Humanity 2.0, Year 006, Day 115

Nina shook her head, sighing and interrupting me. "-you think you'll make another Nadine, and she'll run off and get us all in trouble or something. Even though your goddamn MIA redhead has yet to cause us any problems." Nina sighed. "I don't think that would happen, and I think you're a lot sharper about that now."

I remained silent, just feeling her body under my hands. She smiled down at me, with a hint of sadness, then took my hands under hers and guided them up to her tits, biting her lip. "Sorry... bad timing. Sex now!"

"I can do that." My hands fixed on her waist, bouncing her up and down. We began to make small waves as the fucking motion took over, so natural by now that it took virtually no effort. 15226's memories had merged themselves into my mind fairly well by then, and I'd also had so much experience with all three girls by that point that sex between us all was a subtle and sensuous thing, doing exactly what each other wanted but always trying to find some new, small, secret way to mix things up.

Once we were both going fairly strong, the splashing was getting a little out of hand; Nina pulled herself up off me and bent over the side of the tub, shivering at first, then gasping as I came up behind her and guided my rod back inside her tight pussy. I bent over her body, knowing she was freezing cold and using myself to help keep her warm.

My own hand came down next to one of hers on the lip of the tub, bracing me in place as I held her just under the breasts with the other. I grunted as my hips took on an animalistic motion almost of their own accord, adjusting my pace to the soft moans and gasps she made. I could hear the noise of Emily and Bethany's lovemaking behind us getting louder as well, the two's hands playing across clits quickly as their tongues never left one another's mouth.

I sensed Nina's closeness not long after she did, and my hand found her clit, rubbing hard and around in circles just how she liked. Her mouth opened wide and she made a long, low, moaning sound as I forced her past the point of orgasm. Her body quivered underneath me as she came.

I kept pumping away, and I glanced back behind me to see Bethany and Emily trying some kind of underwater scissoring thing with each of them braced against perpendicular walls. I don't know how good it felt for them, but it was new, and the sight was enough to push me over. I grunted, and pumped my hips a few more times while I felt the shocks of pleasure in my dick. Come spurted into Nina's pussy once again, resuming a near-daily occurrence after three weeks of not seeing her.

When I let myself slide out of her, Nina lowered herself down again into the hot water, a contented look on her face as she went down to her neck, reveling in post-coital bliss and the heat of the water together. I stood up straight, stretched, and smiled as I heard Emily making a series of short yelps, Bethany bringing her to orgasm -- and Dr. Lazar following behind not long afterward.

I held that position for a time, letting the girls rest, and just breathing the frigid air. We couldn't stay in the pool all night, of course; even hominus have safe limits. I got out first, toweled off briefly, then grabbed three fresh towels from inside, still warm, and opened one wide.

Taking Emily's hand, I pulled her up and wrapped her quickly, then did the same for the other two. I shut off the tub as they went inside, drying one another's bodies casually and talking about something. I picked up my discarded clothes, and went in to join them. Bethany and Nina were retiring to one of the bedrooms, and Emily took my hand and began to lead me up the stairs to the master bedroom.

Tempting as it was to bend her over the bed and fuck her brains out, I was tired after a long day, and more than satisfied after the fucking I'd given Nina. Emily seemed even more sated, and fished through her open bag to pull out an oversized nightshirt, which she donned then tossed herself under the thick comforter.

For myself, I pulled on a pair of jeans, forgetting about underwear, and propped my back up against the headboard with my e-reader. I might have been a multimillionaire with three sexy girlfriends and a permanent-vacation lifestyle, but I didn't want to just completely abandon the idea of bettering myself; the little handheld thing was loaded with nonfiction and educational texts.

I was currently slogging my way through an astrophysics book; the subject had especially began to grip me in the past few years as the magnitude of the Experimenter's existence began to hit me. A cosmic being, flying throughout the galaxy for eons, having witnessed the end of thousands of civilizations...

What a life, what an existence; she'd downloaded into my mind the knowledge of sex in her life as a human female - but the 'real her' was something else entirely, of which I had experienced only a fragment of a fragment. The things I wish I'd asked her in that time, but I hadn't -- I was what, nineteen at the time; even right then, at twenty-five, that encounter still left me feeling like a stupid kid who had squandered the opportunity to ask Life's Great Questions (tm).

