Three Square Meals Ch. 062

Jade and Alyssa helped them roll to their side, and as his cock softened and slid out of Calara, Jade quickly moved to replace him. The three of them watched the Nymph as she lapped away, transferring the contents of Calara's swollen belly into her own body.

Alyssa was lying on the Latina's left side, and she reached across the tired but happy girl, and interlaced her fingers with Calara's recently regrown digits. Bending down, she planted a series of gentle kisses on those fingers, then smiled at the brunette as she murmured, "I said he'd take good care of you."

Calara glanced at John, and smiled as she said, "I know, I was being silly."

They cuddled together for a while, and Alyssa threw John a grateful smile as they both hugged Calara. *She really needed that, thank you,* she said sincerely.

*I love her too, remember,* he replied with a playful smile.

*We're both very lucky to have you,* Alyssa said, her tone earnest, and her words heartfelt. She paused, studying him for a while, and with a curious expression on her face, she added, *You've been getting much more perceptive recently. You picked up on everything that was bothering Calara without me having to say a word.*

*The one downside to having six lovers? It's taken me ages to really get to know all of you,* he replied with a wry smile.

*No... I don't think that's it,* Alyssa replied, studying his face, and ignoring his attempt to laugh it off.

Calara let out a sad sigh, and when Jade set upright with her hugely swollen breasts, John realised she was done. He sat up as well, and said, "Let's go grab a quick shower, then we can head over to Medical and check on the others."

They all rose together, and strolled out of the gym without bothering to get dressed. John hit the button to open the door, then stood aside to let the girls go first. Calara was the last to leave, and she stopped in front of him before going through the door. Her beautiful face was solemn as she gazed up at him, and she raised her right hand, using her newly regrown fingers to caress his face.

"I won't ever forget what you did for me," she whispered to him, her voice throbbing with gratitude. "You healed me once before, but this was something else. I'm not sure I could have coped with an injury like that."

He smiled at her, and said, "You're welcome, but don't undersell yourself. You're a very resilient girl, and you would have been just fine. I'm very proud of the brave, confident young woman you're growing into."

"Thanks to you, I didn't have to find out," she said, then raised herself up on tiptoe and pressed her lips against his in a soul-searing kiss.

When they parted, she gave him a shy smile, then walked through the door to join Jade and Alyssa who'd stopped to watch. The girls slipped their arms around Calara, and the three of them walked up the corridor towards the grav-tube, chatting together quietly. John watched them for a few seconds as they walked away, his lips still tingling and reminding him of the Latina's passionate kiss. He grinned to himself, then strode down the corridor to catch up to them.

***

Five minutes later, and after a very quick shower and change of outfits, they rejoined Rachel and her two helpers in the Medical Bay. All three looked animated when John and his companions entered the room, and it was Dana who spoke up first.

"You'll never guess what we've found out! This shit is crazy!" she blurted out, her sky-blue eyes wide with excitement.

Irillith nodded, and giving Rachel an appreciative smile, she said, "Checking these implants first turned out to be an extremely wise decision."

"Alright, well done, you've got me intrigued," John said with a chuckle, looking at each of the three girls. "What did you find out?"

The redhead and the Maliri girl both turned to Rachel, letting her be the one to explain. She smiled at them, then said, "They're both right, it's been intriguing studying Sakura, and it's very fortunate that we did."

Turning to the cyborg in the cryo-pod, she pressed a couple of buttons on the holographic display, and produced another image showing the girl's implants. Her hand moved over the controls, focusing the image on her brain, then zooming in to look at it more closely. The deep scan showed a fist-sized metal implant inside her skull, and at this magnification, they could make out the individual components.

"So what's all this then?" he asked her curiously.

"Primarily it's a synthetic brain, with a CPU providing the processing power and overriding Sakura's control over her own body. We discovered something else there too though," she said, her expression sombre.

"There's a fucking bomb in her head!" Dana gasped, unable to wait any longer.

Rachel rolled her grey eyes affectionately at the redhead's impatience, and nodded, saying, "We think it's been rigged to explode if the implant is removed."

