Writing it as we (figuratively) speak! About two new chapters in.

Thanks for sticking with it!

Pac

Okay, I guess it's time to continue:




Chapter Fourteen: National Security


The morning passed quickly. Alex and Justine worked-out in the gym, with Justine all business, behaving like a top-notch personal trainer instead of a sadistic tormentor as she gauged his strength. She even made a modest effort to bend the mangled doorframe in her gym back to a semblance of normalcy.

"I know he's going to come look at this after all the reports," she said anxiously. "I don't want him being upset by my tantrums."

Alex felt like he was in the Twilight Zone. What the hell was going on?

"Who are you, and what have you done with Justine?" Alex blurted out stupidly.

"Oh, fuck," he said under his breath, waiting for her big arm to swing down and knock him off his feet.

Justine froze in place, looking blankly at him, and then did something that disturbed him.

She laughed.

It took her a moment to come down from a gale of pleasant laughter, so unlike all of the behavior Alex had seen to that point. He watched her, wide-eyed, as she dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her shirt, exposing several rows of her massive, rippling abs. He felt like she would lash out at any moment.

Laughter finally finished, she looked down fondly at Alex.

"Silly Birdie, this isn't the usual fucking around," she said with a genuinely pleasant smile. "This is Daddy!"

The only thing the same with that response to her usual banter was the vulgarity, Alex mused. He wondered if he was scheduled to meet the same Senator Moreland he used to watch on C-Span, or if it was some Justine-sized Juggernaut, maybe some giant battle robot from the future, that shared the same name. Justine was acting like a nervous little girl trying to curry his favor.

Alex nearly slapped himself on the forehead. That's exactly what she was. He was so intimidated by her size and volatile temper to not think of her as anything but this gigantic powerhouse. Thinking with a moment of clarity in his weary state, he realized the few times she did see her father, apparently the most focal part of her life, were times she wanted to be the model daughter.

"What do you need me to do?" Alex asked.

"Just give me a glowing review," she said, looking down from her great height. "He already told me he's going to offer you the usual job bonus for staying, but it wouldn't hurt for you to say you enjoy working with me, in addition to liking the pay."

Alex was taken aback. It wasn't a threat. There was no implied coercion, no posturing or establishing dominance (though she hardly needed to do that now). It was a request, plain and simple. It was almost pleading.

"I will," Alex said. "I think we're really making progress."

"Good, Alex," she said, still grossly out of character. "Thank you."

Justine smiled sweetly at Alex. She seemed like a different person. There was zero trace of volatility or mood swings. Nothing. It was like her father snapped his fingers during that call and she came out of a trance.

*************

Sitting outside Senator Moreland's office in the west wing of his house, Alex wondered if there was a significance to him having his office in that wing. As his mind wandered he felt surprisingly at ease. He went over what he would say in his head. Alex could dictate terms if he wanted. He could adamantly refuse to continue working for the senator and request that he pay all of his hospital bills for the injuries he’d sustained at Justine's brutal hands. Maybe he could even force a big severance package for keeping his mouth shut.

But that really wasn’t what he wanted.

Alex couldn't figure out how he felt about continuing on, if he was now genuinely enjoying the challenge of matching wits with Justine, or if it was the fact that he couldn't part from Justine's irresistible sexuality, and her apparent attraction to him. Would everything be different now, now that they seemed to have reached some sort of understanding? Something told him no.

"Ah, come in, Mr. Roberts," Senator Moreland said as Alex was shown in by a hulking security guard who then stood near the doorway.

He looked askance as he walked past the mountain of a man holding the door. Why would the senator need him if Alex was the person he was seeing? Justine, yes, but little tiny Alex?

"I'm sure I don't need to ask how you are," Senator Moreland began, noting his roughshod appearance.

"No, you probably have done this before," Alex said in response.

The senator's eyebrow raised.

"Hmmm," he said appreciatively. "So… she hasn't completely cowed you. I must say I'm very surprised by that."

That wasn't what Alex was expecting as an introduction to their talk.

"Excuse me?" Alex asked.

The senator's demeanor changed. The pleasantry was gone in a flash, replaced by a brusque, businesslike look.

"Let's dispense with the bullshit, shall we?" he said. "We both know how things are here. You are here in a capacity somewhat different than was originally advertised. I don't make apologies for that. If I had been truthful, I wouldn't have gotten what I need; what Justine needs. I'm sure you have noticed she's not an ordinary seventeen-year-old."

He resisted the urge to scoff at the statement.

"No, she most certainly is not ordinary," he replied, carefully keeping his tone neutral.

The senator smiled indulgently.

"The offer stands for continuing service after the initial week," he stated flatly. "Doubling of your current pay, plus additional bonuses based on the level of... involvement... you have."

Alex had a hard time believing Justine's father could be so cavalier about the "involvement" that the word implied. Considering every staff member knew and surely reported Justine's carnal treatment of him, against his will, no less. He acted like it was nothing of consequence, like he had seen it all before.

Alex tried to brush away the sickening feeling at Moreland's total disregard for his daughter's inappropriate behavior.

"I'm probably going to regret asking this, but what if I say I am not interested in continuing?" Alex probed.

The senator steepled his hands in front of his face. He gave Alex an appraising look.

"I would not be surprised," the senator said after an uncomfortably long pause. "I would also honor my agreement and pay you. In fact, the money has already been wired to your bank account, the one ending in," he glanced down at his desk, "3341."

That made Alex nervous. He of course had not given routing numbers or any other personal information. Come to think of it, he didn't give the senator his last name. Easy enough to find out, he supposed, but his bank account? The thought of the resources the powerful head of the Armed Services Committee had at his disposal rang in his head as he faced the man. The look of patriarchal beneficence belied something else, a cold calculating intelligence that was likely sizing him up as they talked.

"Mr. Roberts, I can be a reasonable man," he said after another long pause. "I can also be an unreasonable man, but I don't want it to come to that. A PhD in Political Science can certainly guess the types of projects someone in my position is involved in. Information of that nature is, by definition, a matter of national security. People involved with these projects, then, by extension, also come under that umbrella of national security. As you are now."

Alex quickly sat up. What did he mean?

The senator did not miss the brief look of confusion.

"Yes, I suppose I should explain a bit," he began. "Please note that everything I am about to tell you is classified Secret. As a function of accepting this position, this clearance level was generated for you."

Alex felt a sudden chill. Why would he need a Secret clearance? The original statement he was handed in the back of Moreland's limo was was a non-disclosure agreement, not a Classified background check. He knew he was duped into a position that was more than merely acting as a tutor, but this was totally unexpected.

The senator watched Alex's reaction, then continued.

"The overview of your purpose here is as previously described, with a slight addition; you are the tutor, and dare I say, paid companion, for Justine, my daughter. She is one of twelve such girls, but the only one to reach age seventeen. As I said before, Justine is not a normal child, any more than I am a normal father. In fact, she's a very special child, as you know, having spent time with her. Very special. As such, she has special needs, seen to be me, the staff of this facility... and now by you as well. Were I to explain her full capabilities to you, I would need to seek Top Secret clearance for you, and, based, on one of the activities in your past, that is something you would not likely be granted. Shall I read a bit of the background check I have on you?"

The senator smiled at the comprehension on Alex's face. He understood his situation now.

Alex had a lump in his throat. The "Overland Estate" did seem much more of a working secure compound than a place where a senior senator would go to get away from it all. He wondered what kind of liberties a man like Moreland could take under the auspices of "national security activities", and realized he didn't want to find out. He also realized that he had only seen a small fraction of the compound that was his home, whether he liked it or not.

"So, all of this conversation is not really a question of *if* I stay on or not," he stated flatly.

"Now you've got it," the man said, rising from his chair. "Think of this job as doing your bit for God and Country. There are sacrifices in doing your vital role. That said, it is not without its perks as well, but yours is no less solemn a duty than that of any soldier on the battlefield or analyst at The Pentagon. I would contend it is more vital than either of them."

The senator pulled a manilla folder from his desk drawer and flipped it open. Alex didn't need to hear his voice to know what was in it.

"Where was I? Alex Roberts, age twenty-seven, top marks from Georgetown, captain of the debate team, PhD with honors from GWU under Robert Champion, then under Bill Parsons after Champion's untimely death," he read. "Gifted in foreign policy theory and political analysis, liberal bent, handful of white papers to CNN, Politico, Huffington...” he snorted as he read the last. “What, no Fox News?"

He laughed at his own joke, and continued to peruse Alex's file.

"Emotionally compromised after Champion's death... yes, not surprising." He read further, noting as Alex bristled, "Slow descent into very liberal politics, vocal opponent to Parsons's assessment of current Middle-East diplomacy and Chinese annexation of Tibet. Hmm, seems like you had a bit of a rebellious streak after Champion died.

“I see here that you held a handful of think-tank jobs, standard contract analysis. A lot of teaching applications, to mostly Mid-West universities, then nothing for six months... right after your paper to... ahh. You wrote a white paper criticizing the current administration's Lebanon and Palestine foreign relations policy. I see it somehow made its way to WikiLeaks, along with the current policy. Hmm. My policy advisors note you make a lot of compelling counterpoints. Interesting. Looking at this analysis, it seems I'm not the only one interested in your thought processes, it seems." He turned the document over as he looked for its origin. "I wonder if the State Department is where this one came from?"

Alex didn't know what to say. He had anonymously sent the documents himself from an Internet Cafe toward the end of his term at the (insert foreign policy think-tank here); there was nothing that could possibly trace the post back to him -- no online accounts, a newly created e-mail address, made on the spot with a false name, everything he could think of to cover his tracks. If he was prosecuted, it would be a circumstantial case at best. And yet, here it was, some sort of paper trail leading back to him in a little folder with "Alex Roberts" on it. He wondered what else was in there.

As if he could read Alex's mind, the senator looked into his eyes. It was a victorious look, a confident look. Alex saw one of the early scenes in “The Matrix” flash before his eyes:

"As you can see, Mister Anderson, we've had our eye on you for quite some time...."

Alex sighed. He wasn't going anywhere. The "contract" was a formality. He was a literal prisoner, courtesy of the nebulous statement: "national security". The agreement he signed may be a legitimate, legally-binding contract, but it was only paying lip service to the law. His signed agreement was for three months, though he was sure it would most likely become a longer term. Maybe a lifetime term. Maybe three months *was* a lifetime term in this job.

Moreland had a grim smile. He was enjoying this, the bastard, Alex thought.

"I can't make you say yes. However, if you leave now, which, of course, you are welcome to do, that would constitute a breach of contract. We'll activate the contingent clauses in your contract which will, after the legal dust clears, probably have you paying us for this job. Again, you are free to do so. But you undoubtedly realize that we cannot leave you to your own devices, especially in light of your past, shall we say, unpatriotic, behavior."

Alex's dark look told Moreland all he needed to know. He challenged Alex with his level gaze, and Alex realized he knew next to nothing about the man other than his public persona.

“If you agree to stay on, the rewards are not insignificant. You will continue to receive increasingly large payments into your bank account for each successive week you remain in your position, including accrual of paid time off. Yes, I thought you'd appreciate that. In fact, the completion of the first week entitles you to three days of 'recuperative leave'. We find that tutors often need a little break at the end of this rather trying initial period. I am not ignorant of the strain your position places upon you, mentally and physically. Since you have achieved an extraordinary rapport with Justine in such a short amount of time, I have a vested interest in keeping you in excellent health. This entitles you to a certain amount of away time from Justine. However, it must be taken in prescribed locations, and contact with the public at large is strictly monitored for reasons of national security. You may speak to your family if you wish. Under close supervision, of course. I'm sure they would like to hear from you. You may make no mention of my name or Justine's, and you may mention the new position only in vague terms."

Alex was stuck, and he knew it. He wanted to talk to his parents, though. He wasn't a DC native, so his relationship was a long distance one, but he did talk to them nearly weekly. They were probably wondering why he hadn't called over the past weekend.

"Listen, Alex. I am not a monster. I only want what's best for Justine. What's more, this position can lead to a great many open doors in your life. You do your duty, and you will have that teaching position you're after, in a good school that befits your talents, even a painfully liberal school, if that's what you want.

Alex was tired, weary of the whole thing. His body ached in placed he didn't realize *could* ache, and his mind felt leaden. Now he was faced with the thinly-veiled threats of on of the most powerful men in Washington, a man who apparently had strong-armed people like him in the past.

“Alex, I have one last perk for you to consider," Senator Moreland said as he watched Alex mull over his supposed options. "As you can imagine, Justine will be very hesitant to part with you at this juncture, so I will give you an alternative to facing her... displeasure upon your return. I have access to a vacation home in the South Pacific, one of our US Protectorates. It is secluded, as it needs to be to accommodate my special circumstances. You may leave here and visit this vacation home for one week without your usual duties attached... with the stipulation that Justine accompany you. As you can imagine, unsupervised, unaccompanied sightseeing for you and Justine is not permitted. However, since this would be considered recuperative leave, Justine would be instructed to treat you with less... enthusiasm."

"How can you guarantee less 'enthusiasm'?" Alex asked.

"I can," the senator replied firmly. "It is not easy: it requires special steps, but I can exert a great deal of control over her when needed. However, I do not wish to exert it at all times. I need her to grow up... naturally... for want of a better term. She is very important to me, and more importantly, to our country. Yours and mine. You wouldn't believe how much. Her well-being, physical and mental, is my highest priority."

The entire conversation was starting to give Alex the creeps. The clinical way Moreland spoke about Justine, like she was less a child and more a special government project....

"I need to hear your answer, Alex," Moreland said, "for the record. I need you to be on board with this of your own free will."

Alex bowed his head, knowing he would likely regret his next words.

"I accept the extension," he said. "I am onboard."

"No coercion?" the senator asked. "It is important that you say it."

"No coercion," Alex replied, knowing it wasn't strictly the truth. "I accept of my own free will."

"Excellent," Moreland said, clapping his hands together. "You made the right choice. Justine is very taken with you, from everything I've seen and heard. You're going to make a good mentor for her. The development of her critical thinking ability is paramount to her future."

He nodded to the large guard and rose from his chair.

"Mr. Roberts, this has been very productive," he said, the political mask firmly back in place. "I look forward to good things from you in the future. I am going to visit with Justine now, which will give you some free time. You can see your way out."

Without another look, the senator walked out of the room, flanked by the large guard. As Alex watched, another took up position on his other side and they walked down the hallway, taking the entire breadth of the wide space as they went. It was about the same amount of space Alex and Justine occupied when they walked abreast of each other in the hallways. But it was in no way the same.

Alex noticed that the senator left his "file" open on his desk, undoubtedly an invitation for him to look.

He got close enough to see the heading of the folder and froze.

LST-178A775 - Tactical Combat Superiority Initiative - Generation Six Field Combat Operative Development

He began to sweat as he approached the desk. He couldn't turn back now.

A single page information sheet sat open, with his multiple surveillance-type photographs of his face from various angles and a full-body photo of him. He recognized the photo of him in front of his apartment... the apartment prior to the one he currently occupied. He had left that more expensive apartment two years ago, before the end of his think-tank consultancy at GWU. The other photos appeared older than that.

The final item that stuck in his head was his listed job title.

Cognitive Development Specialist, GS8 – Special Exception, Haz-Ops.

Chapter Fifteen: The Truth Emerges

Justine was elated that Alex agreed of his own free will. Apparently others had not been so enthusiastic to come on board, but, despite what he'd been told before, everyone signed on for another week, except those who had been supposedly "broken".

"So now you have the scoop, would you like to see some of my *real* training?" Justine asked, cradling Alex in the crook of her arm as she strode down the hallway from her bedroom suite. "If you think last week was impressive, you haven't seen anything yet. This week is the real deal. Week Two is always the eye-opener."

"So what is this week about?" he asked as his body swayed in time with her long strides.

"Close quarters combat," she said offhandedly, as if this curriculum was nothing unusual. "Weapons, tactics, target acquisition and elimination. The usual stuff.” Justine lowered her voice and continued conspiratorially, “I asked to step it up a notch today because I want to impress you."

"Sounds fun," Alex said, resisting the urge to squirm on his stone-hard seat, "like a video game. It is simulations and stuff like that?"

Justine laughed.

"Simulated people, yes," she replied. "You can't just smoke a bunch of fucking guys like that. Target dummies are what I'm used to engaging, but the hand-to-hand you saw last week, with the girls, that's as close to physical combat I get in Week One. Today is totally different. I engage in some real combat."