I lost track of time as I tried to commit to memory everything I read; Kepler's elliptical studies, the main sequence of stars, Doppler shifting. Nina had finished her graduate degree not too long ago, in world history, and had finally accepted my money when I offered to pay for her second PhD program. She'd been saying something about not being my hooker for years, which always made me roll my eyes, but I guess my argument that the Experimenter's money belonged to all of us finally won her over. She had taught me a few things along the way, mainly tricks about studying and memorization, which had helped me a lot. I took a few notes on a pad next to the bed; they were incomprehensible scribbles to anyone else, probably.

I must have been reading for two or three hours. Emily was sound asleep next to me. The only sound was her near-silent breath and the din of the house's old heater, firing full blast just to keep the place halfway to warm in the below-zero temperatures of Tahoe at night during that time of year. I thumbed to the next page.

Emily moaned next to me, sleepily. "Bennnn... that you?"

I glanced over, perplexed, then looked back at my book. "I didn't say anything, Em. Go back to sleep."

Emily turned over, bleary-eyed, looking up at me. My eyes met hers, and she looked confused for a while, then her eyes narrowed. "What's that sound?"

"What?" I shrugged. I couldn't hear anything. Emily suddenly sat upright, now looking very concerned. Her eyes darted around the room, and one hand shot out to my forearm, holding me still as I bent toward her, worried. My throat caught. "Em, what's wrong?"

Her voice was so quiet I could barely hear it. "Someone's here, Ben. Not one of us." She slid out of bed, quick and with almost no noise. I had never seen her move like that. I was still staring at her confused.

"Do you think maybe Bethany or Nina got-"

She shot an angry glare at me as she crept toward the door. "Shut up!"

It was that moment, as I was staring at her, feeling dumb and confused, that the soldier in snow-camo colors and a white balaclava came through the door, gun pointed out and sweeping the room. I was startled, and for a few moments my mind went blank. What the hell is this clown doing here?

Dumb questions were still floating through my head as Emily acted immediately. In a flash, she threw herself at the nameless gunman, knocking him against the wall with a thud and a groan, and her arm shot out behind her as she punched him in the gut, full force. There was this sickening cracking noise as I knew she destroyed at least part of his ribcage, and who knew which internal organs. A second guy, right behind him, rushed in, his gun down in one hand as a flashing steel knife shot forward toward her.

Something clicked in my head, an instant too late. Someone with a knife was coming at Emily; my beloved sister, one of my first chosen. I hadn't even gotten my feet on the floor yet when Emily caught the second soldier's wrist, twisting it, making him groan, but he countered with a shift of his weight and the two of them twisted around as the first guy slumped to the floor.

It turned into almost a wrestling match, the second fighter trying to push her back against the wall, Emily too off-balance to push back harder. I had hit the floor, lost my own balance for half a second and felt something twist in my ankle as I landed poorly. I still wasn't used to being as tall as I was. I cursed myself a hundred times in that instant for being such a clumsy ass.

There was an enormous crash as the world filled with flying glass. Behind me, the big window which covered the wall out to the second floor patio exploded, two men swinging in, dressed just like the two who had come through the door. There was one on either side of me. On reflex, I reached out toward the one on the right, grabbing him by the vest he wore, though he shifted out of my grasp with a roll to his right.

I heard the sound and, for a second, I thought I'd been shot. They didn't have silencers or anything on their guns; it was as loud as a cannon in the silence there had been before. Two shots, in quick succession; like a professional, or so I'm told. I saw the blood spattering on the door as I turned to see what had happened.

Two blossoms had formed on Emily's side, right around the lower ribs on her right. Her eyes were wide, and she spat up a little blood, which was bright and easily visible even in the dark of my reading light on the soldier's snow-camo-colored outfit. Our eyes met for an instant.

Emily.

Up until that day, I had never really tested my full strength. I went to the gym, and did my cardio, maxed out the resistance machines, lifted huge weights -- all to the impressed oohs and aahs of the people there. I was always careful to hold back because I didn't want to get any attention by breaking Olympic records casually in some random gym.

