Athenium Ch. 02

Article 1 (sorted chronologically)

Owner: Stiles, R.

Item: Written Log Fragments

(2/15/48)

Thought that the pool would hold it (section missing) a week, it had almost completely filled the thing. It doesn't move, except to grow larger. Worried that- (remainder of entry was destroyed, presumably due to incident)

(2/21/48)

-extraterrestrial in origin. They may be right. It has some strange properties. Most fascinating from a scientific standpoint is its perfect metabolism of any material. No explanati-

(2/22/48)

-somehow stepped onto the surface of the Athenium. It should have supported Fareed's weight, but it (section missing) gone within two seconds. He was beneath the surface for six minutes as we tried to figure out how to extract him. Before we could execute any plan, it somehow floated him back to the surface. He's alive, but unconscious.

(2/22/48, 1722 hrs)

-don't understand (section missing) vegetative state. His body is in impossibly good shape. He was known to be precancerous, and was undergoing a preventative treatment. All signs of polyps are gone. There is no sign of any medical problem whatsoever, other than his lack of higher brain function. It's like Athenium broke him and almost managed to put him back together.

"I'll keep you..."

Now free of the goo's confines, I scramble to the concrete. I had to get away from her, or she would...

"You good, Rod?" Phillip asked. I gasped and croaked out a sound that was half panic, half forced arousal.

"Sorry. Your vocal cords...probably not clear of it yet," He said, patting at his own throat. I was grateful for the excuse, because honestly, I wasn't sure how to explain what had happened down there, why I was so scared. I closed my eyes and put my head between my knees, content to sit stark naked in front of nine other men for a moment. They were not paying attention to me right now, anyways.

A few meters from me, Marco was being examined by Rick, our physician. The pace around the freed captive was curious, but not frantic. He did not appear to be injured in any way. He was breathing without assistance, his pulse and blood pressure were the definition of normal, he was just...sleeping.

I swallowed the last hint of honeyed tea. She - it, Athenium was it when I was up here - had never been observed to make a harmful alteration to anyone swallowed into its depths, but we still didn't fully understand the goo's capabilities.

"I'll steal you..."

"Better now, Rod?" Phil asked. My fear has lessened, but it feels like all of my blood is flowing at once through my carotid. It's difficult to breathe.

"Yeah. Yeah, I uh...b-bbrrr..." the Antarctic chill sets my teeth to chattering, too strong to be kept out by four walls.

"Oh. Over there." Phil gestured to a bench where my winter clothing had been placed, still crumpled into the same ball they had been in when I took them off. No one among a room this full of doctors and their egos could be expected to do laundry.

I grabbed the clothes and headed for the shower in the locker room.

"I'll keep you."

A buxom raven-haired fertility goddess, tall as an office building, lifts my naked body, folding one giant hand around my whole torso. She drags me across her nude form, casually pressing me into her stomach and up through a half-meter of cleavage. The tangy smell of sweat and sex fills my nose, and my lizard brain takes over; it knows that this is a creature whose hunger I cannot satisfy. I flail and curse, but she merely chuckles in amusement.

The difference in our nakedness strikes me for a moment. My confused id tries for a moment to imagine her with clothing, and an image does not come. She is in her natural state: savage, untamed, strong beyond measure. My naked state shows nothing but woeful unpreparedness. The only part of me that seems prepared is my cock, which is laughably eager to take the challenge. The rest of me recoils at this ridiculous idea, knowing that the woman in front of me sees me as a meal, not as a partner.

"A little small, but you'll do," The goddess says. I will become her Gulliver: she lewdly thrusts her hips forward, opening her exposed labia. My cock twitches in anticipation, despite it all. I drown in the thick musk as she reaches down to her sex and shoves me inside.

She closes her legs, and daylight disappears.

The shower sputters, and icy water splashes across me. I gasp, stumbling backwards to the textured brick wall behind me.

I gulp hard, clearing my throat. The honeyed tea taste is long gone, but she has clearly done something to me. Like before, I had kept her from digging too deeply into my mind, I thought. Her probing was usually surface level, but this time, the sixth time I had let her pull me under, she was...more curious. More insatiable.

