The Night City

Author's Note: And once more, we have a TALES OF THE MACABRE. Once more, I feel compelled to warn my readers. This story does not end happily. This story deals with darkness and wickedness - both human and cosmic. Because, at the end of the day, this story is a fantasy and sometimes it feels good to visit places such as the Night City.

Just don't...live there

*****

The elevator door opened and Dr. Gabriel Judd and Dr. Hailee Sutton emerged into the darkened corridors beneath Dynacore and tried to not look suspicious. Gabriel adjusted the collar of his shirt, while Hailee re-buttoned her shirt. Neither glanced at one another as they walked down the corridor as they came to the first of the heavy blast doors. Swiping his key-card, Gabriel leaned in for the retinal scan.

Quietly, he said: "So, uh, after work?"

"Yeah," Hailee said. Her lips quirked up slightly. "Your place?"

"Sounds good."

He paused as the computer made a quiet chirruping noise - then typed in the pass code. After a moment, a microphone slid from the wall and he sighed quietly.

"If anyone got down here, I think we'd have bigger fucking problems than a mistaken identity," he said, covering the mic with one hand as he looked at his associate. Hailee smiled, adjusting her glasses with one hand as she slipped them back onto her face after having her eye scanned.

"Dynacore is paranoid. But we should all be a little paranoid." She shrugged one shoulder.

Gabriel nodded, then spoke into the mic. "Golgotha."

The door opened as a computerized voice chirruped: "Welcome to Station-12, Dr. Judd. Have a pleasant day. Emission levels are within-" there was a long pause as the computer switched out voice clips to patchwork a sentence together. "-0.4% of - norms."

"Well, that's good news at least." Gabriel shook his head as the two of them walked into Station-12. Gabriel sat down at his console and rubbed his hands along his face while Hailee got to the coffee pot they had installed within the first day of working there. She poured two cups, her thumb rubbing along her wedding band as she licked her lips slightly. Her finger rested on the tiny diamond that Alby had bought for her. He had been so proud - and she had been so excited. But then her eyes flicked to Gabriel. Lit entirely by the glow of the monitors looking in at the Horizon, he was a sight. Lean. Muscular. Shaven. Even his glasses looked almost predatory.

Hailee shivered and felt a rush of arousal swell between her thighs. She sauntered over, rolling her hips - and when Gabriel looked at her, she leaned forward to set the coffee before him. His eyes were locked on her breasts as she stood - and she loved the way he actually seemed to be interested in her.

"...so," she said after the silence had stretched between them. "Going to start today's trials?"

"What? Right!" Gabriel shook himself and then turned to the monitor. He sipped from his cup, set it down, and flicked on the recording microphone. "This is Dr. Gabriel Judd, Dynacore Special Research Division. The date is February 21^st, 2017, and we are beginning trial number fifteen of the Horizon Project. Assisting me is Dr. Hailee Sutton."

He flicked the mic off for a second, glancing at her. "Do you ever worry about putting your name to this?"

Hailee arched an eyebrow. "No." She snorted. "If we get found out before the Horizon pays off, then we're up against the wall no matter what we do to hide it. This is for afterward. People will understand once..." she shrugged. "The historical weight of what we're doing is shown."

Gabriel smiled at her, then flicked the mic back on.

"Today's subject is a repeat offender from Tennessee - officially logged as Subject-0415. Dr. Sutton, will you please ready the Horizon."

"Beginning sheer-induction," Hailee said - bumping her leg against his as she leaned forward and started to adjust some dials. The heavy magnetic coils built into the Horizon Chamber - visible to them thanks to several large plasma screen TVs that had been hooked up and connected to high definition cameras - started to twitch and writhe as electricity surged through them. Creating the rotating magnetic field of sufficient strength to widen the Horizon was more art than science. And Hailee was a master. Gabriel watched her hands work - and tried to not think about what else she was a master of. She caught him looking at her and winked.

Gabriel wanted to bed her over the desk right then and there.

Instead, he coughed and checked the readouts. "We're at a sheer factor of two," he said. "Two point three - almost there-"

Hailee's eyes didn't waver. She twisted another knob - then flipped a switch. The pale blue light of the Horizon darkened, then turned into a wash of blood red luminescence. The entire chamber seemed to be painted in the colors of rubies and blood and darkness. Sensing equipment turned into jagged, blocky shadows and even the magnetic induction coils were nothing more than faint shadows in a roof that seemed to stretch on to infinity. Now Gabriel's job came up. He leaned forward and started to dial in the focusing apertures as Hailee kept the field rotating properly. The colors shifted from red to pure blackness as the light emerging from the Horizon turned from infrared to ultriviolet.

