Out Of Options, Out Of Line

But she wasn't patient. I could feel that. She put her hand up, quickly and surgically. 'Just... just tell me why you think it's a good idea. No excuses.'

Martin nodded. 'Last time... the deaths were preventable. The issues, as I could see it, was that there was no 'off switch' for if anything went wrong. A failsafe. So, with our funding-'

'My funding,' she sliced in. 'My funding, Martin. I brought you on because you have a familiarity with the material, without legal culpability. Do you understand? You belong to me, because the moment you try and do anything I dislike, I send all of the information we recovered from your previous employers to the authorities, and I make sure your name is on the first document they open.'

Martin nodded, shaken. 'Right.'

'However,' she said. 'You're right to be cautious. As the only carry-over, your experience in this... material is invaluable. If you thought a fail-safe is needed, you should have let me know.'

'You were in Cuba,' he said simply.

A flicker of amusement registered in Ava's mind. She liked his spark. 'Was I? Well then. Perhaps I should congratulate you on your ingenuity.' She stepped forwards, making to go past him and exit, before stopping at his side. Her hand, light as a feather, went to his chest, and I realised that she was a few inches taller than him. 'If, and only if, you are correct, of course. If this saves lives, you're in for a promotion. If this fails, and you've wasted my funds on an unapproved project, you're out.'

Martin nodded, and Ava left, pulling the door shut behind her.

*

THRUMM.

The car came back to me, and the dusting of rain that had started to spread dark spots onto the concrete outside. The building, short and squat, watched me as I waited for Ava to emerge from its mouth - and when she did, I made my own exit.

Her eyes, brown and deceptively warm, slid over me as we passed, and she barely seemed to register my existence.

Whatever Martin has done, he hasn't told her about me, I thought as I rushed inside. I passed through the lobby wordlessly, and skipped up the stairs, which I knew to be faster than the lift on most days - though, honestly, it was more to use up my nervous energy.

When I found myself outside the door, all of a sudden, it was as though time had slipped from me. I wasn't paying attention to what was around me, because I was too focused on trying to parse apart what Martin had said.

What he'd admitted to.

I pushed open the flat door, and saw Martin on the sofa, alone. He sprang up, and then relaxed as he realised who I was. That I wasn't Ava.

But, as I approached him, his expression changed from relief to confusion. Then, realisation.

'Phoebe,' he said, as though calming a protective dog in a house he was robbing. A criminal, pushing responsibility away through the false lens of 'being sensible'.

'What have you done,' I demanded - not hardly a question.

He sighed. 'You heard.'

'I was in her,' I told him outright, my voice louder than caution would advise. 'I was watching, from behind her eyes, as you explained. How you were making a 'failsafe', so that what happened last time wouldn't happen again.'

I stopped, letting him fill the gaps. Again, I watched him scramble, but I was less calm this time. Less collected than the inside of Ava's mind.

'She... approached me, about a month after, you know. Everything. Her company bought the equipment left behind by the last lot, disavowed by whatever shadowy organisation it was. She saw all of the logs, the write-ups. Like she said, I wasn't even in a position of responsibility last time around, but she came to me and said that she needed my experience. Good money, and she would keep me safe from any legal ramifications if any of this ever... got out.'

'Protection,' I repeated back to him, and he nodded, seeing the humour.

'I know, I know - I should have just told you, Phoebe. But... once I was in there, and I saw how they were working on recreating the serum, it got me thinking. What I said to her was true - I designed a sort-of blocker. Something to stop any symptoms-'

'Symptoms?' I laughed. 'Martin, you're working for a company that wants to weaponise psychic abilities. God - could you imagine if, instead of me, someone like her had gotten this gift I have? Because, I assure you, the moment her company has a safe version of this,' I tapped my head for effect. 'She'll have it. And then she'll be doing God-knows what.'

Martin sighed, defeated. 'That's why I'm there.' I must have looked at him like he had two heads. 'I'm sabotaging them, Phoebe. Stopping them from getting anywhere good, while I make a cure.'

That made me pause. 'A cure.'