Short on breath, I thrash and gasp for breath. I feel the goddess's moan as a slow rumble that shakes the world. Maybe I tickle. Maybe I am a pleasant little sensation, but I am not a man anymore. Here in her pussy, I am just a toy.

A wall opens, and two giant fingers grip me. Each slightly longer than my legs, they tightly pinch my legs as she starts moving me in what must be a more pleasurable oscillation.

Damn it, I said aloud, stop beating around the bush. She was a fucking nympho. She had projected almost nothing but sex, and not the gentle kind, no... full-blown, psycho fuck slave sex.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Her pussy contracts, folding around my body and pressing wet flesh into my nostrils. I grow dizzy and breathless from the motion.

And what the hell had she done to Marco? How much of what she projected was real?Had Marco really fantasized about letting Athenium consume him? If that was his fantasy, was it his fantasy, or did she give it to him?

If she had given it to him - apparently from a single touch - what had she given the rest of us?

"...let them come..."

Before my mind's eye, I see Deret Station empty. No lights are on, the only sign of life is a swim gym that is as sweltering as a tropical rainforest. Inside, a sea of hunter green oobleck almost reaches the roof, quaking, undulating, expanding. All 78 people at the station - 22 of the world's worst criminals and 56 station staff - are beneath the surface. They are stripped of all clothing and restraint as the goo massages them, penetrates them, fucks them to climax after climax. A symphony of muffled moans and screams pervades the mass as the prisoners suckle their gelatinous gags and strain against their bonds just to feel the adrenaline that only the hopelessly trapped can ever experience. They know it won't let them go, and they are thrilled for that.

I shake my head violently and turn the shower water to its most frigid setting, trying to free myself from these intrusions into my sanity.

Forget Marco, what the hell has she done to me?

I know the answer to that one at once: she's taunting me. She has told me her evil scheme, and now she's daring me to try to stop her. It thrills her that I know what she wants, but that I'm powerless to stop it.

I'm just not sure how I know that.

The choice between becoming eternal emotional feed stock and a brutal death at the hands of 22 upgraded versions of the world's most deadly murderers wasn't going to get any easier to make, and maybe, I told myself, something to do would make the hallucinations go away. I turned off the shower, intending to clothe myself, then go to check on Marco. It was as good a plan as any, in the absence of any brilliant ideas to save the day.

They had moved him to the infirmary, and he would be there for the next several days. We knew that Athenium was capable of holding humans without harming them, but we had never tested the limits of that ability. Marco had been under for far longer than anyone that we had ever later retrieved, so we had no clue how it had affected him. The ones who could best demonstrate the effects of long-term submersion, obviously, weren't coming out any time soon...unless Athenium made good on her threat. Its threat.

Damn it.

Marco was awake, but was still laying down. I had no expectations when I walked into his "room" - a curtain separated his tiny space from the medium-sized sick bay - but I was still surprised to find him reclining with a happy, sleepy smile. He looked like he had just finished a session with the world's most capable masseuse, and had followed up that sensual experience with a dose of morphine. I did not want to think about how close to the truth that metaphor was.

"Hangin' in there?" I ask, trying and failing to gulp down every ounce of anxiety. Marco lazily turned his head to face me.

"Hmm? Oh, hey Rod. Yeah...just..." He yawns, "Just ready to be back in my own little corner."

"I bet. They uh...well, you know what happened?"

He grunts, eyeing the ceiling. I don't think he'd be able to tell a lie very well in his current state, but who really knew?

"They fished me out of Athenium. Well...you did, I hear. Thanks for that, by the way," He says. His gratitude seems genuine.

"Yeah, well...apparently talking to it is my job now, so..." I say.

"Think they'll be putting you down there again any time soon?"

I eye him for a moment, wondering if he has thoughts of going back. There seems to be no plot in his eyes to discern, no secret he's trying to keep, nothing immediately apparent, anyways. Maybe the guy is better at hiding his kinks than I realize.

"I would imagine so. Gotta check on our guests, make sure they're having a good time," I say. Marco laughs nervously for a moment. He's just as uncomfortable with our unsanctioned private prison as I am, I know, despite recent events.

"Been meaning to ask, but uh...what's it like down there? Can't ask the prisoners and the other three went once and just blanked but you...what was that, your sixth time?"

