night in the firefight and we only have enough rations in our packs for a few days.”

He stared at her blankly for several moments and then made a sound that might have been a giggle.  When she gaped at him he seemed to pull himself together.  He gestured wide with his hands.  “What you see here, corporal, is what we have.”

Danika’s mind immediately conjured an image of the piles of charred debris outside the hab.  An icy fist seemed to close around her heart.  “Sir, we haven’t recovered much—so far.”

“Well you’d better look harder!” he said angrily.  “Because this is our supply drop.  Command informed me that they’d disbursed supplies on hand.  We’ll have to make do until another supply ship arrives unless we can get another unit to share and the closest is five hundred miles to the south of us.  And we’ve been ordered to maintain radio silence.  And we don’t have a working transport.”

Under the circumstances, Danika abruptly dismissed the idea she’d had of informing her superior of her suspicions regarding the cyborgs.  That had never been a good idea, she reflected, since she was a female and her vague intuition would’ve been discounted as hysteria or, at the very least, overactive imagination.  Considering their situation and the condition of their highest ranking officer it seemed like the worst idea she’d ever had. 

In any case, the biggest problem at the moment was the scarcity of supplies.  If Brown knew what he was talking about, and he seemed to, they could be looking at a long, long stretch before a supply ship arrived.  Food didn’t loom as her biggest worry.  Shelter was a high priority.  The suits could extract energy from the sun, but this world wasn’t a place where one could count on a lot of solar radiation.  One of the problems was its distance from its sun and the other was the storms. 

More importantly even than that, to her mind, was the dangerously low munitions. 

That thought instantly conjured an image of the men lying at the base of the ridge.  Revulsion washed over her in a wave, but they were going to be casualties of war themselves if they didn’t have anything to throw at the enemy when they attacked again.

And, newbie or not, she knew they’d be expected to act, not to simply sit tight and hope the enemy didn’t come to them.  They’d been dropped to secure the planet as a forward base of operations.  They were going to have to figure out a way to do that with what they had—or die trying. 

“Sir!  Permission to take a detail to the ridge and collect whatever supplies we can find and bury the dead?”

He stared at her as if she’d grown two heads.  “And leave the base vulnerable to another attack?  We don’t have the manpower, soldier!”

“Begging pardon, Sir!  But we’re going to be screwed if we don’t find supplies somewhere!”

“What makes you think they haven’t already been picked clean?”

“I don’t know that they haven’t.  But we also don’t know that they have.  We have to account for the dead and missing anyway, if possible.  You could spare my squad, at least.  There are only four of us.  And it’s likely that those who got lost in the storm last night will make it into camp.  Or at least possible,” she added when he looked skeptical.

She thought he would dismiss her suggestion out of hand but after a moment, he seemed to steady himself.  “That suggestion has some merit,” he murmured, turning it over.  “Permission granted.  Take your men and hump it over to Slaughter Ridge, collect whatever munitions and supplies you can, and get back here by dark.”

Danika frowned.  That seemed a tall order even for three cyborgs.  She didn’t see any possibility of giving the dead a decent burial and collecting supplies and hauling them all back in the space of a day.  “The burials?”

“We can’t spare the men for a burial detail right now.  They’re on ice.  They’ll keep.  And if the snow doesn’t bury them, we will when we can.  Just scan their IDs.”

It sounded callous, but she knew he was right—on all counts.  It actually heartened her that he seemed more collected.  If they were going to survive at all they needed a leader that had his head on straight—and he wasn’t just the highest ranking officer, he was the only officer at the moment.

When she left his hab, she saw that her squad was waiting nearby.  She met Seth’s gaze briefly and then studied the faces of the other two as she approached them.  Relieved when she saw that neither Dane nor Niles seemed to be affected by whatever had brought about the change in Seth, she felt some of her uneasiness evaporate.  “We’re to return to the ridge to see what we can collect in the way of supplies and munitions.  We’re going to have to hump it, though.  The lieutenant said to be back by dark.”

Seth’s gaze flickered over her.  “Your wound will slow you.  It would be better if we went and you stayed in the camp.”

