Eveline and I quickly retraced our steps from the Watson research facility, heading north to the Canadian border. As we did before, we would need to pass through Vermont again, before getting to the US Border Protection facility north of the state. I doubted it would have been re-established by the time we got up there, given it had appeared to be abandoned for the whole time since the outbreak.
Most of the time I spent on the trek north was spent in thought, with the occasional discussion of the issue with Eveline as we continued north. Bumping into Taylor Kilpatrick was an unexpected complication, given I’d not expected to see anyone from SynTech alive in the post-outbreak world, to say nothing about the seeming coincidence of her working at the very facility I was trying to get information from.
The implications of what Taylor told me were startling, yet they didn’t really tell me why things happened the way they did in the world. In addition to our conversation not proving particularly fruitful, the data I obtained from the server was mainly test subject data and a couple of research principals. I’d modified my data request at the last moment to include research assistants and projects pertaining to post-outbreak operations. I now knew hundreds of additional names of volunteers and researchers involved in the Synergy trials, as well as some ancillary information from SynTech Incorporated, the US parent company.
Eveline said very little as we left, walking some distance away from me as she worked off some of her frustration and anger, but I knew she wasn’t really angry at me, so I let her be as we continued walking.
By evening, though she was somewhat reserved, she had drawn closer to my side. Exhausted and drained from the day’s experiences, we both slept soundly that night, neither of us aware of anything other than entering our tent and collapsing into an almost-immediate sleep.
The next morning, we resumed our daily routine, with Eveline taking off to engage in her morning hunt. I knew this was her way of working off excess energy while helping her mind to deal with the previous day’s issues. Indeed, by the time she returned from her morning ritual, some of her old humour crept back into her voice.
“Time for you to train your blade skills again,” she told me in a sharp tone that belied the humour in her expression. “Can’t have you trying that fool stunt with the flipping of the blades again, can we?”
The resulting combat training was exhausting and utterly satisfying, and then we resumed our walk toward the northern border.
Eventually, we arrived in Fort Edward, one of the few cities in New York State that wasn’t either abandoned or overrun by thugs or roving gangs. The leadership of the town ran the place a bit like Toronto, which made us let our guard down a little, though not completely. I casually strolled into the bar, once we had both set up our accommodations in this city. Sure that Eveline would be along shortly, I strode to the bar and ordered two of their tap beers, which were almost icy cold. It made for a refreshing drink, and while I waited, I took my time with my own, having barely touched it when she eventually arrived.
As always, she wore a jacket, her crop top, a pair of custom-made shorts, and her backpack. The cold aloofness on her face was only marginally altered by the slightly-raised eyebrow she had on her expression as she spotted me by the bar, and having seen me, she stepped over to join me there.
“Couldn’t wait to get started, could you?” She said coldly, sitting on the stool next to my own.
“Uh huh,” I quipped, taking a small sip of the still-cold beer, nodding to the untouched glass on the bar surface. “It’s ice cold. Should go down nicely for you.”
Eveline narrowed her eyes slightly, and I gave her a wry grin. Shrugging, she picked up the glass with her small-but-incredibly-strong hands, and took a sip, nodding slightly. “Nice to know you’re not completely useless, after all.”
“Us hairless apes come up with the occasional good idea,” I quipped. All I received in reply was a grunt, as she turned to look around the bar. Without saying a word, I discreetly admired her form.
Within minutes, the bar had started to fill.
Well… I say “fill”, but what I mean is it started to become less empty.
Ever since the Outbreak event about forty years ago, the population across the planet had been decimated. It had dropped from almost nine billion people, to less than ten million. Most of those who had lost their lives had done so in the initial conflicts that arose when the majority of societies all decided that the nanocloud that courses through all our veins was somehow a threat, and started to try eradicating it. Taylor had effectively confirmed this information for us three days earlier.
First, they tried to neutralise the nanites forming each individual’s nanocloud, only to find that doing so often resulted in the death of the host.
Next, they tried to use electromagnetic pulse weapons to neutralise the nanocloud in populations as a whole, killing those people in the process.
When entire countries started killing their citizens en-masse, other countries stepped up, and started taking on refugees, only for the aggressors to start targeting them with weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear weapons, not used in many decades, were deployed for their electromagnetic disruptive abilities, as well as a new class of EMP weapon that the United States had started to develop.
