Arcturus Syndrome Ch. 08

"Clean yourself up, Robby. We're going to need to find Cody to help take care of this problem."

Robby dabbed at his belly, clearly still stunned.

"Move it, Robby! We don't have time to spare. Anyone could walk in here at any moment. A child could see this, and that must not happen. We are here to protect the children. And whatever Janet made you do, that was very, very wrong of her. I suspected her, and yet I sent you to her, didn't I? I am such a fool. But God has spared you, hasn't he. And that must be for a reason. We will figure it out. Remember, all sins are as nothing in the baptism of the spirit. We will pray for forgiveness later, but first, we need to put this matter behind us."

Robby finished wiping himself off. Intelligence was returning to his gaze, and he was looking at Melissa with a new and somewhat frightened expression.

"Now please, get dressed, Robby. We're going to need help."

Melissa watched him with that heat hungry in her belly as Robby pulled up his pants, and somehow managed to stuff it all in there.

>>> State College, PA, 01:22

The emergency signal on her secure line brought Dr. McKinnon out of restless sleep.

Blearily, she sat up. She was still in her clothes; there was no guarantee of privacy in these makeshift rooms, and she knew she should be prepared for interruptions.

She opened the laptop and connected to their channel. HomeSec and General Buckley were already there.

"More cases in that hospital?" she asked.

"Worse," Glen answered. "A reporter from the L.A. Times."

"Sick??"

Ana Gonzales, CDC, came on the line.

Glen started over. "Jacob Goldman, L.A. Times has filed an emergency freedom of information act request, gotten a Pennsylvania judge out of bed, and is rounding up more reporters. He's got wind of something. He has it all wrong, something about Iranian nukes! But we are not going to be able to contain this with a covid narrative."

"How the hell?" Buckley asked.

Glen shrugged. "Look, we were never going to keep this quiet forever. Our presence in State College is too heavyweight for that. The evacuation of the quarantine zone was bound to break eventually. There are too many cover stories, covering too many anomalies. I was hoping for at least a few days, however. And this is a really inconvenient hypothesis. The international implications are going to be problematic."

McKinnon suggested: "Well, if the president does want to nuke the town, now he can blame Iran."

The HomeSec representative, not prone to levity, grew even greyer and harder. "Not a joking matter."

"Well, do you need anything from me?"

"I need a cure. We need a vaccine. HomeSec is working on managing the P.R. situation, but this gets a lot easier if it's not a threat to global civilization."

"In that case, I have good news and bad news. The bad news: we know it's not a virus, and no traditional vaccine is relevant here. The good news: our monitoring of on-site test subjects has yielded some very promising data. Moreover, we have isolated at least one aspect of the infection and are making that a centerpiece of our research."

"A cure?"

"Too early to say."

"Do we know what this thing is? Not a virus, so... bacteria? What about antibiotics?"

"Also not a bacteria. We are over 99% certain that it's not from earth. The scientists might go so far as to say 100%, but 1% of me still thinks it's some kind of weird Russian skunkworks bioweapon. Only the Russians would come up with something this weird."

Glen frowned.

Ana chimed in. "Is all the data in the shared data locker? The CDC will want to start breaking down the genome."

"There's no genome. No DNA, no RNA. This is something very different. Yes, the data is in the digital locker. But it's 1:30 in the morning. Talk to me after coffee tomorrow, and maybe I will have more for you. Last I checked we still had data coming in from our on-site monitoring equipment."

"Do I want to know what that means?" HomeSec asked.

"Probably not, Glen."

>>> Philipsburg PA, Pod A, Late Night

They found a way to get three on the bed. Thorvald lay on his back. Imani knelt astride his head, while Katherine straddled his hips. They took turns mixing more electrolyte solution, but it seemed that the negative side effects were weakening and the rather obvious move of tasting each other was having at least as much beneficial effect.

Katherine wondered what it would be like to be Thorvald, blessed by these two beautiful women! What a way to "come of age." So much better than to lose your cherry to your stepfather and mother, both already half insane with whatever this disease was. Still, she couldn't change her past. Like Imani said, she could just compartmentalize it and enjoy the moment.

And she was enjoying the moment.

