Altered Ch. 08 Pt. 01

Boyfriend? Ok, I didn't know what she was playing at but I just went with it. I guess my earlier ruse rubbed off on her.

Predictably they pulled out guns and pointed them at her. The flick of my fingers was for show and not necessary to yank the guns out of their hands, but it was important psychologically to keep them on edge. Their guns hovered over their heads and my next move could have been a death strike but I was curious. These guys didn't really intend Rita any harm, their guns weren't even loaded. I could tell because with my newfound knowledge of the energy signatures on material I could tell that their magazine had nothing in them.

"OK, OK, we give up... Listen, they just want to talk to you," the leader said, looking at me.

"Then why are you going after her?" I asked, although I kind of already knew the answer.

"We don't have the right equipment to 'persuade' you... so we thought you might come if we threatened the girl... We wouldn't have harmed her."

"Heads up," I said, their guns dropping suddenly and they were quick enough to catch them before they got nailed.

"We are not going anywhere with you, unless you can answer who, what, where and why... If you need to call your bosses to ask permission go ahead. Otherwise I'm out..."

"Wait, wait, wait. Let me make the call..." the leader said, and he stepped away to make a phone call while the thug stood there quietly - twiddling his thumbs.

He finally got off the phone and said, "The boss says to tell you exactly this; Who - Anna Romano, what - the war with the OEC, where at the Handlery Hotel in Union Station... she says you already have a room there, and why - she needs your help to find the cure to the virus... She says that your friend 'Jenny' is safe and has no intentions to use her against you, however, she will have some things to discuss with Jenny when you meet."

I knew who Anna Romano was, she was supposed to be a 'retired' head of the Illuminati. I had files on all Illuminati members from my newly acquired base in Colorado. All of the info was very specific and I need answers and allies, so I decided to take a chance.

"Fine, can you get us out of here? This place is about to be swarmed by cops."

"Yeah, I work for Anna but I also am an actual FBI agent also. Let's go."

Once we got to in their car, and they flashed their badges getting past roadblocks they drove us across the Oakland Bridge to downtown San Francisco.

"Can I ask you guys a question?" I asked.

"Yeah sure," Frank Smith, the leader, affirmed, (his boot-thug partner's name was John Johnson, I laughed the when I heard him say that with a straight face).

"How the fuck did you guys get on the scene so quickly?"

"They (the Illuminati) have agents all over the city. We just happened to be in the area."

"Why no bullets."

"Ha!" Frank said, "That was under orders, believe me I didn't like it. But there's no way in hell I'd defy them."

The ride took a while with all of the emergency vehicles and the midday traffic, we didn't arrive at the hotel for over an hour.

'What's the plan, Nate?' Rita asked.

'We need allies. Even with all my abilities, I could attack their base and kill everyone inside, but that would include the girls I am trying to save.'

'I thought the Illuminati were our enemies...'

'Maybe they are, but I think that like any form of government they aren't all our enemies. Some of their leadership have their own agendas. We just need to find someone friendly within and maybe we can get them on our side.'

Frank and John escorted us to Anna's suite and once we walked in the door, Frank and John took post outside the room. Once inside the living area, a beautiful dark-haired Italian woman stepped out of one of the rooms in the Suite.

"Hello, and you are?" I asked.

"Anthony Nathan Thompson, I presume," she said with a heavy Italian accent.

"I'm here to see Anna, Miss? I'm sorry I still haven't gotten your name..."

"Anna Romano," she said.

"Yeah right. Look lady, I don't know who your trying to fool but Anna Romano, you are not."

"Oh? And, just why is that?" she asked, with a mischievous grin.

"Besides, the fact that you don't have Parkinson's? How about the fact that you are Ataru...? From my files on the Illuminati leadership, not only does Anna have Parkinson's but she is wheelchair bound, much older and ... human."

