Spark the Runner

"Spark..." she told him in a soft warning tone as she paused. "Not now. You will get your turn later." She then turned back and went down on him, taking his all and driving his head back into the pillows.

"Nnnggghhh!!!" Sounds would have to do. He couldn't get to his words.

She began to bob up and down on him with increasing insistence and his feelings of agony and ecstasy kept pace. He knew he was approaching the inevitable and knew she had the power to extend him to many more than one simple orgasm. She seemed to enjoy that. Honestly, so did he. It scared the hell out of him, but so did he. He was completely caught in her web and found himself relishing the surrender.

She had meant it when she said she preferred it from the spigot.

Twice.

Twice she got him off in her warm, sensuous, talented mouth, swallowing every bit of his cum and seeking more. Twice he was rocked by the Beautiful Agony she brought to him as she fed from him. Twice, before she rose up in all her naked perfection and moved to straddle him. It took a supreme effort of will on his part to slide down between her legs before she could sheath him and make sure his mouth was right where she was coming down.

Given her suprahuman strength, he figured it must have been surprise that let him get away with grabbing her hips at the waist and pulling her down onto his probing tongue. With a soft moan, she fell forward onto her hands, now kneeling over him as he sought to return even a tenth of the pleasure she had been giving him.

If he had been paying attention during the Runs, he would have noted how sensitive she was to physical pleasure -- but he had been too busy trying to catalog her stream. Now, he discovered just how explosive she could be.

"Oh, Spark!!!" she cried out as he fastened his mouth to her clit and sucked for dear life. "Not so... OH!!!" She began pulsing and grinding and flooding and Spark was inundated. And loving it. He had never had a lover as responsive as this, and his ego was off the charts. He slid first one and then two fingers up into her and felt the rhythmic pulsing belying her cum.

He was not about to stop. Not when he had her cranked like this. If they'd made her so perfectly human, then she should have the spot he was looking for with his fingers.

She did.

Mouth on clit, labia, urethra -- check. Fingers on G-spot -- check. Confirmation she was multiorgasmic -- check, check, check, check, check...

He finally had to slow down when his tongue got sore. He was absolutely soaked with her juices and was loving it. And she... she was actually panting, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her body quivering over his. Completely wasted. Well, maybe not completely, but much more like a human woman than a Pleasure Unit.

"I am not sure..." she moaned as she tried to move off his mouth and he let her, "who is making whom sleep like a baby tonight. Do not think, Spark, that being so incredible with your hands and your mouth is going to absolve you of your coital responsibilities. You still owe me, in the vernacular, one spectacular fucking!"

"Is this where I get to drive?" he asked as she flopped down next to him. She shook her head in disbelief.

"Is that not what you were just doing?" she asked.

"Naw..." he smiled as he rolled up over her, spreading her legs on either side of him. "This," he told her as he entered her, "is driving!" She welcomed him and his oversized ego with a long sigh of contentment.

"So it is," she smiled with her eyes closed. "Fuck me, Spark, please... make me feel real..."

The simple request slammed home to him and he realized, if he stopped being so self-centered, he could make a difference in her... Life? Existence?

Fuck this construct crap! he thought. It's time to make love...

* * * * *

"I see you are both well rested," the Professor commented at what was nominally breakfast. Both Spark and Tonya appeared rather disheveled. Smiling, but completely enervated. "I will admit, there are some advantages to youth that I do miss..."

"I hope," he went on, sipping his tea, "that we will be able to get a Run in today? Spark?"

"Yes, sir, we will," Spark answered, loading up his real coffee with real sugar. "As soon as this Resume Human Form potion takes hold."

"Is that what it does?" Tonya smiled a little wistfully. "Then a liter, if you would, good sir."

"Do you have a clear line, Professor? Isolated, preferably encrypted, to one of the major hubs?" Spark was considering his options. "If I'm going after Bratva, coming in buried in a trunk's dataflow would let me get past most of the crap. If I have to free float it from here, I can. But I'd rather not."

"We are very well equipped here, Spark," the Professor answered. "Tonya made sure of it. I can get you a clear line to any of a dozen hubs, all over the planet. Do you have a preference?"