She was also loving sharing this time with Imani. They hadn't really gotten sexy together, but now they were gazing into each other's eyes, Imani shuddering, gasping, and quivering as wave after wave of pleasure flowed through her.

"He knows what he's doing?"

"He's figuring it out, and I don't mind being his test subject."

Gasp, pant, drip!

At one point, Katherine said, "You know Imani, I've never had a black friend before..."

Imani held up one hand. "Please don't."

"What?"

"It's called white fragility. Don't get into your head about it. Just... be a woman, like I'm a woman. Maybe sometime we can break down race relations in this screwed up country, but tonight, we are women, and that's all."

"But.. you're so beautiful!"

"Everyone is beautiful, Katherine. You'll learn this. Every. Single. Person. Is beautiful. Old, young, fat, skinny, damaged, whole."

"Now that is your yoga talking."

"And it's true." And she shuddered again, swirling her hips over Thorvald's eager tongue.

Katherine moved herself over Thorvald's cock, but took her time before putting him in.

In the first place, she loved the sensation of that hard, fat column of flesh between their hips. She liked feeling the length of him pressed against her all at once, and sliding that length through the valley of her sex. She liked catching the big, hard head against her clit and moving herself around, pleasuring herself against it. She liked swiveling her hips, gliding her clit all the way down and all the way up again. She also liked that hollow ache inside, that desperate craving for more. She knew she could have that more at any time, and that made the delay all the sweeter. She liked the way Thorvald kept moving his body, angling his hips, trying to catch her entrance when they were close. She could feel his craving almost as strongly as her own.

When she finally did it, she was so wet, so slippery, so open, that she did not need to use her hand. She just tilted her hips at the right angle, in the right position. She felt herself kiss the head of that beautiful cock, and spread around it.

Imani was watching, rapt.

"It is so sexy!" Imani said.

Katherine felt the resistance of her body to the pure size of his head; she could feel his cock struggling, bending a little as she pressed against it... and then a profoundly satisfying, gratifying feeling when her muscles let him in, gripped him. He stiffened; his hips lifted, his hands tightened on Imani's thighs. Thorvald made a muffled groaning sound that seemed to resonate into and through Imani, as her eyes rolled back and her back arched.

Katherine pressed herself down, reaching for more, letting Thorvald thrust up against her, into her. It was, by far, the best feeling she had ever experienced in her life.

The first time... this time last night? She had been in a daze, in shock. She had climaxed, but she wasn't exactly there for it. Some part of her had checked out.

Early morning, her second, she had again been half gone from her body, acting on compulsions and cravings, not truly of her own choice. Not that she had been forced, either time, exactly, but she, Katherine, had not been herself for it.

This.

This was different. This was completion. This was perfection.

The way Thorvald filled her, the way her body felt with his body inside her.

And any part of her that thought she should be jealous of Imani... those thoughts and voices were gone. She was sharing this beautiful man with a sexy, gorgeous woman. She knew that later, she and Imani would change places, and she would take just as much pleasure watching Imani's perfectly toned, exquisitely curvy body enjoying Thorvald to the fullest.

But Imani froze. Her expression went from ecstasy to something else. Katherine turned.

Amy stood in the doorway, her hideous baggy clothes hanging on her frame awkwardly, her face contorted in a terrible expression. Both of her hands were down inside her clothing.

It took Katherine a moment to parse what she was seeing.

And then she realized. Amy was not moving. Like really not moving. Salt crystals grew, forming before their eyes: thick knobbly chunks of salt forming at her temples, her forehead.

When she fell, she fell like a block of wood.

>>> Woodward Township, PA, late night

They eased down the back road, lights off. The night was extremely dark, a hint of half moon brightening through thinning clouds.

Carl stopped frequently, sometimes driving by feel, shifting when he felt the tires leaving the asphalt.

But now he stopped.

Down the hill, through the trees, the bridge was brightly lit. A military truck was parked on the center of the bridge. Bright lights on an aluminum truss cast a harsh light on the bridge.

"Guess they know your back way," Ruth said.

"Well, crap. There's one other bridge, that's even sketchier, but I am going to guess they are watching that too. Time for plan C."

He carefully made an eight point turn in the dark, and began silently driving to the last dirt road north.