He nodded. 'I know, I know that you've gotten a lot out of this gift - but we don't know if it's safe. The only other person who tried it died, and we don't know why you survived. Maybe dumb luck. Maybe it's a delayed reaction. In a year, ten years, whatever - you could have that same reaction. In that case, I want to be ready. To save you.'

'Martin,' I started, trying to tell him how angry I was.

'I love you,' he said. Of course it would come out like that. An interruption. 'Sorry,' he followed it up with. 'I just... I love you. And the fear I have of losing you... I won't give in to it. But I'm in there to keep you safe, and to stop this happening to anyone else. I swear.'

I didn't know what else to say.

'I love you too.'

~ 3 ~

I watched Martin leave about fifteen minutes later, our less-than-romantic declaration undercut further by the fact that he actually did have to go into work and perform his 'sabotage'. God, what a stupid idea. But the mere fact that someone had the data needed to recreate that serum was terrifying, and if Martin was willing to get close enough to stop that from happening... I wouldn't be able to stop him.

Not now that he loved me!!

God, it was so dumb, but with everything else going on, I was struggling to think about anything other than that.

He loved me.

Martin loved me.

He was so smart, and funny, and sexy, and he loved me.

The giddiness didn't suit me, but I'd spent so long alone, thinking that I was unwanted and would stay that way... and today, thanks to that stupid serum, I was in love. Maybe it wasn't all bad.

THUD THUD THUD.

The three knocks at my door, furious and demanding, made my heart jump and my stomach sink.

'What now?' I mumbled as I pulled myself off the sofa and peered through the peek-hole, only to see Zara outside, in a casual tank-top (no bra, of course), and black jeans that showed off her butt. I had, as Alex, fucked that delicious rear-end so many times that it was difficult to separate that desire from myself.

In her eyes, however, I saw fire. Fury.

'I know you're there,' she yelled at the door, making me step back in instinctively. 'I heard you and that guy fighting - and I heard everything.'

Oh.

Oh.

Oh fuck.

I fumbled with the lock, sliding it open and pulling the door enough to see Zara on the other side. She slammed her hand onto the door and pushed it open, forcing her way in, and slammed it behind me.

For a hot second, I thought she was going to hurt me - and the idea came to me that, in that case, I would have to Share with her - take over, and stop her. It was my fail-safe, if anything ever went wrong.

My gift.

But, instead of attacking me, she just stood, maybe an inch away, and held my gaze. Fire and fury indeed.

'Tell me,' she demanded.

'I don't-' I tried, but she shook her head.

'All those times,' she said, eyes drifting as though keeping contact with mine was less important than it had been a moment ago. 'All those times, when me and Alex were... together. I felt like I could feel someone in my head. Like I wasn't... I wasn't feeling everything. And, months ago - mid-way through him fucking ruining me, I wake up in here. In your fucking flat. And now I know why, huh?'

'Zara, listen to me,' I said, but she didn't want to hear it.

'No - no, you tell me right now what happened, or I swear to God, I'll... I'll...'

'You'll what?' I said, standing a little straighter now. 'Zara, if you've worked it out, you know what I can do. That I can stop you.'

'I'll go public,' she said, but her voice shook just a little. 'I'll tell people to look for your boy, Martin, and his boss. What was her name, Ava?'

I frowned. 'How did you-'

'Thin walls,' she said. Then, she laughed. 'God, all this time, you've been hearing me and Alex while you're sitting in here. And, the day your little pervert tush got psychic powers, you just, what? Wanted a piece of him? Wanted to feel what it was like to get railed?'

I felt my face flush, and Zara saw it. 'You can't tell anyone that. About Ava.'

'What if I do?' she said.

I considered it. She wasn't giving me much of a choice here. I didn't want to do anything... rash. But she was pushing.

Martin was on a razor's edge already - I didn't need anything coming in the way of that.

So, somewhat reluctantly, I took her.

*

There we go.

I took control, catching my own body with Zara's arms as it dropped, and slid myself over to the sofa. Within, I could feel Zara fighting at the walls of her own mind, and I simply lay a blanket over her. Like a cat in a box.

'You wanted to play this game,' I said to the air, knowing she could hear me. 'So lets play.'

Blackmail was the easiest route - Neil had taught me that. No need for anything too... violent. Nothing too gruesome. Just a little emotional leverage, and keep that for a rainy day. Enough to keep the calm, and make sure I was on top.

