Arena, Chapter 6
#6 of Arena
"I thought you said you could insert us into another simulation," Dylan muttered as the six white-armored goons marched toward them.
"Working on it. I should be able to open a portal to another simulation in a few seconds." Cora planted herself between them and the advancing hostiles. "I've also worked out how to boost your strength and reflexes. We should have a decent shot at getting past these guys."
Dylan glanced at her and arched an eyebrow. "Are those mods already 'installed' or do we have to wait?"
The goon squad aimed their huge guns at him and the females.
"Just now." Cora grinned. "Let 'er rip."
Oh, hell. Here we go. Dylan took a deep breath, lunged at the nearest table, grabbed the edge, and flipped it into the goons' path. The table slammed into the lead goon's chest and knocked him into two of the others.
The remaining three shifted their aim to him.
Cora launched at one of them, swatted the gun aside with her left hand, and cocked her right one back. She snarled and thrust it forward like a piston--and punched clean through the mook's chest. Sparks burst from the wound, followed by spurts of blue-green fluid. The gun slipped from its hands and Cora grabbed it as she stepped back and let the body fall.
Syala's glowing eyes widened, then she grinned. She crouched and sprang, her digitigrade legs launching her into one of the goons like a speeding truck. Her considerable mass sent it stumbling backward. She continued driving it back until it lost its balance and toppled over. She landed on top of it, wrenched the gun from its hands, and pile-drove the stock into its blank visor.
Oh, hell yeah! Dylan had to suppress a burst of laughter.
Syala leaped back to her hooves, pointed the rifle at the mook's chest, and pulled the trigger. Its chest blasted open as if a grenade had gone off inside. Syala shifted her aim to its head and fired again, turning everything above its neck into a spray of organic and synthetic shrapnel.
Grishnag growled and charged the rest as they turned their weapons on Syala. She plowed into two of them and drove them to the far edge of the roof. She kicked one of them aside and focused her efforts on the other. She pushed it into the rail, grabbed both of its ankles, and flipped it off the roof. It dropped out of sight and a few seconds later the distant thump of the impact on the street brought another smile to Dylan's face.
Grish whirled to face the other and smashed her fist into the side of its helmet. The tall figure staggered and fumbled its rifle. She clamped her hands onto the sides of its head before it could regain its balance, and gave it a quick, violent twist. Its head rotated nearly one hundred-eighty degrees and sheared partially off.
A beam struck between her shoulder blades and her partially-vaporized innards spewed out across the roof.
Dylan froze and his heart nearly launched into his throat.
Grishnag turned and faced the two remaining goons, her expression a mixture of surprise and annoyance, before she collapsed.
"Grish!" Dylan rushed the two goons and they turned to point their weapons at him.
Ayastal blurred across his path and slammed both mooks to the ground. She clamped a hand around the nearest one's ankles, whipped it up over her head, and slammed it down on the other. She lifted the body and whacked it down on the other again and again, until both were mangled messes and one had detached from the legs she still held in her hand. She growled and tossed the legs casually off the roof.
Another column of light appeared a few feet away and everyone spun toward it. Grishnag materialized, glanced around, then looked down at her torso.
"Uh...fuck." She sighed. "Well, at least it didn't hurt."
Dylan rushed into her arms and held her tightly. "That scared the shit out of me!"
"You_were scared?" She laughed and rubbed his back. "Imagine how_I felt."
"Heh. Good point." He held on for a few more seconds before stepping back and smiling up at her. Then he glanced at Cora. "Still working on that god-mode thing, eh?"
"Yeah. But I managed to decrease the 'respawn' delay, and set it to happen near the rest of us each time. I also set our health to recharge quickly. If we're wounded, it should only be a few seconds before we're back to one hundred percent."
"As long as it doesn't hurt anymore, it's good enough for me." Grishnag turned to the stairway. "The ones we saw on the street will probably reach us any second."
"I've found a simulation that could prove useful." Cora nodded at the edge of the roof. "A portal just opened."
Dylan ran over to the rail and found a glowing sphere hovering in the air several yards below.
Pounding footsteps came up the stairs behind them.
Dylan shrugged and hopped over the rail. Wind rushed past his face for a second, then a blinding flash drowned everything out.
His vision cleared just in time for him to find a metal floor a few inches in front of his face. He slammed into it, bounced, rolled over, and pushed himself to his feet as the females plunged through a portal in the ceiling one by one. They hit the floor, picked themselves up, and looked around with bewildered expressions--except Cora. She remained prone, extended her left arm toward the portal, and clenched her fist.
