Season 4 Episode 1: Five Petabytes per Second

Armstrong roars with laughter and then slams back a bracing shot of bourbon. He pounds a palm on the bartop. "Of course! That dumb broad is gonna be the death of me!"

Nelson laughs, too, the bitter laughter of someone facing his imminent doom. The greenish light of the bar glints off his cokebottle glasses. "You got that right. Without Mara... man, we're screwed. Big league. Whitney can't run this company on her own."

"Did you have any idea about this?" Armstrong asks Dalton, swiveling in his stool.

Dalton waves a bartender over for another gin & tonic. He sips his drink, contemplative. "I did not. It is rather a grim situation, isn't it?"

"Grim. Fuckin' A. We're hemorrhaging board members here. First Tyrus screws off, now we've got Mara tendering her resignation out of nowhere -- it's last summer all over again. Darkbloom Analytics is finished."

Nelson, cradling his forehead in the crook between thumb and forefinger, and staring hard at his bottle of craft IPA, says: "well. In fairness. We thought the same thing last summer."

"This time it's true," Armstrong says. "Delayed reaction. She's like a goddamn cancer eating this company alive, Whitney is."

"We have to get rid of her," Nelson says.

"Have to," Armstrong agrees. "If we could just install Vivian -- or, fuck, ANYONE --" he turns again to Dalton. "Did Mara even tell anyone where it is she fucked off to? Maybe Vivian knows. Maybe we could get Mara back at the helm if we booted Whitney."

"Just a few months ago you two were adamantly against an ouster," Dalton says with a frown.

"That was before Mara decided to take a permanent vacation to the ass-end of oblivion!" Armstrong yells. "Whitney was a nice face for the public when she wasn't all nigger this, nigger that - but she can't be left to her own devices as CEO. We have to get rid of her."

"Have to," Nelson agrees. "We might still have a job this time next week... but only if we can get Mara or Vivian at the top."

Dalton shakes his head. "I think Mara is gone for good. And Vivian won't want the role if we force her sister out. She's fully camp Whitney now -- or more like camp Alabaster, I suppose."

Armstrong huffs. "Alabaster Soliloquy. That stupid fucking -- God do I hate that little wimp."

"I have a close friend at Lloyd's of London," Dalton says, "who used to specialize in asset liquidation -- take over a failing business, sell it off piece by piece -- you know."

"You mean --" Nelson begins.

"We call an emergency meeting, force Whitney off the board -- Vivian, too. Install the new CEO -- and start the process of shuttering Darkbloom Analytics for good. We can move on to greener pastures, as it were."

"I'd like to meet this friend of yours before I agree to anything," Nelson says. "What's his name?"

"Rowan Hamilton -- I can arrange to have him come over from London this week, if you're open to it."

"Do that," Armstrong says. He puts his hand up and twirls his index finger. "Next one's on me," he tells the bartender.

---

The three men stumble out of the bar, to the parking lot, towards their cars.

"Are you really sure you don't know where Mara is, man?" Nelson asks Dalton. He loops an arm around Dalton with one clammy hand up near Dalton's shoulder. Bracing him.

"Haven't the faintest idea... I'm quite sorry to say." He tries to wrench free of Nelson, but Nelson is weirdly tenacious in clinging to him as they walk. He's all buddy-buddy with the liquor in him.

"You were always her huckleberry," Armstrong says. "I gotta level with you... it's hard to believe that you don't know where she is." He steps past, turns and faces Dalton directly, forcing Dalton to stop.

"Be that as it may," Dalton starts. He does not even see the haymaker Armstrong throws.

It hits him square in the left eye. Nelson lets him go and he collapses to the grimy blacktop like a crumpling marionette, prone and unconscious.

"Fuck!" Armstrong yells. He shakes his punching hand limply, fingers flopping around, trying to dissipate the pain. He grabs his wrist and massages it. "Age isn't on my side anymore. I need some cyborg augmentations or something. Maybe that should be our pivot, huh?"

Nelson grabs the unconscious Dalton by each armpit and tries to haul him backwards, like lugging a bag of cement mix, but the dead weight is almost too much for him. The back of Dalton's suit is darkly smeared with oil and dirt from the ground. His head lolls to one side as Nelson pulls tugs.

"Will you shut up about your damn hand and help me?"

"I did my part. You can manage this part. I believe in you." He knocks twice, hard, against the back door of a panel van parked there. Vivian, receiving the cue, opens both doors from the inside.

Nelson is worried. "You better not have killed him with that punch, Steven."

"He'll be fine. Probably."

Nelson steps aboard the van, past the opened back doors. He turns, squatting, to lift Dalton in. He strains -- tugs and pulls, puffs and draws labored breath, all to no avail. The back end of the van's suspension sags with the load.

Bemused, Armstrong watches Nelson fumbling. "This is pathetic. You're weaker than a male barista... here." Finally he relents and assists Nelson in getting Dalton into the van, taking him by the feet and lifting, lest any lookie-loos stumble across the scene and make an even bigger problem for them all.

"Thanks," you tell the odd couple, as Nelson, gasping for air, slides down the side of the interior wall and to his butt. "Sterling work with those jukes, both of you."

Vivian closes the doors again, walks primly to the front, and gets into the passenger seat. Beside her, Saul puts the key in the ignition and fires the engine.

"Where... to...?" Nelson gasps between gulps of air.

"Get the fuck over it, Nelson," Armstrong says. "Did your pussy fall off trying to lift something heavier than your pet Schnauzers?"

"My house," Saul says, in answer to Nelson's question.

"Slumming it with the upper-middle class, great," Armstrong grumbles. "I hope you all understand the monumental risk Nelson and I are taking. This means all-out war with Mara Darkbloom. And your mother is one vicious fucking cunt, Vivian."

Vivian regards you, Nelson, and Armstrong from the rearview mirror. She says nothing -- only nods. Saul is already entering the on-ramp and speeding towards your destination, perhaps the final destination your hostage will ever visit: the Mallory household.

"We're betting everything on you," Nelson says. He's slowly regaining his breath and the red flush is draining from his sweaty face. "Not just our livelihoods, but our actual lives, too."

"Not to mention prison," Armstrong adds. "Even if we do survive, we could still wind up fucked."

"Aye," you say. "And we super appreciate it, Army."

"Uh huh," Armstrong grunts. Then, to Vivian: "That's another thing. Why are we involving this random teenage girl, again?"

"Because," you say, gazing down at Dalton's supine form. "I know how to get things done."

"Amber is a friend," Vivian says. "She will be an absolute benefit."

"I just hope you know what you're doing," Nelson says. He stares blankly ahead at nothing.

"I do," you say. "Mara won't be the first Darkbloom I've killed."

This grabs Nelson's interest. He arches an eyebrow.

"Long story," you add.

"Thank you, Amber," Vivian tells you. "We should focus on what comes next, now. There is a long day ahead of us tomorrow... and an even longer one for Mr. Dalton Cantor."

---

You are Alabaster Soliloquy, hot-shit destroyer of anime pussy and hot-shit destroyer of pussy.

"Here's one for you. Do you know what the word 'perk' is actually short for?"

In times of crisis, you default to old habits -- trivia.

Whitney thinks for a brief moment. "...Perky?"

"Perquisite."

"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard."

Rose2 pokes her head into the office. "Hey Whitney, they were out of coffee. So I got you some popcorn instead."

"I take it back," Whitney tells you. "THAT'S the stupidest thing I ever heard."

Rose2 looks hurt. "Do you... not want popcorn?" She murmurs.

"Fuck yes I want popcorn," Whitney says, motioning with one hand, "bring it here."

Rose2 beams and delivers the goods.

"Our board problem should clear up soon," Whitney says. She takes a handful of popcorn from the white paper bag, shakes it around like dice, and then shoves it into her upturned mouth like an addict popping pills.

"So I hear," you say. "Any word on where our missing CFO is?"

"Nnnf," Whitney says, spraying kernels.

Grimacing, you dust the ones that hit you from your shirt. "Then what makes you so confident?"

Whitney swallows hard. "Viv is on it. And Amber -- Darkbloom hunter extraordinaire, apparently. If Dalton knows anything, they'll figure it out. We'll have mom and Alex back by sunset."

Somehow, you're skeptical.

---

Saul wheels Dalton on a dolly down a long flight of stairs, and into the fully finished basement of the Mallory home. Lush white carpet and a low stucco ceiling focus attention on a cozy fireplace, a pool table, and a red sectional that faces a theater system. An area in one corner tiled with slate holds diamond-shaped racks full of wine bottles, a minibar lit with bluish overhead mood lighting, and beer taps.

When Cerise Soliloquy lived the life of a NEET down here, she lived in the lap of luxury, you think.

"Jesus Christ," Armstrong says, "a rec room? Is the plan to... what -- aggressively bore him with Yahtzee until he fesses up?"

"I could go for a nice game of Yahtzee," Charlotte says, stepping forth from the minibar with her glass of chardonnay.

"God help me," Armstrong says.

Charlotte gulps the rest of her drink in one mouthful, and sets the now empty glass aside. Its base tinks against the counter. "I'm glad you're back," she tells Saul.

"No thanks to these idiots," Saul grumbles, jerking his head in the direction of Armstrong and Nelson. "They almost got us seen, fucking around trying to get Dalton in the van."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Armstrong says. "But while we're taking part in some constructive criticism -- let's just say I fail to grasp the the brilliance inherent to using the basement from the Brady Bunch as the setting for a high-stakes interrogation."

"We're not going to keep him in the rec room," Saul explains. "Quit your bitching."

Dalton is starting to come to, right on time. He shakes his head dazedly this way and that, realizing that he's bound hand and foot, and strapped vertically to the dolly. "Wh--whuh?"

Charlotte strides purposefully to the other end of the basement now, and Saul follows, wheeling Dalton. Charlotte lays a hand flat against a small divot in the wall that you wouldn't see unless looking for it. A secret door slides open, and the Mallorys, hostage in tow, enter the room beyond.

It's a miniature concrete dungeon. Complete with a steel table in the center, a torture rack on the raw brick wall, and a pegboard with various implements for inflicting pain arrayed about.

"Holy shit, you two are freaks," you can't help exclaiming as you take it all in.

Dalton, only now fully cognizant, stammers and sputters: "I-- what is th-- M-Mrs. Mallory? What is the meaning of this?"

"Welcome to the rumpus room," Charlotte says, smiling sadistically.

---

"One crisis after another after another," Rose murmurs, sitting across from Whitney in her office.

"It's such a goddamn mess," you groan. You're at the window, peering down to the brass globe atop the fountain at the front gates. Every time you see it, you remember the night it toppled from its pedestal and crushed a man to death... not the only death you saw that night. You grimace. "We've got too much shit coming at us from every side, all at once..."

"Don't worry about a single thing, Ally. I've got it all taken care of."

You turn back. "How? Enlighten me."

"Step one: I'm going to China."

You have no earthly idea what to say to this, and tell her as much.

Whitney's response is a question: "Did you see the news this morning?"

When she's keeping better abreast of current events than you are, something is wrong. You shake your head.

"Check it out," she tells you. She swivels her monitor around. You go to her desk and peer at the headline with Rose:

>CFIUS Blocks Chinese Conglomerate's Historic $1 Trillion Acquisition of Alphabet Inc., Parent Company of Google

Which in turn sets off a typical argument between you and Rose:

"Wow. This administration actually did something right for once."

"There it is. Couldn't help yourself, could you."

"Please. Don't tell me you're still a supporter -- after all this--"

"Go fuck yourself. Literally, go fuck yourself."

Whitney groans. "Jimminy Christmas, you two. Shut the fuck up. If I have to listen to you argue politics one more time, I'm seriously gonna blow my brains out. No lie."

"Fine," you say. "So China isn't going to buy Google. It's not like they won't still be coming after our intellectual property. Sand Reckoner--"

"P'yeah," Whitney says. "I might be ignorant as shit, but I know one thing -- Sand Reckoner needs data, even a Chinese knockoff. They didn't want to buy Google for fun, they needed it. For whatever bullshit copycat they were working on. And so now we've got leverage... as they say in the biz."

"The biz," you repeat flatly.

"Yeah. That's biz lingo. Look it up."

"Leverage for what, precisely?" Rose prods.

"China's the biggest market old bio-dad couldn't break into. He made some accusations but he never got a foothole."

"Acquisitions," you correct, at the same time Rose says, "foothold?"

"So we can buy them out and get this chinky monkey off our backs," Whitney finishes.

"You shouldn't use that w--" Rose begins, but stops, sighing. She rarely bothers anymore, these days.

"And you've got a trillion dollars just lying around?" You sneer. "That's what they were going to pay for Google. So you can assume that's the starting offer if you want to buy them out."

"Buy low, sell high. That's another principle of the biz. We've got what they want, so they're gonna have to bend over and take it." She helpfully pokes an index finger in and out through the hole made by her other hand's fist.

You don't think DA's current monopoly over Sand Reckoner based technology has got anything to do with the stock trading acorn to buy low and sell high, but you don't argue the point.

"Please explain, as plainly as possible, what your plan is," Rose says. The patience of a saint when it comes to Whitney -- you envy it.

"If we own the rights to Sand Reckoner in China, we don't have to worry about any competition from them. At least not right now. More competition is the very last thing we need. We have to focus all our energy on Mara."

She has something like a point. Still... "We can talk about this when we've got your mom back safe," you try.

"No bueno," Whitney says. "I've already got the trip set up."

"You -- want to leave while your mother is still missing?" You breathe. "When are you planning on going?"

Whitney checks the time on her phone. "About two hours," she says.

Rose clutches her face and stifles a groan of frustration that instead comes out as a loud exhalation through her nose.

"You were planning on telling us this, when, exactly?" You demand.

"I literally just got off the phone with the CEO of Broad Dynamics like two minutes ago. He wants to meet now. Now as in yesterday. Said if we don't work something out pronto, he'll move forward with his other plans. Which means the time is now. We have to do this. And I'd appreciate it if you two were more, like... supportive... and shit."

"How are you even going to communicate with the people at Broad Dynamics?" You ask. "We would need someone with us who speaks Chinese. Not just any random translator. Someone we can trust -- someone who we can discuss company secrets in front of."

"Huh?" Whitney says. "That's no problem. We've got someone."

---

"...You know Chinese?" You ask Fazil, stunned. You, Whitney, and Rose sit with him in the executive dining hall, where Whitney had him meet you.

