One in Ten Ch. 08

"You helped Officer Passey here," Metzer pointed out.

"Which is the best hope you have. Despite being raped and imprisoned by a cop, gang-raped then having law enforcement laugh me out of the office, being driving to Isobel Diaz's party by a cop so I could be raped yet again..."

"Are you getting the picture? I have NO reason to help any woman whatsoever. You have been the bane of my existence since I was sixteen," I huffed. The look the cops were giving me wasn't one of sympathy. It was wonderment that I'd been allowed to babble for so long. "Why should you let me go?"

"Because I love Detective Angel Kristi. I'm truly enamored with Kuiko Sano and Capri O'Hara. I like Aniqua, Venus, Samantha and Roni. I think Francesca Silverhorn walks on freaking water. I'm erotically drawn to a warrior named Zara and a psycho I call Flame. I have every fucking reason to hate every woman who has ever lived...but I don't."

"I've pulled love out of hate. I have forgiven a few of you for your indifference to my suffering. In time, I may forgive others and do what I can. I will never have that chance if you take me away now. The Human Race will never have that chance. Lieutenant, I'm not asking you to save everyone. I'm asking you to save one person, me," I finished.

"What are you going to do if you I let you leave?" Metzer asked.

"I haven't a clue. I didn't come here with a plan or a schedule. I couldn't let her child die while I could do something. It is that simple. If you let me leave, I'm most likely going to walk around a bit and think. I didn't ask for this and it isn't my birthright. I was a lab rat and I should have died."

"I didn't, so I have to go on," I told her. Worst 'let me go' speech ever. My lecturers at Bowden would have tossed me out on my head.

"Clear a way out," Metzer commanded.

"Ma'am?" a senior officer questioned.

"He's not charged with anything," Lt. Metzer stated. "Until the possession of Magic Sperm becomes a crime, detaining him would be illegal."

Thankfully, Passey kept her mouth shut about my bracelet. They could hold me for that.

"Lieutenant - Mr. Jensen," one of the doctors stepped up. "If we could have a blood sample to verify Doctor Vasco's findings."

"I need to walk and clear my head," I evaded. "Let me think about it."

I was out of that emergency room as fast as decorum would allow. Not only was my mind teetering, my body was coming down from the rush of adrenaline followed by the exhaustion of a twenty minute sex session. In the parking lot, a black racing bike pulled up. The owner had on black leather from neck to toe with a black helmet hiding her features.

As I went to climb on, she handed me a helmet. Her size was an indicator but as the bike rocketed away, the sensation I received when I hugged her tightly gave her away. She sped off into parts of the city I was unfamiliar with before ending up at the unfinished expanses of an elevated highway - one of the Mayor's pet projects.

I dismounted, handed off my helmet then walked over to the unfinished edge. I sat down, letting my feet dangle off into the darkness. I guess-timated we were 20 meters up. I'm not an engineer, architect or surveyor so what did I know. Flame took off her helmet and followed behind me. She pulled out her pistol and chambered a round.

"How did you find me?" I wondered.

"Cops talk on their radios too much," she enlightened me. I turned my body so I could look at her. She aimed that huge fucking hand cannon my way. Looking down the barrel was definitely worse than trying to hold the damn thing. She slowly started smiling.

"This is where you start begging," she smirked.

"I want to live, but...I can't think of a convincing argument not to shoot," I confessed. Flame spun around, dancing with her arms outstretched.

"Come on, give me something," she laughed.

"Well, I'm glad you survived the shootout," I mused. "I wasn't sure at the time if I cared one way or the other. After thinking about it a bit, I think I'd be - less if you died."

"Less'?" she stopped spinning to regard me intensely. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"I really can't claim what I said was a rational statement," I answered.

"That makes even less sense," exulted happily - fucking psycho. "Are you trying to be crazier than me?"

"What? I am crazier than you," I declared. Flame looked skeptical. "Would you go out on an uncompleted bridge with yourself while unarmed? Bitch, I got you beat hands down."

"You're right," she concluded. "I hate people who are right about me." She aimed again. I stared. She looked trapped between bottled rage and something she couldn't identify. "What have you done to me?" she asked as she lowered the gun. "I think you are fucking with my mind - mesmerizing me somehow."

