Chrono Inquisitor (Gods Be Damned) (37 page)

The immuno moved in closer, close enough to grab the now half-sized thug with all eight appendages. Still nothing. Another immuno approached and did the same to the other side of the thug so that they were holding it between them, their legs alternating around the entire ball, kind of like the teeth of a zipper.

Sam and I watched as the two immunos dug their legs into the thug. They started to penetrate the hull. A micro-second later the two immunos pulled in the opposite direction. The thug broke apart.

The other immunos in the area rushed in and repeated the process until all the thugs were in two, using up their last bit of stored energy.

Sam zoomed out. “This is when your Chrono zeroed out.”

Then she sped up the footage a couple more minutes and focused back on my heart. “Now watch,” she said, excitedly. There was a gleam in her eye. She was like a kid watching a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis.

The monitor showed the clusters of immunos which had stopped my heart. All of the sudden, an immuno sparked, and then they all did. They zapped my nodes, and like a dam bursting, my heart started pumping again, sending my blood rushing throughout my body once again.

“That’s when you spasmed back to life and slapped me,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s genius.”

“But what does it mean?” I asked.

“It means you’re alive. Whether or not Kali actually sacrificed herself, she saved you. I wouldn’t have finished programming the new thugs in time.”

She hugged me.

A part of me was still mad at her for what she’d done. She had almost killed me after all, but her hug felt good. I put an arm around her and hugged her back.

I breathed in her perfume. It wasn’t one I recognized, but it smelt good.

My bare shoulder started to feel cold and I realized it was because she was crying. My anger instantly melted away and I pulled her closer to me to comfort her. At some point she straddled me and stopped. She’d nuzzled into me and we were just sitting there with her head resting on my shoulder.

I forgot about what had happened. It felt good to have her close, to have her taking comfort in me. Time became inconsequential. Eventually I began kissing her neck, she lifted her head and pressed her lips to mine.

My hands went wandering, until they found the buttons of her blouse. I kissed her deep and passionately with each one I undid.

With eager anticipation, I unfastened the last button and pulled her blouse away. I’d forgotten she was still wearing her full bodysuit, so her breasts were still barred from my grasp.

She stood and I ran my hands up her well-toned calves, reached her knees, and then went under her skirt to her thighs.

Sam started pulling down the suit at the edge or her neck. I reached around to the back of her waist and undid the skirt. It fell away from her and came to rest on my lap. She stepped out of the fallen skirt. I grabbed it and tossed it aside.

Her breasts were exposed then and I wanted to cup them, but they were out of my reach. As if she knew what I wanted, she stopped pulling down the suit, and cupped them herself. They were the perfect size for her hands.

I reached up and grabbed the edge of the suit where she’d left it wrapped around her stomach. Slowly, I pulled the material down, like I was a kid who didn’t want to damage the wrapping paper. I made sure to kiss the newly exposed flesh.

When I got it down over her small, but beautifully shaped ass, I paused to give it a squeeze before continuing.

I was happy to find that she still shaved, as she had throughout our marriage. But she hadn’t recently. There was a little bit of stubble, which I liked.

I took my time pulling the suit off. When I got to her knees, she leaned forward, bracing herself against the cabinet I had my back against. She raised her left foot first and I slid the suit off. Her right foot she placed on my chest. I slowly rolled the material down as if it were a stocking.

When it got down to her ankle I slid my hand up the back of her calf and lifted her foot to finish undressing her. She stood above me like a goddess. Her toenails were painted purple with some kind of white, five petal flower in the middle.

I leaned forward and kissed her big toe. Then I took it in my mouth. I’d always had a thing for her feet, partly because she loved it when I suckled her toes.

She moaned.

I continued to tantalize her toes for a little while.

When I’d had enough of her feet, I placed my hands on her hips and slowly guided her down to me. My cock wanted to be inside her, but what I really wanted was to have her on my tongue. I slid my hands between her legs, then braced my upper arms against the cabinet, and palms up, spread my hands out like a chair.

Her ass came to rest in my palms and her lovely labia were at the perfect place for my tongue to taste and explore her. She was swollen, wet, and glistening, more than ready for me. I ran my tongue up one side of her lips, then down the other. I darted my tongue inside her before taking a nice full lick of her juices.

Sam had a grip on the edge of the cabinet and pulled herself into my face. I wrapped my mouth around her and flicked my tongue across her clit. She rocked back and forth. I continued to lick and flick, then darted my tongue down and inside her. She moaned and writhed as she continued to change the tempo from allegro to lento.

As she reached the peak of her orgasm, she screamed in ecstasy and unintentionally slammed my head into the cabinet. It didn’t hurt though because I was pumped full of endorphins.

She was breathing hard and trembling in
my hands. I waited a moment for the sensitivity to diminish before I lowered her down on top of my throbbing cock.

We stayed there for a little while, neither of us moving.

