McDaurn Family Farm

Lewis County, WA, USA

11 August 1986

0205 Hours

Lasair's head bobbed up and down slowly, her mouth and tongue working, her hand sliding back and forth, her other hand pulling at me, urging me to thrust into her mouth. I could taste her lips and the taste of Nancy from when Lasair had kissed me. Bomber was rolling onto his back, pulling Glenna on top of him, so that she faced him, and Glenna guided him into her with one hand, gasping and smiling. Nancy was being pushed onto her back by the honey blonde woman, who was hurriedly moving down between Nancy's legs, licking her lips, as Nancy moaned encouragement to her.

King, dead since the Spetznas' attack on the barracks, watched it all with cold, dead eyes.

"You will experience several different interrogation drugs over the next several days in order to familiarize yourself with them." He said, not in his own voice, but in the voice of the small slight man who had worn a black suit with only a tiny enamled US flag pin providing any color to him or his suit. "You will notice that each drug affects your body and mind differently, and we will teach you how to resist them."

I looked at King, who melted from the big bulky man into the small slight man. The man stepped forward, walking next to me.

"This is commonly referred to as a honey-pot trap. Like a sundew plant, it lures you in with sweetness and honey, until you are stuck within it and cannot get away." His face was expressionless, uncaring about what was going on in front of him. "A skilled interrogator who has the time will alternate brutality with a honey-pot, often using interrogation drugs to further weaken the subject's resistance."

He looked up at me, his rimless glasses flashing in the light. "It is a very effective tactic, and one that can be nearly impossible to resist. A skilled interrogator or programmer will play on weaknesses, stripping away your psyche to make you completely pliable." He glanced at the bed, then back at me.

What Lasair was doing began to recede from my mind as he spoke.

"With enough time, not only will you admit to everything that the interrogator wants to know, you can be completely reprogrammed to his specifications." He glanced at his watch. "You have a limited time to resist, and you will be past the point of no return more quickly than you would expect. Once trapped, it is nearly impossible to extract yourself."

"Sean, your nose is bleeding." Glenna said. Her voice was low and sultry, at odds with her words. "Are you all right, Sean?"

Lasair's mouth suddenly moved away. "Aodan's nose is bleeding too." I looked down as saw that she had several fat drops of blood on her forehead, and blood in her hair.

"What?" Nancy asked, sitting up.

A thick trickle of blood ran from both of her nostrils.

"Their medication." Lasair said softly, pulling me down to sit on the bed next to her. She looked at the girl straddling John/Sean."Kevena, get their medication from the makeup table."

Kevena climbed off of John, who put his hands to his stomach and groaned.

Stomach cramps. From the tea? From the delay in getting our medication. It was odd, we should have been good until the morning.

"They'll need tea." Glenna said, climbing off the bed. She moved toward the fireplace, picking up a poker.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. Something was wrong, otherwise, why would one of the Alphabet Boys be here?

Nancy held out her hand and I climbed onto the bed, moving over to her. Lasair rubbed my back while I did so, her hands soft and warm.

The lizard shook his head, snapping his jaws several times as if he was trying to drive away a buzzing insect.

"My Aodan." Nancy said, grabbing my arm and pulling me up her so I could kiss her gently. She held her hand on the back of my neck, keeping my face close to her's. "We missed you, Aodan."

...that's... that's... that's not...

"Good to see you, Aodan." John said, rolling onto his side so that he was facing away from and propping his head up with one hand so he could watch the two girls moving around the room.

Glenna was stirring the fire under the teapot. Kevena was carefully popping pills out of the blister-packs. Both of them were nearly luminous in the dim light, their pale skin making them see otherworldly.

"You three are covered in sweat." Lasair giggled.

"Hot and muggy in here." Bomber said, his voice slightly slurred.

"I'll open a window." Lasair said, getting off the bed. All three of us watched her as she moved, and she paused for a moment when one leg was on the bed and the other was on the floor, spreading them wide. She reached down with one hand and spread herself open, giggling wickedly.

"Don't take too long." Nancy said thickly.

She giggled and moved over to the window, undoing the latches and pushing them open.

Wind swept in, damp and cool, raising goosebumps on my skin as the temperature in the room suddenly dropped.

"Lasair, we aren't supposed to open the window." Glenna chided softly. "The Matrons said so."

"They're hot and sweaty." Lasair said, giggling as she touched her hard nipples. "The air feels good."

Glenna was pouring three cups of tea.

...don't...

