Quaranteam Ch. 41

Chapter 41

The next morning, Andy woke to a nearly empty bed, only Aisling curled up beside him, and when he glanced down at his watch, he realized why. It was nearly noon, which meant basically everyone who was keeping regular hours had been up for a while now, but he and Ash tended to be more night owl leaning, so they woke up later and went to bed later.

Ash was somewhere between awake and asleep when Andy stretched out in the empty bed, and as he moved to sit up, she extended her body as much as she could, like a cat waking up from a long nap in a sunbeam. "We overslept again, didn't we?" she asked him.

"I prefer to think of it as sleeping exactly the right amount."

"What's on your agenda for the day?"

"I'm going to head over to the Watkins house and see if I can talk Nathan into bringing that woman Phil needs assigned into his house," he sighed. "So hopefully Niko hasn't left the house."

"She said yesterday she was going to be around the house basically for the next week or so, making sure everyone gets settled in."

"I think most people are capable of that on their own," Andy said.

"Sure, but until Lexi is up and running, Niko feels like your personal security is her highest priority."

"What's she going to do if someone does show up? I mean, I love Niko to death, but--"

"But nothing, love," Ash giggled. "She's got several guns concealed in places around the house, should she need them."

"Why didn't she tell me this?"

"Because you'd worry, Andy," Ash said, running her hand across her bare back. "You always worry. About everything. Why add more onto the pile?"

"Because I deserve to know," he replied. "I ought to know what's in my house that could kill me."

"See? You're already starting to worry." Ash hopped out of bed, completely naked, heading towards the bathroom. "You coming?"

After a nice long shower in his truly decadent bathroom, he and Ash got dressed and headed down to grab lunch. The horde of his partners had clearly already been through, because the dishwasher was running and Jenny had set out a couple of sandwiches for him and Ash.

"Knew we weren't going to be up in time for the group lunch, huh?" Andy said, sliding to sit down at the table in the kitchen.

"You were both up rather late last night, sir," Jenny said, sliding a bottle of Coke across to him. "Nobody wanted to wake you, so everyone's just going about their day."

"I mean, if someone needed me, all they had to do was wake me up."

"Of course, sir, but you've been doing an excellent job of staying ahead of everyone's schedule for the past week that we all agreed you probably needed a bit of rest and recovery."

"Jesus," Andy laughed, "was I really that tired?"

"Let's put it this way, sir," Jenny said with a soft smile. "Do you remember filling Lauren's needs early this morning?"

His eyes widened a little bit. "I slept through that?"

"That you did, sir."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his iPhone. This seemed like a good chance to try out the app that Whitney had been coding in her spare time. She'd told him that she would be continually updating it, but had installed a test version on his phone that would connect to the tablet's app. His version would just be a reflection of that for the time being, and he couldn't update it, but he could at least check everyone's status without having to go over to that one specific iPad.

Sure enough, it had been updated this morning with Lauren having apparently gotten a load from him sometime early this morning, and he realized he'd just slept entirely through it. He felt a little embarrassed by it, but Ash just started giggling, which put him slightly off.

"Oh relax, babe," she said to him, as he started to dig into his lunch. "You were having something of an erotic dream, an' Lauren thought it would just take a little nudge to get you over the finish line, so she sucked a little and was able to do it without rousing you from the dream."

"And she's not mad?"

Ash giggled furiously for half a second. "That you gave her what she wanted? Not in the least, love. She was trying not to wake you up, so for her, this was mission success."

"Well, if that's what she wanted," he said, shaking his head a little. The "do by" dates on the scheduling app were color coded -- green, yellow, orange and red, with red being "if it doesn't happen today, she's probably going to just take it from you" level of severity. He'd actually been very active over the last week, and so almost all the girls were in the green, with just a couple in the yellow and one lonely person in the orange. Niko. "Do you know where Niko is, Jenny?"

"She went back to sit watch outside of Lexi's room, Master Rook," Jenny said to him. "She said if you needed her, you could find her there. She said there was something... unusual about Lexi's imprinting process." Jenny's eyes looked at him with a touch of nervousness. "Should I be... worried, sir?"

