Humanity 2.0, Year 006, Day 115

"How... long... me?"

"You've been out for five days. We drove back here as soon as I had you both stabilized. Nina ditched the rental car in some seedy part of town, unlocked with the keys in the driver's seat, where it'll probably get stolen by tonight if not already." She turned her head to the side, calling out loudly. "Nina! Em! Ben's up."

I rested for a time as Bethany tended to my bandages as Nina came in through the door, Emily's arm slung over her shoulder and shuffling inside with Nina's help. Emily was pale, but standing... even if her gait was a little off. I released a breath I must have been holding for five days. Emily was safe. The injuries I'd seen her sustain really hadn't been that bad.

"Ben! We knew you'd be fine." Nina sounded upbeat, but all three looked disheveled, tired, and had bags under their eyes. I'd never seen them looking more drained, but they were all three still beautiful.

I croaked out another brief sentence. "Who were they?"

The girls looked between one another, then Bethany turned back to me and shrugged. "We don't know. There was nothing in the news about it, and nobody ever came asking us questions. It's really weird. People blocks away had to be able to hear those gunshots."

I tried to think about it, but felt waves of tiredness creeping back in. I mumbled something, and drifted off to sleep again.

I woke another three days later, and it took me a while to even remember that I'd been injured; I just lazed in bed, drifting in and out of consciousness like it was a weekend morning. The pain was weak enough to no longer distract me from sleeping. I suddenly recalled what had happened, and my eyes shot open. I realized once again that I was in Bethany's house, in her bed. My chest still throbbed, but I could move.

I sat up. Nobody was in the room now. After a few experimental motions, I felt confident enough to get out of bed. My body creaked and felt stiff from days of being motionless, and I almost fell over just from that and not from any pain. I steadied myself against a bedpost and took a step. After a minute, I felt good enough to walk unsupported. I stepped into the bathroom, flicking on the light.

I was shirtless, wearing only a pair of boxers that I guess one of the girls had put on me. The bandages were wrapped around my chest, but they weren't stained with blood as they'd been last time I was awake. I unclipped the little clamp, and began to unwrap it, waiting for the sharp pain as the wound was exposed. It didn't happen. As I pulled the last of the bandages off, the scar was revealed.

It was a ragged mess, running crosswise from my lower left side, straight up almost to my neck, running across my sternum. I hadn't noticed, but he must have also swiped the knife across the lower part of my face in the same swing -- I had a visible scar going from the side of my chin up to my lip, ending just under my nose. It wasn't hideous, exactly, but it was very... distinctive.

"Kind of sexy, I guess... I could learn to like it."

I hadn't heard Emily approach. She was leaning against the doorframe, wearing a tube top and a knee-length skirt. I spun around, feeling relieved to see her fully recovered.

"Well, you know... anything to impress you." It was all I could think of on short notice.

She padded up to my chest, then came up on her tiptoes. I bent down, meeting her kiss. She ran a finger up and down the wound, which caused me to wince. Her eyes met mine again, then she wrapped her arms around me and just stayed there, her head against my chest for a while.

"You almost died, you know. Twice."

"I only remember the one time." I started for a moment; had the bastards come a second time while I was out? Was anyone else hurt?

Emily shook her head as she saw me suddenly looking around. "Once, from shock and blood loss early on, Bethany said, and another from something the knife did in your lungs. You were out the whole time the second thing happened. She said if you'd gotten an infection, that would have been it. Somehow you didn't, and you're still here with us."

I didn't reply, instead wrapping my own arms around her and just rocking back and forth for a while. Bethany's head poked out from around the corner, and she greeted us, seeming glad that I was awake. I thanked her for saving my life, but she looked at me like I'd said something stupid. She pulled something out of the fridge and set it out; I realized immediately that I was starving. Before I was done, I'd seemingly eaten half the fridge.

Bethany nodded afterward. "I'd say he's good now."

"Yup!" Nina, who had appeared from some side room, kissed my cheek and sat down next to us.

I stood up and stretched. "That was great... come here, you all." I opened my arms, and all three seemed to reluctantly fall in. I held them to me, cherishing them. I'd almost lost Emily, and had I died, I'd have left them alone, just the three of them, nobody else ever to join them or be like them, no children, no existence save centuries of loneliness - with only one another for company.