"People don't mesmerize other people," I told her. "Look at it this way; leaders don't take control, followers surrender it. They surrender it because the sane thing to do is live and the leader convinces you that the best life you can hope for is with them. The sane person can always chose to die instead - it is just very hard to do."

"I'm not doing anything to you, Flame," I explained, "beyond liking you for reasons I don't feel like grappling with right now. I'm certainly not offering you a better life in any way, shape, or form."

"But I like killing," Flame declared. "I'd like to kill you."

"Killing isn't so much. Death is inevitable for us all. Since we all die, why not try to make our deaths worthwhile?" I mused.

"Worthwhile," Flame scoffed. "Like saving people? Sparing your life?"

"Bitch," I chuckled, "you know me better than that."

"Killing is hastening the inevitable. Saving a life is holding death back for another few seconds - a 'fuck you' to the Universe. It changes things," I said.

"Killing people changes things too," Flame laughed. "I'd rather serve Death."

"There is no serving Death because Death doesn't need you. Death is going to win no matter what," I pointed out.

"Even if killing someone buys you a few more seconds, minutes, hours or days, Death will always come back for you because it is friendless and remorseless. It always wins in the end," I related. Flame stared at me. She raised the gun, staring down the barrel at me. She let it drop, raised it again then finally lowered it.

"That's why you fight," she whispered. "You are defying Death, trying to make a difference. You've seen people die - most likely horribly, so you know what death looks like. When you look into my eyes, you don't see Death, you see me."

"I think I do," I nodded.

"I like you. I never had a boyfriend before," Flame enlightened me.

"We are not boyfriend/girlfriend. I'm not a cheater," I responded.

"Pfah," Flame chuckled. "Not like that, dipshit. I mean me 'liking' somebody. I can't remember liking anyone before. Sure, I tolerate Little M and - Davia, but this is different."

"My whole life I've always wanted to kill people. To me it is like breathing. It's what I want to do. I don't give a shit if someone deserves it. I want them to die. I've always felt that way - until now. I don't feel the overwhelming desire to kill you. I can't say I understand it, it is so alien to me," Flame murmured.

After several minutes,

"You going to leave now?" she asked.

"Nah. I've got nowhere to go really," I shrugged. Flame came over, sat down next to me at the edge of the bridge and dangled her feet off into the dark.

"Going to beg me not to kill you?" she continued.

"Not really thinking about it actually," I grinned at her.

"Want me to go out and start saving lives?" she teased.

"I'm happy where you are right now," I bumped her shoulder with my own. "Unless you want to go and play Good Samaritan, then go knock yourself out."

"Are we friends, Israel?" Flame inquired as she rested her head on my shoulder.

"I guess so. Despite my traumatized background and your violent nature, I'm willing to accept we can get along," I reasoned.

"Are you going to beg for your life now?" she snickered.

"Bitch, were you not breastfed as a child?" I retorted.

"Not much; I choked out my mom when she tried to burp me," Flame laughed hysterically. We'd been down this road while she was punching and kicking the crap out of me at Isobel's party.

"What do we do now?" Flame wondered out loud to the night sky above.

"You could always give me a parachute then shove me off the bridge," I suggested.

"There is now way..." she began giggling as she got the joke, "...it would open in time."

"It's the false hope that often keeps us going," I pointed out.

"Do you want me to get you a gun?" Flame asked me as we rocked side to side at the edge of a long fall to a messy death.

"Well, I wouldn't mind some lessons and a pistol that doesn't threaten to blast me back to the 20th century," I stated. "A few guns for my lady posse wouldn't suck either."

"I'll see what I can do," Flame sighed happily. "You know, if I let you get away, you die and I didn't kill you myself, I'll never get over it," Flame mused. "I want to spend time with you too. It doesn't make sense. It's a..."

"Conundrum?" I offered up the word.

"Yeah - conundrum. Good word, Beatrix Potter," she snickered. "See, when you do shit like that, I don't get angry. You aren't trying to get one up on me - make me look stupid just because I didn't get much schooling."

"I'm not. Survival is a much under-appreciated art these days but that's about to change, Flame," I confided. "You are a survivor."

Flame tilted to the side, turned her torso and looked into my eyes.