I hadn't noticed the sharp smell of incense until the window was opened and it was swept away. King had moved over to by the fire, the ice remaining unthawed even though I could feel the heat from the fireplace all the way over where I was laying on the bed.

Nancy licked up the side of my neck, her hand reaching down to stroke me.

It was right, but it was wrong. My brain couldn't figure it out. It was wrong, but it was right. It was right but it was wrong.

...yes Nancy no... no... no what?...

I inhaled sharply, flooding my system with oxygen. The lizard looked up from his panels, wondering what I was doing.

...this is my body. it is a meat machine that follows my commands. I alone am in control of it. it is my meat machine and it does my will. even when the meat machine is weak the programming that drives it is strong...

"Aodan?" Lasair's voice was worried. I looked down at her to see her sitting down on the end of the bed, staring at me. "Do we not excite you?" She asked, frowning.

...Stillwater...

I opened my mouth to tell her... something. "I'm fine, Lasair." is what came out.

...Anthony...

Bomber sneezed and cursed, pulling his hand away and looking at a palm full of blood.

"Oh, Sean." Kevera said, rushing over to him. She pulled his head against her breasts, smearing them with blood.

I managed to get to my feet.

...Corporal...

I lurched to where she had left the pills. My body didn't want to respond correctly, the lizard trying to turn me around to go back to the two women on the bed.

But Bomber was bleeding, his blood pressure skyrocketing. But why? Why would his blood pressure be going up? Elevated heartrate from sex shouldn't have pushed him into a nosebleed. Ten miles with a full pack couldn't push it to that, even if we hadn't taken our morning dose.

Why?

Because... of... reasons?

...United...

My hand was on the edge of the makeup table when I sneezed, blood spattering across the table and onto the mirror. I sneezed again, sinking to my knees, managing to get my hand up in time to cover it with thick sticky blood.

"Oh, Aodan!" Lasair jumped off the bed, almost falling as she wobbled unsteadily. The blood drops from where my nose had bled slid down her face and breasts.

I pulled myself up, brushing away her arm when she went to touch me, help me, get me to my feet.

...States...

"Don't touch me." I snarled. The lizard watched in surprise as the combat systems initialized and pre-charged.

"Aodan, you're hurt, let your girl take care of you." Lasair said, turning away. "Maitilde, Aodan is... Maitilde, you're bleeding too!"

"Medication crash?" Nancy's voice was dreamy, disconnected, and confused. "Something... something common between... between us." She sneezed, blood filling her hand and misting across her breasts.

Something surged up inside me. The blood on the girl's breasts did something to me. Something weird, something dark, something glimpsed at times but never fully surfaced.

I wanted to throw all four girls down and savage fuck them with blood smeared on their breasts. Feel their nails rip at the skin of my back, feel their teeth bite into me as I drove deep into their belly. The bodies of the dead cooling beneath us as we clawed and pulled at one another, the enemies of McDaurn coughing out their life's blood as I took each of the four girls and filled their bellies and...

...Army...

The ice in my shoulder burned. That black ball of ice, sick and tainted, something that Alfenwehr had left inside my soul, burned and chilled my blood.

I grabbed a set of four pills, mine, and threw them into my mouth, swallowing them down dry. I grabbed the two sets that were identical, one set in each hand, and turned toward the bed.

King stood by the edge of the bed, his M-60 bent, cracked, and damaged from the furious fighting that had gone on in the hallway outside my room. He had field dressings on both biceps and one on his thigh. He was covered in frost, even his eyes.

I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling my stomach cramp hard enough I wanted to double over.

...meat machine...

The boards went full of static and changed while the lizard stood still. Tendons and muscles were replaced by hydraulic pistons, flatware gear motors, and carbon filament cables. My stomach was replaced with a biochemical fusion reactor, lungs were replaced by oxygen exchange powered intake system. One by one the systems, even my brain, were replaced by biomechanical systems.

The lizard picked a cable off the floor and tilted its head forward, exposing a jack in the back of his neck. He shuddered, his tail thrashing violently, then shoved the plug into the jack.

"Stillwater, Anthony, Corporal, US Army." I muttered, moving forward to touch Glenna, who had three cups of tea in her hands.

"What, Aodan?" Glenna asked.

"Move." I said. My voice was raw and sore from all of the screaming I had done while tied up in the field. Glenna looked startled, but moved to the side. I tapped Bomber and he looked up at me, his eyes confused by the glaze and drowsy, drugged look.

"Take them, Specialist." I ordered. My voice was firm.

King nodded in approval.