Then the cameras washed with static.

"Shit!" Gabriel hissed.

"You're slewing into soft X-rays!" Hailee snapped. "Don't drop to gamma, we won't be able to-"

"I know, goddamn it!" Gabriel didn't tear his eyes from the screen. His fingers ghosted along the controls and the static faded. The room looked like pure blackness with a single white sliver of light. The sliver widened into a sphere of perfect, non-reflective white. Gabriel slammed his palm down on the computer lock and the systems designed to sustain the modes the humans had found slapped into place. The controls dimmed and Hailee took her hands off the console. Sweat beaded on her forehead and she brushed some of her red hair back behind her ears.

"Horizon successfully breached," Gabriel said into the microphone.

"Releasing subject." Hailee flipped a switch.

The subject - a bound and gagged African American man - staggered into the room. He squirmed and looked around, his eyes wide and afraid. The gag around his mouth popped open and his manacles fell off as Gabriel turned on the PA system. He spoke into the microphone.

"Greetings Subject 0415," he said. "Please step into the Horizon - the white sphere in the center of the room."

"Fuck you!" Subject 0415 said, his head craning around. "I want my fuckin lawyer!"

"0415, you were declared legally dead as of this afternoon," Gabriel said, keeping his tone steady - though he felt a swell of irritation. These prisoners were always so stubborn. "But if you enter into the Horizon, you will be helping to advance the future of human science and-"

"Fuck that!"

"-and," Gabriel continued over his objection. "You will be given a full pardon as well as a sizable compensation. The alternative is death."

The prisoner glared around at the room - clearly looking for the cameras, or the PA speakers. When he didn't see them, he squared his shoulders and started walking towards the sphere. His lips moved in a prayer as he came closer and closer as Hailee turned on several monitoring systems. Then the prisoner stepped into the sphere. Hailee rubbed her palms together.

"All right," she said. "You got a bet?"

"A bet?" Gabriel asked. "Like, you mean, how long he lasts?" he pursed his lips. "What do we bet?"

"Hmm." Hailee's eyes danced as she rubbed her hands together. "When we get back to your place, if I win, you eat me out first." She grinned, wickedly. "If you win, then I'll do anything."

"Anything?" Gabriel arched an eyebrow. Then, grinning. "A maid outfit?"

"S-Sure," Hailee said, blushing.

"Okay, I bet ten minutes," Gabriel said. "With no telemetry."

"Five, with no telemetry," Hailee said, nodding. Then, sighing. "But god-all-fucking damn it, I wish we'd get more than just static from the probes." She tapped the screen that was showing the prisoner's body camera. His heart beat read zero, his brain-wave patterns read zero. The potential of the Horizon was theoretically infinite, and the animal tests had been remarkable. The first time she had seen a rabbit returned with bulletproof skin and sawblade teeth, Hailee had had nightmares and daydreams that were wondrous and terrifying. But the human trails had been...

Unsatisfying.

The minutes ticked by as they waited.

Then, at the five minute mark, the heart-rate monitor pinged. It showed the prisoner's heart rate. Then the static from the camera unfuzzed for just a moment and showed smooth blackness - it shone faintly, as if it was metal, not merely darkness. Then static returned. Hailee gaped at the screen, her eyes wide.

"Holy fuck," she whispered. "Holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck!"

One of the spectrometers pinged back a partial response - it was being pressed against some material that didn't even seem to be possible, considering what Gabriel knew about atomic science. Since the spectrometer was hooked to the prisoner's palm, he knew that he had to be touching it. Was it a wall? A life form?

Then the Horizon quivered and a stream of red, black, and pale white liquid shot from it. It splashed against the cameras and the walls and the equipment, splashing and splattering for a good minute, like a high powered firehose. The spray slackened slowly, turning to a trickle, then nothing, and then the horizon closed with a snap. Hailee checked the readouts, nodding slowly.

"Once again," she said. "Water, carbon, trace amounts of iron, calcium and phosphates."

"But we got actual data this time," Gabriel said, his eyes glowing with glee. "Real fucking telemetry too! Some footage."

