Switched Ch. 04

This is a work of erotic fiction. All characters engaged in sexual activity are at least eighteen years old.

Many thanks to icedragonmo3 for editing and expert advice. Any mistakes herein are because the author didn't listen.

* * *

Switched

Chapter 4

Fresh Grounds

Jessica

Tawney poked her head around the corner of my sleeping cubby. "There you are. What are you doing here?" It hurt her to say that. Not the words themselves, but it physically hurt her to make sounds with her body. She was that hung over.

"I didn't want to get thrown up on in the night," I said.

"I don't throw up. It's my power." She still looked like hell.

"My father once told me his power was to know when it was time for little children to shut their yappers."

"I used to date a guy who had the power to fart on command," she challenged.

"Gross! Get in the shower."

"No, you come to bed."

"One question first, and I'm sorry for how personal it is. Do you have cum inside you?"

"Aww, no, I just blew him. C'mon." She put out her hand sleepily and squinted in the dim light. None of this was processing for her, I realized. That part of her mind was still offline.

I climbed into bed and let her wrap me up tight. The girl who'd blown Bryan. I did make her brush her teeth first.

She was gone in the morning. I sighed, stretched, and after some instant ramen, I started packing.

Not long after, the door screeched open and she entered with bags swinging from her elbows. She ambled to the stairs and took her time climbing them.

I summoned all the affection and gratitude I felt for her and tried to put into one word: "Hey."

She blanched when she saw me packing. "What's this?"

"I'm trying to be a good roommate," I said. "I figure I'm not welcome here, so I'm moving on and saving you the trouble of having to throw me out."

"What!?" She said it so loudly that she winced. "What kinda bullshit is that?"

"Bullshit? I'm not mad at you, Tawney, but I know you're mad at me."

"What makes you think I'm mad at you?"

I turned to face her, "Tawney, who do you keep saying I have romantic feelings for?"

"Kylie Minogue?"

"Non-celebrity."

"Oh. Heh. Bryan." She smiled teasingly, in that way that only southern girls had. I hoped I could do it. The only thing worse than being a girl would be being a deficient one.

But why was she taking it like this? "Oh, shit," I said. I dropped my panties, which for once didn't mean I got naked. For once. I had been about to put them in the duffel bag. "Tawney," I probed, "do you remember who you went upstairs with last night?"

"I did what?"

*

We went out to sit on the leaf-strewn patio tables and sip coffee. And complain about my coffee, which was apparently an essential activity.

"Did you use fresh grounds?" Tawney asked, her voice testy.

"Yes, of course."

"It matters how much you put in, you know."

"No kidding?"

She squinted at me. "Are you being sarcastic?"

"Are you trying to distract me from the topic at hand?"

"Okay, okay," she sighed, "So. I guess if you say I did it, I did it."

"We can call Bryan and-"

"No!" she shrieked.

"Do... Do you want to talk about it?" I offered.

She bowed her head and admitted, "It could have been me wanting to fool around, and being jealous that I couldn't."

"Because I was fooling around with the other girl. Tawney, theoretically, how would you feel if Ashanti walked in here now and put the moves on me?"

She shrugged.

"What if I was into it? What if I got really excited and practically got to second base with her on the way out the door?"

"It's... okay."

"Aha! You shuddered," I pointed out.

"I did not shudder," she scowled at me.

"You did."

"I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry. Can you forgive me?" She looked so stricken, I hugged her.

"You didn't hurt me, Tawney. It's okay."

"But I tried to!"

I held her in my arms while she made her worried boo-boo face. I kissed her cheek. "You were drunk. Do, uh, do something nice for me, and you're forgiven. For instance, I need more coffee."

"You need real coffee."

"Not this again!"

Somehow arguing about coffee became making out, which relocated inside when clothes started coming off.

*

We didn't make it to her bedroom. Instead, she pushed me against the front bumper of her Fury and ravaged me with her kisses, then boosted me onto the hood with all kinds of bad intentions. She was rounding third base when the banging on the door began.

We jumped up and scrambled into clothes while the urgent rapping continued. I scampered up the stairs while she smoothed her hand over her braids and answered the door.

"Tawney!" said Bryan. "Where's Jessica?"

"Hello to you, too."

