I arrived at the office with Melody, pretending that she’d been the one flying us.
“This way,” I took her to the elevator and held her as she stumbled.
“Miles, my throat hurts,” she scratched it while I pushed the button down to the lab.
“We’ll get you fixed up.”
Melody paused and stared at the elevator. “It isn’t moving.”
“It is. The mad scientists did something to it. You still have the two Monster Fruits?”
She held up two dried lumps. “What are they for?”
“Hell if I know. They are for Wells.” The elevator opened, and I charged out, to find Wells prepping a table among a white, plastic tent set aside. “Get onto the table, Melody,” I said as I zipped up the tent, closing it off to the rest of the lab.
Wells looked up. “Welcome. She consumed Monster Fruit?” The doctor eyed Melody. “But the change isn’t happening.”
I paused. In my rush to get here and get Melody help, I hadn’t worked out exactly how I was going to make sense of all of it without discussing my power.
“She didn’t have a full one. Maybe it’s acting slowly?” I hazarded as Wells then pulled out a hand-held device.
“We’ll see.” She held the device over Melody’s throat, and the table below Melody rattled. When the device finished, there was an image of her throat. “Yes, it seems there are active foreign bodies in your throat, but for whatever reason, they are dormant.”
“What can we do? Can we cut them out?” I asked.
Wells stared at the screen for another moment before shaking her head. “No. Not unless you want Melody to be mute and faint often. Monster Fruit functions like spindly plant roots. They expand rapidly in very thin sections.”
She held up the screen. “See these? Well, those are big enough to know there are also roots like this.” She drew with her finger in a crisscrossing maze of lines, all over her throat. “Right now, she’s feeling the irritation from them because they are halted. The fact that they are halted is the most curious thing to me.”
Her watch was next to me as she held the image up, and it started beeping.
“Dr. Wells, shut up that damn watch. You can sleep after Melody is well,” I growled.
She looked at me wide-eyed, as she tilted her wrist so she could see the face of the watch.
“Doctor?” Melody could see something was wrong.
“Miles. I rebuilt my watch. You probably aren’t aware of my other power; it is miniaturization. I built one of those power scanners into my watch.”
I scowled and pushed all the ki away from her watch; it went quiet.
The doctor gasped, and she double-checked her watch. “I… how?”
“Fix Melody,” I ordered.
“Your power. It’s… off the charts. You just shut it down to zero.” She didn’t even turn to Melody. Her eyes were solely focused on me, and for once, it wasn’t a sexual hunger coming from a woman staring at me. She looked at me as if I were a puzzle she desperately wanted to solve.
Losing my patience, I bound her in kinetic force and sat her down while preventing my voice from carrying outside of our conversation. “You will fix Melody, and you will do it now. I’m not leaving you any other option. Here’s what you need to know. Melody ate a Monster Fruit, and I cut it out of her as quickly as I could. But in the blip of time before I could remove it, some of it seems to have already spread. I have suppressed the remaining Monster Fruit, which is why it appears dormant.”
“Ah,” was all Wells said as she sat glued to the chair. “Well, that makes sense. But I will not help until you can guarantee my safety. Also, I want to study you. Those are my terms.”
I watched her. “My power is to be kept a secret.”
She nodded excitedly. “But I can study it?” She seemed to have forgotten the terms around her safety in her zeal to unravel my powers.
“Yes, but first you need to help Melody. All focus must be on her.” I pointed back to the table, where Melody sat, scared.
Wells got up and picked up the scanning tool again. “So, you are stopping them from growing?”
“Yes, I…” Pausing, I wasn’t sure how much to tell her, but Melody’s life was on the line. “I can control all forms of energy, including the one that drives power.”
Wells looked at me like she’d found the Holy Grail. “What do you call it?”
“I’ve always called it ki, because, like the old Chinese idea, it flows through someone’s body in channels that have no physical representation.”
“You can see it?!” she squeaked excitedly, and I saw her eyes dive over to a notepad, wanting it desperately. But then her eyes grew wider as she looked up at me. “You’re Void. Complete control of energy. That’s how he can do everything he does.”
To remind her of what she was supposed to be doing, I pushed her head back to Melody. “We can discuss things later. This is the problem at hand.”
