Quaranteam: McCallister's Madness Ch. 03

Part three - "Get used to it"

"Before I carry on regaling you with the details of my journey that brought me to here, I must insist upon food, drink and a chance to relieve myself," McCallister said to Elle defiantly. "I have cooperated with all your requests so far, but as much the monster you may think me, I still have basic human needs."

"You aren't going to be able to escape, Adam," Elle said to him, cautiously. "So if you are entertaining notions of a jailbreak, you should disabuse yourself of those quickly."

"If you wish to keep eyes on me while I do all of these things, my dear captor, then I encourage you to do so," McCallister said to her. "But unless you wish me to soil myself, and to have that odor reeking throughout this room for the rest of our voyage, perhaps you should make haste in getting me to a toilet."

Elle narrowed her eyes at him and then sighed. She looked over to one of the women around the room, nodding to her. "Bee, take him to the toilet, but do not take your eyes off him the entire time, and do not remove the handcuffs, no matter what he says, even if it means you must wipe his ass for him."

As the other woman got closer to him, he could finally get a better look at her, the woman that Elle was calling Bee. She had a square face, pale blue eyes and solid jaw, her hair a platinum white drawn back into a tightly woven bun. She was muscular, dressed as they all were in a navy blue jumpsuit, although unlike Elle, she had hers zipped all the way up. It was also clear that Bee was far bustier and heftier than Elle was, as her jumpsuit was practically straining at the seams. That said, the woman's denser physique was more than intimidating enough to keep any notions he might have had regarding flight in the darkest recesses of his brain.

Bee uncuffed his arms from the center ring on the table, then immediately recuffed his wrists together once more, although this time they only used one set of handcuffs instead of two, setting the other set of cuffs aside. The fact that he'd been cuffed twice had seemed rather ridiculous to him, but they were quite set on ensuring he didn't have even the slightest amount of mobility or freedom.

"You know that at some point, I'm going to need to be with one of my partners again, to reestablish my level of DuoHalo immunity, otherwise I am a risk to the safety of not only you but all of your people," he said to Elle as Bee started to push him away from the table in one direction. "I have seen what it looks like to die from that horrible disease and there is no benefit to letting me contract this disease somewhere along the way to wherever it was you took me. Did you forget to take any of my partners? Are you going to need to pair me with someone new?"

"You are so very full of questions, Dr. McCallister," Elle said, pinching his cheeks between her thumb and middle finger. "It's rather adorable. But no, we have solved the problem of you and DuoHalo. We have brought one of your partners along, and we also have another woman, whom you'll imprint later today."

"One of your people, hm?"

"No, Dr. McCallister, I think it's safe to say the woman we will be feeding you to is most assuredly not one of ours," Elle said with amusement as Bee brought him over to a door, or more accurately, a hatch, which opened and granted them passage. "You'll see. It's a fitting thing for you to do. Eventually you may be able to get her story out of her."

On the way to the head, McCallister was able to get a little bit of a better sense of his surroundings. They were in a series of cargo containers that were strapped together on some kind of boat, as Bee shoved him into the boat proper and down a very narrow hallway before stopping him, opening a door to a toilet. She uncuffed him then jerked her head for him to get into the toilet, which was basically little more than a closet with a seat and a shithole in it.

"You must be joking," he said to her, as she grinned back at him.

"It's that or you can shit yourself," she replied. "We can plug up our noses if it comes to it."

He moved into the tiny stall, smaller than even your average port-a-potty, turning around to look at her as she held the door open. "Are you going to watch? Where do you expect I would go? Do you think I am capable of becoming a worm and slithering away down the toilet's pipes?"

"You're too much of a snake to give you the chance," she sneered. "Now do your business or we can go back."