The portal evaporated. Only then did she get back to her feet.
Grishnag heaved a sigh and leaned against the rail running along the catwalk they'd landed on. "What is this place? Space station? Ship?"
Dylan glanced around. They'd arrived in a large chamber with metal walls, floor, and ceiling. Most of the space was taken up by a tapered cylinder in the center, with stairwells and walkways surrounding it.
"Alien space station." Cora grinned and pointed at the cylinder. "That's the reactor. When I found this simulation, I realized that blowing the reactor should put some serious strain on the system that runs everything." She turned and waved a hand at the end of the catwalk.
Another portal flared into existence.
"That'll take us to another simulation. Go through it before the reactor blows."
"Okay." Dylan nodded and glanced around, searching for a control panel. "How do we blow this thing up?"
"The quickest way would be for me to stand right beside the reactor and overload my power cell. That'll be enough to punch a hole through the casing and set off a chain reaction."
"Wait--you're gonna kill yourself?" Dylan gaped at her.
She grinned. "Relax. Just run through that portal and I'll respawn in a few seconds where the rest of you are."
"I know, but still..."
She put her arms around him and pressed her cool metal lips against his. He embraced her and let the kiss continue for a moment before he stepped back.
Cora winked at him. "Now, hurry. We'll need to get this done before those assholes find us again."
He nodded and trudged over to the portal. The other females followed him, pausing just long enough to give Cora a hug or kiss.
"See you in a few seconds." Cora turned, glanced around, and headed for a set of stairs leading closer to the reactor. "When you reach the next simulation, get away from the portal immediately, in case some of the blast gets through."
Dylan nodded and stepped through the portal.
Flash of light.
He blinked and glanced around as he stumbled off to the side. He now stood in a meadow with rows of trees on the left and a lovely sunrise on the right. He smiled and turned back to the portal as the females emerged and jogged away from it. They glanced around, found him, and walked over to him.
"Everybody clear?" Cora's voice seemed to come out of nowhere.
"I think so." Zilaka glanced over her shoulder. "Perhaps we should move farther away, just to be sure."
"Probably a good idea. My power cell's building up to overload now, but it might take a moment."
"Why do you even have a self-destruct?" Dylan shook his head. "I'd expect that in a military robot, but..."
"I actually don't--my real, physical body, I mean. In here, it's a bit of code I added to myself in case I'm compromised by the simulation itself. Didn't actually expect to use it like this, but--"
A sudden roaring boom made Dylan flinch.
A white-hot fountain blazed out of the portal and everyone scattered. Dylan stumbled and sprawled face-down on the ground. When he rolled over and sat up, he realized the women had burns all over their bodies.
Then he noticed it was hard to breathe. But at least there was no pain.
He glanced down at himself and found his left arm badly burned.
"Shit," Grishnag muttered, and dragged herself over to the nearest female, Nishara.
"Doesn't hurt," Nish grunted.
Dylan took another breath, and it came easier this time. Over the next few seconds, he began to breathe normally, and the burns faded away. He glanced around at the females and found their wounds healing over the next few seconds.
Cora materialized a few feet away. She closed the portal, then she turned toward the rest of them and stopped in her tracks, gaping.
"Jesus Christ!" She shook her head and raised her hands to her mouth.
"Guess we didn't get far enough away." Dylan sighed and got back on his feet.
"Sorry."
"Eh, it's not your fault." Grish clapped her on the shoulder and smiled. "At least you sent us to a nice place."
Cora smiled. "I've tried to isolate it behind firewalls, so we should be safe for a while, before the system manages to break through. It'll probably be too busy recovering from the strain that explosion caused to even begin chipping away at the firewalls."
"Good." Dylan glanced around at the women. "So, what's our next move?"
"I want to monitor the system for a while to see what effect that disruption had, if any. And I'll keep working on more upgrades for all of us, as well as get you the same level of access that I have now, so you'll be able to slip from one simulation to another without waiting for me to open a portal, just in case the system manages to lock me out." Cora smiled and waved her hand over the meadow. "Meanwhile, you've got another chance to catch your breath. Or, uh, whatever." She winked.
Dylan turned back to the sunrise and smiled. "Y'know, I never really paid much attention to these back on Earth. I think maybe it's time I start."
"And...access granted," Cora announced, and a wealth of new information flooded Syala's mind. Alien information, things she could never have imagined before waking up in this strange place, or even afterward.
