Season 4 Episode 7: Bubblegum Crisis

You are Alabaster Soliloquy, dispenser of dickings on dangerous days and loving son.

---

"I understand that you are suing the estate of David Darkbloom."

Vivian sits in the man's dingy and dilapidated kitchen. Every available surface is stacked high with detritus of one kind or another. Magazines and junk mail, food containers, empty orange pill bottles, failed scratch-off lotteries, over-ripe fruit, an aged fanny pack, a yellowed Christmas ornament, a remote with no corresponding TV. Some full garbage bags lie tied-off on the sticky linoleum floor beside a bin that's also overflowing. The flies buzz. And there are so many ashtrays... and singe marks in the linoleum.... and bottles of Mountain Dew filled with spit.

The man spits into one of these bottles now -- the saliva yellow-brown and viscous, stained by the tobacco he's chewing. He's about 70. He looks about 90.

Posture stooped, he stares back at Vivian with half-blind eyes that register nothing like human intelligence. "Gotta get what I'm owed," he drawls.

"What do you think David Darkbloom owes you?" Vivian asks.

"I don't know. But he owe me somethin. He was my only boy and he ain't leave me nothin in his will. Not a goddamn thing. Not one penny. Ain't right." He spits again, pursing his lips, creating a small needle of muddy saliva with the pressure of it. Vivian can see the surface of the liquid sloshing around inside the green bottle.

"Why now?" Vivian asks, drawing her eyes to the man's prune-like face, and suppressing one of many shudders she has suppressed in the past few minutes. "David Darkbloom has been dead since 2018. Surely you knew of this."

"That's the problem with folks these days, they don't do right by the ones they owe to." Another spit into the plastic spittoon. "Got screwed outta my pension too. Goddamn company got enough money in it to hire 10 new managers last year but they cain't even pay their retirees a pension. And they ain't pay me for the cataracts neither, or the back problems or the lung problems they caused me workin in them mines all them years. Ain't right. And now my doctor refuse to even prescribe me any percocet or nothin, talkin about some damn opioid crisis. But do you think that make the pain go away just cause I ain't got a prescription no more? No. They ain't do shit for me."

"I see," Vivian says.

Some stray neuron fires, one that hasn't been drowned by whisky. His jaw hangs partway open. He looks her up and down. "Say... you're Vivian, ain't you? You're David's daughter."

"Yes."

His upper lip curls over his toothless gums. "You look like a whore."

David, sitting beside Vivian, begins to say something; Vivian stays his tongue by lightly brushing her palm against his knee.

"I am a whore," Vivian says, apathetically, and without hesitation. "Well observed, grandfather."

"You ain't never come to visit me or write or nothin. Too busy with them fruity la-la computer freaks I guess. Yeah. I'm suin David's estate. I want a billion dollars."

Vivian is unfazed. "You have no claim on any portion of David Darkbloom's estate. His will was quite ironclad, and it left everything to Whitney."

"Hah. You ain't get nothin from him neither?"

Vivian shakes her head no.

"Probably 'cause he didn't wanna give no money to no whore."

"We will not sit here and listen to you slander Ms. Darkbloom," David intones, obviously angered despite the patina of civility he keeps. "Be quiet or this negotiation is over."

Vivian smooths her dress. All business: "You understand that we cannot simply give you one billion dollars. Our company is already cash-poor, and we are in the midst of an expensive political campaign. What you ask from us is impossible, even were we amenable to it. Which we are not."

"Listen to you. I'm your own grandpappy for the love of God. But here you are, talkin about 'no claim on anything' like I'm some homeless person off the street. Ain't no hi grandpa in there, huh? Ain't no nice to meecha?"

"You are suing my sister, and her company, and by extension me -- for a billion dollars. You might forgive me if my demeanor is somewhat chilly today."

He grimaces. "You talk like David did. Nothin but $20 words to hide your own insecurity in the world." When he shouts, it sounds like a wooden floorboard groaning: "You think you're better'n me just 'cause you can read a dicti'nary?!" He pounds the flimsy table and stamps a booted foot. Then he spits again.

"By the same token," Vivian continues, "we do not want to deal with the aggravation of a lawsuit at the moment. The last thing our company needs is publicity like that. Would you be willing to settle?"

"How much?" He asks, clearly seeing the dollar signs already.

"Tell me what you believe is fair."

He thinks for a turn. Slowly. Then: "How about $5 million?"

Vivian pretends to find this offer difficult to stomach despite being 200 times less than the first. "I see. This will be a hardship for the organization, to be sure... but I believe you have left us in no better position." She sighs. "However... given that there is a familial bond between us, after all, strained though it may be... would you be willing to accept $2 million?"

"$3 million."

She bows her head, smiling in a pained way. "You have forced my hand. I see now where father got his negotiation skills from. We will settle."

Vivian pulls out some paperwork and begins to fill it in, then signs it. She slides it across the dirty table.

"Hee hee," Clay Darkbloom wheezes, rubbing his wrinkly palms together. "Finally gettin mine. Took you long enough to do right by your own grandpappy."

When he begins to sign, David swipes the form from him.

"Hey!" the man shouts. "What're you--"

"We will not settle," David says.

"Fa-- Mr. Cantor," Vivian says. "Please. This man has been quite reasonable with us, and I think $3 million is more than fair to make the matter go away--"

"Who the hell are you? Comin into my home tellin me my business. My granddaughter says we'll settle, and that's the way it's gonna be!"

"No," David booms.

"What the hell makes you think--"

David stands, circles the table, and kneels down to eye level with him. He points at Clay Darkbloom menacingly, finger in Clay's haggard face. "No. You will not get a single cent from us."

Clay folds his arms. "All right. If that's how you wanna play it. I'll sue then. For the whole billion. See how you like that!"

David's voice goes louder, if it's possible, but more curiously the slightest hint of an Appalachian drawl creeps into it as he speaks: "Go right ahead, Clay. Sue us. We are one of the most influential corporations on the planet. We have an entire army of attorneys on retainder. All we have to do is wait you out. Litigation like this is costly, and time-consuming... especially for an opiate-addicted drunk bumpkin, who has no money to begin with, and whose actuarial tables look grim. This case will be tied up in court from today until the moment the dementia kills you. You will get absolutely nothing from us. Zero. No -- what's more, not only we will give you nothing -- but we will take whatever very little you do have. We will take your car. We will take your house. We will take your dead wife's ashes. Everything you own will become our property in toto. You will die homeless, and alone, and unmourned."

"Yooou--" Clay drawls. The tremors are getting worse. He's seething with impotent rage. "Do I know..." he trails off. Then: "What right do you have? Huh?! To take the money I'm entitled to from my own granddau--"

"Fuck you," David spits. The drawl in his voice is unmistakable now.

He rises, and for a long moment or two he peers down at Clay Darkbloom with nothing but sheer hatred. Then finally, without another word, he strides from the ramshackle little house.

Clay looks back over at Vivian, stupefied, and afraid.

Vivian takes the paperwork, folds it up, tears it into a couple pieces, and stows it in her purse. "I suppose we are not settling after all. Farewell grandfather."

---

You sit at the edge of the couch in Whitney's living room as she noisily sucks your cock. She lies curled up next to you with her hands on your leg and her head bobbing lewdly up and down in your lap. This isn't the position she prefers when she blows you. Usually she likes to sit on the ground below you, in utter submission to your thrusting dick. But today that position of dishonor belongs to Cerise. On her knees on the tile ground, she has her nostrils pressed up against your nuts, breathing deeply of your manly scent, while her puckered lips hungrily suck on your asshole. There is very little Cerise loves more, you've learned, than rimming you. She's addicted to it. It lets her fill her head with the smell of your cock while swirling her tongue around and enjoying the way you taste too. You can't complain. Cerise's tongue in your anus is the perfect way to enhance the deliciously wet, warm vice of Whitney's gullet wrapping itself around your turgid member. Both girls are certified experts in pleasing your cock. When they work together, you see stars.

Today's entertainment to accompany the use of Whitney and Cerise's mouths as cumdumps: Samantha stands with her arms shackled to a long rope above her head, while Alex torments her. Alex slutted himself up for you today, donning the succubus costume you love to see him in, complete with fishnets, tail, and horns. There's a hole cut in his spandex bottom to reveal his twitching cock, not very long but nearly as fat as yours, shiny and so erect that it stands parallel with his torso. There's a hole in the back too, to provide access to his ass, should you desire. Samantha is totally naked, herself -- save the pointy ears and cottontail, of course. A defenseless little bunny in the clutches of a cruel sex demon. But this bunny is an enthusiastic participant in her own degradation. She keeps her legs apart, fuckholes proudly on display, so that Alex can molest her. He uses a vibrator to toy with Samantha's pussy and make her cum over and over again. The floor below where she stands is slick with her juices, so hot that the puddle steams for a bit each time she squirts.

One of the things your girls really love about your cock is the volume of pre-fuck you produce. It's sweet and lewd-tasting to them, and they thrill to get it pouring -- in their mouths, on their faces, in their cunts. With Whitney's skilled mouth working overtime to bring you off, your cockhead is oozing out even more precum than usual. And Whitney is far from selfish. She takes a moment now to share with Cerise. She gets Cerise's attention by interlacing fingers with hers and squeezing. When Cerise glances up at her, Whitney slowly withdraws from your leaky cock and lets her jaw hang open to proudly display the viscous pool of precum gathering in her bowled tongue.

Cerise, sweaty face blushing, nods her assent. Whitney leans over the couch's edge and lolls her tongue out, lets the long slimy strands of your fuckleak drool out under gravity's force. Cerise, head upturned, catches it. The stuff is so thick that this process takes several long seconds. And it all happens wordlessly; they just smile at each other with their eyes, still holding hands. When at last it's done, Whitney leans further down for a kiss that Cerise returns. Whitney gets a palm behind Cerise's messy hair and pulls her closer. They swap your dick juice back and forth with loud, passionate noises. They're so hooked on everything your cock produces that they want to make it last; they take turns licking the slimy stuff out of each other's mouths, savoring the texture and flavor. By the time they finally do swallow, your twitching cock has burped up a few more fat pearls of it, and it runs down the shaft in long rivulets. Whitney, seeing this, grips you by the root and rubs your penis against Cerise's smiling face. Cerise turns her head this way and that so Whitney can cover her. Your drooling cock leaves trails of transparent precum all over her -- forehead, nose, lips, cheeks. She purses her lips and kisses your cock while Whitney rubs it against her. Occasionally, Whitney slaps her with it too, which makes a wet thwack against her tender flesh. Cerise just coos and kisses your dick in thanks every time. She breathes hard and basks in the stink of your cock and the slime you squirting out of it. You reach down and feel Whitney's wet cunt, too; aiding this incestuous act of humiliation has made her unbelievably horny.

At last it seems that Whitney can take it no more. She opens her lips and starts to go down on you again. Your cock reenters the velvety softness and warmth of her tomboy throat. She does this trick where she swallows while she blows you -- the undulation of her esophagus around your rigid hunk of fuckmeat gives you the illusion of fucking into a bottomless cunt. It's pure heaven, and almost enough to make you spew a wad of jizz into her tummy right away. And soon Cerise is back to her original post, too; she gets her pale little face back underneath your ass and starts to lick your anus again. You have to sit with your ass half past the edge of the cushions, legs wide open, for her to reach; and this slouchy, slumpy posture you adopt while your girls do all the work to bring your cock to orgasm, somehow makes you feel like a king. All you have to do is sit here, just like this, and let their expert mouths suck you off. Cerise, her face still coated in your cockjuice, makes you shiver with the slick sensation of her tongue swabbing it around inside you.

Samantha is begging for cock the only way she knows how. Her voice is hoarse and desperate: "Cock... cooooock.... please master please give me your cock inside my pussy hole... I'm so empty! I'm so itchy for dick!"

But Samantha has already gotten plenty of the cock she cherishes so much. Alex has relieved himself inside her slutty bunny-cunny no fewer than three times already. The cum is running down her thighs even as she pitifully begs for more. As Alex tortures her with the vibrator, he sometimes stops to circle around behind her, wrap his arms around her cushiony midsection, and fuck her standing for a few quick, deep strokes. Without the use of her hands, Samantha can only respond by trying to hump her entire body back and forth against him, which she does, enthusiastically. This is how she's already coaxed several of Alex's loads from him. He's a quickshot, especially inside such a practiced whore. His moans and groans of pleasure are high and girly, even when he drops a load. You and Whitney granted him full use of Samantha's holes because you felt like he deserved the release -- and he's taking more than full advantage.

"Please cut me down... please get on top of me and really fuck me!" Samantha pleads.

Alex accedes. He's so horny that his usually obsequious self is gone; his motions have become rough, and forceful. He grabs a pair of scissors that were set aside, and uses one of the sharp edges to saw through the red rope. Samantha collapses to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Then Alex is standing over top of her, straddling her as he turns her onto her back. Her eyes are wide and bright in fear. Alex, leering, cuts the rope binding her wrists, tosses the scissors, and tugs her legs apart. Samantha mewls. He crawls over her and lines his cock up with her hole, slams himself in and starts to really fuck her. Just like she wanted. You can hear the steady meaty slapping of it from across the room.

"Cock... cock..." Samantha repeats brokenly as Alex brutally humps her.

Alex, propping himself up by both hands as he continues to violate the horny bunny beneath him, grins at you. "Hey, Ally... it's been a while since we shared an onahole, huh?"

Cerise, tongue still wagging around inside your ass, looks up at you with bright, curious eyes.

"Ghh-- shut up," you warn Alex.

Alex laughs. "Haha. Well -- do you want to share this hole with me?"

It's a tempting offer. You do love the tightness of it, getting your cocks off inside a fuckhole together. But you decline: "I've got some onaholes of my own to use. No need to share."

Cerise's expression becomes one of consternation; she doesn't like being counted as nothing more than a dicksleeve. Or really, a backup dicksleeve -- given that she isn't even directly pleasuring your dick right now. But whatever anger she has to be referred to so crassly is totally outmatched by her need to suckle on her little brother's asshole. She doesn't take her lips away for even a moment. Her eyelids just droop a bit, and she blushes, and exhales hard against your testicles -- resigns herself to being a sextoy for your private use. Whitney, for her part, isn't even paying attention. She's so enthusiastic about choking herself on your fat prick that it's all she can focus on. The obscene glug-glug-glug sound of her slamming her throat up and down on your member continues without pause. You keep molesting her cunt, and you ministrations are having the desired effect. She's leaking on your hand, and on the couch, uncontrollably. She always gets off especially hard when she's got your dick sliding past her tonsils.

Alex shrugs. Since you don't want to share, he'll keep the bitch to himself for now. He lies against her perspiration-coated body, head buried in her prodigious chest, and fucks himself into oblivion. Samantha wraps her arms around his back and her ankles around his butt. It might be hard to tell who's the dominator here. Alex is in such need that his grunts border on pained. He sounds more like a girl getting punched than a man fucking someone. Samantha pets his hair and repeatedly kisses the top of his head. Alex is sweaty too, and their bodies slickly thwap and squelch from their mating session. Alex, managing to get his head just barely free of Samantha's cleavage, nurses on one of her nipples like he's really trying to get some milk. In no time at all he's grunting more wads of cum into her searing pussy. Samantha screams softly, an "aaahhhnn~" that signals her joy to get her womb seeded.

It's not long after that when you feel the muscles inside you loosen, and you're pissing semen down Whitney's esophagus. That's what it honestly feels like, as you blow your nuts -- like you're taking a cummy piss in her mouth. Cerise can tell you're cumming, and does her part to help. She gets her tongue buried to its root in your ass and leaves it there, wriggling it up and down, like she's trying to lick your prostate. You think maybe she does. You feel an almost unbearable sensitivity from inside your ass as you empty what seems like gallons of spunk into Whitney. Every surge and spurt of cum, your dick expands like an over-pressurized hose. Whitney holds your cock by its base and keeps her lips in place just above it, head held still, so you can ejaculate to your heart's content. Even through a mouthful of dick, she's grinning. Always so proud to slurp up a load of your jizz.