"On the contrary, Jenny, I think you'll probably be delighted when she wakes up. In fact, you should keep your schedule open today, so that when she wakes up, you have the chance to both orient her here in the house and to catch up with her. I think having her oldest friend around will help a lot, don't you?"

"Yes sir," Jenny said with a smile. "But weren't you planning on leaving the house for a while today? Shouldn't you take Lexi with you for security?"

"Lexi's going to need a few more days to acclimate before she's ready to take over security detail, so I'll just take Niko with me, since she's apparently been keeping a small arsenal concealed around the house without me even knowing about it."

"I knew about it," Nicolette said with a grin, sashaying into the room. "But then again, maids have always been the house keeper of secrets, dating back generations."

"And because you helped her conceal the weapons in places I wasn't going to stumble into."

"Oh, you make it sound so tawdry, Master," Nicolette said with a wink. "If it makes you feel better, you could bend me over your lap and paddle my ass until it's the same shade of red as Mistress Ash's hair."

"Oh no," Andy said, waving a hand, "you would enjoy that far too much for that to be any form of punishment."

Nicolette clicked her tongue with a shrug. "My loss then, I suppose."

"I'm going to take this to my office and get to work, babe," Ash said to him, kissing his cheek, as she picked up the plate with her sandwich on it. "I'll see you tonight at dinner, and remember, Nathaniel Watkins may seem like a good guy, but he's still not entirely trustworthy, okay?"

"Got it," he said, stopping her from walking away, pulling her back so he could give her an actual kiss, lips to lips rather than on his cheek. "Love you."

"Love you more," she said, heading off down the hallway, leaving him in the kitchen with Nicolette and Jenny.

Just as he was finishing his sandwich, his phone squawked at him. He'd set his phone text message sound to be a sound clip from Monty Python & The Holy Grail, so whenever someone texted him, he'd hear the sound of an arrow shooting into someone followed by "Message for you sir!" He picked up the phone and saw it was from Niko. "Come to Lexi's room, ASAP."

"Nicolette, can you clean this up for me?" he said, gesturing to the plate.

"But sir," Jenny said, "I can--"

"No, I need you to come with me, Jenny. I think your friend Lexi's woken up."

"Oh. Oh! Yes sir, of course sir!"

"Don't worry, boss, I got it," Nicolette said.

Andy rose to his feet and started to move down the hallway towards the stairs before he realized Jenny was walking a couple of paces behind him. He stopped, put his hands on his hips and turned to look back at her. "Really?"

"Should... should I not? Sir?"

"Walk behind me?" he said with a scowl. "I catch you doing it again, and I'll paddle your ass, and I know for a fact you wouldn't enjoy it like Nicolette would. This is your friend we're going to see, Jenny. There's no reason to be nervous."

"No one will tell me why Lexi's imprinting is different than normal, sir."

He gestured for her to move along with him, and when she was finally in step next to him, they started up the stairs. "You're going to see in just a minute or so, and it's not a bad thing, Jenny, I promise, okay? Trust me. Have I given you any reason not to trust me?"

"No sir."

"Good, then c'mon."

Once on the second story, they headed down the hallway to Lexi's room, and the chair Niko had placed outside was empty, which Andy assumed meant she was inside. He knocked on the door, and Niko's voice answered. "C'mon in, Andy."

Andy and Jenny moved into the room, seeing that Niko was sitting on the edge of the bed, and Lexi was wrapped up in a sheet, talking quietly with the other woman.

"Hey Lexi, how are you feeling?" Andy said.

"It's... It's a little overwhelming, Andy," Lexi said. "Nobody said this shit was gonna happen."

"What shit?" Jenny said, concern in her voice.

"Jenny?" Lexi said, turning to look over her shoulder at them. "Hey, easy. I'm fine, okay?"

"What does that mean Lex?" Jenny said, looking like she was about to cry. "What shit happened?"

Lexi sighed, standing up from the bed, still wrapped in the sheet before she turned to walk over towards them, and then finally let the sheet fall to the floor.

There she stood in all her naked glory, having not put on a stitch of clothing since she woke up, obviously, but as beautiful as she was, that wasn't what Jenny was staring at. "Where... where did your scars go?" she said, reaching forward, although Lexi was quick to extend a hand out to prevent Jenny from touching her.

"Careful," she cautioned. "It's all... incredibly sensitive right now. Niko was just telling me what happened."