They made their way to the big gray building, and Alex was shocked at the change. It appeared that the far wall of what used to be the gym was movable, and was now three times the length it was earlier. The polished wooden floor was gone, replaced by actual earth and tufts of scrub grass. Where exercise equipment once stood, mocked-up buildings were erected that looked like a small village in Southeast Asia. The main difference was the composition of the buildings. Though they all were topped with shaggy grass mat roofs, the walls of some were solid wooden boards, and in one case, cinder block. Other than that, the entire scene could have been a movie set for “Platoon” or some other war film shot in Vietnam or Cambodia.

Justine set Alex on the floor and began walking toward the village setup. Her huge combat boots left tracks twice the size of Alex's tennis shoes.

"Stay there, Birdie," she said over her shoulder. "I need to gear up."

She walked through the village, and Alex stood watching. Before long, Valerie stood next to him.

"Welcome back," she said sardonically. "I'm sure Moreland made you an offer you couldn't refuse."

"You could say that," he replied. "How are you?"

Valerie paused to look down at him. She was quite striking, he thought as he looked up at her pretty face. She also was wearing a much less formal outfit, and he could see the hint of a very fit body in the curves of her shapely arms and legs. He hadn't realized just how much bigger she was than him before, perhaps from all of the trauma, but today the difference was extreme as he stood next to her. She was nearly the height of Justine's tall friend Karen from last week, the one who hoisted him bodily from the ground during Justine's rampage. Valerie looked even stronger than Karen as Alex observed her bare arms in a short-sleeved khaki button-down shirt and dark shorts. Her legs likewise were very toned and powerful-looking. She had a knowing smile as his eyes made their way back up to her face.

"You know, I think you're the first tutor who's ever asked me that," she mused. "Alex, I am fine, thanks for asking. After last week, I'm glad the only thing I lost was a few hanks of hair, though."

Alex thought back to the end of last week, when Justine held Valerie by her hair shortly before hurting him so badly he was unconscious for over a day. He looked at her head, and she put her hand to her scalp in response, brushing back her flowing chestnut-colored hair.

"No permanent harm done," she replied. "I am glad that I can say the same of you. I guess the better question today is, how are you? She was harder on you than I'd seen in quite a while."

"I really ache," Alex replied, "but she's been extremely gentle with me since her father talked to her on the telephone when he got back."

"Don't get used to it," she said. "That was a rare reprieve. The Senator likes her to be at her optimal combat-readiness during the week. Weekends are a little more lax, unless he plans one of his 'surprise training' sessions. Those are always a nightmare. Nowhere on the campus is safe when that happens."

"What the hell is all this, Valerie?" Alex asked, turning toward her. "I feel like I just stepped into a Rambo movie."

She laughed.

"Heh, I wish," she quipped. "She makes Rambo look like a pussy."

He blinked at her vulgarity.

"You're not just a staffer, are you?" he asked, appraising her body again. "I thought you were assigned to Senator Moreland when I first met you."

She sighed.

"Yeah, well looks can be deceiving here," she said, and looked up as Justine approached them from the village.

Alex turned and his jaw fell open. He had played as much Call of Duty as any other twenty-something, and Justine looked like she could step right into the game without a second thought.

She was dressed in a black tactical outfit: black BDUs, tactical vest, combat boots, and over her shoulder was slung a Barrett fifty-caliber rifle. An assault rifle cradled in her arms looked like a toy compared to her massive sinews, and she held it with the casual air of someone who has handled firearms before. The weapon had a strong resemblance to an M-4, but the bore was much larger, nearly the diameter of the Barrett. Everything about the weapon looked oversized, from the magazine to the housing. To complete the outfit, Justine had pulled her jet-black hair into a tight bun, making her look even taller as it stood high on her head.

"What do you think, Alex?" she asked, doing a girlish pirouette, like she was showing off a new outfit from the mall. "Is it me?"

"Totally," he deadpanned. "The only outfit more appropriate would be something from a heavy metal band."

Justine paused, and Alex realized she had no idea what he was talking about.
"Like KISS or GWAR? Something big and flashy, with some spiked shoulder pads, maybe."

Justine looked blankly at Valerie.

"Music. Rock and roll. We'll talk about it after your exercise," she said. "It wasn't an insult."

Justine's eyes leveled back down to Alex, who suddenly got a knot in his stomach.

"That's good," she said. "You'll have to share once I'm done, Birdie. Maybe we can surf the Internet?"

As she said it, she looked to Valerie, imploring. Valerie shrugged.

"Whatever. But for now, I have to do the stupid fucking hand-eye shit. I did want to come out here geared up to see if you would wet yourself. Do you like this look, or the naughty schoolgirl outfit better?"

"I think they're both pretty cool," he replied, and was rewarded with a smile.

"Wait 'til you see how cool this rig is when I'm actually using it," she said excitedly. "I really want to do the hands-on stuff first, Val."

She shook her head.

"You know the routine," she replied, with more authority than she showed last week. "Hand-eye stuff first, then acquisition exercises, then live-fire."

"Jesus, live-fire?" Alex asked, realizing that the weapons Justine carried were the real thing. He had thought for a moment, a stupid thought, that it was some sort of costume for his amusement, or maybe excitement.

"What did you think I was going to do with this stuff, you dumbass, pose in it?" Justine said with a smirk.

She struck an action-hero pose, unslinging the sniper rifle from her back and holding both weapons in a dramatic pose as she aimed at the far wall above their heads. Her arms bulged as she gritted her teeth and squinted, looking into the distance.

Alex was struck by just how dangerous she seemed at that moment. It was one thing to watch her fight hand-to-hand against the group of martial artists last week, but a whole different effect when she was geared up like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"No mini-gun?" Alex asked, to which Justine laughed uproariously.

"Yeah, I can see someone sneaking around in the bush with one of those things strapped to his back," she said. "Not to mention the rate of fire would require you carry a fucking crate of ammo with you."

She turned quickly and shouted back toward the simulated village.

"Hey David!"

A voice came over a PA system that he'd never heard before.

"Yeah, J?

"Pull up a few targets," she yelled. "Alex needs to get the full effect!"

"Justine...." Valerie said warningly.

"Oh, fuck you," she replied. "It's just a couple of rounds.” Then, louder, to the unseen David, “Do it, you fucker!"

"Okay," the voice replied hastily. "How about six?"

"Eight!" she yelled back.

Valerie shouted, "David, make it an even clip on the M-X," then looked up archly to Justine's face. "Will that do?"

"Perfectly," she replied, and Alex could see a change begin to come over her face.

"Stand back, Birdie, the heavy metal concert is about to begin," she said, and her face went blank, hardening into an intense look of concentration.

In the village, fourteen silhouette targets began rising simultaneously, over the tops of the thatched roofs.

Before Alex could draw a breath, the Barrett was slung back over Justine's shoulder, and the big-bore assault rifle was in both hands. Justine instantly assumed a standing target-shooter's stance, and the big rifle barked deafeningly in rapid succession. He watched the targets each take a shot in either the ten-ring in the chest, or as close to dead-center in the head as he had ever seen. The rifle barrel moved so quickly from one target to the next that he couldn't follow the targets in his vision. As much as he enjoyed shooting games on his computer back in his apartment, he had to marvel at the inhuman speed and accuracy of Justine's marksmanship. She missed none of the targets, and the speed with which she shot each target was simply unbelievable. In less then ten seconds, all the targets were hit, and she quickly dropped the magazine from her rifle and had a new in place with a loud CRACK. She cycled the action of the magazine and squeezed off another series of shots, this time hitting the opposite kill-zone of the targets she had fired at before. The entire sequence, from raising the muzzle of the rifle to shouting "CLEAR!" in a booming voice, took less time than it took for the automated system to raise the targets to their full position.

"Holy shit," Alex breathed. He felt his legs shaking.

Justine was pleased at his reaction.

"You wanna go see them?" she asked excitedly, and, not waiting for a response, scooped Alex into the crook of her arm again and began marching toward the huts.

As they approached, Alex realized just what he had gotten himself into, and the knot in his stomach became that much tighter.

Justine was a killing machine.

As if she could hear his thoughts, she began talking as they walked past the targets.

"Kill... kill... kill... kill...." she said, assessing the targets, as they passed each one. The holes were perfectly placed, dead-center in the head, or dead-center in the chest.

Alex nearly fell off Justine's arm as she came to an abrupt halt.

"What the fuck?" she said in a low voice.

Target number eleven had a hole slightly off-center in its head.

"That's definitely a kill," Alex said, and she turned quickly to look at him with murder in her eye.

"So fucking WHAT?" she roared angrily. "That should have been perfect!"

She began looking around and stuck her arm opposite Alex in the air. Her body shifted slightly, and Alex wobbled on his massive perch, but Justine didn't notice. Her arm bent and her hand subconsciously wrapped around his thigh closest to her head as she held her free hand up in the air.

"Do you feel that?" she asked Alex.

He raised his arm the way Justine did and didn't feel a thing.

She turned and looked back toward Valerie.

"Huh," she mused. "I must’ve changed the air flow in this room when I bashed the corner of the door out. It fucked up my shot. That kinda pisses me off."

Turning quickly, she marched toward the door, and neared the corner she had kicked out of shape during her sparring match.

She tossed Alex carelessly from her shoulder and swung the door so hard Alex could feel the wind from it blow on his face. The door hit the wall with a deafening BANG, and whole huge room shook from the impact.

Justine lined up and grabbed the handle of the door on the opposite side and repeatedly slammed the door against the wall until the corner was hammered crudely back into place. She then closed it again and put her hand down to the deformed corner, apparently feeling the airflow.

"Better, but not perfect," she grumbled. "Maybe a half-degree left of center, still. I'll see in the live-fire."

Alex watched the violent outburst in terrified silence, and Justine turned back toward him.

"Oops," she said, "I put you on your fragile little ass. I need to be more careful with you Daddy said. Sorry."

His eyes imperceptibly widened at the apology.

"Oh, don't get all weepy," she said angrily. "I've said sorry before. It's not like I don't fucking know how."

She snatched Alex by the shoulder from his sitting position and placed him back onto her arm. He yelped in surprise and instantly felt her fingers let go.

She looked up at his face, and he nearly wet himself at the dark look she gave him.

"You break his shoulder and I'm going to tell your father," Valerie said as Justine breezed past her.

Justine stopped and made a threatening move toward Valerie, who flinched, despite trying her hardest not to.

Placated, Justine's laugh echoed through the room as she walked to the other side of the village.

"You'll NEVER be able to stand your ground when you see me coming, you bitch," she said as she heard Valerie murmur under her breath. "Keep trying, though. It makes me laugh."

"She thinks I can't hear that shit," Justine said conspiratorially to Alex as they approached a door he had never been through. "I am a big fucking cunt, though, so it doesn't piss me off."

"We're on the other side of the room," Alex remarked to himself.

"So?" she replied.

"Nothing," he said quickly. "You have really good hearing."

"Give that fucking rocket scientist a prize," she said as she came to the big metal door. This door had a security keypad on it with an angry red light blazing on top. "I have pretty good eyesight, too. I can see your little pecker creeping down your leg from sitting on my arm. Maybe I should bounce your little ass up and down on my bicep and see how much bigger your little trouser snake gets. I'm going to fuck your little cock into the ground when we get done this afternoon... live-fire always makes me ragingly horny. Or maybe I'll take a shower and make you hang suspended from my titties as you suck them. We can see how long you can hang on while I wash myself off. Mmm. Maybe instead I'll lay you on top of them and see how high I can toss you in the air just from flexing my pecs. I'll wager at least four feet, what do you think?"

She smirked knowingly as Alex groaned.

"Too fucking easy," she said as she felt Alex shift on her arm.

Justine rapidly punched in a dizzying series of numbers and the door gave a loud CLICK, accompanied by the light changing to green. She pulled open the door and slid Alex from her arm, holding him in front of her as she descended the narrow stairwell beyond. The walls were claustrophobically tight with Justine's huge body filling the narrow stair, and, hanging suspended in front of her with her hand pushing on his chest, her tactical vest bit into his back from the pressure. The entire situation made him feel like he was being entombed.

The stairwell doubled back on itself halfway down, then reached the landing to face a series of bare concrete corridors that radiated left, right and straight ahead. Justine took the left-side corridor and quickly made her way past three unmarked bare metal doors, set Alex on his feet and opened the fourth door. They entered a small white room with a table and two chairs on either side. A man was sitting in the chair facing Justine across the table. She unslung her rifles and stood them in the corner of the room, then took off her tactical vest and placed it next to the weapons. Beneath she wore a black BDU blouse to match the pants. Her huge breasts pushed the chest pockets so far out it would be impossible to use them to hold anything.

Justine noticed Alex staring and snorted in mirth.

The man nodded, unspeaking, and placed a stack of large cards, roughly the size of a sheet of paper, into a machine on the table in front of him. It looked like the machine would flip the cards up to be viewed from Justine's side of the table.

"Let me know when you're ready," he said as he finished preparing the unit.

"How you doin', Bruce?" Justine asked conversationally as she slipped gracefully into the seat opposite him, looming over the smaller man. "How's your neck?"

"Better," he said in a quavering voice, which made Justine chuckle.

"Are there any more little cheating fucking surprises in that deck?" she asked, her voice still light.

Bruce gulped visibly.

"They don't let me see them before we do the exercise," he said, his voice suddenly hoarse.

"I hope that means 'no'," Justine said in a growl.

Bruce began to sweat. Alex followed suit. The last thing he wanted to see was Justine throttle the guy before his eyes. He pictured the guy's head popping off like a doll, but his active imagination followed the gruesome scene with copious amounts of blood and gore. He shivered as it played out in his head.

"A-are you ready?" Bruce asked Justine, fear in his eyes.

"Sock it to me, baby," Justine said.

Bruce took a small hand-grip and pressed a button set in it, and the first card flipped up. Alex barely had time to see the image, a big rectangular outline, when Justine blurted out, "seven," and Bruce pressed the button again. After that, the images were a blur as Justine scanned each picture in a fraction of a second.

'Six, four, eight, fourteen, one, three, twelve, six, STOP!" she said.

Bruce looked up at her, his eyes trembling.

Alex looked at the image on the stopped card. It was a line drawing of an office building, about four stories tall. It was very uniform, and each floor had ten windows. Images of people were in random windows, and he was able to count five men, clad in either black masks or abbiyahs, all wielding weapons in different threatening poses. There were five other figures in different windows than the "bad guys". Each of them was unique: one was a woman with her hands to her face in a silent scream, one was a child crying, one a man smoking a cigarette, one a dog, and the final one, the one Justine stared at like she would burn a hole through it, was a woman in the act of taking off a hijab. It looked a great deal like one of the hostile men's abbiyahs in outline from the position of the woman's body.

She looked up with fire in her eyes, and Alex followed her gaze to a mirrored window set high in the wall.

"Do you really think me nearly breaking Bruce's neck the last time is fucking funny you assholes?" she shouted at the mirror, reaching across to grab him by the neck. "If there's another of those fucking trick pictures in this deck I'm going to throw Bruce through the window to have a conference with you about it."

Senator Moreland's voice came through the PA system.

"That will not be necessary, Justine," he said, and Justine's demeanor changed instantly.

She pushed Bruce with what Alex recognized as her lightest push. Bruce and his chair went flying to hit the far wall with a heavy thud and a groan of pain.

"But these are BULLSHIT, Daddy!" she groaned petulantly. "They slow me way the fuck down."

Alex smelled urine in the room, and knew what had just happened.

"That's the point," he replied. "Your outline recognition is Class One, but you need to go beyond that to actual facial recog and threat designation. That's the entire point. I don't want you putting a hole in some little old lady's head. These CQ envronments always have a mix of hostiles and non-combatants. We don't need you to clear and sweep; we have tactical teams for that. YOU are special. You operate so far above that. It's a strategic waste to send you into a clear-cut situation like that. If you have to play Whack-A-Mole on these goddamn cards for the next five years, you're going to DO IT until you get it right every time."

Justine looked up defiantly.

"If I'm window-cleaning in a stupid scenario like this, you know as well as I do that I have less than two seconds to pop everyone I can before they start shooting back," she said, her voice hardening. "Who fucking cares if I ten-ring wife number thirty-fucking-eight? She'll probably have a fucking AK in her hand anyway when I go in."

"Non-combatants are non-combatants until YOU verify otherwise," her father retorted. "Besides, it's not like 'wife number thirty-eight' -- an armed civilian -- will be able to target you on approach, anyway. You move too fast for that. The trained soldiers will have a hard enough time tracking you before you penetrate the building in such a scenario."

