Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (46 page)

None of them moved for a long while; until Sandy’s breathing had finally returned to normal.  The flush of red about her skin slowly dissipated, and then she sat up.  She wove her way through her Sisters-in-Marriage.  Her hands sought Estefan’s face.

He smiled down at her as she cupped his face and kissed him soundly on the lips.  He returned her kiss, though he was still holding onto the other two women.  Both of them were patiently waiting for them to finish.

“Your turn, Estefan, I want you to cum for me now,” she said softly.

“Ok,” he acquiesced.

She swiftly flopped on all fours, and then backed up to him, her round ass pointing directly at him.

Tirza giggled.

“He’s gonna cum fast that way,” Katie pointed out, a lopsided grin on her face.

Sandy breathed a chortle.  “I want to feel it shoot in-,” she was about to say when a high-pitched whir sounded throughout the chamber.

It wasn’t an alarm or anything of that nature.  It was merely an acknowledgement hail, but it still made them all freeze in place, seeing they were all naked and in the middle of
having sex.

Estefan flicked a finger over his left-hand index finger activating his ‘Swarm.  “Reyna trace the incoming frequency for identification.”

The room swirled with Nano-bots for a moment.  “My dear, it is your wife, Synoddess Flavia, the Guardian,” answered the complex processing unit.

“Pipe in the call,” ordered the Keeper, turning from the bed as a life-like projection of his one-time half-sister formed from the floor up a few feet away.  “Flavia, you have news?” he prompted.

She seemed to glance up from something she was looking at one her side.  “Yes, the Null-ship has arrived and -.”  She was about to say something else, when suddenly, she realized he was naked and so was everyone else.  “W-what the hell are you guys doing?” she stammered.

“I’m enjoying our husband,” replied Sandy before any of them could answer back.  She had flopped on her tummy when Estefan had turned and was addressing Flavia from
that position on the bed.

“It sure looks like it, Sandra.”  Flavia’s voice was stern.

Estefan knew she was envious at being left out, because she had other things to attend.  Her speaking Sandy’s given name wasn’t the only clue.  His one-time step-sister’s face was blank and she appeared relaxed, but he knew it wasn’t the case.  She was standing the way she did right before she entered combat.  He could read her body language as if it were written in the stars.

“How long until it’ll be suitable enough to board?” asked the Keeper in an attempt to sidestep Flavia’s wrath.

She tapped her foot a few times before she answered.  “Fifteen minutes.”

“Okay, we’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he nodded, smiling.

“See you when you get here,” she said with a roll of her eyes and then terminated the connection.

Katie huffed through her mouth. “Well, Eff, looks like we’re gonna have to give her some
real
alone-time with you.  Before she guts us all…”

Tirza laughed.  “We should get cleaned up,” she urged, scurrying from the bed, walking toward Estefan.

He smiled into her kiss, leaning down to do so, feeling himself grow at the thought of the extremely petite woman in his arms.

She felt him below her breasts and squirmed out of his arms.  “No way, Mister,” she admonished.  “Otherwise, we’ll never leave this room.”  She grinned hugely, pinching his butt and then spun on a heel and made for the Dermal-cleanser, her round buttocks bouncing as she walked.

He grew harder.

Katie came from the other side and kissed him as well, deliberately crushing her body to his, knowing it would make his cock fully hard.  He tried to get a better hold on her, but she too twirled from his grasp, wagging a finger at him in the negative.  She followed Tirza into the washroom.  His eyes were riveted to her ass as she sauntered away.

“Come over here, babe.  Let me take care of that for you,” said Sandy demurely from the middle of the bed, back on all fours once again.  “We’ve got fifteen minutes, honey, plenty of time to finish what we started.”

Estefan didn’t hesitate.  He could never turn down such a tantalizing offer.

“Put it in the other hole, my love.  I want to feel you in there instead!”

“
God
, Sandy, I love you!” he said in a rush and dove for the bed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Summer – 2018)

Jacob

[Th
e trip is monotonous, slow, an agonizing trudge.  He needs to do somethin to occupy his mind, other than lounge about with no more than the worrisome thoughts of the present.  He wants to relive the past, but he is dreading it.  Though he is convinced there is, in fact, an answer buried there.  He’s not certain he can handle the unearthing of it.  And yet, he has nothing better to do…]

It was 6:32 pm exactly when Jacob called later on that evening.

I know this for a fact
, all these years later, because I thought - when the line abruptly disconnected about ten minutes into the call – I would never hear from him again.  I was wrong of course, because if there is one thing to be said about my cousin, it is this.  He is a motherfucken cockroach.  You can stab him or shoot him or bash him over the head with a god damned sledge hammer.  Fuck, you can even nuke the sonofabitch!  He will always, under the most miraculous conditions, pick himself up off the floor, dust himself off.  He’ll stare at death in the eye and say, “What, deeeeck, you think your fucking love taps hurt?  It’ll take a lot more than that to put a
Rodriguez
in the ground, bitch!”  Then, he’d flip you off and walk away, lighting up a joint.

Even back then, he was indestructible.