John's eyebrows climbed higher and he asked, "There must be a way to stop it?"

Rachel was pensive as she replied, "Normally, no. Without the deactivation codes being remotely activated, even the slightest tampering would detonate the explosives." She glanced at Irillith and said, "We think we might have a way to neutralise it, though."

The Maliri girl nodded and said, "She has data jacks at her wrist, which allows her CPU direct access to consoles. If I use the data jacks as an access point, I'll be able to infiltrate the CPU and deactivate it, then hopefully suppress the detonation trigger until Rachel removes the implant."

Dana chipped in again, saying, "Once it's out of her head, I'll use inhibitor fields and signal dampeners to prevent the explosives from going off. They'll only work once we yank it out though, as she's got cranial plating that might interfere with the field."

"So you're removing the brain implant first then?" John asked Rachel, glancing at the unconscious cyborg.

The tawny-haired girl followed his gaze, and replied, "Second, actually. She's got subdermal plating around her abdomen, and I'll need to remove that first to let her expand to carry your full load."

"Nice work, girls," John said, clearly impressed. "Are you going to start immediately?"

Rachel turned to face him again, and said gravely, "Soon, but there's something else I need to tell you before we start."

"That sounds ominous," he said, studying her sober expression. "What's the problem?"

"I took a small skin sample to check my theory about the cryo-induced frostbite. I was right, but that's not important. Physiologically, Sakura is in her early twenties, I'd estimate around twenty-one, twenty-two perhaps," she explained carefully.

Alyssa frowned and said, "That can't be right. I saw hundreds of murders archived inside her mind, and some of them dated back decades!"

The doctor looked saddened as she said, "I checked the DNA sample against the Terran Federation medical archives, and managed to find her listed there. Sakura Honami was born on New-Eden on the 12th of February 2684."

"Wait a minute, that can't be right!" John exclaimed. "That would make her ninety-five!"

Rachel nodded, and said, "We triple checked it to be certain. I think she's been held in cryo-stasis for over seventy years, being temporarily thawed out for each assassination then frozen again. It would explain the skin damage she's sustained."

John stared at the girl in the cryostasis pod, and said quietly, "Did you find out anything about her family? Any surviving relatives?"

"Not yet, no," Rachel replied. "As you can imagine, it took a long time to match the DNA in the archives."

"I'll look into it," Calara offered. "Now I know her date of birth, name, and home planet, it should be relatively easy to find out more."

"Thank you," he said gratefully. "I'm sure the first thing she'll want to know when she comes around is if her family are alright."

Calara nodded, but they shared a look, both already coming to the same conclusion.

Turning to Rachel, he asked, "What's the plan now?"

"Irillith will hack into her CPU, and shut it down while we bring her out of cryostasis. I'll prep for surgery, then we'll begin," she said, sounding confident in her abilities.

"Is there anything you need me to do?" he asked as he gazed at the comatose assassin.

"It would be helpful to have you here at the start, just in case Irillith can't deactivate the CPU. If that happens, we might need you to physically restrain her," she asked plaintively.

"Of course, I'll help however I can," he agreed.

It didn't take Rachel long to get cleaned and prepped for surgery, and she soon stood with them again in her surgeon's gown and gloves. "Alright Irillith, please proceed," she said, looking at the Maliri girl.

Irillith found Rachel's calm and confident nature helped steady her nerves, and she took a deep breath as she got ready to project herself onto the astral plane. She was growing much more accomplished at spirit-walking, and once she had peeled away her ethereal form, it only took her a moment to steady herself afterwards. Approaching the captive assassin, she knew the data jacks were located on Sakura's wrists, so she reached out with her mind, searching for the connectors.

The data ports were much like the others she had entered before, so she carefully poured her consciousness into those points of entry. She felt a momentary feeling of uneasiness, as she suddenly remembered she was entering a system inside a person's body, rather than some inanimate object. Fortunately as she re-emerged in the digital network within the cyborg, it appeared largely interchangeable with all the other systems she'd explored so far.