"Great," she said sharply. "She squeezes off a shot in fear and gets a lucky bullseye on my noggin. You've watched as much footage as I have. More. It's happened before. Neutralize the building. It's what real entry teams would do. That's what the teams on every piece of footage you've ever shown me did."

Alex heard a sigh over the intercom.

"You're not a normal entry team, Justine," he said, and Alex could hear his voice rising in anger.

Moreland paused, and the hum of the open mic died with a click. When he spoke next, his voice was back to its normal neutral tone.

"Our intel says the Chinese are getting one hundred percent hostile kill rates with ZERO casualties," he said mildly. "The Russians are well behind us, but the Chinese are at least two generations ahead. Should we really cut corners, Justine?"

Alex watched Justine sulk for a moment.

"The little fuckers aren't as big as me yet. Never will be," she said under her breath, then louder, "No, Daddy."

"That's my girl," he said. "Do it again. Slow down if you have to, but maintain focus. I want full visual identification, not outline. Speed is not as important as accuracy. Bruce, move to the second part. She would have aced this one except for the last.” There was another pause, the mic again going off for a moment. "Nix that. Go get yourself cleaned up."

"Yes, sir," Bruce said and withdrew, shaking, with Justine chuckling evilly as he walked past her. The door opened on his second try.

Another man entered and, after cleaning Bruce's vacated seat and the floor nearby, moved the chair back into position and pulled a Rubik's Cube from a drawer in the table. He handed it to Justine with a shaking hand, and she took it with two fingers.

"Thank you, Darrin sweetie," she cooed, her voice dripping honey.

He looked like he was going to throw up from fear.

“Alex dear," she asked, “How'd you like to rub my shoulders?

Alex started at the mention of his name, then walked to where Justine was sitting hunched over the table. He put his hands on her gigantic trapezius muscles, marveling at how he couldn't cover them fully with his hands.

"Is that really necessary?" Moreland's voice said over the PA.

"Yes, it's really necessary," she replied smartly. "I always perform faster AND more accurately when I'm less tense."

"Who's going to rub your shoulders in the field, Justine?" her father asked, and she gave the mirror the finger.

"Justine I can't even dent your skin with my hands," Alex said quietly as he leaned over to whisper in her ear.

"It’s not you massaging my muscles, it's the feel of your hands on me that's calming," she said. "Especially YOUR hands, Baby. I'll keep it in my memory palace for the field."

She looked pointedly to the mirror with her last words.

"Or maybe I'll just smuggle him in my rucksack on my ops... if I ever get a fucking op."

"That's enough," Moreland said over the PA. "You're in rare form today, Justine. Perhaps we should talk after the live-fire...?"

"That won't be necessary," she said quickly, and Alex heard something he never thought he would from her. Fear.

"Just rub my fucking shoulders, Birdie," she whispered tersely. "I don't care if you can't knead the muscles. That's not what it's about."

"Okay," he said and moved his hands over the huge trapezius muscles on either side of her neck.

Alex could see her lips break into a smile in the mirror where her father apparently was located, the two of them locked in some sort of power play.

"Perfect," she said, closing her eyes for a brief moment, then aimed her gaze at Darrin. "I'm ready, dipshit."

Darrin pressed the button on the machine, and a different series of images flashed before Justine's eyes. This time she barked out the numbers again, more slowly, while manipulating the Rubik's Cube insanely fast. Alex could barely believe his eyes. Justine beat the Rubik's Cube about halfway through the stack of twenty or so images, speeding up dramatically once she had. Even slowed, she still beat the deck at a rate of slightly less than a second per card. The last image, which stayed in view, was of a cargo ship. There were a handful of "hostiles" on the deck, along with a group of obviously non-hostile characters gathered in a group before them. The hostiles were in various acts of either threatening the non-hostiles or moving about the deck of the ship. One was visible through a window in the bridge, and one was atop a stack of cargo crates.

"There, at that speed I’d probably be dead. You happy now?" she yelled, then lowered her voice. "Birdie, you can stop."

A sigh came over the intercom, but no rebuttal.

Even with such a short time spent trying to massage her gigantic traps, Alex's hands still throbbed.

"How in the hell can you do that so fast?" he asked, flexing his fingers.

"That's nothing," she said, reaching back to pull Alex onto her lap. "I can rub my belly and pat my head at the same time, too."

Justine took Alex’s hand in hers and rubbed his hand over her cobbled abs as she patted her head. His eyes wandered to their densely muscled expanse, and he couldn’t suppress a look of awe as his fingers bumped over the hard striations.

"Alright, enough nonsense," Moreland snapped through the PA. "Do that when you're not training. It's acquisition time, followed by live-fire. Get your ass out there, soldier!"

Justine nearly launched Alex into the air she rose so quickly.

"Woo hoo!" she whooped, dropping him to his feet. "Now you get to see the really fun stuff, Birdie!"

Hey Pac!  Yes, this is the same sinclair4000 that commented on this story on © Saradas and encouraged you to post here as well.  Glad to see you did!  I love © Saradas but as you can see there are more folks that comment here, and therefore more of a community that forms around female muscle stories.  Will be glad to see the story continue and finish.   

Setting the bar high I see.

I'm not a big fan of violence in a story, but the rest of this is so good.  Not many people write sex well, and very few would be able to keep it fresh and stimulating when including such gratuitous quantities, yet you have pulled it off.  This would be an eminently readable story even without the fetish material.  A lot of stories on this and similar sites seem to exist in a bubble world.   I appreciate the various details you've included indicating familiarity with the DMV, the federal government, and maybe even firearms, it makes everything a bit more believable.

It may be a small thing, but I also appreciate the way you handle transitions and breaks.  Despite the length of this story, my eyes didn't get tired.  That often happens to me even when reading common five sentence paragraphs, let alone the large blocks of text that descriptive writing often falls prey too.

Well, since someone actually commented....


Chapter Sixteen: Testing The Boundaries

The mock village had been reconfigured since they had gone below ground. Another hut was added, its walls composed of corrugated metal.

As was the case all day, Alex was riding on Justine's arm as they walked past the new hut. She rapped on the metal with her gloved hand, the tinny bang making Alex start.

"Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in," she said with a laugh, and punched the metal sheet that simulated the door so quickly that her hand burst through the metal while the entire panel deformed inward. She struck with a blindingly-fast straight-armed jab, using only the muscles of her shoulder and arm. Alex was barely jolted from the motion.

"I don't think I'd let that fat little fucker oink out his standard response," she said to Alex. "I'd much rather eat the bacon. Then I’d pick my teeth with the hair on his chinny-chin-chin."

"Ten demerits," an emotionless voice said from the speaker.

"Yeah? Come down here and tell me that, you shit!" Justine yelled. "Fuck your demerits!"

"Twenty," came the disembodied response.

Justine chuckled, but didn't reply.

"They think a fucking demerit bothers me," she said in an aside to Alex. "They never let me out of here anyway except for school. I could give a shit if they take away some of my stuff. Even school feels like prison, so who cares?"

"I care," Alex said, surprising himself. Before he could stop, he continued, "Justine, I was offered the chance to go to the South Pacific for "recuperative leave". Would you like to go with me? Your father said you could if I wanted."

Justine stopped so quickly Alex was thrown off her shoulder. She snapped her hand out and caught him so gently he couln't believe it. Her hand tightened on his shirtfront and she held him lightly across the vast gulf of her chest to stare him in the eye.

"Say that again," she said.

"That's not a bad thing, is it?" Alex asked in a small voice. "Us going away together? It's not code for some horrible combat simulation, is it?"

He could see the tiniest bit of wetness on the outer corners of her eyes, and unbelievably saw her lip tremble nearly imperceptibly.

"No, no code," Justine said quietly, her voice trembling slightly. "Do you really mean it?"

"I do on one condition: I’ll take you if you can keep from hurting me for an entire day," he said, suddenly bold.

She smiled so broadly he felt like she would hold him high, tilt back her neck and swallow him whole.

"Challenge accepted!" she squealed. Then, with her other hand, she thwacked him in the stomach.

Alex buckled and the air blasted out of him. His entire body rocked back from the blow, and he slumped in her grasp, coughing violently.

After he recovered, he looked fearfully at Justine.

"What... did... I do?" he gasped.

"Nothing," she said. "I needed to get that in now so I could resist the urge later. I feel much better now."

"I don't," Alex groused under his breath.

"Alex, I can hear a fly fart at two hundred yards in a hurricane, so it's always best to either say it or shut the fuck up. Your twenty-four hours begins... now."

"Yes, dear," he moaned, clutching his stomach.

Justine laughed.

"God, I just love you, Birdie!" she said happily, hugging him to her. "You’re a tough little fucker. Sometimes I don’t give you enough credit. That little love tap probably would have knocked that pussy Hans off his feet.”

Justine looked at Alex’s pained face with heavy-lidded eyes.

“I'm going to fuck you until your brain explodes tonight."

"Justine, knock that shit off," her father said over the PA. "Get your head into this or I'll send him away for a month!"

Justine, her face suddenly livid with fury, dropped Alex so fast he scrambled for purchase, grasping the first thing his hands found: her tactical vest.

She reached around his waist and caught him in a flash, pulling him tightly into her. Her right hand moved quickly under his butt, holding his weight.

"Alex," she said, instantly serious. "Freeze. Let go slowly. Just open your hands. Don't pull away."

She had wrapped her hands around him as gently as he had ever felt her grasp him, and moved him to her palm with graceful, fluid ease.

Justine looked into his eyes with deadly calm. The intense gaze of her eyes on him was unsettling.

"Very slowly," she said, her voice soothing. "No sudden moves. Open your hands now."

He wondered why the instructions were so spelled out, and then realized what his left hand was holding onto. A spherical object about the size of his fist. His index finger had slipped through the metal ring at the top, and pulled the pin halfway from the grenade.

As soon as Justine saw his eyes move to the grenade, she released her right hand from his waist and shot it to the grenade, covering his with hers.

"Shh. Don't panic," she said quietly as her hand closed over his. "Don't look scared. Stay calm. I've got you."

He felt her replace the pin fully by moving his hand forward. She let her breath out in a rush, unclipped the grenade from her vest, and pulled Alex's face close to hers.

"Don't look scared!" she said in an urgent whisper. "If Daddy knows I have live HE grenades instead of flash-bangs on my tac vest he'll punish me. I did it to impress you. It was stupid. You're clouding my judgement, and he'll punish me even worse for that. I won't do it again."

Alex gulped fearfully.

"O-okay," Alex said as she pulled him from her and set him on his feet.

"Justine, my patience with you is at an end," her father's voice said sternly over the intercom. "Is this how you've been behaving since I left?"

She looked up at a camera set in the ceiling.

"No, Daddy," she replied, her voice even. "Alex just invited me to go on vacation with him. I'm pretty excited; nobody's ever done that before. Can't you cut me a fucking break?"

"Ah," he replied.

Alex thought he heard a note of surprise.

"Yes... well… that is excellent news," he said after a pause. "I'll have Valerie make arrangements. It might take a little time."

"I don't want her going with us!" Justine snapped. "I want Greg instead."

An exasperated sigh came over the intercom.

"Very well," he said. "Greg will chaperone. I'll need to double the escort if Greg goes, you know that."

"Fine. I don't care," Justine said again. "I won't do anything stupid, I promise."

"I'll hold you to it, young lady," Moreland replied. "I'm taking a big risk letting you go. I need to convince people very high up that you will be on your best behavior. Your actions will reflect upon me. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, Daddy," she said, her face solemn.

"Good," he said, sounding pleased. "You've come a long way in one week, my dear. I think this trip will be good for you... for both of you. Now, back to the task at hand. Acquisition armament, please. And get your boyfriend out of the live-fire zone. We’ll begin live-fire as soon as acquisition is over and we pull the opposing unit."

Justine chuckled under her breath.

"You must have made an impression with him, Alex," Justine said as she walked Alex out of the “village”. "That's the first time he's ever said anything about a tutor's well-being."

"Glad to hear," Alex said, still shaking from nearly being blown up.

"Hey, relax," Justine said, ruffling his hair hard enough to wrench his head around with her palm. "I had that whole situation under control. I would have never let you blow us up, you silly little shit. You are one hundred percent VIP material now, my little Birdie. Anyone so much as lays a hand on you that isn't me will be missing limbs.”

She set him down saying, “Go join Valerie in the South Observtion Room. She'll talk you through what you're watching."

"Okay, Justine," he replied and, not knowing what else to say, added, "and good luck."

"You are really racking up the points today, little guy," she replied, her lips stretching into a broad smile. "I'll see your luck and raise you a massive amount of skill. I'll show you what I'm REALLY capable of. Prepare to be super impressed."

"I'm already super impressed," Alex said, looking up at the gigantic woman before him. "I don't know if my heart can bear any more excitement today."

Justine's face darkened.

"Don't say that!" she said with a scowl. "Don't fucking even joke about that!"

Alex took a step backward.

"Okay! I'm sorry," he said hastily. "It was a bad choice of words."

"You're goddamn right it was," she said. "You're lucky you made that deal with me. I would definitely have to punish you for that comment. Pray I forget you said it at the end of your twenty-four hour reprieve. You currently have twenty-three hours and forty-six minutes left."

Alex gulped. Justine wasn’t looking at a watch, but he knew in his gut that her timing was precise.

"I'm praying, Goddess," he said, and watched Justine's face brighten immediately.

"Good reply," she said, her face pleasant again. "Keep praying to your own personal goddess, and you may survive with your parts intact tomorrow. Now go watch me kick ass."

Alex walked to the huge metal door they had first come through, and a staffer was waiting to escort him to a room two stories above them. It was a large room with comfortable row seating facing a huge window that looked down into the gym. Valerie sat in the center of the seats, a headset on her head. He joined her and she gave him a brief look.

"Tactical team on the ready," she said into her mic.

Alex thought about what he called the gym. It appeared to be an all-purpose room, and was much more than it first appeared. This entire place was more than it appeared, he mused.

Justine stood at the far end of the "village", facing the buildings. A small group of people swarmed around her, taking her weapons, including the grenades, and handing her a weapon similar in appearance to the assault rifle she had relinquished.

"This is an acquisition drill," Valerie said, "so the weapons are light-guns only. She has to paint a target on the opposing unit's gear with the light beam to score a 'kill.' Likewise, they score a kill on her if their weapons mark her harness. They win if they get two hits on her. In simulation, it was determined that Justine was likely to survive almost all single small-arms hits short of a headshot and still be combat-effective, so the opposing team needs two hits to render her 'killed'."

Alex looked at her face as she scanned the scene below.

"How many times has she been killed?" he asked.

"Never," Valerie replied. "What this usually becomes is a time trial for Justine. Her best time is two minutes thirty-five seconds to neutraize the opposing team. We are here to keep her from engaging the opposing team hand-to-hand, which she sometimes tries to do. Then the virtual kills would become actual kills."

Alex blanched.

"How many times has she done that?" he asked, "Or do I not want to know?"

"Once, when she was in a bad mood. Nobody died, thankfully," Valerie said. "We have countermeasures in place, but we have to be vigilant because she's so fast. These guys are all Deltas, but it doesn't matter much against her."

"Jesus, Delta Operators?" Alex said, whistling. "The baddest of the bad."

"I think that title now belongs to your girlfriend," Valerie said. "There are no conventional soldiers that can stand against her. She's been able to neutralize several platoons en masse in this type of simulation. It's the speed and the adaptability. She can draw them into crossfires, snipe them one-by-one, or tackle units by jumping into the middle of them and wading through them with speed and strength. We only ever tried CQB with her and conventional units once. Nobody died because she was pulling her punches, but we lost operational use of an entire SEAL Team in one fell swoop. The official report was they were shot down over Afghanistan. Now they’re living well-compensated lives on the governement dime. Those that can still breathe without assistance, that is."

"She's like the fucking Predator!" Alex breathed.

"She'd kick that thing's ass," Valerie replied. "Her visual acuity, Targeting to Kill Ratio, and Hand-to-Hand scores are all Class One. Strength is off the charts, and speed is Class One just because we don't have a higher rating. Most of her stats are, actually. She is to Deltas what Deltas are to untrained civilians. I read your chart, Alex. You play a lot of FPS and read up, so I know you know what I'm talking about."

Alex was now awed, but now more intrigued than frightened. He leaned forward in his seat.

"What's more," Valerie said, "is she's still growing. Size and strength are still increasing. They've slowed, but they haven't stopped. Her muscle mass is right now measured at 5-times human normal. We expect it will reach 6X before the end of your three-month stint. We figure by some time next year, she'll be able to stop normal, non-AP rounds with muscle impact alone. The simulations can't assess blunt-force trauma impact, but you saw how little that affects her first-hand. After that, who knows how long it will be before she's shrugging FMJ rounds, and then, who knows? Conventional explosives? They've hit Generation Six out of the park. She’s the only one that survived, and the geneticists still don’t know why."

