Quaranteam: Piper's Prelude (Ch. 05)

Part Five

It was starting to settle into evening while they took their coffee break. Jenny had gotten some exotic blends of coffee and the girls had learned that if they weren't specifically craving one of the things they'd already been introduced to, they should simply ask to be surprised, and would inevitably be introduced to a new thing they didn't know they already loved.

Dinner was just a few hours off, and Nicolette told them not to ruin their appetites by eating too much in advance, and both Piper and Fiona had rolled their eyes at her, assuring her that they would definitely be more than hungry enough to devour their share of dinner.

From their vantage point on the balcony, they could see Phil and his bodyguard Linda were dropping off Emily's friend, Maya, one of the final additions to the House of Rook. Fiona asked Piper if she wanted go down and introduce themselves to her, but Piper insisted they take the time to finish her story first.

"Maya's not going anywhere and we'd only be crowded her with too many faces and names all at once," Piper said. "Let her get situated in the house and spend some time talking with Emily. We'll get a chance to meet her at dinner. I want to tell you about this last part, simply to cleanse my palate from the horrible rest of it. If I leave it there, I'll only be grouchy throughout all of dinner."

"You're the storyteller, Piper," Fi said to her. "I'm just along for the ride. Where do you want to pick up? From the morning after leaving Covington's?"

* * * * *

So, yeah, like I said, my first two encounters before the imprinting process are mostly just scraps of memory, but nothing I can hold onto with any level of real detail. When I awoke the next morning, I felt sort of scrambled, but amazingly refreshed. It was the strangest thing, but I felt rejuvenated, like I'd gotten the best rest of my life. There was, like, a lingering level of bliss still hovering over my brain, almost... shit, almost like I was high. Like I'd been smoking pot. I don't do it very often, but the few times that I have, I've always felt massively relaxed, like all the stress just leaves my body.

It felt like that.

The room wasn't decorated at all, but I could tell I wasn't in Covington's house any more. I felt like I should be at least a little worried, but I wasn't, which I remember thinking was strange at the time. The haze and fog of the previous day was still too dense for me to even remember what the man I was imprinted to even looked like, much less what his name was.

I'd learn later that when we'd gotten back to the house a few days earlier, Niko and Ash had immediately taken me into the bathroom and hosed me down, washing me off and cleaning my hair before putting me to bed. They'd also gotten me dressed in a pair of Andy's boxers and one of his t-shirts, hoping that the scent of him nearby would put me a little more at ease.

My cellphone was plugged in, charging on top of the dresser, along with a note, addressed to me that I decided to look at after checking in on my phone. As it turned out, I'd actually been imprinting for over a day, and woken up around as early as I normally did, the sun just starting to crest over the hill I had a great view of from my bedroom window.

My gold medal was resting on the dresser right next to the phone. I guess that Covington didn't want to fuck with it for fear of getting the IOC on his ass, or maybe Alicia had gone out of her way to keep it safe for me. I'm not really sure how it got there safely, but there it was.

The group chat the volleyball team's had going for years had blown up in my absence. Several of my teammates had been paired up with men, although a handful were still waiting for ideal matches to show up. That meant that those who'd been through the process were detailing it all to others who hadn't yet had the chance to get imprinted. Most of the girls had been allowed to keep their phones with them while they were waiting in redistribution facilities scattered across the country. A couple of them had gone radio silent while they were getting treated, but all of them had come back into the conversation a few days later, once they were at their new home.

I knew I was in my new home, but I didn't know where or with whom that was.

My absence in the group chat hadn't gone unnoticed, and several of my friends were worried that something had gone wrong with the imprinting process, or that I had contracted DuoHalo in transit and had died somewhere along the way. There wasn't a lot I could tell my girls yet, but I could at least assure them I was alive.

My phone told me it was 5:45 am on November 4^th, which meant it had been more than two weeks since I'd left Colorado on the plane, so I completely understood why my teammates were nervous. Several of them were on the East Coast now, so when I sent a message saying that I was alive and had just landed at my new home, I immediately got several responses. I also sent a message to my parents and my sister, letting them know I was okay, and that I would give them a call later in the day, once I'd gotten my bearings a bit more. I didn't want to tell them what I'd been through. Shit, I didn't even want to think about it. I wasn't ready to actually talk to anyone. That's why I was looking for anything else to focus on.

The envelope with my name on it sitting next to my phone kept calling my name. The handwriting on it was messy but still legible. I didn't know it at the time, but Andy had taken quite a while writing it by hand, making sure he didn't rush, that each letter was unmistakable, the meaning and the intent impossible to read as anything other than he had intended. He told me later that he felt like seeing hand-written words would give more credibility to his message. He was right - it made it all feel that much more personal. He'd also been in quite the fragile mental state when he wrote it, although I didn't know that at the time.

I turned on a light next to the bed, picked up the envelope, tore it open, and pulled out a couple of sheets of paper, and started to read. I've been carrying the letter with me everywhere I went since I read it, so let me just take it out and read it to you word for word, although if I'm honest, I probably know the entire thing by heart at this point.

