The Abdominal Snowman

"He is your mate?" Like before, his eyes were focused on her and didn't move away.

Chastity burst out in laughter. "No. God, no. No mating with fuzzy lip. He's a friend—a teacher."

"You have a mate?"

Chastity's thoughts returned to Leo. What had she felt the last time they walked along the coast at midnight, or the last time they had sex? Had she felt anything besides the thickness of him as he slid into her? Was there anything beyond the enjoyment of his sweaty weight as their bodies skated against each other when they made love? Did her heart race when they were together? Or was she just going through the mechanics of being with someone? There had to be something, but she couldn't figure out what it was.

They had almost constant companions since the Chamfield mission—the mad scientist prison break that nearly left them stranded millions of years in the past. He was leaving things in her apartment—she had found his favorite Glock in a dresser drawer earlier in the week—a sure sign that he intended to move in. She enjoyed his company and the sex was fine, but the word mate, as Khor used it, seemed to intimate something deeper. Leo was a good man, but did he fit into that deeper something? She wasn't sure.

"No. No mate," she said, feeling the sting of truth.

Khor winced and inhaled hard. He lifted his burnt hand from the basin. His palm and fingers was red and swollen. Translucent blisters had already formed and filled with serous fluid.

"I can help," Chastity said.

Khor was silent for a long, uncertain moment then scooted around the fire to Chastity's side and held his raw hand out to her. "Help."

Chastity unsnapped a pouch on her utility belt and took out a small spray bottle. "The pain will stop in a few seconds. It's going to be warm and tickle, okay?"

Khor raised one eyebrow as if tickle was a completely foreign concept.

Chastity took his hand into hers. It was nearly twice the size of her own, and hard and muscled. The skin was calloused from a life of work with Stone Age tools. She steadied it and sprayed a thick liquid onto his palm and fingers. The tiny droplets vibrated on his skin as miniscule projections emerged to join one drop to another in a fine, silvery lattice. Blisters shrank. The fiery red faded to pink.

Khor flexed and extended his fingers and made a confused but pleased grunt.

"Nanites," Chastity said as she gently stroked the healing tissues with her fingertips. "Tiny machines. They repair the tissue and release medicines—antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, growth factors..." She paused and turned her head to look into his eyes. "You don't know or care what any of those are, do you."

She was shaken by his closeness. He had leaned in while she was focused on his hand—moved toward her so subtly that she hadn't noticed. He was closer now than he had been when he had snarled at her after she woke. But his expression was far from angry now. His breath had quickened and was humid on her cheek, nearly as warm as the mounting pulse of heat in her chest. He took his hand from hers and lifted it to her face. His fingers were rugged and the skin was almost as coarse as the volcanic rock that surrounded them, but he was tender with his touch as he caressed her cheek.

Chastity closed her eyes as his hand slid back to the nape of her neck and guided her in to a kiss. First their lips brushed lightly. It was a gentle curiosity, a soft and careful coming together that caused Chastity's breath to catch in her throat. Khor's lips were warm and earnest against hers, and the tender friction of their meeting sent an electric tremble to Chastity's core.

She wanted—no, she needed more than gentle so she bit his lower lip with just enough pressure, catching a tiny fold of it between her teeth and letting it to slowly roll free as she pulled back ever so slightly. Now it was Khor's turn to moan; a low and eager rumble reverberated in his throat.

Chastity shifted her weight and twisted so that she was straddling his lap. Khor smiled in surprise. As she leaned in to kiss him again, she felt the hard press of something against her abdomen. She looked down and got her first real look at the thing that had captured her interest when Khor ripped off his loincloth in the cave. It was thick and throbbed as blood pumped it full. Chastity arched her back so that her stomach pushed forward against it. Khor took in a sharp breath and grabbed her hips to pull her closer.

Chastity kissed him again, pushing her lips hard into his, and slipped the tip of her tongue past his teeth to brush against his. She placed her hands on his chest and slid her fingers through the downy hair that covered his shoulders and chest. She let her hands drift down the firm angles of his pectoral muscles, then lower, along his abdominal muscles until she reached the part of him caught between their bodies.