I guided them together onto the couch with me, letting all three warm female bodies gather up against mine. It wasn't sexual, at least at the time. I just didn't want to let any of them go. We spent the day all together, goofing off mainly; telling jokes, acting like it had been old times. Oddly enough, we didn't have any sex -- it was probably the longest stretch of time the four of us had spent together in one room without any fucking. We joked a lot about it, though. Booze came out, and we started drinking as the sun went down.

A while in, a sort of mental itch began to get the better of me. The girls seemed... off, somehow. Still, I'd been bedridden for days, and my body was aching for a go at them. I'd been awake and relieved that they were alive long enough for my baser instincts to start to assert themselves. My eyes were drifting down to Nina's ass, Bethany's tits, under my sister's skirt as they played some dumb game or another.

All three noticed, of course. My erections are difficult to hide, and even under my clothes, it always had some effect on them. Bethany and Nina were soon cuddled up on either side of, kissing me up and down, pulling my shirt back off and then my pants. I helped Bethany out of her clothes first, then pulled her over me so I could bury my face between those tits. Nina and Emily took turns on my cock again, then they let Bethany at it. Dr. Lazar performed her specialty -- deep-throat. The girls cheered her on as my pole stretched her throat wide, as I gasped as I was taken down to the base of my cock into Bethany's mouth.

Nina and Emily stripped each other, and Emily came up above me, balancing neatly on the edge of the couch as she spread her legs wide over my face. She slowly lowered herself down further, and my tongue extended. Her taste hit my tongue and I savored it, then licked at her clit and probed a finger inside her pussy while my other hand came to rest on her sculpted ass. I felt Bethany's weight atop me, shifting around, as my cock popped out of her mouth, then Nina helping position me. Bethany's pussy sank down around my pole, surrounding me with hot silken wetness; I moaned into Emily's pussy. It reverberated into her clit and she moaned herself.

Nina was the only one left out, but I felt her shifting weight, and then her tongue on my balls where my cock was sliding in and out of Bethany. She licked at my pole in the moments it was exposed, and laved my balls gently.

Something was wrong with the whole picture; it kept finding its way into my mind, though I kept fighting it down. The whole scene was too hot. I felt a rush and clutching pleasure in my balls. I groaned loudly into Emily's pussy, nibbling at her clit, which set her off; she made a low keening sound, steadying herself. My balls pumped, and I felt blasts of pleasure as my cock unloaded a massive amount of semen into Bethany -- eight days' worth.

Finally, as Bethany was sliding off of me, I put together what it was. The whole time, the girls had been totally focused on me, not each other. Every time we'd had any kind of group scene before, the girls were just as much into each other as me, but this time, it was like they'd done some kind of choreographed show just for my benefit. Bethany tightened herself against me, and as I looked down at her face, I could see her eyes were squinted shut. She was holding onto me for dear life. It was like...

"What was that just now?" I said it out loud, even though I'd half meant it as a question to myself.

"Uh -- what?" Emily suddenly came up from where she'd plopped down on her side, and had been creeping into my open arms.

"This. We're never like this. You all can't have enjoyed that as much as always."

"Of course we did!" Emily said it with just enough conviction for me to almost believe it. "Ben, we're just glad you're okay, and you saved my life, so we just wanted to thank you!" Her smile beamed, in that same fragile way as when I'd been bedridden.

"Like hell I did, I sat there frozen like an idiot. You're the one who saved us both. That's not what this was about."

"Ben, just stop it and relax." She slid over atop my waist, straddling me. "Maybe you just need another fuck."

I glowered at her. Fun as it sounded, it wasn't the time.

"Em... don't. He deserves better than that." Nina sighed from my left, and came up; she looked downcast. She fished around for her panties, then pulled on the rest of her clothes. She continued as she pulled her top on. "Let's not wait until tomorrow to tell him, okay?"

"For what?" I peered at Nina.

Emily looked at Nina, then back at me, then back at Nina -- almost frantically, then she bit her lip, with sadness in her eyes.

"What the hell is wrong!" I raised both my arms up.

"Tomorrow morning, Ben..." I heard Bethany's small voice from my side. She looked up at me. "... we've decided we'll abandon the house, and split up. Nina will be the only one with you for a while, and we won't tell each other where we're going, just in case-"

"No." I said it flatly. I already knew where it was going. I had to stop this idiocy before it started.