“Right, but we may be able to use your power to help Melody. Are you able to sense the Monster Fruit inside of her?”
“Absolutely. Though it worked its way into her throat too fast for me to get it out without killing her,” I reminded her.
Wells nodded along and put the scanner down. “I don’t need this, then. Let’s talk about my basic theory on how Monster Fruit works. You see,” she continued, “it’s a parasite, or a tumor, one that is designed to spread through the body. Once it has taken root, it should alter the person and then die off, being reabsorbed back into their body. As it is absorbed into the cells of the host body, it modifies the genes, which cause the drastic mutations that occur,” Wells finished explaining.
While the explanation was helpful, I wasn’t seeing how it was specifically going to help Melody, and I was starting to lose my patience. We needed to stop her from mutating incorrectly. “What about the cancerous giants? What went wrong?”
“What we have found is that the Monster Fruit appears to fail to integrate with the host body. Instead of dying off, parts of it live and create tumors that then spread back through the body, creating the cancerous giants.” Wells reached, taking the two samples of the Monster Fruit Melody had brought with her.
“Since we can start and stop your transition with the help of Void here, maybe we can get a good idea of what’s happening.” Excitement filled the doctor’s eyes.
Melody swallowed loudly. “Am I going to be okay?”
“You are likely going to mutate heavily, but the chances of you becoming a cancerous giant are smaller,” Wells didn’t sugarcoat it.
“We’ll get through this,” I encouraged Melody. I would never let anything happen to her.
I looked over, getting the nod from Dr. Wells as I let go of my hold on the Monster Fruit strands in her throat.
Melody jerked on the bed and grabbed her throat. “It hurts!”
“Yes, that is expected. You have a parasite stretching throughout your body,” Wells commented as all her attention went towards the science. “Hold still. I’ll give you an injection.”
I pinned Melody to the bed, and Wells injected her with a white, milky liquid.
“What was that?” I asked.
“A strong sedative. Awake patients can be such a pain.” The doctor capped the syringe as Melody tried to protest, but the complaint died on her lips, and she slumped on the bed.
“You could have warned me,” I snarled.
“But that would have warned her, and we don’t need her awake. What’s the Monster Fruit doing?” Wells went right back to working, as if it was a normal day on the job for her.
I stared at the doctor for a second, wondering if I should ‘paste’ her, too. No one disrespected my women. But I needed her help, and society needed her brain. She might be the one who could finally shift the gender ratios back to normal.
I swept my power through Melody’s body. “The Monster Fruit is moving down her neck and into her body.”
“Good. This is much slower with a smaller quantity. That’s noteworthy. Where is it now?”
I pointed just below her breasts. It looked as though worms crawled under her skin, and that made me shiver.
The little, wiggling branches moved out endlessly, speeding up and covering her body rapidly.
If she were awake, she would probably be screaming. I know I would be.
“There’s a pocket,” I noticed.
“Where?” Wells grabbed a scalpel, and I glared at her, but she seemed adamant. “It’s likely going to become a tumor. We’ll cut them out as they come. Hopefully, that’ll prevent the worst-case scenario.”
True to Wells’ words, the pocket of ki bulged into a lump that pushed out of her skin.
Rather than let Wells cut her, I sliced it out perfectly. “I can do that,” I insisted. “You can patch her up as we go.”
The doctor nodded, and we got to work. More tumors grew, but I cut them out each time.
As time went on, Melody’s skin darkened and turned purple.
“Is that normal?” I frowned.
“It may be part of her mutation,” Wells hypothesized as she wrapped the fifth tumor we’d cut out. “But that is a good sign. She’s clearly trending towards a cancerous giant, but now that she’s mutating heavily, maybe she’ll pull through.”
“She will,” I replied, determined as I continued to cut out more growths. The Monster Fruit seemed to have spread along most of her body. Now it was time for her body to take back control.
We cut out a few more tumors before it seemed to stop. Melody’s skin turned purple, and her hair turned bleach white.
I brushed aside her hair. It felt just as soft as down. But what caught my attention were her ears. They had become pointed, like some sort of purple elf.
“Do you still find her appealing?” Doctors Wells asked, taking out a notebook.
“Yes. How long will she be out?” I lifted her off the bed. “I want to take her home.”