Khor's cock pulsed as Chastity traced a cord-like vein that ran along its underside to a tip flushed red and slick with precum. Chastity wrapped her hand around it, not quite able to enclose its girth with her fingers and slid the foreskin back as she stroked the shaft from tip to base. With her free hand she took the zipper loop at the neckline of her bodysuit and pulled it down in a slow, smooth glide, revealing an expanding V of pale skin between her breasts. Khor leaned forward and kissed the exposed, delicate area, and slid his hands inside the bodysuit and stripped the body-hugging cloth away.

Chastity gasped as exploring fingers grazed each nipple. The scuff of his gritty, calloused palms against the softest parts of her was electric. Each squeeze—each brush of rough-ridged skin—sent lightning-charged tremors through her, rippling along every sensitive nerve, causing her to shiver. She leaned forward into Khor and pushed him backward. Surprised and unbalanced, he landed on his back on the cave floor.

Khor started to rise, but Chastity, who had maintained her balance by locking her thighs tight around his hips and was now on top of him, pressed her hands in the middle of his chest and used her weight to pin him in place. He agreed to the change in positions with a smile and relaxed. He was stronger and could have easily tossed her aside, but he remained still.

Satisfied he would stay, Chastity stood and took the zipper again and drew it to its end. Despite the closeness of the fire, the slow draft of air through the cave chilled her as she removed each piece of her clothing. In seconds only her panties were left. She ran her hands along the swell of her hips and hooked the elastic of her damp panties with her fingers. She swayed slightly as she lowered them and kicked them aside.

Chastity's fingers drifted down, then deep. She touched herself, enjoying the pulse of heat that rose with each soft stroke of her fingertips across the silky, aching bud of her clitoris. The fragrance of her genetically modified pheromones became heavy in the air, filling the cave with the springtime scent of cypress and pine.

A mild puzzled expression crossed Khor's face as Chastity lowered herself to her knees and knelt between his thighs. The puzzlement shifted to surprised pleasure as she took him into her mouth and rolled and applied the slightest of pressure his balls with a practiced grip. From the way the muscles in his hips and thighs flexed and shuddered, Chastity knew he had never had a blowjob. More excited for that, she flicked her tongue along the underside of his glans. The sweet and salty taste of precum filled her mouth.

She slowed.

She didn't want him to cum yet.

She wanted to do so much—to be with him in every position.

She wanted to do so many things with him, but they had so little time.

Khor let out a disapproving groan as Chastity gave one last sweep of the tongue and removed her lips. She slinked forward and positioned herself so she could lower herself onto him. She hovered for a moment and took him into her hand. His cock was slick, and hot with the blood that engorged it. She whimpered at the stretch she felt as she guided the massive tip in. She rolled her hips and took the rest of him in. His cock throbbed and caused Chastity to take in a rapid, shallow breath.

Chastity rocked her pelvis in a slow back-and-forth grind, shifting the pressure of Khor's hardness along her vagina's walls. She had only just started and was already feeling the swell of a coming orgasm in her lower abdomen.

As if he sensed the near imperceptible quickening of Chastity's pace, Khor grabbed her hips and heaved deep into her. A weak, pleasured gasp escaped from Chastity's throat as he filled her depths. He rose to a sitting position and pulled her close. She wrapped her arms around his neck as his strong arms held her tight against him. She could feel his need in the rapid rise and fall of his chest. His breath and the frenzied thrusting of his cock were both quickening.

He growled and lost himself with one deep, final plunge. The raw heat of his cum filling her pushed Chastity over the edge of her own orgasm. The muscles in her body contracted in waves that radiated out like an explosion. She quivered and dug her fingers into Khor's back as another explosion spasmed through her body.

Another detonation followed—one that wasn't orgasmic—it was gunfire.

"Pauline," Chastity said as she untangled herself from Khor and dug the comm-cuff from the pile of her clothes. "Dammit, Alex. Why didn't you warn us?"

Then she remembered.

"Damndamndamdammit," she said as she smashed her fingers against the glowing red words in the center of the screen. Tap to end translation sequence.

The screen went dark and a yawning smiley face appeared in the center. "That was a nice little nappy—oh... Oh. We have problems."

"No shit," Chastity said as she hastily pulled on her clothes.

"I've lost the drone feed—the connection to the main computer, too—my battery is nearly depleted. What the hell were you translating for so long, War and Peace?"

