The next morning I made a beeline for the cafeteria, knowing Tabitha would be up bright and early to get herself a big plate of breakfast and a tall coffee. Similar to how my pseudo-transformation into a dino-freak had accelerated my metabolism by a factor of ten, I figured a similar process was at play within Tabitha’s body because the girl could eat.
Bleary-eyed and moving a little stiff, just like she was every morning after a workout, Tabby sat down at her usual table with her large mug of coffee and three plates stacked high with breakfast foods.
No sooner had she pressed her ass into the bench and started digging in than I sat down across from her. I probably looked pretty crazy after a sleepless night spent in a doom-spiral as I overthought the ramifications of what had started out as a silly theory but by now I was completely convinced was a full-blown conspiracy.
“Uh, you good?” she asked, her words slightly muffled by the bacon strips she had folded into her mouth a second earlier.
“Not even a little,” I replied honestly. “So here’s the thing.”
I launched into my best attempt at a dissemination of my thesis. It was awkward and I stumbled several times as it turned out that Tabby had not seen most of the movies I was bringing up so casually in my explanation, expecting her to catch on right away so I could move along swiftly, which cost me time as I had to rewind several times and explain the plot of each film.
The good news was she seemed very interested in seeing some of these movies.
The bad news was she did not believe a word I said about my whole Aleksei-is-behind-everything theory.
“Okay but it all fits. Aleksei runs the organization tasked with tracking down and merc’ing Feral monsters. I don’t know where he gets his funding from but what do shadowy organizations do when they’re worried about their funding getting cut? They invent more problems that only they can solve. So he invents this ‘signal’ doohickey, right, and suddenly there’s an uptick in Feral monsters. Oh no, what are we going to do? Send money towards the Keeper’s Bureau, duh. Now Aleksei has more money to make cool flashy gadgets and pay his tailor to make those fucking immaculate three-pieces he wears. With me so far?”
Tabitha shook her head but gestured for me to continue anyway as she shoveled scrambled eggs into her mouth and washed it down with coffee.
“Okay, so now Aleksei’s the head of an even more well-funded Bureau who, thanks to the conveniently timed graduation of a batch of fresh Keepers, takes out this new threat with ease. He makes a name for himself in the upper echelons. Next thing you know? Aleksei’s trading that sick white office chair at the end of a magic corridor for a leather office chair in the oval office.”
Tabitha, wide-eyed, nodded as if this all made sense.
“So let me get this straight. You think Aleksei is behind this ‘signal’ and he’s organizing this big conspiracy that’s getting a bunch of people killed, all so he can be President of the Colonies?”
I frowned. “Yes. Why are you saying that like it sounds crazy? That’s what all the villains do in the movies. They’re trying to attain more power, and who has more power than the Colonial President?”
Tabby stared down at her second empty plate incredulously. “Dude. Aleksei already has more power than the President. Trading his office for the oval one? Serious downgrade. Like…Ouch. That would be like an astronaut being told to become a…janitor or something. No offense to janitors, I’m just saying.”
This wasn’t making sense to me. “I’m not sure I follow.”
Tabby sighed. “Ryan you can’t go missing sleep like this. Did you get high last night or something? Where’s this coming from?”
“No, I haven’t been high for weeks. And I told you, I overheard him and some doctor lady and then some other agent guy in a quiet corridor by the labs. They were talking about—”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. The ‘signal,’ you said. Enough already.”
“Okay but how would being President be a step down from heading up the Bureau?”
“Wow. It’s moments like these that I recall how much of a newbie you are at this. So the President of the Colonies controls one nation of one world, a world with hundreds of nations, mind you, in a solar system with three worlds, each with a bunch of nations. ‘With me so far?’” she parroted.
Eyes narrowing at her mocking tone, I stole one of her pancakes and motioned for her to continue while I started tearing it apart and dipping it into syrup.
“Well Aleksei manages Eastport. The focal point for six separate dimensions and the intersections of a whole host of other alternate dimensions which occasionally allow unexpected arrivals like Alan the sun-lion to pop in unannounced. He’s sort of a governor, an ambassador, an air-traffic controller, a military general, and the CEO of a Fortune-50 company all wrapped up into one.”
I shrugged. “Kinda sounds like the President’s job to me. He’s got a whole country’s economy to balance.”
Tabitha scoffed. “Balancing the Colonial economy is a damn sight easier to do than negotiating a treaty between the fairies of Skontonea and the goblins of Urglsnir. But Aleksei managed it just one month before you got here.”