Bomber looked confused, but took them automatically. Nancy held her hand out and I dumped her pills into them and she swallowed them down almost greedily.

I turned, staggering toward the dresser. My clothing had been folded neatly on top of it, where one of the girls

...your cousins...

had taken my glasses and handed them to me. My flannel shirt and T-shirt were folded neatly on top of my Levi jeans. I could see where the rips in my shirt had been neatly sewn.

I could smell the girls, smell their arousal, and blocked it out.

"Stillwater. Anthony. Corporal. US Army." I whispered, picking up my T-shirt. I shrugged into it, feeling the cloth slide over the fresh scabs from where Tuath Dé Aine has savaged my skin with the thorns that slid from beneath her fingernails and deposited venom into my bloodstream.

"I am meat machine. Twisted steel and sex appeal." I kept whispering. Everyone on the bed was occupied, but I ignored it.

If I looked over there, I'd be lost again.

My Levi's felt rough against my skin. My nerves felt raw, like the first layers of skin had been removed to expose the nerves.

...nerves... nerve...

I buttoned them up quickly. My pockets still had my wallet, change, keys inside of them. I buckled my trusty leather belt.

...nerve agent...

The belladonna. Atropine sulphate was extracted from the plant atropa belladona, the common ingrediant in many of the Matron's teas they used to control boys. Atropine was used as an antidote to organophosphates commonly used in nerve agent and a sufficent dose would give one hundred percent blockage of the organophosphate uptake into the nervous system.

The Sticky Bromide had to be reacting to the belladonna.

I pulled on my socks, ignoring the sounds from the bed, where I knew the five of them had gone back to their nasty little fivesome. My boots went next, and I topped it off with my flannel shirt. The sheathe for the Ka-Bar was under everything, and I clipped it to the back of my belt and put the Ka-Bar away from where someone, probably Lasair, had set it down.

When I turned, John was pushing aside Glenna off of him. She protested, fell on Nancy, her elbow digging into Nancy's stomach.

Both of them vomited explosively. Glenna was showered by Nancy, who pushed her away, rolled, and held onto Bomber as she vomited again. Both of them were throwing up sticky blackish looking stuff mixed with bile and the remains of their dinner. Their heads were together, and when they looked up I dumped a basin of water all over their faces.

"Get up. Get dressed." I snarled.

My head was clearing. Whatever was in the tea couldn't affect a meat machine made of biomechanical machinery.

...part man, part machine. Underneath, it's a hyper-alloy combat chassis, microprocessor-controlled. Fully armored; very tough. But outside, it's living human tissue: flesh, skin, hair, blood... Kyle Reese's voice wound through my brain, and I closed my eyes for a moment.

"Aodan?" Nancy asked, looking at me.

I slapped her.

"Aodan?" Her voice sounded small, hurt, and tears welled up in her eyes.

I slapped her as hard as I could, throwing her against Bomber.

"I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!" Nancy Nagle came off the bed, her arms reaching for my throat.

"What the fuck, Ant?" Bomber came to his feet, lunging at me, trying to grab me and pin me before I kept going psychotic on them.

I backpedalled and they bumped into each other.

"At ease that shit." I snapped.

Both stopped. They looked at each other. Nagle turned around and looked at the three women on the bed. All three of them were staring, open mouthed at the three of us.

"Get dressed, soldiers." I snapped. "You're suffering from atropine poisoning."

"Goddamn it." Nancy swore, She grabbed her shirt, pulling it on, while I looked at the three girls on the bed.

"Stay on the bed." I snapped. "Don't try anything that you're going to regret."

Glenna opened her mouth and I held my hand up.

"You call me Aodan, I'll knock the teeth out of your mouth before you finish saying it." I told her.

She looked behind me, and I knew she was looking at the raising red welt shaped like my hand across the side of Nancy's face.

"We'll be in trouble." Lasair whispered.

"That true, Ant?" Bomber asked.

"Maybe." I said, sucking on my lower lip. Dammit, I didn't know how much the balance of power had shifted, what traditions had been cast aside.

How much the hatred for my Father ran.

"Then they have to come with us. This shit ain't there fault, brother." Bomber said.

"Shut up and dress." I snapped. I looked at the three women and made a snap decision. "The three of you, get dressed in warm clothing, we're going to be leaving."

The three girls just stared. "Now, dammit." I stepped forward, helping them gently off the bed. "Stay quiet, the last thing we want is someone to hear us." I helped Glenna off the bed. "I don't know if you're safe is you stay here."