"Do you ever feel bad about the poor fucker?" Hailee asked, her voice speculative as she looked at the prisoner - returned in his component parts. Dripping from the walls. The ceilings. Puddling on the ground.

"What?" Gabriel looked at her, then snorted. "Course not. It's all in the name of science."

"And Dynacore's profit," Hailee said, quietly.

"And our profit," Gabriel said, grinning. "Speaking of that..." he tapped the clock. Hailee saw that it had hit nine minutes thirty seconds. He waggled his eyebrows at her.

"Shit." Hailee sounded less than upset.

###

Tabitha Judd rubbed her wedding ring with one finger and tried to make sense of the reports that she was getting from Lab-1369. Dynacore, like most proper multinational energy companies, had more than its fair share of fingers in the pots of a few dozen different energy projects. Some of them were clean energy, some were more efficient methods to use classic energy sources, some where simply used to expand the corporation's possibilities in the profit making game. But 1369 was the weird one. She knew that her Gabey worked at it - she knew that much - but every analysis they kicked upstairs had so many notes scrubbed and elements redacted that she felt like she was half blindfolded.

"Still up?"

Tabitha looked up from the latest spectrograph study and smiled warmly at Mika. The two hadn't even known that they were so closely tied together until an accidental meeting at one of the company sponsored team-building exercises. Mika's wife, Hailee, worked in lab 1369. But Mika wasn't one of the scientists that Dynacore employed. Rather, the plain and somewhat dumpy looking man was one of the many accountants that Dynacore needed to keep their ledgers balanced.

Dumpy, yes, Tabitha thought as Mika stepped into her office and held out a second Styrofoam cup to match the one he held in his right hand. But the man brings me coffee. He has to have something going for him.

"Life saver," she said, then sighed and looked down at her paperwork. "I'd swear that the chemical analysis is wrong, but the higher ups keep telling me to stop asking questions."

"Don't run it by me," Mika said, dryly. He leaned over her shoulder despite his words. "What do all the squiggly lines mean?"

"Well, uh," Tabitha said, pointing. "All matter interacts with the electromagnetic spectrum - also known as visible light to us squares." She adjusted her glasses with one finger, sipping from her cup. "A spectrograph is able to bounce light off an object, split the light that bounces back, and we compare it to other elements to see what matches up. Its how we ID what is inside stars, and what other stars are like from a distance. It can also be used to identify materials when you're not able to take a sample."

"Uh-huh." Mika sounded interested.

"Only problem is this?" Tabitha gestured at the paper. "Makes no sense. I'm going to be up all night." She sighed and pulled out her phone and hit speed dial. She put her phone to her ear, smiling slightly. "Hey, honey..."

###

Hailee's mouth was fastened tight around Gabriel's cock, her eyes closed as she hollowed out her cheeks. Her tongue swirled around and around the tip of his dick as she bobbed her head up and down, up and down. Her hand stroked up and down his shaft - what little of it didn't fit into her eager, whorish mouth. Gabriel looked the way that she looked, her entire being focused on nothing but bringing him pleasure. There was a wanton eagerness to it that drove him wild. The fact that she didn't just work the shaft, but also reached forward and up to squeeze his balls was merely an added bonus.

It made it rather hard to control his voice. "What's up?" he asked, trying to sound casual.

His wife sighed - her voice buzzing with static on the phone. "Just I might not be home until real late. Later than usual."

"Is that so?" Gabriel asked, sliding his fingers through Hailee's hair. He squeezed enough to make her squeak, but thankfully, her voice was muffled by his dick.

"Yeah, the results you guys are sending me are weird," Tabitha said. "Still. Love you, don't stay up for me."

"I won't, don't worry," Gabriel said - then hung up quickly so he didn't groan into the speaker. "Fuck." His balls clenched and Hailee made a tiny squeaking noise as his cum splashed down her throat. Warm. Thick. Her throat twitched and he watched as she focused on nothing but swallowing. She was good at that. The fact that, for a moment, nothing in the world existed for her but his cock and his cum...oh, it was the most satisfying feeling in the world. His cock softened slightly as he slid it back and out of her mouth. A moment after, Hailee coughed and laughed.

"I can't believe you kept her on the line while I was-" she shook her head, cutting herself off. "That took balls. More balls than my limp dicked husband ever showed." She leaned forward - kissing the anatomy in question. Her tongue darted out, sliding along the underside of Gabriel's balls. He sighed, quietly, as his cock became rock hard.