He takes a sip of his coffee. Thanks a lot, Rose2 -- apparently you weren't out after all. He says: "To a conversational level. However to say, I am not knowing the Chinese as well as I am knowing the English. But I do knowing."

"That's just -- really surprising, is the thing. You never mentioned it."

"Ah!" Fazil cries. "I see now the miscommunication. You are worrying of yet another double agent fiasco."

"That isn't th--"

"Do not worry, my best man." He puts a hand to his heart and raises the other aloft. "Solemnly I say: I hate the Chinese. If a djinn were to grant me three wishes, I would use the first to stamp that entire nation from existence."

"Maybe keep that to yourself while we're there," Rose says.

"Yes, of course."

"We need to go pretty quick," Whitney tells him. "Sorry for such short notice. Can you be packed and back here waiting within the hour?"

Fazil leaps to his feet. "You can depend on me. I will be back post-haste."

"You're the best, Fazil," Whitney says. "High five."

"High fiiiiive!" Fazil cries, sticking out his tongue and meeting Whitney's upheld hand.

He goes. On his way out, he passes Rose2 -- who's standing at the threshold of the dining room watching you like a bashful kitten.

"China?" She says.

"Who the fuck invited you?" Rose spits. You give your wife a disapproving glare, but she doesn't apologize.

"It's just a day trip," Whitney says. "We'll be back by Wednesday. You ok with staying at home by yourself? You'll have plenty of security."

"I... I guess so..." she sighs.

"We should head back together," Whitney adds. "I gotta get packed anyways."

"I need to get packed too," Rose says. She's intently focused on her phone's screen, clacking out an email, as she adds: "and let the rest of our board know about this. The ones we don't think want to murder us, anyway."

"Are -- you gonna go too, Ally?" Rose2 asks timidly.

>[x] I need to go too.

>[x] I'll stay behind to keep Rose2 company and take part in interrogating Dalton.

---

Charlotte tightens the leather strap around Dalton's chest, and takes a bit too much pleasure in doing so. It knocks the wind from him with a wheeze.

"Vivian..." he pleads. "You -- cannot be serious about this. Please see reason. This is a crime!"

"Where is Mara?" Vivian demands. Her diminutive stature places her head just a little bit above Dalton's where he lies on the cold slab. She grips the edge of the metal and peers contemptuously down at him.

"How should I know?" Dalton cries. "She resigned. She didn't tell me where she went!"

"We got two for the price of one," you say, circling the table, and peering down also. You're quoting Dalton's own words from earlier in the day, back to him -- the words from when he murdered Sable Guiteau: "We wanted only Dr. Carte, but we received also for our trouble Alex Best. You complete the trifecta."

"I don-- I--" he stammers. "I don't know what you're talking--"

You give him another of his greatest hits: "Somebody has to die. You or him."

"She saw everything," Vivian says. "Forego the dissembling. We know you were there. We know you helped take Ms. Carte and Alex Best. Now tell us where she took them."

"Vivian... Viv..." he's breathless with panic. "I've known you since you were only little. This isn't you. You're not a monster!"

"You are the monster," Vivian spits. "You murdered innocent people in cold blood. And you kidnapped a woman who is very dear to me... I will make sure you pay for that. With your life if needs be."

"This isn't you!" Dalton insists, again. His voice is nasally and bourgeois. What a pathetic wimp. "Your sister is making you do crazy things. She's putting crazy ideas in your head. Don't you remember when you called her an unreliable dullard -- a liability and a ticking time bomb? Those are your words! For the love of God... don't let that ticking time bomb make you into a killer too!"

Vivian's glare is icy and unflinching. "Whitney and I do not always see eye-to-eye. She has her way of operating, and I mine. But we are sisters -- Darkblooms, through and through. This company is our legacy to manage jointly. If need be, I know she will kill to protect it. And so will I."

Dalton gapes at her.

"Where is Mara?" Vivian repeats.

"I don't know."

You pick up the damp rag from a nearby table. You kneel over him and coo. "Army really fucked you up, huh? You should see the shiner he gave you. Holy shit."

You dab the shiny black bruise around his eye as if to help soothe it. He's trembling.

"See?" You say. "We're nice. Aren't we nice?"

You fold the rag neatly, and lay it over his face. "Charlotte, go get a pot of cold water."

She hurries out.

"What are you doing?" Dalton asks, his voice muffled by the terrycloth.

"Where is Mara?" Vivian says.

"I don't know! I don't know!"

"Bad answer," you tell him in an empathetic tone. "Sorry, Dalton. The next few minutes are gonna really suck for you."

---

When you come out of the rumpus room a little later, you find Armstrong and Nelson huddled over a table, playing Yahtzee. They're deep into their drinks -- and an intractable argument.

"I'm telling you," Armstrong says, "there's no fucking reason. There is absolutely NO reason to do it."

Nelson is beside himself. "What do you mean 'no reason'? It's hygienic, you maniac."

"Do you wash your hands every time you touch your face? Every time you touch your arm? No. You don't. So why in the hell do you need to wash your hands just because you touched your dick?"

"You are disgusting. You are, without question, the stupidest, most disgusting man I have ever had the displeasure of knowing."

"Unless you're splashing yourself with your own piss, you don't need to wash your hands after using a urinal. Period. Is that your issue here, Nelson? Is your little Jew dick too tiny to piss out of without dribbling all over your fucking fingers?"

"The handle of the urinal alone--"

"When was the last time you used a manual-flush urinal? They're all self-flushing nowadays. Anyway, chrome is a natural disinfectant. It's harmless."

"Oh my god. I've been shaking hands with you -- for YEARS -- but NEVER again."

"Your fucking problem is that you're too clean. You damn germophobe. This is why you had eight sick days last year. I had zero, by the way, in case you were wondering. Your autoimmune system is weaker than Tom Hanks at the end of Philadelphia."

You clear your throat to get their attention.

"Hate to interrupt you lovebirds," you say, "but I've got bad news. Dalton says he doesn't know where Mara went."

"He's lying," Armstrong says. "Go torture him some more."

"He's half-drowned as it is," you tell him. "He keeps losing consciousness. Seriously... what a fucking limp-dicked weasel. Why did you ever let him into your company?"

"Wasn't my choice," Armstrong says.

"Ask Vivian's dearly departed father," Nelson adds.

"He made a lot of questionable decisions, didn't he," Vivian muses. She sits on the red sectional, kicks off her black flats, and rests her besocked feet on the table. Her head slumps against the backrest. Poor thing is wiped.

"Any case, that fucker knows more than he's letting on," Armstrong says.

"Obviously," you say. "But we need some time to rest -- and strategize. We'll give him a couple hours to think about his situation and then get right back to it first thing in the morning. Meanwhile--"

You hear the roar from the rumpus room: Charlotte putting on your CD.

"What in the--" Nelson says.

"True black metal!" You chirp. "Neat, huh? He'll have that to keep him company, looping on repeat, all night. Full volume, like God intended."

Charlotte scurries from the room and closes the hidden door. The sound of Burzum's inhuman wailing now is muffled through the thick brick walls.

"My what interesting taste you have in music," she says, voice fluttering, but trying to put a positive spin on it. "Does your mother know you listen to that?"

"She doesn't know I'm torturing someone in your sex dungeon, either," you say, frowning.

Charlotte turns neon red. "W-well... I'm doing this because Mara needs to be brought to justice..." She swipes a strand of hair behind her ear and smooths her mom jeans. "I like to believe I'm a very forgiving individual, but Mara... Mara Darkbloom deserves to die." Her voice begins to develop a crazed hitch as she continues: "She deserves to have the life snuffed out of her... to get strangled, or stabbed, or crushed.... slowly, slowly crushed, from the feet up, in an industrial grinder..."

"Charlotte?" Saul says.

"Sorry. I'm okay."

Nelson is peering at his phone. "Uh... Steven. Did you see this?"

"See what?"

"Check your email."

Armstrong does. His phone looks like a doll's accessory in his grip. "China?!" He hollers. "That dumb little -- goddamn it..."

He heaves himself up and hurries towards the stairs. "Thank you, Saul, for your hospitality," he says distractedly, "but I have to go stop our CEO from fucking us. You understand..."

Nelson follows like a puppy after his master when he thinks it's walk time. But Armstrong wheels on him and says: "You stay here."

"Excuse the hell out of me?"

"You stay here. The last thing we need right now is for our only halfway competent tech person to go missing. If those goddamn slants nabbed you the way the slavs did with Alex, we'd be royally screwed. Big time."

"Gee. Thanks for looking out for my well-being," Nelson says sarcastically.

"Anytime," he barks sarcastically back.

Vivian turns her head on the sofa's backrest, to half-face Armstrong: "Sincerely, Steven -- thank you. For helping us... for being on our side."

He laughs in his macho way. "Well. Your dad once told me if anything ever happened to him, to keep you safe."

"You took this command to heart, then?" Vivian murmurs.

"Fuck, no. I'm keeping me safe. But -- I do like you, kid."

He leaves.

Nelson stands there for a beat, looking uncertainly up the stairs leading from the basement, before turning back towards you. "Do you know how to play Yahtzee?"

Vivian, her arms looped over the couch's back, is peering at a sign on the far wall that says "Live, Laugh, Love" in a faux cursive font.

"These trappings are dreadfully gauche..." she says.

"Yahtzee!!" Charlotte cries, picking up the red cup to reveal her dice. She either didn't hear or didn't care about Vivian's remarks, because she's busily shaking her balled-up fists excitedly and grinning ear to ear over her sudden luck.

"This damn night gets worse and worse," Nelson sighs. Charlotte marks her points down on her score sheet, but it hardly matters -- she was already running away with it.

"She cheats," Saul tells him. "I know she does."

"I'm not a cheater!" Charlotte pouts. "I just get lucky. That's all."

"Uh huh."

They scowl at each other.

"Amber..." Vivian says. "Are you as tired as I am?"

You shrug.

"Would you like to stay in the guest bedroom with me tonight? Some shut-eye would do wonders for me, I think. And to be frank, I would enjoy the company."

"I was just gonna crash on the couch down here," you say.

"With this awful music to accompany your rest?"

"Sure. I mean.... what... are you saying you want to sleep together?"

"I believe I am, yes."

Vivian Darkbloom, that pint-sized little capitalist, has a way of leaving you a bit speechless.

>[x] Stay with Vivian for the night.

[ ] Stay here with Charlotte, Saul, and Nelson.

Charlotte was kind enough to give you a spare comforter and several nice, downy pillows, which you lay on the floor of the guest bedroom. Which isn't much of a guest bedroom, because it still has Alabaster Soliloquy's things in it. Thankfully over the course of years, Charlotte has managed to Febreeze away the baked-in scent of cum tissues -- although the bin, now empty, still sits under the computer desk. What horrors that poor bin has seen.

Even as you kneel to lie down atop your makeshift bedding, Vivian grabs the blanket and pillows, and tosses them onto the full-sized bed.

Still sitting on your knees on the now barren carpet, you pout up at her. "That's the problem with you billionaires. What you've got is never good enough. You gotta steal from working people like me."

"Don't speak nonsense," Vivian chides. "And do not think of sleeping on the ground when there is a perfectly usable bed here for us to share."

She quickly disrobes: dress, socks, bra, leaving only her thin satin panties to preserve her modesty. She doesn't care at all about letting you see her tits -- such as they are -- but despite the brash figure you cut, it's a little weird to you, and you look away, feeling yourself blush.

"Look, just because you sniffed my pussy in a karaoke booth--" You start.

Vivian is tugging you to your feet and beckoning you towards the bed.

"Kind of small for two people, isn't it?" You say.

"I'm small," Vivian says. She plays her fingers up your arm, tickling you a bit. Leaning in, her breasts push against your arm now as well. It sends a shiver down your spine. You can feel the hardness of one of her nipples on your skin. "You're small, too," she says, whispering. "A small bed suits us, does it not?"

"You creep me out, Vivian."

"I love you."

"See, that's why--"

She pulls you onto the mattress.

But instead of ravishing you, like you expect, she just pulls the blankets up over her -- and snuggles in.

You can breathe a little easier. Until Vivian asks: "will you join me beneath the covers?"

"I'll be okay. It's pretty muggy in here anyway."

"Take off your clothes."

The tone suggests a request, but the look in her eyes suggests a demand. Then in a whir of motion, she flings the covers over you, like a Venus Flytrap ensnaring its prey. Her body is curling around yours before you can protest.

You can't lie to yourself and say that the experience you had at Rose's bachelorette party wasn't really fun... but Vivian's voracious hunger for you frightens and somewhat repels you. You're pretty sure she's about to rape you.

"May I touch you?" Vivian asks, her face nuzzling up against your neck. She rains kisses on you. Her hands roam over your body. Her spindle-like fingers travel searchingly over -- then snake under -- your cotton tank.

"Y-you're already touching me."

"I want to service you. Will you let me service you again, the way I did back then... Amber?" Her breath is hot in your ear and tickles some deep down part of your ear canal that you didn't know you had. You shudder. Her body is wrapped totally around you. She bites your earlobe. "Will you let me have your cunt again? Please?"

"M-my--" you stammer. No snappy comebacks, no sarcastic quips -- you're out of things to say. You're just a trembling teenage girl in the grips of this lesbian rapist.

"Your cunt," she repeats. "I'm in love with your cunt. It's beautiful. So please, let me --" She writhes against you, her hands pawing your breasts. Despite yourself, Vivian's molestation is making your nipples hard, and you bite your lips to suppress a moan. "Are you frightened? I will cease if you want me to cease, but I am so, so desperate. I am begging you. Please just let me bury my face in your cunt again. It will feel good, I promise it will. You can cum on me. I will help you do it... my mouth is an excellent masturbation device. Just let me lick you..."

She's pulling your shirt up over your head, and you're letting her. She's suckling on your neck, smelling you, rubbing you. Her body is soft and weak, and smaller than yours, but you're utterly at her mercy. It doesn't help that the idea of getting eaten out tonight is actually pretty alluring. You want to experience it -- properly, this time.

"O-okay," you say. You gulp, knowing that there is no going back.

And that's all it takes. She disappears under the covers. You see only the lump of her tiny form. But you feel her prying at the waistband of your shorts, and you help her get them off you. Then like an electric jolt surging through you, you feel the tip of her nose make contact with your clit, through your panties, which are already wet. She's enjoying her favorite pastime again, inhaling your unique scent. Only this time she's even hotter for you, and she can't be satisfied just huffing your pussy through the crotch of your damp underwear. She tugs the elastic down, but doesn't even bother to pull the panties all the way off.