Piper,

My name is Andy Rook, and for better or worse, you and I are now bonded together. I can only hope that you will find me acceptable as a partner.

In my efforts to try and rescue some of one of my current partner's friends from the horrible bastard named Arthur Covington the 4 ^th , I heard that you were unwillingly in his care. He described you as "more trouble than she's worth," which to my ears means you are a hell of a woman. Covington's plan was to give you as a "booby prize" to whichever man came in last in his demented little game, a consolation gift for whomever he expected was going to wash out, but I could sense that he intended that more as a punishment for you rather than trying to place you with someone whom you would find happiness with.

Covington and I do not care for one another, so through some cajoling, I convinced him to add you to the prize pool of women who were being gambled for.

This part requires a bit of explanation, so let me try and do it simply - Covington and his friends have a regular card game, where they use women they are to be paired with as collateral to stake with for chips for the poker game.

Let me stress first and foremost that I find this sort of thing abhorrent, and wouldn't have willingly participated in such a game, but my partner Niko informed me that one of her friends was, along with her daughter, going to be sent to Covington, to be made members of his household. Before he would add them to his family, however, he was going to use them as a stake for his card game.

Niko pleaded with me to join the card game for a single night, just to rescue her friends. I was very hesitant to do this, because it meant I would be gambling with the lives of two women whom had entrusted me with their safety.

That said, I also knew exactly what kind of man Covington was, and Niko had told me that he had planned to use both her friend and her friend's daughter at the same time. Together. And would force them to engage with each other. Sexually. As troubling as it was, I knew that if I left those women to Covington's clutches, I would never forgive myself. The problem was that it meant risking the lives of two other women, each of whom had chosen me.

It was an impossible choice, but in the end, I realized that if I tried and failed, I would be losing four lives, but that this was only a possible outcome. If I did not go at all, that mother and daughter ending up with that horrible bastard Covington was a definitive outcome. Yes, it was possible that someone else could have won them, but Covington seemed to control that group like an iron fist, and I fully believe he would have manipulated the situation to get them back under his control. I would have been forced to live with my inaction, and knowing that I might have been able to do something would have haunted me my entire life. I had to try, even if it meant I lost even more than I had originally intended to. I simply chose to let that fuel my will to endure the trial before me.

I suspected that Covington might have had some additional help in his previous successes, so upon my arrival, I insisted upon two things. The first was that we rotate the dealer duty between all of the players involved, to ensure that no player was cheating. I was a little surprised that none of the other players had thought to do this, especially since the dealer was normally a member of Covington's house, and it sounded like he usually won. While Covington clearly seemed put off by the request, there was such support from the other players that he felt compelled to go along with it.

I don't know for a fact that he was cheating, but the fact that he lost and lost big on the first night where his designated dealer wasn't in play certainly implies that pretty heavily. Also, as someone who's been playing cards for a long time, he struck me as the kind of person whose tells would've been readily apparent to any decent card player after a handful of games.

The other thing I insisted upon was that you be added to the pool of women who could be selected by the winners, and not just relegated to the position of consolation prize. It wasn't met by much resistance from Covington, and I got the impression that he just wanted to be rid of you.

I'm afraid I don't really know that much about you. After we got home, I did a little bit of research on you once we got back to the house. I know you've won a gold medal, so congratulations on that. I know you were in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit edition, after a video clip of you warming up went viral and was turned into a meme. The interview with you on Jimmy Kimmel made you seem very nice and kindhearted.

I'm not sure why Covington requested you, but Niko tells me that you were requested specifically, which implies intent. Knowing Covington, he probably heard about the meme and decided he wanted to have you in his house to rub in someone's face. He strikes me as exactly that brand of petty.

My original intent was just to get you out of Covington's house and to let you pick yourself someone to be bonded with, but the state you were in... it seemed medically dangerous to let you go any longer without being imprinted. Heh. Not that you really left me much of a choice, to be blunt. You were very focused on getting out of the waiting room process your body had been stuck in, and you sort of overwhelmed me and forced yourself to be imprinted on me.

A little bit about myself - I'm originally from the Midwest, but moved out to California a decade and a half ago to pursue a career in the tech industry, where I'm still remote working for the time being. I also am an urban fantasy author who uses the pen name of Blake Conrad, and have written several books in a series called The Druid Gunslinger, which has a small but loyal following.

Before all of this, I had been single for several years, but since the pandemic started, I have been paired with several women, whom you'll meet soon enough, but let me provide the briefest of introductions to them.

Aisling Blake, commonly called Ash around the house, was the first to come into my life. She's the boisterous redhead you'll meet early on, originally from Dublin. She works as a contractor for Google doing graphic design for them. She's remarkable, about a million times outside of my league, but then again, all of my partners are. Honestly, since we were paired in June, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I only find myself falling deeper in love with her each and every day. I seem to make her happy, which is, I suppose, all I can ask

You won't be able to miss Lauren White, as she's tall enough to tower over everyone, even you. She's originally from Australia, and she's a personal trainer for the 49ers. She can be a little shy and reserved at first, but I think you and her will be able to bond over your time in professional sports. Covington destroyed all the clothes in your suitcase and left you with some, well, some unsuitable attire in the suitcase, which we've disposed of, so the clothes you'll find in your room are some of Lauren's spares, until we can get the rest of your things brought here from your home or buy you new things. He left your gold medal intact, out of fear or respect maybe, I don't know. I placed it next to your phone, and hopefully you already found it.