Valerie took his arm. Alex noticed how surprisingly large her hand was as she touched her fingers together around his forearm.

"She's going to showboat for you today, Alex," Valerie said. "I hope it doesn't make her careless. The Senator will not be pleased about that. You need to keep her from doing it from now on, for all our sakes."

Alex had to bite his tongue to keep from mentioning the grenades clipped to Justine's harness, and realized he might as well kill himself if he revealed that to her.

Alex saw a group of soldiers, the Deltas, on the opposite side of the village from Justine. They fanned out in a skirmish line and took cover behind the buildings nearest them. He looked back to Justine, and saw her head make little motions as she tracked her advesaries.

The sound system in the observation room allowed them to hear everything from the control booth and the exercise floor as well. "Ten seconds," a voice said over the PA.

He watched Justine's body tense, muscles bulging visibly even from the distance.

A buzzer sounded and Justine was off, moving impossibly quickly between two huts. A bell sounded and one of the soldiers called, "Out!"

"Jesus, that wasn't even a second," he said under his breath.

"She doesn't miss," Valerie said.

Two more dings sounded, followed by two more calls.

Alex watched as Justine vaulted to the roof of one of the huts in a dead sprint, leaping unbelievably high, and another ding sounded seconds afterward.

"Out!" came a voice.

She was nearly impossible to track. Her movements were eyeblink-quick, but seemingly random, the motions impossible to predict. She used the cover of the huts effectively, and barely poked her head from behind a hut to acquire, aim and hit a target before moving back under cover.

Of the twelve men she faced, six were out by the end of the first minute, with the rest unconsciously grouping closer and closer as they looked for her to appear from any location. Another two dings happened in rapid succession, and the last four of the platoon of soldiers realized their mistake and broke from each other, taking cover in different parts of the village.

"Looks like she might break her record," Valerie said, then paused. "Oh, what the fuck is this?"

Justine had stealthily crept behind the Delta farthest from the others, and was right on top of him before he realized. With a look of surprise, he spun to bring his rifle to bear and her arm snapped out, grasping the back of his tactical vest. She lifted him from the ground with one arm, yanking his rifle away with the other and throwing it nearly the length of the gigantic room. Her free hand clapped over his mouth and nose before he could make a sound.

The entire apprehension, disarm, and suffocation took less than a second.

His struggling body thrashed as he tried to remove her suffocating hold, and Alex saw that the man’s rifle arm was moving poorly, like Justine had broken it from pulling so hard on his weapon. He soon lost consciousness and hung limply in her grasp. Justine began to advance on the remaining soldiers, crouching low until the unconscious man’s feet nearly touched the ground.

"Moreland's going to be pissed," Valerie muttered. "Enjoy the show, because apparently it's for you."

Alex leaned forward until his arms were on the glass.

"Dammit, Justine, what are you doing?" he murmurred.

Justine made her way quietly until she was within sight of two of the soldiers, hidden behind huts about five meters away from each other. She got close enough and poked her rifle under the arm of the soldier she was holding and scored a quick kill on the first, then hurled the unconscious soldier at the second.

"Justine!" Moreland roared as the flying soldier collided heavily with the first, a ding sounding about midway through the soldier's flight as Justine shot him in the back. A second tone sounded right after the two soldiers crumpled to the floor.

"Adapt and overcome, Daddy," she said, and her voice came over the PA. "There are no rules against that."

"It was a stupid tactical mistake," Moreland said as Justine dove into one of the huts, barreling through the door as the last soldier rolled from behind a nearby hut and aimed his gun toward her.

"Hardly," she retorted. "This dude is alone now. I can take him out at my leisure. What, does he think he has me trapped in here?"

The back side of the hut exploded outward, collapsing it as the last soldier sprinted to get a bead on Justine, but the debris in the air didn't allow him a clear shot. She was gone by the time the soldier had an unobstructed line of sight, sprinting the length of the “village” and ducking behind one of the most distant huts from her adversary.

Justine's laughter was audble over the PA. The final soldier not "killed" looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"Justine, this is inexcusable!" Moreland stormed. "We are definitely discussing this after the live fire!"

Justine sighed through her mic.

"Fine," she said, resigned. "It was worth it to hear your voice, Daddy. It's so hard for me to get you upset these days. I thought I was losing my touch."

Valerie sighed next to Alex.

"Oh boy," she said. "This is as defiant as I've ever seen her. Wonder what's gotten into her? Did I hear you invited her to your recoup leave? Is that right?"

Alex nodded silently, unable to tear his eyes away from the scene below.

"Why the hell would that have her so wound up?" Valerie mused. "You'd think she would be on her best behavior after hearing that. This is different, though. This isn't normal show-off behavior. She's sending him a message of some sort."

Moments later, Justine snatched the final soldier by the back of his vest as she crouched low from an overhanging thatched roof. Then, standing nimbly on the walls to support her immense weight, she quickly disarmed him, and held him high overhead, pointing his struggling body at the window that most likely had Moreland inside. Slowly, intentionally, she poked the muzzle of her weapon into his back and fired, causing the final ding that ended the exercise.

"Do you wanna land easy or hard, dude?" she asked him as she lowered him to look her in the eye.

"Easy, ma'am," the soldier replied, his voice neutral.

"You got it," she replied and hurled his body at the nearest hut, where he crashed through the thatched roof, landing hard on the floor inside.

"Justine, switch to secure channel Bravo Three!" her father roared over the PA.

Alex watched her look up at the control room window on the opposite side of the room, her face unreadable from the distance, as she jumped down to the floor. She looked down to her vest and put her hand on it, apparently adjusting her radio controls… then suddenly crumpled to the floor.

Alex jumped up from his seat.

"What the hell happened?" Alex cried, alarmed.

"Senator Moreland curbed her enthusiasm," Valerie replied. "The shit storm is now building to dump record levels over the Moreland Estate. Grab your shovel, Alex."

"Get her! Get her!" Moreland was screaming over the PA, any semblance of cool completely gone. "Bring her the FUCK up here!"

Alex watched in alarm as a team of large, black-clad men ran out onto the floor, bearing a larger than normal gurney. They quickly loaded Justine and rushed her out the door below them.

How was Justine incapacitated?  Microwaves?  Anyway, I hope there's a next installment. 

Chapter Seventeen: Managing Expectations



Alex didn't see Justine for three days. He was allowed to take meals and wander about the campus, though at no time did he feel he was left alone. The sensation of being watched pervaded his feelings, and he had no doubt there were unseen eyes or cameras everywhere. The classification of this program was the highest of the high as far as National Security was concerned, he knew that now. Justine more or less represented nothing less than a monumental evolution of humanity. What was next, humans able to resist extreme duress, weather... the total vacuum of space? Valerie was talking about Justine's muscle density on track to being able to shrug off non-jacketed rounds. Freaking bullets! It was inconceivable.

He thought about his brief time at the "Overland Campus". The outward appearance of a country home on the outskirts of Kansas City certainly belied its sinister intent. He wondered how much of the National Defense budget REALLY went to conventional weapons versus the time, research and genetic engineering breakthroughs required to do this almost unconscionable human experimentation.

Alex inquired about Justine to a few of the security guys that seemed omnipresent on the campus. He got no response, with "I'm not authorized to say," being the uniform reponse.

He did know of one person who would likely know besides the Senator.

He found Valerie in her office (she had a freaking big office!) in the Main building.

She looked up and saw him in the doorway. Alex opened his mouth, but Valerie cut him off.

"No. You get the hell out of here, Alex," she said sternly. "Things are just getting bad, and you'll make it that much worse if you start doing your little Jimmy Olsen routine."

"I'm not going to pry about anything," Alex replied, throwing up his hands and a gesture of surrender. "I tried to find out about Justine, but nobody will say, so I just want to know how long you've been here. I'm going a bit stir crazy with this long period of quiet."

"I'll bet," Valerie said, her mood softening. "How are you feeling?"

"Still sore," Alex replied. "I don't think three days is enough time to recover from the beating I took last week, but I have to say I welcome the chance to recuperate."

"Have you been keeping up with your exercise?" Valerie asked. "You know what awaits you when Justine returns."

Alex sighed.

"Yes," he replied. "I finally met Hans. He is a bit, um, docile, to be working with her, isn't he?"

Valerie chuckled mirthlessly.

"Purely a survival mechanism," she said. "He's been here longer than me, from back in the... well, let's just say he sent people's ideas in a new direction."

Alex pondered her statement quietly for a moment, unable to grasp the meaning.

Valerie sighed and gestured to a couple of chairs in the corner of her office. She rose, again startling Alex with how big she was, and sat in one.

"All right, Alex," she said, crossing her long legs as she sat. Alex noticed the tight muscle tone as they flexed from the motion.

"Here's the deal," she continued. "You're in deep, but there is a smidgeon of a chance that you can eventually walk away at this point. If we have our 'chat,' then you're here to stay, just like me. I'll get you your Top Secret clearance, and you become a permanent fixture here. The upside is there is nowhere on the site you can't go. I already explained the downside."

Alex paused briefly, pondering.

Valerie moved to get up, but Alex put his hand on her shoulder, trying to keep her in place, but she rose despite the pressure he exerted. She didn't seem to notice. Her knowing look told him that she in fact DID notice, but was completely unaffected.

"Hmm," she said, taking his hand in hers. "I have a lot to do, so if you want to take this up again, this is usually where you'll find me. Just remember, Alex, there's always more to this place when you're only partly in the know. Some of it you'll appreciate, and I'm sure plenty you won't when you understand. Take your time and think it over."

Alex looked up at Valerie's model-pretty face. She had a half-smile on her lips as she observed him.

"I think we both know that 'smidgeon' you referred to is vanishingly small," he said with a heavy sigh. "I might as well know everything."

She smiled approvingly.

"I was right," she said. "I figured you were pretty sharp for a regular-old guy. Okay, let's chat."

Valerie fished in the pocket of her blazer and pulled out her cellphone.

"Secure Bravo Three Niner," she said brusquely. "Get Alex set up with the G6 Justine protocols. He's onboard all the way now. Yes, just heard it from him directly. Oh, he does? Yes, sure I can, hold on a sec."

Valerie pressed a button on her phone and turned it toward Alex.

"Congratulations, Alex!" Senator Moreland's voice came from the speaker. "Justine just said she's thrilled as well. What's that dear? Oh, and she says she'll give you a great big hug when she's back... and that you owe her a dance, whatever that means."

"Thank you, Sir," Alex replied, looking at Valerie as he spoke.

Moreland's voice tsked him through the phone.

"Now, none of that," he said, his voice pleasant. Call me Bill... or Dad if you like; hell, it's all the same now. Welcome to the family, Alex."

Moreland stopped speaking, and Valerie switched the speaker off, then put it up to her ear.

"Yes," she said, "we're going to talk a while. I just cleared my schedule, but I will be able to attend tonight. I'll eat with him, that's fine."

She looked at Alex as he stood, confused.

"Do you like Italian?" she asked.

"Um, yes?" he replied.

"Yes," she said into the phone. "I'll set up the South Terrace. Louis will make something grand, I'm sure. Yes, I will. Okay."

Valerie ended the call and sat back in her chair, inviting Alex to join her.

"Personally, I think it’s the right move," she said, taking Alex's hand again.

Her face was warm as she spoke to him, and her touch was more familiar than he had ever experienced from her. It was a bit disorienting, like his acceptance changed everything.

"Okay, so where shall we start?" Valerie asked.

"Um, how about something easy. This was on my mind before I walked in here. So how long have most of the familiar 'staffers' have been here, like Greg? You seem like you've been here the longest of the higher-ups, so I figured you were the best person to ask about what my supposed term of service really was... but I guess that's kind of irrelevant, now, though."

Valerie nodded.

"How about I answer you like this to start. Did you know you have access to the Internet here, Alex? You find one of the computer rooms, use your passkey, and away you go. It's all monitored, of course, but there's a ton of declassified stuff out there, and, shockingly, some classified but debunked by our people in the media. It's easy to find, especially since you know the most salient details, like the project title. Now, though, you can access the archives as soon as we set up a computer in your room with the hand-encoded protocols. Justine's room has one already, of course, not that you've had time to use it. But, yes, short answer, a ton of stuff is on the 'net, even stuff about me. Go Google 'Valerie G3' and you'll get a handful of hits. I'm sort of an Internet sensation. I'm even on Google Images. My favorite is a pic on Imgur called 'Mile-Long Legs Valerie G3'. Very flattering. Some wag caught me in a power suit on Capitol Hill, and he took a nice pic from further down the steps."

Alex tried unsuccessfully to not look at the mile-long legs in question, but couldn't help it. The smile on Valerie's face told him she knew it was a losing battle. His attention abruptly turned to her face when he realized what she just told him. This crazy Ultra Top Secret project was on the web?

"Wait, you're kidding, right?" he said. "I could seriously find 'Tactical Combat Superiority Initiative' on the Internet?"

"Oh, you didn't even get a high-level synopsis?" she asked, surprised. "You DO have Secret Clearance, right? How the hell could you be around Justine at all without that?"

"Yes, the Senator told me I did," Alex replied, "but I was never given a keycard like you have or any kind of documents other than the Tutorial Manual and the packet in my room."

Valerie's brow furrowed, and her expression became serious.

"It had to be there, Alex," she said. "I know you had a baptism by fire that first day, but that is the first thing you should have seen in that packet. I know Greg set it up himself. Hang on a sec."

Valerie picked up the telephone on her desk.

"Peter, I need you to do an access check on a badge," she said to the garbled voice on the line. "Yes, look it up by user. Alex Roberts. Yes, the Tutor."

She waited for a moment, looking at Alex with the phone receiver in the crook of her neck. Suddenly she sat bolt upright.

"When?" she asked, her voice tight. "For how long? Oh, fuck me! Go to Security Status Alpha, and get the hell over here!"

Valerie slammed down the phone and moved quickly toward Alex.

"Come on," she said, pulling him up from his seat. "This is really really bad."

"What?" he asked, shocked at the apprehension on Valerie's face. "Why? What's going on?"

"Somebody has your badge, Alex, and they've been using it since Tuesday." she said grimly, "which means we've been infiltrated."

His eyes widened.

"But I don't even have access to that much!" Alex sputtered. "What good would my card do?"

Card access clearance is easy to hack," she said. "Do you know how easy it is to spoof a card reader, especially for someone trained to crack them? None of these systems is foolproof."

Valerie dragged Alex over to the desk and pulled out a Sig .45, slapped a clip home and cycled the slide with practiced efficiency. Alex goggled at the big handgun in her hand.

"Just stay cool, Alex," she said. "We're moving to the shelter until whoever has your card is caught. Stick close to me."

Alex, his panic rising, grabbed Valerie around the waist. She looked down with a half-smile, but didn't pry him loose.

"Ma'am, we need to get you two-" came a voice from the hall, followed by a loud CRACK. Valerie visibly tensed.

A man began to enter the room, slightly shorter than Valerie, dressed like a Secret Service agent. His eyes were glazed and unfocused. Alex quickly realized he wasn't moving under his own power. He seemed more to glide into the room than walk, which was when Alex noticed his feet weren't touching the ground. They were hovering just above the floor, maybe half an inch, and as he entered the room fully, Alex noticed a smaller woman immediately behind him, who then closed and locked the door. Her hand was on the man's neck and she was apparently holding him upright as she entered. She threw the man's body aside without a word, and he crashed to the floor, unmoving.

The woman, Alex noticed was not a grown woman at all, but one of the teens from the Self-Defense Lesson, the shorter blonde, Jane.

Alex was surprised to see Valerie drop her weapon on the floor quickly. He saw Jane relax slightly from the crouch she assumed when she threw Peter's lifeless body aside as the gun fell. The entire event happened in the blink of an eye, even Valerie's movements.

"What?" Alex said, startled at her response.

"It won't help," Valerie replied her voice tight. "She could outdraw me and put a hole in both our heads before I was able to raise the muzzle."

She disengaged Alex as she raised her voice to address Jane.

"Hmmm... Generation Eight?" Valerie mused, her voice outwardly calm, but Alex could tell it was tinged with fear.

The woman bowed slightly in acknowledgement, and then gestured to the handgun on the floor.