You feel then the curves of her curled lips, warm and wet, latching onto your genitals. You groan -- she groans. She's not just licking you, she's sucking at the same time. Sucking on your cunt like she needs it to live. Her little tongue slithers around the outer lips of your pussy, suckles up all your dew -- and then, when she's gotten it all, she parts your labia with both hands, and goes deeper, searching for more. While she licks you from the inside, she uses her dainty fingertips to lecherously poke and prod your pussy. And not just your pussy but your lower hole, too. You bite your pinky. She's servicing you, sure, in an adoring way. But she's the one in control. You feel like you're her plaything right now. And somehow that only makes you burn even hotter with lust.

You pull the corner of the comforter up, and in the dim light you see only the crown of Vivian's head as she feasts on you, like a sow at a trough. The thought strikes you that you're doing this with her in Alabaster's bed, on Alabaster's sheets, in Alabaster's room -- the man who's fucked both of you. You shiver anew.

"C-can I try?" You ask her.

Vivian looks up at you, the lower half of her face dripping with your combined fluids. "Try?" She questions.

"69..." you grunt. "I want to do you, too."

Vivian is elated, her face lighting up with a wan grin. She turns and lies atop you from the other way now. She doesn't warn you when she settles her butt down on your face, and it knocks your breath away. The seat of her silky panties is resting on top of your head. Her ass presses against your face. It's heavy. You realize she's doing it on purpose, grinding herself into you, pressing her weight down. Your nose is buried, half-crushed, in the small space between her pussy and her asshole. You become overwhelmed with Vivian's scent -- talk about role reversal -- it's delicate, perfumey. But beneath that a heady hint of sweat, desperation and cum. With effort, your manage to get your mouth open even despite her weight bearing down on your head. You cup your lips around her mons. She likes this; coos and groans approvingly in her anemic way. She shifts herself forwards and back, rubbing herself on you, like a humping dog. Then she dives back in and starts eating you again.

"F--fuuuck," you sigh. Can't help it.

You want to feel her bare cunt, too. You reach up and tug her panties to one side. Even from directly up-close, there's not a hair to be seen -- smooth and pristine, with tucked-in labia, a pussy you can hardly believe ever fit Alabaster's cock inside of it. Without her panties covering it, it drips freely onto your face -- her sticky, slimy juices oozing shamelessly out of her tiny slit. Not that she can help it. But you know that even if she could, she wouldn't. She wants to get off with you.

You like the way she tastes. And you never thought of yourself as a lesbian, but the way Vivian loves your pussy is the same way you love this darling little cunt slit in front of you. You would eat her out any day, and have fun doing it. As weird and creepy as it is, as much as you don't want to give in to the world of perversion surrounding Vivian, you can't help it. How could you say no to licking a pussy this clean and inviting? Vivian's tongue worming around inside you is driving these depraved thoughts, and sighing, you close your eyes, and lick her back.

The covers oppressively trap your body heat while you suck each other off. Vivian's lithe body is covered with perspiration, yours too. But that makes it more fun. You're both wet, all over. Your pussies are creaming and you're pouring sweat, and it's fun. This tingle deep inside that Vivian is both relieving and aggravating... you never want it to end. All five of your senses are consumed by that, by the thrill of Vivian taking you. Her pale skin, the pulsing insides of her cunt shuddering against your tongue, her delicious cum, her slippery body. Her mouth attached to you like it's a part of you. The way she licks you all over... inside, outside... in your asshole, around your mound... flicking your clit playfully, that slutty little devil. She knows how to make a girl feel good, she was right. You're not as skilled, but you're learning, and you know you're having an effect on her because the volume of her juicing is only increasing.

"I'm -- I'm gonna..." you warn.

"Yesssh," screams, directly into your cunt. It reverberates through you and sets off your orgasm. You cum on Vivian Darkbloom's face just like she begged you to.

Vivian doesn't pay you the same courtesy -- doesn't warn you at all. She simply cums on you. Her pussy spasms, once, twice. And then a geyser of her cum sprays directly into your mouth. For fear of drowning, all you can do is swallow it. But you love it. You grab her ass with both hands and press it down, forcing your tongue deeper, to get it all out.

Vivian is out of her mind with pleasure. She humps up and down, slamming your head repeatedly into the mattress. It dazes you. She's making noises that are barely human. For this moment, you're only a fucktoy, nothing else -- a billionaire's meat urinal. There's a wet slapping sound echoing off the walls as she bounces on top of your face, and you wonder whether you'll bruise. But you don't care about that, either. You wail, sputtering, and choking, nearly suffocating. And you cum and cum and cum in Vivian's pretty little mouth.

---

Whitney is snoring near the front of the plane, and a few seats down, Armstrong is guzzling his way through bottle after travel-sized bottle of Jack. An airborne SMATTERS unit, propelled by mini stabilizing rocket thrusters, drifts lazily up and down the aisle of the lush, wood-paneled private jet. It's being piloted by a bored Fazil, who sits somewhere in the back.

Sitting alone at one of the small, somewhat private tables, the high bright Pacific sun beating against you, you examine the silver band on your left ring finger. You consider it, its import and meaning. You think through hypothetical future introductions: "yes, nice to meet you... I'm Alabaster, and this is my wife" ... "I'd like you to meet my wife -- Rose" ... "and I assume you've already met Rose Soliloquy, my wife?" ... "Rose and I got married in September... well no, we're not trying, but we're not NOT trying -- if you know what I mean..." Though somewhat tarnished by wear from the years it belonged to your father, it glints, and you idly twist it back and forth with your right hand's thumb and index finger. Then you settle on merely staring at it; you turn your palm first one way, then the other, and back, over and again.

"Alabaster?"

Of course. Rose settles across from you. You quickly let your hand fall to the tabletop.

"How are you feeling about this?" She asks.

"About what? Flying to China on a whim? Renee and Alex getting taken hostage by Mara fucking Darkbloom? Or dead people who keep reappearing?"

"Start with China," Rose says. She pulls out a thick three ring binder. "I thought Whitney might want to have a summit with the people at Broad Dynamics, so I've already been gathering information about the company. There's not much here, unfortunately..."

You nod at the binder. "That looks like much."

"This is the sum total of everything I could find. Bear in mind we're discussing a mega-conglomerate that had $1 trillion of liquid capital available to purchase Google outright. It could very well be the most cash-rich corporation on Earth. This? This binder is nothing on a corporation that size. It's like they're ghosts."

You shake your head. Rose begins to go into the details -- such a detail-oriented person, which annoys the hell out of you, but in times like these, it's a boon. But right now there's something else that's been bothering you. All day, all week -- all year.

>[x] Ask her if she remembers her love confession in the sewers beneath Darkbloom Analytics.

[ ] Don't ask.

"Hey," you say softly, interrupting Rose's description of the company's CEO -- a politburo higher-up turned capitalist named Li Xi. "Listen. There's something I wanted to ask about. Something that's been on my mind for the past few weeks..." you glance down again at your wedding band. "Maybe it's not a good time, but I just have to ask..."

"Go ahead," Rose says, kind of wagging her head in an expectant circle.

"Last year after all that insanity with Camelia, and Tyrus... and the bombs I had under the campus... when I had to go down into the sewers to defuse them. You remember all of that?"

"I'd be hard-pressed to forget it."

"Well. There's another piece of it, too. My memory of that night is..." You take a deep breath, pause, and then begin: "I was down there, working on defusing all the bombs. I was way behind, I was never going to make it in time. And there I was with the deadline about to hit -- when you showed up. You came down into the sewers."

Rose's eyes search your face, and her lips are partially parted in mute bafflement, as you go on.

"I told you to go away, but you insisted on staying. You said you wanted to help me defuse the bombs. And I kept saying -- go away, go away -- I said awful things -- but you told me you wouldn't go. You said you were in love with me."

A long moment passes.

"Do you remember that?" You ask.

Her answer is flat. "No. I rather think I would."

Another, even longer moment passes.

You ask, bluntly: "Is reality broken? Do you think?"

"Yeah. Reality is broken."

You rest your forehead in your palm.

"Wait," Rose drawls. "You mean to tell me you knew for over a year that I was in love with you? And you never--"

"Oh for f--"

"--never bothered to say, even once: 'by the way, Rose, me too'?"

"Will you stop already?"

"You unbelievable ass. You fucking prick!"

"I asked you about it!" You insist. You throw your hands up. "I asked you about that conversation just a few days later and you said you didn't remember."

"I didn't!"

"So in my head, at the time -- I'm thinking, well, she doesn't want to deal with that right now. How the fuck was I supposed to know that we got sucked into a tear in the fabric of spacetime? Tell me."

"Extraordinary. You are absolutely extraordinary, Alabaster. I cannot believe you."

"I'm extraordinary? No. You are."

Rose mockingly quotes your own words: "'She doesn't want to deal with that right now.' Wow. The one and only time you decide not to pester me with a conversation you think will get under my skin--"

"This is what you choose to bitch about? Fan-fucking-tacular, Rose. Reality is literally coming apart at the seams and you're still nagging at me because I didn't do exactly what you want."

"I really, honestly don't know why I bother with you sometimes."

Rose2 strides by. "Hey, I'm going to the snack bar. Do you two want anything?"

"I'll take some Shasta," you say, hardly glancing up.

"Diet for me," Rose says.

"Mkay," Rose2 hums. She scuttles past.

"Anyway," you go on, "it's not like you were throwing me any signals or anything. There's playing hard to get and then there's whatever the fuck it is you do all the time."

"You're such an ass. You are such a miserable fucking asshole."

"Bitch, bitch, bitch. We're married now. What else do you want?"

"For you to not act like such a--"

She stops mid-sentence. She turns in her seat, and gazes down the aisle. You poke your head out, too, realizing the same thing she just did.

"Didn't we leave her at home?" Rose breathes.

"Jesus Christ."

"I can't even -- how?"

You stand and stroll down the aisle to intercept your stowaway.

Rose2, arms full of snacks (for her) and drinks (for you), is startled when she turns away from the fridge to find you looming over her.

"Ally! Oh hey!"

"Hey."

She tries to hand you your drink, awkwardly shifting the rest of her goodies to one arm pressed against her prodigious chest to keep them steady. But you ignore her outstretched offering.

You frown at her. "Have you ever seen in an anime series, when the girl does something really stupid, and the MC whacks her over the head?"

She gazes vacantly up at the low, curved ceiling. "Hmm? Oh, sure. Yeah, I've seen that."

You whack her over the head.

"Oof-- what th-- rude!!"

You whack her again.

She steps back, curls her lips to one side of her face and stares reproachfully up at you. "That hurts! What the heck!"

"You're an idiot. Why aren't you back at home?"

"Cuz I wanted to come with you!"

You whack her.

"Oof-- stop it! That really hurts!"

"How did you get here?"

"I snuck into your suitcase!"

You peer around the thin partition of the snack bar towards the rear of the fuselage. Your suitcase lies on the ground in front of the luggage bin, open -- and empty. There wasn't room enough for both Rose2 and your personal things in one suitcase, apparently.

You whack her again. She drops her snacks. "Ow! I get it, okay? Geez."

>[x] She needs more punishment.

>[x] That's enough. Debrief with Whitney and Rose on the upcoming summit.

You grab Rose2's wrist and tug her towards the nearest table. Sitting, you pull her down with you, and get her on her tummy over your lap.

"A-Ally?"

"This is for your own good." You flip up the frilled hem of her skirt, revealing the face of Hello Kitty on a pink cotton background, stretched tight over her ass.

"Ally!!"

You spank her. You don't hold back -- you raise your hand high over your head and bring it down with all your force. Her ass jiggles through her panties like half-set gelatin. She she tenses up, caterwauling. "Owww! Ow, ow, ow!"

Armstrong, who's at a seat nearby, cranes his neck and watches the spectacle for a few moments. Then, laughing to himself, he turns back to his drinks.

"Are you done?" Rose2 wails, her eyes full of tears, her voice forlorn.

"Nope."

You spank her again, and a third time, and a fourth. She screams bloody murder, balling up her fists and kicking her legs like a disobedient brat. You grab her thick calves, squeezing them threateningly, to still her kicking. You continue the spanking.

Of course the unholy racket she's raising has drawn attention: from your blushing bride and your tomboy fuckbuddy alike. They're standing there in front of you, watching on.

"When did Rosie get here?" Whitney asks, still a bit groggy from her nap.

"You do understand that this is basically a reward for her behavior, right?" Rose demands. "You'll only encourage her to keep acting up like this."

"You're projecting again," you tell her. You keep spanking the now softly sobbing Rose2.

"Are you gonna fuck her?" Whitney asks, excited.

"No. THAT would be a reward."

Rose2 mewls desperately.

"Too bad," Whitney says. "But... this is making you hot, right? You do wanna fuck, right?"

You crook your finger and beckon her towards you. She laughs, and is already out of her dress shirt before she closes the distance between you.

Rose purrs in disapproval. "You know your wife is right here, right? Why are you--"

Whitney blows a raspberry. "So possessive. Like you weren't rubbing your pussy all over my face the other night. If you get to fuck me, Ally DEFINITELY gets to fuck me... get over yourself."

You push Rose2 off your lap like a sack of potatoes, for her to lie on the ground, nursing her bruised ass and ego. She's still gently crying. Seeing her cry makes you really hard, for reasons that you can't fathom. Whitney bends over, squeezes your cock through your pants, and leers at you. "God, I love your dick. Cum inside me a whole lot today, okay? We can join the mile high club..."

"Yeah," you grunt. "Get on top."

She straddles you, as you unzip, and tug your leaky prick free of its tight confines.

Rose2 paws at your knees. "Alllyyyyy," she cries pathetically. "I came all this way 'cause I wanted to be with you..."

Rose yanks her back by the collar. "Shut up. The grown-ups are talking."

"I--"

"We've only got a few hours before we touch down in Beijing, and I need to talk about important grown-up stuff with them. So keep quiet."

"B-b-but--" Rose2 blubbers.

Rose pulls her to her knees, and then forces her to lie across the seats opposite you and Whitney. Even now, Whitney, fully naked, is sinking her hot velvety cunt down on your cock. Her springy, spongy hole is such a lovely hole to fuck. Especially when you don't have to do any work, as now: she ropes her arms around your neck and bounces up and down with sheer determination. You kiss each other wetly.