Lauren's ex-girlfriend Taylor showed up recently, and there's some friction between Lauren and Taylor at the moment, but I suspect the two will eventually fully patch things up and bond together closer than they have ever been. That said, Lauren's punishment for Taylor's previous infidelity (the reason they broke up) is a bit extreme by any definition of the word, and something I'm not entirely comfortable with, but Lauren insisted and Taylor agreed as a path to get back into Lauren's good graces, so who am I to tell these ladies they can't live their lives as they see fit?

My final current established partner is 2 ^nd Lieutenant Niko Redwolf. She's half Lakota, one quarter Mexican and one quarter Japanese, and is part of the security forces for the local Air Force base that is managing the response to the DuoHalo pandemic. Ash and Niko have become best friends since they met several months ago, and the two of them take my well-being incredibly seriously, which is good, because I suppose someone should, and I've never been very good at that. Niko's a badass, and while I suspect she's keeping secrets from me, at this point I feel like the only reason she would do that is for my own good, and so I trust her with my life and my love.

Of the two women that Niko wanted me to rescue - Dr. Charlotte Varma and her daughter Asha - as it turned out Dr. Varma has never been particularly attracted to Caucasian men, so she is going to be paired with one of my oldest friends, Dr. Phil Marcos, who's Filipino. I don't want any woman to be with me simply because she feels obliged to, and we had time to find her an alternate partner. Because Charlotte felt strongly that a mother and daughter should not be imprinted on the same man, Asha is remaining with us, as one of my newest partners. As I write this, she is also in the midst of the imprinting process.

I'm a little uncomfortable about Asha, the age gap being a strong contributing factor, as I'm twenty years her senior, her being eighteen and me being thirty-eight, but Asha insisted that she wanted to be a part of this family, as she and Niko have spent time on the base discussing our household and Asha seemed quite smitten, not just with me but the household in general.

As I write this, I know that there are three more women scheduled to arrive before I anticipate you awakening from the imprinting process, but until they are here and imprinted on me, as the old saying goes "Anything can happen," so I won't seed your mind with information about them in advance, as I simply don't know if they're actually going to show or not, or if they will be at all like they've seemed in interviews. (Two of them are quite well-known actresses.)

Of the two women I was required to "stake" as part of my entry into the poker game, one of them is going to remain in the house, and her name is Sheridan, although I know very little about her at this point, other than she used to work as an acrobat for Cirque Du Soleil, and that she chose to join our family deliberately and with relative understanding of what the household composition looked like. The other I staked was, as it turned out, my ex-girlfriend, whose name is Erin Donegal.

As antagonistic and difficult as Erin's and my split was several years ago, I do not hold enough animosity towards her to wish that she ended up with Covington, and so I was pleased to see that she went to another household instead. Regardless, even if I hadn't engaged in the poker game, I would have sent Erin back to the Air Force base and encouraged her to pair with someone else.

During the course of my relationship with her, it became readily apparent to me that Erin expected to have complete and total control over my life, and our relationship ended when she dictated to me one day that either all my friends went or she did. You can imagine how well that went over, and what my response might have been. (Spoiler: I hadn't seen her in many years since.)

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the staff here at the house. Again, I'm compelled to tell you that the decision to have house staff wasn't mine, but I've been assured and reassured that this is entirely by their choice, and that each of them decided this was what they wanted. Nicolette is the maid (and I swear to you, I have told her again and again and again she doesn't have to wear that ridiculous outfit), Jenny is the cook and Jenny's wife Katie is the caretaker of the estate grounds.

I do have sexual relationships with all of these women, in order to reinforce my resistance to the DuoHalo virus as well as enhance theirs. This Hugh Hefner life I've been dictated to live according to the government's rules in order to ensure my survival... It's not just excessive; it's more than a little absurd. But this is what the government is mandating to us, in order to up the odds of our survival as a species, something that still very much isn't guaranteed at this point.

You may not have heard, but the fatalities of men here in the US is quite likely in the tens of millions. That's what my source told me a few hours ago anyway. The fatalities of women is maybe a tenth of that. For whatever reason, the DuoHalo virus aggressively targets the Y-chromosome and the government is basically grasping at straws to keep as many men as possible alive.

I can only apologize endlessly that you're now linked to me sexually, and will need to engage in sexual activity every ten days or so. You should have had a choice in who that was with, and it sucks that you didn't get that. As such, if you just want to avoid me entirely and have me come and drop off a bottle of semen each week, I would completely respect that. If instead you want to simply have an unemotional sexual encounter once a week and no other contact with me, that is of course your right, absolutely. And, should you want to be a regular member of the household and one of my partners, not only physically but emotionally and mentally, of course I would be more than honored by that as well. I don't want to impose the expectation on you that should choose that option, but I don't want you to feel unwanted, because you strike me as a very remarkable individual.