Besides, there was no putting the cat back in the bag now - Zara knew. Which meant that, unless I did something drastic, and quickly, she would use it against me. She'd made that much clear.

So, looking for something to use, I scoured her memories.

I saw images of Alex and her - their sex-central lives. I watched a memory, like a playback, where she was drunk and kissed another man while Alex was nearby, and he jumped in at the guy - beating him to a near-pulp. I could taste the vodka-cokes on her tongue, and smell the cigarette smoke from that night, all of that sensory information flooding back.

'So, he's possessive,' I said. Zara agreed, unwittingly. I could feel it in her.

So, I pushed back further. Before Alex, when Zara was a student - youthful and skinny and slutty. I saw a multitude of partners, but one stood out.

She had met Alex while at a party - which was when he had bragged to her about making her cum three times in one night. He had lived up to that, of course, but she hadn't gone to that party with Alex. She'd gone with a lovely guy, burly and masculine, named Jefferson. An American, he'd moved to the UK for uni, and gotten a job here - he was older than her by a few years, and at the time had been a tad too rough with her. Like to slap her as they fucked, and choke her.

Now, since Alex's input, Zara was a bit more into that stuff - but at the time she'd been ready to leave. Hence taking up Alex on his offer.

I also knew, from Zara's delightful memory of him, that Jefferson worked within walking distance, and lived only a short drive away.

'That's that, then,' I decided, stealing my own flat keys from my unconscious self's body, and made my way outside.

I could feel her, beneath that psychic blanket, struggling for release or control as I started up her car, planting her purse on the chair next to her. I grabbed her phone as we idled in the car park, rain softly varnishing the world outside, and pressed Zara's finger to the small circle on the back. It opened up, and I started to have a sort through some of the photos she had - a healthy mix of selfies, pictures of friends on nights out, and saved dog pics from the internet. Then, interspersed, there would be five or six lewd photographs of her tits, half-hidden in twilight, and then one of her full-frontal in front of her bathroom mirror.

I remembered, vividly, embodying Zara as Alex fucked her senseless, our face pressed into that mirror, once. That had been... an experience. Watching her eyes roll back in pleasure as Zara's cervix was kissed by the head of his cock... it was heaven.

I smirked, and flicked over to her texts. I scrolled, finding an old exchange between her and 'Jefferson' - an oddly formal name considering the way Zara's body reacted to seeing his name. A flutter of the lips, a warmth in her sex. A sort of physical memory. She associated him with pleasure, even after all this time.

I sent him the selfie, the full-frontal, backlit by the light of the window, a halo effect almost making her glow in the picture. She looked delectable.

Z// Wanna have some fun? I typed out. I've missed that cock.

Zara damn neared pleaded inside her own head, but I kept her locked down - at least for now.

Within a minute, Jefferson had replied.

J // Holy shit. Yes. You wanna meet?

Z // Tell me where you are. I'll cum to you.

As Jefferson's address popped up on the screen, I decided to give Zara a choice. 'This can all stop now,' I told her. 'I have enough here that Alex would leave you in a heartbeat. Just say the word, and it stops. Say you'll keep quiet.'

I gave Zara her mouth back.

'Fuck you - how fucking could you - I'll kill you bitch-'

I stopped her, pushing her back down like a straw trying to escape a fizzy drink. 'Maybe we're not done yet then.'

With that, I copied the address into Google Maps, and listened to the directions as I pulled away.

'You should know,' I said to the air, speaking to Zara through her own voice. 'I've done this before. Or, something like this. Blackmail, I guess. Which is an ugly word, but... I don't want to. Not really. I wasn't hurting anyone. I was just... enjoying what you had. Maybe that was wrong, but I did it. And I enjoyed it, to be honest. And because you went and tried to ruin it, look where we are.'

With her eyes, I watched the road, listening to the SatNav as we got closer and closer to Jefferson's address. Memories popped up, triggered by some of the things around us - Zara remembered the roads from when she used to come here after work for a long weekend with Jeff - that's what she liked to call him. They would fuck, unending, for days, and by the end of it she would be worn out. His tendency to play rough had, more than once, ended with her tied to his bed and gagged, face-down with a pillow under her hips, as she was used as a cock-sleeve for days. He fed her through a straw, taking out the gag four times a day to give her a smoothie, and telling her that she should 'hold' her toilet breaks until he was done. He'd let her piss, then tie her back up for another few hours.