Even though it felt endless, you do at last finish squirting dick juice into Whitney's mouth. She takes it out and leaves it with a parting kiss on the piss-slit, by way of thanks. You can tell from how she has her lips sealed that she didn't swallow. Even now your jizz is swirling around inside her mouth. When she sits upright, you get clearer access to her pussy, and shove a few fingers deep inside to reward her. She leans back and closes her eyes and enjoys it: your spunk on her tongue, your fingers jilling her off. Cerise doesn't have another pair of lips to compete with now: she lays her palms flat against the globes of your ass and goes to town on you, shaking her head back and forth as she feasts, and inhaling your musk deeper than ever. Whitney didn't vacuum up quite all of your semen, and a couple ropes of it slide down your shaft, over your balls, and down towards Cerise's face. If anything, this just eggs her on. The sticky vestiges of your brotherly cum seep down around Cerise's mouth and join the wet mess she's already making down there.

Whitney taps Cerise on the shoulder. It takes a few insistent tries before Cerise is willing to pull herself away. Whitney grins broad and wide, her white teeth coated in a slimy film of sperm. Cerise's verdict, delivered through a face that is itself coated in spit, precum, and spunk, is simple: "Whitney, you fucking slut."

Cerise raises herself up a bit to lick and kiss your cock. Whitney, laughing as best she can with 10 or 15 mL of your genetic material swimming around inside her mouth, finally lets her jaw hang open to show off how much she made you cum. Cerise is using one hand to rub you dick against her cheek as she drags her tongue back and forth across it. She appreciates the sight Whitney is showing her. Just to drive the point home, Whitney begins to wag her tongue in tiny little circles, stirring the off-white load all up, so that some of it sloshes under her tongue, and a few thick clumps slide over the broad pink top.

"Don't play with your food," Cerise tells her.

"Ahhhh," Whitney replies, like a patient in the dentist's chair.

"...What?" Cerise says.

"Ahhhhhh," she says, more meaningfully, communicating via her tone what she wants.

Cerise gets the message. She clambers over your lap, gets up onto the couch, embraces Whitney. Their faces inches apart, Cerise says: "aaaaaahhhh~" in the most seductive way you've ever head.

They snowball with your load, and they make it as lurid as possible. They French kiss, getting about half your cum into Cerise's mouth, half in Whitney's. Then they pull apart just a little to let some of it ooze out in thick strands that droop and then snap, splattering their bare chests. They rub their cum-slick nipples together playfully, Cerise's dark and fat, Whitney's pink and pert. Then back to snowballing: they swap it from mouth to mouth with the same gusto they had for swapping your precum.

When you stand up, nudging Cerise out of the way to do so, they hardly notice. They're too involved with each other -- hands on one another's shoulders, lips pressed together, staring dreamily into each other's eyes while they share the reward of an excellent cock-pleasing session. They can have their fun, though. You're still horny and you've still got a load in your heavy balls to dispense. You decide you'll take Alex up on his offer to share his onahole, after all.

You walk to them where they lie mating on the floor. You nudge Samantha with one foot. Nose twitching, she looks up at you. "Master~" She cries with joy. "Are you here to give me cum, too?"

"Turn over," you order the pair.

"Yes! Ok!" Samantha pips, only too eager for the prospect of more dick.

Alex rolls to his back and helps Samantha atop him. It's hard to imagine more of a mismatched duo. Samantha is tall and buxom, Alex is short and lithe. She's actually got a couple inches on him, and she's definitely thicker too, so that with Samantha on top, he looks like he could easily get smothered. Not that he seems to care with how desperately he continues to thrust his dick up her. You take a second to admire the sight: Alex in his slutty spats, and Samantha's plump ass with twitchy tail for decoration. But you're impatient, and don't want to only watch. You want to help dominate this fucking bunny bitch completely. You spread her asscheeks and find the star-shaped hole concealed between them. Such a welcoming sight -- you don't waste time taking advantage. You simply lie on her, belly to back, and get your hard cock seated inside the velvety confines of her asshole. If Samantha's pussy is nearly too hot to fuck comfortably, then her asshole is practically a scalding hazard; the heat actually makes you wince as you sink into her. You've never seen a bitch who gets so literally hot for dick, as Samantha Smatters does.

Whitney and your sister, still lezzing out on the couch, finally notice the debauchery. "You two are gonna break her if you're not careful," Cerise warns you between frothy, cummy kisses. The tone of her voice conveys that she doesn't really care one way or the other about that.

"We don't wanna break her," you tell Cerise. "Not yet, anyway."

"Uh huh~" Alex agrees between thrusts.

"Please!" Samantha shouts. "You can break me! Break me with your dicks, master!"

God. This woman(?) is going to kill you.

The grippy inside of Samantha's asshole is the smoothest that you've ever had the pleasure of raping. And through the thin membrane separating her asshole from her cunt, you feel Alex's eager dick rubbing itself back and forth -- selfishly using her other fuckhole for his own relief. That sensation of frotting with him is almost as good as the tightness of Samantha's rear. The combined decadence of it all is enough to make you nut right then and there. Without intending to, you drop your second load in Samantha's ass. The sperm is jetting through your cockshaft and out of the tip before you even know it's happening. You seed Samantha's ass and grunt, lips curling over your teeth. Fuck, such a good cum. But even through your orgasm, powerful as it is, you're not satisfied. You keep fucking her without breaking your pace, stirring up the cum you dumped in her, making it leak in thick globs down her fleshy inner thighs.

Whitney leans way back and entwines her legs with Cerise's. They get their wet cunts pressed together. Having accomplished this, Whitney leans forward again, hugs Cerise tight, and they start a round of tribadism that fills the living room with wet sucking sounds. They keep swapping your milky sperm back and forth, while watching the lewd threesome from the corners of their eyes.

"Cum... cum in his ass," Cerise pants.

You look quizzically at her over your shoulder.

But majority rules. Whitney laughs: "Heeeeh... yeah, Ally. Fuck that little twink's asshole, huh?"

Alex's squeak of... surprise? protest? ... is muffled by Samantha's massive tits pressing against his face. But he never stops thrusting. You pull from Samantha's ass with a wet plop, making her whine in frustration, but no matter. She got a load from you already. With rough hands, you assist the pair in turning over a second time, Alex back on top, beet red and sweating even more profusely than before. You part his bubble butt and enjoy the contrast of his white ass surrounded by the black nylon spandex of his crotchless short-shorts. And of course the heart-shaped devil tail, and the obscene, girly fishnets which are torn in several places. And the low-cropped tank, baring his thin belly, both streaked with his own cum. Like the whore he is, he's ready to get fucked, whether he thinks he is or not. You get yourself stuck in, just as you did with Samantha.

"Unghhh..." Cerise moans again. If rimming you is her favorite thing to do, sexually, then for sure her second-favorite thing is seeing you use Alex as a cumdump.

For the sheer perversion of it, you reach down and probe your fingers through Samantha's mouth while you fuck Alex silly. She gazes back up at you with a blank, stupid expression, and lets you degrade her like this too. With Alex pinned between the two of you, your fucking is violent and meaty. The cumming goes off like a daisy-chain: first you feel Alex's ass tightening around your hardness, as he empties himself for the fourth or fifth time today inside Samantha's sloppy twat. This sends you over the edge into climax, too, and you balls draw up, and spit their hot load directly into Alex's boypussy. The wet explosion pulsing out of Alex's well-used hole and all around your crotch, before seeping down over his ass to join the mess he's making inside Samantha -- seeing this sets off Cerise and Whitney, too. You hear the squelchy patter of their cunts squirting and cumming against each other's bodies. Their shrill wailing fills the room.

Half enervated, you dismount Alex. Samantha slithers out from underneath him, leaving him lying on the floor in a puddle of cum, yours and his own. But Samantha, greedy cunt she is, can't let it be. She gets down on hands and knees behind him, and opens her mouth, and starts to slurp. She sucks your jizz out of him. She licks the slimy mixture off the ground, too. Sheer unabated enjoyment on her sleek face the entire time. She doesn't care where it goes or where it comes from; as long as she's getting cum in her. Alex is too tired to fight, and can only go "ah..." or "oooh..." in a girlish voice here and there while Samantha works him over. Who used who, after all? You sit indian-style in front of Alex and make him suck your cock clean. He does so without question. It's always so nice to see his cheeks bulging with the girth of your dickmeat filling his mouth. It's not long before your blowing another load straight down his throat, one Samantha won't be able to steal. Cerise and Whitney are rubbing each other's pussies as they watch. They look jealous -- they've swallowed your jizz already, and wish they had some more to eat. They're about as hungry for your cum as Samantha is.

---

You're with Noelle in the little guardshack at Whitney's front gates. The doldrums of the mid-afternoon left you both bored, and playing cards got old, so you decided to fuck.

Now, Noelle sits bare-assed on a stool with her knees spread, cunt proudly on full display. She's got both hands gripping Rose's favorite double-ended dildo, thrusting it in and out of herself like the slut she is. She wears your panties over her head, the seam of the crotch directly against her cute little nose and her eyes gazing glazedly through the legholes. You don't know what it is, but these lesbian bitches seem to like the way your undies smell. It's fine. It's fun to see Noelle debase herself like this, anyway.

"Dyke..." she moans through gulps of air, "I'm a dyke... I love being a dyke..."

"That's good, cop," you tell her. "Keep cumming yourself fuckin' stupid."

Not that she needed instructions. She's squirting all over the tiny room -- the floor and the table, staining the cards you were just playing with a few moments ago. She inhales and exhales as deeply as she can manage, basking in your scent, the scent of an underage pussy. What a low you've brought this FBI agent to, masturbating for a teen girl's perverted pleasure while wearing your panties like a mask. She's getting that dildo stuffed so far inside, you think she must be fucking her own womb with it. This thought makes your own pussy clench and your own womb shudder. You like that best of all, the image of cock pushing through to that most private part. The idea of a dick raping a womb. You share that in common with Vivian, you've found; it's a fetish you've bonded over at length. No pun intended. Noelle rocks lightly back and forth on her butt while she screws her twat up with the plastic dick. Her eyes, though unfocused, are fixed on you. You're pantsless too, your fingers gently diddling your horny clit, and that sight obviously gets her off. Oh yeah: Noelle likes to peep, all right.

What she didn't expect was this: "I invited someone. Hope you don't mind."

Noelle freezes, the dildo half-buried in her quim. "W-what?"

In she comes now. You've got an uncanny sense of timing, these days. Rose bursts through the door, a pink blur: "Ta-dai-maaaa!!" Only after announcing herself in the most obnoxious possible way does she realize what it is she's really walking in on. "O-oh..." she stammers. "So that's why you texted..."

You quell whatever uneasiness your older sister has by walking over and giving her a sweet reassuring peck on the lips. "Glad you could make it," you purr.

Noelle is the more abashed. She scrambles, trying to rise to her feet while pulling the sex toy from its deeply embedded spot. You stay her by pushing her flat chest with your flat palm. "Sit down, cop."

"Stop calling me that like it's an insult!" Noelle demands, haughty in spite of wearing your underwear on her head like a masochist perv.

Rose is giggling. Waggling her wrist in a circle, she points at Noelle with a forefinger. "I knew it. I knee-eeew it~ You're into girls, Noelley-belly!"

"Don't call me that, either--"

Rose is already kneeling in front of her. "It's totally daijobu. I am, too..."

"Y-you--" Noelle begins. "You stupid, shitty little -- little -- y-you fat, cringey f-fucking-- hhh--" She can hardly keep her composure enough to string together her typical anti-Rose diatribe, as Rose tenderly strokes her pale thigh.

"Don't be so tstunstun~ If you're into girls... and I'm into girls... what's the harm?"

Noelle huffs, half angry and half turned-on. But the turned-on half is obviously winning out. A perfect mix.

Rose seems to think so too. She gets her fingers wrapped around the pink toy. Hesitantly, Noelle releases her own grip on it, and lets Rose hold it for her inside her drooling pussy. Rose has the broadest, silliest grin. You've always known she was easily manipulated, and probably a slut, but seeing her so gleefully dive into depravity still somehow surprises you. Alabaster and his little harem really fucked her up. She's always down to fuck at a moment's notice nowadays.

All at once, her grin turns to a pout. "Heeey... this is my dildo, isn't it?" She glances up at you. "You should ask before borrowing my stuff next time! Geez!"

Noelle's eyes widen. The thought that she has a toy lodged up her cunt that's spent many a night lodged in Rose too, is obviously unwelcome news. "What the f--" she begins. But you roughly press a hand against her face, mashing your panties into her nose. "Shut up," you tell her. "Let's all kimochi together, huh?"

Noelle is about explode, maybe literally, as Rose begins to use the toy for its intended purpose. This is sexual torment of the worst kind for her, being at the whims of this weeaboo she despises. Yet she's powerless to resist. Rose's technique is just like the rest of her: overly enthusiastic and abrasive. She pumps the dildo into Noelle like plunging a toilet. Noelle's cunt-lips slide back and forth, and her pussy goes from concave to convex at blistering speed. It looks honestly painful. And that's hot. Cracking your neck, grinning, you guide Noelle's hand towards your bald pussy so she can help you out, too.

"You f-fucking bitches," Noelle grunts, even as she gets her fingers rooted into your wet little pussy-hole. "This is rape..."

"This isn't rape," you tell her. "You want this. You'd stop us if you didn't."

"I d--"

Rose chirps: "Amber's right! If you can't fight off a couple of teenage girls... then you're useless as a bodyguard!~" 

Noelle hugs herself and shivers. "G-go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself, you stupid bitch..."

Rose snickers. You do too. The glint in her eye tells you that, dim bulb she may be, she's got the same idea as you. "You heard the cop," you tell her.

You get behind, grab Noelle by the shoulders and haul her back at the same time as Rose gets hold of her legs to stabilize her. All at once Noelle is horizontal and the stool is lying tipped over on the floor. Noelle flails her arms uselessly, crying out. "What the-- stop! Stop!"

Too late. Much too late. You have her on her back on the ground that's already dirty with her cum. Rose shimmies out of her ruffled plaid skirt and tosses it aside, revealing her shapely ass and juicy pussy. She wasn't wearing underwear, the slut, all the better for someone to take advantage of her. Or for her to take advantage of someone else, as the case may be. You nod at her. She goes to her knees, straddles Noelle's crotch.

From the legholes of your panties, Noelle's eyes go wild, and she shakes her head forcefully. Rose is not to be dissuaded. She takes one of Noelle's toned calves and hoists high into the air, so that she can hug Noelle's leg with the ankle against her temple. A perfect perch to use as, rooting around with her free hand, Rose finds the opposite side of the double-ended pink dildo and pops it into her candy-sweet cunny.

Despite herself, Noelle sighs. It's a depravedly wonderful sight, those two pretty pussies, one above the other, linked by the translucent pink rubber. Noelle appreciates it as much as anyone. And of course there's the pressure of Rose's not-inconsiderable weight bearing down, forcing the dildo's bottom ever deeper into the tight confines of Noelle's slit. She likes to get mating-pressed, after all, and this is something similar. Rose, too, hisses -- enjoying as always the pleasure of getting penetrated. You're jealous.

So jealous in fact that you decide to punish Noelle even more. She wanted to smell your pussy, so you'll give her the real deal. You straddle her other end, squatting down over her face, calves folded under your naked butt. She can no longer see what's happening to her, but that's fine. She doesn't need to. You rub your hot cunt back and forth over her face. The cotton material of your underwear is a bit rough and it tickles your clit in a strange way. You can hear Noelle making pig-like noises as she sniffs you and tries to suck you even through the material. How cute.

"This is so... so..." Rose pants, fucking herself up and down. But she's too stupid to finish the thought. Instead, hugging Noelle's leg even harder, she just redoubles the pace of her frenzied humping. She's leaking all over Noelle's body. With every downward thrust, Rose's tight pussy lips get closer and closer to Noelle's. Then, with a triumphant and dreamy smile, Rose finishes the job. Down her throat or into her little pussy, it doesn't matter -- she's an expert at making that dildo disappear. Her barely-there cunt lips are kissing Noelle's fleshy labia, their cum intermingling, their four thighs all shiny under the guardshack's fluorescent overhead light.