Niko smiled warmly from her perch on the bed. "So about one in ten people who are imprinted go through some level of cellular regeneration. It can range from small to severe, and nobody on the base seems to know what causes it or how much it's going to revert. In Lexi's case, it looks like the entire accident scar got healed up, so Nicolette's going to have a hell of a time cleaning up her bed. There's an entire layer of skin here, and as gross as that is, it's what she's been doing for the last couple of days. Her body's been repairing itself. I knew there was a chance of it happening, but I didn't want to mention it in case it didn't happen. No point in getting your hopes up, right?"

Lexi's hand smoothed over her own torso, shivering a little at her own fingertips. "That's... it's so goddamn tender."

"They're entirely new nerves, Lexi, so you'll have to be very careful for the next week or so as you get used to having all that feeling back. You're going to be hypersensitive until your body readjusts to all the nerve endings working again," Niko said. "As much as it sucks, I would recommend you definitely not engage in any funtime with Andy for at least a week. By then, your body should be able to handle the sensations."

Lexi moved over to her dresser and opened it, taking out a sports bra and a pair of panties, pulling them on, wincing a little bit as she tugged the bra into place.

"Does that hurt?" Jenny asked with concern.

"It's... it's more like a sunburn more than anything," Lexi said. "It's weird. It's very hard to describe." She grabbed a pair of pants and a very loose t-shirt, slipping into them.

"So, this is going to sound strange," Niko said, "but how much do you remember about the accident that scarred you, Lexi?"

Lexi's brow furrowed a little bit. "That's strange too. I remember it in vivid detail still, but now it feels... it feels almost like something I saw, rather than something I experienced? Like I saw it happen to someone else up close, but... it doesn't feel as personal. Is that unusual?"

Niko shook her head with a smile, standing up off the bed. "Not really. If the serum decides to go on a healing streak, it also tends to sort of disassociate any memories tied to the injury, like it's trying to heal the mind as well. You're probably going to find that a lot of old stress triggers you used to have aren't there any more, because there's nothing to flashback to."

"Wait." Lexi turned to look at Niko, her eyes widening a lot. "Are you telling me my PTSD is... it's just gone?"

"Not entirely, but mostly, yeah."

Lexi threw her arms around Niko in a giant hug, burying her face in Niko's neck, and Andy could hear her tearing up a little. "You know the guy who created this serum, right?"

"I know some of the people who worked on it, yeah."

"You tell them thank you, from me. Tell them they're doing God's work, and that they should know that this is nothing short of a miracle, what they've brought me back from." Lexi pulled back and lifted one of her hands up to wipe the tears from her eyes with a smile. "For the first time in years, I feel like me again."

"Hey, you just help me keep him safe, and we'll call it even, okay?" Niko said with a grin.

Lexi's head turned to look at Andy, as she pulled away from Niko and rushed over to him, wrapping her arms around him, pulling him down into a kiss as warm as summer sunlight over the Pacific Ocean. After a little bit, she slipped back, looking up at him. "I am going to protect you with every fiber of my being, Andy, and if that means I take a bullet for you, I will do it a thousand times over, and I will do it gladly."

"Hey now, I'm just--" he said, before she shut him up with another kiss, her hand stroking along the back of his shaved head.

"You're just the most important man in my goddamn life, Rook," she whispered to him. "Now and for always. God gave me a mission, and that mission is to keep your naive, overly trusting ass safe, so it's not just my mission, it's my fucking way of life from now on, you hear me?"

Words Ash had said to him not so long ago still rung in his ear, so he responded the only way he knew he should. "Thank you, Alexis."

"No no," Lexi said, shaking her head with a wide smile, "thank you, Andrew Goddamn Rook." She giggled a little. "And I'm sure Enrique thanks you too," she said, tilting her head towards the beefcake poster that still hung on the wall.

'Assuming he's still alive,' Andy thought to himself, but didn't say aloud.

"So I know you brought me on to be your bodyguard, but--"

"You're taking a week to get acclimated and adjusted, Lexi," he said. "I want you and Jenny to get caught up, have a day of it, and she can answer any questions you have about the house, me, New Eden or anything else. After a couple of days of R&R, you and Niko can talk it over, work out how you two want to split time as my bodyguards, although Niko's certainly going to have to start winding that down once she gets further along."