You catch a glimpse, over Whitney's shoulder, of Rose sitting on Rose2's head. From the waist down, Rose is naked, and her dripping pussy is on full display -- resting atop a stunned, tearful Rose2's mouth.

"Make yourself useful for a change," Rose says. "Lick my cunt. Don't stop until I say so."

Rose2 tries to speak, a protest maybe, so Rose spanks her. Only unlike you, she doesn't spank Rose2's butt -- she spanks Rose2's crotch, vicious open handed slaps that resound through the metal fuselage.

Rose2 gets the message. She begins to lick your wife out.

"Ahhh," Rose sighs contentedly. "See? The bitch is good for something after all. I needed a little stress relief..."

"Me too," Whitney says, wagging her tongue and staring deeply into your eyes. Her pussy is so snug around you.

"We really should talk, though," Rose says, voice catching. "There's a few things about Broad Dynamics you should know..."

"Ooh, a fuck-and-talk," Whitney chuckles. "I like it." She bounces extra hard on your dick a few times, making a squelching sluicing noise that sounds deliciously lewd.

Rose, riding Rose2's face like it's her personal toy, drops her binder down on the table, opens it up, and starts to read aloud. As if it's the most casual thing in the world: dominating a scared, stupid, defenseless girl while describing the details of a business competitor. Rose is way more cruel than even you are -- you love it.

You help turn Whitney around so she's fucking you in a reverse cowgirl. She holds the edge of the table and nods along to Rose's debrief. But her eyes are rolling to the back of her skull and you can tell she's more focused on the hot cock spurting precum up her womb than the minutiae of Broad Dynamics. Oh well, you kind of like this -- and you're a better multitasker, so you're getting some benefit from it, even as you enjoy the grippy insides of Whitney's cunt and the relief it provides your aching nuts.

When Rose2 forgets herself and starts to moan and cry again, Rose shuts her up with a different tactic. Absentmindedly, she reaches back and gets her hand down Rose2's panties. She starts fingering her, not even looking down while she digitally rapes the poor girl. One hand busy in Rose2's underwear, the other holding a pen that she uses to scan the pages in front of her. She keeps reading from her binder: how Broad Dynamics incorporated from nothing, how it's probably a straw company helmed by the Chinese government itself -- heavy stuff. And all the while she's getting her cunt off all over Rose2's face. Rose2 grips Rose's thick thighs from underneath, but is powerless to resist, and her eyes shimmer with unwanted pleasure as Rose molests her.

"You're such a bitch," Whitney coos.

"Uh huh. So Li Xi got his start as an envoy to the Soviet Union -- I'm thinking that cannot be a coincidence, given what we've learned -- so -- nnn~"

Even Rose can't stay 100% focused, as Rose2's skillful mouth makes her shudder with pleasure.

"Cum inside me!" Whitney yells without warning, ass bucking double-time in your lap. The table rattles beneath her. "Fuck, I love this. Squirt your fucking cum in me!"

"Whitney, please pay attention..." Rose chides. She gyrates on Rose2's face and mashes her pussy against her lips.

"Oh, fuck that stupid bullshit already! I just wanna get cummed in! Fuck..."

Her head droops, her fingers curl up around the table's edge, and she humps you without shame or inhibition.

"You can go on," you tell Rose, your voice a low growl as Whitney brings you closer and closer to cumming. "I'm listening."

"I..." Rose begins. But then she stops, sighs. "Oh, nevermind. We may as well cum first, right?"

"Sure," you agree.

Rose runs her palms down her tummy. She pulls her blouse off, baring her supple tits, and tweaks her own nipples. Rose2, pussy no longer being violated, whines.

"I told you to shut the fuck up," Rose snarls.

Rose2 shuts up.

"Good~" Rose says.

"Cum cum cum cum cum," Whitney pants deliriously. "Cum!"

You stand, forcing Whitney to adopt a doggy position. You have to stoop to keep your head from hitting the low ceiling. Hands holding her hips, you start pounding her like she's one of your disposable onaholes. Whitney's head bangs hard against the table and knocks Rose's binder to the ground, but none of you care about that.

Rose settles back, directing her gaze up, and locks eyes with you. Meanwhile she uses her hands to rub her clit and her ass at the same time, as Rose2 licks her out. It's not a typical marriage, no. You're getting your cock off with someone else's pussy and she's getting her cunt off with someone else's mouth. But still, you're cumming in unison. And so that's almost like fucking by proxy. Beneath you, Whitney hugs herself, shivers, and creams all over your sawing cock. And beneath Rose, her victim is forced to drink her squirting cum. Seeing that wonderful sight, you bellow, and let loose, and spray Whitney full of the jizz she begged you for. You and Rose grin at each other, each smug, and each enjoying a powerful, wet, messy orgasm.

---

Rose2, still sniffling, lies curled up, her head in your lap, her fists balled. You pet her hair tenderly with long, gentle strokes.

"Behave yourself while we're in China," you tell her.

"Y-yes..." She nuzzles your crotch.

"What's this guy's name again?" Whitney asks. She's kicked back, still naked, legs crossed, sucking on a Tootsie pop.

"Li Xi," Rose replies. She's got her blouse on, but she hasn't bothered to clothe herself from the waist down yet.

"Luigi?"

"Li Xi."

"It's, like, where's Mario? Right? I don't wanna deal with second banana here. Gay."

"Whitney, what did we say about using that word that way?"

"Gaaaay."

Rose purses her lips and gives you a look as if to say "are you going to do anything?" You shrug at her.

Armstrong heads back. He's no longer anything like shocked to see such uninhibited displays -- just bemused. "We're touching down in a few minutes. Might want to grab some fig leaves, huh? There's gonna be press there. Don't wanna have your bare asses plastered all over international news."

"Why not?" Whitney says. You're a little disturbed that she seems genuinely curious.

You force her to her feet and toss her clothes at her. Reluctantly, she dresses.

---

You wake up nude, with Vivian's head still in your crotch. That's how she slept: with her nose nestled right where the sun don't shine. On her dreaming face she wears a goofy grin. You've come to with whatever the female equivalent of morning wood is -- a first, for you at least. And as Vivian stirs, she can't help noticing it. She begins again to get to work, and you run your fingers through her silken hair, and it all promises to turn into a redux of last night.

Unfortunately then, you hear a buzzing noise from somewhere down on the ground, and Vivian, getting up, tells you it's her phone. She digs through her purse, looking as disgruntled as you are, and finds it.

"Well? Who interrupted us?" You ask.

"Ms. Kay Vera."

"Ugh. Journalists."

Vivian frowns at you. She shows you the screen:

>There's a famous mathematician I always liked by the name of Georg Cantor. I read that he spent most of his time doing research in his university's basement... and the conditions down there were real torture.

>You know a lot about him, right? Let me in, maybe we can have a chat.

"Subtle," you say.

"Shall we invite her inside?"

"Well, that depends on how much ol' Charlotte feels the spirit of hospitality this morning."

"I am asking you," Vivian says. "Not Mrs. Mallory. What do you think?"

>[x] Let her in.

[ ] Keep her out.

Kay barges in just as soon as you unlock and open the front door.

Charlotte, rushing in from the kitchen, is aghast. "Who invited you?" She turns to you. "Why are you letting a reporter into this house at a time like this?"

Kay shuts the door behind her. "I'm not here as a reporter," she says.

"Bull," Charlotte cuts in. "People like you are always looking for a scoop."

She laughs derisively. "'What a scoop!' Is that the kind of thing you imagine I sit around saying at a time like this?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's not."

"You literally just did," you counter.

"Literally go fuck yourself. I -- who even are you? Lord in heaven."

You smirk at her.

"Are you people insane?" Kay demands. "Did you honestly kidnap --" she glances this way and that, leans in, brings her voice to a whisper. "Did you honestly kidnap a member of your company's own board? What the fuck?"

"Dalton Cantor murdered Sable Guiteau," Vivian says. "He helped kidnap some of our own, as well. Renee Carte and Alex Best. This is retaliation -- and a search for information."

"So this place is your own personal Abu Ghraib now, huh?" Kay says.

"Know a lot about that place?" You say.

Kay wheels on you. "What?"

"I said, do you know a lot about that place? Abu Ghraib?"

"Yooou..." Kay drawls. "Do I know--" but she stops, trails off. She moves on: "Where is he?"

"Downstairs, not that it's any of your business," Charlotte says. "Keep yourself out of this."

"I can't. I'm gonna get killed too over this shit. I'm in way too deep as it is. You're going to have Mara Darkbloom bringing the wrath of god down on all of us. You fucking psychos!"

You somehow can't help but notice the barest hint of a smile on her lips despite her accusatory words.

---

Charlotte turns off the music. Dalton is half-batty, shivering like he's got hypothermia. His gaze is unfocused and jumpy, jittery. He shakes his head this way and that as if delirious. He tries to speak through chattering teeth: "P-p-p-please... I... know nothing..."

"Fucking Christ," Kay breathes.

"I d-d-don't know where she is, but... I'm in c-c-contact... she... expects a c-c-call from me t-today..."

"She's not getting it," you say.

"If she doesn't get that call, she'll know something's up," Kay says. "She'll know we know -- she'll know we've got him. And then what happens?"

Charlotte frowns. "She's right."

"Yeah?" You say. "And who's to say he's telling the truth. Maybe he's trying to talk his way out of it with a load of horseshit. How is it he doesn't know where Mara went, but he's still in touch?"

Kay flicks your forehead. "Dolt. Isn't that how you would do it if you were Mara? Exactly for this fucking situation? She left him at DA knowing this could happen. Of course she didn't tell him where she went."

You growl at her, but even Vivian is against you on this one: "Yes. That makes sense. That being the case -- maybe it is time to dispose of Mr. Cantor."

"N-no!" Dalton cries. "No! I -- can help. I'll help you!"

"Shut up," you tell him.

"I don't know where she is -- but I'll stay in touch with her -- and help you find out -- please! I swear it. Vivian, you know I have a wife -- I have children -- please..."

"Fuck..." Kay breathes. She ushers you all from the room and shuts the door behind her, shutting off Dalton's continued pleading too. Out in the main area of the basement, with Saul and Nelson crowding around, Kay explains:

"The way I see it, we have three options. Option A. We take Dalton up on his offer. He says he'll turn triple agent. Of course the risks there are obvious. Option B. We get whatever info we think we can from him, and --" She draws a finger across her throat. You get the message. "Of course as soon as he's dead, Mara will know it. And who knows what she does in response. She could kill Renee and Alex, for a start."

Vivian winces.

"She won't do that," Nelson says. "She took them because she needs them."

"Fine. Then she'll just kill us, then," Kay says.

Charlotte shakes her head.

"Option C," Kay says. "We keep or kill Dalton, but in any case we keep him out of contact with Mara. And try to make Mara think he's still alive, by posing as him."

"How?" You ask.

"Fucked if I know. I'm just spitballing. If you fuck that up, the risks are the same. And by the way, you need to convince his family he's still around too. Because as soon as there's a missing person report..." She trails off. "If there isn't one already. Morons."

"Well?" Vivian asks. "What is our course of action?"

You all glance uneasily around.

[ ] Option A. Turn Dalton into a triple agent.

[ ] Option B. Finish interrogating Dalton and kill him.

>[x] Option C. Keep Dalton alive for now, and pose as him for any contact he needs with Mara.

"Me personally?" Nelson says. "I vote option C."

"I agree," Charlotte says.

"How can we thread that needle?" Saul says, hands on his hips. "Kay has a good point here. We not only need to fool Mara. We have to make everyone in his life think he's still around, even though we've got him chained up in the rumpus room."

"Would you please stop calling your fuck-dungeon a rumpus room?" You say. "That's some Mormon cult shit."

"I don't recall asking you a goddamn thing," Saul spits. "If you don't like this house, there's the door."

"We have Sand Reckoner, don't we?" Nelson says. "SR can make the world's most convincing deep fakes. We can use it to string his family along for at least a week or two. Make them think he's on business somewhere."

"I just got the government to climb down out of our assholes," Saul says. "You want them back up there again? Turning Sand Reckoner on is a great way to do that."

"I have an idea," Vivian says. "But I will need to confer with Cerise Soliloquy. Did she depart for China as well?"

"No," Charlotte says. "She's at her girlfriend's, getting ready for the wedding."

"That's one way to put it," Kay says. "But how many times do you have to practice for the honeymoon before you're ready?"

Saul snickers, and Charlotte tsks him.

"Please tell her to come at once," Vivian says. "And tell her to bring Anna with her. This is paramount."

---

The plane sets down and taxis across the runway. Before she puts on her undies, Whitney straddles the sides of your chair with both feet -- half-standing, half-squatting in the cramped space above you, with one hand braced against the curved ceiling to stay balanced. She presents her naked mound to you. "Kiss my cunt for good luck," she says playfully.

What else can you do? "Muwah."

"Heeeh. Awesome."

They've rolled out the red carpet for you. Literally. You descend red-carpeted portable stairs leading to a red-carpeted runner, at the end of which sits a podium lined with mics and group of dignitaries who bow and shake your hands each in turn. Alternating Chinese and American flags serve as the backdrop to the tableau. A few yards away on the tarmac, behind a cordon, are reporters, mostly Asian but with several foreigners mixed in -- European, American, Latin, Arab, African even -- jostling and snapping flashbulbs. When the last dignitary shakes Whitney's hand and someone informs her that this is Chen Jining, mayor of Beijing, Whitney finishes the handshake by stepping back, standing tall, and saluting him.

Rose gently presses the crook of Whitney's elbow and lowers her salute on her behalf. "Don't do that," Rose whispers.

"Ms. Darkbloom! What do you think of Beijing!" Comes a shouted question.

Whitney takes the podium, gripping the edges and leaning into the mics. "Beauitful airport," she says. "Definitely a high class airport. One of the best."

You glance back. Rose2, who you told to wait inside until the press junket is over, watches sadly from the portal atop the staircase. Maybe you were too rough on her back there.

"What do you plan to do at Broad Dynamics?" A reporter asks.

"Many things. We're looking at many different things," Whitney says.

"Do you know about the death of Sable Guiteau? Is this trip related? Are you still working on Sand Reckoner?"

Armstrong jumps in lest Whitney say something fatally stupid here. He's got a fantastic skill: making himself be heard without microphones. "We're going to have a fruitful, mutually beneficial trip. The discussions we have tomorrow should strengthen the bond between our companies." What bond? Oh well, it's a nice-sounding bromide.