"Reconnect and get what information you can."

"There's nothing to reconnect to. The wireless bands are disabled. They either powered down or destroyed the mainframe."

"Khor, I need the bag your people took from me."

Khor only offered a perplexed glance.

"My cargo bag." When he stayed silent she ran through a string of words as if she were reading a thesaurus. "Bag. Cloth sack. Woven basket... And, fuck, you can't understand a word I'm saying. Alex, help me out here."

"No can do." Alex's voice was stiff and his vowels were slightly stretched with the slightest hint of an electronic drone. "Not enough power to reboot the translator program."

Chastity let out a discouraged huff just as Professor Adams stumbled in from the maze of offshoot caves.

He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and gave a relieved smile. "Thank goodness you're safe, dear girl, I was quite worried when I noticed you were gone. For the longest time I presumed you were there transcribing my comments for posterity—but never mind that, my memory is still spot on. I have a complete perceptual recollection of the night's events in my mind. There's quite a bit of skirmishing going on and—and you really should put your coat on, you know, you'll catch your death. We are in a glacial clime, after all."

Chastity caught herself before she could blush. Her hands reflexively went to the seams and zippers of her bodysuit, which were, luckily, in mostly appropriate positions. Everything was in place, except her parka, which she dutifully picked up and slipped into.

"We have to get the tribe clear," Chastity said. "Pauline will—"

Chauncey tutted her quiet before she could finish. "The yeti will be fine, Miss Summers. This is their home; they know every in-and-out of the cave system. They skedaddled as soon as the screams started."

"But the gunfire..." Chastity paused, then finished, "Screams?"

Chauncey's face suddenly looked very tired. "Dean Eastburn's team. I'm afraid Miss Murdock found them."

*

Chauncey knew exactly where the yeti dropped the cargo bag. It was open and the contents tossed through but still mostly there. Chastity pushed the guns aside. Being run through with spears didn't seem to do any lasting harm to Allie. From the earlier encounter, Chastity expected they would be next to useless. Bullets would just slide right through now nonexistent organs. But the plasma blaster, that had potential. Fire scared Allie—scared it—and the creeping ooze on the yeti child's body burned, so a plasma blast might do the same.

"Miss Summers, where did you get these?" Chauncey, who was kneeling beside her, had opened the rectangular box she had tossed in.

The grimness in his voice that made her apprehensive.

"The grenades? Same place as the guns. From the camp armory."

"From the camp. Of course." Of course came out in a slow, almost disheartened sigh. He closed the box's lid with extreme care. "These aren't grenades, Miss Summers. They're cryophage canisters."

"I've never heard of them."

His voice slipped back into teacher-tutor mode, but his tone was subdued and lacked its usual thrill. "There's no good reason you would have, I suppose. These dreadful things have been banned for ages—since well before you were born."

"Dreadful? How so?"

"Do you remember a textbook I taught from when you were a freshman in my Introduction to Cryptozoology class?" He gave Chastity an expectant glance, to which she returned a vague half-nod. "No matter. Strachan's Treatise on Cryptid Physiology. Informative, but a tedious read. The class was discussing the chapter in it about the so-called golden age of cryptozoology when you asked a question. I remember it clearly."

"That was nearly ten years ago."

"'Professor,' you asked, 'how did we learn so much so fast? We knew next to nothing about cryptids for centuries, and then all of a sudden we have an almost all-encompassing understanding of the anatomy and physiology of several species. How?'"

"I don't sound like that and I do remember that lecture because you sidestepped the question and gave us a pop quiz. Afterward, I felt like an idiot for asking—like there was some glaringly obvious answer that everyone could see, except me."

"It was a less than elegant shift, I admit, to avoid an uncomfortable conversation. And you shouldn't have felt badly, it was an extremely insightful question—one that no other student in all my years has thought to ask..." He paused and patted her hand. "You should know I was proud of you in that moment, Miss Summers. It may have seemed like a simple question, but it showed a curiosity beyond what many in our field demonstrate nowadays. I knew then that you would go far in the field."

"What does that have to do with these?"

"These are a part of the answer you were searching for."

The heaviness in his voice made Chastity stay silent.