It didn’t take long for a third world war to break out… And it took even less time for that war to come to an end due to lack of willing participants. After all, if almost 100% of your population was dead, where were you going to get soldiers from? The population had already dwindled to having only one out of every thousand people survive, after all. Very few people compared to when I grew up, and most were still spread out across every continent. Imagine how empty a bar is when a town capable of housing four hundred thousand people now only sees five hundred full-time residents at best, and less than a hundred travellers on any given day. It also resulted in a massive disparity in how the worlds’ cities, states, nations and so on had handled the sudden depopulation that had occurred. Some nations, like my own, and the United States of America, had utterly collapsed. All that was left was a dying ruin of a nation, where every city and town was run entirely dependent on who had managed to take charge at the time. No central government, no devolved powers to each of the city-states. It was a free-for-all, with many towns being completely and utterly lawless, requiring us to always be on our guard.
So much for that world-record 50% global military spending being anything other than a complete waste of resources.
Other nations, such as Canada, Iceland, and many of Europe’s countries such as France, Germany, The Netherlands and Austria, had all fared much better. In all of those cases, I had experienced a series of devolved towns and cities that were all loosely collaborative, while largely running themselves. It was like a remnant of the European Union or the English Commonwealth of my era. Those were the kinds of places where it was safe to live and work, with only the vast wildlands outside of each city border being unprotected, and therefore open for anyone to be attacked or ambushed.
It was something that Eveline and I had grown used to in the time we had known each other.
My ruminations were interrupted when I heard a glass smash on the floor. Two of the newcomers had started brawling with each other.
Morons.
They were far enough away from us, that we had no need to act in any fashion, but it was still irritating.
Eveline shook her head. “What is it with you humans that makes this kind of thing so commonplace?” She asked, thumbing over her shoulder.
I felt a burst of derisiveness, and I mastered the impulse to retort sarcastically. “I’ve often wondered that, myself.”
Eveline rolled her eyes, snorting as she did, before turning away from me and facing the bar.
I took another swig of my beer, realising it was starting to warm up slightly. The thought occurred to me to try and inject some cooling into the glass, but I dismissed the idea. The function code existed, and my nanocloud had been able to implement the raw function tasks that would allow heat transfer from one system to another, but I didn’t have the physical capabilities in place, without the subdermal upgrades in place. The last time I’d tried to transfer heat away from an external source so I could freeze it, I’d almost frozen my own hand off in the process. My nanocloud advised me that I couldn’t do such a thing without the proper body modifications in place, including some pretty drastic dermal enhancements.
Eveline suddenly slammed her drink down on the bar. “Fucking seriously?!” She hissed, turning to face a human who had started to saunter over to us, a lascivious look on his face that I quite frankly wanted to slam my fist into. “What is it with you guys, oozing out of the cesspools or whatever you call them?” She snarled at the newcomer, who started to sneer back, his expression taking on a defensiveness that I recognised all too well. “What, you see a hybrid sat at a bar with a drink in her hand, and that suddenly gives you permission to sleaze your way up to her to try your luck?”
“Bitch, I was just tryin’ to be friendly,” the newcomer snarled. “Fuck is your problem?”
“My problem is, I don’t suffer fools,” Eveline hissed. “I can smell the stink of sexual hormones wafting into my face, and I don’t like it.”
I didn’t like it, either. You could literally feel the revulsion and disgust emanating from Eveline’s core in waves. It made me feel slightly nauseated.
“Fuckin’ bitch?” The newcomer hissed back. “You’re crazy! There’s something wrong with you!”
I felt a sudden and intense burst of fury course through me, and it took everything I had not to get up off of my stool to lay the guy out on the ground.
I was glad I did, because Eveline had the situation well under control. “This is typical of entitled dicks,” she said in an aside to me, a look of simmering anger on her face. “They think they can try it on with any woman they come across, then when they are rightly called out for their bullshit, they try to make it our fault.”
Old Rick might have protested this, back when he was eighteen years old…
Or would that have made me “Young” Rick?
Whatever. New Rick was fully capable of understanding.