You reward Rose by leaning forward, palms pressed against the ground, and kissing her on the mouth. You swap spit with your own sister while you use Noelle Keki as a cum toilet. Could life be sweeter?

---

After Jeopardy, you duck into a guest bedroom with a giggling Dr. Carte. She might be a little worse for the wear between the cast on her foot and the drunkenness, but she's as hot for your cock as she ever was, and she wants you to know it. She showers you with loving kisses and you hungrily return them: you taste her lips, her face, and her neck. She has the same flavor she always did, the flavor of a desperate and degenerate older woman. You get her coat and her shirt off; she gets your pants off. Her bare tits are so nice and warm, big and soft, in your groping palms. Your hardening dick feels just great in her practiced grip. In summary, things are going about the way they usually go between you and her. But then amidst your searching kisses, Dr. Carte sits down on the edge of the bed. When you try to nudge her backwards and climb on top of her, she instead pushes you back. Then in the moment of your surprise, she grabs a handful of your tee's fabric with a strong fist. She yanks, surprising you a second time, and the force of it makes you stoop your spine enough for her to get her hand on top of your head. She forces you the rest of the way down, then, under gravity's assistance. All of a sudden you're on your knees in front of her.

"What the hell--" you start.

"You lost on Jeopardy. That makes you my slave, remember?"

"Har har. Very funny." You begin to stand, but she presses firmly down on your shoulders with both hands.

"I'm not joking."

Your wife only wishes she could scare you the way Dr. Carte just has with those three simple words. Your heart actually stops for a brief moment.

"But you..." you say. "Dr. Carte, this is--"

She laughs derisively. "That's Mistress to you, slave." As she says this, she parts her meaty thighs which are still tightly confined in the fabric of her trousers. Her bare torso shimmers with sweat, so much that you can see the trickle of it from underneath her udders. She rubs one of them sensually, playing with her own nipple, grinning down at you. Her waistband is biting into her skin, accentuating that plump hourglass shape, just barely on the right side of overweight, that turns you on despite yourself. From this close, with your head almost nestled in her lap, you can smell her, her unique womanly scent. You can smell it radiating out even from behind the inseam of her pants and her underwear. She must be so wet right now that she can barely stand it. No wonder she's acting so crazy. It melds with the earthy, slightly sour scent of her perspiration, creating a pheromone laden bouquet which instantly shuts off the part of your brain that wants to protest this treatment. You lay your palms on either one of her legs, enjoying how soft she is, staring up at the way she lewdly rubs her flattened hand in circles around her nipples. Dr. Carte has extraordinarily sensitive breasts, you know, and she could probably make herself cum just like that; by masturbating with her nipples. Even now her lower lip is quavering with her own onanistic pleasure.

"Unbutton me," she orders you.

You do as she tells you. With shaky hands you unbutton her trousers. It's hard, with as wide as she has her legs spread, to get even so much as your fingers into the taut waistband. When you pop the button free, Dr. Carte spreads her legs even wider still, and this motion forces the zipper of her pants down all on its own. Behind the fly is the bulging mound of Dr. Carte's cunt, hardly concealed at all by panties so sodden with need that they've become translucent. The white cotton is more like a window than anything; through it, you can can clearly see every detail of her pussy. The fat out-turned lips, the thin strip of hair above, the pulsating clit peeking out from its hood. Her tight little fuckhole, and the perinium below it. And you can feel the heat of her, too, like sitting in front of a firepit. It wafts over you and makes you halfway dizzy.

She gives her mound a wet slap that send a few droplets splashing onto your face. You flinch. "You, Alabaster, are a slave to this hole tonight. You're going to please it, and make it cum, until I'm satisfied. Or I'll be forced to punish you."

You don't respond -- you're too busy staring transfixed at that lewd pussy you've just been consigned into slavery for.

"Tell me 'yes, mistress'" she demands.

"Yes mistress," you say with a flat voice.

"Hmmm~" she laughs, pleased at your docile reply. "Do you want to put your mouth against it?" She asks.

You lean in to do so, but she stops you by pressing her thighs into your cheeks. It puckers your lips and the skin around your eyes, forcing you to make a fishy face, and it feels utterly humiliating.

"I didn't give you permission to put your disgusting face against my body," she sneers.

You gaze up, your expression still contorted, waiting for what comes next.

"Ask your mistress nicely for what you want, slave. I might be nice if you can manage that."

"Prease cwan I puh mu fashe againsht your crosh mishtresh," you manage through the pressure of her legs squeezing you on both sides.

She lets her iron grip on you loosen. "Good slave." She makes you wait for excruciating moments, during which you can feel your hard cock throbbing painfully, before finally saying: "Go ahead."

You immediately bow your head forward and bury your mouth and nose against her crotch.

"Say thank you to your mistress," she tells you.

"Thank you mistress," you reply, inhaling deeply, and seeing stars.

"Kiss my hole," she grunts.

You kiss her pussy through her underwear. Not just once, but again and again. You dart your tongue out and try to penetrate her with it despite the stubborn barrier of that damp garment blocking your access. The taste of her juice is tart but sweet, and so gratifying. You can't help moaning.

"You are desperate, huh?" Dr. Carte says. You nod between your little kisses and licks. "That's okay," she adds, and gently strokes your cheek, "your mistress is a bit desperate, too..."

She lifts her butt off the mattress, just enough to pull her pants down, and now her soaking underwear is fully on view. "See?" She coos.

"I need to fuck you," you groan, squirming in place like an impatient kindergartner, pawing at her silky smooth legs to keep them apart for you to feast your eyes on the treasure between them.

"Dirty boy~" She chides. "What makes you think I would let you put your dirty slave cock inside my pussy and mess it up?"

"Please," you beg.

"What makes you think I would let you squirt your raw cock inside me like the pathetic animal you are? What makes you think you deserve such a privilege?"

"Please," you repeat. "I'll do anything. I need to fuck you."

With a sharply arched bare foot, Dr. Carte presses the hardness of your cock against your belly, the way a person might crush an insect. She grinds the sensitive underside with the ball. You stifle a moan. "Admit that I own you, and I might let you get your dick wet for a couple seconds."

"You -- own me--" you admit.

"Admit that MY pussy is the best..."

"It's the best. Of course it's the best. I -- god, fuck, just let me fuck you, please!"

"Awww," Dr. Carte says. "You're so cute when you're needy."

She scooches back and rests against the bed's headboard. Arms wide and elbows locked, she beckons you with both hands.

"Come on, slave. Fuck your mistress. Fuck her hard."

You get up on the bed and crawl forward towards her like a man under a hypnotist's spell. In a sense, that's what you are. You're 100% under the spell of Dr. Carte's mature pussy. You would do anything at all for the chance to get off inside it.

She hooks a thumb through one leg of her panties and tugs it aside, baring her hole to you. What a beautiful hole it is. So tender and warm, and so drippy and pink. Who wouldn't want to be its slave?

Panting like the animal she says you are, you steady your jerking cock with one hand and find the rubbery entrance at the bottom of her vulva. Her so-superior play-acting falters for just a second when you plunge yourself into her. She throws her head back and gasps at the intrusion. Your coke-can dick is impossible to get truly accustomed to. The best that most women can do is just grit their teeth and bear that initial flash of pain, like Dr. Carte does. When she meets your eyes again, they're dewy, and swimming in pleasure.

"You... have a very nice dick," Dr. Carte sighs, unable to come up with anything more than that simple praise. You prop yourself on your elbows and begin to fuck in earnest. Doctor's orders. Your efforts make the bed creak and shake and jiggle. Dr. Carte, too. She's jiggly all over. Her tits and belly undulate like the ocean. When she speaks, her teeth are clattering and her voice is shaky. "Th-that's it -- that's it -- dirty, dirty boy. Make your mistress's cunt all dirty with your dirty dick..."

You wouldn't be able to do anything else. Your horny dick controls you completely right now. All you can do is thrust and fuck atop her. The sweet relief of her cunt's interior soothes the raging ache in your boner, but only as long as you keep rutting. If you slow down for even a microsecond, the ache returns, and worse than before. You have to keep fucking her, just as hard and fast as you can, or you'll go mad with need and frustration.

Dr. Carte pets you. She touches her sweat-streaked cheek to yours. "God, you make my pussy feel so good... keep fucking me just like that..."

"I'm gonna cum," you groan, eyes clenched shut.

"No you aren't," Dr. Carte says, voice soft, but firm and commanding. "Don't you dare stain your mistress's cunt without her permission."

"Please--" you beg.

"No."

You whinny.

"You don't get to cum," Dr. Carte says, stroking your face, "until you make my hole cum first. I told you, Alabaster. You're a slave to my hole tonight. You don't get your reward... until you please me enough... then and only then... I'll think about letting you drop a load inside me."

You bow your head in sheer frustration, but Dr. Carte will not relent. She clasps your face with both hands, and forces you to kiss her. You taste the menthol-and-whisky flavor of her mouth, and bask in the heat of it. You pound her horny, motherly pussy out, trying your best to get her off. The precum is coursing out of your cockshaft like a broken faucet, and you know you're going to jizz soon whether you've got her say-so or not. You're frightened, legitimately so, of what she might do if you orgasm without permission. And so you do your best to get her off first. You fuck rhythmically,  mashing your crotch against her clitoral hood, and you play with her sensitive tits to help her along. You want her to cum... no, you NEED her to cum... so that you can cum too. Yes, you need your mistress to cum... she gets to cum first...

"You really are hot, huh?" Dr. Carte coos between wet kisses. "You really want to cum inside me, huh?"

"Yes -- yes--"

"Beg me for it."

"But--"

"Beg me for it!" She shouts. She jerks her body back and forth, torturing you with the silky soft clench of her sexy pussy. It makes your head go blank. You shudder. Of course you'll beg her for it, if that's what she wants.

"Please let me cum mistress please -- please, please, let me cum inside you, let my slave cock cum inside you--"

"Nasty boy," she spits. She takes one of her tits and presents it to you: "Suck me."

You obey. You wrap your greedy lips around her nipple and suck her. Your tongue swabs back and forth over the ridged nub and the fat areola. You can taste her sweat, the salty-sweetness of it. Your teeth accidentally scrape against her succulent skin, and she spasms beneath you.

"Okay -- okay, slave -- on the count of three, you have permission to get your mistress's cunt dirty with your spunk. Thank me for it..."

"Thank you mistress thank you--"

"One--"

You hammer her as hard and fast as you've ever hammered any girl before. She begins to shiver despite herself.

"Two..."

You can feel her girlcum running in streams out of her twat, and to the bedspread below. It coats your cockshaft entirely, getting it slick and sticky, as you mount the peak towards your ultimate, blessed relief.

She nuzzles her face against your head and giggles. "Two and a half..."

You growl in pain. "PLEASE -- fuck! --"

She pets you again, and finally: "Cum inside me, slave."

You bellow, and can't even find the composure to thank her again as you should. You just blow your nuts off inside her. Sweet, sweet, relief. You ejaculate a virtual geyser of gooey semen directly against the back walls of her womb. She shrieks, literally, her shrill voice ringing in your ears. Your cum seems to last an eternity, and then you collapse on top of her, still nursing her tits -- one, then the other.

She nudges you, and draws your flushed face up to look at her. Then, leaning forward, she rubs the tip of her nose against yours. A patented Dr. Renee D. Carte Eskimo kiss. You grin, broad and dopey; she laughs huskily. But then: "Why are you just lying there?"

"...What?"

"I'm not done with you yet, slave. Keep fucking your mistress."

It's going to be a long, long night.

---

You eat lunch with Rose and Whitney in the executive dining hall. She sips a milkshake, her burger and fries already half-devoured. You and Rose are much slower eaters, and lighter eaters too. She has a salad, you a chicken sandwich.

"What I wanna know is why there's no guys in Gensokyo," Whitney says.

"There's like one guy," you say, "I'm pretty sure."

She snorts. "He must be busy."

"No," you say sadly. "Pretty much everyone in Gensokyo is a lesbian."

Whitney shakes her head. "Well that's just plain improbable."

"Alabaster is wrong, as usual," Rose says. "There are plenty of men in Gensokyo. They're just not important, so you never really see them."

"Ha!" Whitney shouts. "Now I get why you like those games so much. The universe makes sense again."

You roll your eyes.

Into the dining hall walks Qiangxiang. She pauses when she sees you and your girls eating here. The other lower-level executives in the room pause at her entrance, in turn; she gives just about everyone the heebie-jeebies.

After a moment, she resumes; finds a table to herself in the corner, and beckons for the waiter. She places an order for something or another, and sips at her glass of water. All alone in the world -- it's a little pitiful.

"I thought Galgal was supposed to be watching her all the time," Whitney whispers.

"She can't do anything evil with a bowl of shark fin soup or whatever the hell it is she eats," you say. "Gal is watching her in all the ways she needs to be watched--"

But it turns out that Gal is more committed to her job than you even assumed. She and Cerise enter now as well, and find a table directly across from Qiangxiang. Qiangxiang looks at Gal with a sort of beleaguered contempt, but says nothing.

>Where are you going to spend time today, Alabaster?

>[x] Get to know Qiangxiang.

[ ] Get involved with Cerise's campaign.

>[x] Speak with David Darkbloom.

[ ] Hang out with Mom.

[ ] Custom?

Qiangxiang is staring placidly out the window to her right, the gray sunlight from the overcast sky making her skin look sickly, when you sit down at her table.

"Alabaster," she says warmly.

"What do you want?" You ask.

"I... am not sure I understand the context of the question. Could you be more specific?"

You fold your arms, thinking. "You're one of the richest people in the world, right? You obviously have a lot of power already. And at a young age. You don't need to be here, do you? You don't strike me as ideologically motivated... or if you are, you don't show it. All that talk about China reigning supreme -- but you really don't give a shit about that, do you?"

She smirks back.

"You could grow your money and influence in any of a million ways, but you chose -- you chose to come here to the United States, to our company... where you're all alone, and under constant surveillance. What is it you really want out of this?"

"I want to have a say in the future. Darkbloom Analytics is the future, Alabaster. Although maybe you do not truly realize it yet. Broad Dynamics is the past. They definitely do not realize it yet."

"Your soup, miss--" comes the waiter's voice, as he sets a bowl in front of her. You were close; it's not shark fin soup, but it is some sort of watery fish dish that looks even less appetizing than it smells.

"Take that back," you tell him.

"Errm," he murmurs.

"Take it back or you're fired," you say.

He picks the bowl up. Qiangxiang quirks her eyebrow at you -- not upset in the slightest, more like curious.

"Get the girl a nice cheeseburger. Medium. Fat and juicy, with pickles, lettuce, onion and ketchup. And french fries. A bottle of Coca-Cola too."

Qiangxiang closes her eyes and shakes her head and smiles. "Is this some form of torture?" She asks you. "Thank you, but I would rather go hungry."

"I'm sure you would," you say. The waiter scurries off, to place your new order. "But we'll teach you how to eat like a real American, Chloe."

"I need to be forthright. I do not like that name."

"Chloe?"

"Mm."

"I'll make sure to keep using it."

"Shall I call you Ally?" She asks, perching her chin on the back of interlaced fingers.

You don't reply, but that gives her all the go-ahead she needs. She knows now that you don't like it. "Ally it is, then. Chloe and Ally -- a partnership to endure."

You rub your face. "Why do you think this company is the future? What do you want to do with Sand Reckoner?"

"I have already told you my theory of the world, have I not? It was no empty prattle, Ally. I want to be among the interesting people of the world. To influence the course of history. You know already that Sand Reckoner can unlock such enormous potential... I want to contribute. Sincerely."

"Is it true about your uncle?" You ask.

Qiangxiang grips her napkin tightly in her lap, and the hint of a scowl develops on her lips. You knew it was true already, you just want to mess with her.

"Your hamburger, miss," the waiter says, setting her new plate in front of her.

"Hamburger..." she mutters to herself, staring forlornly down at the food. She pokes the greasy meat testingly with a forefinger, and doesn't seem pleased with the way it gives.

"Looks tasty," you prompt. "Give it a bite."

"So this is how I die," she says, smiling brightly up at you. "Poisoned by my enemies."

"Aha. You consider me an enemy after all."