"It's interesting, don't you think, how we take some things for granted—how we expect the everyday to always be helpful and harmless. Nanites, for example. We use them to heal ourselves, to build, to do any number of practical tasks. But who decides what 'helpful' actually is?"

"I don't follow, Professor."

"Science isn't always kind, Miss Summers. I think you understand that better than most. It certainly wasn't to cryptids soon after we developed the level of technology necessary to uncover them. The cryophage is one of those unkindnesses—one in a long line. These canisters"—he tapped the box with his index finger—"contain an exceptionally malicious strain of nanites. Foul technology by any standard. They infect a specimen, disperse throughout the body, and radiate a cryonic field."

"Cryogenics?"

"In a fashion, yes. A common enough method for preserving tissue samples, but these were designed with a secondary function. Dead tissue is only useful in research to a certain point. Living tissue is much more informative. That is what the cryophage does—it flash freezes a host while preserving its biological processes. Do you understand the enormity of that? A living being instantly frozen alive, with all higher cerebral functions intact, with nerves still receiving and transmitting. Thought without the ability to act."

"It would be torture."

"Yes. Cryptids were captured, then stored and studied. Experimented on. Dismembered alive. Some were kept in that state for years. After some years, when they were deemed inhumane, a few 'specimens' were planned for release—the nanites holding them were deactivated—but that didn't end with a happily ever after... they had to be put down. The unending agony of experimentation and the preservation process drove them insane."

"Why would Pauline need these for a first contact situation?"

" I think you already know the answer, dear girl. Since we have cryophage canisters in front of us, we must accept that they were meant to be used."

The armory at the base camp. McMurtey's involvement. The biostasis container. It all led to one inevitable conclusion. "Pauline knew what was here."

"Yes, dear girl, I'm afraid she must have."

"The whole yeti expedition was a cover. She came for it... They came for it. I heard Pauline talking about Charles McMurtey and samples he wanted. She's here to get it for The Think Tank."

"It's our fault. We woke it. The yetis are very good at pantomiming, you know? After you left the cremation, they relayed that a creature—and this translation isn't precise, mind you, because I was left without the translator program—sleeps in the depths of the volcano. It last rose generations ago when outsiders came and disturbed its slumber. Odd how history repeats itself isn't it. It has been passed down in their oral history ever sense. Fire must have been mentioned in their stories, since they knew that Allie—that it—feared it."

"You got that from..." Chastity made a few wild gestures with her hands.

"I have been here for weeks, Miss Summers, building a communication system. Charades may be rudimentary, but it still works," he chuckled.

"We have to help stop it."

"It may have started as a sham, I'm still my expedition. I have a responsibility to protect the yeti and my people."

Chastity wasn't so sure anyone on the expedition team would consider themselves Professor Adams's people. Amanda Dawson, possibly, but her lack of a backbone made her impossible to trust.

"Then take this," Chastity said as she pushed a handgun into Chauncey's hands. "It probably won't help if Allie charges, but we have another worry: I don't think we're meant to make it out of this alive."

*

With Khor guiding them through the maze of tunnels, they quickly found what was left of Pauline's mercenaries. Caleb was hunkered down next to the buzz cut blond of the group. Chastity had never caught his name. He was holding a length of wood like a sword. It was rapidly smoldering out.

"You goddamned bitch," Caleb spat out when he saw Chastity. "Two of my men are dead because of you." He grabbed the stick from the Buzz Cut and raised it as if to swing, but held back when Khor bared his teeth and growled.

"I wouldn't," Chastity said. "You may want to think that you're fast enough—that you're badass enough—to bash my skull in before he rips you apart. You're not. And get the hell off that fucking high horse, your men only got what you had in planned for me. I know you weren't going to let me leave Antarctica alive."

She hoped to be wrong, hoped that Pauline wouldn't literally put a knife to her throat, but the mask of control Caleb strained to maintain cracked just for the slightest moment and the truth shone through.

"And I'm not the one who sent you in here to face down a monster without the cryophage nanites, am I. Yeah, I know about those too; put your goddamn tongue back in your mouth, it wasn't that hard to figure out."

"It was supposed to be confined in a grotto," Frizzy said. "Clear a path, deal with you, get the canisters, contain the thing, and capture, that was our plan"