“Please leave her. I need to continue observation until you can complete your duties as Deputy Director.” Wells put a hand on her, as if that would prevent me from taking her. “I’ll continue to treat her wounds.”
I paused, looking between the two of them, ultimately settling on what would be best for Melody. “Message me the second she wakes up, or if anything changes in her vitals. Any tiny thing.”
“Yes, yes. Of course. She likely won’t wake for hours. I doubt you’ll let me walk away with your secret if she dies. I’ll take perfect care of her.” Wells confirmed. “Go, your tablet has been pinging.”
Grabbing the annoying device, I looked over the messages and realized we had another problem. “How will we explain this?” I gestured at Melody’s transformation.
“She clearly consumed Monster Fruit. I performed an emergency procedure, and she mutated,” Wells explained with ease. “How she consumed it is up to your report. You brought her in.”
I ran my hands through Melody’s hair again. “Damn you for being so stupid.” I kissed her forehead. “Take care of her. I’ll be back.”
Marching out of the plastic tent and to the elevator, I cursed the whole way.
But I needed to relax. I tried a few breathing exercises.
I was headed into Kim’s office, but she’d hinted to me in her messages that she wasn’t alone. There was going to be hell to pay today.
The elevator dinged at the lobby before I knew it, but the lobby was still almost empty.
I took a left into the office area and marched into Kim’s office.
“There he is,” Kim gave me a weak smile and gestured to the two other occupants. One I knew: General Pratt. The other was much prettier, in a royal blue power suit with a pink blouse underneath. “You know the general, and this is Mayor Hendricks.”
“Pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard much about you.” Miss Hendricks shook my hand in one of those firm, get-your-attention sort of handshakes.
“Great, now that we have everyone, tell me what the fuck just happened in my city.” Hendricks went from friendly to pissed off in a blink of an eye.
The general evaded her by pushing the question onto me. “Let’s hear the firsthand account,” he said gesturing to me.
Despite the shitstorm around me, I remained calm. Dealing with these officials was nothing compared to almost losing Melody. “We received warnings that there were two prison breaks in progress. Kim was at North Point. Right now, I can only speak to Gateway. I apologize for the delay; I was seeing to the injured personnel before coming up here. But at Gateway….”
I went through the story, the three of them listening intently. I recounted Void’s appearance and his battle with an unknown super above. And I ended by describing the super falling from the sky, only to fly away with all the inmates. I tried really hard not to growl as I got to the end.
“That’s her. There’s no way that’s not Project Cerberus, General.” Kim shot a glare at the general, who seemed very uncomfortable at that moment.
“We can’t be sure without more information,” Pratt deftly tried to save himself. “There are incredible supers born every day.”
Hendricks held up a hand before the two of them started fighting. “What is Project Cerberus?”
“Before your time,” the general and Kim replied at the same time.
Kim allowed, “It was a project in which the military’s lead scientist gave a girl a third power, which was successful. But then they tried to give her even more. She was born with weak telepathy and regeneration. But after she was given Fortress’s power, both of her existing powers went through the roof. She was a ticking time bomb. I petitioned to get the project terminated.”
Pratt grunted. “We both saw them dispose of her body. There’s no way that could be her.”
“Maybe we could ask the scientist who studied her to weigh in?” I suggested, not having any patience for their arguing.
Hendricks liked my idea, gesturing at me and nodding eagerly.
“Dead. Died of a brain aneurysm a month after the project was canceled,” Pratt grunted.
“What?” That was news to Kim. “That didn’t seem suspicious?”
“We investigated and found nothing amiss. She was a teen at the time, and we thought she was dead,” Pratt defended himself, but he shifted around, looking deeply uncomfortable.
I leaned forward. “Anything else we need to know before we have another disaster in my city?”
Hendricks raised a brow at my phrasing, but she gestured for Pratt to continue.
Pratt opened his mouth and paused. “Screw it. I was hoping to give this to all of you later, but we could get our military satellites to follow Cerberus as she left the city.” He grabbed a tablet and flicked his fingers across it before my tablet pinged, as did the other two.
I knew what it was going to be before I even opened the link. It showed satellite images of a small city that had never been on any maps. “How many?”
“Our best guess is fifty-thousand for the size.”