She titters in that insultingly condescending way. "No. But you see it that way despite my best intentions. So you have decided to fatten me up -- to clog my arteries and kill me in the American way."

"One burger is not going to kill you," you say. "You're so melodramatic. Fuck."

"This meal weighs more than an infant, Ally. My body mass index would balloon as quickly as your country's deficit." She waits for laughter that doesn't come. "A political joke. Those are risky in formal company. I see you did not appreciate the humor."

She picks it up, the bun already soggy, the bloody grease dripping fat dollops down to the plate. She cannot help her upper lip curling in disgust. "This smells like dead cow," she says.

"That's what it is, so."

Cerise and Gal are watching intently from the other table, whispering to each other; ditto Rose and Whitney. The other employees here, too, are gossiping over the scene. Taking bets, most likely. Will she eat it? Will she vomit it back up if she does? Will she burst into tears and flee the room?

"It's not getting any less dead," you tell her.

"You so love to humiliate a young woman, don't you, Ally?"

"I do. It makes me hot. That's the American way, you know. Make a girl eat a hamburger, then fuck her silly." Qiangxiang gives you a glance that looks a bit too hopeful so you add: "only, I'm not going to fuck you."

"So you say."

"Eat the fucking hamburger, Chloe."

She closes her eyes, opens her jaw. Such a tiny mouth it is. And she takes a nibble that's more bun than anything. She chews for a brief moment or two, mulling it over.

She swallows as slowly as she chews, sets the burger back on the plate, and sips at her cola.

"Well?"

"What would you like to hear, Ally? ... What would make you hotter?"

"Something genuine," you say. "I just... I just want something genuine from you, for once."

She picks up the burger and takes a second bite, this one much more substantial. She doesn't conceal her enjoyment. Her face alights, and she chews with gusto, and licks her chops when she's done. Next she samples the fries, which are enormous, more like potato wedges, seasoned orange with zesty powder. She eats these with as much enthusiasm. Her dainty eating habits have suddenly become a gorging session to rival Whitney. She's gnoshing the meal down as fast as her little hands and mouth will let her.

"My genuine reaction," she tells you between bites, her mouth half full, "is exactly as I had feared. This combination of fat, salt, and carbohydrates, this lowest-common-denominator garbage masquerading as food, is decadently and completely delicious. Addictive. Having eaten it once, I am sure to eat it again. And again and again. Opium for a new age. I hope you like your girls chubby."

You can't help laughing, just a little.

Qiangxiang licks her fingers when she sets the half-eaten burger back on her plate. One by one. Suck-plop, suck-plop. "Do you know? Teenage girls rebel in the ways set forth for them by their families. If your family tells you not to go out after midnight, you go out after midnight. If your family tells you to till the fields, you neglect the fields." She props her elbows on the table and smiles at you. "My uncle raised me, Ally, and he told me not to eat American junk food."

---

At home that night, Dr. Carte is beyond angry at Whitney:

"You had this the entire time? And you didn't tell me about it?"

"Mom -- Mom, I'm sorry, geez!--"

"I can't believe you! How dare you! How dare you keep this a secret from me?"

Dr. Carte flips the page in the photo album. Another set of pictures of Whitney as a toddler reveals itself. Dr. Carte, usually so eloquent even while angered or excited, can only manage an overjoyed: "Aaaaah!!!" -- not her first of the evening. "Look at that! Look at how fat you were! AAAHHH!" Vivian, standing over Dr. Carte's shoulder, grins -- this is a side of big sister she's never seen, either.

The doorbell rings, blessedly, and you go to answer it. Standing in the foyer, you hear yet another "aaaaahhh!!" from the living room. It's like nails on chalkboard when Dr. Carte wails like that, honestly.

Darkbloom, on the doorstep, furrows his brow. "Is everything all right?" He asks you.

"I don't know. I mean. My eardrums aren't all right. Otherwise yeah, sure."

You stand there blocking the doorway, perhaps by instinct more than anything.

"May I?" He asks.

You consider it for a couple moments. Then you step aside.

When Darkbloom enters the living room, Dr. Carte's excitement at seeing Whitney's childhood photos briefly dissolves. She looks up from the album in her lap, wearing a severe expression. She and Darkbloom have kept their distance since Vail, but tonight, of course, that won't be possible.

He clears his throat. Then he tries: "What are you two looking at?"

Whitney answers on Dr. Carte's behalf. "Somebody tattled that I had an old picture album lying around." (That somebody would be you. You sort of don't even regret it. Dr. Carte deserved to see it.) "Mom's been going through it."

"Oh..." Darkbloom says. He awkwardly stands there in the middle of the room, in silence. Then, turning, he begins to say to you: "Well then. I suppose we should discuss--"

"You wanna see too, right?" Whitney interjects.

Darkbloom tries to be nonchalant about it. He turns back towards her. "If you are offering -- I would -- ahem, I would find it quite interesting, yes."

"Well come on, then," Dr. Carte says. She makes room for Darkbloom to sit beside her. You hate this -- but you won't interrupt it.

The album is thick, but its hundreds of photos cover mostly only the first three years of Whitney's life. The reason why is pretty simple: most of these pictures were taken by Whitney's adoptive mother. When she died, her piece of shit adoptive father couldn't be bothered. After that, the only photos are official ones -- school portraits, news clippings from her time in varsity soccer, the occasional picture taken at a friend's birthday party. A few photos from your house, too, taken by your mother -- and of course her win in the quiz bowl. These photos were all catalogued by Whitney herself.

Whitney explains this to her biological parents. Not in a play for pity, but as matter-of-factly as she would tell them the weather. It's just the truth of the situation, and she doesn't think anything of revealing it.

Darkbloom frowns down at a family portrait of a chubby little baby Whitney with the couple he gave her to. "Lilly Price was a fine woman," he says. His voice is rueful. "I'm sorry her husband was not a fine man."

"Whatever," Whitney says, shrugging.

"Oh my God," Dr. Carte says, pointing at a portrait beside it, of toddler Whitney in a fancy red dress. Taken for Christmas, it looks like. "Oh my God!! Do you still have that dress?"

"Why would I still have that dress, Mom?"

"Answer the question!"

"No... geez, no."

"We need to get you a dress like that!" Dr. Carte says.

"I don't wear dresses," Whitney says. "They're itchy... and hot... ew."

"I could find you some dresses that you would enjoy wearing," Vivian offers.

"No. Fuck no. Shut up."

Darkbloom, even, is smiling. "I don't know... you do look rather fetching when you're gussied up. Maybe for a special occasion?"

Whitney ruffles her hair and clenches her eyes shut. This is turning into a major embarrassment for her. Your heart goes out to her.

"What is--" Darkbloom begins when he sees a certain photo on a certain page.

Whitney quickly turns the page to move past it, but Dr. Carte turns it back.

"Is that a kilt?" Dr. Carte breathes.

"Oh my God..." Whitney mutters. "Just turn the page already. Fuck."

"Whitney was in the model UN in middle school," you say, sitting down on the loveseat.

"You? In a model UN?" Vivian questions.

"Fuck. Goddamn it. Shut up."

Cerise, looking up from her laptop beside you, pipes up: "She wanted to impress Alabaster. King Dork here was the Ayatollah."

"I nuked a lot of countries that year," you say. "They had to rewrite the rules for the next school year because of me."

"Did you actually learn how to play the bagpipes?" Darkbloom asks her, as he gazes down at the photo.

Whitney, ironically, is a shade of cerise. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Oh Danny Boy..." Cerise sings. You join her: "The pipes, the pipes are calling..."

"That's Irish, you fucking asses!" Whitney hollers. She tosses her handbag at Cerise, who deflects it with an arm, laughing. "I was Scotland, not Ireland!"

"That hardly makes sense," Vivian says, "Scotland is not an independent member state--"

"From glen to glen, and down the mountainside..." Dr. Carte croons. So off-key.

"Stop!!"

Vivian gives up her starkly rational line of questioning: "the summer's gone, and all the roses falling," she sings. Whitney turns and tries to swat her, but Vivian deftly dodges.

"It's you -- it's you must go, and I must bide," Darkbloom sings, in an impressively tuneful baritone.

"Agggh!!! Fuck all of you!"

Whitney heaves herself up off the couch and storms from the room. Dr. Carte, giggling, continues to leaf through the album.

After dinner, and getting Whitney to calm herself again, it's down to brass tacks.

"All I know of the lighthouse is conjecture," Darkbloom tells you. "I'm not even certain it's an actual lighthouse. I suppose it could be -- but, that doesn't make sense to me. If it was, it would have been discovered by now. The Russian government lost track of it when the wall fell, and no one else knows where it is either. Surely if it was a structure existing above ground somewhere, satellite imagery would have uncovered it. Similarly -- if it was a physical structure below ground, it would also have been discovered by now as well, with ground-penetrating radar and the like. You see what I am driving at. Rather than a structure, I believe the term 'lighthouse' is by way of analogy -- it's a non-physical entity, a network, airgapped from the worldwide web."

"What is it?" Alex asks him.

"If the rumors are true then it is not much different from what the true power of Sand Reckoner could be. An engine to understand the world well enough that you could make it conform to your desires for it. To in a sense rewrite reality." He looks at you sternly. "It's too powerful. That's why I wanted to give the world something less -- but adequate. Better for people to enjoy a simulated reality of their choosing than to change the structure of the world as it actually is. Don't you agree?"

"Is it real?" Cerise asks.

"I don't know. I think it is."

"How can we find out?" Rose asks.

Darkbloom crosses his legs, ankle on knee. "Chloe," he tells you.

"Pfft," Whitney says. "Fuck that noise with a rusty tin dick."

"How?" You demand.

"Her family has deep connections to the Chinese government. She has the resources needed to get to the bottom of it, if you can convince her that you need to know the truth of it. Or..."

"Or?" You say.

"Not all mysteries demand a solution. Or even have one to find. It took me decades to accept that truth. Is your position such that you truly must know? Is there not enough for us to manage without--"

"Us?" You say. "There's no 'us' as in you and us."

Darkbloom sighs. "Never mind that. There is more than enough for you, Alabaster Soliloquy, without dredging these waters." He motions at Cerise with the broad side of his palm: "Of course, if you have patience, then maybe our rising young political star here can develop ties to the US government of her own, given time enough, and find out that way. Lord knows I tried, but I was never a political mastermind. I cannot deal with people. People... confuse and frighten me, to be perfectly honest."

Such candor.

---

You find Darkbloom out on the back patio, where he's standing by himself, smoking a cigar and staring into the pool. You slide the glass door shut behind you and approach him. Without turning around, he asks: "you knew Carl Price, correct?"

You draw alongside him and watch the rippling pool as well. "I'm impressed. You found one of the only men on Earth who was a worse father than you."

"It was not always that way. He was a perfectly capable provider before Lilly's cancer. Then the alcoholism and joblessness... I considered ways to remove her from that home, but..." He trails off. He takes a lingering drag, and you glance questioningly at his cigar. He takes a look, too, when he notices you staring -- turns it over in his hand and examines the glowing cherry, before telling you: "Steven's habit -- it rubbed off on me. You don't mind, do you?"

"But what?" You demand. "Why didn't you find something better for Whitney? You could have."

He puts the cigar back in his mouth. "There is no but. I made the decisions I made and I feel no obligation to justify them to you, Alabaster."

"You--"

"I what? If it were not for Whitney's upbringing, you would never have known her. You would be a nobody right now. Or most probably dead. Do you grasp that? You have ridden her coattails to the top of the world. Is that not enough? Or must you continue to lambaste me."

"What does this have to do with me?" You say. "I'm not talking about how things worked out for me. I'm talking about Whitney."

Darkbloom seems taken aback by that remark. He doesn't respond.

You huff. "Don't think you can manipulate me. You might be getting all cozy with the people in there, but I still remember what you did. And I'll never forgive you for it."

He makes a pained smile. "Oh, I know that perfectly well, Alabaster, believe me. But how much more will you insist on degrading me? You've won. Did no one teach you how to gracefully accept a win? How much vengeance is enough to exact? You stole my love, you took and corrupted my daughters, you hijacked my company -- you murdered me. Yet here I stand doing my very best to help you. And Renee and my girls, even, yes, Amber and Anna. You may call me a terrible father but look at what triumphs my children have obtained."

"I should have seen this coming. Can't be God anymore, so you'll settle for Jesus. You died for our sins, huh? Want some help getting yourself nailed to that cross?"

"I'm no martyr." He turns, grins at you: "More like a holy ghost."

He falls quiet again, and his face goes serious for a brief moment, as if he's considering something. Then he comes out with it: "I killed Congressman Isstein."

You feel the dark rage simmering within you: "You... I knew it. You f--"

"On what remains of my life, I swear I did not have any hand in running Cerise for his seat. That was Whitney's concept. In all honesty I think the idea is absurd, and Cerise is sure to fail. But yes, I killed Isstein, and pinned his death on Tyrus Kang. Would you like to know why?" You meet him with stony silence, so he explains it anyway: "this company has enemies both foreign and domestic. Isstein was going to be a domestic enemy. He knew too much about Mara's dirty dealings, which implicate the entire organization -- whether she is here or not -- and I think you least of anyone would like to see our server facilities RICO'd."

You don't even know what to say to him. He squats, snuffs his cigar against the limestone edge of the pool, stands and stows the butt in his coat pocket. "You may thank me later," he tells you. "I should be running. Have a pleasant remainder of the evening."

He begins to go, but Saul and Charlotte are coming out onto the back patio now. Looking for you, apparently, because Charlotte begins: "Alabaster, we were--" before noticing Darkbloom, and stopping.

"Don't mind me, Mrs. Mallory," Darkbloom says, "I was just on my way."

Saul is never one to mince words: "On your way. Hah. You should be under lock and key. Or dead."

"I see you agree with your stepson. Quite similar personalities, I should think -- no wonder your wife is so enamored with him."

Saul has no comeback for that one. Darkbloom steps past him, and goes. They watch him depart, and then an awkward silence descends, before Charlotte finally breaks it by touching your arm and saying: "Alabaster... are you all right?"

"No," you admit.

"Cerise got tickets for a Warriors game," Saul tells you. "One of many gifts I assume she'll be treated to now that she's a politician."

"--What? From who?" You marvel.

"The governor," Charlotte says. "I think he's trying to convince her not to run." She fishes through her purse and finds the tickets. It's not just any game ticket, either -- it guarantees access to a private suite at the stadium, high above the commoners in the crowd. "Cerise hates sports, and so does Anna, so they wanted to give their tickets to us. But we're going to the theater tonight, so..."

"I see," you say.

"I think Whitney intends to go, and she's dragging Vivian along too, and maybe a couple others," Charlotte says.

[ ] Go to the game with Whitney, Vivian, Rose2, and Noelle.

>[x] Go to the theater with with Charlotte, Rose, and Mom.

>[x] Stay home with Cerise, Gal, and Amber.

"And you think I'm some kind of sports superfan?" You laugh. "Thanks, but no. You and Saul have it right. I'd rather go to the theater than an NBA game, too--"

"Oh, would you like to come with us?" Charlotte cuts in, sounding hopeful.

"Uh. I was just making a rhetorical p--"

But Charlotte, once an idea crosses her mind, is impossible to persuade: "Rose and Scarlett are coming. We could make it sort of like a family night out."

Oh boy. You're always weirdly off-put by the prospect of directly rejecting Charlotte's hospitality, so instead you try to throw up a roadblock by pointing out an immediately practical problem: "I'd love to go, really, but -- you didn't get any extra seats, did you?"

"Oh, that's no matter," Charlotte says, "you can borrow the season pass I gave Cerise for her birthday." She giggles. "Wow -- Cerise is just swimming in tickets she doesn't take advantage of, isn't she? That girl is such a homebody. It's a shame."

You force an awkward: "Haha, yeah." Time to try another escape route: "Except I just--"

"I'm glad you want to go, though! At least one of the Soliloquy siblings isn't a shut-in, right?"

You sigh. "Right."

The hall is going to be packed, Charlotte tells you. Apparently this is one of the country's foremost Shakespeare troupes, and Palo Alto's socialites are champing at the bit to see them play. The performance tonight is King Lear. No one is less excited than you. But you get this rare treat as a dampener to your petulance: Mom, wearing a cocktail dress.