“You made those words up,” I said.
Tabitha splayed her hands out at her sides. “Ryan. Calm down. Go get some sleep. I’m giving you the day off from training. Go to the infirmary and ask for some tranqs, okay? You’re talking like a conspiracy theorist.”
I swallowed the last bite of pancake and purposefully looked around.
“Interesting words coming from a werewolf sitting in a top-secret government facility.”
“Touche. I’ll tell you what. I will go talk to Aleksei myself if you agree to grab a few hours of sleep. Deal?” She offered me her right hand and I stared at it for a solid thirty seconds before finally reaching up and grabbing it.
We shook.
“Infirmary,” She said sternly.
“Hey,” I warned, already half-standing now. “We’re not in the training room, Tabby. Out here you’re not my boss.”
Tabby grinned. “I wasn’t ordering you around as your trainer, Ryan. I was actually ordering you around as your friend. And for the record, I actually am your boss.”
Maybe I was a touch sleep deprived, but a smile crossed my face. “We’re friends?”
Tabitha groaned and gave me a shove. “Go get some sleep!”
I moved to comply with an idiotic grin on my face.
Three steps in, a voice broke through the din of cafeteria-goers and altered my trajectory. “All Keepers, report to Level 7 immediately. This is not a drill. I repeat, all Keepers, report to Level 7 immediately. This is not a drill.”
I turned around to see Tabitha tossing an extra pancake and two strips of bacon on a plate and chugging her coffee before heading my way. All around the cafeteria an assortment of other Keepers were rising from their tables and trying to cram in a few bites in a similar manner.
“What’s on Level 7?” I asked.
Tabby had the good grace not to make me feel stupid for asking and instead waved for me to follow her as she answered, “Our next mission, hotshot. C’mon.”
Level 7 was a massive briefing room, as it turned out. Big circular amphitheater with a massive stage and holographic projectors and surround-sound speakers. I bet the agency movie night was lit, if they had one.
“Here,” Tabitha said quietly, shoving a pill into my hand and offering me a paper cup of water. “Take this. It’ll wake you right up.”
My eyes narrowed suspiciously as I looked down at the uncomfortably large pill.
“What’s in it?”
She rolled her eyes. “Eyes of some newt and the tongue of a frog-monster, what do you expect? It’ll make your body feel like it’s all caught up on sleep. Just take it, the briefing is about to start!”
She was right, Aleksei was marching up onto the stage like some trillionaire CEO coming out to announce they just reinvented cell phones or something crazy like that. It’s crazy just how many Keepers there were in this complex. I had heard of a couple different pairings or teams over the past three weeks and I supposed that most of the people in the gym were probably Keepers too, but it never really occurred to me that there were this many.
Aleksei had his own private army of secret Keepers down here in his underground facility. And here we all were gathering around to obey his every command.
I’m not really sure if I was disgusted or jealous. Maybe both.
Having an army did sound pretty chill.
Tabitha kicked me in the calf hard enough to startle me out of my reverie.
“Focus, dude. You almost fell asleep!”
I shook myself and took the pill, chasing it down with the contents of the paper cup as quickly as I could to stop myself from overthinking too much to actually get anything done.
The next thirty seconds or so? Nothing. Don’t have any information whatsoever.
When I came to, however, my eyesight was a helluva lot sharper and my heart was thumping along like I was running a pacer test. The sleep-deprived fog lifted from my brain and I swore I felt all my joints pop into the perfect alignment at the same time. In short: I felt ready to rock and roll.
“Whoa. Holy shit what is in that? Wow!”
“I know, I know. Keep it together. And here, hold this,” Tabitha set a jacket over my lap. It was one of those cut-off jackets that did nothing to cover the mid-riff and would have looked extremely hot on her, so I was already disappointed she was handing it to me instead of wearing it, but now I was extremely confused.
I glanced down at it and then back over to her. “Why?”
She blushed bright red. “That pill I just gave you has some side effects.” Her eyes darted very pointedly towards my crotch and then back up towards the stage.
My eyebrows crawled up my face as her unspoken message washed over me.
“You’re telling me this now, after I already took it?
Tabby covered her mouth to keep from snickering and nodded in the affirmative.
“Well this jacket’s not going to cover it, we need something else.”
“Oh calm down, Ryan. I’m sure it’s not that big of a deal. You’ll be fine. That side effect usually only lasts like ten minutes anyway. Besides, the briefing is starting. Shh.”
She did not just shush me.