"A wise choice. I need your card, Valerie," she said conversationally, no trace of menace or threat in her voice. "Dr. Roberts's card is limited, even after my modifications. I'd like you to access the intranet here, please, and bring up information on your Gen Six Program. I'd like to see everything you can access before they deactivate your card."

Valerie stood quietly, not moving.

"Do you really want me to force you?" Jane asked.

She began to advance and Alex backed away, terrified.

"You're so cute," Jane said with a warm smile as she passed by Alex. "No wonder Justine likes you. I was never so lucky to have such a lovely little man to teach me things."

Alex kept backing away, but without a second glance, Jane reached out to his shirt, bunching it tightly in her fist, and lifted Alex's body without a word, continuing her advance on Valerie.

"You know the drill. First, I'll damage him. Slowly. Painfully. Nothing that won't heal... at first. After that, the damage will become irreparable." the woman said, again conversationally. "Just imagine what that will do to Justine's development. When he's dying, screaming in agony, you'll comply, won't you? I do hope you'll reconsider, though. You really don't want his blood on your hands, do you, Valerie?"

Alex was beside himself with terror. Jane was bigger, stronger and heavier than him, almost a miniature Justine. She wasn't quite as pretty, and didn't have the massive breasts that Justine did, but her entire body exuded power. The way she casually held him at her side as she threatened to harm him, he knew he would be just as helpless as if he had faced off with Justine herself.

Valerie seated herself at her desk, and Jane stood looking down at her. Alex hung next to Jane, as if she had forgotten about him. Her hand was up by her shoulder with Alex's shirt bunched tightly in its grip, and his toes dangled three or four inches off the ground.

He made a slight move as the discomfort of his situation began to sink in, and immediately Jane's other hand shot to his throat. He froze in panic, and she glanced at him for a millisecond, then back at Valerie.

"I would suggest against the Glock under the desk or the alarm button," Jane said calmly, the modulation of her voice very similar to the way Justine had spoken to him when he grabbed the pin on the grenade during the disastrous target acquisition exercise.

"You know I can reach you before you act upon either option." Jane said, again in that calm, disarming voice. "If I have to exert myself, it will go badly for you. I can still get what I need if you are not intact. I know how important you are to her, Val. Years of setback for your program, and most likely you won't survive."

Valerie raised her arms up away from the desk, still composed, though Alex could see a bead of sweat running down the side of her face.

"Please don't hurt Alex," Valerie said. "Not because of any project reason, but because he's a good person."

Alex looked at her in surprise. She looked back at him sadly.

"I'm sorry, Alex, that you were selected," she said, and turned her attention to Jane. "Yes, Jane, he is a strategic asset, but he only has empathic value for Justine, no secrets or leverage otherwise. I will log in and give you what you want. You can let him go when you've acquired the data."

"You know it doesn't work that way," Jane said, moving Alex's body in front of her so she could focus on them both simultaneously. She extended him until he was at her arm's length, his thighs touching the desk. "I am fully capable of killing every soldier on this base with Dr. Roberts slung over my shoulder or tucked under my arm... save one, of course. I will need him when Justine becomes aware of my presence here and is mobilized. I am sorry, Dr. Roberts, if you do not survive, but I will make every effort to ensure you do."

Jane's attention turned again to Valerie.

"Do you know, I don't like doing what I do? That I feel each death keenly? The poor man on the floor, Peter was his name; his death will haunt my dreams. They all do. It's our form of control. We don't quite understand what yours is. It's obviously not empathy. This man..."

She gave Alex's body a shake in emphasis, then paused, looking at Alex, "Sorry, Dr. Roberts. Alex, if I may be so bold, has been treated so harshly by your Gen Six, but that is perfectly acceptable to you. Such behavior would be completely unacceptable in our program."

Valerie smirked.

"Yes, but of course your government runs over dissenters with army tanks on global television, so let's just agree to disagree on the ethics, shall we?" Valerie replied.

Jane nodded in understanding but did not rebut her statement.

"We all have consciences, unlike your Leviathan," said Jane. "We are taught to cherish life, and only take it when we must. But do not mistake my compassion for hesitation. This mission is of the utmost importance. Do you really think my people would send me here for so long otherwise? I have been going to school at Barstow for three years. I'm on the track team. I could have won the state championship. Just imagine how proud my family would be with that trophy on the mantle."

Valerie's smirk was even more pronounced.

"Your Generation seems to have an excellent grasp of irony, Jane," she said. "Or would you prefer I call you Xinjuan Xiue."

"Your use of the third tier of sound is excellent, Valerie," she remarked. "I detected a hint of Chuanyan Provence. That's where I was raised."

"We know," Valerie said.

"Of course," Jane replied. "I believe our conversation is at an end. Place your hands upon the keyboard, now please, Valerie. I can see your keystrokes, and I will cripple you if you do anything but enter your username and password. Tell me now if you have biometric access on your system or I may inadvertently hurt you for making the motions."

"No biometrics," Valerie replied. "Username: Codyscatch, password: 97nightskyAres."

"Thank you," Jane said.

She set Alex on his feet but maintained her hold on him as she moved around the desk. He was trembling violently, but Jane's arm was completely unaffected by his motion. Though her eyes were focused on Valerie's hands, she addressed him in a warm voice.

"Please try to relax, Alex," she said to him, the same soothing tone as she used previously. "You are not a threat to me. I do not wish to hurt you, and I will not unless Valerie does something foolish. You may wish to plead with her for your life, because she will take that completely out of my hands by her actions."

Alex's eyes were watering with fearful tears, and Jane actually took a moment to wipe them away from the corners of his eyes.

"Shh," she soothed. "Just stay calm. This will be over soon."

He dreaded the ominous finality of those words.

Valerie finished typing in username and password and lifted her hands from the keyboard.

"I'm in. Give me your instruction, Jane," Valerie said, holding her hands in a placating gesture.

Jane quickly spun as the door suddenly crashed inward, shielding her body by holding Alex in front of her. Out of nowhere, she produced a silenced pistol of unfamiliar design, and began firing rapidly at the doorway. The tactical entry team that had rushed the room all appeared to drop as one, but bursting through their bodies as they fell came Justine. The men's corpses blasted away from her as she bulled through them impossibly fast. She was upon Jane and Alex before he could even think. Justine disarmed Jane and ripped Alex away from Jane's grasp in the blink of an eye. He was sent hurtling toward a couch in Valerie's office, where he hit hard. His arms and neck snapped to the side from the sheer force and as he hit, he felt a sharp pain in his neck. The couch flipped onto its back, tumbling Alex away from the melee. He ended up slumped against the far wall, and witnessed an incredible sight.

Justine and Jane were no longer sparring. Now it was a true life and death struggle. He could barely follow the speed of the strikes and counters that were occurring as the two superwomen struck and blocked simultaneously. A fast flurry of motion was all he noticed while the women's faces remained completely neutral, their bodies an impossible but beautiful dance of powerful, deadly grace. The sound of punches landing and blocked sounded as rapid as the gunfire from Jane's silenced pistol, each strike landing with enough force to blast Alex's body across the room like a ragdoll. Alex did notice that Justine's strikes landed harder and Jane reacted more to the impacts than Justine did. Neither of them appeared badly injured in the few seconds Alex had to witness the blindingly fast exchange.

He also saw Valerie watching, wide-eyed, much as he was. Apparently this was the first combat of genetically enhanced super-soldiers.

Alex could barely tell what was happening until a loud CRACK was heard, and Jane's neck snapped to the side sickeningly. She toppled and began to thrash uncontrollably on the floor until Justine stomped on her head with horrifying authority. Jane's body rebounded from the power of the blow then lay still.

The entire fight took maybe thirty seconds by Alex's estimation. He was surprised he could be so clinical about it, but he realized that he never for a moment thought Justine would lose.

Justine immediately raced to the couch and, hurling it out of the way, retrieved Alex's barely-conscious form, lifting him so gently he was amazed. Taking great pains to immobilize Alex's neck and spine as she held him, she spoke into an invisible mic.

"Section Six clear," she said, her voice perfectly controlled. "Emergency medical personnel needed in Valerie's office, stat. Entry team down. Valerie, are you hurt?"

Justine's voice was total control and efficiency, and Valerie rose, shaking, from behind the desk.

"Uninjured, I think," she said. "How is Alex?"

"Possible neck or spinal injury from impact with the couch. HRT is all dead. Her reaction time looked to be about 0.2 seconds faster than me in acquisition and targeting. Hmph. Daddy was right, dammit."

"Wow, more than we expected. How did you beat her in hand-to-hand with such a deficit in speed?" Valerie asked.

"That is what I've been discussing with the unarmed combat instructors ever since their greater speed was anticipated," Justine said. "Muscle density is the advantage we will have. She landed three strikes that would have killed me were I not as muscle-dense. I'm already at Stage Two in that regard. I estimate up to .38 caliber handguns would be totally ineffective short of a headshot. Maybe jacketed pistol rounds would penetrate, but with that low velocity, I would still be combat effective even after multiple body or limb hits."

Valerie's trembling lessened dramatically at that news.

"You are Stage Two already? When?" she asked, surprised.

"It was important for me to be sure, but I estimate three weeks or so. I am well into approaching Stage Three, and the effect appears to be accelerating. It seems the Chinese underestimated that, based on the killing strikes Jane aimed at my neck. Hers wasn't quite as sturdy, it seems. Ribs, either. I am guessing I broke nearly all of them. Impressive she could still fight that long with that amount of internal injury. They must have conscious pain suppression capability. It's a shame her protocol refused to allow her to be taken alive. She was my favorite girl from Barstow; we could have been friends in a different world."

"We are learning a lot already, especially with the duration of the fight," Valerie said. "Their infiltration skills are much more advanced than we anticipated. The accent was perfect midwest, even the nuances, so she must have some form of adaptive linguistic training to assimilate that well. We'll learn a lot more, Justine. This was a serious tactical error on their part. They must know how outmatched they are to pull such a desperate move."

"You need dogs," Alex groaned from his perch on Justine's arm. "Dogs can smell Terminators from a mile away."

Justine's eyes welled with tears, shocking Valerie, and she smiled down at Alex.

"Don't move, Alex; help is on the way," she said in the warmest voice Valerie had ever heard her use. "You were very brave."

"Thanks," he said, his voice fading. "I was so scared. She was really strong, almost as strong as you."

"Maybe a fifth or so, based on the hits I took, but more advanced in other ways," she said. "Rest, my sweet; don't speak."

"Not as pretty," Alex murmured and closed his eyes.

Justine gently moved Alex and placed a kiss on his forehead. She glanced up at Valerie's shocked face, and suddenly her eyes widened.

"Oh, no," she said as Valerie toppled backward, a small red spot growing on her shirt just above her right breast.

Is this forum so bereft of content that people need to take stuff from other forums and post it here? I wish people wouldn't do that. I guess I should just say thanks and appreciate that you visit that other forum for your content here.

Anyway, here's the next chapter.



Pac


Chapter Eighteen: Convalescence


Alex had never seen Justine as distraught as he saw her when Alex and Valerie were placed side-by-side in the infirmary within the big battleship-gray building. Valerie spent two full days unconscious, vital signs extremely low, coma-like. Her heart-rate slowed to only a few beats per minute, but her core body temperature spiked to almost dangerous fever range, prompting the doctors to ice her body down as she lay next to him.

Alex was placed in a neck immobilizer, and immediately discovered that the unconscious itching that such a device produces was nearly unbearable. Justine hovered ominously over both their beds, alternately watching Alex and Valerie as they went through the various procedures they required. Alex was told he was very lucky in that the two cervical vertebrae that were ground against each other during his collision with the couch were only superficially damaged. The muscle tears from the whiplash of the impact, though, would require him to wear the immobilizer for a few days until the tears began to knit. He was injected with several syringes full of unidentified liquids. “Antibiotics” was the explanation when he asked, but he suspected something more subversive than a standard antibiotic cocktail, especially the local anesthetic and multi-stage injection he received in the back of his neck.


Alex had been questioned by several scientist-types who visited him, their demeanor all business. He recalled the fight as well as he could, but he could tell the interview was a formality. Apparently Valerie’s office had multiple cameras, and the fight was captured from several different angles. Justine had pored over the video as much as the analysts, and even brought a copy of the fight for him to watch on a tablet computer, a split screen video with a running timer in the lower right corner. He blanched when he saw his body rocket away from Jane’s grasp in the first milliseconds of the engagement, his legs arrow-straight as he shot out of one camera’s view. He appeared simultaneously in the lower left camera, and it showed him careen more or less head-first into the couch. The entire heavy piece of furniture slide backward several feet before toppling.

“I clocked you at twenty five miles per hour when you hit,” she said from high above. “You’re lucky you only had a little trauma to that little scrawny neck of yours. Still, I figured it was your best bet. I debated throwing you straight up for an instant, but figured you’d rather hit the couch at that speed than the concrete ceiling, and I didn’t have time to catch you when you fell back down. I was a bit busy, as you can see.”

Justine laughed at the shade of green he became as his body rag-dolled into the wall to slump against it. The motion made the large leathery tube-top she wore creak as it fought to contain her. It was cropped, and the huge ab muscles that fascinated him flexed and moved in time. She must have worn it for him, along with her “schoolgirl skirt,” since she stood with her belly nearly close enough to touch. It dominated his field of view as she stood close, holding the tablet down low for him to see. Her face loomed somewhere far above him, hidden from view by the incredible overhang of her breasts. Despite their overwhelming size, and the obstruction they must have given her line of sight, she seemed to know exactly where his head was. The tablet was held perfectly for his reclined position. He wondered how she accomplished that feat, and how she could see his expressions to react to them. He then realized he was on closed-circuit TV, just like everywhere else on the “campus.” She must have been able to see the feeds, somehow.

“That is why you need to fucking toughen up, Birdie-baby,” Justine said. “Shit like that goes down, I don’t have time to be gentle. Even when I DO have time, I don’t particularly like to be gentle, you know that. You need to be able to take a little more than you do now. There’s no way you can last for more than a few weeks with me otherwise.”

“How often does ‘shit like that’ happen in this place?” he asked, afraid to know the answer.

“First time, actually,” Justine replied. She bent down to watch her brief exchange with Jane. Her muscles twitched as she relived the fight. “My guess, though, is it’s going to happen again, now that the box has been opened. I would imagine the little fuckers are assessing the fight just as we are.”

“How?” Alex asked. “How could they have footage or anything like that?”

Justine tsked as she glanced at him.

“Oh, you silly little shit,” she said, her knitted brow betrayed by her warm tone, “I’m sure they have telemetry on her, maybe even a visual feed, just like these assholes do on me. I have accelerometers all over my body, and of course, they’re jacked into my optic nerves, however the little egghead fucks do that. Now that you’re one-hundred percent in, you can probably watch these feeds, too, maybe witness the virtual me do all kinds of exciting stuff, like fucking her tutor. I’m sure the computer geeks who process this shit jack off to it every night. Jane is wired similarly to me. So much so, that I’m sure some of her internals came from either yours truly or one of my predecessors. We haven’t cracked the encryption on her signal, and I’m sure enough of it got out before we jammed it. Her corpse is still broadcasting, but we figure it’s probably got a timebomb on it somewhere that’ll go off eventually. She’s in a bunker somewhere, probably with a shitload of terrified techs taking her apart, waiting for her to blow up in their faces.”

Alex had a hard time hearing the nonchalant way Justine remarked on her and Jane’s engineered bodies. They apparently weren’t just genetically modified, but mechanically as well?

“What kind of extra internals do you have?” he asked, curious. “Is it muscle enhancement, or just tracking stuff?”

She shrugged.

“The muscle is all me, baby. The rest is mostly telecom and telemetry; vitals, monitoring equipment. They don’t exactly tell me, but I know there’s GPS or some equivalent, throat mike, audio, HUD, stuff like that. My eyesight is like a first-person shooter. Here, look.”

Alex watched, fascinated, as Justine took the tablet, a clunky, military-looking piece of hardware, and tapped the screen in a blazingly-fast series of motions. She turned the screen toward him, and he looked at himself, with an array of information in the corners of the screen.

“Threat assessment upper left; playback of the last few seconds for visual verification – if I have the time – upper right; vitals, lower left; location – latitude/longitude, lower right. That’s my standard stuff, which I usually have just off when I’m off the clock, but I turned it on for you since you’re curious. I can change the HUD based on need, like if I take fire, I can get a rough assessment of the amount of damage. I kept petitioning for the angry little Doom Guy and the levels of beat-up he is in the game, but the fuckers said no. It’s my fucking body, the assholes.”

He was amazed. It really was like the HUD of a video game.