"Wow..." you say appreciatively as she steps forth from her room and descends the staircase. "I didn't expect you to get dressed up. Actually, I didn't even know you owned any dresses like that--"

"Don't you start!" She barks. "Keep your snide comments to yourself!"

Cerise, who's kicked back on the living room couch with a beer, Gal wrapped around her, raises her bottle and toasts at Mom: "I think he was trying to compliment you."

She adjusts the purse on her shoulder, scowling. "Well, he's got a strange way of doing that." She glances around, and finally seems to realize that she's the most formally dressed of anyone. Saul and Charlotte both have on the business casual they went to work in, you and Rose are wearing your normal day-attire. "We... were supposed to get dressed up, right?" She asks, voice strained.

"You look fantastic," Charlotte says, trying to reassure her. "I think you're going to love the experience."

That doesn't help assuage Mom's embarrassment at being overdressed. She's blushing vividly. Cerise giggles -- a fatal mistake.

"I'm sure I will love it!" Mom announces, and then, to Cerise: "So will you!"

She's not laughing anymore. "What -- what does this have to do with me?"

"You're coming too! I'm not going to let you hide here at home with your wife. You and Anna need to get used to going out if you're going to be a political operative."

Cerise has the same low cunning as you when it comes to getting out of social engagements. "But -- but we don't have enough seats--"

"We're billionaires, honey," Mom tells her. "Buy the seats of the people next to us."

"that's scalping," Gal tries. "scalping is illegal. we shouldn't break the law"

Mom frowns at her.

"the... the law..." Gal repeats. She turns to her wife: "th-the law... that's why... we can't..."

Mom isn't buying it. Two swings, two misses. You'd feel sorry for them, but misery loves company.

Still, if you can talk Mom out of taking them -- you could definitely cash in on that favor in a big way.

[ ] Keep Cerise and Gal at home, for some wholesome fun with Amber.

>[x] Drag them out with you.

The couples sit together, all along a row near the very front: Saul and Charlotte, Rose and you, Cerise and Gal. Poor Mom is the odd woman out, sitting between you and Cerise -- a Soliloquy double-decker sandwich with her as the meat.

Cerise and Gal are as lazy as ever. Both are wearing their schlubby around-the-house clothes, Cerise in her black tee, Gal in her tank and light coat, both in their shorts. Which only makes Mom's snazzy ensemble stick out even more. She seems mortified by her own elegance. Maybe Vivian should give her a primer on the benefits of overdressing.

The players strutting and fretting on the stage are obviously skilled thespians and you can appreciate how honed their craft is. You just feel like there were more interesting things you could have lent you ears to tonight. Rose seems to be of the same mind because she's less focused on the play than on trying to rub a small but persistent stain out of the sleeve of her blouse. You're pretty sure she's rubbed the spot out already, but she must still see it, because she's still working at it.

"Why is Lear such a dick?" Cerise wants to know -- but Charlotte, enraptured, shushes her.

"don't be rude," Gal tells Charlotte -- surprising you. But that comparatively brave defense of her wife only draws another annoyed shush from Charlotte herself. Charlotte always protests too much, you think, when someone speaks while she's watching something.

Maybe a love of Shakespeare comes with motherhood. Mom is just as drawn into the proceedings as Charlotte, and nods along enthusiastically when Lear proclaims: "how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is, to have a thankless child!" You roll your eyes, but she isn't paying attention. Thanks Mom.

Saul's tastes are more in line with yours than you'd like to admit, and here as well; he's nodding off by the second act. But Gal, surprising for the second time tonight, becomes as enthralled by the on-stage action as anyone. By the time intermission rolls around, she has her elbows on her jostling knees and her glasses are almost foggy. She keeps her attention glued to the actors, jaw agape, totally bewitched at the court intrigues of medieval Britain. When the curtains fall after each act, she seems almost crestfallen.

During the intermission itself, you all stretch your legs amid the milling crowd in the brightly lit, spacious lobby of the performing arts center. Gal enthusiastically discusses the details of the plot with Charlotte, voice uncharacteristically emotive: "Gloucester! Oh my gosh! I can't believe Regan did that -- how can one girl be such an awful bitch?"

"Have you never seen Lear before, Anna?" Charlotte asks.

"No..." she says. "I mean, some Shakespeare plays. But never this one. It's so good!"

"It is," Charlotte says. "Some say it's Shakespeare's finest."

You can't help marveling at how the play is bringing Gal out of her shell. "Maybe Cerise should give you her season pass," you say. "You'd get more use out of it than candidate NEET Feet here."

Cerise flips you off. Gal isn't sold on the idea, anyway. Her mousy tone creeps back in: "i don't think i'd want to go out without cerise though ... or you, Sir"

Saul arches an eyebrow. It must be the first time he's heard Gal deploy "Sir" on you.

"Well, I can always get a second pass for you, dear," Charlotte says, "if you want one. Saul and I are friends with the owner, so it's really nothing."

"Really?" Gal says, excited. "You'd do that?"

"Absolutely--" Charlotte begins, but Mom butts in:

"Don't waste your money. Cerise is perfectly capable of buying her own wife some tickets for the theater. Aren't you, Cerise?"

She's grouchy: "Yeah."

Mom is also grouchy: "Show some interest in your wife's hobbies!" she says. "This is the happiest I've seen her since I met her. Encourage it!"

Cerise makes a face, but she has to admit it: "You're right." She hugs Gal around the waist. "But I'm not surprised. Gal's always been a huge theaterfag." When Charlotte and Rose both give her a dirty look, she corrects herself: "I'm sorry -- theater homosexual."

"Maybe you could take her out again next week," Rose says. She nods her head in the direction of a poster on the wall displaying upcoming performances: Yo-Yo Ma is playing next Friday. Gal audibly gasps when she sees it.

"Fuck. Now I have to," Cerise grumbles.

"Can we?" Gal pleads.

Cerise nods. Gal, hopping up and down, kisses her on the cheek.

"...Cerise?" Comes a voice. "Cerise Soliloquy?"

A well-to-do man and his well-to-do wife are approaching from behind. The man grins broadly, and offers his hand to shake, an offer Cerise is slow to accept. "Do I... know you?" Cerise asks him.

"We saw you at the Rotary Club," the man says. "You are exactly the sort of young voice that DC needs."

Cerise relaxes. Not a /csg/ shitposter, then -- rather, a political supporter.

"Please vote for me," Cerise says. It's maybe a bit on-the-nose -- she's still unused to the nuances of retail politics.

"We intend to!" The man's wife chimes in.

"I hate to interrupt a night out with your wife, but... could we get a photo with you?" He asks.

Cerise shrugs. She must figure this is going to be a routine part of her life now. She poses with Gal between the happy middle-aged couple while Charlotte, ever solicitous, uses the man's phone to snap the picture. He and his wife both hover-hand Cerise, who despite the smile, looks miserable. Gal looks doubly miserable.

As the man departs, he leaves Cerise with this nugget: "We both maxed out our single-donor contributions to your campaign. We know a lot of people in the party, so if you need any help getting your feet wet -- just ask."

He hands her his business card, and goes. Cerise stares skeptically down at it, frowning.

"feet..." Gal murmurs.

"That's funny, isn't it?" Charlotte says as she re-approaches. "Feet. The wallpaper on that man's phone was a picture of you at the tennis tourney... zoomed in on your bare feet. That's not normal, is it?"

"Oh God," Cerise says, dry heaving, clearly as repulsed as you are. "He was one of those fucking cretins from /csg/ after all."

".../csg/?" Charlotte repeats.

"You don't want to know," Mom tells her.

"Have you ever seen a show where someone has a stalker?" Cerise asks Charlotte. "And the stalker has a creepy shrine in their closet full of photos and hair clippings and chewed-up wads of gum and stuff from the person they're stalking? And, like... an effigy of the person on an altar of burning candles?"

Charlotte nods along, perplexed.

"Well. Imagine all of that... but live on the internet, 24/7."

"Oh my," Charlotte says. "That sounds awful."

"it's even awfuler than it sounds," Gal affirms.

"I don't think that's a real word, Anna," Charlotte tells her.

"erm..." she mutters.

"Yes it is," you lie on Gal's behalf. "In the OED and everything." Charlotte, who never questions the breadth and depth of your trivia knowledge, just blinks and says: "Oh. I never knew." She apologizes to Gal for what she incorrectly believes was an incorrect correction, but which was actually correct.

"thank you Sir," Gal tells you softly, tugging on your sleeve.

You pet her.

Saul, noticing the thinning crowd, checks his wristwatch. "Should be heading back soon," he says. "We don't want to miss Act IV. Well. Some of us don't, at least." He gives his wife a meaningful glare. She just titters.

"I'll catch up," you tell the group, your eyes following the man from before as he cuts into a nearby restroom. "I gotta go take a leak."

"Ugh," Rose groans. "Could you not--"

But you're already gone.

---

In the bathroom, you step to the urinal right beside the one the man is using, despite the entire rest of the row being unoccupied. He bristles at this breach of etiquette, his face tightening; but doesn't say anything, merely stares straight ahead.

It's juvenile and petty, you know, but you make your stream as loud and forceful as possible. His dries up as soon as you unzip -- bladder shyness affects millions.

As you finish the deed and pull back, still shaking your dick, you purposefully turn a bit in his direction. The last few dribbles hit the legcuff of his dress-pants and his dress-shoe.

He startles, jerking his leg back, and grimacing down at what you've done. "What the f--" he begins.

"Oh shit," you laugh, cutting him off. "I got your feet wet."

He looks up at you, bewildered, just in time to see your fist connect. You bloody his nose. He stumbles back, falling supine to the sparkling tile floor, fly still undone, the material of his boxers still jutting out -- and amid it his little prick, like a worm poking out of a Kleenex box. He's groaning.

"Thank you for your contributions," you tell him, smiling brightly. You wash your hands and go.

---

As you cut through the now mostly-empty lobby and back towards the auditorium where the play is already resuming, Cerise flags you down. "Are you as bored as I am?" She asks you.

You shrug. "Let's say I've never been into the fine arts."

"Same," Cerise agrees. "Wanna have some fun?"

You narrow your eyes at her.

"Don't give me that," Cerise grumps. "Look, Mom's been bitchy all night, hasn't she? Isn't it a little annoying?"

"Situation normal as far as I'm concerned. She's always bitchy to me. It's only fair that she's doing it to you now, too."

Cerise smirks. "She's trapped between us for the next hour or so," she says.

"So?"

"So... wanna bully her?"

>[x] Bully your okaa-san.

[ ] Pretend to agree -- but turn the tables and bully Cerise instead.

[ ] Bully Charlotte.

>[x] Bully Rose.

Not long before Oswald gets murdered -- who was always a patsy, in your opinion -- you notice Saul, at the end of the row, get up and excuse himself to the restroom. He's gone an unusually long time, and you don't think it's any coincidence that soon after he gets up, a pretty young woman in the row behind you excuses herself from her husband and exits the theater, too.

Charlotte is too intently focused on the unfolding plot twists of this Elizabethan drama to pay much heed to it. This sort of thing must be pretty normal for them anyway. Such an odd marriage.

Rose begins to sensually rub your crotch.

Okay, so maybe you're throwing stones in glass houses.

"Are you as bored as I am?" Rose whispers.

You huff. Rose and Cerise have spent way too long living together -- their perverted minds are beginning to sync up.

"Shh," you tell Rose. You lift her hand by the wrist, away from your dick, and drop it to her side.

She makes a face at you. "When have you ever said no to sex?" She says.

"Shh!" Charlotte hisses, un-sarcastically. She's oblivious to what it is Rose is actually saying, just wants her to be quiet.

"I'll let you know when I need my dick rubbed," you tell your loving wife. "I like a bit of foreplay first, that's all."

This remark catches Mom's attention -- she swivels her head and gawks at you. "...forepl-- what on Earth are you two talking about?" Even in the low light, you can see her blushing.

Cerise uses this moment to strike. Her hand lightly brushes Mom's leg, and begins a slow, slow transit northward along the outer edge of her meaty thigh. The edge of Cerise's palm catches the sequined hem of Mom's little black dress, and begins to peel the material steadily back -- baring more and more of her delicious, supple skin.

Mom's breath hitches, and she swivels her head the other way now, like someone who just felt a spider crawl on them and doesn't want to believe it's really there. But Cerise's hand is really there, all right, and now she's really squeezing. You can see the dimples made by her fingertips, as they sink into the lovely give of Mom's leg. Like kneading dough, it is.

Charlotte and Gal might be too enthralled to notice this incestuous groping, but Rose isn't. She feigns disgust. "Your own mother, Cerise? That's--"

"Shh," you hiss.

Winking at Rose, you put your hand on Mom's other thigh now. The expression on Rose's face is hard to gauge -- trapped between disapproval, jealousy, and debauched curiosity. Mom now is well and truly pinned, and at the mercy of her "thankless" children. She's unable to decide which direction to look: at your leering smile, at Cerise's wolfish grin, or down, at the gentle harassment of your hands creeping their way together up her thighs. She hugs herself -- maybe to shield the upper half of her body if she can't preserve the dignity of her lower half. But Cerise won't let her have even that. She turns in her chair and grabs one of Mom's arms and pries it away. You do the same to her other arm. Together you force Mom to keep her arms at her side -- useless.

"Y-you unruly -- h-horrible b-brats," she stammers.

"Shh," Cerise tells her.

Mom's legs are soft and hot, and in this too-warm theater, a bit slick. Just feeling her up, like this, is enough to make your cock throb its way to stiffness. As your violating hand reveals the waistband of her little black panties -- how nice, that she wore matching underwear -- you appreciate the way the elastic bites into her skin and makes an indentation in the padding of her hips. She's got a motherly body, it's true. And you intend to enjoy it to its fullest extent. It's your right as her son, isn't it?

You grip the elastic now between thumb and forefinger, pull it back, and let it snap against her. It makes an unexpectedly loud noise. Mom winces in pain -- and you wince at the possibility of being seen. You glance quickly this way and that, to confirm that no one noticed. You wince again when you hear Cerise parrot your miniature act of abuse on Mom's opposite side. Mom jolts this time, jerking backward in her seat. Cerise laughs under her breath at Mom's distress.

"Shh," you warn Cerise.

"You two are awful," Rose tells you, but she can't peel her eyes away from what you're doing. Hypocritical bitch.

"Let's take those off," Cerise says, practically growling. You can hear in her voice, how wet she is. Toying with Mom like this is really getting her off.

"Cerise..." Mom murmurs. "You can't--"

"Shh!" Charlotte hisses. Mom bows her head and begins to tremble.

You hook an arm under Mom's knees and lift her just enough off her seat to give Cerise the access she needs. Cerise peels the garment from Mom's butt, then leaning way forward, gets it all the way down her calves. Mom watches it happen, totally defenseless, and plainly frightened.

"All the way off," you whisper in Mom's ear.

Mom nods, and slowly, fumblingly, she lifts both her high-heeled feet from the ground so that Cerise can get her underwear fully removed. Like that, your mother is going nopan in a packed theater in the middle of a play. And because of the work you've already done, her dress is hiked all the way back, and her bare pussy is out in the open. You gently run your fingers through the downy tuft of hair above her vulva.

"I can't believe you..." Mom whispers between gulps.

"She's wet," Cerise tells you, obscenely feeling the crotch of Mom's panties.

"I know," you say, running your fingers across the sticky folds of her labia.

Mom shudders. She wrenches her eyes shut, and lets what's happening happen.

"All right," you tell Rose, "you can play with my cock now."

Rose shakes her head. "No. You're disgusting--"

You grab her hand and roughly direct it towards your crotch. "Shut the fuck up," you order her. "Jerk me off."

"Fuck you. You nasty--"

"Shh!" Charlotte hisses, eyes never leaving the stage.

Cerise, smiling, shrugging, hands you Mom's panties. You know precisely what her idea is, and you've got the same one. You wad them up, tug on Rose's jaw. And as Rose's eyes turn to dinner plates, you shove the soiled garment into her mouth.

You press up against her chin to make sure she doesn't spit it out. She tries to say something, but of course, it's unintelligible.

"Shh," you tell her.