To his discomfort, he pulled down his pants and underwear and sat upon the toilet to do his business. His guts felt unstable and rumbled even as his bowels did their best to vacate themselves of whatever awful Russian food he still had lingering in there, tainted by the drugs they'd been pumping him full of since his arrival on the boat, and he absolutely pissed like a race horse, feeling like his body was drained of a few gallons of urine. There was a level of pain and pressure that was alleviated, and he hadn't been aware of how strong the discomfort had been until it was gone, the sensations likely stifled by the various narcotics they'd injected him with.

As soon as he stood up, she recuffed his hands, and then she reached behind him to grab a handful of toilet paper, wiping his ass for him before tossing it into the toilet, pushing the button to let the heavy blue chemical wash rush in to take all the waste to the tank somewhere else aboard the ship. She pulled his pants and underwear up for him before shoving him back down the hallway towards the containers they'd come from.

He didn't notice anyone moving around on the boat, and wondered if their section of the ship was sequestered from the regular crew, or if the boat itself didn't have a large crew aboard, and everyone on the ship was in Elle's employ.

They walked back towards the container they'd come from, Bee nodding to someone who was standing guard outside of a different container, a large bulky man who laughed, kicking the container door behind him. "You can't see it, Stevie, but your man's here," he said over his shoulder. "He'll be back in a few hours and you two can get to know one another."

From within the container came a primal roar, followed by the sound of balled up hands banging on the inside of the metal box, maybe even kicks or knees slamming against it, followed by the sound of a body slamming its full weight against the metal before howling and giving up in angry frustration.

"She's quite the handful," Bee said to him. "Not that you deserve any better."

"You didn't even let me wash my hands," McCallister complained to Elle, as they reentered his little interrogation suite.

"Why?" she asked. "Did you shit on them?"

Bee pushed him back into his chair and then reshackled him to the table, connecting the handcuffs on his wrist to a loop on the table, so he couldn't get up without pulling the entire table with him. Somehow they'd convinced themselves that he was Harry Houdini, he thought to himself.

"Maybe you can bring me some fava beans and a nice chianti," he said with a laugh.

"Perhaps later, Doctor," she replied quietly. "You seem to be struggling with the notion that you will somehow get out of this. I advise you to discard that notion. Get used to it, this life under the watch of armed guards. Now talk to me about the Russians. How did the Russians get involved in all of this, and how did they get you out of the United States?"

"Those are two entirely different questions, my dear, but I shall endeavor to answer them both for you in due time, although I suspect the answers will not satisfy you as much as you would like. But let us talk about the experience, and perhaps you will catch things I did not."

* * * * * *

When the Russians reached out to me in person the first time, I almost thought it might be a joke, or a security test, but the Russians were persistent and they were compelling, and it gelled with the information I'd gotten remotely via security forces when I checked up on it later. We had gone from dead drops and messages being passed into the night into... something a great deal more intense.

I had gone out to have lunch off the base one day and two very large men sat down on either side of me in the booth, explaining to me how they were big fans of my research, they'd enjoyed what they'd seen so far and they wanted to give me the ability to take it even further without the constraints and confines of the US government and their scruples.

Aiding the Russians was one thing, but leaving my country entirely was something else, and something I was not initially keen to do. It was around the second time that I refused them that I felt the cold discouragement of a gun barrel pressed against my ribs, urging me to reconsider.

They didn't want to kill me, they told me, but it was certainly an option if it came to it. They would much rather bring me to Russia and let me continue my work, or they could just kill me off and solve their problem right then and there.

The man in charge of my defection was named Shukrat, although once I was out of the United State, I never saw him again. I don't even know if he's still alive, to be truthful with you.

They informed me that I and my wife would be taken from the United States and brought to Russia, where we would be treated like royalty, as long as I continued work on my research for them. I would need to bring a version of the serum with me, naturally, but as long as I could provide that, I would be of use to them. Or, Shukrat told me, I could go and tell the Air Force about our little meeting, and could find myself under suspicion for the rest of my life. That was, of course, assuming I didn't get arrested on the spot and imprisoned for life, just for talking with them.