She found herself on a tiny platform with a swirling green portal behind her, although the sky and floor were a dark red rather than black. There was a cursory firewall barring her path, which she broke through with a contemptuous flick of her wrist, barely having to flex her cyber-psychic muscles to do so. The sundered barrier shattered into thousands of tiny glowing shards, falling away from the platform and revealing the path beyond.

A silver lined pathway snaked away into the darkness, so she leapt out onto it, and raced along the short distance to the CPU centred in the cyborg's brain. It was here she finally paused, as this was wholly unlike the previous systems she had entered. Rather than blank, largely featureless black walls, the data fortress inside Sakura's skull was made from an opaque gold material. The surface of the walls was covered in intricate sigils, and Irillith felt a flicker of anxiety when she recognised them as Maliri.

There were no guards patrolling the walls, and the door to the digital citadel was unbarred and thrown wide open, inviting her inside. She approached warily though, as this whole setup felt eerily familiar. Standing at the entrance, she could clearly see her target sitting out in the open on a raised platform, surrounded by rectangular blocks that looked like data archives. The central processing core was a large green cube with a bewildering number of buttons and controls on the top. It was only a few dozen steps away from her, just tantalisingly out of reach for the moment.

Part of her wanted to stroll right in and shut down the system, but Irillith just knew this was a trap. One of the Maliri cyber-defence techniques was to deliberately lure a hacker into a false subnet, which had been baited with some tantalisingly named files. Once the invader entered that system, they would be savaged by aggressive defence programs that would shut down the hack, and in some cases even backtrack to the host system and launch a counteroffensive.

Narrowing her eyes suspiciously, she stepped inside, while keeping watch open for hostile tracking programs. She created a shield formed from violet polygons, then as an added precaution she created some defensive routines that appeared as shield wielding Maliri soldiers, flanking her as she walked in cautiously. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, but her senses were screaming at her that this was a trap.

Accompanied by her guards, she walked into the forest of data archives, taking careful steps as she approached the big data repositories. Unfortunately her guard programs weren't as sure footed, and one of them walked out onto a floor tile, which sank down with an ominous click. The monoliths surrounding the dais began to tremble, and Irillith realised they were part of the trap. The big rectangular shapes quickly begin to shrink and morph, and she let out a startled gasp, as a flash of blue lunged towards her from her right.

The defensive program took the hit, and was instantly scythed in half by the hostile program. It advanced on her remorselessly, and she gasped as she saw more of the sleek, faceless figures all around her. They were armed with long twin blades instead of hands, and they raised them aggressively as they rushed in on the attack.

The first of the lethal programs charged directly at her, blades flashing as it attempted to disembowel her, just as it had just done to her defence algorithm. Irillith slammed her shield in its path, frantically blocking its frenzied attacks, just barely keeping it at bay. She glanced to her left, just in time to see the second defensive program fending off another digital killer, until another one flanked it and stabbed it in the back.

Backing away warily, there were six of the blue twin-bladed killers bearing down on her, so she gathered her will, forming a javelin of purple light in her hand. She hurled it at the lead program, which toppled over as the javelin tore through it in a spray of glowing blue chunks. Holding out her hand, the spear of light raced back to her, skewering another program on its return journey in another cascade of digital blocks. Irillith seized it in a tight grip the moment it came in range, just as the other programs surged in to attack.

They rained blows down on her shield, which she had to swing back and forth to try and keep them at bay. Irillith kept backing away from them as she got ready for another attack with her javelin, until she suddenly bumped into a solid object. The fortress walls had slammed shut behind her, and there was nowhere else to run. The hostile programs seized on her momentary distraction, and while she managed to keep three of them back with her shield, the fourth darted in and stabbed her in the thigh with one of its blade-arms.

She screamed in shock, as the blade sank into her leg, agonising pain radiating out from the wound. The attack program seemed as surprised as she was, but in its case, it was frozen in a logic loop. Its programming told it the invader should have been destroyed, but the system alerts were still triggered, telling it that the intruder was still present. Irillith took advantage of its indecision, and plunged her force-javelin into its chest, causing it to explode in tiny fragments. At the same time she widened the shield and blasted it out ahead of her, sending the three remaining attack programs sprawling backwards.