Rose, her eyes going half-lidded as the taste and scent of Mom's cunt invades her brain, at last gets a bit more compliant. She undoes your zipper and frees your straining prick. Such a nice sensation, the open air circulating across it, and the soft pad of Rose's hand curling around it. Dutifully, she begins to tug. She watches with unconcealed lust both the sight of your leaky cock and the sight of Mom's leaky cunt getting poked and prodded by her eldest children.

God gave you two hands, so you'll use them both. You hug Rose around the hips and hike her skirt up without any ado. Like always, the fucking cunt you married was going naked under her skirt, and her pussy is already juiced-up for you. You take a moment to appreciate the contrast of these two pussies as you begin to finger them both. Rose's little twat is tight and rubbery, as slick as any lube-coated synthetic onahole, and totally bald. Mom's is meatier, warmer, stickier -- not as tight, yet somehow clingier. It's twitchier, too, with Cerise's fingers working their magic in tandem with yours. Since you've claimed her maternal pussy for yourself, Cerise has settled on fingering her asshole instead. Together you and your older sister sweetly torment both of your mother's lower holes.

It's having its effect. Mom is writhing around as if in agony from this molestation. Her inner walls are clamping and shuddering against your invading fingers; she bites her hand to keep from crying out. But Cerise, who gets completely demented and prone to throwing caution to the wind, yanks Mom's hand away with an evil smirk. Mom's jaw hangs open in a silent scream while you and Cerise wring an enormous, wet, sloppy orgasm out of her. It squirts from her pussy and stains the red velvet seat, plus the diamond-patterned carpet below.

You nudge Mom's wrist, and guide it to where Rose is still giving you a handjob. Your dick is way too big to be satisfied by just one of Rose's little hands, no matter how soft and practiced it is.

Mom gets the idea, and her hand wraps around your shaft. She and her daughter-in-law find a steady rhythm together, their palms corkscrewing up and down on your meat, giving you the maximum relief possible. It feels fucking great. The pleasure courses through you, from the sensitive tip of your cockhead, down the veiny pole, and into your heavy nuts. There's nothing quite like this feeling, of two women working together to bring your cock off. And in public, no less.

"cerise...?" Gal at last notices the depraved scene playing out right beside her. "what... what are you doing--"

Cerise, her fingers still sawing in and out of the dark pucker of Mom's anus, draws Gal into a lingering kiss. She tenderly strokes her hair. "Play with my cunt for me, babe," she instructs.

Gal nods her understanding. Her hand snakes down between the two of them, and unclasps Cerise's shorts, and finds its way inside. Cerise sighs a sigh of deep contentment. "That's it, babe. Bring me off."

Cerise has got your same commitment to using her natural blessings. Her free hand finds its way down to Gal's pussy, too. Suddenly the five of you have become an interlinked, incestuous chain of busy fingers.

Cerise is getting even hornier with Gal's fingers up her cunt, and that's making her bolder. "Take... take her dress off," she gulps.

"What?" You whisper back. "Right here?"

"Shh!" Charlotte hisses.

Cerise nods. Mom, who resigned herself to being lewdly masturbated in public, panics anew at this suggestion. You have this row to yourselves right now, but there are plenty of people behind you -- and of course, the players on the stage -- not to mention other rows of viewers at your level, separated by the aisles. There are eyes all around. For her to get fully nude would be insanity. Surely someone would notice.

But you and Cerise are already pulling her dress up and off of her sweaty body. You reason to yourself that she was embarrassed to be overdressed anyway -- right? You're just being a courteous son. You do it as clandestinely as possible, trying not to raise the suspicions of anyone nearby. The darkness helps. Mom's dress clings to her, and doesn't want to come loose, but you force it, pulling it inside-out as you do. Her soft tummy, her hourglass waist, her meaty tits, all breathe free. She has her bra on, still, albeit a couple sizes too small. And her heels, too. But otherwise she's stark naked, right here in the theater.

"P-please..." she says. "N-not this..."

You cruelly smile, and toss the dress to the ground. She shivers in disbelief. But she grasps your cock again, and continues to jerk you off without being instructed. She may resist, but it's clear that she loves this perversion as much as you.

It's actually quite easy not to be seen by anyone in the audience. It's so dark in here, and no one is looking at you anyway. But you don't have any cover from the actors. King Lear himself, in the middle of one of his soliloquys, notices it first. It makes him choke on his lines: "No rescue? What, a prisoner? I am even the natural fool of fortune. Use me well-- ghh-- what the--"

He's a consummate pro, though. He recomposes himself and powers through. The actors, although fully aware now of the depravity happening below them, just keep acting.

It's only at this moment that Charlotte -- suspicions perhaps flagged by the actors' momentary shock -- notices what's going on beside her. She turns to shush you, but finds herself gobsmacked instead. "Sh-- oh... oh, oh my..."

This is a brand new flavor of humiliation for Rose. She looks her mother in the eyes, mouth still stuffed with a sodden pair of panties, hand still jerking on your turgid dick.

Charlotte smiles at her.

"Alabaster..." Charlotte whispers huskily. "Couldn't you wait until after the play was over?"

"No," you grunt, jutting your hips forward, enjoying the twin handjob you're receiving. Charlotte stares unabashed down at your drooling dick, and licks her lips.

"You're not going to waste it, are you?" She asks.

"Waste what?" You ask, slow on the uptake.

"All that cum, honey. You're not just going to shoot it in their hands, are you? That would be such a waste."

"Mmf--" Rose groans through the gag, shaking her head, red as a tomato, trying to protest. She doesn't want her mother seeing her like this.

You laugh at Charlotte. "You want me to fuck you again, huh? That's what this is."

"Oh my, no," Charlotte says, "not right now, anyway. You need to cum inside your wife tonight."

Rose's eyes bulge.

"She's particularly fertile today, I think... your first load should definitely go inside her."

Rose gazes back at Charlotte in shock. Charlotte lovingly pets her. "Shh," she coos, "it's fine. You want Alabaster to impregnate you, don't you? Be honest with yourself."

"I can't fuck her right here," you insist.

Charlotte looks furtively all around, then back down at you. "It's fine," she says, "as long as you do it down there." She nods at the ground. "No one will see. Trust me."

Even as she says this, she's getting down onto the ground herself -- sliding out of her chair, and then pulling her daughter down with her. Rose is violently shaking her head again, begging no -- but she isn't doing anything to actually resist this.

Charlotte, on her knees, with Rose's head resting in her lap, beckons to you. "Come here, honey... come here and fuck. Fuck her pregnant. You know you want to."

You glance back to the others. Cerise is a little disgruntled that you'll probably be blowing yet another load inside Rose tonight. Gal is too lost in pleasure to care what Sir does with his jizz.

Mom is the most conflicted of all. She's still jerking you off, but she's looking down with interest at where Rose lies, gagged, legs spread, skirt hitched, wet pussy on display. Her lower lip is quavering as you continue to finger her. She wants to see it, you can tell. She wants to see her son knock a girl up. Even a girl she mostly disapproves of.

You get down onto the ground, and line your cock up with Rose's swampy cunt. You stare into her wide hazel eyes.

"Alfffabbsffter," she mumbles through the wadded-up satin of your mother's underwear.

"Shh," you hiss back, "get pregnant."

You grab her by both her thick thighs, force her legs even wider, and sink your cock into the lovely, hot confines of her vagina. You begin to saw in and out without a care in the world. Charlotte, petting her daughter tenderly, eggs you on: "That's it. Fuck her nice and hard... make sure you cum as deep as possible. Don't let a single drop get out. It has to go inside... all of it... that's the best way..."

Mom, idly rubbing her own enormous breasts, watches. You hear a pained sort of whine escape her lips. Her horny cunt no longer has anyone paying attention to it. Cerise nudges Gal and directs her down -- soon your favorite ginger slavegirl is joining you on the ground. Her head goes between Mom's naked legs, and her mouth opens wide. And then Mom learns firsthand what an accomplished cunt-sucker her daughter's wife truly is. Cerise holds Gal by the back of the head and presses her face into Mom's crotch to get Gal's tongue buried just as deep as it can go. Gal, glasses steaming over, eats her out enthusiastically. There isn't much she likes better than licking pussy.

"Oh my god..." Mom sighs. "No wonder..." But she doesn't finish that thought. She just basks in it. She presses her jiggling thighs on either side of Gal's ears and squeezes, trying to trap that sensation. Gal, who's used to having her air cut off, just keeps licking. Cerise is proud of her handiwork, and masturbates while she watches.

With you lying on top of Rose, Charlotte can reach far enough to cup the globes of your ass. Even through your trousers, it's a strangely erotic thrill. She presses you firmly against her daughter.

"You have to get deep inside, honey, remember..." she instructs, voice sounding a bit high and dizzy. "It's no good if you don't get your entire dick inside her... you need to really use her, completely..."

Rose is breathing ragged as you do your best to fuck her completely, the way Charlotte told you to. You clasp Rose's tiny chin, pull her face towards yours, and kiss her. Through the drool- and cream-coated wad of your mother's underwear, your tongues wriggle out, and press together. Although there is no direct contact, you enjoy the kiss all the same, as the two of you suck on your dear Okaa-san's panties. Mom's earthy scent and tangy taste blends with Rose's to send your lizard brain into overdrive. Your hips are a blur on top of her as you bottom out with every stroke and rail her as deeply as you can. Your entire cock buzzes with the pleasure of raw fucking.

Mom, meanwhile, is cumming unashamedly on Gal's face. Reaching behind herself, she undoes the clasp on her bra, and lets her knockers hang free. An exhibitionist at heart, at last. She slumps forward in her chair, letting her legs hang wide open, and smiles down at you. Gal laps up her cum, as obedient as ever. Cerise, watching this, cums in her shorts, strumming her clit to a series of little orgasms that leave a visible wet spot in the denim. The force of the cum makes her grit her teeth in pleasure, eyeballs rolling to the back of her skull.

With Gal's tongue wagging back and forth from her asshole to her still-cummy twat, Mom sighs and joins Charlotte in encouraging you young newlyweds. "Fuck her, Alabaster... don't be gentle..."

But un-gentle is exactly what Rose likes. Her cunt is gushing and spasming all around your rampant battering ram of a dick. Her mouth is hungrily mating with yours through the gag. Charlotte, grinning, pets the sides of her daughter's face with two flattened palms. "See?" She whispers to Rose. "Isn't that nice? Doesn't that feel good?"

Rose nods.

"Doesn't getting pregnant feel good?"

Rose nods again, even more enthusiastic.

Cerise, hungry, and still in a somewhat sadistic mood, joins her wife between Mom's legs. They take turns pleasuring her cunt with their mouths and fingers, giggling like a couple of naughty schoolgirls at Mom's little squeaks and pips of over-sensitive enjoyment. They reach up, too, and fondle her udders -- just for the perverted fun of it.

With the full approval of both Mom and Charlotte, you know you're about to lose your load inside Rose's unprotected pussy. You try to stave it off, not because you're having second thoughts, but just because you want to ride out this utter bliss as long as possible. But you're at your limit. You feel the cum surging through your nuts, and then without warning it's sloshing around inside Rose's fertile womb.

The way you and Rose tense together at your climax, the way you groan long and almost painfully into her mouth, "mmmmmmmffffff..." -- the way you stop moving, to keep yourself seated inside her deepest parts -- all of this makes it obvious to Mom and Charlotte that you're ejaculating right now. They coo and murmur their happiness at seeing it. "That's so nice, isn't it..." Charlotte says with particularly long, loving pets of Rose's face. "Just let it happen, baby... get pregnant, okay?..."

Mom is nothing but agreement as Cerise and Gal suck her off. "Yes... yes... get fucking pregnant..."

When at last you finish cumming, Charlotte pets you instead, drawing your face up to look at her. "You're not done yet, are you?"  She says gently.

"I..." you pant. "But..."

"Shh," Charlotte says. "Just keep going. You have to make sure it takes."

You miss Act V.

---

You wake up at around 5 PM, as usual on a weekend, and rub the tiredness from your eyes. Err. Your eye. What a drag.

You lie in Daddy's bed for a little while, not wanting to leave the warmth and comfort of the bedsheets, the softness of the pillows, the reassuring scent of his body.

But your growing harem of hot bitches calls to you.

You trudge downstairs in your tanktop and panties, stretching luxuriously. "All right, you shut-in freaks," you say, "the life of the anime club is here. Who's ordering pizza?"

But when you get down to the living room, it's empty. You see, on the couch, the downy alpaca wool blanket where Cerise and Galgal were cuddled up, now discarded and lying twisted up like a snake on the cushions, describing the phantom perimeter of Cerise's thick ass.

"Cerise?" You call. "Gal?"

No answer. You frown.

Only then do you make the arduous trek back upstairs, to clamber across the bed, unplug and grab your phone, and check its messages. Sure enough, yep: one from Gal, informing you that they tried to wake up you and couldn't, and decided to go see a play without you. And one from Rose2, that the others are going to an NBA game -- also without you.

Those ungrateful bull dykes don't know what they've got coming. You'll have to punish them accordingly.

You occupy yourself as best you can for the next couple hours -- porn on a hi-def theater system with full 3D surround sound is pretty fun -- but eventually you run out of things to do on your own.

You wonder how long it'll be before they're back. There's something about being alone in the Nail House that puts you ill at ease. Well, you're not completely alone. There's that bunnygirl in Whitney's bedroom, and of course Jimbo the night-shift guard at the guard shack, who's pretty fucking good at Wii Bowling.

But the people you really care about are all gone.

...The people you care about? It's so weird to think about it like that, but yeah, you've really grown to care about all these pervos and freaks. You're all a big fucked-up family.

You know you shouldn't, but you do it anyway -- just for a second, just a brief peek. You lift your eyepatch up and bare the glowing grain of that implant to the world. You just wanted to glimpse what they were all up to. You're no good at using this thing for directed purposes, though. You get nothing you wanted. Instead, you get this. You get a faceful of Qiangxiang "Chloe" Xi, AKA Qiangxiang "I'm a Huge Fucking Cunt" Xi -- sitting demurely by herself, waiting... for what?

She's at home. 421 Pratt Lane. A quaint little yellow adobe condo.

Still wincing in pain from the use of that little demon inside your head, you stumble into one of the downstairs bathrooms and look yourself in the mirror.

"What are you trying to tell me, me?" You ask.

You close your good eye and think through the mess of data you saw in that brief instant. There's not much intelligible. But you did get some of what you wanted, after all. Let's see...

Well, Vivian and Rose and them are still in San Fran, watching the Warriors take a beatdown. Daddy is... doing Daddy things... which is nice, but you hope he's not too tuckered out by the time he gets back.

And Qiangxiang "Yellow Menace" Xi is eating McDonalds in her quaint little condo... such a quaint little condo for a little girl who's anything but quaint. Waiting.

>[x] Go see Chloe.

[ ] Crash the party to watch the game with Vivian and the others.

[ ] Custom?

Chloe is shocked to see you. The surprise is plain on her flat little face when she opens the door to find you standing at her doorstep. She puts that mask of aloofness back on in a flash, but you know she wasn't expecting this.

That's all well and good, but... you didn't come with a gameplan. And so you meet her surprise with silence.

"Alabaster told me that he would kill me if I ever came near you," she says.

"Yep. That sounds like him." (Just hearing that warmed your heart, though.)

Chloe tilts her head. "I wonder whether he would make an exception if you were the one who came near me?"

"Probably not," you say.

She nods. She thinks. She steps aside.

"Come in, please."

---

"Why did you try to kidnap me?" You demand as she breezes into the small, ceramic-tiled living room and sits down on a cozy red sofa.

"Those were not my orders."

"Bullsh--"

"Those were not my orders," she repeats, more firmly. "Believe what you want. Or can your all-seeing eye tell you the truth?"

You won't give her the satisfaction. You don't reveal it to her. "Why do you want to come here and fuck with D-- with Alabaster and the rest of us?" You say. "Don't you have enough fun with your slaves back at home, fucking chicom? Leave us alone."

"My slaves?" Chloe says. "I had direct reports, who received a wage, and who were hired by the firm employing me. They belonged to me no more than the machinery they operate. I was only a caretaker... now they are overseen by someone else entirely."