"I assure you I am Anna and very much human. As for Parkinson's you are correct, I did have Parkinson's. But as you can see, I am completely cured... It's one of the things I came here to talk to you about."

"No, you ARE definitely Ataru, you have an Ataru signature..." I said, and she looked a little shocked. "I am, amongst other things, a master Tracker."

"Interesting... I came here Anthony..."

"Call me Nate," I interrupted.

"OK, Nate. I came here as an emissary. We are both fighting for the same things..."

"Don't make me laugh, you're part of the Illuminati... that makes us enemies."

"Enemies? Do WE have to be enemies?" she asked, pointing back and forth between us.

"When you try to kill me, my friends and my family... yes, very much so."

"I assure you, I had nothing to do with all of that and I'm pretty sure the Illuminati didn't either. You are too valuable to us, but you ARE right about one thing. OUR resources were used to try to kill you and THAT does make us responsible..." she said, trailing off, looking at me to see if she was getting through. "If it gives you any comfort, we are doing everything in our power to stop the ones that actually attacked you."

"What do you need me for?" I asked, a little annoyed. "Because if you want me to be another one of your assassins, you can forget it."

"I need you to help us fight your 'father'... He is stronger than you think... Bot only that but we need you to help us figure out how to stop this new blight."

"I know all about how powerful my father is, not only that I know what he is planning. As for the plague, I neither have the time nor the resources to stop it... But I do have people working on it."

"I see... Why don't we combine our resources, I have access to resources you could only dream of."

"That all sounds great on paper, but there is no way in hell I'd put my family in danger... I don't trust you."

"You must be talking about your 'wives' in Colorado... We know all about them and your base..."

"What do you know!" I demanded, and she looked frightened and visibly calmed herself.

"Only that you took over an old OEC research base... no we haven't been able to hack into your base or infiltrate... but we are getting desperate, this plague will lead to war."

"Fine, I'll help you on two conditions!"

"Anything!" she said, desperately fast. "If we don't come up with something fast, there will be no illuminati or Ataru to fight for."

"First, your war with the Ataru resistance stops today... You will give them all the help and resources they ask for..."

"Done! What else?"

"You'll protect my family, my children need to be hidden and my 'wives', as you call them, will need new identities and places to stay... this doesn't mean you put them in a compound somewhere, you'll let them have as normal of a life as possible."

"OK, you got it. What can you do for us?"

"We discovered research, done on a Master Vampiric named Mike, he supposedly can alter the genetics of infected... Oh, so that's why you have an Ataru signature... You already know about him then?"

"Yes, as you can see, I am cured... We are even helping Mike find his mother."

"Hmmph, I can help you there. Jenny is Mike's mother."

"Really?" she said, happily. "This is good news!"

"Does he know?" I asked, seriously.

"Know? I don't know what you are referring..."

"His daughter? His mother... and him... ummm..."

She turned pale, and said, "Oh, I see... No, I had no idea. I don't think he knows either."

Anna seemed to think hard on the new revelations, then she responded, "This is indeed disturbing news, but what does that have to do with your research?"

"Vampirics, or I should say master Vampirics, so far are the only beings besides myself that have the ability to survive the procedure... Mike is a master vampiric, the lab that I took over had normal Vampirics being experimented on. Despite replicating the procedure, they did on Mike, none of them have survived yet. It is my belief that they need that extra boost of healing that a master can do in order to survive... And Mike's daughter is likely a master vampiric, like Mike."

"I see, but how would it work for a female?" she asked. "I mean, females don't ejaculate anything into a male, so even if we got the procedure to work on Mike's daughter how would she be able to affect her partner?"

"I believe we could create a machine that would work similarly for a woman. The only issue is, she'd have to let thousands of guys have sex with her for her to do much good..." I said, and before she could say anything more, I responded to her shocked looking face. "Of course, that's may not be an option, I certainly am not going to force her to fuck thousands of guys. Besides for it to be effective we would need a lot more than just HER anyway. Remember, the machine would produce specialized nanobots for the guy that she would be having sex with, she'd have to be really INTO it in order for her to produce female ejaculate for each guy... In other words, the guy would have to bring her to orgasm." I said, and she saw where I was going and her face changed from concern to relief and worry.