It wasn’t the fact that he had desired Eveline so blatantly. The fact was, there were far too many people in the world that refused to accept responsibility for their own actions. In this particular instance, when the guy realised Eveline was not receptive to male attentions, he should have just shut the fuck up and walked away… Or better yet, acknowledged her lack of desire for his company, and walked away. Instead, he had gotten defensive, and lashed out.
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Honestly, it reminded me of a canine we had met in Quebec, who was very similar.
The entitled prick who had come over to us here did not like the fact that I’d rolled my eyes and shaken my head at his behaviour, and he turned aggressively to me. “What the fuck are you, a pussy? You think she’s gonna get in to your pants by being a nice guy to her? Bitches-”
“I’d seriously stop talking right now, if I were you,” I interrupted him harshly. “You have no clue what you’re talking about. Say what you like about me, but that’s the last time you call my travelling companion a bitch. You’re the one came up to us in the first place, dickhead.”
“Oh ho,” he crowed. “You’re a Brit, huh?” He then stepped right up to invade my personal space. “Got any tea-”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said in a low, tightly-controlled tone, as I caught his hand as it was about to grab me by the shirt. With barely any effort, I squeezed it, breaking every bone in his hand, and causing him to let out a blood-curdling scream of pain. Once he’d stopped, I stood up, and pushed him gently back. “I hate entitled shitbags like you. Now be a nice little boy and run along, will you?” The insincere smile I gave him belied the seething fury I felt deep.
With a murderous glare, he stumbled off toward some corner somewhere, to nurse his wounds.
Frankly, I was surprised that I had been able to break his bones so easily. Sure, I had a nanocloud, and it had greatly enhanced my physical attributes, but didn’t everyone have a nanocloud?
Preliminary analysis of subject nanocloud was carried out during physical contact.
Subject nanocloud was substantially inferior in quality and capability to the units that comprise my own cloud presence.
It wasn’t often my nanocloud volunteered information, but when it did, this was significant. I filed that away for future reference, and decided I would follow this up when I wasn’t in a bar with a very pissed-off tiger woman.
“That arsehole has ruined this place for me,” Eveline sighed, and I caught a momentary slip of her aloof and disdainful facade, revealing a glimpse of someone who was almost apologetic, while still being pissed at the situation. To many, it would be confusing to see. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to bed.”
I nodded, stepping away from the stool. “Sounds like a good idea,” I told her.
As was often the case in an unfamiliar town or city in the States, we parted company at the door, and she stepped off toward a side street, disappearing in the shadows shortly afterward.
I continued walking toward my motel room, a grotty little shit hole on the Interstate that stretched from New York State to Massachusetts. The walk only took a few minutes, and I had my keys out, unbolting the door and unlocking it, stepping inside, and closing, then locking it again afterward. With a heavy sigh, I dropped my keys on the table, glancing at the two backpacks on the floor.
I suddenly felt a burst of frustration at the night’s events, mingled with a curious sense of desire, both the desire to end the night on a far more positive note, as well as a deep and intense physical need. It almost overwhelmed me, and I would soon feel the need to do something about it. As I was trying to control the sudden intense rush of these emotions through my psyche, I watched as the door quickly unlocked, then opened, and Eveline stepped inside, an intensity on her features that made it clear she was incredibly impatient this evening. As she fastened the final bolt inside, deadlocking the door to prevent anyone else getting in, she turned to me, divesting herself of her jacket, stepping quickly up to me, as she reached back and unfastened her shorts, pushing them over her hips and allowing them to fall to the floor, her expression very quickly transforming from the facade of aloof disdain to one of intense hunger and desire.
Here’s the thing about Eveline and I.
She isn’t merely my travelling companion.
She is also my partner, in both our endeavours across the continent, and in our journey through this life we now find ourselves in.
Without needing to use words, we communicated with each other our desires, and within a second, I whipped her crop-top over her head, exposing a lovely pair of compact breasts that practically defied gravity with how firm they were. The sudden burst of desire this sight caused to well up within me had the curious effect of causing Eveline to grin brightly at me, as she leapt up and wrapped her legs around my waist.
“Show me you’re mine!” She said in a breathy, husky tone, as she whipped my own shirt over my head and casually threw it to the floor. “I want that tongue of yours!”