I'd seen the security around the base, especially what with the concern that the DuoHalo was sparking in everyone. It wasn't as unlikely as I would have liked it to have been. This was not long after I'd gone through the ordeal of being locked in with all the other men who weren't immune to DuoHalo, being forced to watch them die, so I was still struggling to deal with my own brush with morality.

The idea of dying so close to seeing my vision executed on a grand scale was completely unacceptable, so I agreed to go along with the Russian plan, as long as they could agree to a few slight conditions, which I informed them were non-negotiable, but easily met.

Most importantly, my wife Eve would be brought along with me, because as complicated as my relation is with her, I did not want to abandon her to death, as would be the case now that she is, well, was bonded to me. I will cross that particular bridge when we reach it later. At the time, however, I wanted to ensure she was with me when we left. At the very least, I wanted to ensure she live long enough to witness what glorious work I had brought into the world.

The other condition was that wherever we went, I would be provided with a laboratory, to continue my studies and research. I did not think what I had brought into the world was finished, and there was still much left to be done in ensuring the survival of the species. While that hadn't been my initial intent, to get my formula out there, this is what it would take. I'd just wanted to see the world remade how I wanted it to be; I hadn't set out to see the near total genocide of my gender.

Without hesitation, the Russians agreed, and urged me to ensure that all the notes and work I'd been sending them since 2019 was not only up-to-date, but also in what they brought with me, just in case the boots on the ground didn't have access to the notations that had been sent to the security forces remotely.

It felt very much like one hand not knowing what the other was doing, but I had been working in government research long enough to know this was not exclusive to the Russians and their military - ours was just as bad in many regards.

The defection was set in one week's time, so that I would be able to make all the proper accommodations, and that I could tell Eve and have her ready to go. I chose to wait until the night before to tell Eve, and when she started to lose her cool, I offered her a choice - she could remain in the States without me and die, or she could come with me and continue to live.

Presented in such stark black and white, she felt like she really had no choice at all, and agreed to come with me. Her own loyalty to the country had also been wavering a little since her sister's death, I think, so while she may have outwardly put up a great deal of resistance, internally, I think she was ready to leave the SNAFU of the United States behind her. A few days prior, we had been given a security guard, which neither of us cared for, because it felt a little like being on a leash. But I had a plan for that.

On April 8^th, I got a text message that read simply 'Exodus 19:12' and that meant at 7:12 PM, my wife and I would be picked up at our home, and that we would need to have dealt with our escort by that point. You might find yourself thinking that I as a man of science would be incapable or at least hesitant to commit egregious acts of violence, but I found it was in fact just the opposite.

When I was locked in a room with my fellow scientists, knowing full well that I had the key to keeping them alive running through my veins, and that if I wanted to, I could dispatch an assistant to my lab and could help all of them remain alive, well, I found that extremely empowering. To feel the weight of someone's life in your very hands, that was... thrilling, exciting.

So yes, it would not be remiss to describe me as eager to kill Captain Scott Sabino, just to prove to myself that I could.

When we got home, I gave Eve the signal, and she went to move our bags quietly, while I proceeded to make myself an omelet for a bit of evening protein and waited for the signal that our handlers were outside. My handlers had been quite specific on how this particular episode needed to go down, and so I needed to look like I was sticking to my normal routine, and on Wednesday evenings, I always fixed myself an omelet, so that was what I was doing at a little past ten after seven.

My phone on the countertop lit up with a message, although I had it on silent/no buzzer. I could see the message, which had only one word on it. 'Arrival.' This meant that our handlers were outside and we should move to join them as quickly as we could.

"Stay here, Adam," Sabino said to me. He drew his gun from his holster, as he was looking into the backyard. I think he might have spotted some of the team, so I knew that I needed to act fast, but I also needed his concentration to be on something other than me, which it was, as he seemed completely focused on the backyard. "I think there may be somebody outside, so I need you to remain here and not move, you feel me?"