My cock would swell and pulse, then a residual wave of orgasmic contractions from Sam would gently squeeze me, which would cause it to swell and pulse again. She must have enjoyed it, because the waves came more frequently and built with intensity, rather than dissipating. Without either of us moving our pelvises, she started to moan and I realized she was going to cum again.

The sound of her pleasure was all it took for me to climax. I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her. We both had our eyes open, staring into each other as we came.

I repositioned so that I could lie down on the floor. She kept me inside her while we got comfortable, and my cock stayed hard. She lay atop me, her head resting on my chest.

We fell asleep.

I awoke before Sam. At some point in our slumber she’d moved off of me, but she was still snuggled close with her head on my shoulder and my arm wrapped around her.

I kissed her forehead.

So much for there being no residual affection.

‹“Kali, time,”› I said without thinking, having forgotten for a split second what had happened.

And then when I did remember, I wished it had all been a dream, or that maybe she had just been hiding out until she was sure all the thugs were destroyed, and now that they were, she’d returned.

Silence.

I felt empty.

Alone.

Kali had been with me for almost two decades. I’d grown accustomed to her always being there. I hadn’t realized how much she’d meant to me, how much of a friend she’d been, a constant companion, always with me.

The things we take for granted until they’re gone.

I wasn’t sure what would happen. Would I be given a replacement? As far as I knew, no one had ever needed to replace a CerA before. Would the replacement be different? Assuredly, but how much so?

I knew all CerAs started out with the exact same programming, and were designed to alter themselves over time based on their host. It had taken me years to get to a point where I didn’t want to slam my head into a wall on a constant basis.

I knew that if I did get a new CerA, I could give it the designation Kali, but it wouldn’t be the same. It’d be like replacing a pet that had died and giving the new one the same name. Except Kali hadn’t been a pet. You couldn’t have a conversation with a dog or a cat, not yet anyway.

In hindsight, Kali had been very much like a child.

My child.

In a weird sort of way, I’d raised her. Sure, she’d started out with more book knowledge than I would ever possess, but she’d been just a machine, a computer which tried to act human, but was far from it. Or so I’d thought. It’d taken years of me instructing her how to behave more like a human than a machine. I knew some people preferred their CerAs to be more computer like. I had initially.

It’d annoyed me when she’d acted and sounded like a real human, yet she’d get some common every day interaction wrong. I’d wanted her to be more computer like, not realizing it had actually freaked me out just how human like she really was, even from the beginning. I hadn’t realized before then that she’d reminded me too much of
Blyss.

I was so caught up in my thoughts I hadn’t realized Sam had awoken until she said, “How long have you been awake?”

I looked at her and thought how beautiful her eyes were.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have no sense of time, and there aren’t any clocks that I can see.” Normally I wore a watch, but I’d decided against doing so with all that had been going on. All the watches I owned were very expensive.

“Good god,” Sam said. “It’s been almost five hours since we came in here.”

“So it’s sometime after three in the morning?” I asked.

“3:46 to be precise,” she said.

“It seems Kali really is gone. She still isn’t responding.”

“I’m sorry, Travis,” she said, and turned her gaze away from me.

I felt the spark of anger catch. Kali was gone and it was Sam’s fault.

I didn’t want to feel angry. I didn’t want to feel anything emotional, not at that moment. So I didn’t. I just laid there and listened to my breathing, wrapped myself in the warmth shared between our bodies, and got lost in the smell of Sam.

Finally, she said, “Inquisitor Noble should have woken up. Lillian has probably already interrogated him. We should go see.”

She pushed herself off me and got to her feet.

With her gone I realized how cold the floor was. I got up. Sam had started to gather her clothes, so I did the same. I reached down and picked them up. Something small fell to the floor with tiny clang. I reached down and picked it up.

It was a small square piece of metal with a raised surface that looked like –

It was the Kali
Yantra.

I held it in the palm of my hand. I had no idea where it’d come from.

“Did you put this with my clothes?” I asked.

I turned towards her, she was already in her body suit. As for me, I was still naked.

She shook her head. “Wasn’t me. It’s not yours? That is the Kali yantra, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I don’t recall ever seeing this before.”

“Can I take a look?” she asked.

I handed it over to her. She took it between her thumb and forefinger and brought it close to her eye, then raised it to get a better look in the light.

Sam grabbed a myte scanner off a nearby table and waved it over the yantra. She turned and smiled at me.

“Can you guess what this is?” she asked.

I had no idea and said so.

“It’s Kali!” Sam said excitedly, almost jumping up and down.

“What?”

“This isn’t just some piece of metal. It’s made out of CerA-mytes. I can’t say for certain that it’s Kali, but it’s her symbol. It has to be her. She must have left your body somehow and then brought all the mytes together to form this so you’d know it was her.”

I wanted to believe it was Kali, but with all the recent talk of rogue CerAs and people being hacked, I was skeptical.

“How can we find out if it’s really her?” I asked.

“Haven’t you ever interacted with her in a virtual lounge?”

“I didn’t know I could.”

Even if I had known, I probably wouldn’t have.

