Alan Ch. 17

Captured for a Time

The plates were long cleared from the table, and the men sat around the living room, a football game shining off the screen of the television, volume turned low so as not to disturb the baby resting in his cousin Jack's arms. Jack was married to his cousin Nina, and Shara was their first baby, though number two was a work in progress, more than seven months along inside Nina's belly.

Nina sat down next to Alan on the couch, across from her husband and Alan's dad. She ruffled his hair as she did when he was a kid and she was his babysitter. "So," she said with an accusatory tone in her voice, "You move to the city and we see all of a grand total of ONE time since September? I don't know whether to be hurt or insulted."

"Sorry Nina, been busy, but the phone works two ways. You haven't called me. I'd be glad to come over, especially if you're cooking." Before the first baby was born Nina was the sous-chef at a very well regarded French bistro in Tribeca. Now she was a stay-at-home mom, and loving it.

"Pig," she snorted. "I'll call you."

"After the new year," he insisted gently. "Exams start in about two weeks." She agreed. Alan was impatient for the whole gang to go home. They had eaten at four, and it was nearing eight.

He had plans to stop by at Megan and Leila's that night, but it would be bad form to sneak out while the guests were still hanging around. Leila still took and occasional shift as a PT, despite her med school status, because she liked doing it. She was thinking of doing her residency in sports medicine. Since school was on break for the holiday and a lot of people went away for Thanksgiving, the hospital had begged her to work both Thursday and Friday, so the two of them had remained in Westchester. It was just as well for Megan. She had yet to tell her parents that she was bisexual, and for that matter, bisexual with a live-in female lover, and for that matter, that she was pregnant out of wedlock. Every time she was working up the nerve to tell her folks she could just imagine her father having a heart attack, her mother a stroke.

Alan pulled up to their house and parked shortly after nine. Megan answered the door. "Welcome to the farm," she greeted him with a chuckle.

"Farm? I don't get it."

"You've come to see me--the cow--haven't you?" Megan took a step back from the doorway, and Alan could see her stomach. She was showing her five month pregnancy, a bulge visible from underneath her sweater.

"You look beautiful."

"That's what I keep telling her! Hi, Alan," Leila said coming over and kissing him on the cheek. After he sat down Leila returned from the kitchen with a glass of wine. The minute he had drained it she took it back from him and went back to fill it.

"You don't have to get me drunk," he laughed.

"Megan insisted," the trim Asian woman confided, "If you're drunk you wont think she's fat." Leaning closer she lowered her voice to a stage whisper, "She thinks she isn't pretty since she started to show. It's up to us," she added with a twinkle in her liquid brown eyes, "to convince her otherwise."

With that she stood and took his hands, pulling him up and guiding him up to the bedroom; Megan followed closely behind. Leila stood behind him, turning him so that he was facing Megan and sat him on the end of their bed. As she worked her hands at his shirt buttons she stared over his shoulder at her red-haired lover. "Tell her Alan. Tell her how lovely she is."

"You're gorgeous, Megan. You always were, and you always will be." Megan gasped, her hands playing with the top button of her blouse, but too afraid to unbutton it, afraid that if he saw her naked he would recoil in shock. He approached his former teacher; Leila had unfastened all the buttons, and as he stepped to Megan she had held on to his shirt, so he was topless as he approached her. Gently he removed her hand from her neck, grasping the top of her blouse, and with a deft touch popped open the neck button and pulled the blouse over her head and off her. She pressed her body to his, and he could feel the smooth hardness of her belly. He dropped his arms down from around her neck and rested his palms against her pregnant abdomen, making gentle strokes all around it, and at the same time lowered his mouth to hers.

They kissed for a long time, distracted only by Leila undressing them; once she asked Megan to step out of her skirt, and then took off Alan's shoes and socks, then his pants and underwear. Alan led Megan, clad only in her panties, over to the bed, and sat down on it, pulling her into his lap. She groaned as he fondled her breasts, now more sensitive due to the hormones of pregnancy, her head lolling back to rest against him as the pleasure began to overtake her, little hums and gasps escaping past her trembling lips. Leila joined them on the bed a minute later, completely nude, taking charge of the situation.