Nowadays, I like to think of him as a defective, puny version of the
Incredible Hulk
.  No matter what you do to the fucker, he always seems to be able to walk away unscathed, possibly even stronger.  It always makes me shake my head in wonder…  
Fucking Jacob! 
That’s the only phrase that capture’s him entirely, holistically and completely in one breath.

Nonetheless, the call came
while I was just finishing up the dishes with Katie, Flavia and Johan.  All of us decided to stick close to one another, after my two younger siblings were assaulted by the same mysterious sickness that had attacked so many of us on that fateful day.

“Jacob, what’s up?” I had asked at once, answering the call with a slide of my finger.

“Hey, Eff, this is going to be a quick call.  I got a shitload to tell you and not a lot of fucking time to do it,”
he said, sounding out of breath, harried, rushed. 
“I think I’m under surveillance or something, cuz…”
  I heard rustling on the other end of the line as if he were transferring his cell from one hand to the next. 
“…I keep seeing the same fucking culos following me all over the god damned place.  The maricones are everywhere!”

I rolled my eyes, already hoping, in his “quest about the streets”, that Jacob hadn’t smoked a joint or two laced with some psychotropic substance.  That was the very last thing I needed right then.  I needed him focused, on point, like he
had been earlier that day, not drugged out of his mind on PCP or some other stupid shit.  Too much was happening too fast.  I had to keep up or I was going to be buried under it like a bug at the bottom of a port-o-potty, praying there wouldn’t be another shit storm from above.

“Dude, you’re gonna have to get it together.  I don’t have time to be messing around right now.  This Muto shit is getting out of control,” I emphasized sharply and was about to say more, but caught myself of a sudden.  This was an open cell line, easily tapped and triangulated. Maybe I had said too much already.

FUCK!!!

“What are you talking about, cuz?”
asked Jacob, his tone, his inflection – everything changing in a flash.

Naw, this dude wasn’t fucked up.  Not at all.

I recovered in seconds.  “Forget it, man; I was talking out of my ass.  Jus-just go ahead and tell me what you found out, ok?”

“Yeah, yeah,”
he said immediately. 
“Ok, well, you remember that dealer I was talking with earlier?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, well that dude, being the cool fucker I always knew he was, did some searching on his own.  You know, damned well, he did it out of respect for our uncles than us, right?”

“Probably,” was all I said, hoping he would get to the point.

“Anyway, bro, he’s got an acquaintance - no more like a colleague - in the organization he’s belongs to.  This guy… well, this guy is a little more connected, you know?  He has bigger clients, more contacts… let’s just say he’s a bigger fish in the pond, ok?”

I nodded to myself, but stayed otherwise silent.

“This dude tells my guy that it might be a good idea to stop dealing for a while, at least, until things calm down.  This of course made my guy curious, so he asks the dude, why?” 
Jacob paused to take a breath and cleared his throat. 
“The dude says one of his clients actually works for the NIA.  He’s a soldier in one of the Shock Units they’ve been secretly shipping to this part of town since the beginning of spring.  This trooper tells my friend’s friend something big is about to go down.  Curious himself, the dude offers the trooper a free hit of some new shit he’d recently acquired, hoping to pump him for more info.

“After a few hits, the trooper – out of fucking nowhere – says, ‘you ever heard of Inhaler Software?’  Of course
, the dude has no fucken idea what he’s talking about and says so.  The trooper takes another monster hit, keeps the smoke in his chest for a minute or so, then explodes with it with a big grin on his face.  He says to the dude, ‘Inhaler is some real crazy shit, my man.  It can tell who’s a Muto and who’s not.  It can even back track data all the way to the point of origin.  Soon, it’ll have tracked the Muto Taint all the way back to the fucking explosion itself.  Once it’s done that, the techs will have the ability to fast forward the software in order to predict where the highest probable Muto outbreaks will occur.’

“The dude asks, ‘what explosion?’

“And the trooper says, ‘the explosion of the comet that was on its way to destroying all life on earth last year, you stupid fuck!’

“This confuses the dude even more and he says what does that have to do with Muto’s?

“The trooper takes another hit and says, ‘that’s where it all came from, man.  The comet wasn’t just ice and rock and your occasional hunk of metal.  There was something else on it, something that affects humans in a very adverse way.  This something – whatever it is - has the potential to turn anyone into a full blown Muto in a matter of months.’

“The dude is like totally shocked and kinda puts two and two together, and after a few seconds or so, asks the trooper why are there so many of his homies hanging around Highland Park.  The trooper looks at the dude with glossy eyes and says, ‘the Inhaler Software predicted an inordinate probability of Muto manifestation in the whole northeastern section of Los Angeles.  Apparently the program tracked a unique strain of the shit coming out of the come
t.  This is a very strong, a very potent strain, and the NIA is dead set on wiping out entirely – no questions asked just pure eradication.’  The trooper stops right then, you know, seems to catch himself.  He looks over at the dude and says, ‘it’s going to happen soon and it’s going to be a clusterfuck for the civilian population around here.  You should think about clearing out.’  Then the bastard takes another hit of whatever the dude had given him and walks the fuck out of the room.