“So if I have a wireless controller, can I take control, maybe pick up a car and hurl it at opponents in the combat room?” he asked.

“Oh, fucking ha ha,” she said, her tone still light. “You know, you are off the twenty-four hour no bruising agreement, which I WON by the way.”

“Yeah, because you were gone,” Alex said petulantly. “That shouldn’t count.”

Justine smirked, an uncanny resemblance to Valerie’s face as she faced Jane.

“Ha! That was not a part of the agreement. You’re a smart guy; you should know a contract like that needs those details spelled out. Even if I WAS around, I would have been harmless for that entire time. My father can pretty much guarantee that.”

Alex looked up at Justine’s face. Her levity was gone and she appeared to be pondering something.

“Where were you, Justine?” he asked.

“Being punished,” she said, her voice neutral. “A little pain is good for the soul, isn’t that what they say? Builds character, I’ve been told. They should have let you come visit. You’ve have enjoyed a little karmic payback.”

He gasped as a bolt of pain shot through him as he tried to shake his head.

“No I wouldn’t,” he replied quickly. “I think I got my payback with that bo staff the first day I was here.”

Justine’s face softened as she looked down. She bent quickly and her face loomed inches from his.
“Yeah, I enjoyed that, too,” she said. “It was like an erotic massage on my little belly. I know how much you like to touch it. I personally think that it’s because my abs are what you see when you stand directly in front of me. I’m going to have to wear more tops like this one for our ‘tutoring’ sessions.”

She took Alex’s hand and pulled it across her muscular core. She smiled in smug triumph at the expression on Alex’s face.

“I’m so fucking horny right now, Birdie,” she moaned softly. “I’d LOVE a replay of that right now. I’d finger the fuck out of my pussy while you pounded away on me with that little toothpick, wherever you wanted… except my head, of course. I keep wondering if I can pull you out of that bed and not break your scrawny little neck if I shoved you up inside me a little, and then I think, hell, I can’t keep from hurting you even when you’re in one piece, let alone with your head about to pop off that little pencil neck. I may have to go find Hans, that repulsive fucker.”

“I’d never even get close to your head, seeing what happened with Inoki,” he replied immediately. “My luck would be I’d land a hit that hurt like that, the one in a million shot that could get through all this armor.”

Alex’s hand was wandering over Justine’s abs, and he recognized the familiar scent of her desire permeate his senses. He didn’t realize that he was quite horny himself, but his painfully stiff penis was happy to remind him as it tented the bedsheet. He was surprised that he was so excited. He’d barely been aroused when he saw Justine first loom above him, maybe ten minutes ago, and then it had been more abstraction than fact; the idea of Justine, not Justine herself. Now, though, he was hard as a post. It’s like she had a button she could press to turn him on.

Justine purred loudly as she rose to stand before him.

“Well, well, well,” she said, pulling her shirt up and exposing her gigantic breasts. “I might have to do something about that. I am feeling surprisingly contrite, considering I nearly removed your head the other day. I think that does merit some sort of apology.”

She took the restraints that Alex had noticed on the bed and lashed his legs down, cinching the cams that held the two heavy nylon straps together with her index and thumb holding the strap. She repeated the act with a strap she connected over his chest, and he looked up at the devious smile on her face.

“Uh, what are you planning to do?” he asked, unable to keep the concern out of his voice.

“Oh, relax, you little shit,” she said, her voice slightly annoyed. “I’m not allowed to get you out of bed, father’s orders. He didn’t say anything about having a little fun.”

Alex became increasingly interested when she made no move to lift him from the bed. Apparently Moreland’s hold over her was reestablished. He was wondering what she planned when she lifted the metal rails into position on either side of him.

Justine traced all the leads on his body and pulled the wire harness slightly to make it slack. She then delicately moved Alex’s hospital blanket to the side, and, with precision Alex had seldom seen, tore the fabric of his gown up the middle with the same index finger and thumb combination, only this time using both hands. She had a prim look on her face that would have made Alex laugh if he hadn’t been strapped to a hospital bed with his gigantic charge looming over him. That made him both apprehensive and excited in turn. Alex couldn’t follow her body as she left his side, found the bed’s controller and lowered it until Alex was laying flat. As he saw her reenter his field of view, he couldn’t help but be awed as he realized he lay knee-high to her with the bed fully lowered and flat. The massive muscles of her thighs bunched nearby, and he raised his arm to run across the surface, dipping into the valleys between the muscle groups.

Naughty smile firmly in place, Justine moved to the foot of the bed and removed the footboard. He could see her patience was waning as she wrenched it downward and heard a loud SNAP as the piece came free in her hand.

“Oops,” she said, her eyes burning into his as she carelessly tossed it away to smash against the wall. “Are you ready?”

“What are you-” Alex said, then his voice caught as Justine laughed and bent forward, placing her hands on the hard surface beneath the soft bedding. Her massive breasts buried his thighs beneath them as she laid a fraction of her weight on him. He heard a creaking sound come from the bed and saw her forearm muscles bulge as she tightened her grip. Her eyes were inches away, her gigantic body all around him.

“Don’t move,” she said and bent upward, taking the entire massive hospital bed with her.

Justine held the bed in her arms, raising it until Alex’s face was just above hers. Her arms flexed hugely as she moved the bed closer to her, and Alex felt her breasts drag up and down his body. Alex couldn’t help himself. He reached for her breasts, sliding his hands over the tops of the seemingly endless expanse of flesh, his fingers playing over her now hugely erect nipples. Justine’s head tilted upward to look in his eye, and an incredibly sexy look of smug superiority crossed her features. She puffed out her chest and watched with satisfaction as her tits pressed Alex’s tiny body deep into the mattress behind him.

“Your little eyes are bulging out almost as much as my arms, Alex,” she laughed, and he bounced around with the jiggling flesh that dominated his upper body.

Alex reached her swollen limbs and ran his hands over the rock-hard surface. He loved how tiny his hands looked as he spread his fingers as far as they would go to try to cover her biceps. It was like trying to palm a soccer ball. Of course, there wasn’t a gigantic vein running over the top of a soccer ball, he thought. His fingers traced the veins that crossed each one, and Justine looked like she would melt a hole in his head from the intense look she gave him as she gazed up at his rapturous face.

“God, that is so fucking incredible!” he breathed, and Justine’s smile grew broad.

“Yes, it all is, isn’t it?” she said. “Bigger, harder, stronger than anyone else on the planet. And all that might is right here, ready to take that little dick and make it explode. You could well be the luckiest little tiny man ever. But you need to return the favor a little, Birdie. Grab my nips and try to tear the fuckers off!”

Alex fought to push his hands between the surface of Justine’s breasts and the mattress, where he knew her nipples were most likely digging holes in the bedding. After a brief struggle that made his arms burn from the effort, his hands made contact, but it was impossible to grasp them, as tightly as she had her breasts pressed into the bed. They spread around his slim waist and engulfed most of his upper body in their immensity. They even strained the rails of the bed as they pressed against either side of him.

“See?” she growled. “You need to toughen up. How am I going to tit-fuck you if I can’t squeeze your dick in between them?”

She sighed in frustration.

“All right, dammit!” she said, her patience nearly gone. “NOW grab them, you little pussy!”

Justine moved the bed farther away, and the pressure against Alex disappeared. He immediately grabbed her nipples as hard as he could and pulled with every ounce of strength in his arms. He was rewarded with a loud moan from Justine as she rammed the bed back into her chest, forcing the air out of him.

“Oh, that’s more FUCKING LIKE IT!” she howled and wriggled until Alex felt his cock buried between her huge globes. “Pull ‘em as hard as you can, Birdie! God, I want you to bite them so fucking HARD, but I’m not allowed even near your face, you little crippled fuck! When your neck is better, I swear you’re gonna do nothing but suck and bite them for an entire fucking WEEK! If nothing else, at least I’m going to make your jaw stronger from all the work it’s going to do!”

Alex could only moan in response as the bed began to rise and fall from Justine rubbing Alex’s cock between her tits. The sensation was overpowering as he and the entire seven hundred pounds or so of the bed bounced up and down at an ever-quickening pace. The bed rails impeded Justine’s breasts somewhat, until frustrated, she flexed her pecs hard, and the pressure against his cock became almost painfully tight.

Justine was moaning loudly as was Alex. He dug his fingernails into her nipples, squeezing as hard as he could. As he rose higher and higher in the throes of his mounting climax, he knew if he climaxed and didn’t take her with him, the consequences, even though he was injured, could be severe.

His arms burned as he fought to get her off. He was seconds away, and nothing he tried would prevent his orgasm. The pressure, the immense power of Justine as she tit-fucked him; hell, she was pretty much tit-fucking his entire pelvis… AND lifting both him and the hospital bed like it was nothing! He wondered if her arms even burned like normal humans as they exerted their ungodly strength with such ease.

“Ooooh!” he cried as his head rocked back and he came.

He desperately tried to hold on and pull her nipples, but his strength failed him from the intense pleasure. Justine lifted him up and ripped the front of his gown away with her teeth, and then inhaled his spasming cock. She worked it in and out of her mouth by moving the entire bed with her arms and shoulders. He felt her pecs flex from the effort and the pressure increased against his legs until he felt like his thigh bones would snap. He jerked uncontrollably from her lips on his super-sensitive cock, and pushed hard against her to stop the torture, but it continued as an evil laugh came from Justine, slurred by his slowly deflating member in her mouth.

“Such a selfish little fucker you are,” she said as she gave him a moment’s rest from the torture. “I think you like getting me all worked up. I like it, too, Alex. Want to know how much?”

She took him back into her mouth and furiously pumped him back and forth, his head rocking back and forth against the matterss.

“Dammit, Justine!” Valerie rasped from her bed. “Can’t you fucking go five minutes without being such a fucking slut? This is really NOT what I wanted to wake to you cunt!”

Alex’s body froze as Justine ground to a halt. He looked down to see her, livid with anger, almost spit his cock out of her mouth as she turned to glare at Valerie.

“Oh, FUCK YOU, Valerie!” she said, then set the bed down, surprisingly gently.

Alex could feel his neck ache from the motion of rocking back and forth from her last exuberant moments of torment.

He was barely able to see Justine rush to Valerie’s bed and pull her into a strong hug.

“I thought they punched your fucking clock, you old bitch!” she said, more emotional than Alex had expected.

“Who the fuck shot me?” Valerie replied as Justine buried her beneath her gigantic frame. “I’m going to fucking rip their heart out through their throat!”

“Too late,” she said as she stood back up. “One of the fucking HRT squeezed off a stray round as Jane’s bullet scrambled his brain. It pierced your lung. You’re one lucky bitch. Went right between the aorta, the subclavian artery, and a whole mess of pulmonary veins. It nicked the vena cava, and the surgeons had to go in and slap a patch on that before it ruptured. You dodged oblivion by millimeters, Val. Just imagine, being taken out by some fucking douchebag like that, on your own team, no less. By fucking ACCIDENT. I’d have been so disappointed, Val.”

“Yeah, right,” she said. “You’d have laughed, you big bitch.”

Justine laughed in reply, but it sounded more relieved than humorous.

“Of course I would, but I’d have been pissed afterward. I found out which one shot you and punched my hand right through his corpse in the morgue, if that makes you feel better. You should see the big fucking dent in the table. They can’t put it back in the freezer. I was picking stuff from under my fingernails for an hour.”

“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Justine,” Valerie said, her throat raw. “Now, stop being useless and hand me that water.”

Justine chuckled as she held out the cup.

Alex missed the rest of their outrageous conversation. Knowing Valerie was going to recover seemed to make him suddenly exhausted, and he fell asleep as he came down from his incredible climax.

*************

Alex awoke, surprised to find Valerie standing over his bed watching him. A nurse came by, attached a new bag to the IV hooked to Alex’s arm (funny he hadn’t noticed that before he went to sleep) and left without a word.

"Just fucking lovely, isn't it?" she groused, gesturing around the room; her voice was less rough than before, Alex noted. "They need to put a screen in here with a view of the outside or something. I'll set that in motion. I have one in my office and I sometimes forget I don’t actually have a window. It's funny - I never thought I'd be one of the people recuperating here, and now that I have, I think this place really sucks."

Alex was pleased to hear her voice returning to normal. Valerie was touch-and-go on the first day, he was told. However, she stabilized quickly once the immediate threat had passed in surgery.

Amazingly quickly, he thought, considering the trauma of a nicked vena cava, the biggest vein in the body, and a collapsed lung from it being punctured. Even the surgery, at six hours, seemed less intense than such a nasty gunshot would dictate.

“Where’s Justine?” Alex asked and thought he saw Valerie’s look darken slightly.

“She got in trouble for having her way with you,” she said. “I think she’s enduring the William Moreland version of grounding, which means she’s most likely doing those hand-eye cards and bitching. Hopefully nobody gets hurt. Those sneaky trick images are a new invention of his, and you saw how much she enjoys them. Speaking of enjoyment, how’s your neck? I hear you are a bit modified yourself now. You apparently got an experimental injection of fibrin in the C 4-5 disc after it was ruptured.”

He wasn’t told his neck had a ruptured disc. Justine seemed to downplay the injury. Maybe that was her version of guilt.

"It hurts, thanks for asking," Alex said, "but the doctor told me I was lucky my neck wasn’t broken from the way I hit. He has no idea. Whoa, what did that nurse put in my arm? The whole room started spinning."

“Pain meds, and it looks like something to reduce the inflammation from your surgery,” she said.

Valerie glanced at the IV and placed her hand over his. He was curious about all of the new touching. She never seemed to come into contact with him before he said he was in all the way, but now she seemed to use every excuse to touch him.

"I understand," she said. "I think we were both lucky. You can sort of get used to Justine and the threat she implies, but to experience a hostile with her capabilities, I have to say my knees were knocking as badly as yours were."

Alex tried to nod in agreement and winced as a sharp pain shot down his side. Even the tiny range of motion the neck immobilizer allowed was too much, apparently.

Valerie's hand tightened on his and her brow knitted in concern.

"Stop trying to move your neck like that," she said. "You need to give it time. I think those quacks need to tighten that brace. Maybe you should be in a halo."

"Valerie, you amaze me," Alex said, his words slurred from the pain medication.

"Why's that?" she asked.

"You were just shot two days ago, and now you're up and about like nothing happened!"

She nodded, and moved her right arm gingerly.

"Well, I do have a lovely little pinhole from that jacketed round punching through my lung, but it exited cleanly and didn't damage anything extremely critical. Lungs repair quickly."


"Yours do, at least," Justine said as she ducked gracefully through the doorway. Alex thought his eyesight was playing tricks on him because she looked like she nearly took up the entire width. Maybe she was that broad all along and he was just unused to seeing her pass through from the vantage he currently had. Usually he was passing through a doorway with her.

"It's a shame the ol' muscle density thing didn't come along until Gen Four, though, huh Mommy dear?"

Alex looked at Justine and her comment sank in.

"You're...?" Alex asked, his medicine-addled brain finally asked the question.

"Generation Three, yes," Valerie answered, her eyes narrowing at Justine. "Don’t tell me you hadn’t at least guessed. I got some strength enhancement, though not enough for Uncle Sam's tastes, reaction time increases, improved cognitive abilities, pain tolerance, recuperation, and so on and so on."

Justine matched her cold stare.

"Bummer about the longevity stuff, though, huh?" she said, then glanced down at Valerie's hand holding Alex's.

Valerie released Alex's hand, and raised it to Justine, middle finger extended.

"Yeah, well bummer about those uncontrollable mood swings, huh, musclehead?" she replied.

"Now, now, kids," Senator Moreland intoned as he walked through the door. "All of this bickering is unproductive. We're all one big happy family here."

He turned toward Alex.

"How are we feeling, Alex?" he asked.

Alex noticed the 'Mr. Roberts' title was gone, apparently because of his new commitment to the cause.

"Sore," he replied. "I hope this doesn't count against my 'recuperative leave' time."

Moreland laughed. He seemed to be in a pleasant mood.

"Since you haven't gone anywhere, I think we can let your, 'sick days' shall we say, slide," he replied. "However, due to our heightened state of alert, we think it necessary to postpone your little vacation trip. We will have to assess our adversary's reaction to losing one of their prized assets."

"Get me in a room with a few more, and then you'll really see their reaction," Justine said neutrally.

"As long as they aren't armed," Valerie said. "Her reflexes, acquisition and targeting were significantly faster than yours. The HRT barely made it through the door before she took down all eight. I think she may have ten-ringed one before they even got the door open."

"*I* made it through, though, didn't I?" Justine said. "She only nicked me with three rounds, nothing even close to kill shots."