Maybe, I think to myself, he's not so good at hiding his kinks. This speech seems rehearsed, like he's been spending weeks trying to ask without giving away his strange fascination. In his defense, I doubt I would've detected the oddities of this line of questioning without my insider information.

"I'm a geologist by trade, been in my fair share of caves. The tight spaces don't bother me," I explain.

"Yeah, sure, but that? That's no cave. That's like getting shrink wrapped and thrown into a car presser, right?" His questions are rehearsed, as well. He's really trying to throw me off the trail.

"It..."

Before I can say anything about its mental manipulation, a three-meter tendril of Athenium bursts through the door of the infirmary, making a beeline to Marco's bed. Gooey pseudopods form out of the main body, and the Athenium lashes me by the wrists, grabs Marco by the ankles, and hooks Daniela - the nurse on duty - around the waist. We three are hoisted into the air as more tendrils emerge from the main body to grab every errant limb. The tendrils thicken and grow at an alarming speed, flowing over every inch of skin as they lengthen and expand themselves across our bodies.

Daniela screams as the sleeves of the world's tightest jumpsuit pull her flailing arms to her side, where they join the goo that has already covered her torso is working its way up her neck. She whimpers as it slithers up her chin and seals her mouth. Her eyes press shut instinctively as the expanding Athenium claims the remaining inches of skin. The dark-skinned woman writhes and twitches before she is retracted into the main mass.

Marco closes his eyes and gasps as the thing he has fantasized about for weeks comes to claim him. He touches the slime crawling up his legs; it holds his hand there, growing over his fingertips and up to his wrists. He places his arms flat against his side of his own accord, not wanting Athenium to take a second longer than necessary to plunge him into the gooey world of his dreams. The greedy slime obliges, wrapping him up quickly. It feels better than Marco ever imagined; he is grunting with pleasure when the slime finishes traversing his neck, and he offers no resistance as it explores inside of his mouth. A ragged, throaty moan is the last sound that escapes him before the thing he wanted so much shows him just how badly it wanted him back.

I am frozen in fear. In seconds, all is dark and silent. I don't see it, I hear it. It's saying words, accusing me of crimes I cannot comprehend. As it drags me into more of itself, where I will be buried and irretrievable, it laughs.

The goo drags us, writhing and screaming inside the oobleck serpent, back into the pool.

"-with us, Rod? Hey! Rod?" Marco said.

I shudder and take a deep breath. Marco is giving me a concerned look when my vision clears.

"Yeah...yeah. Sorry. Side effects. I think the Athenium is still...uh, well, it hasn't quite learned our language yet," I stutter. Marco is unconvinced by that answer. An uncomfortable silence stretches across half a minute as we try to hide the torments from each other.

"Can I ask you something? It...uh...well, it seems like a question you could answer..."

Marco is fumbling the words. His relaxed demeanor is beginning to change; now, he is wringing his hands. There's a problem that will develop over the next few days, I realize. Stuck in this hospital bed with not much to do except stare at the ceiling and think, the fantasies are going to become even more unbearable, and he's going to do something stupid.

"You want to know what it's like down there," I state.

"And I can't say my curiosity is...scientific in nature. It...uh..."

"You want to try it for yourself."

My head is four feet below Athenium's surface. She's stretching my limbs like I'm on a medieval rack, pumping furiously at my cock, which seems to be the only part of me that is enjoying this. She retracts from my throat and I gasp for air that isn't there.

The sudden, primal terror and the stimulation make me explode into forced orgasm. She tightens around my neck, and I begin to see flashes. I beg her to reinsert the gag, but she just laughs. She might actually let me die this time.

Damn it, Athenium, he asked me a question. I'm not going to risk you killing me, but I have to give him some kind of answer.

"If you can't talk about it, it's alright-"

"No," I interrupt, "no, I can...it's fine. Sorry. It's...it's not uncomfortable. Feels like being in a bath full of really thick lotion. I've never played in Jello, but maybe it's like that?"

"So it's not claustrophobic? Wait, you said you worked in caves, maybe...yeah. What about the breathing? Does having that stuff in your mouth make you gag?"