I don't understand any of this...but I understand_it._
She shrugged off the feeling of unease that had come with the new knowledge. There was no point in trying to figure it out, just like everything else here.
"Whoa," Dylan blurted. Syala glanced over her shoulder and found his bewildered expression beginning to clear. He'd been sitting behind her, his arms around her and her hands resting on his as she leaned back against his chest, both of them watching the sunrise. Until a moment ago, her thoughts had been more on him than on the spectacular view.
"I'm getting it, too," Grishnag said from her position beside them, one arm around Dylan's shoulders and the other propping herself up, one ankle crossed over Syala's. Her momentarily startled look relaxed over the next few seconds, and she smiled.
"As am I." Nishara, stretched out on the grass in front of them and snuggling with Zilaka and Ayastal, grinned and glanced around at everyone else.
"It's not root access yet," Cora continued, "but I think I'm close."
Syala turned and found her sitting on a floating square made of light, with several panels and windows hovering in front of her. Cora pointed at them and faced everyone.
"You can access the system the same way I do, but something like this might help you visualize what you're doing until you get the hang of it. You can use these consoles to modify whatever simulation we're in currently, though I've mapped certain commands--opening a portal, for instance--to gestures like the ones you've seen me use. I figured we'd need things like that in a hurry if we're being pursued, so..."
"Huh. Kinda like hot-keys," Dylan said.
"More or less, yeah. And with these consoles, you'll be able to modify your own software. Also, I've loaded each of our languages into all of us so we'll be able to communicate once we find out way out of the simulation. Once we're in the physical world, we'll lose the sim's translation software."
Dylan and the other women stood and stretched before walking over to Cora.
"You've thought of everything," Dylan said, and leaned in to kiss her.
"I sure hope so." Cora chuckled. "One of the first things I started working on is a secret hideout for us. The environment we're in is good for a quick getaway, at least until it's discovered, but I've just finished setting up a more permanent place. Our headquarters, you might say."
She waved her hand and a portal appeared.
"We can reach it through a heavily encrypted pipeline. The encryption is fluid, constantly changing multiple passcodes, and I've given each of you a cypher that lets you access it."
"Awesome." Dylan stepped through the portal.
Syala and Grishnag followed him, and the rest filed in behind them.
Syala found herself standing in a circular room with walls made of light. Seven doors were evenly spaced around the room.
"One for each of us," Ayastal said.
"Exactly. Each of you can create any environment you want. You could make it look like your homes, for example." Cora winked again. "Each room also has doors leading to all the other rooms, just in case."
"I like it." Dylan grinned and rubbed his hands together. "I'm already getting ideas."
"I already have an idea of what not to turn mine into." Grishnag laughed. "My homeworld is the last place I ever want to see again."
"Well, something you find familiar or comforting might be a good idea." Cora smiled. "And since everything here is a virtual simulation, you're not limited by size. You can create an entire world in there, if you want. Or a whole universe."
A wistful smile crossed Grishnag's face. "All I need is a house. The house my husband and I bought when we moved to Earth."
"Husband?" Dylan raised an eyebrow.
"When you and I first met, I said you reminded me of someone. That was him." Grishnag sighed. "He's been gone for a long time. As I said in that room we awakened in, I miss him terribly."
Oh._Syala reached out to touch Grishnag's arm. _I suppose I'm lucky to be so young that I haven't endured such a loss.
"Ah," Dylan said. "I'm sorry. I thought you looked...well...you had this look in your eyes like you'd pretty much given up on life."
"Not_quite_. I eventually moved on, but I guess you never get_completely_ over the loss of someone you hold so dear."
"I hope I haven't brought back any painful memories, or anything like..."
"Oh, no, not at all. You're very different from him, but there are certain similarities, like the way you carry yourself, and your inner strength, and the way you've shown yourself to be a warrior. But your personality is vastly different, and you don't really resemble him. Well, aside from being human." Grishnag chuckled. "He rescued me from the hellhole that was my homeworld. His mother owned a corporation that wanted to mine the area near our village, and the way our people sealed such agreements was by marriage. Since his parents were already married, as mine also were, we were elected."
"An arranged marriage?" Syala raised a brow. "My people have tried that a few times, far in the past, but it usually didn't work out. It didn't last long enough to become a tradition."
"We were lucky. We were both around Dylan's age when we 'completed the deal.' Over time, we fell in love." She smiled. "The clan elders worked out a sweet deal. The corporation took over the entire area and the whole clan was relocated to Earth. One of the elders even managed to take him to bed before our wedding. Her excuse was to teach him how to please me, but honestly, I think she just wanted to feel a young stud inside her again." She snickered.