"Are you discussing a buyout? Does Broad Dynamics want to buy Darkbloom Analytics?"

"There is no talk between our companies of a buyout at this time," Armstrong answers -- technically true.

"Would you be open to a buyout, Ms. Darkbloom?" Another asks. Sneaky sneaky.

Whitney laughs. "We have a lot to talk about. We're looking at a lot of different things. A buyout is a very complicated process, you know... not many people know this. But that's something that if we were to do it, it would take a big process. We'll see what happens."

Rose is doing her best not to literally detonate like a shaken phial of nitroglycerin. She doesn't like to let Whitney off the leash to speak publicly in such an uncontrolled environment -- for good reason.

A softball coming Whitney's way, now: "Will you sightsee in Beijing while you're here? Anyplace you want to go?"

"I dunno. Sure. Maybe."

"We have a beautiful city here," the mayor says, laughing jovially in a way that's also patently fake. "We would graciously accommodate your sightseeing tour. I recommend the Forbidden City."

"Bwahaha. I was reading about that place, on Wikipedia. Did you know it gets like 20 million visitors every year?"

"I am well aware of the popularity--" the mayor begins. He's visibly a bit annoyed to have Whitney regurgitating infodesk stats at him.

But Whitney has even less social grace than her little sister does, and is undeterred. "20 million! So I dunno what's so forbidden about it. 20 million tourists. That sounds like the least forbidden place on Earth. They should call it the Not-Forbidden City. The Allowed City." She points at the mayor. "Write that down, you can use that. The Allowed City."

Leave it to Whitney to fuck up a pitch lobbed gently over the plate. And then it gets worse:

"I'd rather see somewhere less touristy, you know?" She says. She rubs the back of her head. "I'm sure there's lots of stuff to do in China. Maybe I could even go to a different city... Shanghai or Taiwan or something."

Rose's eyes bulge when she hears this.

"Taiwan?" A Chinese reporter asks.

"Sure."

"Shut up," Rose whispers. "Shut up, shut up, shut up."

Another reporter presses her: "Are you saying Taiwan is part of China, in your view?"

"Shutupshutupshutup"

Whitney stares at the clouds for a moment. "Huh? I think so? I mean... Taiwan is part of China, right?" Whitney must find encouragement in the expressions on the faces of the majority Chinese press corps gathered here because she adds with much more conviction: "Yeah. Taiwan's in China."

Rose, rubbing her eyes with the heels of both hands, turns and goes back into the plane. As she pushes past Rose2, she mutters: "This is a nightmare. This is a living nightmare... I can't..."

"We appreciate your curiosity," Armstrong booms, "but we're extremely jetlagged, as you might be able to tell, and looking to kick our feet back. Please understand. Direct any further questions to our designated press department -- we really need to go and settle down in our hotel now!"

He laughs, but his tone communicates quite clearly that there will be no more live Q&A. He's as well aware as Rose that Whitney already screwed the pooch enough for one day.

As the dignitaries direct you towards waiting limousines, Rose2 steps out -- and behind her, Rose The First. Descending from the plane, Rose is pale and frightened. "Whitney... there's a-- phone call, for you... in the plane..."

"Huh?" Whitney says, one hand already gripping the open back door of her limo. "Tell whoever it is that they can fucking wait. I'm on important business."

"It's the -- it's the President."

Whitney sighs. "Fuck. Always calling at the worst times. Fine... guess I better go take it, huh."

She trots back up the stairs. You and Rose watch her, then turn to face one another and share an uncertain, lingering look.

"Should I go in there, or do you want to?" You finally ask.

She thinks for a turn. Then: "Maybe it would be best to let Whitney handle this one on her own..."

Rose is probably right. Those two have some kind of weird special rapport, and trying to artificially guide Whitney through their interaction could only make that interaction turn out worse.

---

Cerise sits with elbows propped up on the dining room table of the Mallory house, expression severe from behind interlaced fingers.

"I gave the implant to Alabaster Soliloquy," Vivian says. "That is the last I saw of it. Has he destroyed it?"

"No," Cerise says. "But he doesn't have it anymore."

"Where is it?"

"He gave it to Renee. We were gonna put it inside a -- nevermind. She still had it with her when she got taken."

"Oh God," Charlotte says. "That means Mara has it now, doesn't it?"

Nelson reels in his chair, like he's been pushed back by a gale. He runs his hand through his long, frizzy hair. "Just when I thought we couldn't get any boned-er."

"There goes Plan D, huh?" Kay says.

"Maybe it's for the best," Cerise tries. She hugs Gal close, who's staring madly at the grain of one of the table's legs. "Doing this surgery is a little rough for her... for obvious reasons..."

Vivian is far from pleased. "This is unacceptable. We've let our enemies abscond with father's consciousness."

"We didn't do shit," Cerise says. "Don't go finger-pointing now. It's not helpful. Besides, even if we could get that thing inside Dalton, there's no guarantee of when or if that asshole father of yours would rear his head. It's not a reliable way to keep Dalton under control."

"i could do it" Gal offers.

"What?" Cerise says.

"dr. carte modified the device... to lower its power output... but if i removed the limiters... maybe darkbloom would be there on a permanent basis..."

"This is all academic anyway," Saul says. "We don't have it. And we need to make a decision now."

>[x] Tell the group that you have the implant. (Sub-choice: [x]Put it in Dalton / Don't put it in Dalton)

[ ] Don't reveal it.

"Where have you been, missy?!"

You try to sidestep past Mom, but she blocks your path. You try to sidestep the other way, but she blocks your path the other way.

"I told you, Mom. I went to Raisin Brant's place to plan the culture festival with him. Important StuCo bullshit. You know."

"Is that so? I called him last night and he said you weren't there!"

Raisin Brant, you little fucking snitch. You make a mental note to fuck him up the next time you see him.

"He's mistaken. I was there."

"What kind of answer is that? Do you think I'm stupid?"

"It's true. He's got this memory issue. It's very sad. But we need to be understanding of his condition -- it's the right thing to do."

Mom sniffs at the air, and makes a sour face. "You smell like a whorehouse, Amber. Have you been prostituting yourself?"

"Yes," you say, seriously, and without hesitation.

Mom is gobsmacked.

You lace your fingers behind your head, arching your back. "This gig economy is vicious. It's why we need to overturn capitalism."

She swats you with her ladle.

"Ow! Fuck!"

"You're grounded."

"You cannot be--"

"No backtalk!"

[ ] Tell her what's going on.

>[x] Sneak out without getting her involved.

---

The ride back to the hotel is awkward and silent, with Whitney wearing a disgruntled expression the entire time. Sitting beside her in the limo, you finally ask: "Well? How did it go?--"

She punches the sidewall on her right. "This white house is horseshit! It's a horseshit white house, Ally--"

"But tell us how you really feel," Rose says.

"That fucker pisses me off. I'm not supposed to be here in China all of a sudden, why? 'My poll numbers. My poooooollllll nuuuuuumberrrrrs.' Fucking A. Like I give a shit if you're more unpopular than you already are. You know what I said? I said look at my fucking poll numbers, buddy. No. Look at them. More people approve of the common cold than approve of Whitney J. Darkbloom, how do you like that? So fuck anyone else's poll numbers. Christ on a bicycle. It's not my fault no one else knows how to deal with China."

"I guess it didn't go so good, then!" Rose2 summarizes, and tries to force a laugh.

Armstrong raises his palm just above his lap, and waves at Rose2 while shaking his head, to silently communicate: "don't try to defuse this."

Fazil clears his throat. "I for one eagerly await the hotel," he says. "I am being told it is a five-star establishment. In the past when I have gone on holiday abroad, I have only been capable to afford two- or occasionally three-star lodgings."

"Huh?" Whitney says, gawking at him. "What am I paying you?"

"I receive a salary of $150,000 per annum," Fazil says. "A tidy sum, although the cost of living in the city is quite high."

"Okay. I'm multiplying that by 10," she says absentmindedly, and turns again to stare out the window, chin on palm.

Fazil is speechless.

--

You open the safe in your bedroom, the one behind the photo of everyone's favorite war criminal. Inside are the two implants, just as you left them, still glowing creepily. But something's not right. The single stand of your own hair that you stuck to the inside of the safe's door is missing. Someone, not you, has been inside this safe since yesterday. Couldn't have been Mom, since she could never keep a secret that big. Couldn't have been Will, either -- he knows there's a safe here, but he's too much of a moron to get inside it. That leaves only some really disturbing possibilities.

Downstairs, you find Mom in the kitchen, stewing over a pot of stew. It smells rank and looks even worse. She should really stick to dessert. You once read about a man who lived on nothing but Twinkies and maintained his weight. If he can do it, you can definitely live on nothing but her confectionery. But that's a conversation for another day.

"Mom... I've reconsidered."

"Your life as a harlot, I hope?"

"No. I'm still a slut. Which is why I've decided to move into Alabaster Soliloquy's sex mansion. Will you be so kind as to join me?"

"I..." she stammers. You're laying a lot on her, here, so best to give her a few moments to process.

"We'll be safer there, I think," you add.

"That's what I tried to tell you!"

"Congrats. I'm convinced."

"Hmmph. You are unbelievable."

"Can you be packed tonight?"

You're pressing too hard now -- she's suspicious. "Why are you so antsy about this all of a sudden?"

You try for only half of the truth. "I'm scared. I've been scared." Then, a total lie: "I saw some weird guys on my way back home, and I think maybe they were following me." You reiterate the main point: "I know we've got security, but I'm sure we'd be safer at Alabaster's..."

She blows a stray bang from her face. "Fine. We can go live with Alabaster. But don't you let me catch you doing shady things with him!"

"Of course not."

"That boy is a pervert."

"Oh, trust me, I know it."

She squints at you.

"I'm gonna go take a nap," you tell her. Of course you climb out your window as soon as you're back upstairs. Clyde, one of your family's security detail, is really cool, and likes Big Macs. Freshly printed, fraudulent coupons for free Big Mac combos are all it takes to keep him quiet about the fact that you're sneaking around.

---

On the way to the room you're sharing with your girls, Rose wheels her beige suitcase behind her (how you envy having a suitcase of personal things to take along). Whitney lets her bellhop tote her suitcase, which is almost as big as the poor, likely underpaid sap is, and possibly heavier than he is too. His knees buckle and wobble as you traverse the long, gilded and brocaded corridors on the top floor of this Chinese Ritz.

Whitney's eyes light up when she sees the suite.

"Holy fuck. There's... fishes! There's fishes above our heads!" She points excitedly upwards.

She's right. Above you, the ceiling is glass, and an entire aquarium of exotic tropical fish flit to and fro.

"Sugoi!" Rose2 chimes in, clapping.

"There's a Jacuzzi!" Whitney squeals. Again, she's right: it sits at the top of a short rise in its own slate-tiled corner, the walls on either side made entirely of pristine glass, with a view to the evening cityscape.

"Kakkoii!" Rose2 squeaks, jumping up and down.

"Shut the front door!! An entire bar!!" Whitney yells. Yep, an entire bar. The bellhop, setting Whitney's bag down at the head of the room and rubbing the small of his back, says in broken English that you can have a bartender come up and mix drinks too, if you like.

"Maybe later," you tell him, and give him a generous tip, and send him on his way.

As you shut the door, Rose warns: "We can assume anywhere we go on this trip is bugged. This room especially. So watch what you say." She gives Whitney a meaningful look -- that warning was principally for her sake.

"Bugged?" Whitney repeats. She blinks a few times, then, getting a devilish look on her face, she says: "Whatever. All they'll see is a lot of fuckin'."

She jabs Rose in the side, near her tummy, with both index fingers. Rose jolts back -- ticklish there.

"I don't really want to put on a peep show for Chinese spies," you say.

"I agree with my husband," Rose says. You're far from 100% used to hearing yourself referred to that way.

"Psh," Whitney says. "Prudes." Without warning, she quickly strips -- bare-ass naked -- and marches around the room literally slapping her own butt.

"Get a load of this American ass!" She calls to the skies, turning in circles, to make sure she picks up on any listening devices. "Feast your eyes, 'cause it's as close as you'll ever get!"

When she's had her fun, she falls back on the mega-king-sized bed, arms and legs akimbo. Her body sinks down into the super-soft mattress. She stares at the fish swimming above her, laughing to herself. "Heeeh. I bet they're all jizzing in their pants right about now."

Rose is appalled. "Haven't you ever heard of kompromat?"

"Kom-what?"

"Blackmail material," you say.

"Can't blackmail a girl with no shame!" Whitney chirps. "Ohhh nooo, Whitney Darkbloom got naked in her own hotel room. Scandal of the century. Pff. Let the world see my tits. I'm proud of 'em."

You sometimes wish you had a mind as simple as Whitney's.

From the north window of your hotel room, you can see way down to the mosaic tiled thoroughfare of an open-air mall. It's as ritzy as the rest of your vicinity, with high-end stores of designer fashion and bespoke art. It's got the chintzy sort of luxury sheen that new money goes nuts for -- new money like Whitney, say. Save of course for one glaring eyesore: right in the middle of it, like a thing dropped from the sky, sits a ramshackle thatch house. You guess it's one bad storm away from collapsing under its own weight. Shoppers route themselves around it like a stream splitting around a boulder and converging.

"Whoaaa," Whitney breathes, sidling up -- still naked. "Is that a museum, or what?"

"Just a house," you say, staring down at it. "I assume the owner is a holdout. When they built this place, he wouldn't sell to the developers... so they built right around him."

"Freaky deaky," Rose2 says.

"Happens all the time. It's called a nail house."

"Heeeh," Whitney wheezes. "I love it. From now on, our mansion is officially the Nail House."

"It's getting a little late," Rose says gently. "We have a big day tomorrow."

"Buzzkill over here," Whitney says, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder to indicate Rose. "I'm not sleepy. How about you?"

You shrug.

"Rosie?" Whitney asks.

Rose2 shakes her head. "I'm too excited to sleep!"

>[x] Go out and see the surrounding city a bit.

[ ] Stay in.

"Atsui... atsui..." Rose2 sighs as you walk. She trudges along theatrically to show her enervation, shoulders slouched, head drooping.

"God, why is it so hot here?" Whitney groans, fanning herself. "It's 11 PM! Isn't China supposed to be cold?"