Justine pulled up her shirt, and two black and blue marks appeared, one just under her left breast and one on her right latissimus muscle. She didn’t display the third, and Alex wondered where it might have hit her.

"Yes, but she shot you through soft cover, AND she was shooting around their tactical vests," Valerie rebutted.

"Which is why I kept my noggin hidden behind one when I rushed her," Justine countered.

The exchange was becoming heated, and Moreland raised his hands.

"Ladies, ENOUGH," he said, and the ring of authority in his voice made them stop. "Justine, I don't believe this was the conversation you intended to have with Valerie today, was it?"

Justine looked chastened.

"You're right," she said, and faced Valerie, who awkwardly returned her gaze. "I'm glad Jane didn't smoke you in there."

"Gee, thanks, Justine," Valerie replied, her voice acidic. "I'm glad she didn't break your face, as many times as she hit it."

Moreland sighed.

"Valerie, please," he said gently. "You know this is hard for her."

She turned a cold eye on the Senator.

"Oh my fucking heart is breaking. Do you know what's hard, William?" Valerie said. "This."

She pulled her hospital gown aside, revealing her bandaged chest. Alex looked away quickly as the rest of her upper body, not covered in a bandage, was exposed as well. In addition to being ripped like a professional athlete, Valerie also had quite a bit of bosom to see, Alex couldn’t help but note. Maybe extra boobs are an effect of the modification, he mused, though Jane didn’t seem to possess the abundance the American super-soldiers did. Probably the bright idea of some pervert geneticist here in good ol’ ‘murrica.

Apparently, super-soldiers also don’t have a problem with indiscriminate nudity, he thought. Of course, with bodies like theirs, why would they?

"This fucking hole in my chest is hard," Valerie continued bitterly. "How the hell did she get in here without us ID'ing her? I’m not even going to mention the half-assed security that didn’t account for her being here for two fucking DAYS after the other girls left. This place has infrared and motion-sensing cameras in every room, but Jane was just holed up somewhere, trying to hack our system. Better yet, how did she spend the last few YEARS at Barstow without setting off anyone's alarms? She was one of Justine’s sparring partners, for Christ’s sake! I’m sure there’s an in-depth series of physical and combat-capability assessments in enemy hands."

The Senator shrugged.

"All excellent observations," he replied in a placating tone. "Concerns we're looking into. There is already a full inquiry, of course. All the other sites are in full lockdown like this one. If there are any more sleepers, we'll pick them up, or at least flush them out."

Valerie hardly seemed mollified, but the Senator didn’t give her a chance to reply.

“As to enemy assessments of Justine’s capabilities, so be it,” he said, unconcerned. “We have an excellent assessment of our own in the footage of Justine’s hand-to-hand combat with the Xinjuan Xiue operative. We have an excellent gauge of hand-eye, muscle control and memory, tactical cognition and combat-effectiveness. We couldn’t have designed a better first operation for Justine, if I may say so. If we can figure out how to access the implants, we may get her telemetry data and an understanding of their interface technology to gauge the differences between ours and theirs. Maybe we can discover their communication protocols and tap in real-time, listen in if you will.”

Alex watched the exchange, trying to follow along, but his drug-addled brain was having trouble.

One statement the Senator said resonated in his brain.

Other sites, he thought. How many other sites were there?

"Aw, poor Mommy," Justine teased. "You’re so upset. Should I get you a fucking hanky?"

Valerie, suddenly enraged, moved incredibly fast and her fist smashed against Justine's jaw. Justine's head didn't even move from the blow, and she stood tall, a broad grin on her face, as Valerie winced and shook her hand. Alex figured the force of Valerie's punch would have probably broken his neck, even uninjured, not to mention destroyed his jaw.

"You're such as easy mark when you're hurt, Val," Justine said, her smile broadening.

"You know I hate that Mommy shit!" Valerie said through clenched teeth, though Alex couldn't tell if it was pain or anger that caused her tightened jaw.

Moreland sighed again, this time deeper.

"Ladies," he said again, and Alex watched as both of their demeanors immediately relaxed. "I think we should have this conversation elsewhere and let poor Alex get his rest."

"I'm staying," Justine said firmly. "I haven't had any time to see him today. I'm already done with my training AND my penance, Monsignor."

Justine added the last as Moreland's surprised look aimed at her. Valerie appeared surprised as well.

"Hmmm," he said, glancing sidelong at Valerie. "I suppose you can spend a little time with him. Valerie, are you good to be discharged, or have you already been given leave?"

"I'm fine," she said, working her arm in circles unconsciously. "Doctors said I should be 100% by Friday."

He nodded in approval.

"Excellent," he said, sounding pleased. "Valerie my dear, you continue to exceed my expectations. Three days to near-total function after a critical injury is everything we could have hoped.”

He looked warmly at Justine.

“Both of you have. Stage Two almost a year ahead of projections! Incredible. This week is starting out on a high note. Come, Valerie. You need to be debriefed. "

He turned to Justine and Alex.

"You have ten minutes, Justine," he said sternly. "After that, you need to let him rest. No more of yesterday’s foolishness. "

Moreland and Valerie left the room, and Justine approached Alex's bed, taking the hand Valerie had held.

"How are you feeling today, little guy?" she asked softly.

"Like a lucky little guy," he replied, his voice groggy. "I didn’t have a chance to say thank you yesterday, since we were so, um, busy. She would've killed me if you hadn't been there to stop her."

"Probably, unless you believe all that guilty conscience bullshit she was spouting," Justine said. "So very Yin and Yang of her. Killing's killing. Your actions stop someone else before they stop you."

It took a moment for Alex to process Justine’s nihilistic comment.

"You don't believe in anything after this? No afterlife, Heaven, anything?"Alex asked.

Justine shifted her massive bulk as she pondered Alex's question.

"Well, let's just say I chose not to. When you know you're essentially a Frankenstein's Monster cooked up in a lab with the sole purpose of killing everyone you meet, it kind of sours the whole 'there's somewhere better' idea."

Alex tried to shake his head, but Justine noticed the effort and engulfed the top of his head with the hand not holding his, stopping him before he could hurt himself.

“I’m going to squeeze your head off if you keep trying to move it,” she grumbled.

Frustrated, he sighed, and she removed her hand.

"I would think the idea of some sort of salvation would be a comfort in your line of work," he said.

Justine tilted her head back and laughed loudly. Alex winced at the unconscious tightening of her other hand over his.

"That's hilarious, Alex!" she bellowed. "My 'line of work'. How about the purpose of my existence? I'm an engineered person, Alex. A man-made monster. I was never a cuddled baby, or a perky little girl with pigtails. No Sunday School or shopping sprees or walks in the park. Just death. Learning how to kill, learning how to neutralize the enemy, eliminate the threat. All that kid stuff you got to do, I didn't. I'm not really a person, Alex. I'm a weapon. A killer born and bred."

"There's as much to you as you wish there to be," he said. "You have the ability to feel, right? Experiences shape you, but they AREN'T who you are. Only you can decide that."

Justine looked fondly down at her little Tutor.

"I have such good taste," she said. "I'm so glad you're as tough as you are. Maybe Daddy's right. Maybe you really are just what I needed."

Alex sniffed in mock indignation.

"Maybe?" he said. "After everything you put me through, and the fact that I'm still here, willingly I might add, and still you doubt? I am surprised at you Ms. Moreland."

Justine's sudden dark look jarred Alex when he saw it, but the realization he was teasing her eased her temper.

"I am trying so hard not to grab you right out of that bed and squeeze you until you pop, Mr. Tutor." she said, her voice low. "But you know what I'd REALLY like to do?"

“What?” he asked, playing along.

“NURSE you back to health,” she said, pulling her shirt over her head. “I still have three and a half minutes. Be quick. Fuck the orders to stay away from your head. And besides, you OWE me for yesterday.”

*************

Moreland and Valerie watched their conversation, then Moreland turned off the monitor as Justine began to remove her top.

“It’s a scary precedent,” Valerie said, wincing as she gestured with the arm on her injured side. “You saw her defiance, even after you gave the compulsion that she depart. Maybe the ability to defy command is a function of her increased rate of growth, maybe neural pathways are being built to work around the implanted compulsions? What do the eggheads have to say?”

Moreland shook his head.

“They don’t know,” he replied. “By all assessments they have made, she should be at sixty to seventy five percent of the way to Stage Two, but she has related that she is there already. The footage from the fight bears that out. Strikes from the Xinjuan Xiue had next to no effect, even with the assessed trauma in the 1800 to 2000 pounds of force range.

“The first day Justine took Alex to her studio,” Valerie began, “she had him use a bo staff on her. That weapon, even with someone as small as Alex, generates greater than the Xinjuan Xiue impacts per strike. He hit her eighty-seven times and she wasn’t injured in the least. She may have been Stage Two even earlier than her personal assessment.”

“Where is that footage?” Moreland asked, intrigued. “And where is the report?”

“It’s already uploaded onto the server,” Valerie said. “A normal human, even a trained standard soldier, would have been dead after the fifth or sixth strike, the analysts said. Alex was striking surprisingly hard for a completely untrained person. She showed him proper technique, and he took to it immediately. He was between 1600 and 2500 pounds per strike. He was a bit emotionally unstable toward the end, so the final hits were in the 1400 range, but the early strikes were all up around 2300. A trained martial artist can impart up to 3000 pounds per strike, so, all things considered, the little guy did impressively well.”

Moreland smiled.

“Eighty-seven strikes in a concentrated area, but it made no difference,” he said, his voice smug, pleased. “We have tactical superiority, Valerie. We finally have tactical superiority. Maybe Justine’s confidence isn’t unwarranted. She may well be able to go up against multiple Chinese Generation Eights and emerge victorious in hand to hand. Let’s not be in a rush to find out, though.”

Valerie nodded.

“Are you really going to let them go off the ranch?” she asked. “After what happened?”

“Yes,” he said after a moment of consideration. “As you saw, her ability to break the compulsion has begun even earlier than anticipated, along with pretty much everything else. If this carrot is dangled and withdrawn, I fear that those controls will fail altogether. That means no more kill switches, and, at the current rate of muscle growth, tranquilizing darts will be almost wholly ineffective within the month.

Moreland paused, and looked at Valerie, and a note of regret crossed his voice.

“Her resistance to electrical stimulus is also increased significantly.”

Valerie looked darkly at him.

“You didn’t,” she said, temper rising. “After the live fire?”

He returned her dark look.

“Yes, I DID,” he said strongly. “That defiance was inexcusable, and she knew what she was in for when she put on that display.”

Valerie looked away, and a small smile crossed her lips.

“And now? Considering this new information, do you think it was such a good idea now?”

Moreland paused.

“Had I known, I would have… reconsidered,” he said at length. “I fear my actions may have hastened today’s defiant behavior.”

Thank you for the new chapter!  I loved it.  Justine is as brutal and massive as ever

Thanks, Bert! Love your work as well.

Best,



Pac

(maybe I should call you Bert's...? or BMB? That handle is WAAAAY too long! ;-) )

Okay, here's the latest:


Chapter Nineteen: The Ol’ Grind

“GRRR!” Justine roared. “Where the FUCK is my tactical vest?”

Alex sat quietly, watching, as Justine ripped open several of the new lockers in the big battleship-gray building. None survived her enthusiasm, and after flinging away several of the doors she had removed, she clenched her fists and drove her right completely through the bank of lockers a foot above Alex’s head. Ducking low, he moved quickly to her side. A small cut appeared on her forearm as she pulled her massive limb from the destroyed locker, and she looked, fascinated, as a thin trickle of blood rolled down her arm.
“Huh, how about that?” she said. “Still not cut-proof, I guess.”

“I doubt that,” Alex said. “The force you put behind that punch must have been enough for the metal to cut you, but there’s no way I could do anything like that. Hell, no other human on the planet except for maybe those Chinese agents could, I’ll bet.”

Justine didn’t hear, or didn’t appear to. She appeared focused straight ahead, staring blankly over the mortally-wounded bank of lockers.

“I fucking put it in here... oh, wait. No I didn’t.” she began, pausing. She looked like she was leafing through a book as her eyes moved.

“Okay, the light tactical webbing is in my room,” she began as her eyes moved, “and the heavy gear is... God knows where, after they carted me off after that live fire last week. So that means my tac vest is... ah.”

Justine vanished from the room, returning shortly after wearing the vest over her fatigues.

“That is frustrating as shit when I misplace stuff,” she groused, looking at Alex.

He was silent. Her rages were easily directed toward him, so he now knew to keep his peace.

“Well?” she said, her temper still flaring. “What the fuck do you have to say? I see you looking at me with those beady little rat eyes!”

“I’m not saying shit,” he said. “Your memory is nearly flawless, so whatever little hiccups you have from time to time are still way better than mine. I’m surprised they didn’t stick a hard drive in there or something for perfect recall.”

She cast a droll smile at Alex’s comment. He seemed to have finally learned that confrontation with Justine often led to her stopping to assess the “threat,” often ratcheting down the anger as her training kicked in. She always wanted to tease him about not following the Tutorial Manual, but figured she’d spring that on him when he least expected it. It was one of the things she loved about him: he blazed his own trail, instead of following the rules like the other Tutors. Of all the sheep that had come through the Morland Estate, he was unique… maybe the Black Sheep of the tutoring herd.

“Oh, I’m sure they tried mechanical memory somewhere along the fucked up timeline that led to me,” Justine replied, her anger thankfully abating. “I don’t think I have one, but of course I have some sort of black box I’ve been told. When someone punches my clock, they want to know why their billions of dollars just went up in smoke.”

“They have all kinds of real-time monitoring for that,” Alex replied, surprised at his callous reply. “Why would they need some sort of device that an enemy could recover like we did with Jane?”

“Fair enough,” Justine said. “Probably because there is stuff being recorded there that they don’t have enough bandwidth for in real-time, like enzyme levels or some shit. On top of that, signals aren’t perfect. Sat-com goes down all the time with solar flares and storms, so it records data locally to dump to servers when reception’s better. Ha, here’s a fun fact. I know that the black box is booby-trapped. Semtex charge with enough explosive mass to splatter whoever’s near me like a water balloon.”

Alex paused.

“So you are a literal ticking time bomb,” he mused.

Justine looked down at him and scoffed.

“No, but some of my internals will be when I am deceased. Semtex is relatively inert unless you activate it. What point would a bomb be if it goes off when you don’t want it to? But the hardware is in here to activate that blast, and it is somehow triggered by my death. That’s why we keep waiting for Jane to go boom, but she’s still in a basement somewhere on a slab. Maybe the Chinese don’t make ‘em as foolproof as we do. Why should their top-notch shit be any less shoddy than their mainstream shit?”

“It can’t be that simple. Maybe they’re planning some sort of retrieval operation?” Alex countered.

That gave Justine pause.

“Hmm,” she said. “Maybe, but I doubt it. They lose one, no big deal. But to launch a black op like that they’d have to use multiple G8’s, and I doubt they want that many in one place to possibly get waxed. They try to punch a hole as deep as wherever Jane’s body is being stored; they’d have to go in swinging hard. No way anyone could just ease their way in like she stealthed us here. That would have to be a hard-ass smash and grab, like a Detroit car-jacking.”

Justine laughed at her own joke, then slammed the nearest locker door closed, startling Alex out of his contemplation.

“Okay, little shit,” she said amicably, “Ready to watch me go fuck some dudes up? Maybe I could take you in my pack like I said to daddy the other day when he sent me for ‘re-education.’ I’d love to see how combat-effective I’d be if I was carrying a civvie with me. I wonder if I could plead that case to the brass?”

“No, thank you,” Alex said. “I’d rather be an observer. You want me to stick around, or go visit Hans? He’s got me doing upper body today.”

“Fine, you fucker,” Justine said, but her tone didn’t match her words. “You’re still so painfully weak anyway. I want him to get your core to the point where I could actually hug you without wrenching muscles in your back and torso. It’s so fucking hard to be this restrained around you all the time, my little baby boy-toy. You wait ’til you get the medical okay. Your little ass is MINE that day!”

Alex didn’t want to look up. He knew exactly what she was doing, burning holes in him with her intense gaze. Justine was punished for disobeying the rule that forbade contact with Alex’s head after their last sexual encounter, and was chafing under the current restriction. It was only a matter of time before she disobeyed another Moreland edict. He had thought about asking Valerie to keep them separated to prevent another sanction until he was cleared, but the repercussions of such a parting would likely be even worse.