"Yeah, right," you say. "Talk about mental gymnastics. You're disgusting."

"Am I. Amber Catachresis -- you are so eager to talk about structural change, but the moment you stand opposite another lost soul enmeshed in the unmerciful gears of society, you turn to nothing but ressentiment, rather than camaraderie."

"You're not a victim, Chloe. You're part of the fucking problem. I should kill you. No one else has the balls to do it."

She shrugs. "If you want."

You blink.

"Have you heard the story of when Zhou Enlai encountered Nikita Khrushchev at the International Meeting of Workers' Parties following the Sino-Soviet split?" She leans back in her seat. "They were busily discussing the differences between Soviet and Chinese communism. It became personal. Full of insults. Khrushchev said that the main difference between the two of them was that he, Khrushchev, was the son of noble working peasants, whereas Zhou was the son of privileged bourgeois Mandarins. Zhou replied: ah, but we are really the same, after all. We are both class traitors."

She folds her arms smugly.

"What do you want from me?" You demand.

"I have guests coming presently," Chloe says. "I think maybe they will clear things up."

There's a sharp rap on the door. Chloe stands and answers it.

"Uncle, come in."

You goggle as a stream of suited Chinese businessmen enters the tiny condominium, fully a dozen of them -- led by a fat, greasy, grey, pockmarked little man you somehow know is Li Xi.

He stops short when he sees you standing there.

"Ah," he says. He smiles at his niece. He says something to her in Chinese. Something that conveys a sort of warm surprise. He's got this aw-shucks-you-shouldn't-have tone to his voice. You don't like it.

"Please, uncle, in English," Chloe says.

He snaps back with something, something terse, probably a "why?"

"I want her to understand what is happening to her," Chloe says.

"Hmmph," Li grunts. He and his cronies encircle you, gawking at you like you're a zoo animal, before seating themselves in Chloe's living room. You look from face to face, petrified. Worse even than the worst of Vail. You consider how you could escape. You're sure none of them are armed, and they're not exactly in peak physical condition... then again, you assume Chinese trillionaires don't go on international journeys without a little backup. You're sure to have the mooks crawling out of the rafters the moment you try to bolt. Best to bide your time for now. You stand there awkwardly amid this impromptu board meeting.

"I was briefly relieved," Li says. "I thought again I could trust your judgment. You retrieved the Catachresis girl for us, with very little fuss, or so I thought... but tell me truthfully. Have you fallen in league with her?"

Chloe mutely sips a little glass of tea.

Li looks at the crumpled white bag with the golden arches sitting on Chloe's table. "I thought I smelled something awful. You let this girl eat that trash in your home?"

"No," Chloe says. "I ate it."

He's talking in Chinese again, and he obviously isn't pleased.

Chloe holds up a palm, smirking. She talks over her uncle's anti-McD's ranting. "No distractions, please. You would like Amber now?"

A man to Li's right starts to speak, also in Chinese, motioning at you wildly. Chloe shoots him an icy glare that stops him dead, and just to drive it home, she sneers: "be quiet."

He goes quiet.

"These games do not impress me," Li tells her. "The Federation has come crawling to us for help and we do intend to help them. You can get on the winning side of history right now and come clean with what you've been doing these past weeks. Or you can be left behind. Sabotaging our research -- sending Diogenes right back to Darkbloom Analytics -- this is unacceptable. We could have taken it all, right there in Vail -- Mara Darkbloom and Dahlia, Sand Reckoner, the Diogenes platform. But you -- your insolence --"

"My insolence, my insolence," Chloe says in a singsong voice. "Always, always, my insolence. How sad." She leans forward, elbows on knees. "Yes, how sad. You've been undone by a teenage girl."

"I have not been undone by you, little girl," Li booms, standing. He nods at one of his toadies. He barks an order that must be something pretty clear, because all of a sudden the toady is on his feet too and wrapping his hands around you.

"Do not do that," Chloe says, voice airy.

The man is dragging you, kicking and screaming, towards the door; and Li's other men are standing too, ready to depart, with you as their hostage.

"I said do not do that," Chloe repeats with the tone of someone warning a friend against doing something stupid, knowing all the while that they won't be heeded, and willing to let it happen so that the friend learns a valuable lesson.

Li tells her something derogatory in Chinese. Something with "Shǎbī" in it. And that cinches it.

She's on her feet, too. She has a dagger in her hand. Li wheels on her, gawking, and he seems about to defend himself with force -- but too late. Chloe stabs him in the crotch. The sound of fabric ripping in two and the sound of flesh getting lacerated blend to create a nauseating sschllrch. She draws the knife out as viciously as she put it in him. Li doubles over, clutching at the wound, which in just seconds has already stained his charcoal grey pants a deepening crimson. He's howling in Chinese, without a doubt a string of obscenity. The other 11 faceless businessmen, including the one still grasping you in his clutches, are frozen in horror at the sight. Frankly, you are, too. This is what she only threatened to do to Muskfucker, now made manifest.

"Shh, shhh," Qiangxiang says like a mother burping a newborn. "Be quiet, little cunt. We don't want anyone finding out."

Li is not paying any attention to his niece. He's on his knees, hunched forward with both hands pressing down on his horrifically bleeding genitals, like a little kid trying to hold their bladder. He vomits all over himself and the floor. He's shaking uncontrollably.

"Fine," Qiangxiang says. "If you can't stop crying, I'll shut your mouth for you."

She jabs it into his throat. He gurgles, and then dies. Chloe lets the body fall to its stomach in a growing puddle of red.

She wipes the blood from her dagger's blade using a dainty white handkerchief. She says to Li's cowering survivors: "Let it be known to the rest of the board at Broad Dynamics that this was done of my own initiative."

There is an animated, multi-party exchange in Chinese now, a gaggle of nasally shouting and recriminations that Chloe coolly deflects each in turn, like a hitter at a batting cage. Whatever she's telling them, she's putting the fear of God into them, as if it wasn't there already. The room stinks of iron and tastes like copper.

"Dispose of him," Chloe orders the men. "And release the girl."

The man holding you loosens his grip, and you stumble towards Chloe, over the corpse of her recently departed uncle. She puts a consoling hand on your back. "I am glad you came, Amber," she says. "I was wondering how to convey this news to Alabaster. I did not think he would trust me if I told him, but maybe now you can trust me, if I tell you."

"W... what?" You stammer, feeling how pale you've gone.

"I believe that some of the ones you love are in quite some danger at the moment."

---

"We have to call them --" you begin, when Chloe explains to you what's about to happen. "--warn them--"

"Please tell me that you did not bring a mobile phone with you," Chloe says, frowning. She takes out a little tin of mints and pops a few of them into her mouth like pills, crunching down, chewing.

You were right about the presence of unseen mooks, all right, by the way: a small retinue of burly bodyguards are even now dragging Li Xi's corpse from the room. Their employers -- the dozen-minus-one grim-faced, besuited businessmen who find nothing scarier than Chloe, confer in grave tones just outside the front door.

"Do you have a phone?" You ask.

"Don't be absurd," Chloe says.

"Then what are we--"

One hand in the crook of her elbow, the other holding up a thoughtful forefinger, Chloe says: "You had a special connection to David Darkbloom, via that special grain inside your head. You are Camelia, are you not? And now, that connection has devolved to his youngest daughter. Why use mobiles when you have a direct link?"

"I -- don't know how..." you say.

"No matter," Chloe replies. She grins. "What is the slogan? It just works."

She steps closer to you, nodding slowly.

With the ghastly carnage behind you, and Chloe's expectant smile before you, and disaster swinging like a pendulum above you ever closer: you peel back the eyepatch for the second time tonight, and let her see the hole in your head, the glowing red speck embedded in your tear duct.

"Amazing," Chloe murmurs. Her breath is hot against your face and smells of wintergreen. Her self-satisfied face fills the entirety of your limited field of vision.

You're having difficulty staying standing. The pain is throbbing through your skull like getting zapped with a cattle prod. But you can see Vivian Darkbloom. Or rather, you can see through her eyes. She's in her limo, on the road, cruising along the 280 -- the scenic route -- making out with her older sister, and your older sister, a three-way tongue kiss; Noelle watching on in envy.

"You are being followed," Chloe says.

Vivian jerks back from her lewd little makeout session. Whitney is asking her what's the matter, and Vivian is covering her face with her hands, wracked by pain as badly as you are.

"They are going to run your car off the road," Chloe says. "Tell Ms. Keki to be ready. We will try to be there soon. Please -- wait warmly."

Chloe puts the eyepatch back over your eye for you. You totter back a couple steps, and your heel slips in the thickening pool of blood still there on the tiled ground. You flail around, arms windmilling, like a person sliding on ice, before finding your balance again.

"May I come?" Chloe says.

You grab her by the ribbon on the front of her blouse. "Oh you bet you're fucking ass you're coming," you snarl. You tug her closer. "Let's go, bitch."

She's smiling.

---

You tap frantically on the window of Will's bedroom. He peels back the bedsheets that are acting as his curtains. He makes a face like the slack-jawed fucking yokel that he is, and you can practically hear the "duuuuuhhhhhh" on the other side as he eyes you and Chloe standing there in the dusty trailer lot just outside his shitty little trailer home.

You gesticulate at him. "Open the fuck up!"

He slides his window open, and it makes a piercing squeak. "Sup?" He says.

"Get your Golf fired up. Now."

"Who's that Asian ch--"

"Shut up and get the fucking car going."

---

David fucking Darkbloom is sitting on the porch he stole from Dalton Cantor, in the rocking chair he stole from Dalton Cantor, listening to the Blu-tooth radio he stole from Dalton Cantor, using the ears he stole from Dalton Cantor.

And so the song, fittingly, is by Stealers Wheel.

You hear the twangy plucking of their Dylan-esque pop bubblegum favorite from April of 1974, as you approach, cutting across the front lawn.

He has his head leaned back, eyes closed and fingers laced over his chest. But he's awake. His toes are tapping and his head is bobbing side to side. He knows you're here, too, because as you draw near, he brings his head level again and nods at you. "Camelia."

"Your daughters are in trouble."

He's standing.

"...Daddy?" Oh, perfect. Here comes the daughter he stole from Dalton Cantor, standing in the doorway. "Who's that creepy girl?"

"No one, honey," Darkbloom tells her, not tearing his eyes off of you.

"Why is she on our lawn?"

"She's no one," Darkbloom repeats. "Just a girl scout selling girl scout cookies."

"But--"

"Go back inside, Hazel," he says firmly.

Chloe is bringing up the rear. She draws alongside you, staring up the short little set of white stairs leading to the porch, up at Darkbloom's stony face, and young Hazel Cantor who doesn't want to go back inside at all.

"Let's go," Darkbloom says.

---

The assholes and idiots peopling California's highway system are nothing against Will, who can cut off five cars across four lanes of traffic at 100 MPH without batting an eyelash.

"Just like Vail, huh?" He shouts over the roar of the engine. Yeah, just like Vail. You in the passenger seat and Darkbloom riding bitch, so carsick he looks like someone painted him green. Only now there's a fourth: Qiangxiang "Bateman" Xi, sitting beside Darkbloom, hands folded in her lap, as placid as can be.

Will is bearing down hot on the speeding limo where Rose, Vivian, and the others are hunkered. A few car lengths separate you from them -- and a troupe of black sedans driving perfectly in formation, fenders all lined up, block him from getting any closer.

The limo's driver, that limey bastard who helped extract you all from Mara's server farm, swerves and careens back and forth, preventing any of the sedans from getting up alongside. Noelle, butt perched on the sill of one of the limo's rolled down windows, peppers the sedans with automatic pistol fire, her ponytail billowing in the wind.

None of the attackers are firing back. Just trying to get beside the limo with a tenacity that borders on maniacal. When the limo veers left, the sedans to the right eke forward; when it fishtails right, the sedans on the left advance. That British idiot can't keep this going forever, you know.

"Get closer," you tell Will.

"Uh? I can't?" Will says. "I literally can't?"

"Get closer!"

Will sighs, and redlines it.

His Golf closes the short gap separating you from these anonymous, plateless black Sedans. They don't budge an inch, even as Will gets his front bumper pressed up against the backs of the central two cars, and his engine's whine rises an octave with the stress he's putting it under. There is no space to maneuver. To the left is the reinforced steel-and-concrete median, to the right a sheer drop into the valley of death below.

You crank the mechanism on Will's passenger-side window, rolling it down as fast as you can. The air rushes into the cramped quarters of the little hatchback, nearly deafening you.

"Amber -- what are you doing?" Darkbloom demands.

"These fuckers think they're gonna Princess Di my sister?" You yell. "I don't fucking think so!"

You hoist yourself up onto the sill much the same way Noelle is. You lock eyes with her from across the miniature armada separating you. You see her mouth at you: "Don't" and "Get back" -- warnings you ignore.

"Amber!" Darkbloom is yelling from inside the car. Is he concerned for you? Or just worried that you're endangering whatever plan he thinks he's got?

You rip the eyepatch from your face and drop it down to the seat below. Your vision fills with blinding white and you scream as the wind blows right into your fucking brains. Was this a bad idea? You sway, and the only reason you don't go tumbling down to the asphalt blazing by underneath you is because Will gets his hand hooked into the waistband of your shorts, holding you steady even as he steers with his other hand. He's wild-eyed, glancing frantically back and forth from you about to fall out of the car, and the twisting road ahead.

The flash of white passes, and you can see again -- you know where to go. Woozy, drunk on data and reeling in pain, you nonetheless wriggle yourself free of Will's grip and swing your legs out of the car. Oh man, Noelle is really hollering now; you can even vaguely hear her: "What the fuck!" and "You stupid bitch!" and so on.

You see, too, Vivian's head in Whitney's lap, and hear her screaming in an agony that's in equal measure to yours.

You crawl up onto the roof of Will's Golf. It's not an easy maneuver, and you don't exactly have the world's most calibrated equilibrium right now. But you power through. You slide on your butt, down the windshield, down to the hood, which the engine has made so hot that it singes your bare thighs. "Fuck!" You grunt.

Amber Get Your Gun: you pull it from the holster you have strapped around your calf, and take careful aim at the rear wheel of one of the black sedans. It makes a nice bright spark, but the wheel is reinforced, bulletproof, and your little peashooter does nil. You reholster your gun. Time to go in raw, then.

On hands and knees, you navigate the gap between the Golf's hood and trunk of the car Will is pushing up against. The gap is only inches wide, but at NASCAR speeds it feels like trying to step across the Grand Canyon. Noelle is focusing fire on the car you've boarded: trying to pop its windows or windshields. She's got considerably more firepower than you, but the glass is as sturdy as anything else on these fucking tanks disguised as road vehicles.

"Get back!" Noelle repeats over and over. "Get back in your fucking car, you fucking stupid little cunt!"

Whitney is hugging Vivian tight, and Vivian is rubbing her nose. It's bleeding. Rose, beside them, is crying like a baby.

You get down to the hood of this sedan, and, with your hands pressing against the windshield, you face your attackers. The men inside look disinterested and definitely unafraid. Consummate spooks, suited and holding machine pistols in their laps that they still, after all this, are not deploying.

You turn, butt on the windshield, your back to the limo ahead, bracing your weight with your fingers wedged tight in the little space where the wipers fit. With the heels of your sneakers, you kick again and again at the point where you somehow know the gunfire has made the glass the weakest.

They're raising their guns on you now, at last. A friendly warning to stop that you don't heed.

One of the men in the back rolls down his window and pokes his upper half out, pointing the muzzle of his gun directly at you. You steel yourself for another lost eye, maybe -- but then the man flops back into the car, the side of the door now streaked with his grey matter -- shot dead. Looking up, you see the source of the magic bullet: David Darkbloom has entered the game. He's getting in on the fad of sitting where the window should go and shooting wildly into traffic.

With Darkbloom and Noelle keeping you covered, you kick the top of the windshield away from its frame. The glass remains in one piece, but there's space enough to squeeze through now -- which you squeeze through.

The man in the passenger seat grabs you about your midsection as you worm your way in, his grip oppressive and choking -- but it helps you get your bottom half the rest of the way inside.