"Kyoto, or New Edo," Spark told him. "High density. A lot of business traffic. Good chance of bumping into something I'm interested in. Although a relay might be a good idea, to discourage backtracking, in case I get made."

"Spark..." the Professor protested. "You wound me with your lack of faith..." Then, before Spark could develop an appropriate comeback, he added, "but if I were you, I'd be a bit paranoid, too."

"Thank you," Spark told him, relieved that the old man understood.

"How about insertion in New York, bounce to Amsterdam, bounce to Abu Dhabi and then to Old Moscow?" the Professor suggested.

"Fine by me," Spark agreed. "I'm going to be parking outside the Moscow hub, anyway, until I can look for the intersection of those three women."

"Then give me ten minutes and meet me at the insertion station," the Professor told him. Spark waved his coffee mug at him in acknowledgement as the Professor finished his tea and headed out.

"Spark, tell me something..." Tonya turned to ask him as he finished his coffee and nibbled at a Danish. A real one, not the synthetic shit they served at restaurants. When he looked at her, she added, "are you happy?"

Spark had to think about that one for a moment. He had so many emotions bouncing around in his head, it was hard to pick one out.

"Yeah," he finally decided. "I suppose I am. There's fear and excitement bouncing around, like with any Run, and you just take it to a whole 'nother level. But right now? Yeah, I'm happy. I'm ecstatic about last night, in case that's what you're worried about. But being with you and the Professor and having a mystery to crack... yeah, I guess I'm happy. Why?"

"Because I think I am, too," she told him. "Not a programmed response. A real feeling. Or at least, I think it is. And yes, it has a lot to do with being with you and the Professor... and last night."

Spark smiled, finished his Danish and slugged down his coffee. "You might want to stay on the other side of the glass for this Run," he told her as he stood up. "It could get bumpy." She smiled and rose, and followed him to the insertion lab where she did, in fact, join the Professor in the control room.

"Okay, Spark," the Professor's tinny voice came over the intercom. "The yellow cable is a hardwire to New York. Five-twelve bit rotating encryption. Don't get lost."

"What? No ten-twenty-four?" Spark joked as he got comfortable on one of the benches. "Say when, Prof."

"When."

Spark lifted his arm and jacked in. And got slammed again. Almost no sync up time, this time. Straight into a very familiar datastream.

"The fucking Stock Exchange?" he asked aloud. Old habits and all that.

"You're on the clock, Spark," the Professor told him. "I'll bring up the shields when you head for Abu Dhabi. Until then, you're on your own."

Spark shut up and concentrated on the datastream. The easiest track would be diamonds. Amsterdam was still a major clearing house. He found a stream and settled in. It was nearly thirty seconds before he was at the junction he wanted. Sidestepping the stream, he looked for oil-meets-diamonds. It took a bit of time, but he finally found a high-density flow he could piggyback on.

Heading for Abu Dhabi, he thought to the Professor, hoping he was listening. Or at least monitoring his change in direction. Then he moved into the stream. One of the lovely things about the datastream was the lack of a language barrier. It was all just ones and zeroes. Or marks and spaces, depending on your orientation. He didn't have to speak Arabic to get what he wanted, although he could. Along with about seven other major languages. The Powers willing, he wouldn't have to.

Okay, Professor, Etihad Airways to Moscow. Please tell me I'm shielded. These airline security jerks can get really anal.

You're shields are up, the Professor's voice echoed in his head. Now shut up and don't give yourself away.

Spark rode the stream and eventually stepped out, parking himself outside of Domodedovo Airport.

Let's see what I can find, he thought to himself, intentionally trying to keep it private. I have three patterns. They have to converge somewhere.

He felt like he'd spent a lot more time than he could afford before he detected the pattern for Marya.

Must be a busy girl, he thought. She's all over the place. He followed her path, looking for any kind of intersection with one of the others, but again, it seemed to take forever. Finally, he found Yeva. She was much more sedentary. Her path crossed Marya's at several points. Concentrating on those, he finally found Dunya's pattern and it surprised the shit out of him. The convergence was in a bunker twenty meters below the surface of Red Square, directly below the Lobnoye Mesto.