"Sorry. Shit. This is an emergency."

She called my name but I was already coming down the stairs. "What is it?" I asked.

Up close he looked even more disheveled than we did. His eyes were wild. "I've got this docking routine for my phone, right? Safe environment, runs checksums and other stuff when I plug in the phone. For viruses and shit. I forgot to charge it last night. This morning I plugged it in, and the check failed."

"So?" asked Tawney.

"It's been meddled with. It has to have been..." he hesitated and looked at me.

"I told her everything," I said.

He shook his head vigorously as if to clear it. "McKenna's people had to have put something on my phone, so we have to assume it's compromised. That means they knew I was at the party last night, and they'll correlate with the location trails of everyone there..."

"Wait, they can get that?" I asked.

"From phones that aren't as secure as mine, yes."

"And they know you met up with the suspect at the party?"

"Yes. Necessary risk. But they must have seen the significance because they modded my phone there. They must have waited until I was indisposed. I bet they had an agent there that looks like they belong there. Just waited until I was drunk, picked it up and plugged in a device to install their spyware."

"They wouldn't do all that," Tawney disbelieved.

Solemnly I stated, "The Senator does not like to be embarrassed."

"What do we do then?" she worried.

Bryan put a hand on my shoulder. "We run."

We argued while he threw gear around. Then he packed tinfoil onto the tailpipe of the dirt bike and zip-tied my two bags to either side. I hadn't unpacked from earlier, so points to me for being prepared, ha-ha. When we'd laid out our most effective arguments with irrefutable precision, he said, "They are coming. We have to go. Tawney, please let me buy your dirt bike and a spare gas tank."

*

Operating a Motor Vehicle

Jessica

He gave Tawney some instructions, then I gave her my abundant thanks. After, I said, "You're a great person, Tawney. I'm better for having known you. I hope I see you again sometime."

She smiled, "You're awesome, girl. I'm sorry about what happened to you, but... I will never admit to saying this, but you're tough as hell, and girl? That means you're one of us. In a way I'm glad you got turned."

I couldn't withhold the truth from her, not after she'd said those wonderful things. I took a deep breath and admitted, "Tawney, I didn't get turned into a woman. I got Switched with one."

She frowned, "What's the diff?"

"This used to be somebody else's body. Which means mine is out there somewhere. Probably in the medical ward at the estate."

"But why did you get Switched? And how?"

I stuck my hand down the front of my pants, because I'm a stinker. Then I stared at her. I wished I was her. I imagined myself as her...

I was suddenly watching Jessica scream and snatch her hand out of her pants. She looked at me in utter confusion and I concentrated. Much easier this time.

We Switched back.

I was myself again, stumbling. My body had been in motion. Something to think about for next time.

What? Something to think about? Next time?

She stopped screaming. "You... you..."

"I have a Variant ability."

"What the fuck!" Her exclamation fell somewhere between awe and irritation .

I was on a roll. I'd been keeping this in for too long, and as my friend, I felt Tawney needed to know. "Those Variants who crashed the event... They didn't gender-switch the senator's son, they gave him a power. That way, if Father condemned them, he'd condemn his own flesh and blood. They probably didn't know which one I'd get and it screwed up their plan.

"I must have been looking at a pretty girl when it went down. I felt something... I think I got shot, and my mind just flinched away. I came to, in this body, down on the floor. I Switched by accident, chose who to Switch with by accident. This body was the one I happened to be looking at in that moment. After that, she wound up in mine just as a bullet entered it."

"But why would... A bullet? This is a lot."

Just then we both snapped our heads around. The proximity beeper had just gone off, meaning something had broken the beam running across the entrance to the property. Maybe it was Tawney's folks coming home for lunch, but the skin on the back of my neck buzzed with goosebumps.

I gave her a quick kiss and ran for the door, hearing the bike's motor whoop. Damn, I wanted him to have to ride bitch. I swung in behind him and wrapped his chest with my arms.

To the left, the track ran a few hundred feet to the road. There was a sheriff's deputy and two black SUVs coming from that direction.

The other way led into the forest. No outlet. We went that way.

We were slower than our pursuit, even on the track. They ate up our head start as we leaned through the twisting track. The small strip of raised grass in the center of the dirt road dwindled away until the path could only be discerned by the lack of trees.