But she did. And Aleksei was already starting up his presentation. The good news was that all the lights started dimming, which afforded me more privacy than her crop-top hoodie. The bad news was Tabitha sat down right next to me and leaned a little bit closer than was strictly necessary.
My eyes gravitated towards her thighs, wrapped up in some too-tight leggings and clad in her typical dual holsters. She looked me dead in the eyes and winked, and that was it.
Game over.
It started off fairly gradual, so at first I thought it wouldn’t be an issue. I scrunched up the hoodie, set it on my lap, and hoped for the best. But it became quickly apparent to both me and Tabitha that she had miscalculated.
“Oh,” she whispered, her eyes darting from my lap up to my face. An expression of shock and embarrassment was almost instantly replaced by an expression I did not expect to see on her face, though it was one that I welcomed. Desire.
Sitting at about half-mast I was already bulging against the fabric of my pants, a good ways down my left thigh and already showing off more details of what I was working with than I was even close to ready to be sharing with Tabby just yet.
Her eyes were drawn to it like a moth to a flame, and her cheeks took on a rosy hue.
As it kept growing to its full size, Tabby mouthed the word ‘fuck’ like seven or eight times, each time more incredulously than the last. I didn’t think she meant to do it but her right hand sort of reached for me instinctually. Her hand, which suddenly looked dainty and feminine in comparison with what she was reaching for despite all the hours I had spent seeing her handling assault weapons or sheathing them in boxing wraps, moved towards my left thigh like an arrow released from a bow.
Some part of me panicked, perhaps at the idea of being touched for the first time in so long. Or maybe it was just the same side effect acting on a different body part. Either way, my dino-arm suddenly sprouted into existence between her hand and my crotch. One of the spiked knuckles caught her hand as she was reaching down and pricked her finger.
Her eyes widened slightly and she snatched her hand back fast, looking up at me all apologetically. I was too stunned by how quickly that had all happened to formulate a good response.
A tiny bead of blood flew up from where her hand had been a moment earlier, flicked my way from the sudden trajectory change of her hand, and hit me in the cheek. I wiped it off with my human hand and glanced down at it.
Our eyes met as a whirlwind of emotions, reactions, shock, and regret picked up between us. My mouth fell open to apologize but she stopped me by showing me her hand, already healed, and shaking her head.
“It’s okay,” she mouthed.
She shifted one seat away and let her eyes linger on my crotch for a second before I covered it with my dino-hand, and we both focused on Aleksei’s briefing and did our best to pretend that never happened.
“... which is why I am raising our alert level to defcon 3, effective immediately. I want round-the-clock patrols in each district of Eastport and a fast response team on-call to handle extreme situations. You will still be sticking with your designated partner or partners, but you may be asked to escort non-combat personnel into the field, hex-techs, healers, and the like. You know the drills, Keepers. Get to your groups, check your assignments, and keep our streets safe at all costs. Go!”
The holographic overlay of the city faded. The lights bloomed back to full brightness, and the amphitheater suddenly filled with a rush of noise as all of the other Keepers (who were paying attention) rose from their seats and began moving towards the exits in unison.
Which left Tabitha and I in an awkward predicament.
She turned to me and scooted back into her original seat, leaning in extremely close.
“I’m sorry about the hand thing, I had no warning it—”
Tabitha waved away my apology and whispered a question into my ear.
“Hush. I heal quickly. Now, when were you going to tell me you were packing, hotshot?”
My mind was a little blanked out by the intense pressure emanating from my dick combined with the perfect view I had with her leaned over right beside me, but I still tried for a suave answer.
“When were you going to ask?”
She leaned back and lowered herself onto the seat, eyeing me up and down with a very serious expression. Like she was considering doing something a little…naughty.
“Come on, Ryan. It looks like we’re going to be busy for the next few days, maybe weeks. If we’re going to be seeing more real combat I think it’s time you got a proper weapon.” Her eyes fell once again to my cock and an unmistakable look of desire crossed her face. “Another proper weapon,” she corrected. “Follow me.”
Tabitha got up, turned around, and started heading for the nearest exit. My eyes were drawn to her tight leggings. Her ass was smoking hot and once it started moving away I really had no choice but to follow it.
I’m not going to pretend that getting out of that briefing chamber wasn’t awkward as hell while I was still walking around with a raging erection, nor am I going to omit the fact that I turned quite a few heads as I trailed behind Tabitha, who introduced me to my new favorite part of the entire Bureau Headquarters.
The Armory.