"China is -- it's huge," you say, almost disbelieving what you're hearing. Where did she get the idea into her empty skull that China is 'cold'? "It's... so big. It's one of the biggest countries on the planet. It has... a range of different biomes--"

"Biomes, pfft. Well this biome is giving me a major case of swamp ass."

You shudder.

---

Fazil helps Whitney navigate buying a number of $20,000 suits and accessories. She wants you to get some stuff too, Rose also, but you share the same aversion to this profligate spending -- and you're sure the quality isn't up to par even despite the enormous pricetags. Rose2 is less averse and ends up with a pile of new cosplay options that she can't wait to change into. Pretty soon you're wandering from shop to shop with a candy-cotton-pink catgirl in tow.

Fazil himself, newly flush with cash, also makes some purchases. In one corner shop, he finds a fez that costs -- no joke -- $15,000. He waxes poetic about its quality as he lifts it from the display case and turns it over in his hands. You cannot tell the difference between it and the fez you see him in every day. But the way he lights up while stroking its velvety material, the way he beams when he fits it to his head, the way he exclaims that he feels like an entirely new man wearing it, makes you almost support his purchase. Almost. No matter, though. He gets it anyway, at Whitney's behest.

In a shop of life-sized statues, Whitney falls in love with an intricately carved onyx horse. It's about 8 feet tall, rearing back on its hind legs, depicted with sinews and veins so lifelike you expect the flesh to give when you touch it. In the saddle sits an intimidating onyx man in full armor, with a sword, and a scowl, and a Fu Manchu stache. Doubtlessly some storied Chinese general of a storied Chinese dynasty back in the days of fending off Mongol invasions. Which is why you cringe when Whitney, clambering atop, hollers loud enough for everyone in the store to hear: "Check it out! I'm Genghis Khan!"

"Whitney, get down--" you start.

"I'm gonna buy this thing! How much is it?"

Rose is pale green when she reads the price tag: "$100,000..."

"Fuck yeah! Giddyup!"

She kicks her feet. The statue totters -- one way, then the other -- then it falls. Whitney falls with it. And then she's lying amidst shards of onyx. The goddamn thing was hollow all along. Some value for six figures.

"I'm going to vomit," Rose says.

You help Whitney to her feet even as stunned patrons and livid employees surround you. Thankfully she's unhurt, just a couple scrapes -- and she's smiling stupidly. "Guess I did buy it, huh?"

You whack her the same way you whacked Rose2 on the plane.

On your way back to the hotel with more shopping bags than any person should ever need to carry, your path takes you past the nail house you saw earlier. You and your little coterie make like the rest of the people here, and route yourselves around it while pretending like it doesn't exist.

On your way past, you glimpse a grizzled old man sitting out front, on a tattered old stool, smoking a cigarette. He looks like he's got a bad case of cataracts, maybe bad enough to render him fully blind. But beneath the milky white film coating his eyes -- the irises are a brilliant blue.

You're not a geneticist, but you know that's not a common trait in this part of the world.

He looks at you -- although it's more like he's looking through you. You wonder again whether he sees anything at all. It freezes you in your tracks all the same. Rose is the first to notice, and stops alongside you, touching your arm. "Alabaster?"

Whitney, Rose2, and Fazil stop now too, several paces ahead already, and turn back.

The man stands, and goes into his house.

>[x] Go speak with him.

[ ] Leave it be.

You knock on his door. There's a long, long moment of rustling from within, as he shuffles through the tiny house, and finally opens the door. The smell of the dingy home beyond is without compare to anything you've ever experienced -- not unpleasant but not pleasant either, just alien, in a way you can't pinpoint. You're not sure if it's food or potpourri or something else, but it's definitely tinged with cigarette smoke as well.

Fazil translates for the man: "He asks why we have come."

"I just want to ask you a couple questions," you tell him. "Can I come in?"

He steps aside.

---

You're situated across from him at a small, round wood table, hands on your knees. He hacks and coughs, and you take in the rest of the house while he struggles against his own lungs. The olive green stucco walls, the grimy linoleum of the kitchen peeling at the corners, the framed photos so yellowed with age that they look like they were taken in sepia tone. A stained stainless steel pot of something sizzles on the gas stovetop.

"What happened to your eyes?" You ask him.

He considers this. Through Fazil, he responds: "He is blind. He has a medical condition."

"Ally, let's go," Whitney says -- but you wave her off without looking at her. "What kind of medical condition?"

His voice is a dull monotone, without any apparent emotion to it.

"He says it is caused by his evil eye."

You slump your head and let out a long breath through your nose.

"He wishes to know whether you also have an evil eye."

"I do."

He asks something, and Fazil answers for you -- then informs you -- "he asked if you were also blind."

"Where did your evil eye come from?" You ask him.

The man's voice becomes a droning hum that blends with the electric fan in the living room to create an awful static in the background of Fazil's on-the-fly translation:

"He is not sure. He volunteered for medical tests some time ago. He was in need of money, to fight the development of this retail area... one day he was taken somewhere far away... put under sedation... he woke up with his evil eye, and never again did he see the people running the medical tests."

There's a pause, before the man adds something: "He says he is not truly blind. But he sees differently."

"How?"

"He says he does not see the world as he did when he was a young man. When he was young, he saw the forms of things, as all people do, but could never discern what was beneath. Now in his old age, he sees only what hides beneath. But for this he has lost sight of the forms. It is like living life beneath a smoky glass."

"You see us?" You ask.

"Yes. You have here a wife who loves you very much, and two more who love you maybe even more. A diligent and devout employee who is loyal--" (Fazil stops to thank the man in his own tongue) "--you are on an important trip, which will determine the course your future life takes."

"What do you see for me?" You ask.

"He says you have lost and gained so much that you must be dizzy with it. You are stranded on the top of Mt. Everest. You cannot come down. So what will you do? The only choices left are to await the end... or to build for yourself a ladder as tall again as the mountain, and pierce the dome of heaven."

"What's in heaven?"

"God -- he supposes." Fazil glances your way. "He cannot say for certain. He has never been."

Rose pipes up. "The people who experimented on you -- were they Chinese or American? Or something else?"

"Chinese."

"What did they tell you about themselves?" She asks.

"Nothing."

"How long ago was this?" She asks.

"He estimates a decade."

"We should go," Whitney says again, and more seriously this time.

"I want to give you some money," you tell him, in a sudden convulsion of charity. This man was victimized, just like you and so many others. "You should live somewhere better than this."

"They offered him plenty of money to leave when they built this place. He wants to remain here. It is where he knew his wife. Now she is gone, and he is at the end of his life as well. He does not wish to leave."

You purse your lips and nod. You heave yourself up, turn for the door. As you get towards the threshold, the man speaks again.

"He wishes to know whether an evil eye can be fixed."

"I'll let you know if I ever find out," you promise him.

---

You sit Indian style on Dalton's chest. His eyes are saucers, but there's not much he can do about the view he's got.

"Charlotte can paddle your balls again," you tell him, "or you can be nice and tell us what we want to know."

His breath is ragged. "I don't know... I don't know... I... owwww! Ow!"

You yourself wince at the sound of it, Charlotte doing exactly what you warned him she would.

"Vail!!" He cries, straining against his bonds. "Vail! Vail! She's in Vail!"

"Stop!" You call, holding up your palm behind you. But there's a couple more thwacks before Charlotte heeds the command.

You turn. She takes a woozy step back from the table, face flushed, sweat beading around her brows. "Sorry."

"Lies," Vivian says. "I had people check her winter cottage already. She is not in Vail."

"Not her winter cottage!" Dalton says. "Somewhere else... where exactly, I don't know... I don't! And I'm not sure she's in Vail. I just think she must be... she's not many timezones away, for certain... and she owns half that damn city..."

"Why isn't she in Russia?" You ask.

"She isn't welcome there. She fell out with the Kremlin. That's why I think she must be here in the states... please, that's all I know!"

"Why isn't she welcome?"

"How should I know! She only said she couldn't go back."

You lock eyes with Vivian.

"I believe him," she says. "Mother told me some time ago that the situation with the Kremlin was becoming untenable. I believe they wanted access to Darkbloom Analytics intellectual property... and she kept stonewalling them. Wanted it for herself, obviously."

"If she can't be in the valley," Dalton says, "and she can't be in her homeland... it has to be Vail. But I don't know that. It's just my speculation... please, please stop this... I cannot bear it..."

"All right," you sigh. "That's good enough. Say ahhh."

"What?"

You hold up a pill bottle. "Say ahhhh."

"Please! Please stop!"

"We are stopping," you tell him. "Quit whining."

Vivian turns and motions towards the main area of the basement, and Cerise and Gal enter.

"We're going to give you an implant," you say. "These are Ambien. Hopefully they keep you asleep through the operation. We aren't sadists, after all."

"Implant..." he says.

"It's going to be a long sleep," you tell him honestly. "But you won't feel a thing. Thank you for your cooperation."

You force a handful of pills down his gullet.

You all don surgical masks and disinfect your hands, plus the surrounding area, as well as the implements you'll be using.

Cerise rubs Gal's shoulders soothingly, her head nuzzling Gal's neck, while Gal fiddles with the resistor at the end of the implant's long, thin wire.

"You okay with this, babe?"

"im ok"

"Are you sure?"

"im sure"

You sort of remember Gal. And you sort of remember that implant. And you sort of remember what it's like, the thing that's about to happen.

Charlotte puts a leather belt in Dalton's mouth, and secures it to the table beneath, so that he's biting down on it in his sleep.

Then the moment of truth. Gal uses a melon baller from the kitchen, to scoop out Dalton's eyeball.

He was asleep. Now he's awake.

Through the bit, he shrieks -- bloodcurdling shrieking, agonizing shrieking, and his eye, still attached by the nerve, flops around on his cheek. You fight back vomit.

>"MY EYE! MY EYEEE! I SEE EVERYTHING!!! MY EYEEEEE!!!!"

That's not what Dalton is saying, but it's what you're hearing, internally -- like an echo -- you try violently to shake it loose from your mind, but it won't go.

Charlotte holds his head steady, while Gal works quickly to get the thing installed. But quickly isn't quick enough, and it feels like an aeon with Dalton's wailing. What you're doing to him now is on a level entirely removed from even the worst of what you've inflicted on him prior. He's out of his mind with the excruciating horror of it.

And then it's over -- he tenses, arches his back the inch or two he can with the straps holding him down, and passes out.

Gal is working again in peace and quiet. She's crying. Cerise is stroking her hair, also crying -- and your eyes, you realize, are also wet. Charlotte is the only one in this room even close to unaffected. She's cringing at the sight before her, but she isn't sparing Dalton any sympathy.

Back into his head goes his eyeball. His eyes now are blue.

And then a few moments later he has consciousness again. Not Dalton. Him. And you remember him too. And he remembers you.

"Camelia," he says.

---

Men filter into the conference room, all dour and besuited and old and grey. These are the executives of Broad Dynamics. Armstrong greets them with laughing bows and handshakes, but there are no smiles on their end.

Whitney salutes them.

Rose can take a lot when it comes to Whitney, but even she has a tipping point, and this is it. She grabs Whitney from the front, holding her by either shoulder, and walks her backwards into the empty hallway. You follow them out.

"What the hell?" Whitney says, wriggling free.

"Stop. Fucking. Saluting people. They're not American! You're not in the military!"

Whitney salutes Rose. "Aye aye, captain. And sieg fucking heil. Man you're annoying."

"This is serious," Rose says. "You need to remember that you're representing our company and our country here." She points to the doorway. "And that what happens in that room is going to be really fucking important for all of us."

"Ally, tell your cunt wife to shut up."

"She's right," you say.

Whitney huffs, mad, but finally getting the message. "Fine. I'll keep a lid on it."

A very tall, very fat man approaches from the end of the hall, along with a short, cute girl holding a notepad. This is Li Xi, you know, from Rose's description.

"It is so nice to meet you," he says. Not dour like his underlings -- he swats Whitney's shoulder and laughs before shaking her hand.

"Back at you," Whitney says. "You're Mr. G, right?"

"Correct. Li Xi. I am so pleased to have you here today. We have been so looking forward to this meeting." He motions for you to enter the conference room.

"We can get started right away," Xi says, taking his seat at the center of the long table, opposite to the side where you and your people sit.

"Whoa," Whitney breathes, looking Xi over, seeing him more clearly now that they're sitting level with one another in the bright light of the meeting room. "Did you have acne when you were a teenager?"

So much for keeping a lid on it. But maybe this is leverage: he can't help reaching up and touching his own deeply pockmarked cheeks. "Ah--"

Realizing herself, Whitney adds: "I had some acne, too, when I was just starting puberty."

"I see," Xi intones.

"It cleared up, though."

"Ah."

"No scars even."

"..."

"As opposed to you."

Xi's cute little secretary salvages things. She introduces you all to the now abashed and sullen Xi: "Right. This is Steven Armstrong, CHRM; Fazil, the group's translator; and of course you know Whitney Darkbloom, the woman herself."

"And these two?" Xi asks, pointing to you and Rose.

"Of course. Alabaster Soliloquy, chief adviser, and --" she stammers, stops short, seems to be mentally checking her notes.

"Rose Soliloquy," Rose herself says.

"What is your role?" Xi asks her.

"I--"

"She's my tradwife," you cut in.

"Tradwife?" Xi asks.

"I am NOT y--"

"She's my wife, but more of a traditional type. You know. Wants to be a homemaker, leave work and take care of the children."

"How wonderful!" Xi says. "An ideal woman. Keep her!"

"I am NOT your tradwife, you demented APE," Rose hisses.

Xi seems to take offense to this, even though Rose's insult was towards you. You try to smooth things over: "I'm sorry, Mr. Xi. She's with child, and the hormones are really something else. You know how it is."

"Oh my god... you can't be-- oh my god..." At this rate, you're going to short her brain out entirely.

"It's not such a traditional marriage anyway," Whitney says, coming to the rescue of Rose's frayed nerves. "They're cousins."

Xi gives a displeased frown. But his secretary, saying something to him in Chinese, makes it go away. "Oh," Xi chirps. "That's not so bad, then."

"I'd like to buy your technology out from under you," Whitney says.

Dead silence descends.

"Well, our CEO is a bit brash, you might be able to tell," Armstrong says. "It's the American way. We speak frankly. But yes. We would like to purchase the rights to all Sand Reckoner technology you are currently working on, and we are prepared to offer $20 billion for it. In addition to making you a trusted partner and a distributor of platforms derived from our proprietary architectures, developed for Chinese markets."

