Quaranteam: McCallister's Madness Ch. 04

I slipped out of bed and headed next door into the lab, noticing that everything was on, all the computers giving off dim light in the cool night, a piece of paper resting on top of my keyboard, which I read quickly.

Adam,

I've left you, you prick.

Maybe I'll make it. Maybe I won't.

I don't really care about my own life at this point.

But I've taken Sergei and by the time you see this, I should be out of the country and completely out of your grasp. Sergei's sperm will let me be reassigned to someone else, far far away from you, you horrible bastard. You might have thought him a patriot, but Sergei has spent the last month with us hiding who he truly is - a gay man.

Sergei's boyfriend Andrei evaded getting paired up with any women over the past few months, and has also avoided contracting DuoHalo, and when he and Sergei were reunited, Sergei's sperm imprinted Andrei onto Sergei. They did this in secret two days ago, and Sergei came to me in confidence to tell me all of this. When he did, I knew we couldn't stay long, but I stayed long enough to run a few more tests.

Sergei's sperm allowed two unimprinted women to be imprinted upon each other, although it took a decent amount of vaginal fluid for the imprinting to take. It also allowed two other unimprinted men to be imprinted upon each other.

Once I knew that, I knew you would destroy him given the chance. If not you, then that monster Karina you've been working for, as she continued the 'no gays in Russia' barbarism her predecessors did, and for what? To try and hold onto some religious fundamentalists who are likely dead anyway?

Ever since Charity's death, we've been walking ghosts in each other's lives, and I can't do that any longer. If you ever truly loved me, not now obviously, but at some point, in our distant past, before all of this, if there was ever genuine love in your heart towards me, you will let me go and not pursue me. You will wait as long as possible to tell Karina about our disappearance, and we will never see each other again.

The point where our stories had converged ends here.

You have taken everything from me except my life.

At least allow me to have that a while longer.

-Eve

"What the hell do we do, Adam?" Dasha asked me, genuine fear in her voice. "They're going to punish us for this. We're going to be held responsible!"

I picked up the piece of paper and brought it over to an ashtray before setting it down, lighting the corners of it to make it burn to cinders before our eyes. "We saw nothing, we heard nothing, we know nothing, Dasha," I told her. "We're going to go back to bed and in the morning when the guards find Sergei and Eve missing, we will pretend to be as shocked as everyone else."

"But Adam!"

"Dasha!" I said, grabbing her shoulders to shake her. "We didn't help her escape. We had no part in any of this, so as long as we say nothing, they can't hold us accountable for Eve's actions. But we must pretend like neither of us ever saw that note, alright?"

"...are you sure?"

"No, but what other choice do we have? This is what we're going to do, and how we're going to get through this. I give you my word," I said to her, wrapping my arms around her, "I will do everything I can to keep you safe, everything within my power."

"Will that be enough?" she sniffled.

"I hope so, my dear. I hope so."

* * * * *

"There was clear evidence that they had used military credentials to get in and out of the laboratory, which was something neither I nor Eve had access to, and it wasn't the same sort of credentials that Dasha, Anya or Sofia would've used to breach the inner layer, so they knew it wasn't them either. As it turned out, Sergei's boyfriend Andrei still had fairly decent clearance, which was how he had been able to hide his and Sergei's relationship for so long in the first place. Using his credentials, he had made his way into the lab, gotten Sergei and Eve, and then fled with them before anyone was any the wiser."

"All without a drop of blood shed?" Elle asked him.

Adams sniffed, shaking his head. "Andrei killed two guards to ensure their exit wouldn't go noticed until the change in shift and did so well enough that the chaos probably bought them at least a few more hours. I heard all of this a few days later from Karina, who wanted to impress upon me her disappointment, although she did believe both myself and Dasha when we told her that we had nothing to do with it. Eve's imprinting was done with perhaps the earliest version of the serum, so I suspected Sergei's reassignment sperm wouldn't work for her, not that I had ever told her that. I didn't need her anyway. I had Dasha."

"Mmmm," Elle said with a nod. "And would you say of all your partners, you were closest with Dasha? Was she willing to keep your secret, even from her country?"

Adam nodded. "Whatever loyalty she had for Russia ran very deep, but the imprinting process took particularly deep hold in her, and I became her world. Thankfully, she is both very beautiful and very smart, so we found much in common between us. I..." McCallister stopped, looking down at the table before looking up again. "Whatever layers of armor I erected, whatever walls I constructed, Dasha always found a way to pass through them as though they were never really even there. She saw me for who I was, and did not ask me to change a thing." He inhaled an expectant breath and then let it out once more. "I've answered all your questions, so answer me this one - is Dasha the one partner of mine you brought with you?"

Elle considered him with a long stare for what felt like decades before speaking. "She is. She was traveling with you in your vehicle, and we knew we would need to bring at least one of your partners with you to transport you safely on our voyage, so we gave her a choice, to take a reassignment tablet and to go and find a new partner or to come with you. She chose to come with you, so perhaps you have found someone to share in your monsterhood."

"Of course she did. Regardless of what has happened, we have found love with each other. I... thank you for bringing her with you."

"Mmm," Elle said. "It seemed only fair that we offer you a kindness in exchange for the difficult task we're going to also saddle you with. We're going to pair you with another woman we picked up along the way in just a little bit, but we had to give her dose of the Quaranteam serum before we left to get you, so she's... a bit ripe, if you'll pardon the expression. But it seemed only fitting that you see what your serum does to a woman firsthand after ten days of not being imprinted."

"God, she's going to be brutal."

"That she is," Elle chuckled. "But the experience will be good for you. And we will ensure she doesn't harm you."

"Don't you need to hear the rest of the story?" Adam said, desperately trying to stall for time, so he wouldn't be taken down to that woman he'd heard raging inside of a container earlier.

"What's more to tell? Karina decided to relocate you to somewhere she considered safer, and while you were in transit, we ambushed the caravan and absconded with you and Dasha, and then made our way out of the country."

"You haven't told me where we're going, or even who the hell you people are?"

"In due time, Doctor McCallister. After you've had your time with my friend."

The guard, Bee, moved to unshackle him again, helping him back up to his feet, and they were almost to the door when he struggled to turn back and look at Elle as it dawned on him what he'd missed moments earlier.

"Wait wait wait... did you say 'reassignment tablet' earlier?"

Elle's smile widened deeply, looking extremely proud she'd caught the doctor completely off guard, as she nodded. "I did. You aren't the only one to have found someone with reassignment sperm, and we found a way to stabilize it. It still has the limitations of your friend Sergei's - it can only be used once before it becomes toxic - but it's portable and is good for 30 days before expiring. They're in a suspension gel, so that it'll be about an hour after it's ingested before the effects take hold. Of course, trying to get someone to throw it up will only expose the core medicine to air and make it useless. We let each of your partners in the convoy swallow one if they so choose before we left, so they won't be dying just because they won't come with you. We're not monsters, like you are." She paused, letting all that sink in. "Did you truly think you Americans were the only clever ones still alive?"

For once in his life, Adam McCallister was completely speechless as he was dragged from the room, a million questions in his mind, and not a single one able to make its way to his lips.

To be concluded...