Then, when he was done on a Sunday night, or early on a Monday morning, she would be untied, kissed on the lips, and patted on the arse. 'Good Girl,' he liked to say to her.

Zara left him because it was too much. Apparently not too much to make her stop threatening me.

I pulled up across the road from his place - he hadn't moved from being a student. A flat, the bottom half of a house, with the front windows blinded out. That was his room. That's where he had made Zara whine, and cum, and beg, for days on end. Her mix of arousal and fear, her slick cunt and hard nipples, told me there was a lot of unearthed tension inside her regarding this place.

'Last chance I said,' before giving her the mouth back.

'Please.' The first word she said was used to beg. How fitting.

'Tell me what you'll do.'

'Nothing,' she said. 'I won't say anything. Just... don't make me cheat on Alex. Not with him.'

'Why?' I asked. It was a strange experience - one voice, two emotions. Listening to her was starting to make my - her - head hurt. 'I'm in your head, Zara. There's no point in trying to lie.'

'Because I would stay,' she admitted.

'Why?' I asked again, an odd sort of sadness seeping in, from Zara to me.

Of course, as soon as I asked, I knew. Zara's mind started to delve into the right thoughts, the right memories.

'Alex doesn't care. He just wants a live-in mother he can fuck. Someone who washes up after him, and cooks. The only thing that matters is what he wants - his job, his friends, his life.'

After a moment, I realised that I had no idea which of us said that, nor if there was a difference. The blend between us was getting harder to pull apart.

'Can we go?' she asked. I nodded, pulling out and turning the car around, back towards the city. 'You have those texts. For blackmail.'

I nodded, with her head. 'I do. And,' I screenshotted them and sent them to myself - not that she had my number saved. 'If I need anything, I know who to ask.'

'Alex, if he saw that... '

'He'd leave. Would that be bad? If you're not happy?'

'He's jealous,' Zara said, and memories of the fight drifted back. 'Even if I leave him, he can neer see that.'

'And he won't,' I said. 'If you do me a favour.'

~ 4 ~

There was a certain part of me that was upset that I wouldn't be using Zara's body to ride that sexual juggernaut Jefferson, even though I knew that it wasn't to be. I was already sure enough that she wasn't going to say anything - her relationship with Alex, and the potential that he might go out and fight with this Jefferson guy, it was enough to keep her in check.

Still, the way Zara's body had been in a state of arousal the whole journey back to the block of flats... it was impossible for either of us to ignore. Plus, the... intimacy of the two of us having spent so long within each other, with her aware of me... it was honestly only rivalled by Martin. I knew Zara in a way only she had before. I knew how her orgasms felt, how her toes curled when Alex bit her shoulder. But, now, I also knew how fear made her stomach squirm, and how anxiety made her chest tighten. Nobody else would ever, could ever know her like that. But I did.

When we pulled up to the flats, I dropped out of her and snapped back into my own body, waking up on the sofa with a stiff neck and a dry mouth. The worst.

So, I fixed myself some tea, and got to researching. Specifically, looking up the shoot locations of Sylvia Wellons' new film.

The official press releases didn't tell much - only that they were in the city. Local news had talked about certain streets getting shut down for the rest of the week, and that they should be gone by thursday. Martin's birthday was friday, but he would have to deal with an early present, in that case. I was fairly sure he wouldn't complain.

It was tuesday now, so I used the rest of the day to hatch my plan. Tonight, I'd put on one of Sylvia's films, gauge Martin's reaction to her; tomorrow, I'd scope out the set, maybe get a feel for where everything was - where her trailer was, that sort of thing.

I knew that if I 'shared' with a member of the crew, and just sat inside them for a while, I'd be able to get a good view of where everything was; then, on thursday, I could use that information to 'take' Sylvia. Have her fall ill or something like that, and sneak away. Which wouldn't be easy, but once I was in her I was sure I would know who to call to get an hour away.