Alan laid back on the mattress, and Megan straddled him, Leila kneeling behind her, in between Alan's outstretched legs. Holding Megan by her now more meatier hips she guided her onto his erection and then pulled her down so she sunk down all thy way.

"Ooof! Ah, ah, MY GOD, it's been sooooo loooooong!" the redhead exclaimed, her passions rising as she felt Alan fill her completely, a feeling complemented by the incredible sensation Leila was causing by strumming her hardened nipples. She could feel the softness of Leila's breasts pressed into her back as she rode up and down on Alan's hard cock, and the very idea of it still excited her.

"Tell her again," Leila demanded of him, "She still needs to hear it. Tell her again, and again, and again. She wont listen to me," she ordered him, her eyes boring into his with a frightening sense of determination.

"You're so pretty," he gasped up at his pregnant partner. "So pretty, so pretty, so pretty."

Megan began to cry, tears spilling down her face and over her heaving bosom. "Thank you," she squeaked (hormones again, she thought to herself), a split second before her body seized up as she orgasmed. Alan came in her, and she quivered at the sensation of it, then collapsed and rolled off of him, a stewing morass of emotion. As she laid beside him her hands danced up and down his chest, and watched Leila take his manhood into her slurping mouth, cleaning him of their combined juices, and getting him hard for round two.

Once he was ready she gave him a swat on the side of his butt, and her sat up and moved off to the side of the mattress. Leila positioned herself over the supine Megan so that they were face-to-face, her wiggling behind a tempting target for their teenaged lover.

As Alan sunk into her she lowered her face, and pressed her lips against Megan's. Leila moaned, and Megan snaked her tongue past Leila's hot lips. He began to thrust in and out of her clenching pussy, enjoying the sound of loud slurps that her tight passage emitted; her syrup coated his dick from tip to root, the excess falling in dribs and drabs on the bedspread, pooling between its folds.

Leila's moans and groans increased in fervor and loudness as Alan increased the pace and force of his fucking. As Leila bucked her throbbing pussy back against his throbbing cock Megan was finding it difficult to maintain her lip lock with her Sapphic partner; to deal with this she placed her hands on Leila's temples, holding her fast.

It was a good thing, too, for just as Megan gained a grip on Leila's bouncing head an enormous climax exploded throughout the Asian woman's sweaty body. Alan climaxed as well, and they collapsed into a sweaty mess on the top of the bedspread.

"Mmmmm," both women purred. Alan settled himself between them, caressing each one lightly. He stayed the night. Megan drifted off first, Leila's soft cries echoing in her ears, "Yes, my ass, so g-good, ahhhhh!"

* * *

The train was crowded for a Sunday evening, filled mostly with college students like himself returning to school. He didn't see anyone he knew in his car, so he used to time to study. He had a term paper due for his history intro class, and his outline was complete as the train pulled into the Harlem station. He hailed a cab on 125th Street for the very short trip back to Morningside Heights, and stared blankly out the window as the cab headed west to Broadway.

"Excuse me," Alan heard the heavily accented voice behind him say. He had just dismissed the cab at the corner and turned towards campus.

"Yes?"

"Vhich vay is to Columbus Avenue? I'm a bit lost, I thinks." He had a piece of paper in his right hand and held it up for Alan to see, an address scribbled on it.

Alan turned forty-five degrees and gestured south and east. Columbus Avenue terminated at 110th Street, one block east of Amsterdam.

"You need to walk down Broadway a few blo-"

He didn't finish his sentence.

The foreigner stepped forward and held him up, preventing Alan from collapsing to the pavement.

His partner pocketed a small white device, a jet injector filled with tranquillizer, just as the van pulled up to the curb. In a matter of seconds Alan was inside and the van was pulling away, headed for the Triboro Bridge, and then on to the Bronx.

Karick dialed a number on his cell phone and spoke immediately upon hearing an answer on the other end. "Team Alpha to base. Extraction successful." He thumbed the END button, not waiting for a response. He had a bad feeling, growing worse the further north he went. Just a few blocks shy of the rendezvous he reached into his pocket and depressed a button which caused the cell phone to ring, though no call was actually incoming.

"Yes," he said into the device for the benefit of his vanmates. He paused for a few seconds and said, "Understood," and then keyed the END button. "Let me out here," he instructed the driver. "I haff to go back to ze office and clean out all of ze files. I'll take the subway."