Professor... He risked at least alerting the old man that he was going to go probing in some very dangerous places.

Da, was the simple reply he got back. Maybe the old man was just busy, protecting his ass.

Doing one of the more stupid things he'd done in his career, Spark started his penetration of the bunker.

It was heavily shielded, both physically and metaphysically. Whoever was in there did not want to be disturbed. It took Spark a long time to find the chink in the armor. A utility feed, normally carrying natural gas, had a single unprotected coax for switch control purposes. But that was enough. Becoming one with the electron flow through that wire, Spark eased inside. And once he was in, all of his consciousness was in.

And he almost wished he wasn't.

He was in a command center of sorts, with many different types of datastreams converging and diverging. There were patterns from all over the world, involving all kinds of businesses, and Spark realized with great unease that he was looking at a Mob HQ. The problem was, it wasn't just Russian. There were representative data patterns from every continent and they all had "sinister" strings imbedded. He found a high concentration of "directive" energy, which would usually indicate decision-making, so he followed it -- right into an Executive Level meeting of the mob bosses.

This, it turned out, was worse that the Bratva. This group identified themselves as the Al'yans krovi, or "Blood Alliance". Spark quickly picked up that this was a multinational cooperative of top level organized crime from all parts of the world, and they were here to discuss just one thing.

What the hell happened to their fifty billion credit AI?

The amount of knowledge about Tonya filling that room saturated the datastream, almost to the point where Spark couldn't assimilate it. Identities of the creators, locations of the workshops, intended uses, fail-safe's that had failed, altered programming which allowed her to evade their ability to track her... a massive amount of data about her and about where to find the people who knew more about her.

He felt like a tick that was going to explode from engorging on blood. Slowly, he began easing his way out of there. The level of anger in that room didn't make processing the data any easier and he really needed to get some distance before he set off some kind of intrusion alarm. These were the cream of the nefarious crop and they had all the best toys in the world. Coupled with a desire to crush anyone who stood in their way, they scared the living daylights out of him.

He carefully worked his way back to the airport, where he took some time to settle his nerves. They didn't just operate on the physical plane, like "normal" people, but integrated into his meta as well, which meant his body back at the lab and his mind here, in Russia, were experiencing the same adrenaline rush.

Prof? he thought quietly. He realized he'd been about to jokingly ask Traffic Control?, but realized what a disaster that could have been.

Da, the Professor's voice echoed in his mind.

I need another return route, Spark told him. There was a pause before the Professor answered him.

You're clear to New Delhi, to Osaka, to home, Spark was told. Don't get lost.

Not is high on my list, Spark answered, starting to analyze the datastream for someone or something going to New Delhi. He picked up on an Aeroflot flight leaving in an hour, but he didn't need the physical plane. He needed its communications. And a few moments later, he was inundated by the hubbub that was Indira Gandhi International. He fought his way out of the saturated datastream to clear his head, then started looking for a flight headed to Osaka.

Piggybacking on airline communications routes was the easiest way to globetrot, but did have the problem of exposing him to other Runners, not to mentions megacorps and government agencies monitoring the paths. In this case, he was taking the risk because he hadn't done anything to piss off anybody recently and he figured with the Professor's shielding, he could be back to his body in the shortest amount of time. He turned out to be right.

Osaka was a rerun of New Delhi, having to get out of the crush of the datastream surrounding the people, planes, equipment and all.

Use Old St. Louis as a marker, the Professor's voice came to him. Then get off the grid. Public utilities will not be as closely monitored and you can home on your physical self, still safely with us.

Yes, sir, was Spark's simple reply. Then he was on his way.

* * * * *

Returning from a Run was familiarly disorienting. Spark knew it would take awhile for the effects of being immersed in the datastream to clear from his conscious mind. The Professor had killed the link and removed the jack from Spark's semiconscious body. Now Spark was sitting at the dinette's table with a bottle of fortified water in his hand and a very confused, very concerned look on his face as he regarded Tonya anew.

"What do you know about the Blood Alliance?" he asked her, trying to read her expression. It wasn't possible. There wasn't any.

"In summary or in detail?" Tonya asked in return.