His distraction meant I had complete freedom to open one of my least used cabinets and pull out the suppressed.45 I'd sequestered there in the middle of the night. I leveled the gun at the back of his head and squeezed, just like he'd taught me to shoot a few weeks ago, putting a hole right through his skull and out the front of his face. When he was teaching me how to handle a firearm, I do not think it ever crossed his mind that the first target I would be using those skills on would be him.

Captain Sabino's body crumpled into a puddle beyond my breakfast, so I stepped around to him and I think I pulled the trigger a handful more times, just to ensure the man was dead. I suppose that I instinctively knew he was dead from the first shot, but it was also the first time that I'd personally killed a man, so I wanted to be sure I hadn't screwed it up.

In theory, I should have felt regret, sadness, shame or excitement, some emotion of some kind, but instead I felt nothing at all other than a certain sense of satisfaction that I'd been efficient and gotten it right on my first shot so the man didn't suffer.

After that, I set the gun calmly down on the countertop and put my omelet into a resealable plastic container, so that I would have something to eat for the trip.

Once that was done, I moved to grab a bag with my research that I'd set aside in my office, as well as my laptop bag, as I heard Eve walking down the stairs. Three men came rushing in, one moving past me to meet Eve, preventing her from turning to look inside of the kitchen area and seeing the dead body I'd just created. I was a little disappointed, personally, as Eve had often accused me of being incapable of doing anything that would have disrupted anyone's life, and I had wanted her to see that I'd just ended one.

The Russians began covering the inside of the house with accelerant that I suspected was gasoline, based on the smell of it, splashing it everywhere. The idea was that the house would be burned to cinders and that we would be outside of the country before anyone was even aware that the deaths weren't an accident. Oh, I should mention that our Russian handlers brought two corpses into the house, laying one down in the kitchen along with the Captain, and the other upstairs, in my wife's bedroom. The idea was that initial reports would show three bodies and that a fire had killed us all until a bit more time was spent in investigation and revealed the gunshot wound, or that neither of the other two bodies were Eve or myself.

Once the bodies were in place and Eve had been escorted out of the house and to the waiting SUV, one of my handlers snapped open a Zippo lighter and tossed it onto the ground, making sure it took as the room erupted into flames while I went with my handlers to join my wife in the SUV.

And I suppose that's where my life story in California comes to an end.

We were taken from New Eden and driven west to the northeastern corner of San Francisco Bay, where we were loaded onto a boat that zipped across the water, taking us to run alongside one of those massive cargo ships, not entirely unlike the one you have us on now, and where we were given a luxury suite that had been concealed on the inside of one of the cargo containers, a giant metal box on the outside but endless comfort on the inside.

Also waiting for me inside of the container were two of the most beautiful Russian women I had ever seen, both of whom I was expected to fuck. They were both busty, statuesque, blonde and very easy on the eyes, even if they had overdone their makeup to rather excessive levels. They pretended to speak only a smattering of English, and would often feign ignorance of why Eve and I were arguing. At the onset of our trip, it was clear neither thought I was much to look at, as the two would talk briefly to each other in Russian, not knowing that I spoke the language fluently.

After they were imprinted onto me, however, the two - Anya and Sofia - quickly changed their opinion of me, remarking to each other in Russian on how much they could not believe my touch would bring them to ecstasy so quickly and easily, and how they might actually come to enjoy this assignment, no matter how long it lasted.

I'd immediately known that the two women were FSB when they were introduced to Eve and myself, but the fact that I could understand them and they were unaware of that was of great use to me. It wouldn't be until months later that they realized I spoke Russian, and by then the damage was far too great for them to undo their casual underestimations of me.

Neither Anya or Sofia cared for me personally, but they found themselves rather addicted to the sexual release they found I could bring them, during the course of our trip across the Pacific Ocean. Eve, naturally, found their presence repugnant, and hated that she had to rely on me for her own sexual gratification, but it was during this trip across the Pacific Ocean that I got to see the current version of the serum demonstrating how strongly it considered my lock/key system.