"That's it. You are nice to me and not in a way that says you want to screw me, or 'begging me to let you live' sort of way. You are just fucking nice to me and I don't get it," Flame seemed truly confused.

"I'll give it a go. No one understands us. When we walk into a room, no one knows what's going on behind our eyes. You and I are totally different in what we are going through, but in that total separation from our peers, we are alone. I guess that is what I meant when I called you pure. You are pure in your thoughts. There is no confusion," I pieced things together.

"But you confuse me," Flame pointed out.

"And you don't think you confuse me? Ha, I should be running the fuck away from you every chance I get. For a guy who claims to not be a masochist, I certainly have a lot of violent women in my life," I chortled.

"Hmmm..." she then paused. "Want to have sex?" This may have been the first time Flame had actually asked a man that. I imagined she normally took it.

"Sorry, I never have sex with a woman whose clit is bigger than my dick," I teased.

"Bitch!" she wacked me with her gun while she giggled and swinging her legs back and forth.

"Woman, don't make me come over there and make you beat me up with that flyswatter of yours," I teased. Nothing was said for a while. She snuggled back to me. Outside our little world, sirens blared while the city lights turned the night sky into a dirty, charcoal-colored haze. In that tiny segment of time, we were both comfortable in our skins.

Eventually Flame found the silence unbearable. "What is it like to be tortured?" Flame inquired.

"Different tortures do different things," I tried to explain.

"Some things are so painful that the pain is all you recall. The phantom of that agony carries on long after the act is done. Other tortures are humiliating. They erode your understanding of the world. You lose your perception of the peripherals, collapsing into your core values even as those crumble apart."

"Finally, there are those thing that seem good, but are actually bad - sexual torture. They wreck you emotionally and leave your body's responses cross-wired. All of those break down your mental picture of yourself - chip you away until you are some creature you don't recognize, but that's the person you now have to live with," I sighed.

"I'd rather die," she punched me very lightly.

"It is never that easy," I explained. "Keeping you alive is part of the torture. Making you want to die then stealing even that hope from you."

"If I was about to be captured, would you kill me?" Flame prodded.

"Yeah," I nodded.

"Bitch...why?"

"I couldn't deal with looking in your eyes and not seeing that madness there - a purely selfish reason," I confided. There was a long silence.

"That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, and meant it," Flame breathed deeply.

"I wouldn't want to do it. I don't consider myself a killer," I sighed, "but I'm the only friend you've got."

"That's the damn truth," she snickered.

"I'm sure Davia would shoot me, but I think it is because she wants to be sure I'm dead," Flame giggled.

"Davia? Do you mean your partner? I call her Silent and I really didn't want to know her real name," I groaned.

"Why's that?" Flame asked.

"Take it easy, Lady and Gentleman," a soft female voice called out behind us. "No sudden moves." I looked to Flame. She was giving me a toothy smile and pumping her eyebrows. I raised my hands - slowly.

(Behind the Scenes)

What no one in the Federation knew at that moment was that we were racing for the final curtain call. The WHO knew that something was very wrong, but they were still digging - and desperately hoping they were wrong with what they were looking at. The UN was only learning of the footsteps of doom. They too were praying.

The moment Judas took his thirty pieces of silver he had a date with the end of a rope, he just didn't know it. This time it wasn't the fault of those doctors, jurists and politicians from forty years ago. They had never intended for the extreme efforts of the different societies they were creating to go on forever. They were buying time.

The problem was men stopped publically dying. The next generation of women would never know the flush sexual possibilities of their mothers, but they became comfortable with the system they had inherited. The men who knew what gender equality (if not downright male domination) felt like were too old to cause many problems and could be safely ignored.

They were still searching for a cure, but no one was hopping mad about it anymore. Infant boys were still dying at an abysmal rate - but in the collective memory of womankind, we always had. They became complacent. The male voice diminished then fell silent. Twenty years ago, when key world leaders learned that the male side of the species was dying out, they had a choice.

If they told the people of the Earth the bad news, the women feared that anarchy would ensue. The world economy would collapse. The civilization their predecessors had fought so hard to keep afloat would go under. It would be the End.

Or, they could make the men soldier on in futility while women waited for a miracle.