Knowing full well what she meant, I kissed her passionately, as I became intensely aware of the soft fur of her body against my own, the solid feel of her abs against my own, the rigid muscle under soft swell of those lovely breasts of hers, and the steely grip of her arms as she wrapped them around my shoulders with unbridled enthusiasm and passion. Her tongue danced with mine in our mouths as she breathed rapidly in reaction to our heightened sexual energy, and I could feel my own heartbeat racing in response to her almost-overwhelming sexual desire for me.
In that moment, I could feel how hard I was, as my shaft pressed painfully against my shorts. As I removed one hand from Eveline’s well-muscled butt so I could undo them, she let out an almost-frustrated noise in her throat as she continued to kiss me with wild abandon. It took a moment or two, but I finally had my shorts off, allowing them to fall to the floor, stepping out of them as I stepped carefully to the bed. Carefully, I sat myself down at the foot of the bed, and then I pulled us back so that she was above me, as I lay back. Giving her butt a playful slap, I glanced to the headboard.
Eveline got the hint, as she pulled back and smiled at me with a dazzling grin, before crawling up, so she was kneeling against the wall, her stomach and abs passing my eye line, until her pussy was staring me right in the face. My hands, almost of their own volition, grasped and gently squeezed both of her glutes in a gentle massage, and I could feel the heat from her body, the smell of her sexual scent, the steadily-increasing physical desire through our bond, as it intermingled with my own need for her. This was a cycle of lust and sexual desire that never failed to feed back into itself, and the end result was far more intense than it had ever been with anyone else I’d ever met. Unable to hold back much longer, I nonetheless resisted the urge to plunge my face into her folds, resisting just long enough to kiss the base of her lower abs, holding myself there for just a moment so I could appreciate the good fortune I had in being with this vibrant, powerful and unparalleled young woman, and as I thought these thoughts, I couldn’t help but feel a burst of affection, matched that very moment with a burst of Eveline’s own sense of joy at being with me.
Then I allowed my desires to take over, as I pushed myself lower, taking in the sight of those radiating tiger stripes that all pointed toward the folds leading to her very hot, very damp entrance, the light skin bare only around the slit, darkening around her labia, leading to the pinkish inner entrance. The sweet scent of her desire filling my nostrils and making my mouth water, as a drip of her juices slowly drooped out.
I couldn’t resist any longer.
I opened my mouth and swallowed her sweet nectar, then kissed against her entrance. Eveline’s breath came out in a ragged gasp as I worked against her folds, moving up to her clitoris, then back down again, working slowly but steadily, increasing my speed in reaction to the simultaneous erratic movements of her hips and the increasingly overwhelming state of anticipation as her climax began to build. My own shaft began to throb painfully as I worked, and I ignored it in favour of giving my tiger the best orgasm I could possibly give her in that moment, and as I plunged my tongue deep within her folds, hunting for the rough folds deep within, she unexpectedly hit her peak and let out an exultant shout above me, as she began to shake and tremble in reaction. As she did, the sense of bliss I could feel from her in the bond overwhelmed me, and I had an immediate reaction, as I felt the firing of my own seed into the air around us, causing me to shake in reaction, which in turn fed back into our bond and causing Eveline’s own orgasm to intensify for a moment.
I found myself unable to speak for a second as my head fell back onto the bed, and Eveline crawled back until her face was visible, her expression stunned for a moment. I felt a sense of confusion through our bond, although the climax she enjoyed left her in a sense of hazy bliss that matched my own, and underneath it all was the sense of appreciation and affection that was the foundation for how we both felt for each other.
We have this ability to feel each other in this manner, because Eveline is my bond mate. It is a curious and deeply-satisfying connection that was established weeks ago, when she and I first declared our love for each other, when we first fulfilled each others’ desires, when we spent our first night together. The bond between us is a manifestation of the connection we had somehow established between each other, even if neither of us understood what was responsible for it. This bond allows us both to know how the other feels at any given moment, and while it was never going to be enough to help us fully understand each other, it certainly does go a long way to helping us communicate more effectively. It is how I knew earlier, that despite the disdain, the attitude, the apparent hostility Eveline was throwing in my direction, I knew she was actually having fun, indulging in a little bit of teasing, while maintaining her emotional defences against complete strangers she knew nothing about. The fact that we understood each other so well was what allowed me to weather practically every snide comment or hostile remark she would ever send in my direction, and with the knowledge that she meant not a single word of what she said, allow it all to slide off of my psyche without even the slightest effort.
