Hardwired 2.2

Mox says something to Arkia about leaving but I'm too far from my own ears to hear- don't care what the little punk has to say. She's next. First the blonde, though. The wave of furious lust swamps the lesser me back down and I lurch back into movement like a reactivated automaton, at her in two steps. No more hesitation, no doubt, the blonde's features are already halfway to Courinna's. Her hair is shifting tones toward brunette waves, Courinna's taunting mouth sneering, urging me on. The little punk can scream at me all she likes but I'm not stopping until I'm done.

I reach out for the blonde but she slips under my arm and is in my face, grabbing me by the ears- shouldn't I be taller than this? Than her?- and pulls my face close to hers. I don't react immediately. This doesn't happen.

"B.G.," she snarls, "You can knock this the fuck off now. Wintermute!" The shouted word is like a bludgeon, knocking my stolen features to the side, punching me backward in a stumble, burning every trace of Courinna from Arkia's face.

I desperately glance out from behind the mask that's choking me and see the flare of recognition in Arkia's eyes just before Mox's shoulder slams into the back of my knees and brings me to the ground. Arkia can move like a cat when motivated, she's on top of me after the first bounce. There's a memory of this before, Arkia pouncing on top of me, but it should be dirt beneath me, not this hard tile. This is wrong.

Wind, heavy with the imminence of rain, rises around us. The windowless hallway is lit by a distant crash of lightning and fresh, damp earth's smell is impossibly coming from the linoleum. I'm looking up at Arkia's face with two sets of eyes, her strong chin tilted upward to the sudden wind, hair thrashing around her as she crouches over me, her weight holding me down.

"That's it, lover," she says, turning back to me with an encouraging smile, hands pressing my shoulders to the soft dirt. More hands pressing down on my wrists tell me that Mox has joined her. "You remember this. You remember me," she murmurs, leaning down further, the pressure of her hips and breasts impossible to ignore.

The beast I wear lashes out, furious in terror at being contained, but the implanted muscle of my arms isn't effortlessly shoving them away as it should. I would say that the howl I let out is bestial but it is so very, very human in its needful despair.

"Wintermute. Wintermute, say it, lover," Her tongue tickles my left ear and another voice echoes it on the right. "Come on, big guy. Wintermute. Say it." The blonde shifts on top of me, grinding upward from my hips then her nipple is at my lips, hard and inviting and my mouth is wrapped around before I so much as think of it. The taste of Arkia's skin, the frequency of her moan connect me to her and through her to myself.

"Seriously? Time and frigging place, Arkia," the voice beside me says and there's a headshake in the tone that doesn't need to be seen to be heard, but it doesn't matter. The storm winds are rising through the fading walls of the hallway and Arkia has to shout for her answer to be heard.

"He can't go like this and I'm not leaving him. Help or bolt!" I'm fairly sure that there's a response of some kind, entirely comprised of profanity, but I'm not listening. Arkia is anchoring me, her smell, her taste, but it's not enough.

Thunder's crash startles Mox enough that her grip on my wrists loosens and I'm free, wrapping my arms around Arkia and though it's the illusion of borrowed muscle that powers me forward and spins her beneath me it's my desire that leads these false hands to rip her pants clean away from her. Brockwelter still burns inside me as I tear myself free of my own clothing and slam inside of Arkia, and I know that she's feeling a size that is not my own. She gasps, eyes wide, but her legs lock behind my hips to urge me on. I don't hesitate, slamming her into the softness of the wet dirt ground over and again, the speed savage. Fingers grip my hair and tilt my head upward, direct my lips up to Mox's own small breasts beneath her pulled-up shirt.

"This better work," she says, but her voice is husky from my eager lips and teeth exploring her hard nipples, running my tongue along the absences where her piercings belong. One arm props my weight up to allow my hips freedom to pound away at Arkia and leaves my other free to squirm fingers down, across a belly ridged with muscle and through the soft patch of Mox's pubic hair to her swollen lower lips.

Both of them are a chorus now, moans and urging gasps of Say It, Say It, and it's with a sense of perfect completion that I feel Mox shudder around my fingers and Arkia around my cock and my own orgasm bursting forth in time with the rain's sudden torrent. Arkia's legs hold me within her, connected as completely as possible, accepting all of me.

Mox's fingers are a tearing pull on my scalp, pulling hairs from my head as she cums, vertebrae creaking as my head is forced back. At last I scream the command word, blasting the storm away on reality's wind.

Connections break in my skull with concussion impact, burned into meaninglessness, amputating my connections to the collective lie and driving Brockwelter's echo back into the howling void. It leaves emptiness, leaves... the ones I love, surrounding me, connected to me, part of me. The broken mirror's shards grind back into place, never whole, but with the right shape, and held together by the right glue, they'll do. I'm on my back, rain and dirt and storm evaporating into nothingness to leave me stranded in sterile grey hallway, broken in mind and body but not alone. Not alone.

I manage to raise my arm up enough to read the inscription on it in the harsh flicker of damaged fluorescent light, amazed at the soft pale hairs that have replaced thick black ones. Darkness crowds my tunnel vision to nothing and the next time I'm aware of what's happening I'm half-staggering, half-being-carried between my two companions through the now open door of Reception. Of course there's no actual steel door blocking it. What possible need could there be for it?

It's a glorious fall day outside, the clouds we had left replaced with a genuine blue sky. I stare blankly for a bit before it occurs to me to wonder just what we'll do from here. I look to Arkia, now dressed in an ill-fitting orderly's uniform, and try to marshal my faculties to produce words. I've croaked two-thirds of the way through a "Hey" (and yes, I'm aware that that's one syllable) when the most ostentatious vehicle I've ever seen in my life pulls up to the curb in front of us.

From behind the wheel of a monstrosity of fins and spoilers, the flame-painted hood customized to mock a gas-burner's lines, Malk gives me a grin that I try to return. He rolls down an actual, physical window on the thing's passenger side (with a hand crank, no less) and looks us over critically.

"You folks look like you know how to party. Want a ride?"

End

SLH