Their wounds, or damage, was going to slow them, too, but she doubted even though they’d sustained more damage than she had that they would be as handicapped as she was.  She was running on adrenaline and she knew it, but not only did she realize she couldn’t afford to lay around to recover, there was no place to lay around and no actual medics.  “I feel like shit, but I can make it.  I’ll feel a hell of a lot better when I have some ammo—and enough rations to carry me through a couple of weeks.”

Thankfully, he merely nodded and followed her when she shrugged her weapon from her shoulder and started out of camp.  The throbbing from her wound began to intensify almost immediately and she paused after a little bit and checked her med-kit, counting the painkillers.  She had three doses.  She decided to take half a dose to dull the pain.  If she took a full dosage, she wasn’t going to be very alert.  Besides, she might need the painkiller worse later on.  “I don’t suppose you guys were issued painkillers?” she asked, only half joking because she was hopeful they might have something. 

“No,” Seth responded.

“Want one of mine?”

Seth sent her a sharp look.  “Thank you.  I do not need it.”

She didn’t believe him.  He looked like he was in pain, but she didn’t push it.  Shrugging, she put the kit up.  “More for me.”

“Yes.”

Thank you for pointing that out, she thought irritably.  She didn’t think it was a good thing that the cyborgs knew the humans among them were far weaker than they were. 

They’d only been trudging through knee deep snow for an hour when they found their first corpse.  Danika discovered it by stubbing her toe on it and falling over it.  The fall set her wound to throbbing hard enough it might have taken her a while to get up if Seth hadn’t hauled her upright.

She thought she’d tripped on a rock, but she’d managed to clear enough loose snow away when she’d sprawled out to identify the object that she’d fallen over. 

“He is dead.”

Danika flicked a sharp glance at Seth, met his gaze for a moment, and looked away.  Until he’d said that, she’d convinced herself that it was a cyborg.  In that state, he certainly didn’t look human.  She swallowed a little sickly and knelt beside the corpse. 

“I will do it,” Niles said. 

When Danika glanced toward him, he lifted his head, looked her directly in the eyes, and she saw there the same change that she’d seen in Seth.  Caught between horror at the task she’d volunteered for and shock that whatever it was affecting Seth seemed to be spreading, she couldn’t think of a response for several moments.  “It has to be done.  I might as well get used to it,” she finally responded.

“You do not have to grow accustomed now.  I will … search this one for supplies.”

She decided not to argue with him.  For one, she didn’t think she could manage the ‘job’ without puking.  For another, arguing with a machine that could rip her apart as easily as tearing paper if he took the notion seemed like a really stupid idea.

Seth gripped her arm and hauled her to her feet again as if the matter was settled and she sent him an uneasy look. 

Seth hesitated, but he didn’t like the look in her eyes.  “No one here will harm you.  We are programmed to protect our team leader, Danika.”

It was almost an admission that he’d changed—drastically—and it didn’t comfort her as it had no doubt been meant to.  How much of their programming, she wondered, had been corrupted by whatever had brought about the change she’d noticed?

Chapter Three

Danika had expected to find virtually the same thing when they finally reached Slaughter Ridge as they’d already found—multiplied many times.  What they did find rattled her as that wouldn’t have.

In the course of their trek, they’d discovered many of the missing and unaccounted for, both human soldiers and cyborgs buried where they fell by the blizzard, frozen, beyond help.  Snow was mounded over the bodies, marking their locations on the otherwise almost featureless landscape so that it looked like what it was—a newly formed cemetery.  They paused at each one to collect the supplies that soldier would no longer need, identify the remains and add the names to the growing list of known dead or, in the case of the cyborgs, destroyed property of the confederation.

They approached the ridge cautiously, despite the fact that they expected to find nothing they hadn’t already seen, the enemy long since departed, and those abandoned to their mercies and the fury of the storm beyond help.  Instead, when they’d crawled up to the ridge on their bellies and looked down, they spied soldiers moving about the plain below collecting and sorting.  Danika’s throat instantly leapt into her throat, but Seth stayed her hand as she tried to move her weapon into position. 

“They are ours.”

Danika narrowed her eyes.  “You’re certain?” she asked, stunned.

“Yes.”

Relief was slow to kick in.  “How?” she wondered aloud.  The enemy had been advancing on them when they’d retreated to the ridge.  It didn’t seem likely that they’d simply turned around and left when they saw that the troops they’d expected to box in and finish off had slipped the noose they’d fashioned for them.