“My guy is listening to the dude as he tells his story and suddenly it hits him square in the cajones what the dude is talking about.  He realizes, it might be related to the request I had made earlier.  So, he hits me up on my cell.  He starts talking like crazy about how something fucked up is about to go down.  I should get my family out of Dodge, like now.

“Eff, he sounded a little spooked, you know, and this guy is usually as calm as dried up shit.  So, I said I’d seriously take his advice and he cut out.  About an hour after the call, I started seeing motherfuckers in suits and ties off in the distance, just fucken standing there, staring at me and nothing else.  It’s been
hours
now, Eff, and these guys aren’t letting up, they’re all over me, cuz.”
  He stopped then, mumbled something unintelligible and then a high burst of static sounded through the earpiece.  I was forced to pull the cell from my ear.

“Jake, you still there?!” I asked loudly, once the shrill noises ceased.

A heartbeat or two later, he came back on, but I could barely hear him, so I repeated myself a few more times to no avail.

Then, as clear as a bell,
“Eff, you still there,”
said my cousin.

“Yeah man, I’m still here,” I answered him calmly, though my head was running a mile a minute.

“Whadaya think we should do?”
asked Jacob.  His voice was just above a whisper.

I heard him, but there was one thing, one item that he had mentioned that made everything else seem inconsequential.  “You said, the trooper had said, the Muto shit had come from the comet?”

“Yeah, man, isn’t that crazy,”
he replied after a short delay.  Again, it sounded like he was moving quickly, as though he were running and hiding - moving fast, then slow.  It was erratic, weird in my ears, but I could picture it clearly in my mind’s eye.

“That’s pretty fucked up, if you ask me,” I voiced my opi
nion with heart.  “I mean, here we are saved from mass destruction only to be cursed with something else.  Doesn’t that seem kinda Wrath of God to you?”

“I don’t know what it sounds like, Eff.  All I know is these motherfuckers are after me and we gotta figure out what the hell we are going to do,”
retorted my cousin, raggedly.  He was laboring now.   I could tell.

“Where are you, Jacob?  What the fuck is going on?” I asked suddenly, realizing he just might be telling the truth instead of acting like an ass.

“I’m not gonna say right now, cuz.  I have a bad feeling about all of this - .”

“Hey you!”
  It was another voice in the background, male and resonated with authority. 
“Stop where you are, right now!”

“Oh shit, Eff, they fucking found me.  Fuck!  Fuck!!”

All at once, there were scratching sounds of jostling and fervent movement through the cell.  I squinted against it, but kept the device plastered to my ear.  I wasn’t about to miss a single detail now, just in case.

“Shit, these motherfuckers - .  Fuck!  Oh, SHIT!”
was all Jacob managed.

“Halt!  We have you in our sights, young man.  Stop now or we will use lethal force!”
  It was the same voice from before only amplified and metallic in tone.

“Fuck you!”
I heard Jacob yell at the top of his lungs, more distortion and garbled noises followed.

“Jake, are you ok?!?” I bellowed into the microphone of the cell.  “Jake!  Answer me, Jake!”

That was when I heard the first shot.  It sounded like a hollow snap through the connection.  I could hear Jacob breathing heavily.  There were more indiscernible pops and squeals, and then came the words, sending a chill up my spine.

“Shoot for effect!  Bring him down!”

I closed my eyes as ten, twenty, then thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred shots rang out –again and again, so many it seemed they would never stop.

A second later, the Jacob’s cell hit something, or maybe something had hit it.  I would never know.  A blink of an eye later, the signal dropped and I lost him.  I had lost my cousin to some faceless enemy, some adversary I hadn’t even understood.

Jacob was dead.  He had to be.

I looked at my cell with stark
unbelief, my face a rictus of horror.  I let me gaze fall to the others in the kitchen with me.  All of them stared back, dread plain in each of their eyes.

All I could say was, “They got him.  They got him.  They got him…”

Katie rushed forward and crushed me with her embrace, attempting to force strength and courage back into me.  Yet, when my gaze found my brother’s, it drained away all the same.  I was a ragdoll in my cousin’s arms.

Jacob was dead.

The NIA had killed him. 
And for what?  Information?  The fucking truth?

It was the first step of many, down the path I’ve trudged, taking me to where I am today, all these years later.  A path lined with all the vile titles I’ve been called over the decades – assassin, extortionist, pimp, sexual predator, terrorist, Muto, bigamist… fuck, the list goes on and on.  Some of which is truth, though most is just the persona that has evolved around me and my associates.

[He slips to the surface like an alligator in water.  Just eyes and nostrils break the surface.]

What did you expect?  A Hero?  A righteous vigilante?  Fuck all that, we went from frighten refugees to become the Aegis Synod.  I never really cared what people thought about me.  I still don’t give
a shit.  This was about survival, protecting what I loved.  I know it started that evening when I thought my cousin had been gunned down by the government.  I know now, they made me a criminal that night.  They forged my will.  I would never be one of the good guys.  Naw, I was going to be something else, something… feared…