Your slight frame is working to your advantage. You have enough leeway to slither up in his grasp, draw your chest parallel to his, crane your neck up, and smile at him -- then headbutt him in the teeth. It shocks him enough that you can wrest his gun from his hands and fire it into his belly. In the mostly enclosed space, the gun's report is eardrum-splitting and the smell of phosphor blended with raw guts makes you retch. He's dead, or dying, already -- in any case unconscious. The survivor in the backseat is reaching for you from around the headrest, so you duck, like a prairie dog retreating into its hole. The driver is clawing at you too, from your side, but he's too busy keeping the car steady to be effectual.

You put the gun against the chest of the man you just shot, and fire: the bullets travel through his body, through the leather seat, and into the back of the car, hitting the spook back there. Yellowy batting from the seat and blood from the man spray back against you.

The driver finally has a real human emotion on his face, fear, as he curses in Russian. Just you and him now.

You body-check him, and his shoulder hits the driver's side door, and the steering wheel jerks in that direction, and the car follows along with it, and it collides with the next car over, and the next car over crashes into the median. It goes ass-over-teakettle with the force of it, and soon the tumbleweeding wreck is a fast receding dot in the rearview.

The driver you shoulder-slammed gets his car back under control again, but Will has his opening now: he speeds past the formation of sedans and gets up next to the limo.

You see, through Vivian's eyes, David Darkblooom wildly motioning for the limo to pull into the weeds. 16 armed spooks have become 9, and that's the best you'll do in the middle of a high-speed chase. You'll need to face the remaining attackers on foot.

Golf and limo together decelerate, and slip into the tall grass abutting the roadside, navigating the severe slopes well enough to come to a halt.

The two unscathed sedans pursuing them also pull off.

You, in a deadlock with the driver of the car you're occupying, know he isn't going to stop. If he's speeding down the highway, you can't shoot him, because the car will crash and you will die as well. That gives him an inherent advantage.

He points his Uzi at you, and you duck before he can depress the trigger.

He grunts in surprise, cursing, as you lie yourself across his lap like an oversized seatbelt, and reach for the door. He shifts his body and points his gun at your back now -- too late -- you reach up and get the driver's side door open at the same time as you blow a few rounds of hot lead into his leg. He shrieks.

In one swift motion you draw back to the passenger seat, grab the oh-shit handle above the door, use it to pull your butt into the air, and give the man a nice hard kick in the side. See, speaking of seatbelts: wearing them saves lives. He wasn't wearing his, and now he's turning into a red streak on the asphalt. You slide across to the now vacant driver's seat and pull the sedan out of a tailspin. Then, yanking the door shut again, you pop a bitch, and double back to where the firefight is already continuing in the reedy roadside.

It isn't going well. The limo's driver is DOA, RIP -- Whitney and Vivian are huddled underneath the chassis, Noelle bodily shielding them. The three are waiting for an opening to bolt down the slope and into the California wilderness towards safety. Rose is nowhere to be found. You try to focus on where she could be, but this is progressing too fast for even you to process. You're not used to this continuous stream of information blitzkrieging you.

Darkbloom and Chloe, shoulder-to-shoulder, fire on the advancing men. But Darkbloom's miraculous headshot a few moments prior notwithstanding, neither of them are sharpshooters. Darkbloom gets a clean shot into one man's gut before he and Chloe have to duck back behind the cover of Will's Golf. The Golf is a write-off now, unfortunately, and Will himself is cowering in the backseat amid the hail of bullets.

You rush in, fool you are. You've got the edge provided by Sand Reckoner, but there's only so much an augmented sense of time and space can do. At some point, you're just outgunned. As now.

And you glimpse Rose, you know where she is without having to look: she ran towards the highway rather than the protection of the grass and trees in the other direction. Dumb. Fucking. Bitch. You run, and try to catch her up.

Of the 8 attackers, 7 still stand, and one of them sideswipes you. You topple to the crunchy brown grass, feeling the sharp stalks biting into your skin. He lies on you, chest to chest, pressing down. You gnash your teeth and scream obscenities.

Another Ruskie is manhandling Rose, and drawing her to heel, keeping one of her arms held fast behind her back. Through her tears, she shouts: "Let me go! Let me go!" as he drags her right past you. His compatriots give him cover, keeping Darkbloom, Chloe, and Noelle pinned. You try to wriggle yourself free of the man lying on top of you, but it's no use.

Noelle gets a good shot off, though -- right into the foot of the man leading Rose away. He takes a pratfall, letting go of Rose, and Rose uses the opportunity to bolt. But these fuckers are everywhere, and her path is blocked by yet another spook just as soon as she gets her feet going. He stands before her, at the edge of the road, and she freezes in place, terrified.

"Stop fighting," he booms -- a directive for you all. "We only want the Catachresis girl."

The man atop you forces you to your feet, holding by your wrists. Though you tug and writhe against it, you aren't strong enough to get away.

"W-what?" Rose says. She notices you standing there just behind her. "You... you leave my sister alone! We'll kill you!"

"Shut up," you yell. "Just stop... I'll go with them... get out of here, Rose."

"I won't let you take her!" Rose shrieks.

The man in front of Rose grabs her menacingly by the forearm and yanks her towards him. She almost falls flat from the force of it.

"We don't want your sister. We want you."

Her jaw hangs open.

"You will lead us to the lighthouse," he says.

The shrill high-pitched whine of an engine warped by the Doppler effect fills the air. The grass turns white from hi-brite headlamps reflecting off of it, and then the man holding Rose is gone. He's just gone, replaced by the fender of a late-model hybrid -- a tasteful off-white now streaked red by blood. You recognize that car.

Stepping forth, Auburn draws a little semi-auto pistol, and nails the nearest of the spooky mooks encircling you all.

Chaos, then. The survivors are after him, and he's dashing through them like a sprinter in the Olympics. This is the break Noelle, Darkbloom, and Chloe need. They're back in the open now, picking off the Russians, who most definitely didn't expect to get ambushed by some male-feminist twerp. Not even you, in your semi-infinite wisdom, expected that.

The man holding you lets you go and raises his gun at Auburn as he passes; Chloe, lurching forth from out-of-fucking-nowhere, gets her dagger through his Achilles tendon and floors him. You've heard quite a fair bit of screaming this evening, and the scream he looses is by far the worst.

Chloe's gonna let him suffer like that: she crawls over to him and peers down at him reproachfully. Auburn's a bit more merciful. He falls to his knees beside the injured man and shoots his brains out. You jump back let out a little yelp of surprise -- can't help it.

Chloe, face spattered red, blinks in confusion. She meets Auburn's eyes. Balling her fists up beside her temples, she shrieks, voice nasally and not at all refined: "Cào nǐ mā! Cào nǐ zǔzōng shíbā dài! Who are you! You -- I needed information from that man! How dare you!"

Darkbloom is also desperately grasping for info. He's kneeling over another dying man, pressing him: "Why Rose Catachresis? What does she have to do with the lighthouse? Answer me!"

But he's a goner. You and your friends are the only living souls remaining out here. It's just you and the weeds and the Russian corpses now.

Will pokes his head up from among the ruins of his car. "Auburn! You dickweasel! What are you doing out here?!"

"Saving you," he sneers, struggling to his feet and dusting off his pantlegs. He grimaces at you, then down at Chloe, who's cursing at him in Mandarin like she's trying to hex him. He ignores her, and goes to Will's golf, and roots around inside, and finds your eyepatch. He tosses it at you. "Make yourself decent," he says.

Rose, looking around the grisly scene, is trembling like a bird. Voice similarly trembling, she heaves: "I... am about... to freak... the eff out."

"You can curse," Noelle tells her, helping a shellshocked Whitney and Vivian to their feet from underneath the limo.

She lets out a hard exhalation, and gulps down an equally hard breath to replace it. She tries again: "I am about to fuck the freak out."

"We'll work on it," you tell her, reaffixing your eyepatch.

---

"I raised nothing but idiots..." Mom says, hugging Rose2 and Amber tight to her bosom with either arm.

Charlotte nods sympathetically. "I know how you feel," she says.

"I know you know how I feel," Mom tells her.

Charlotte makes a sour face.

Vivian is curled up with her head in your lap, totally enervated, and Whitney, almost as wiped, sits with her head against your shoulder. Darkbloom clearly isn't thrilled at that setup, but he's staying mum. He's a guest in your home for the second time tonight, after all, so he can't complain.

"Am I part of the team now?" Qiangxiang says, between a couple Chinese curses. "Do none of you know how to conduct a proper interrogation?"

"Shut up," you tell her. "This isn't our fault." You turn your gaze towards Raisin Brant now. "Have you been stalking Amber?"

"Oh, is that what's most important now?" He spits.

You glance up at your wife who's standing near the arched entry to the dining room. "Tell your pet loser to leave Amber alone."

"He saved their lives," Rose counters. "You could be a little more thankful."

You stare daggers at each other, but you're not going to argue with her right now.

Whitney's voice is flat and emotionless. She tells Qiangxiang: "I don't know what you're trying to do. But you're not part of the team. You need to leave my house."

Qiangxiang looks to you for confirmation. You don't say anything.

"I will see you all tomorrow," she says, not betraying any sting at the rejection. "We all need rest."

As she leaves, she shares a recriminating gaze with Auburn that could melt steel.

---

"What kind of protection is good enough protection from the world's most powerful governments?" Noelle wonders aloud, as you all huddle over the dining room table, wondering where the fuck to go from here.

The good news is this: Damon's PMC firm is pulling through for you even after the advent of his death. Their fixers mopped up the carnage on the 280 and got your girls back in one piece.

The bad news: you have no fucking clue why Russians want Rose2, and neither does Qiangxiang -- or so she claims.

"Qiangxiang Xi is a woman without a country," Vivian says. "We can do with her what we did with Mr. Cantor -- and get any information she has, by force. There will be no consequence. Her fellows at Broad Dynamics will want her gone after what she did to her uncle."

"No, they won't," Darkbloom tells his daughter. "She has her uncle's wealth now. They need that capital to survive. Her situation is rather like yours and your sister's."

Great.

Ding-dong, comes the doorbell. You look over your shoulder towards the foyer. Tension fills the room. A wetwork squad come to finish the job?

Amber is a trooper. She pulls her eyepatch away just long enough to let you know, through a hiss of pain, "aggh, fuck -- it's fine. Your rentboy is here."

"Alex?" You say.

"Ayep."

You answer the door. There he is, shivering, on your doorstep. White as a sheet.

"Mandala," he says.

---

He sucks on a mug of cocoa provided by Mom, while he explains. "I was wrong. The implants that Chloe's men were wearing. I've been going through Ms. Guiteau's notes again and again... she theorized about this. Only briefly, but she considered it. How does a malignant actor keep control of a technology that's been leaked into the hands of the public?"

You shrug.

"Mandala," he says. He peels the napkin away from his mug, the one Mom wrapped around it so he wouldn't singe his hands. Using both his palms, he smooths it out, flat on the tabletop, and frantically draws a series of concentric circles on it. "Not centrally networked in the traditional sense... and not peer to peer in the traditional sense. A hybrid." He begins to draw arrows back and forth among the circles. "Low level users can send and receive data to others with the same permissions, only when in physical proximity... but elevated users can send instructions -- also while nearby... and super users, at the center of it all, can see it all. Harvest it all. You reap the benefits of a centrally networked data source without the need of the central network." He pounds his little diagram, which is looking quite like a bloodshot eye by this point, using his little forefinger. "Not peer to peer -- slave to master. Broad Dynamics needs the key to that. That's the piece they've been missing."

You pretend that this makes perfect sense. He's too rattled to press him too hard.

"Ms. Guiteau's notes..." Alex says. "I don't know how far she got with this... if she got very far with it, she didn't tell me.. but maybe she kept at it while she was on the run. I don't have the notes she was keeping when she was living out of her van."

Charlotte lays a hand on his. "I know your brain is going a mile a minute, dear, but try to focus. What about Sable Guiteau's work is important here?"

He takes a couple breaths to calm himself. "When she realized what Sand Reckoner really is, she started thinking about a way to hide from people who can see all." He looks at you. "That was the concept preceding Diogenes. I thought she abandoned it. But what if she didn't? She went undetected for so long, didn't she? Is that how?"

"Some... anti-implant implant?" You question.

"There's only one way to know," he says. "We need to take a flight... as soon as possible."

---

She was buried in a little cemetery in the town of Oneida, New York, her tombstone as no-frills as anything else about her while she was alive. It says simply:

SABLE JULIA GUITEAU

MAY 21, 1991 - SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

"You don't have to do this," you tell Alex.

He sighs and dons the surgical mask and heaves the shovel down from its resting spot on his shoulder.

"It should be me," he says.

He starts to dig. You help. So does Rose.

---

It takes longer than you thought it would. But eventually you're down to the concrete slab over the coffin, and then you're down past that, and Alex cracks open the lid, and the three of you retch and heave at the ghastly, maggoty rot within.

He uses a flashlight and scans the beam up and down through the remains. He's crying, silently, but there it is: tears trickling down his cheek in the moonlight.

The light glints off something, down near Sable's wrist. Squatting, producing a butterfly knife, he carefully cuts it loose from the putrefied flesh and the larvae and the muck. Not a grain, but a little chip: a small wafer of circuitry no larger than a cookie crumb.

"Is her consciousness in that thing?" You ask.

"No," Alex says, peering intently at the device. "It's nothing but a high-tech Faraday cage. Just a mask. Sable Guiteau is gone."

You wouldn't put it past him to lie about that if he thought differently, but the way he says it, barely choking back his sobs, is enough to convince you that he means it.

---

On the flight back, the sunrise streaming through the plane's windows, you inspect the disinfected little crumb of silicon.

"It's a tool to keep in our back pocket," Alex says, leaning back in his seat across from you.

"What can this really do?" You ask him.

"Just hide. That's it. That's all it needs to do."

"Hide how?"

"The user won't be seen by Sand Reckoner or any of its offshoots. They'll be like a value outside the domain of a function. It won't be able to tell anything about them..." He thinks for a moment. "Ms. Guiteau was terrible with names. In her notes she just nicknamed it BlindSpot ... can I?" He reaches out, and you hand the crumb to him. He holds it aloft in the air, twisting it this way and that between thumb and forefinger. "But if I were to name it? I'm thinking Tiresias."

You shrug. "What's in a name?"

Rose, beside you, rolls her eyes.

"Names are important, Ally..." Alex says.

"Would I be able to use it?" you ask him.

"I don't think it would be wise to put it inside someone with an SR implant."

You nod. He sets it down on the little table between you.

>Who, if anyone, should get it? (Can also vote to leave it unused for now, or to destroy it)

"You should have it," you tell Alex.

He cocks his head. "You mean -- I should have it installed -- inside me?"

Rose nods. The logic of it is hitting her, too: "He's right. This is Sable's legacy, isn't it? You're the only one who could carry it on anyway. Not to mention, if you stick around at DBA... and we really do make true adversaries of Broad Dynamics... you'll be their public enemy #1."

"She'd want you to have it," you add.

He sighs. "Do you really think so?"

"Why not?" You ask.

He props his elbows on the table and massages his face with both hands. "I don't know. I always felt like I never measured up."

"She loved you," you tell him.

He looks at you with rheumy eyes.

"The sad thing is..." he says, "I don't know anymore if I loved her. I'm so mad at her... everything she did... and she never even told me about this thing... even in the very end, she didn't trust me enough for that. I feel sometimes like... like I hate her."

"That's grief talking," Rose tells him. "Well. It's your choice. But it has to be the most useful if you're the one using it. You'll be the ace in our sleeve."

"A trump card--" you say.

"Right, an ace in our sleeve," Rose repeats, speaking over you.

"We believe in you," you say. "Not just me and Rose. But everyone else, too. Whitney, Cerise, Gal, Nelson, Armstrong -- all the rest. If you don't think you measure up, that's fine. We know you do."

He looks down at the grain again. He thinks for a long, silent turn.

"All right..." he says. "All right. Assuming I figure out the missing details of how it works -- assuming that. Then I'll use it. For you -- all of you. And--" He gazes out the window, the warm orange light washing over his face. "For Sable, too."

END OF EPISODE 7.