Kim didn’t believe her ears. “Fifty as in five zero? Holy shit, Pratt. How did you miss this?”
“All nine cities did. Our best guess is they have been recruiting out of all the cities. They’ve taken in the undesired and given them Monster Fruit. We know very little at this time, besides that there appears to be a city growing out in the wilderness where we all thought such was impossible.” Pratt pressed his lips together in a tight line. “We’ve only recently looked at expanding into the wild and that’s just near the city.”
I remembered Kim talking to me the other day about the military’s boneheaded plan to send female supers out into the wilds, to both expand the city and help with the gender imbalance. The thought was chilling.
“Can we bomb it?” Hendricks asked immediately. “Just get rid of it?”
“Absolutely not,” Kim stood up from her desk. “A bomb won’t kill Cerberus, but it would be like kicking a hornet’s nest. She would wreck this city. We cannot count on Void to stop her every time.”
Hendricks crossed her arms, locking in on that topic. From her stance, it wasn’t the first time they’d talked about Void. “Have we still not achieved some sort of agreement with Void?”
Now it was Pratt’s turn to grin at Kim.
“I’ve only managed to get two very brief meetings with him. These things take time. He would spook if I slapped a contract down in front of him. Besides, he knows no one could enforce anything on him,” Kim argued. “I still think it is better to let Void do his own thing, approach him as a friend, and not try to tie him down with contracts or agreements.”
“That’s not entirely your decision to make,” Pratt reminded her.
I raised my hand to get their attention. “Let’s focus on what we can control. Void isn’t it. Kim, we need to entirely reexamine how we were tracking Monster Fruit. If it is coming from outside the city, that changes the game entirely.”
That got their attention, and I was able to divert the conversation away from Void, back to the Monster Fruit problem. I hoped we’d be a bit more productive that way.
Maybe we’d get it out of our city with the new information.
I finished up with the bigwigs and went downstairs to snatch Melody, only to find her surrounded by the rest of my women.
Melody was awake and leaning against Angelina, her body slightly slumped in exhaustion.
“No. Like a good purple. Right?” Angelina encouraged everyone to compliment Melody, who was clearly adjusting to some new realities.
“She’s super purple,” Stella grunted, still glaring at Melody.
If looks could kill, the newly purple super would be dead a thousand times over.
“There he is,” Stella turned to me with her arms crossed. “So, is Melody kicked out? Do I kill her?”
Rather than argue or fight, Melody just hung her head.
I put a sound bubble around us. “Of course not. She’s one of ours. And I kind of like the purple skin.”
Melody looked up, a bit more hopeful, as I said those words. “But she also did something that endangered our entire family. Now, my powers are at greater risk of no longer being a secret. We will determine how she will compensate us all for that risk.”
Melody nodded, accepting that she had some work to do, to repair the relationships in our group.
“A thousand apology blow jobs ought to be enough,” Stella nodded firmly.
Not getting into that, I added, “She’s going to have mandatory therapy for the rest of her life.”
Stella snorted and gave Melody a warning glare. But Melody didn’t need it. She nodded again.
I gave her a little smile, putting the matter to rest.
I looked back over at the women, making sure they were all okay, as well. I’d been so tunnel visioned on Melody that I hadn’t really looked at any of them. Thankfully, we’d made it out of that battle without greater loss.
As I scanned their bodies and their curves, I could feel the heat in my body rising.
Emma saw it as well, leaning over and whispering to Mona. “I don’t even need to be able to read his thoughts to know what’s going through them right now.”
Mona chuckled in response: “I believe my fated has come back to the promises Stella gave for this evening’s activities.”
Stella’s deep frown, directed at Melody, instantly changed as excitement filled her face and she turned to me. “Yes! I am Master’s good little succubus. We should go start right now.”
I laughed, pleased that the tension had dissipated from the group. I looked over at Angelina, who gave me a nod, letting me know that she’d take care of Melody.
Opening my arms, Stella raced into them, snuggling up against me.
I leaned down, burrowing my face into her hair as I held her, taking deep breaths. Refocusing on Stella’s smell, I felt the day’s edges fade away.
I knew the new city would bring new threats, but all my women were around me, safe.
We would figure out whatever came next. For now, I was going to savor my evening and take on new challenges in the morning.