"Realistically she'd have to 'reset', clean herself of any residuals for the next guy then start the process all over. Each guy would take an hour on average... Even if she was multi-orgasmic and didn't need the help of drugs, we are talking 20 to 40 guys a day. It wouldn't be as easy as having a thousand guys line up to have sex with her for it to work..."

"But here's the thing, we are going to need guys to be cured more than women. If we don't find an effective means of curing men, we may have to resort to something drastic, like male on male sex. Most of the Vampirics that I have in my lab right now are heterosexual so we'd have to do something dastardly to trick them into having sex with another guys."

"That's a lot to think about," she said. "We will have to come up with a plan... I know you think the Illuminati is an uncaring organization set out for world domination and we go around torturing and killing at will... and certainly there are a few psychopaths in our organization that have given us a bad reputation, but on a whole we are just people, and we get just as shocked and disgusted by what people do as everyone... We NEED a cure, certainly, but we will not resort to brutality to do it... unless there is no OTHER option."

"I guess that's all I can ask," I said. "I do have some knowledge of technology we can use in the future to cure this 'blight' as you call it. But it would require great leaps in the technology that we currently have and it wouldn't come out fast enough to stop a war. We need to have some sort of solution, to give people hope."

"What do you need from us?" she asked.

"First and foremost, I need you to find Mike and his daughter and bring them to my base. They can help heal the Vampirics and hopefully let them survive the process... After they are cured they will be like Mike, they will be able to help cure others by transforming them into Ataru hybrids..."

"OK, I already have a team on the ground in New York helping him. I will do my best to convince him to help."

"I will also need help confronting my 'father,'" I said, disgustedly. "He has two of my unborn children and their mothers in his custody. I am powerful enough to destroy him now, but not without killing a lot of innocents along the way. I'll need an extraction team and as much intel on his compound as you can give me."

"OK, I'll see what I can do. It will take some time to get everything you'll need. The soonest I can have an extraction team ready would be tomorrow. I'll get whatever intelligence out to you as I get it," she conceded.

Rita was silent through the negotiations, but when we were finished, she looked concerned. I could read her mind but I knew what she was thinking before she even said anything.

'I don't trust her Nate...' she sent.

'I don't either, but she let me into her mind... I know what you're thinking, but if she had any psychic blocks, splits or false memories I would be able to see them...'

I could almost hear her gasp, 'No one has been able to do that for centuries!'

'You'd be surprised by what I can do now. Your father is much more powerful than he let on...'

'I KNOW just how powerful he is, believe me,' she answered.

'When I go against him, I'll have to use ALL of my powers to defeat him... Your father, was once a good man... The powers, they corrupted him... took all of his empathy... made him into the psychopath you know today,' I sent.

'I know that... why are you telling me?' she asked, suspecting the answer.

'I'm afraid, it'll happen to me... what if, by killing your father I become an even worse threat to you? What if I lose all empathy - all love? I'd be capable of killing my family, my mother, my children even!... I need you to help me.'

'What can I do?' she asked. 'You already know how to protect your mind.'

'Yes, but even if I split my mind the metamorphosis will chemically change my mind destroy all empathy, no defense I can come up with will fix that. The only way to feel... anything... after that will be if I can train my mind how to feel again... or remember...'

'I don't know what you want me to do but I'll do whatever you need,' she said.

'Careful what you wish for!'

*

The Illuminati quickly assembled a team and we share info and resources. Jenny made friends with Anna and was eager to see her long lost son and flew out that night on a private jet to New York to meet him. I went over plan after plan all night long and came up with a plan I hoped would have the greatest probability of saving the girls, but all of them were messy...