"I think there's some kind of numbing agent in it. Honestly, after it gets in my mouth, I don't feel it. The hardest part is opening your mouth the first time, getting past that fear."

"But it gives you air? Water? Food?"

"Far as we can tell, a human can be alive down there for as long as they live. No way to test that, of course, but...yeah."

"Trippy."

This isn't helping. If he sneaks off to indulge in his fantasy, I'm not sure that Athenium will give him up a second time.

I feel my mind slipping into another one of the forced hallucinations.

"Let him come."

It's a demand this time, a signal to my subconscious to take over. Just let him go to it. That's what he wants. That's what she wants. She's not going to hurt him.

No, that's a terrible idea.

But maybe it's not?

What the hell am I thinking? Of course it's a terrible idea.

But just think: he's not your problem anymore. You just tell the others that the goo won't listen to you, or there's a miscommunication, or...whatever. Make something up. You can stop worrying about this, and he can go be a fuck slave to a pool of goo, like he wants to be. You can't stop him.

He'll do it.

He'll do it, and you'll have to go after him, and...

"I can get you in, if that's what you're asking for. I don't think it will hurt you," I offer.

It is all that I can do to not grimace, to keep my cool as I silently lambast that inner voice that seems to be overtaking me. This is seven hundred different brands of wrong, unethical, illegal. They'll make new laws to keep what happened here from ever happening again, and they'll lock me up and throw away the keys. Or maybe they'll feed me to Athenium, too, that would be ironic.

Marco can barely hide his thrill. The vitals monitor shows his increased blood pressure and pulse. He is eager to take the risk.

I had no good ideas of how to deal with the dilemma Athenium imposed upon me, but this one felt uniquely bad. I was not worried so much about getting in trouble for breaking him out of the infirmary; I could make up something about needing a sample of the goo for a test I had just thought of, and I was pretty sure Marco would go along with it if it came to that.

No, what worried me now was Athenium finding out that I had lied to her. With everything that had happened, it had gone to the back burner, but now I needed to deal with it, and I wasn't sure how I was going to pull that off. First thing Athenium was likely to do was to soothe a feeling that he was betraying a wife he did not have, and then...well, if the goo could reach me from outside the pool and choke me to death, it didn't seem outside the realm of things she might do.

Come on, think of something, I prodded myself. There has to some idea, something better than delivering an unaware fool to a pit of debauchery to be used as a sex toy, even if I have it on good authority that that is exactly what he wants. I try to walk slowly, lying that we needed to be sneaky, but Marco is beginning to move ahead of me. There is sweat on the back of his neck; he might blow his load before he even gets in there and realize what a bad idea this is.

It's a relief, then, to find the door to the pool room padlocked.

"New procedure, I guess. Sorry, I didn't know-"

With a wet smack and the sound of clanging metal, the door bends open the wrong way, pivoting around the padlock and falling awkwardly on its side. In the pool room, Athenium has overrun the edge of the pool and is now filling the bottom of the whole room. Marco looks to me for an explanation; I have nothing, except a wish that they would fucking find some other "expert" while I run to the other side of the world.

My self-pity is cut short as a meter-high wave of goo floods through the door frame, snapping the padlock latch as it tosses the door aside. I am frozen in fear as the wave grabs us both up to our knees and begins to haul us to the center of the room.

This is a hallucination, I tell myself. It has to be.

It isn't a hallucination.

Deceiver. Trickster. Fool.

The redhead appears in my mind's eye, a wicked grin on her face. She walks up to me as the goo pulls me down to my stomach, pinning my arms to my side.

The real world and the "dream world" she creates in my mind now mesh almost perfectly. I'm seeing what she wants me to see, whether it's happening in the real world or all in my mind. I won't outwit her now. Maybe I never actually did.

She takes my face gently in her left hand, running fingertips and nails across my cheek as she takes my chin, raising my eyes to meet hers. She is everywhere, and even when I close my eyes, I see her. She won't let me miss this.

She tisks as she draws closer, giving me a wet, passionate kiss that tastes of a sickly-sweet alcohol. I am disarmed, struck dumb as the slime reaches my mouth. She bends to my ear, and I feel her cool lips move as she begins to speak.