Because I knew without a shadow of a doubt, that she loved me so intensely, that she would die to protect me…
Just as the intensity of my own love for her meant that I would do the same for her.
“What happened?” Eveline asked me, her tone gentle, and while her expression was tinged with some sense of concern, she was nonetheless still suspended in a state of bliss. “I didn’t even get a chance to…”
I indulged myself in a silent chuckle as I looked at her, the depths of my love for her momentarily leaving me speechless. She could feel it through our bond, and it was greatly amplified as her own love for me lit our connection up like a torch. It’s why I knew that despite the sudden watering of her eyes as she gazed at me, I knew she was overjoyed at the moment.
“What can I say?” I asked rhetorically, as her face settled into one of overwhelming contentment. “I really enjoy making you feel good.”
Her kiss was slow, sensual and light. It was neither the chaste kiss that would happen outside of a romantic moment, nor the hurried and frenetic passion that we enjoyed mere seconds before, but it communicated the deep desire for my continued presence in her life. For some reason, while the passionate and hot sex we regularly enjoyed was amazing, these soft, slow and sensual moments made me harder than a rod of steel, and I was ready once more.
“I want more!” she told me, with a burst of amusement.
“So do I,” I told her, flipping her quickly so she was laying flat on the bed, a giggle escaping her throat in surprise.
“Good,” she whispered as she pulled my head down so she could whisper in my ear. “Remind me that I’m yours.” She then ran her cat’s tongue along the back of my ear before kissing the crease at the back of my jaw.
Things weren’t always this way for us. The road to get to understanding each other so deeply and on such a personal level had been an incredibly treacherous one, that had required both of us to get past some deep seeded personal issues. My distrust of people thanks to my previous experiences, my hot-headedness, all of it had warred against Eveline’s own emotional defensiveness, the disdain and aloofness she put on display for strangers to see. It had once been directed at me in the early days of our acquaintanceship, and I had no clue what she had been hiding deep down at the time.
It had taken a few false starts, an almost disastrous intimate moment in Europe, an even more insidious individual who had ultimately manipulated us to turn against each other, succeeding only in getting herself killed, and some weeks of trying to repair our association long afterwards, a betrayal of trust that, while it had deeply affected me at the time, I was now easily able to put into perspective once I’d learned Eveline’s greatest fear, and the help of a sister who I had only learned was still alive a few months ago.
We overcame those personal trials, and the understanding and realisation we had both come to had made it all worth everything we had both gone through together.
This bond between us also gave us both the best of each other, in that I had adopted (among other things) her own ability to assess a situation when it came to combat. I would never be as skilled as she was, but I had definitely improved far beyond what I alone had been capable of. In turn, she had picked up some emotional resilience that she admitted to me not long ago, she’d been lacking. How exactly this would manifest itself in the future, I could only guess, but so far, it had allowed her to weather one social situation that might once have sent her into an angry spiral of emotional volatility, but which she had been able to come to grips with in minutes. The bond also meant that she far more often desired to give and receive emotional support than she had ever been, and even though I had yet to see too many examples of this, I could already see the signs. Her friendship with a common friend of ours, Amélie, had improved almost beyond recognition as a result of her newfound emotional strength.
Even in the few weeks we had travelled together on the road since forming and then sealing the bond at my sister’s place in Quebec, that bond between us had intensified noticeably, and would only become stronger as time went by. It was also how I knew when she had been pissed at the audacity of an unwelcome presence like the human at the bar earlier, just as I knew she had been almost furious at him when he tried to suggest I was inadequate, and just as I knew she was utterly disgusted and repulsed by the hormonal scent that he had been putting out, it was also how I knew that right now, she desired I purge the memory of such an awful person out of her mind by showing her how much she meant to me, the hunger intensifying as it intermingled with my own almost irresistible desire for her, resulting in a feedback loop that could only result in one outcome this evening.
It would be many hours before we would sleep, and Eveline was determined to relax and enjoy the experience.
I wholeheartedly concurred.