"Further along?" Lexi asked.

Niko smiled and patted her stomach.

"Oh shit! Congratulations! I didn't even know! How far along are you?"

"Just a couple of months in," Niko said. "Maybe a little more."

"Having a pregnant bodyguard's no good," Lexi scolded.

"Why the fuck do you think I was so glad you showed up?" Niko laughed.

"Yeah, okay, I guess you're right there."

"So you best do your goddamn job, you hear me?"

"Yes ma'am," Lexi said, offering Niko a little salute.

"Anyway, why don't we let the two of you spend some time reconnecting and we can talk again later, okay?" Andy said.

"You got it, Rook," Lexi said to him. "But in a week's time, you owe me a nice dinner and some dancing."

"I've got two left feet, Lex," he said with an embarrassed chuckle.

"That's okay," she said, moving over to grab Jenny's hand with her own before moving to scoot past them, slapping him on the ass as she did. "The kind of dancing I'm talking about we can do lying down. Adios!"

She and Jenny darted down the hallway giggling like they were freshmen in college all over again, as Niko moved to stand alongside him. "Looks like that choice worked out pretty well for all parties involved," she said, sliding her arm around his waist.

"Let's hope so, because I'm going to be putting my life in her hands regularly."

"Not just yours, but all of ours," Niko said. "That's why I vetted her myself as well after you'd chosen her."

"Oh yeah?" he said. "And what else do I need to know?"

"There's nothing to be concerned about, but maybe one thing you should know," Niko admitted as the two of them walked out of Lexi's room. "She got hit with that molotov cocktail when she was helping to evacuate some women and children from a village one of the cartels was rolling into. She'd been told to flee to higher ground, but she refused to leave until she'd gotten everybody out. The company took a harsh view on someone who went off script, but she was a good enough agent that they were willing to let her keep going, until the scars proved to be too recognizable and they had to retire her from active duty." Niko squeezed his hip. "She's one of the good ones, Andy. When she said she'll protect your life with her own, she wasn't kidding, so be sure to respect that. I know you will, though."

"Speaking of respecting the need for protection, I need to head over to the Watkins house today to talk to Nathaniel for a bit, and I know you stressed I shouldn't go anywhere without protection so--"

"So you're letting me know we're going out for a bit today, got it," Niko said, and Andy could already see the wheels spinning in her head. "You ate lunch already?"

"I did," he said. "How about you?"

"Affirmative," she said, and the change in tone was something he noticed, as if she was putting on her business hat for a time. "Let me go and get a sidearm and I'll meet you in the garage, okay?"

"Okay, see you down there."

Niko headed off in one direction and he headed off in the other, starting to walk down the hallway, although as he approached the stairwell, he could hear moaning coming from behind the door closest to the stairs.

Sarah and Emily's studio.

The door was closed, but he opened it just a little to peek his head in and found the two of them naked and sixty-nining one another in the center of the room, Sarah's body beneath Emily's, her face pushed up against Emily's pussy. Emily was clearly trying to do the same at least some of the time, but Sarah seemed to know exactly how to push every one of Emily's buttons, as she squirmed and writhed atop the much taller woman, her hand balling into a fist to hit against the floor, as if trying to clear her head for a moment. Andy grinned a little, and pulled the door quietly shut once more.

The two women had been a couple before either of them had met him, so he was glad to see they were still enjoying the pleasure of each other's company without him around; he simply hoped they had the good sense not to turn the cameras in their studio on while they were doing it. A lesser man might have felt jealous, but Andy actually felt relieved, as it meant their relationship hadn't been damaged by their injection into his family.

'Oh Christ,' he thought to himself. 'I was supposed to take care of Taylor, Hannah and Asha last night. I better go talk to them.'

He took his phone out and texted Niko, "Gonna be 5-10. Have to do one thing first."

"Roger," she shot back.

"No, Andy," he typed in amusement, "but I'll tell Roger you said hi."

She shot back the eyerolling emoji at him, as he turned and headed back down the hallway to the room that Hannah and Asha had converted into a mock dorm room until college campuses opened back up again. He knocked on the door, and heard Hannah say, "Come on in!" from inside.