"I think you have misunderstood your bargaining position," Xi says.

"Maybe you have," Whitney says. "You got fucked up the ass on the Google buyout, didn't ya?"

"We do not need Google," Xi says.

"Big words for the guy who tried to pay a trillion bucks for Google."

"We do not need Google," he repeats. "But you clearly need us." He sips his water.

"It's not a need so much as a request for synergy," Armstrong says. "Your technology is obviously plagiarized from ours, and we know you're struggling to cross the finish line. Why bother trying to reinvent the wheel? Just become a partner, take your paychecks and go home. We'll handle the tech. Isn't that the easiest thing for you?"

"Here is a counteroffer. We will pay you $200 billion to hand over all your intellectual property, your servers and your existing research into Sand Reckoner. Along with that, Darkbloom Analytics will cease to exist as an entity."

"I can't say I'm not seeing dollar signs!" Armstrong says. "But that would be entirely illegal. I think the US government would have something to say about that. I'm sorry, we simply can't."

"Then perhaps there is nothing further to discuss," Xi says.

"$50 billion," Armstrong says, "and we'll work on getting our militaries to work together on this one. Hey, the American century is old hat. How about the Sino-American century? Eh?"

"How has your company persisted for so long?" Xi's secretary wonders aloud.

"Luck, mostly," Whitney says.

"A can-do attitude," Armstrong adds, pressing his fingertip against the mahogany table for emphasis. "And of course, having the brightest minds in the world working for us."

"These are the brightest minds?" She says.

"Absolutely," Armstrong says.

"Maybe you will understand better," Xi says, "if we show you our production facility. Do you have time to visit our factory a few kilometers from here?"

>[x] Yes. See what they're working on.

[ ] No. Press them harder to become partners.

"We don't need to see your factory," you say. All eyes turn to you -- the air in the room is one of surprise, that you, an adviser, would speak out of turn.

"Ally?" Whitney breathes.

"We know what you're working on. You have implants of your own. But they don't fucking work, do they? They blind people."

Xi's poker face is hard to read, and so are those of his underlings, but his secretary is smirking.

"I'm working on it," she says.

...She's working on it?

"Who are you?" Armstrong asks. "I don't remember seeing you on the list of executives here."

"Qiangxiang Xi," she says, bowing slightly. "I am the head of R&D."

"Huh?" Whitney says. "Chingchang?"

"Qiangxiang," she corrects. "Xi."

"Say that again."

"Qiangxiang Xi."

"More slowly."

"Qiang. Xiang. Xi."

"Okay. I'm gonna call you Chloe."

Qiangxiang smiles confusedly. "...Chloe?"

"It's either that or Quack-Quack. Take your pick."

Her tone is polite, but biting: "Do you have dyslexia? A memory condition? Are long words difficult for you in general?"

"No, no, and no. Names are like whatever. I'm just not gonna bother with yours. Sorry Chloe."

"I will have to think of a fitting nom de guerre for you as well," Qiangxiang says, utterly unfazed. "I am thinking maybe Shǎbī."

"Is that Chinese for idiot?" Whitney asks. Fazil gives her a nod to confirm.

"Literally translated," Qiangxiang says, "it means stupid cunt."

"Let's see your factory," Whitney says.

"Whitney--" you begin.

"No. We need to see it. I have to know what I'm buying, right?"

---

You walk alongside Rose, Armstrong and Fazil on a wrought steel mezzanine above a clean, white, modern looking factory floor.

A few paces ahead of you: "Our implants improve by the day," Qiangxiang says to Whitney. "I will be honest -- yes, I am struggling with some specifics as regards implementation. Those will sort out as I continue my research. With or without your assistance."

"How old are you, anyway?" Whitney asks.

"Do you ask for prurient reasons? I am given to understand you have strange tastes."

"Don't flatter yourself."

"I am 16."

"I get it. So you're the Chinese Vivian. Is Mr. G your dad?"

"He is my uncle. The less said of him, the better. He just manages accounts. A piggy little nothing of a man."

"Yep. Chinese Vivian. Not as cute even."

You whisper to Rose: "Can I say something that's protected by spousal privilege?"

"Sure."

"I honestly love Whitney."

Rose makes a face. "What a wonderful thing to tell your wife."

"You love her, too. How many power plays has she made since getting here? And she doesn't even realize it. Think about that. You and I have to consciously decide if we're going to fuck with someone. Whitney just kinda does it."

Rose shrugs. "You're awfully effusive today."

"I'm trying to see the positive side to all of this. And stay optimistic. Because... this could really go bad."

"It already has." She pulls out her phone and shoves it into your hand. You read the email. Darkbloom Analytics' main parts supplier for its server facilities is canceling all your accounts, effective immediately.

"What the fuck," you mutter.

"They're a Taiwanese company. They didn't take kindly to Whitney's little faux pas yesterday.

"Goddamn it."

"I hope none of our servers go out." She smooths her skirt. "We need to get that thing out of you as soon as possible, Alabaster. Like I tried to tell you."

You don't want to admit she's right, so you say nothing. Qiangxiang stops as if suddenly realizing something. She turns, hands demurely in front of her. "Alabaster," she says.

You stop, too, surprised.

"You have an implant, yes?" She asks.

You decline to say.

"What do you see when you look at me?" She asks.

"Just a snooty little girl who thinks she's the smartest person in the room," you say.

"I have watched you with interest, Alabaster Soliloquy," she says. "It is so nice to finally meet. And yet -- it is such a disappointment. You do not use your implant."

"All it does is aid memory," you say. No use denying what she already knows. "Its effects are passive."

"We could upgrade it for you."

"And make me blind?"

She smiles. "You would still see, just in a different way. No interest at all in trying it?"

"None."

"Of course. The supplier shouldn't dip into his own supply, yes? You've done enough as it is." She turns and continues walking. You can only follow. "As for us, we are already entering mass production."

"Mass production on implants that maim the wearer," you say. "Some business plan."

"That is the problem with short-sighted entrepreneurs like you. You see only what people will buy for themselves. But what about what people will buy for those they employ?"

You tilt your head.

You all turn a corner, and now you have a view down to the main production floor. An assembly line of dozens of workers in full body cleansuits, at stations arrayed around enormous industrial microprocessor fabricators -- pulling hundreds of grain-sized circuits at once from outfeed trays, snipping and crimping wires and attaching them, spooling them, packaging them, putting them onto pallets. At the rate they're working, even if this is the only production area, they could be making millions of Sand Reckoner implants a day. Whitney, visibly disturbed, grips the railing to steady herself as she takes it all in.

Qiangxiang goes on. "Laborers or soldiers, or prisoners perhaps -- in any case, people who have no say, but who might be more efficient with an augmented data processing capacity. It is said the human mind receives five petabytes per second of sensory input, and yet our brain's processing power is less than that of a first-generation home computer. So much of what we receive as input is never processed into useful information. That won't do in such a fast-paced world, will it?"

A worker down on the floor glances up towards where you all stand. Through his goggles, you see his eyes -- a milky white film, and blue beneath.

"What are you doing here?" Whitney sputters to Qiangxiang.

"Americans are so funny," she says. She nods at Armstrong, who's as pale as Whitney is. "Speaking in terms of who owned the last century. Who owns the next. One paltry century of prominence on the world stage is nothing against 5000 years of history. No. It is not simply that the next century belongs to us. All subsequent centuries do also."

---

Whitney is hyperventilating on the bed of the hotel room, head in her hands. The panic is beginning to set in. "I want my mom. Fuck. Fuck. I want my mom... where is she? Is she back yet? She could help us fix this... she could help for sure... where is she?"

Rose rubs her back soothingly, but Whitney is beyond reason.

"Where is she?! Why haven't we heard from Viv yet? Are they okay? We need to go back--"

"Shut up!" Armstrong roars. He came back to your room with you for the powwow. "You're the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, Whitney. Start acting like it."

"You shut up!" Whitney shrieks. "What am I paying you for? Our competitors are going to eat us alive! And you couldn't make a fucking deal!"

"Is that my job?" Armstrong shouts. "What about you? You've been fucking us over since day one. I've just been trying to wipe up the mess. Maybe I should have sided with Mara after all. She's not a fucking idiot!"

"Go ahead, then! Fuck off and go work for Mara! You're fired!"

Rose2, in the corner, gnawing a stick of pocky and reading Shonen Jump, says: "if you wanna keep tabs on China, why not say we'll work with them on Sand Reckoner? Instead of one buying the other... that way you keep 'em close, so we can watch 'em."

All eyes turn to her. She senses this, and looks up. "Did I say something dumb again?"

"No... no," Armstrong says. "That might be the first halfway intelligent thing you've ever said. He looks at Whitney. "Our CTO position is vacant right now. If we told Qiangxiang that she could have mediated access to our research and work products, in exchange for working for us --"

"What about Alex?" Whitney asks.

"Oh, fuck Alex," you groan.

"Go to hell," Whitney tells you.

"Alex would understand," Armstrong tries. "The future of this company is at stake here."

"And so, what..." Whitney says. "We invite queen Hitler to walk right through our doors and peek at all our shit?"

"What else do you suggest?" Armstrong says. "Selling out? Can't do that, 'cause--" He motions at you, exasperated. "So what else can we do, then?"

"Ally?" Whitney asks you.

>[x] Invite Qiangxiang to be the new CTO.

[ ] Decline.

Armstrong returns to Broad Dynamics -- alone, this time -- and makes the offer. It happens so fast: by the time you're all checking out of the hotel, you have a new CTO. Qiangxiang plans to stay behind in China to close out her business, but the plan is for her to arrive in Palo Alto early next week.

There's another press junket at the airport. Whitney and Qiangxiang shake hands for the reporters -- Whitney's grip just about rips Qiangxiang's arm from its socket, tugging her forward so fall that she almost takes a vaudevillian pratfall, but Qiangxiang regains her balance and does her best to maintain composure. Then they bow at each other, and exchange platitudes for the cameras about how excited they are to be embarking on a new chapter of their careers together.

Whitney's smile crumples as soon as she's aboard the privacy of her plane. She walks up and down the aisles, punching the seatbacks, kicking the tables, and spewing obscenities. You and Rose share a disturbed look. The return flight is not nearly as fun as the departing flight was.

---

At the private airfield outside Palo Alto where Whitney's jet touches down, Vivian comes to meet you. She's accompanied by Nelson and Saul. You spy through the limo's tinted windows, sitting in the back, Dalton Cantor.

"What the hell is he doing out?" You demand.

"We need to talk," Vivian tells you.

---

That night, you and Rose share a much-needed session of me-time in your bedroom.

Rose, beneath your desk, stares contemptuously up at you as she sucks your cock. But she knows better than to speak. One of me-time's many ritualized components is that the person beneath has no rights: no right to whine, bellyache, or complain, no right to even speak at all, and absolutely no right to stop servicing the one above for any reason. Because the one beneath is not a human. They are a meathole, there to be used as a masturbation device, no matter how long it takes the one above to cum. Thus: "me-time."

This leads to gamesmanship. Rose, sucking you off, brings all of her well-honed techniques to bear during these sessions: getting the tip of her hot pink tongue between foreskin and frenulum to swirl it cruelly around, flexing her esophagus around you on the downstroke, letting her drool run freely into your lap until your cock is so wet that it feels like it's in a warm puddle. Tenderly massaging your balls with both hands. And making herself gag on you because she knows you like the sound of it. All calculated efforts to force your orgasm as early as possible. That's how the one beneath fights back, by trying to bring it to a quick ending. It's a skill she's been developing since the first time she sucked you off under your computer desk at the age of 15.

But you, above, scrolling through your favorite doujin -- you take sadistic pleasure it staving off orgasm as long as you possibly can. In making her stay there on her knees, under you, servicing you, well past the point of discomfort. Past the point of discomfort for both of you. You always hold your cum until it actually aches to keep going, until the decadent pleasure of Rose's throat perversely becomes a punishment of its own. Like everything with you two, it's a struggle for dominance that hurts both sides. This is the true, veiled purpose of me-time: that struggle, sweetly excruciating, of master and slave.

But Rose's cunt of a mouth is just too much. Her suckling, slurping, gagging attention turns your brain to mush and makes you woozy with the sexual thrill of it. In stark and simple terms, she makes your cock feel really fucking good. You scratch her head like rewarding an obedient pet. Since she has both hands busy tickling your balls, she can't swat you away. Her big hazel eyes stare unblinkingly up and shimmer with something between hate and pride. She blushes through the sheen of spit on her face. She's such a beautiful whore. That sight -- not your porn, but Rose's spit-covered face that hates and loves you, makes you squirt her throat full of sperm.

As soon as you're done and reality sets in -- that reality is already hitting you in the face. Now it's Rose in the chair, and you beneath.

She's as sadistic as you, and takes twice as long. Her squishy thighs clamp around your head and she mashes her overheated pussy against your face. Again and again, nearly suffocating you. Your entire world is winnowed to that leaking little, sweet-smelling slit right in front of you. "Lick me," she grunts cruelly.

You have to obey, that's the rule. You lick her.

"Lick my asshole too, Alabaster. Lick it thoroughly."

You have to obey -- it's the rule.

She sighs deeply and squirms in the chair, enjoying the sensation of your rimjob. She plays with her tits and presses her legs oppressively into either side of your head. She's gonna crack your skull like this.

She cums in your mouth the way you came in hers. And you have to swallow; another rule of me-time.

After she's done, and she's basking in the afterglow, she leans back onto her tailbone and takes a few minutes to rub her stockinged feet all over your face, as if walking on it -- and although that's not technically in the rulebook, you suffer it because you know it means you'll get the bend the rules the next time you're on top. She coos at you while you suckle her toes. You're sure the look you're giving her from below is just as contemptuous as the one she was giving you -- and so of course she must think it's cute.

Somehow this humiliation makes you hot. When she least expects it, you stand, and push the chair away from the desk.

"A-Alabaster?" She stammers, no longer haughty, but suddenly frightened.

You dump Rose onto your bed, hike up her skirt, and fuck her violently. No more foreplay and no more talking, just raw animal need surging through you.

There's something about forcing your cock past the springy resistance of a hot, wet fuckhole over and over again that you will never get sick of. And Rose's fuckhole is best in class, soft enough to cushion the force of your powerful thrusting, but rubbery enough to squeeze back against you. She must do exercises to keep her little pussy so nice and tight for you. She's such a good cunt. You rear back all the way each time, drawing yourself out of her almost completely, with just the very tip of your freely drooling mushroom head poised at the entrance. This gives her cumdump pussy a microsecond to close, to seal itself off. And then you plunge back inside, to the root, tearing her open. Over and again you give her vicious full strokes that bruise her delicate insides. The way she likes to be bruised inside.