Once they caught up, they rode our asses trying to intimidate us, then the police car activated its loudspeakers and demanded our surrender. It stopped after that, and I could guess why: The people in the trailing SUV had contacted the sheriff and were now wasting everyone's time by demanding exclusive access to the loudspeaker.

Bryan made full use of that time and the narrowing track to gain some ground. Then he turned off the track.

We clattered through a length of gnarled undergrowth. Just when we were twising through the last bit, the bike jerked to a halt with a tree root in its spokes. With the vehicles behind us tentatively nosing through the brush, I had to hop off and try to pull it out.

The pursuit would get through the brush soon, and after that they'd make much better time. I had only seconds.

Bryan finally understood the instructions I'd been hollering and backed the bike up to take tension off the root. I yanked it free and jumped behind him, holding on for dear life.

He launched us like a rocket. Leaves sprayed behind us as we angled down one slope and up another, heading toward a gap uphill.

We burst out onto the road and cut a hard left, engine whining, and merged with traffic.

We took a few turns. "...got a friend around.." I heard him say over the noise. Then it was a long succession of gratuitous back roads before we pulled into the overcrowded parking lot of a busy mechanic's shop.

Bryan went in and returned fifteen minutes later with a set of keys. "Red Datsun in the back. Manager's project," he said.

"You took his project?"

"And gave him enough money for four more projects, yes. The car wasn't sentimental to him."

It was a '71 Datsun 240Z painted in 'scarlet' that had faded to 'tomato'. Its sound system was in the trunk in a dozen pieces and it needed a valve job, but was otherwise shipshape. The owner came to get his toolkit out of it, but Bryan bought it off of him for a thousand bucks. When we left, the guy's coworkers were circling him hungrily. He'd be buying the beer for some time.

We stopped for gas, snacks, hats, and sunglasses before hitting the road.

"Life on the run," I said around a mouthful of Crunch-Os.

"I know a place," he said. "Did you happen to look at those video files?"

"Not yet, but I have more information."

"Let's hear it."

"Not while you're operating a motor vehicle."

He eyed me. He was good at that, I decided.

Later, while I was driving, I told him what I'd learned about what really happened at the convention center.

He listened in silence, then he shocked me. "I thought that might be the case."

"Buh... You... But how?"

He smiled. "Not while you're operat—"

"Shut up and tell me!"

"The medical thing, the care unit at your father's house. Who would be there but you? And besides, it seems like if they'd gender bent you, you'd look like yourself. Like your hot sister."

He eyed me sidelong and continued, "Your vision is better. You've got painted nails and blonde highlights. You're fully functional with... Lady problems and such."

"Jesus, Bryan..."

"I still haven't figured out about the shooting, though. What's the significance there? What happened, for that matter?"

"I'll look at the videos when I get a chance."

"Sure you will," he grinned. He rubbed his face with both hands and looked out the window.

We rode for a time in silence. "You're a super," he said.

"I don't know if I'm ready to talk about it. It's so... wrong."

"Okay, fine. For now."

He fiddled with the radio again, remembering once again that it didn't work.

He said, "Saw you kissing Tawney, earlier. And before that you were screaming with your hand down your pants?"

"I'd rather talk about me being a super."

We drove all day and night, talking and planning and considering contingencies. Bryan was brilliant at this. He explained why we shouldn't carry weapons, why we should travel at night, use cash, and so many other things. He knew about face recognition and how to defeat it, the chances of the police having a BOLO and what that would mean, and on and on until frankly I was tired of it.

But I ignored that and pushed through and tried to take in all I could from this knowledgeable bastard.

He was jealous of my power and highly, profoundly amused by my affair with Tawney, which he eventually pried out of me. I didn't share the motivation behind her encounter with him, though, or what I did with that cutie in the coat room.

I had a power. Me. A bona fide parahuman fucking ability! And there could be more! I might also have the parahuman vigor, but I wasn't in a hurry to hurt myself and see how fast I healed. And I might have other manifestations if this power, or other related abilities.

I'm a super.

Checkpoint

Jessica

The large, official sign said, "Osage Exclusion Zone," and it was layered with multicolored warnings.

I asked Bryan, "Are you sure about this?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I got a tip. We should be okay for awhile. It's only really bad in the Spring and early Summer."