“Did you ever listen to me when we were married?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Occasionally.”

She shook her head. “We can load her into a virtual matrix and you can interact with her. You know her better than anyone, so theoretically you should be able to tell if it’s really her.”

“Then let’s do it,” I said.

Sam and I finished getting dressed and went to the virtual lounge in the next room. Apparently, the bunker was more like Sam’s personal lab, and she liked to interact with Buddha on a regular basis when working.

I imagined her programming her little thugs, while a rotund bald man sat cross-legged on the floor behind her spouting off enlightening pearls of wisdom.

Sam decided it would be best if I was alone in the lounge when Kali first materialized, since it’d be the first time the two of us came face to face. I’d named her after the Hindu goddess who always seemed to be depicted with a man’s severed head. I’d never actually thought of my Kali even having a body. Would she take the form of her namesake? I was about to find out.

I stood in the empty room feeling anxious and uneasy, like I was on a blind date. I didn’t really want the image I imagined brought to life in front of me.

Lights flashed, indicating the
holo system was activating.

A shape started to materialize in front of me.

It wasn’t Kali.

At least not how I’d imagined, anyway. But it was a woman, and damn, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She looked a little like Sam in a way, just with a darker complexion. The two of them could have been sisters, or cousins. They definitely looked like they were related. She was wearing a long golden dress.

“Kali?” I asked.

Then I caught something out of the corner of my eye.

I turned and there was the Horseman Death. In an instant I’d taken up a defensive stance and had my kamas in my hands.

“You can put your weapons away, Inquisitor, they won’t hurt me,” he said.

“They’re sharper than they look,” I said. “How’d you get in here? If you decided you wanted to kill me after all, I’m not going down without a fight.”

“He’s a projection,” the woman said with Kali’s voice.

“Are you really Kali?” I asked, not lowering my weapons and still keeping my focus on Death.

“Yes,” she said.

“Forgive me if I don’t trust that you’re telling the truth,” I replied.

“Inquisitor Yan, I need your help,” Death said.

Sam came into the room. “You can put your weapons away, they’re both constructs,” she said.

I didn’t like virtual lounges. They were too realistic. I wasn’t sure it was actually Sam and not another construct. Granted, projections were nothing more than light, therefore they couldn’t hurt me, but if one of them were real, I could be. Sam could have been created to put me at ease and as soon as my weapons were lowered Death could strike. I kept them raised.

I let Sam approach, and she put a hand on my shoulder. It really was her.

“He’s not here physically,” she said. “He’s a projection, he can’t hurt you.”

I lowered my kamas hesitantly and put them away.

“How, and why, are you here?” I asked, looking at Death.

“He’s here, because without him, you’d be dead,” Kali said.

I turned to her.

“Same goes for you,” I said. “How are you here? How did you get out of my body and create the yantra?”

“Your sweat. It was the only way to ensure neither of us died.”

“So, you are responsible for almost killing me?”

“It was him,” Kali said, pointing at Death. “It was his plan, but I enacted it.”

“So you two are working together?”

Rather than answering, they both looked at each other like they weren’t actually sure.

“Okay, care to explain what you are doing together?”

“The more important question is, how did you come across the design for the mytes you calls thugs, Ms.
Matsuzaki?” Death said.

Hadn’t she designed them herself?

I turned and looked at her. The look she had told me she hadn’t. I was even more confused than ever.

I took a step backwards so that I wasn’t directly in the middle of the three of them.

“I think you know where I got the designs,” Sam said.

“Which one of us are you working with?” Death asked.

Sam was working with a Horseman?

“I can’t say,” she said.

“You shouldn’t have those designs. They’re extremely dangerous and outlawed. Who gave them to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did you come across them?”

“I don’t know,” she repeated.

She sounded weird, like it was a programmed response.

“Sam?” I asked.

She turned and walked out of the lounge.

What the hell was going on?

I followed her out, leaving the projections of Kali and Death alone in the room.

“What the hell is going on?” I said. “What aren’t you telling me, Sam? And why the hell was Death there?”

“He’s a Celestial.”

“So that was Death’s CerA?”

“No, Death is a Celestial.”

“What does that mean?”

Sam explained Celestials to me.

Aliens? Computers even?

“And they’re responsible for ChronoGen tech?” I asked, still not quite believing everything.

“It’s one of ChronoGen’s biggest secrets. I’m not sure how many Celestials there are exactly, but rumor
has it around a dozen.”

“And you got the design for the thugs from one of them?”

“Yes.”

“And Death is another one?”

“Yes.”

I continued to question her. A couple times she gave that robotic, ‘I don’t know’ response. I questioned her about it.

“I can’t tell you,” she said. “You don’t have the thugs anymore.”

“You can’t tell me because I don’t have thugs?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not making any sense Sam.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve told you what I can. You should go back in the lounge and talk to Kali and Death. Maybe you’ll find some answers there.”

I stared into her eyes, trying to glean something, but came away with nothing. I took her advice and headed back to the lounge.