They had made a deal with the Devil, but the Devil doesn't deal in Salvation. He gave them twenty years. Old Nick was smiling behind his polite façade. He'd also provided them with the means of killing themselves. I was born a year before the Big Lie was concocted. Another boy, half a world away, was born a year later.

Like me, he had his innocence torn away at an early age. Born on Java in Indonesia, he was kidnapped and sold to the slave trade. He could have ended up anywhere, but fate landed him in the Chinese port of Shanghai. By the age of twenty, prodigious amounts of performance drugs and continuous sex had rendered his mind a shell - a few memories still bouncing around.

Outside of a small family circle in his native land, no one cared about the boy and no one would have known about him if he hadn't died. In the end, they didn't even care about his body or his name. The WHO named him Patient T2 Zero because by the time they found out about him, the only person who might have remembered his name was dead also.

It would be poetic to say he struck back at his tormentors from the grave. In fact, women had stolen away any ability to know what he had done. The fact was that on the Saturday before I moved into my condo, his long laboring T1 antibodies, his reward for surviving infancy, lost their struggle to produce more guardians than naturally degraded.

In those seconds, sometime after the lunchtime clientele returned to work, the most mutated version of the T1 virus ever seen 'woke up'. The cluster of antivirals that encased it crumbled away. It attacked the first cell it came across. In minutes, that cell became a factory. Inside an hour, the antiviral/viral battle became a rout.

Under normal conditions, the T1 Gender Plague manifested in three days and the male was dead in four more - max. The boy from Indonesia wasn't normal. He was fighting off some influenza that a few patrons had coughed on him. The housekeeper gave him something for that. He was 'profitable' after all. He had been given an injection at the start of flu season too.

The boy's blood was a soup of medicinal drugs, aphrodisiacs and performance enhancers. Both his red and white blood cell counts were a wreck from long exposure to these substances. He was fed regularly - they only chained one of his legs to the bed when he was 'working' or sleeping. His throat had hurt so much that he hadn't been eating enough. Besides, his will to continue on was already gone.

He was a prostitute, a sex trade worker, a slab of meat. If you get told that enough times, treated like that enough, it becomes all you know. When was the last time you saw a slab of meat fight to stay in one piece? Around four in the afternoon, the housekeeper came by, allowed him to go to the bathroom and gave him some food to eat.

She wasn't overly concerned about him barely eating. The boy had a good run. He'd much more than made up the cost the 'providers' extorted from her 'community'. She mused it was a pity they didn't have more Asian boys. They fetched more money. They couldn't be Chinese, of course. The police put you against a wall and shot you for that, so mainly they were Indonesians, Malay, and Africans.

When she shackled the boy back to his pallet for the evening rush, she noticed his pelvic region and penis were enflamed. She checked - the boy was still feverish. She gave him something for the fever and doused his crotch with powder so as not to disturb the clients. Had she been forty-five or older, she might have recognized the onset of the Plague, but she wasn't.

Even then, she could hardly be blamed for not understanding. No adult had died from the Plague in forty years. It was a childhood disease. In a final irony, two kilometers away was a very fine hospital. They would have recognized the ailment and quarantined the boy. He would have died, but the Human Race would not have - yet.

The housekeeper was indifferent to his suffering. She had other boys to take care of before the working class women began flocking in with their hard-earned Yuan. In a final sad reaction to the impending crisis, she dimmed the light in his room so as to not upset the clients with the condition of his genitals.

On Tuesday, as I struggled through the last few hours of my normal life, the boy's was clearly failing. The housekeeper was seeing the local patrolwoman off, with a freebie and the monthly 'allowance' money for the precinct when a junior attendant came running. The Indonesian boy the policewoman had just visited wasn't performing and the client was being noisy.

She was feeling irritable and ill, so she went straight for the 'electrical stimulation aid'. She soothed the client, jolted the boy's anus until his cock finally responded then left the room. She told the assistant to help her move the boy to the storeroom after the latest patron left. The dying boy was no longer profitable.

She wasn't going to waste the drugs to simply put him down. One day without food or water would do the trick. Besides, she was angry, she felt like crap and her pussy itched. Inside that boy on that Saturday, the T1 inside the boy had become what was known as the T2 and it had made that last, great leap. It was no longer gender specific.