It also seemed really disrespectful to the actual Olympic athletes who busted their ass to bring themselves to the peak of human perfection -- after all, I wasn't actually human anymore. Even when I tested my strength alone, I was doing it on machines designed and built for humans, performing to the limits of human power and endurance. No methods or machines had yet been devised which could really test a hominus male.

I had never before, or since, felt fury as I did in that moment. My arm lashed out again at the man on the right, grabbing him savagely by the neck, my big hand clamping down on it as hard as I could. I felt a pop, then a snap, but I wasn't paying much attention to it. The man who'd shot Emily needed to go down.

I flung the man in my right hand as hard as I could, pivoting on one foot as I shifted my weight to bring him up and over, smashing him down atop the shooter. I heard shouting, the sound of disciplined men all trying to order each other at once; I didn't care. The two who had come through the window smashed together, leaving a big dent in the hardwood flooring with a massive smash. They bounced back up briefly, like ragdolls, before bumping against the armoire and lying still.

The one who had been fighting Emily was backing away from her, leveling his gun at me as she slid down the wall, leaving a trail of bright red blood on it. Panic threatened to take control, but in the moment before it did, the other force took over again. With a tight, controlled kick, I felt a sharp pain against the bridge of my right foot as I kicked the whole bed up and toward him. It was king-sized, and reached almost to the ceiling on its side; the thing suddenly filled the guy's whole field of view.

There were more gunshots, but they went wide, blowing holes in the mattress as I charged toward the opening left at the base of the mattress. As expected, I saw him coming around the corner to try to line up a shot at me -- but I got there sooner than he... and I, for that matter... expected.

I batted the rifle out of his hands, bruising my palm in the process. I heard an odd noise from it as I did, and wondered in some corner of my mind if it was broken. I was turning back toward him, but for an instant he wasn't there. I sensed a shift of weight lower down, and saw he had ducked low, and was gripping the knife tightly, blade down in a closed fist.

In a single flashing motion, he swung it diagonally, starting on my lower side; I stepped backward on some reflex. It was probably the only thing that saved my life. It didn't hurt for the first second; there was this cold metallic sensation zipping across my chest, then I felt hot sticky stuff creeping over my skin. It confused me long enough for him to draw it back toward him, and suddenly launch his arm forward from the elbow with the glinting steel at its edge.

I could see a look of intense anger and concentration in his eyes and mouth -- all that was visible through the balaclava -- and I tried to stop him with one arm, but I was too late. The knife sank into my body, in between two of my lower ribs on the right. Instantly, I felt an enormous, horrific pain in my chest and abdomen.

He tried with all his weight to twist the knife; I suppose I should thank 15226 for those polymers she managed to apparently steal from various dinosaurs and engineer into our bones. The imperviousness of my bones made him lose his grip, and he staggered backward, still with this massive, maniacal grin -- like he'd felled the giant, all by himself.

I suppose that was his final thought. My kick caught him in the gut, as hard as I could, and he sailed backward as I felt bones shatter and organs rupture against my foot before he flew away and smashed limply against the far wall. He choked out a messy goop of blood, coughed a few more times as he slumped over, and then went still.

The pain was quickly becoming unbearable. The blade -- a big military combat knife -- was still sticking out of my chest, blood was all over me, and it only seemed to be getting worse. I inched closer to Emily. I noticed she had one hand over her gunshot wounds, and was looking over at me. Happiness ran rampant through my head for a few brief moments as I realized that she was, at least, alive. I didn't want to go after my sister did, that was just criminal.

I reached out toward her, brushing my fingers across her face. She was more pale than I ever had seen her. Dread filled every part of me. It couldn't end like this; not here, not before I'd done anything. Not together with one of the girls, the both of us still young. I forced my flagging consciousness back into place with a surge of anger, but I still felt myself going in and out. My vision was getting progressively darker.

I heard the girls' voices from below. They were calling out to us, saying something. I was dimly aware of a tallish blonde coming through the door, wearing a heather-grey sweatshirt, and there was this awful screech of horror as Nina saw us both. Blood was everywhere, four strange men's bodies were strewn about the room, shattered glass was everywhere.