"Huh. Elder, eh?" Dylan raised both eyebrows.
"Remember the mortality rate I mentioned. Clan elders were usually a few years younger than I am now, because people on that planet rarely grew any older." Grishnag chuckled and shrugged. "She actually stayed with us during the first few years of our marriage, and continued 'teaching' him." She winked at Dylan. "Well, 'teaching' both of us, actually."
"Oh." Dylan grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. "This is making it harder to wait until we escape the simulation."
"Well, I'm ready whenever you are." Grishnag smirked and stroked his cheek. "When you're ready, perhaps I'll tell you of a few of the...adventures we had together. To 'prime the pump,' as it were."
Syala drew in a slow, deep breath. "Well, after hearing just that much, I need to masturbate. Cora, which room is mine?"
Cora grinned. "They're all blank slates, now, so just pick one."
"Thank you." Syala gave Dylan and Grishnag a lustful smile as she walked to the nearest door. "I'll leave the door open in case anyone wants to join me."
"We_really_ need to get out of this simulation." Dylan tugged on his shirt collar and adjusted the front of his pants as he watched Syala pass through her door. "Like, soon."
"I agree wholeheartedly." Nishara slithered past him, paused long enough to slide one of her palms over his chest and across his erection, and continued on to the next door. She flicked a glance over her shoulder at the others and slid inside, leaving the door cracked open.
A small shiver zipped through Dylan's body and he grinned. After taking a moment to steady his breathing, he picked one of the remaining doors and stepped through into a space that appeared to be nothing more than a floor that stretched out to infinity in every direction.
Blank slate. Okay._He conjured up a set of floating consoles and monitors like the ones Cora had used in the meadow. _Hmm. An entire world, she said. What he had in mind wasn't a whole world, but it was definitely big. Not exactly a mansion, but his dream house had high ceilings, lots of floor space, a personal office, and a movie/game room with an insanely fast gaming computer hooked up to a hundred-inch ultra-HD television.
Only one bedroom, as he'd never expected to need more, but now...
_Okay, gonna make the bedroom big. Really big. With a huge bed, in case the ladies and I decide not to wait until we're out of here._He started with the bed. Circular, with a thick, soft mattress, a dozen pillows, silk sheets, and large enough for all of them to occupy at once. Once he'd finished the room, he took a moment to admire his handiwork.
Then it hit him--the fuckedupness of this entire situation.
I'm actually getting into some sort of orgy, and they're all aliens. They're planning to pass me around like a bong at a frat party, and now I'm even thinking about all of us going at it at once. What the hell?
And not only that...
I think I'm in love with them. All of them.
If they all managed to survive this and escape the simulation, what then? Continue living together, somehow? Would it even work? And what about going home?
_Home._When this started, and he'd realized it wasn't just a nightmare, all he'd wanted was to get back home. But now...
_Wait. Would it even be possible for any of us to go home?_Cora had mentioned living among humans, and the Earth he knew didn't have sexbots or any other kinds of AI. And then there was what Grish had said about humans coming to her planet, but Earth had barely begun sending probes to planets within its own solar system.
Maybe, in addition to being abducted, could I have been pulled forward in time, somehow? Hell, maybe we all_were._
He wondered if any of them would ever see their friends or family again. Not likely, if his guess was correct.
On the other hand, if they were far enough in the future, maybe they'd find themselves in a world with enough alien species mingling that they wouldn't even be noticed. And maybe even a multispecies group romance wouldn't strike anyone as unusual.
Wishful thinking, that last part. But what the hell. You never know.
He shrugged, tried to put the matter aside for now, and began building the rest of the house. Once he'd finished that, he decided to add one more room--sort of like an operations center, where they could all meet and monitor the simulation and plan out their next move.
Speaking of meeting, didn't Cora say each room had doors that led to all the others? He brought up the floating consoles again and found the code for the doors. _Ah. Just not added on yet._He thought about putting them all in the bedroom, but that might be a bit much. He decided to add them to one wall in the living room.
Then, not knowing what else to do, he returned to the round area outside.
The doors to Grish's, Syala's, and Nishara's doors were wide open. His pulse revved up and he took a few deep breaths. Well, I guess we don't have to wait until we escape. Maybe--
One of the other doors opened. Cora took a step out, saw him, and stopped.