You purr. Like a cat, you purr your contentment -- and bite down on her shoulder. She gasps. You taste then a trickle of iron-rich blood on your tongue, but that doesn't deter you at all. You just lift your mouth, and find another spot closer to her neck, and bite her a second time. As you thrust and rut inside her, your heart overflows with glad feelings. There's a warmth in your chest that reflects the happy pleasure circling like electricity around the circumference of your horny cock; you're glad for the much-needed relief Rose's hole provides for you. Paradoxically, you're full of unfiltered aggression too. Your veins burn with a crazed lust. It's the overwhelming need, manifesting as anger, to rape this tiny hole full of cum, to fuck Rose's ass into the mattress and turn her into nothing more than a seat of pleasure for your dick.

What you growl at her, between nips at her neck and shoulder, reflects this paradox raging inside you: "Fuck you. I love you. You stupid fucking cunt bitch. I love you so fucking much." You run your hands through the hair on the back of her head, grasping her tightly. You fuck her and snarl tender obscenities directly into her eardrum.

Rose is sighing, drowning in the pleasure of getting raped. Her mouth hangs partway open. In an airy voice she demands: "make me pregnant... knock me up..." Her hands find your sweaty back with twin slaps, and she holds onto you for all she's worth, nails digging into your flesh. She bucks her hips in tune with you. Her pussy shudders and you dump your second load of the night straight into her womb. It feels like your soul is leaving your body through your cock as you empty your nuts completely inside her. The way Rose screams as you give her your cum must mean she feels the about the same. You can almost hear the sperm sloshing around inside her belly -- and, feeling dizzy, all you can do is lie atop her as your spurting cock breeds her out.

And after you're totally spent, you collapse. All the tension and strength drain from your muscles. You lie atop Rose, your entire weight bearing down on her oppressively. You feel the warm mess spilling out of her, all around your union. You're purring again, deeply and from the back of your throat -- sounding less like a cat and perhaps more like a percolating coffee maker. You gulp air through your mouth but exhale each breath hard through your nostrils. With your face resting against the side of her head, these forceful exhalations ruffle her hair. She snuggles against you. Her nose tickles your neck in just the way you've come to love.

When you finally find the energy to move, it's only to roll off of her. The sensation of pulling out sends an almost painful jolt through your over-sensitive dick. You flop onto your back, staring dazed at the ceiling. One hand is somehow pinned beneath Rose, who is similarly on her back, similarly dazed and similarly ceiling-staring.

"Oh, fuck you," she pants between jagged breaths.

"Goddamn it. Already with this shit?" You carry on your bickering, both of you still staring straight up, and struggling for air. It's hard to speak considering how winded you are, but you manage. You clasp a palm to your sweat-slick brow. "Can't even take two minutes to rest before getting right back to it, huh."

"Seriously... fuck you. You prick. You really intend to make me sleep on the wet spot?"

"I'm not making you sleep anywhere. Go back and sleep in your own bed if it bothers you so much."

"This is my bed."

"What do you--"

"We're married. This is my bedroom now. My bed."

"Oh Jesus. Make yourself at home why don't you."

"I already did, thank you very much. So I advise you to get used to it. I own half your shit now, Alabaster."

"Well, fine. You get the half with the wet spot."

She sighs in contempt. But underneath that is something you've learned to detect over the years, like a wine connoisseur appreciating subtle undertones in the bouquet of a fine vintage; hidden in the contempt is happiness.

"What are we gonna do?" You ask her after a long period of increasingly somber silence.

"I don't know. I think we're doomed."

"Maybe."

"Aren't we?" She says.

"I can't work with David Darkbloom. I'm so fucking beyond -- I can't believe they did this without even consulting us. Without consulting ME."

"Do you think he'll make a convincing enough Dalton to fool the man's family? ... to fool Mara?"

"I don't give a shit. David fucking Darkbloom is out and about in the world, walking around as a free man. I don't give a shit if it fools anyone."

Rose props herself up on her elbow. You're thankful to be able to pull your arm back, the one that was pinned -- it's already falling asleep, and it tingles like how TV static must feel.

"Alabaster," she says softly, peering down at you. "Do you think we're doomed, too?"

"No."

Your phone dings. When you check its display, it's the last person you expected.

"What do you think? Should I go?" You ask your wife.

"You cannot be serious," Rose says, reading the text over your shoulder.

---

"Thank you for coming on such short notice," Noelle says. You sit on the patio outside the Coffee Bean. Chain coffee houses are nice. Bad things never happen at chain coffee houses. Not like those Mom and Pop places.

"No problem." You rest your cheek on one fist. "I had nothing better to do."

"Don't get shitty with me," Noelle warns. "I really needed to see you... this is important..."

You frown. She sounds serious about this. "What is it, then?"

"I don't know how to say this. So I'll just say it. I... I'm pregnant."

Your blood curdles. Your jaw hangs slack. "Y-you're --"

"Nahhh," she says. "But that would be pretty bad, huh?"

You rub your face, your breathing returning to normal. "Fuck, Noelle. Why would you -- don't fuck with me. I've got enough to worry about as it is."

She laughs. "You fuck with so many girls. Why can't I have a little fun, too?" Looking down, she notices your ring for the first time: "What the -- oh my god. Don't tell me you're actually married."

You nod.

"I leave for a couple days, and you get married on the rebound? That's kinda sad. Who's the unlucky gal?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but Rose."

She grimaces. "Rose... I'm not sure I even want to know which one."

"Which one do you think would be worse?"

"Hard to say. Rose2 is the human embodiment of cancer. But so is Original Recipe Rose, with the added bonus of being your own cousin."

"Once removed!" You groan. "First cousin, once removed! Why can NOBODY get that right!"

"So it's her," Noelle hums. You sigh. Noelle, mental cogs visibly spinning, reasons aloud: "You... did this to invoke privilege? You got... no way. You got caught in a sham marriage with an SJW to invoke spousal privilege!" You neither confirm nor deny; Noelle, cackling, adds: "this is just too much. Oh, this is perfect. Muwah." She bunches her fingers to her lips and gives a chef's kiss.

"This is all because of you, naturally," you add. "You ruined my life."

Another chef's kiss from Noelle. Peppier than before, she grabs a few packets of Splenda from the nearby porcelain holder, and flicks them repeatedly before tearing them open. She tugs her saucer and coffee cup towards her.

"There you go," you say. "You're so fake that even the sweetener you use in your coffee is fake..."

"Have to maintain that girlish physique somehow," she says, pouring the Splenda, stirring it. She draws her mug to her lips and blows.

"A couple packets of sugar won't make any difference. Live a little. That stuff causes cancer anyway."

"Clarion call of fatties everywhere," Noelle says. "'Oh, just ONE won't hurt...' Like that. And for your information? Sucralose is one of the most studied chemicals ever, and no causative link with cancer has ever been demonstrated."

"Whatever. What use is a good body on you? For what, exactly -- watching yourself ride a dildo in front of a mirror?"

"Exactly."

You raise your eyebrows higher than the noon sun.

"Will you just get to the point already," you flatly grouse. "What's so important that you needed to see me in person?"

Noelle is serious again all of a sudden. "This is another one of those oh-shit moments," she warns. "I could get in real trouble being here."

You rise. Enough of this. But she reaches for your hand, staying you.

"Then again," she says, "I got royally fucked by the government, didn't I. Bent over and with no vaseline to boot. So if they want to tell me that I can't fraternize on my own time, as a private citizen, with a man they won't even call a person of interest -- they can go jump off a bridge. Sit. Please."

You do.

"I have a friend at the bureau still. He told me something that you ought to know. My replacement -- there was an ongoing IAB investigation into him. Key word 'was.' It got squashed and swept under the rug when he took my job."

"Internal affairs... what for?"

"He's colluding with someone to sabotage the investigation."

Adrenaline surges through your gut. "A spy...? For who, Mara? The Russians? Chinese?"

Noelle slowly shakes her head.

---

Tyrus leads the way into The Sizzler. Closed for the evening though it is, he has a key to the premises, and unlocks the swinging double doors. Behind him, in handcuffs, is a Russian national -- Konstantin Federov, who was arrested by the FBI earlier this year on suspicion of working with the mafia. And behind Konstantin, corralling him, is Hugh Thurston, now the lead on the investigation that ensnared him.

Tyrus flips the light switches, illuminating the dingy red carpet and empty buffet troughs and grubby tabletops in the restaurant's dining area. It's too bad, he thinks -- that that Noelle bitch didn't get out of the way before he was forced into hiding. Things would be so much easier. Working with someone like Hugh is nothing at all. Grease his palms with enough money and, if you want, he'll even steal a major international criminal from federal lockup for the night.

Into the pristine kitchen now, staffed by a bunch of gangsters-turned-frycooks who have made the necessary preparations: pushing chrome tables together, disinfecting them, donning fine mesh hairnets and latex gloves in case they are needed as assistants. Tyrus graciously thanks them for a job well done: "shit's looking like a regular ER in here," is his assessment. He walks with a limp and winces with each step, still recovering from the wounds he sustained at his nightclub. This very kitchen was the site of an emergency surgery not too long ago that saved his life.

Tyrus hops up onto the ad hoc operating table and strips his shirt off like someone getting ready for his physical, baring the gauze still wrapped about his sinewy belly and shoulder. Hugh nudges Konstantin forward.

"Forgive me," Konstantin says, gruff, and thickly accented, "but I think there is misunderstanding. You want operating? I am qualified only to operate on humans. Not on monkeys."

Tyrus smiles. "That kind of thing don't faze me one bit. You can call me whatever mean name you want. Call me nigger with a hard R for all I care. Fact, you can have unlimited free lifetime uses -- and if anyone gives you any shit, just tell 'em Tyrus gave you a pass. Know why?"

He actually waits for a response, but Konstantin, stoic, refuses to play along.

"Because," Tyrus finally begins. He puts both his balled up fists to his pecs, drawing a deep, appreciative breath, and sighing theatrically. "--because I'm a free man, breathing free air, free air in the greatest country on the planet. And that's how I'll be until the day I die. You?..." He points at Konstantin. "You're getting shipped off to Florence ADX in a few months, and you'll be down there in a 6x6 concrete hole in the ground, forever, until the end of your natural life -- nothing to keep you company but memories of Das Motherland. So I feel bad for you. Don't worry, though. I got you covered. I'll send you some borscht every couple decades."

"Das is German word, you stupid nigger."

Tyrus lightly swats Konstantin's chest with the back of his palm, laughs. "You didn't wait two seconds to use your pass! Goddamn." Then, grin crumpling, face instantly turning serious, Tyrus reaches for his back trouser pocket. Konstantin flinches, feeling the fear grip him; but Tyrus doesn't produce a gun. Instead he produces an implant. He holds it by the end of the wire, the grain dangling in the air between them. "I want you to put this inside my head."

"Do you even comprehend of what that device is capable?" Konstantin demands.

Tyrus shrugs. "Pretty beneficial shit I assume, or everyone and their moms wouldn't be gunning for one." Konstanin begins to say something, but Tyrus speaks right over him. "Your bitch Stasi had this in her. It's how she knew where I was all the time, isn't it? Don't you fucking lie to me, you Ruskie motherfucker. It was like a bad rerun of Tom and Jerry with that cunt, all the time. She had herself a built-in advantage -- literally. And this is it. You know something? It's a damn miracle Alabaster Soliloquy just happens to be dating Calamity Jane as a stalker." He grins at Konstantin "You into anime? I been watching a lot of animes recently. They call it yanyan. When you've got a bitch so hot for you that she just straight up murders a bunch of motherfuckers over it. Anyway. I'd be dead if not for that. And you should have seen the look on Stasi's fucked-up face when that midget bitch pumped her chest full of buckshot."

"I refuse," Konstantin says simply. He stomps a single time to punctuate it.

Tyrus nods at Hugh. Hugh spins Konstanin around a full 180 degrees -- decks him -- then as Konstantin is still regaining his bearings, the cuckoos still metaphorically circling his head, Hugh pulls a polaroid from his FBI coat pocket. It's a telescopic photo of Konstantin's wife and two young daughters on a shopping trip in St. Petersburg. The implication is obvious, and makes Konstantin's pale skin turn paler.

"Still refuse?" Hugh asks.

Konstantin snarls, but does not reply.

---

When Tyrus wakes up, he's a new man. Well. Newish. He sits up slowly, like Frankenstein's monster rising from the concrete slab in the dungeon. He's mostly his same self -- but augmented.

His first impression is simple, and practical: his left eye is viciously sore. Though he knows it's probably an inverse placebo effect -- the knowledge of the fact that it was recently outside his body playing a trick on him -- the eyeball feels loose in its socket. Like a bum wheel on a shopping cart. He reaches up as if to rub it with the heel of his palm, but thinks better of it.

Only then he realizes, without needing to consciously scan his memory banks, that he has an entire lifetime's worth of new memories inside his head now. It's the lifetime of Anastasia Lebedev, available for instant playback. So now he does scan his memory banks: he can remember Afghanistan in 1987, slitting the throats of Mujahadeen on the way out the door; he can remember Moscow in 1999, castrating a rival capo at his home while the newly minted eunuch's wife and children huddled caterwauling in the corner; he can remember Pyongyang in 2003, securing a lucrative deal in exchange for fusion-capable devices that fell off a truck when the wall fell.

Although he got closure, although he got his justice and revenge, Tyrus can't help himself. He's a dog gnawing at his own mangy hind leg. He immediately wants to see it, he wants to see what happened to the only man he ever really loved, wants to see what Stasi did to him. He thinks back to that night.

There it is.

Stasi's point of view, from around a row of server towers. Slipping stealthily away. Alex Best tied to a chair. Alabaster Soliloquy entering. Stasi stopping to watch, curious. Marquis looming, upset, accusing betrayal. A confrontation, a sudden misstep -- savage screams, a bloody bat raised high in the air.

Alex beating Marquis to death.

Tyrus exhales, and blinks hard, and rolls his jaw like a cow chewing cud. He's back to reality, Hugh is waving a hand up and down in front of him. "You okay?"

Tyrus meets his gaze. "No. I'm pretty fucking far from okay."

END OF EPISODE 1.