"Yes, Ben." Nina was looking at me like I was a petulant child. "Last week was our wake-up call, but this whole possibility has been stewing in my head for years now. Hell, probably in everyone's head but yours." She sighed. "We're superhuman. Even we don't really know what we're capable of... to anyone but us, that has to be terrifying. Splitting up is the best way for us to ensure the king survives."

"NO!" I'd meant to only raise my voice a little, but it came out as a roar, which startled Emily so much she fell right off my waist and onto the floor below. I stood up, too angry with Nina to focus on anything else. "Not now! Not ever! We're stronger as a group, and now isn't the time for us to have a fight and break up!"

"Break up?" Emily looked up at me. "Ben, none of us are breaking up. We all love you. You know that. This is about..." She looked at the other two, steeling herself. "Ben, only you can make more of us. At the end of the day, the three of us are-"

"NO!" I roared it even louder. There was no way in hell I would ever let her finish that sentence. Not her, not any of them. "We are NOT doing this! This is NOT how I want this to happen!"

Nina's sarcastic, arrogant side abruptly came out. "Oh, please. Do you think that matters anymore?" Nina glared at me. "Ben, I love you, but you can't ever think straight when it matters. If they get us, it's bad - but if they get you, it's over. We don't know who they are, but we'll have ways to keep in touch with each other, and all of us will keep our ears to the ground and be very careful.

"We'll rotate you between us, one year at a time, and nobody will tell each other where they are except to meet up once a year. This way, they can only get one of us at a time, and if they do, the others can follow up and learn as much as we can, or even try to get you back. Maybe we can even fight back."

I searched frantically for a while. "We don't even know if there is a 'they'! For all we know those four guys in Tahoe were the only ones who knew about us! Let's at least make this decision after we know more-"

"I really, really doubt they were working alone, Ben, and even you aren't that dumb. Can we really afford to just risk everything like that?" She sighed. "They could bust in through the walls any minute, you know, and this time they'd come with a hell of a lot more than four guys. Can you punch out a tank, Ben? Can you dodge bullets if they have a sniper? Or ten snipers? We've already risked enough by even coming back to this house.

"We rented the Tahoe place in your name, but they could easily track you back to Bethany with the link between the two of you with the whole hospital thing six years ago. If they track down your records, they also find Emily's, probably me too. We can't keep all the eggs in one basket, Ben. We split up. Everyone's already agreed to this."

"Everyone except ME agrees!" I snatched my boxers up off the floor. "This isn't some movie bullshit! None of us know anything about this stuff! None of us know how to do this Jason Bourne disappearing bullshit or whatever, so let's just stick together and hole up somewhere safe, trawl the internet for leads..." I put a hand to my forehead, scrambling for anything. "I can't do this. I can't lose any of you. I already lost one."

Emily, dressed again, came to my side. "Her again? Now?" She sighed. "Ben, I know you don't think you're ready for this. None of us are. It doesn't matter, though. We have to do it. They get one of us, or they get all of us. Or we get lucky and they get none... but then, the worst case scenario is you have to settle for fucking only one hottie at a time for a few years. Boo hoo."

She shrugged, smiling up at me weakly - but it cut me, even if she was trying to keep it from doing so. This wasn't about how many threesomes and foursomes and incestuous sister-fucking I got to do. This was about breaking up a family. "We'll keep in touch. If things look safe, then we do it your way, and all get back together again. Until then, we lie low and split up. You'll thank us later."

Nobody who's ever used that expression has been telling the truth.

I fumed, looking between the three of them. Bethany was fumbling for her clothes, but all three had that steely gaze. They'd clearly discussed this at length while I was out. I knew I wasn't going to win them over, but I felt compelled to try. Every instinct said this was the wrong move, even if I agreed with the fundamental logic Nina was using.

Still, even I knew that logic is only as good as the data being fed into it, and there was this niggling worry in my mind that said I was failing to consider something really important. I had to keep my girls with me. There had been this big, unresolved question in my mind for years by then about what happened to Nadine that occupied my thoughts all the time; I knew that if anything happened to any of the three of them while we were apart, it would drive me nuts. I couldn't go without knowing they were safe.

Nina waited for a while as I stared at some point well beyond the sky, as if the Experimenter was going to pop out of the sky and offer some great solution that meant I'd be able to keep the girls around and not get shot. No celestial intervention was forthcoming. As always, I had to make the whole thing up as I went along.

My blonde lover looked at the other two, then at me. She nodded toward a duffel bag over in the corner. "Our stuff's already packed, and so is yours. We all leave in the morning."