"Goddamn it, Ant, you practically took my goddamn jaw off." Nancy bitched.

The three women moved past me. They were still flushed, their eyes dreamy but fear beginning to show.

"John, don't watch them dress." I told him.

"Huh?"

"He said not to watch him, you Texas ape." Nancy snapped. She stepped up next to me and I glanced at her. She was fully dressed, that knife of hers riding in a sheathe at her hip. "You sure about this?"

"I don't know what will happen to them if I leave them behind." I told her honestly. "They haven't done anything wrong, and after what happened to Niamh..." I let it trail off and Nancy nodded.

"I'll run point, Nancy, you keep the girls together, Bomber, you're on drag." I said, running everything through the floorplan in my head.

The side door would be best, then around the house to where the vehicles were parked. Even if my truck wasn't out there, I could hot-wire a vehicle in less than sixty seconds, which meant that we weren't going to be stuck.

I could also disable a vehicle in the same amount of time.

The girls were dressing and I kept them in my peripheral vision so I could see them but not look directly at them.

If I looked at them, I'd be lost.

The lizard was armored with chrome armor, his eyes burning LED's, a blade sliding in and out of the end of his tail. He was beyond the breed button, which had gone dark.

That rough, dark thing inside of me had submerged again and I tried to forget it had ever surfaced. I didn't know what it was, but the fact that it was inside of me frightened me.

"Goddamn, Ant, look at Lasair's..." John started to say.

I whipped around and slapped him. "Eyes right, soldier."

His eyes widened and his knuckles crunched as he balled his fists. His eyes lit with fire, his sudden rage at me burning at the drugs that were coursing through his system.

"You're poisoned, drugged, don't look." I told him. I grinned. "Trust me, I want to too. They're beautiful."

A wistful look covered his face. "Yeah, they are..."

"I'm sure your girlfriend will understand why you were in bed with three women that weren't Nancy." I tossed out.

Bomber flushed suddenly, looking down.

"There you go, hold onto that." I told him.

"They're ready." Nancy said, coming up next to me. Her cheek had a handprint on it and I felt a rush of guilt at striking her like that. She saw where I was looking and took my hand. "It was like coming out of a dream, Ant. You had to."

"Doesn't mean I liked doing it." I told her.

"Honey, of everyone on Earth, I know that best." She told me, squeezing my hand. "I'm tough, I'll be all right." She took a deep breath and blew it out. "The only thing that kept me from grabbing one of those girls and pushing their face into my muffin was that slap still hurts."

"Aodan?" Lasair asked. Her voice was wavery, dreamy.

"Call me Ant." I told her.

"Ant." She drew the word out, tasting it, rolling it around in her mouth like she had...

Cracks appeared in the lizard's armor and one LED fell out to reveal one of his reptilian eyes. I pulled my brain from that image and memory before I lost control again. With Tuath Dé Aine's venom in my system I was going to have a hard time resisting if I kept thinking down those paths.

"OK, girls, I'm going to go first, you'll all stick with Nancy, and John will pull up the rear." I told them. They nodded, all sleepy eyed. "Did they bring my truck from the hospital?"

Glenna nodded.

"We'll go for my truck. Girls, you pile in front with me, John, you and Nancy jump in the back." I finished.

All three of them looked young, afraid.

"You're McDaurn women, hold onto that." I snapped.

One by one they straightened.

"Girls are no longer safe, look what they did to Niamh." I told them. "You might be considered tainted by association, so you're coming with us, we're not going to leave you behind to take the brunt of whatever the fuck is going on."

All three nodded. They were still drugged looking, but I could see them trying to throw off the effects of the tea and whatever else had been done to them.

Glenna moved over and picked up the fireplace poker, her face hardening. She handed it to Lasair, who looked at it, looked at me, then nodded slowly. Nancy and John moved over with them, John taking the knife off of the plate of sliced bread and meat and handing it to Kevena, who blushed but smiled at him. Glenna took the knife John offered her from his belt. He had another on his belt and I knew he had a third in his boot.

"We ready?" I asked.

They all nodded.

"That depends." A voice said.

...aw shit...

I turned and looked at the door.

Matron Rionoch stood there, dressed in a black dress with red edging, the family colors, with the McDaurn sigil done in needlepoint over her heart. She had a red sash around her waist, and her iron gray hair was done up in a braid that was thrown over her shoulder so it fell over her right breast.

"What is your plan now?" She smiled, exposing her tea stained teeth.

...kill her... kill her now...