They quickly regained their feet, then started to sprint towards her on the attack, but those few seconds of respite were all she needed. Her eyes had begun to glow with a throbbing purple light, and furious with the pain in her leg, she lashed out with twin columns of virulent energy. The first program lost its head and most of its upper torso as the eye-beams punched into it, and she viciously slashed the raw eldritch energy across the other two neatly chopping them in half. The pulsating light in her eyes dimmed out, and she sagged back against the fortress wall, breathing erratically as she recovered.

*Are you alright?!"* Alyssa thought to her in alarm. *I could feel your pain! What happened?*

Irillith steadied herself, and pushed away from the wall as she gasped breathlessly, *Ambushed by defensive programs... I was right... it's Maliri tech!*

*Do you need more power?* Alyssa offered, her voice ringing with concern.

Remembering what happened to the last data fortress when Alyssa flooded her with energy, Irillith quickly replied, *No! I'm okay now, I fought them off.*

She looked down at her leg, and saw a gaping wound in the digital signal representing her presence in this network. It throbbed with pain, and she limped as she approached the dais again. Although she'd dispatched the sentinels defending the raised platform, it still didn't feel right, and after what had just happened she was wary of activating any more traps. Stopping for a moment, she began to build, then replicate two dozen search routines, which she sent spinning off into the data-fortress to locate the central processing core.

The search routines rushed up to the green cube on the platform then studiously avoided it, fanning out as they began to scour the rest of the electronic citadel. Waiting patiently, Irillith eyed the large green cube with a sardonic gaze, and wondered which of the controls on top of the Trojan Horse would have unleashed a small army of sentinel programs intent on her demise. It didn't take long for one of the search routines to change colour from orange to green, and Irillith limped over to the section of wall it was pointing towards. It seemed just the same as the rest of the golden walls surrounding the fortress, but now she had drawn near, she could see that the Maliri symbols looked slight discordant.

Now she was studying it carefully, she could see that the Maliri script that covered the surface of this section was gibberish. The words were written correctly, but the sentences they formed were nonsensical. Something seemed strangely familiar about the broken phrases, the words more fitting to rhyming couplets than any kind of programming terminology. She had a sudden flash of insight, and recognised a few of the key phrases from a Maliri nursery rhyme her nanny had told her as a small child.

Placing her hands on the surface of the wall, her fingers began to glow, and the wall responded immediately, highlighting a grid of small tiles. She was able to move the tiles around, shifting and replacing them as she repositioned the words into the correct sequence. There were over a hundred tiles to rearrange, so it took her a while to complete the puzzle. When she was finally done and the last tile clicked into place, the whole panel sank back into the wall, before parting down the middle and swinging wide open. There was a hollowed out section behind the reinforced panel; a secret subnet that had been concealed to keep the central processing core away from intruders. She approached it, immediately recognising the complicated device for what it was, then carefully examined the controls on the upper surface.

This was definitely the central processing core, but she couldn't see any way of deactivating the trigger controls for the bomb. Irillith suddenly realised that the trigger controls were not linked to the processor, and must be purely mechanical in nature, perhaps hooked up to some kind of signal receiver. She pressed her hand down on the big red button, deactivating the CPU, and preventing Shinatobe from re-emerging.

*It's done,* she thought to Alyssa, suddenly feeling bone weary. *I've shut down the CPU, but the bomb is still active.*

***

To the others waiting patiently around the cryo-pod, it only seemed to take less than a minute for Irillith to complete her task, such was the speed that events occurred in the cyber-realm. Alyssa gestured with her hand, and the Crystal Alyssium bands that were securing the cryo-pod melted away, flowing into a cube that she placed on the floor. The moment that she told them it was safe to bring the assassin out of cryostasis, Rachel sprung into action.

She leaned over the pod controls, and activated the thawing process, awakening the cyborg from its slumber. The pod doors swung open with a hiss, and as they parted, cold misty vapour swirled out into the room. Sakura groaned in agony, and Rachel was there like a shot, pressing a hypo-injector to her neck and applying a sedative.