"In summary," Spark told her. "I'd be afraid to find out what you know about them in detail."

"An Organized Crime Supergroup," she told him, "drawing from every crime syndicate of note across the world. If it is illegal, they have their fingers in it. And some legitimate enterprises as well. They manage through a combination of terror and reward, usually providing exactly the incentive needed to elicit cooperation. They are deeply imbedded in every political organization, from the lowliest labor unions to national governments and sit on the Boards of Directors of several multinational megacorps. In essence, they rule this world and several human colonies on other planets.

And why would you be afraid to know what I know?" she asked, now looking puzzled... and serious.

"Because they made you." Spark was awed by the absence of a reaction, of a tell. Except for the total lack of a reaction. She had absolute mastery over her presentation subprograms.

"Why?" was all she asked.

"I'm working on that," Spark told her. "On the surface, you would be the perfect mole. The perfect ape... as in Agent In Place -- AIP. You could infiltrate every level of society and no one would ever be any the wiser. Seduction instead of coercion. You could topple governments without them ever having to lift a finger. I'm guessing it's something bigger than that, though. They already run everything.

I've got a suspicion, but I can't prove it until I do a couple of Runs, and take another deep dive into you. In the meantime, your biggest headache is how not to be found. They dropped fifty billion credits making you and they want to know where the hell you are and how you're being hidden. I don't think they realize that you want to be hidden. They probably think you've been stolen and someone is keeping your against your will."

Tonya nodded her head, obviously thinking.

"They cannot find me," she finally told him, "because between the Professor and myself, we have disabled every piece of tracking code we could find. And, using his 'cloaking device', it is even possible for me to access the dataplex without being detected. The one big concern, though, obviously, is did we get it all?"

"Can we start by trying to kill that Piece of Shit cancer in you?" Spark asked. "It's the kind of thing that would show up as an anomaly that they just might recognize. And I'd like to look for any other similar anomalies, just in case."

"You can do whatever you would like with me, Spark," Tonya told him in a soft voice. "I have chosen to be yours."

Spark took a deep breath and let it out, slowly, eliciting a smile from the amazing construct across from him. Stop thinking with the gonads, he chided himself. She's already given herself to you, in so many ways. Keep on task, you dumb horndog!

"Then let me get a bite to eat and a bit more rested," he suggested. "I want to go back into you, first, before I head out into the big, bad Plex. And Professor? You're going to have to fill me in on what kind of weaponry you've got up your sleeve, to use on things like her cancer and the ICE out on the Plex."

"Eat. Sleep. By then I will have a catalog for you," the Professor told him.

"That sounds like a plan," Spark smiled.

* * * * *

Spark was now a very puzzled man.

He'd woken up with Tonya curled up with him. That wasn't puzzling. Pleasant, not puzzling.

He'd jacked into her using the remote as they had done before and she had assisted him in killing off the PoS cyst and in looking for others. It was what they'd found that was puzzling.

Alien libido.

Not alien, like unusual or foreign, but alien like Alien. Nonhuman Alien. From a different planet Alien.

And now, Spark was jacked into the global Plex, trying to chase down everything he could about the Cresco, an alien race that had recently made First Contact with the Mars colonies. It had been on the news, but most of the data about this new race had been buried. Classified. And there was a big chunk of it hidden in Tonya's programming. Apparently for sexual purposes.

They were the dominant race of a planet called Recensere and were mostly humanoid, with a single torso and one head, two legs but four arms. They were mammalian in function, with the females having four breasts for nursing their young arranged in two rows of two. They also had human-like genitalia with a vagina and womb, while the men had erectile penises.

They had a laryngeal structure for vocalization, similar to humans. The first humans to make contact with them discovered this, along with the fact that they had limited telepathic abilities, mostly along the lines of being empathic.

The Cresco, as the humans had dubbed them, could vocalize primitive human speech, usually reflecting emotions. The first humans had also discovered, as the race is wont to, that the Cresco were sexually compatible, with one notable exception which drove the entire Cresco political power structure.
After reaching sexual maturity, the male penile structures continued to grow, and the female pheromones which governed attraction and excitement, continued to strengthen.