* * *

Mr. Patel folded his own phone closed, and then placed it in his pocket, his left pocket. He felt his jacket's right pocket, double checking that his pistol was there, and properly situated for swift removal. He rubbed his hands together, his breath visible in the unheated expanse of the warehouse, wishing he had a nice cup tea to keep him warm. A light snow sprinkled, though not enough to accumulate. "All the better," Patel thought to himself. Snow keeps people inside, and the fire he was about to set would not be discovered for a few extra minutes due to the reduced street traffic. The only problem was the homeless; upon arriving at the warehouse a few hours earlier he had to scoot them out from the squatting places. He could have brandished his weapon, but thought better of it. Hundred dollar bills were a much better method, and the six bums had gladly accepted them as an inducement to vacate. He just worried about more showing up.

While in the middle of these musings he saw the headlights of the van coming up the alley, where the side entrance of the warehouse was located. "Money," Patel thought. "That's when I'll take care of it." He would wait until they were distracted by the wads of cash he would place in their hands to "take care of business."

"Where is One?" he asked the two before him.

"He told us he had to go back to the office to shred the files. You didn't know?" one of them explained.

Patel shrugged, not wanting to let on his frustration. Karick was smart, demanding half his payment upfront and deposited into a Swiss account. He must have suspected that he would be terminated upon completion, so he took what he had already been paid, and ran. "Well, we didn't hire him because he was stupid," he thought. His Lordship would not be pleased by this complication, but there would be time enough to rectify this later.

After the van had pulled in through the loading doors Mr. Patel directed the team to strip Alan Marshall of all his clothes and possessions and place him in the second van.

"These rings," one of the agents said with a tone of exasperation. "They wont fucking budge."

"Let me see," Mr. Patel said impatiently, but he was no luckier than the soon to be dead man. "OK, well leave them. I'll cut them off of him later."

"OK," the agent responded, not really caring, and looking forward to his payoff.

Mr. Patel reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat and withdrew two packets of cash.

Two minutes later he was pulling out of the warehouse, the first smoke wisps rising behind him; he tapped his jacket and felt both packets, replaced.

* * *

Alan came to his senses sometime later. He was moving, he could feel. His was--for some reason he didn't understand--naked but for a straight jacket and a length of rope binding his ankles together, flat on his back on an rattling ambulance gurney.

He was very groggy. His whole body ached.

He tried his powers against his bonds. No joy. Underneath the gurney, though he couldn't see it, was a large sphere of pure silver, slightly less then the diameter a regulation basketball. The waves coming off of it served to deaden his abilities. He struggled for awhile longer, but fatigue and a nasty headache got the better of him.

The van came to a halt; Alan's eyes popped open, but all he could see was the inside of the roof of the van. He heard the front door open, and expected to hear the back door open shortly, but it did not. Two men were standing just outside of the rear of the van. They were on a gravel driveway, Alan could sense by the sound of their footsteps. They spoke for a few minutes, but he couldn't make out the words.

After a period of time indeterminable to him he heard one of the men reenter the van and pull into a garage. The back door popped open, and the opener was surprised that Alan was conscious. Alan felt something against his neck, and he dropped off into unconsciousness once again.

* * *

Mr. Patel cut the engine inside the garage and directed his underlings to remove the boy from the van and roll him into the mansion. Using the connecting door he entered the house and made his way to the living room.

"Report," Lord Thornbow demanded.

"Success. He's being moved now. The men have their instructions."

"Any problems?"

"Well, he was awake when we opened the van just now, but that isn't such a problem. Our friend Karick did not show at the warehouse. I'll put some of my people on it."

"Agreed," his boss replied, pouring the Indian man a small brandy. "You have done well, as always, Mr. Patel." If all went as planned Karick would not be a problem, living or dead. He clinked his glass against that of his servant and they sipped. His Lordship picked up the receiver on his desk phone and pressed for the intercom. A few seconds later they were joined by another.

"Neil, please come in. I'd offer you a drink but you have work to do. The boy is in the basement. Mr. Patel will show you the way."

"Yes, Your Lordship, straightaway. Thank you again," Dr. Neil Swindon-Smythe said as he bowed and allowed the swarthy man to show him to the dungeon.