Soft sobbing came from inside the room.
"Dylan, would you join us in Zilaka's room? She's really upset, all of a sudden."
"Of course." He followed her through the door into another blank-slate chamber. Zilaka sat on the floor with her knees pulled up to her chest, weeping and rocking slightly. The other females sat around her, hugging her and holding her hands.
Dylan hurried over to her and Syala scooted over to make room for him. He sat and put his hand on Zilaka's shoulder.
"Hey, what's wrong?"
"I...I started making this space look like...like my home." Zilaka sniffed and wiped tears from her eyes. "That only made me realize how very much I miss it, so I wiped it. Staying in it would only depress me."
"I'm so sorry." Dylan put his arms around her. She held him and rested her muzzle against his neck. He rubbed her back and said, "If you want something that won't make you feel this way, maybe we can help you design a room that won't remind you of home."
"I would...I would like that. Yes." Zilaka released a long, shuddering breath and sniffled again. "Something that won't remind me at all of what I've lost."
"Okay." Cora smiled and leaned over to give her a kiss. "I think my room is as different from your home as you can get. Want to take a look?"
"Al...alright." Zilaka stood, sighed, and dried her eyes again. Cora took her hand and led her across the hub to one of the other doors. Dylan walked beside Zilaka and held her hand, and Nishara put her upper arm around Zilaka's shoulders and held her other hand.
"This is a replica of my ship. It might give you a few ideas for your space, if you don't find it too off-putting." Cora stepped through, stopped at an inner door, and tapped a panel to open it. "We're passing through the airlock."
Zilaka shook her head. "I don't understand how I could possibly know what that is, but I do."
Cora led them through a series of short corridors until they reached a long one with a half-dozen, unevenly-spaced doors on each side. Cora opened the fourth one on the left and waved them inside. Dylan slipped his hand into Zilaka's and stepped through into a large, oval-shaped room with a curved window running along most of one side. Five round tables with two chairs each were placed through the center, and a curving sofa ran the entire length of the back wall.
"This is a decommissioned research and exploration ship named the Mae Jemison. Once I read up on the history, I didn't want to change the name. I gradually added a lot of upgrades, but I kept it unarmed. I was never really into the whole space battle scene, anyway. Just used her to take me from one job to another, or to transport cargo or whatever else anyone needed to get from one place to another quickly."
That sounds like it could be a fun life._Dylan smiled. _Maybe when we get out of this mess we're in, if we're able to get back to Cora's ship, she might take us on as her crew. Even if we can't go home again, there's so much out here to see, and I'd never have a chance of seeing it in person, back in my former life.
"There's a lot of laboratories, telescopes, scanners, and so on," Cora continued. "But when the Jemison was still in service, the crew used this observation deck to see the galaxy with their own eyes. I've spent a lot of time here, myself, just staring out into space."
She reached for a control panel on the wall. "I'll have to turn the lights off so you can see this clearly." She touched a button and the lights faded out, leaving the room illuminated by a fiery glow from outside the window. She held a hand out toward the window and Dylan approached. He found himself staring at glowing gas clouds--red, orange, pink, green, blue-violet.
"That's NGC 1976," Cora said with a smile. "The Orion Nebula. We're seeing it from a different angle than what you've probably seen in photos from Earth, so you wouldn't recognize it."
Dylan grinned. "Never in my entire life would I have thought I'd see anything like this anywhere except in a photo."
Syala braced her hands on the lower edge of the viewport and gaped at the nebula. "What is it?"
"It's a nebula." Dylan smiled and slipped his arm around her waist. "It's an enormous cloud of gas and dust lit up by stars forming inside."
"It's...beautiful!" Her gaping expression turned into a broad smile and tears ran down her cheeks. "I never even imagined there could be such wonders in the sky!"
Cora smiled and rubbed Syala's shoulders gently. "After everything you've been through, I thought you'd like to know that not everything outside your planet is horrible. There's so much beauty and wonder." She turned to smile at Zilaka. "Like I said, this is probably pretty different from your home."
"Very much, yes." Zilaka clopped up to the viewport, rested her hands against it, and stared with wide eyes at the nebula. "I...I like this. It's amazing, and beautiful, and it doesn't remind me of home at all. Thank you."
"Glad I could help." Cora reached over to rub Zilaka's back.
The other females joined them and stared out at the nebula. Everyone remained silent, content to just stand and enjoy the view.
Dylan smiled. They could plan out their next move soon enough. For now, they could just enjoy the moment while it lasted.