Justine had insisted on Alex being around for practically every aspect of her training after the incident with Jane, to the point that he longed for a bit of alone time. He wanted to read the project files he was now permitted to access, to see just how deep he had dug himself with his acceptance. He wondered what the point of the Feds even paying him was, since he was now a virtual prisoner to “The Moreland Estate,” and even more so to Justine’s whims. He couldn’t go anywhere to spend it.

“So does that mean you DON’T want me here while you train today?” he asked, finally looking up.

Her gaze was still intent upon him, and he couldn’t help but sweat a little at the piercing stare. Justine’s face broke into a grin as she saw a sweat bead form on his brow.

“Yes, that is the appropriate response,” she said, satisfied. “As is THAT.”

Her gaze shifted downward to the beginning of Alex’s excitement. He hated how she seemed to command that part of his anatomy by sheer will.

“I love to watch it happen,” she murmured. “No matter how many times I see it, I still like to stop and watch. Show me. Take ‘em down, big boy.”

“Seriously?” he asked, looking up at her face.

The anger was swift and unsurprising.

Justine was on Alex in the blink of an eye, her hand clamping over his shoulder to lift him to her height.

“Yes, fucking seriously,” she said, her voice deathly calm.

“Ow, fine, dammit!” Alex said and she dropped him.

“Tell Hans to focus on your shoulders today, you little fucking pussy,” Justine sneered. “That shouldn’t hurt if your muscles are developed enough. Hell, I could do that to Valerie and she’d smack me in the face instead of crying like a little bitch. I could even use a little pressure, not the kid gloves I use on you.”

“She’s a super-soldier like you, not a little academic,” Alex countered, his voice reflecting the humiliation he felt as he dropped his pants before Justine. “Of course she can withstand those hydraulic presses you call hands crushing her shoulders.”

“You are such a mouthy little shit today,” Justine remarked, watching as Alex’s manhood came into view. “I approve. Makes me want you even more. But today, I just want to see what this bod does to your little dick. I’m keeping a picture of it in my head so I can enjoy it while I’m kicking people’s asses today.”

Alex stood before Justine and she stepped close. Her gigantic torso filled his vision.

“Want a little visual stimulation?” she asked, and pulled up her shirt to expose her abs.
The muscles danced across her torso as she flexed and rippled her washboard.

“I could probably rip a finger off if I flexed them with your hands in there,” she said, her voice throaty. “I saw a cartoon on the ‘net where a woman flexed her abs and bent a quarter in half. I wonder if I could do that? Maybe I’ll let you watch me try.”

Alex watched, transfixed. Of all the parts of her anatomy that fascinated him, Justine’s abs were the most alluring for some reason, and of course she knew it.

“Just a couple of kisses,” Justine sighed. “I want to feel those little lips on me.”

“You’re not watching my dick rise if I’m kissing your abs,” Alex remarked.

“I’ll get to that in a second,” she replied. “Right now, I need those little lips on my muscles. Helps out before one of these simulated ops. It’s the dopamine; I learned in my human biochemistry class it has a calming effect.”

Alex didn’t need commands to want to press his lips to the huge bricks of muscle that comprised the impregnable wall of Justine’s abs. His lips traced over each of the individual abdominals with Justine moaning in pleasure far above. After several minutes of worship, she placed her hands around his waist and raised him above the breasts that loomed over his head while he was kissing her stomach.

She laid him on top of her chest as her lips pressed to his. As they kissed, Justine leaned back and Alex felt himself rise on the mass of her chest. She increased the tease as she flexed, until she actually took her hands away and Alex stayed right where he was.

Yet another awe-inspiring display, he thought as they kissed.

His hands drifted down to the gigantic breasts that held his entire body weight without yielding, and he felt Justine’s lips stretch into a smile without taking them from his.

“Mmm,” she moaned as they broke from their kiss, “Where the fuck have you been all this time, my little Alex? I wouldn’t have gone through so many tutors if you’d been a little farther up in the rotation. I’d have gladly traded a dozen Adams for YOU!”

Alex was given pause.

“I always thought Adam was your favorite?” he asked. Alex was surprised to hear a touch of jealousy in his voice.

“He WAS,” she said pointedly, “but he NEVER touched me the way you do. Never wanted to have anything to do with me. His attitude that I loved so much was out of sheer frustration. Toward the end I think he provoked me out of some sort of suicidal desire.”

Alex wanted to ask about Adam’s fate, but he knew the mood would immediately change if he did. He instead focused on the amazing breasts that buoyed his body.

“You want a little more stress relief before you go out there?” he asked, reaching back to feel for her nipples.

“Yes, I do; but no, I can’t,” she said, lifting him off her chest to set him on the floor. “I want to watch your dick grow before my eyes, and then I’m going to go out there and rip some fuckers up out of sexual frustration. It’s the ‘optimal’ balance of dopamine and epinephrine/norepinephrine. The kisses are perfect for the former, and being sexually frustrated is perfect for the latter. That’s why I need to stop now instead of ripping your clothes off and sucking your cock down my throat. That would throw my balance off and we can’t have that, now, can we? Today is the day my platoon neutralization record is going the fuck DOWN.”

“Lying on your tits has my dick already up,” Alex said. “You knew it would.”

He realized he should have shut up as soon as he said the words.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I know how to get rid of it in a hurry.”

Justine lunged at Alex, a furious snarl on her face, and he flinched back, slamming into the lockers behind him.

Justine’s laughter was loud in the confines of the changing room.

“See?” she said. “There’s a droopy little boy. Now I want it BACK.”

And, just like that, he started getting hard.

“How in the fuck do you do that?” he asked, amazed and embarrassed at his display.

“You didn’t read about that little trick?” she asked, licking her lips. “God, I fucking WANT it. I want it so fucking bad! Three more days, Alex. Three more agonizing days, dammit.”

Justine’s shirt creaked from the flex of the massive muscles beneath.

“You’re not going to tell me?” he asked, finally red-faced enough to talk again. “It’s like a damn steel pole now.”

“Yep,” she said. “I should probably torture you like your cock is torturing me, all hard and tasty like that, but I’m in such a good mood today. So this is the secret: I can produce pheromones at will. It’s one of my tactical response capabilities. They addle men’s brains, you know. The urge to fuck is more powerful than the urge to fight. It’s one of the reasons why they use females as counter-agents in these programs. There are no male super-soldier programs that I know of, did you know that? There were, but the boys all scrubbed out, like Hans did. Something about male sex-linked genetic traits being less compatible with their tinkering. I think that’s what Valerie was babbling about one day.”

Alex was no longer surprised at any new revelations. Just one more wonder to add to the list.

“Yeah, Valerie said Hans took people’s minds in new directions,” he said, more to himself than Justine. “Figures. What was he, Generation One or something?”

“I don’t know if he even got a Generation designation,” Justine replied. “I think that’s for the real soldier programs, but fuck if I know. I don’t get to see that shit, just hear things once in a while. I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m going to weep for the test tube babies that died before I got here. Hell, I kill shit for a living, what do I give a fuck for some dead sperm in a jar?”

Alex shook his head. “Maybe it’s because you won’t care about what came before, but you WILL care if you ever find out what they did to make you what you are?”

“Nah,” she countered. “I could give a shit. They could cross a baboon with an octopus for all I care to get me here. I look like a chick and I fight like a fucking monster. That’s all I care about.”

“A HOT chick,” Alex added, which made Justine smile. “You could’ve come out like some big ugly brute. You have to be happy about that, right?”

“I’m sure it was by design,” Justine said. “Pretty things are harder to shoot at, you know?”

“I’d shoot you, you big beautiful nasty bitch,” Alex said.

Justine laughed loudly and snatched Alex by his shirt, holding him high and pressing him against her breasts as she kissed him passionately. His pants dangled around his ankles, eventually dropping to the floor.

“I love when you talk like that,” she said. “Maybe I’ll even LET you shoot me sometime. I would love to see the look on your face when small caliber bullets just bounced off me. Then I’d come at you and smack the gun out of your hands before I fucked your brains out.”

There was a squeal of feedback, and Justine paused in her ardent kissing. Both looked toward the speaker in the ceiling.

“Justine, where in the royal FUCK are you?” Valerie’s voice came over the PA. “You should be on the ready line, you stupid cunt!”

Growling, Justine tossed Alex away from her as she donned her helmet. She grabbed her assault rifle as she turned toward the door. “Keep that thing primed and ready, Alex,” she said as the ducked through the doorway. “Three days!”

*************

Alex met with Hans, working through the pain in his shoulder, and then had lunch with Valerie, the meal they had originally planned to have before she was shot. The South Terrace was resplendent with Italian dishes from Tuscany, and the quality of the meal was world-class. Alex wondered how they employed chefs in this ultra top-secret facility.

The meal, and the company, were wonderful. Valerie certainly didn’t lack in social graces like Justine did.

After some surprisingly enjoyable small-talk Valerie asked Alex, “So how is your constant companion doing?”

“She’s about ready to burst,” he said. “She keeps counting down the days until I’m off full medical restriction. I think I’m likely to go right back on it if she’s any more exuberant than she has been recently. And I also learned today about her ability to release pheromones on command. That’s just not fair.”

Valerie laughed.

“How do you think we were able to actually keep any tutors?” she asked. “You are more receptive than the others, which I feel guilty about, but you seem to be adjusting.”

She paused, looking across the table at Alex. She had the most fascinating blue eyes. They had whorls of gray and brown in them that made her already gorgeous face that much more entrancing. It wasn’t instant excitement like Justine’s ability, but Valerie could definitely produce the same effect if she desired.

“I don’t know about ‘adjusting,’” Alex replied. “More like coping. I’m stuck here, so I might as well deal with it. It STILL beats working at Sav-Mart. Talk about humiliating. That was even worse than being forced to strip for Justine’s amusement before I came here.”

Valerie laughed.

“That can’t possibly be true,” she said. “Your intellectual pride trumps your physical pride? Your manly pride?”

She was looking at him with the most curious expression, Alex thought.

“I’m sure you noticed that I’m not exactly built like some sort of male model,” he said, “so I never really had any sort of manly self-image. I was one of the shorter guys through all of my schooling. It was normal for me, so I never really thought about that much. I was one of the brightest in most of my classes, though, so THAT kind of pride I did have.”

“Well, I had both of those,” Valerie said. “I had feminine pride and academic. So I had a lot more to lose I guess when the next generation made me obsolete, and then the next... and that behemoth out there now, training, growing bigger and stronger... she’s on a whole other level than anything prior. Whatever they did in Gen Six, it outstripped anything that came before.”

Valerie seemed lost in thought as Alex watched.

“You had those experiences in THIS program?” Alex asked. “Did you have some sort of outside life even though you were one of the Generations?”

Valerie froze and looked at him.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, yes. Sometimes it’s hard for me to get over the fact that you’re still very much an outsider. It’s not like you had time to read through the entire program. I went through every single growing-up event that you did, in all likelihood. I had ‘parents,’ went to a school, college, graduate school, all of that. I was a star on my track team; I have a shelf full of trophies and medals from a ton of sports. It was only after all of that that I was reeled back in. Justine is a very different being, and the program has changed a lot. It was apparent from an early age she wouldn’t be able to be fostered like I was, not with her sudden violent mood swings. Gen Six procedures are not like my Gen Three experience was at all.”

Alex looked quizzically at Valerie, who rose and leaned against the balcony, gazing into the distance from the South Terrace. A small open atrium beneath the Terrace lay below, complete with a pond and manicured grounds. As nice as the view was -- even more impressive with Valerie’s body displayed before him -- it was still a prison. For all of them.

“The original purpose of this program was infiltration, not direct combat,” she continued. “It was only after some of the bigger breakthroughs in physical development that they realized their ‘super-soldiers’ could actually exist. In my day, the eggheads were tickled that I could military press three hundred pounds and still do third order differential equations in my head. That was enough for Special Forces units, but not enough cost-to-benefit for main-line combat troops. Elite men can almost get to my physical abilities through strength training and not cost the billions of dollars this program surely did. They wanted more than I achieved to justify the cost. And they got it.”

Valerie paused in her reverie as she regarded Alex staring at her from the table. “What?”

Alex smiled. “So you basically have a genius-level intellect and THAT body? I think I’m going to revise my opinion of you, Valerie.”

“Ha!” she said, flashing her smile at him. “I don’t have the ability to make men go gaga over me like Justine does, though. I have to do it the old fashioned way.”

She cocked her hip provocatively as she rose to tower over Alex.

“Well, then don’t talk about being smarter, faster, prettier and stronger,” he replied. “That just makes guys jealous.”

“You’d be surprised,” she said. “Some guys seem to like it. Cody does.”

“So who is the mysterious Cody?” Alex asked. “I have to assume he works here. Is he Security, Operations?”

“He is ‘Chief Willis’,” Valerie said. “He’s Head of Security. And he has to stay out of the public eye, especially Justine’s. If she knew who he was, he’d be dead. I don’t think we could stop her from getting hold of him and ripping him to shreds. He’s Special Forces, but he’s not any kind of super-soldier, so he wouldn’t stand a chance. None of us would, even en masse. You know that.”

“I just don’t understand that aspect of all this,” Alex said. “I know Justine will end up being incredibly combat-effective, but the emotional issues have to be considered as a tactical liability. How do they think they’re going to control that?”

“They’re not,” Valerie said, “but not from lack of trying. The thing is, she’ll likely never get any kind of external op. She trains and grows, and, honestly, we don’t know what her full potential is. She’s overshot every analysis and estimate of her growth or strength curves, and the invulnerability is a side-effect that the scientists identified only after she showed resistance to unarmed combat strikes as a child. One of her early physical training regimens was fighting larger opponents. When she was young, one of the thoughts when they were still in infiltration mode was to use soldiers like her as assassins in things like public events. Suicide bombers in a way. They would be an unobtrusive child in a crowd, but could neutralize a high-value target before any kind of countermeasure could be brought to bear. You might be able to shoot a normal ten year old with a bomb, but not a fast-moving, very strong ten year old -- especially one that moves the way we do.

“That all went to hell when Justine was over six feet tall at ten. She was taking on grown men years before that, and multiple men were easy for her well before she got to six feet. I recall her strength eclipsing a normal grown man well before that, eight I believe was the age. Ten was when the program shift went to infantry, to main line combat troops. It’s still a pipe dream, though, honestly. A different kind of arms race. Nobody can sustain the cost of a significant force of soldiers like Justine. But they keep spending the money; keep upping the stakes. God only knows what Generation Seven will be like.”

“Maybe they’ll shoot lasers out of their eyes and kill with a look,” Alex said.

“I wouldn’t put it past any of these lunatics,” she replied, her smile devastating.

They were silent for a moment, and Valerie turned back to looking over the Terrace, her long, graceful body leaning on the marble railing.

“So, Val, is there really going to be a ‘recuperative leave’?” Alex asked as he rose to stand by her.

“That’s the rumor,” she said. “Moreland said he doesn’t want to dangle that carrot and take it away. You know how Justine gets when she’s denied. And besides, it’s YOUR leave, isn’t it? Not hers. She’s there at your request.”

“And Greg will still be the ‘escort’?”

“Yes, the openly visible one,” she replied. “I’ll likely be in charge of the surveillance.”

Alex looked up at her.

“You don’t think they’ll let her just roam around out there, even if it is an island,” Valerie replied. “She’s a Priority One asset, notwithstanding being a psychotic killing machine. There’s no way anyone will let her out of their sight, especially now that the Chinese have tipped their hand. It’ll be hush-hush, our little field trip, but if they can get one of their Gen Eights into our compound without raising alarm bells, my guess is they have ears in here somewhere.”

Valerie glanced down at her watch.

“Okay, I need to get back,” she said.

Alex was surprised when she put her hand on Alex’s shoulder.

“I enjoyed this, Alex,” Valerie said as he looked up at her smiling face. “I forgot how much fun it could be to talk about things other than this place and the glorious mission. Maybe I’ll get to go on leave myself and see my foster family again. It’s been a few years.”

She quickly bent down and kissed Alex on the cheek, then turned and walked away.

“I’m sure your shadow will be looking for you soon, Alex,” she said in parting, “so you should get in some ‘me’ time while you can.”

Alex watched her go, surprised at the effect her kiss had on him.

No pheromones, my ass, he thought, putting his hand to his face.

Thank you for continuing this story. Along with "Bitten by the Queen," it's my favorite ongoing adventure on this site. It's nice to see Justine actualizing getting more "humanized" by Alex as time goes on.

CP

This is a phenomenal story. It's well-balanced, both in terms of characters and exposition-to-description ratio. Even the moments where the POV switches from Alex to Justine aren't jarring. I cannot wait for the next part. Serial? Who needs it!