"So, want to fuck me on her bed?" Hailee purred. "Just nail me where she sleeps?"

She sounded positively vindictive about it.

Now, Gabriel's cock was iron hard.

He leaned forward, dragging her to her feet, then growled as he slung her over one shoulder. He headed to the stairs, taking them two at a time as Hailee playfully beat her hands against his back. Then they came to Gabriel and Tabitha's bedroom. Tossing Hailee down, Gabriel tugged off his shirt and looked down at her slender form. She rolled her head back slightly, arching her spine to cause her perky, apple-sized breasts to bounce and jiggle. She spread her thighs, her hairless slit glistening.

"God you're so fucking gorgeous," Gabriel murmured, sliding onto the bed, knees first. He crawled forward - leaning his head down. He caught one of her nipples in his mouth and sucked on it, drawing his head back. Her breast distended ever so slightly and she squealed, turning her head and burying it into one of the pillows that Tabitha bought - the ones that looked like a U shape. She bit down on it and quivered as Gabriel caught and gently teased her nipple with his teeth. His fingers rubbed against her sex, spreading her lips. The slick, glistening folds seemed to beacon him.

"Fuck meeee!" Hailee squealed.

Gabriel released her nipple. "Say please."

"Fuck you!" Hailee snapped. "Stick your dick in me, damn it!"

Gabriel smirked. "Bitch."

"Fucker."

Gabriel leaned forward and chomped on her neck, his hips shifting. His cock pressed to her sex, teasing against her. He bit down harder and Hailee grabbed at his shoulders. Her fingernails dug in tightly and she gasped.

"Please!" She grunted.

That was all it took.

He drove his cock forward and Hailee's sex spread before him. She was tight and moist and her fingernails bit into his back so hard he was sure she was drawing blood. He didn't care. He slammed his cock into her - into the other woman. Knowing that every single thrust, that every single slap of his balls against her ass, was in its way, a betrayal...it just made it better for him. In an abstract way, he cared for Tabitha - he liked having her around. But she wasn't this. She wasn't forbidden. She wasn't wrong.

And the wrong made it so very right.

"Fuck me, fuck me, you fucking monster," Hailee gasped in his ear. "Screw me silly. Oh, god, your dick is huge - you make Mika feel like a finger..."

The fact she could really encourage him helped too.

Hailee lifted her hips up and locked her legs around his back. She writhed against him, her breasts bouncing and mashing against his chest. Her mouth opened and no noise came from her throat - no noise save for the quiet whimpers of a woman having her brains fucked out. Gabriel knew that he couldn't last, and he didn't care. He thrust into her once more and shuddered. His balls clenched and he didn't pull out. Hailee gasped out an objection - "You motherfucker!" - but she didn't try and push him away as he emptied himself in her womb. He felt his cum drip around his cock, sliding along his balls, dripping onto the bed.

Silence reigned for a bit.

Hailee gasped. "One day," she whispered. "The pill's not gonna work."

"Then get a fucking abortion," Gabriel said, shrugging as he slid his cock out of her. Hailee slapped at his chest. Then, quietly, she rolled onto her side. She started to close her eyes. Gabriel shook his head and pushed at her gently. She grunted. "My wife is coming home eventually, you dumb cow." He nipped at her ear as he leaned forward - his voice playful, despite his words. Hailee flailed her arms and then rolled out of the bed and thumped to the ground.

In the end, Gabriel lay down in the bed - after having changed the sheets - and closed his eyes. He slept with a smile on his lips.

###

He opened his eyes again. Slowly, looking around, he saw that he was in someplace vast and empty and howling. That noise came from the wind. It was warm and moist, but it went fast enough that it caused the walls that rose to either side of him to whistle. The noise was like a damned soul, and yet there was an oddly musical tone to the bottom of it. Shrieking, yes. But shrieking in a chorus. He looked at those walls - they were a matte gray, like metal. Like metal, they were segmented. But there, the similarities ended. They moved in undulating waves, rippling upwards to the tops of what seemed to be a canyon. There was no roof - only an infinite blackness that stretched out overhead.

He walked up to the wall, his eyes wide, his brow furrowing. When he touched it, the wall rippled slightly. A series of rungs smoothly extended from it - but they weren't proper rungs. Rather, it looked as if a series of nipples grew from the walls to either side of a space about the width of his head. Those nipples opened and thin tubes emerged - slotting against the other nipple, then hardening into a rung. But he figured that getting to the top would be worth it.