The freezing night air was filling the room, which didn't help because I was already feeling my body become cold. I figured it was probably because hot blood was pooling around my knees. I mentally patted myself on the back for such a sound deduction; clearly, it made thermodynamic sense. Heat went out, cold went in. Bethany was shouting my name, and Emily's, and then she was shouting at Nina too. For some reason the world turned sideways and I felt something hard against the side of my head as I hit the floor.

I don't have a clear recollection of the following hours; this next part is taken from what I was later told by Bethany and Nina. Had Bethany not been an ER doctor for years, neither of us would have survived -- hominus or not. I'd lost a massive amount of blood, and Emily had two through-and-through bullet wounds that had come dangerously close to her major arteries.

Bethany, apparently working bare-ass naked in the freezing cold, without any supplies, saved both of our lives. You'd have to ask her for the medical specifics of how it was done; I know she apparently left the knife in me for a few hours after she sealed my wound with a can of foam-spray attic insulator, of all things. She turned her attention to Emily, quickly doing everything she could stop her bleeding.

It occurred to me later how strange it was that no police ever showed up. One would assume that the neighbors would have called 911 after such a commotion. I can only guess that whoever those men were, that they'd taken some kind of precautions to ensure their attack happened without incident or any chance of being caught; they must have done something to keep the neighbors from calling. Nina suggested that they probably rented every unit near ours, but that meant that they would have been planning this thing for a long time before we got to Tahoe. Weeks or even months.

I was in and out of consciousness for a long time after that; my world was a dark place of labored breathing and throbbing pain. Remaining motionless did barely anything; it was like my body was tearing itself apart. It was far worse than the pain I'd felt when I was initially exposed to 15226's retrovirus. I remember Nina's face, and Bethany's.

I recall, as my stints in the waking world became longer, even Emily's face over me. All of them had these smiles that looked as fragile as glass, like they were trying to cheer me up and be supportive, but there was some crushing worry on their mind the whole time. I really wished they'd have just told me what it was in my few half-lucid moments, or at least gotten drunk and had some lesbian three-way to relieve their stress or something. I couldn't tell what they were so worried about.

I woke an interminable time later, in a familiar place. I recognized the ceiling as Bethany's; I knew that funny brass ceiling fan above her bed. I was lying on my back, and the pain in my chest and stomach was still a horrible, churning monster eating me, but it wasn't enough to wipe out all thought. I grunted something, and cleared my throat. I was parched. I shifted an arm, trying to support my weight. It caused a horrible burning pain in my chest, but I could do it. I grunted loudly as I tried it a second time.

"Ben?" I was distracted for an instant by the clear, high voice, familiar to me. I fell back down and looked over. Bethany was curled up in a small chair next to the bed, wearing an oversized knit sweater and sweatpants. She hopped up out of it and to my side. "Ben, don't move."

"Be—guhcchhhhh-beth-huchhh..." I rasped. She moved a bit, and suddenly a glass of water was on my mouth. I drank, messily, but it was the best drink I ever had. I felt the bed shift slightly as Bethany's weight came up on it, and she knelt next to me.

"Don't move for a second. I'm going to take a look at the wound." She sounded professional and calm again, the ER doctor. Her small hands found the thick, red-stained gauze bandages wrapped around my chest, and she fiddled with some clasp. I felt a sharp pain as something lifted and ripped away from my skin.

She winced, and replaced it. Her hand brushed through my hair. "I know it's bad, but trust me, you got off easy. Had you been human, you'd have been dead inside two minutes. As it is, you're only alive because your body is built like a tank. If he'd managed to twist that knife and aggravate the internal bleeding, that probably would have been all it took to push you over." She was talking almost more to herself than me.

"Em..." I cleared my throat. "Emily?"

"She's all right, Ben." She nodded at me, this time without the impending worry I'd seen in their faces as I was in and out. She continued as she looked at my injuries. "Emily's wounds went through and through, and missed her major arteries. She got off a lot easier than you, really. Anyway, she's resting with Nina right now, but she's been awake and moving around on her own for the last three days."