* * *

"Dungeon" wasn't exactly the word Alan would have used to describe the room to which he was confined. It more closely resembled a hospital room; the walls were white and antiseptic, and he was still, of course, lying bound in a straightjacket on a hospital gurney. Furthering the scene was the IV bag on the stand next to the bed, a catheter in his arm slowly feeding fluids to his veins. He didn't know what they were giving him, but he felt debilitated. It was morphine, dulling his senses, reaction time, and mental defenses.

The only thing out of place, that made him know he wasn't really in a hospital (besides, of course, they way he got to where he was) was a small silvery-looking sphere suspended from the ceiling in a clear mesh net. It was slightly smaller around than a basketball, and it was brilliant in the fluorescent lighting of the room. Had his mind been unclouded by the morphine he would have been able to discern wave upon wave of mystic energy emanating off of it, enveloping Alan in a virtual downpour of powerful heavenly radiation.

Dr. Swindon-Smythe stopped at the alcove just outside the boy's cell and spoke to the guard and physician outside the door who had been monitoring the CCTV.

"Any movement?" the archeologist asked.

The guard shook his head.

Swindon-Smythe swiped his keycard through the reader mounted on the wall near the door and waited for it to click open; he entered, the doctor trailing him.

"Wake him up," Swindon-Smythe directed.

"First I'll switch him from the straightkacket to the regular restraints," the doctor said, not waiting for assent to do so.

The doctor retrieved a canister of oxygen and some tubing from the closet and placed a mask over the semi-unconscious prisoner's face, turning the valve open to full blast. When he saw this was having effect he briefly lifted up the mask and waved some smelling salts under Alan's nose. This did the trick.

"Well, well, well, we meet again, young man."

"You!" Alan groaned softly.

Swindon-Smythe didn't answer; instead, he walked back out into the alcove and pulled a small rolling cabinet into the cell. From it he pulled a few small talismans and fetish items of the cult of Ahuramazda, some of them recently unearthed by teams digging with the financial backing of Lord Thornbow, others stolen from museums, private collections, and even government storehouses, over the last few years.

The scientist arrayed the small items around the room in no particular formation, at least as far as Alan could tell. There really wasn't a pattern; Swindon-Smythe was just spreading them out around the room to see if any would react to be being in close proximity to a Seed carrier. He doubted they would. His walkie talkie crackled from its cradle on his waist. "Yes, my Lord?"

"The rings. Remove them."

Swindon-Smythe didn't bother to answer; he knew he was being observed through the camera. He signaled for the doctor to return, and he came in carrying shears designed to cut off rings, something found in every hospital emergency room, and something the doctor knew how to use.

SNAP!

"Shite!" the doctor swore.

"What happened?" Swindon-Smythe asked, looking over the doctor's shoulder.

"The tool just snapped apart. I've never seen something like that happen before."

"You cut him." The doctor had poked Alan after he lost control of the shears after they came apart violently; there as a small jagged laceration on his middle finger, about a two centimeters long, and it was oozing steadily. It took the doctor just a few minutes to clean the wound and drop three stitches into Alan's finger. It usually took longer, but since the boy was on a morphine drip he didn't have to give him a local. The two men withdrew to the anteroom and Lord Thornbow joined them presently.

The doctor had a small medical saw, the kind used to remove fiberglass casts, and he said it would take a bit of time to get it down from the truck and brought to the cell. Lord Thornbow ordered him to proceed, and the doctor shuffled up the steps to retrieve it.

"Will it prevent us from succeeding if we can't get the rings off of him?"

"I'm not sure, my Lord. He obviously had the powers when I first met him at the museum last spring, and that was before he had acquired the ring, so it's hard to say. We're flying blind with most of this."

Lord Thornbow nodded ruefully. "When the doctor returns tell him not to bother just yet. Tomorrow, if we still can't remove the rings we'll just have to cut his fingers off. Begin the interrogation." This was a mistake.

* * *

Years of careful planning were coming to fruition for Lord Thornbow. The acquisition of the abandoned silver mine in southeast Turkey was the key. It had taken him many years to pull that one off. First, years and years of study of the ancient legends. The scientific analysis of the metal had led him there.