"But... There's no law in there. Monsters and shit."

With a twinkle in his eye, Bryan said, "You forgot toxic waste and man-eating vegetation. Oh! And criminal gangs."

I turned in my seat to face him. "That's your plan? Avoid my father's people by running into an Exclusion Zone and getting killed? And how are we supposed to get in?"

"My dad worked on some of the legislation. They don't advertise it, but anyone's free to enter. The authors of the bill didn't want some idiot bureaucrat stopping dangerous variants and such from going in. It's a place that troublesome people go into and seldom return from."

I suppose I could appreciate that, but I was focused on the more important issue. "You still haven't told me how this isn't us committing suicide."

Bryan actually pulled the car over. At first, I thought he was changing his mind and was turning around, but he stopped on the side of the road. I felt a little uncomfortable here, but there was no traffic so I supposed it was cool for now.

He put his hand on my shoulder and the ferocity if his gaze was surprising. "Chase," he began. I liked the way he said my name, my real one. He squeezed my shoulder, his eyes so blue. "I would never put you in danger. Never."

It was a little awkward. I said, "Okay, that's a given. Same here, you know."

He reassured me, "This is the least dangerous thing, I... I'm sorry I couldn't do better."

"An Exclusion Zone is less dangerous than laying low in New Orleans until this all blows over?"

"They'd definitely catch us there. And as for the Zone," he put the car in gear, "I've got a tip."

I watched his profile as he drove. Of course he had a tip, he was Bryan. There was nothing he couldn't do. I believe in you, I thought at him. I know you'll never let me down. I wished he could read my mind because I was too chicken to say it out loud.

*

The gate to the Zone, it at least this one, was a manned military checkpoint. There were a couple of Humvees with those cool remote turrets on them, a little roadside sandbag cubicle, and soldiers standing around looking serious. The many signs declared that they would be checking identification, and it would be a felony to blah blah who can read at a time like this!

I had no identification. If my biometrics were in a government database, it was the missing persons one.

An icy hand clasped my insides. Did the government know about me? Father would have covered it all up, wouldn't he?

Maybe I wasn't officially a parahuman, but I was definitely about to be asked for my papers.

Bryan said, "You can do this." He looked at me intently, "You have to do this."

My scalp prickled all over. I couldn't believe this was my life.

There were no other cars here and we were rolling toward the guards at a walking pace. They were two car lengths away.

"Switch with the gate guy," he said. "Hit the button. Switch back when we're through." As if he had to go over it yet again. I guess that was just his nerves.

This was crazy. This was not my life. How could I possibly do what we'd planned? How could anyone? "I can't-"

"You've gotta!" he hissed, and then there was a soldier standing next to our car.

He was checking our IDs with a hand scanner. There was a guy who operated the gate manually, by pushing down on the other side. I couldn't do two at once! And beyond then, another there it for that I could see.

If I got the gate guy, the rest would know. They had to have experience with Variants, and that meant they'd know what it meant when one of their own acted out of character for the benefit of someone passing through.

The soldier said, "Identification, please." He leaned down to get a good look at me, his eyes widening a little when he did.

I was in a database. He recognized my picture. I just knew it!

"ID, Miss?" he asked. He smiled, and I realized he just thought I was pretty.

"Oh, sure, one sec." I started fumbling with my purse.

There were two soldiers watching from Bryan's side of the car. They exchanged a glance and one of them walked around to my side. I frantically rummaged in my purse. This was crazy. I was going to pee on myself.

He got a good look at my cleavage, then leaned down. "Everything okay, Miss?"

He had pretty eyes. Why was I noticing his eyes? "Sorry," I said, still rummaging.

We were going to be caught. It wouldn't just be me, it would be Bryan going into custody and who knows what else.

I looked over at his face, so boyish and yet confident. He believed in me. He'd been so good to me. He was scared shitless and yet here he was. I felt a powerful surge of gratitude and wanted to do so much for him in return.

I couldn't do this, no. Maybe. But me and my Bryan? Not a problem for two international super-soldier slash spy slash drug kingpin slash sexy super-beings.

I winked at him and shrugged. His eyes bulged and I had to restrain myself, lest I snicker inappropriately. Poor guy.