Chapter 16

Apologies for the delay in this chapter being posted. My darling children brought home the plague. Parents, you know what I’m talking about. I am back in the land of the living now and regular posting will continue.

The landscape seemed to almost blur as I ran through it, moving as fast as my legs could carry me over the uneven terrain, through the tall grass, to the base of the hill, and up the ascent. It must have taken the better part of an hour to walk from the bunker to the river, but it couldn’t have taken much more than a quarter of that time to run back.

Breathless, sweating more than any two people healthily should, with the throb of my heartbeat pounding into my temples, I ignored the curious looks from the members of the group sitting outside the bunker, threw myself through the gun port, and raced up the corridor.

Predictably, the first person I ran into was, Lousia. “Where’s Tom?” I asked flatly, unable to keep the suspicion out of my voice.

“He’s busy,” she arched an eyebrow at me as she leaned against the wall between the main living area and Holding One, the new hospital. “What do you want?”

There was something about the way she said it, something about the tone of her voice; it was like an indignation that anyone except her could want Tom for any reason at all. “Tell me where he is. It’s important!” I wanted to jump down her throat! I had never hit a woman in my life, but I was just about ready to cross that line and beat the information out of her.

“I don’t think I like the way you are asking,” She crossed her arms.

“Asking?” I stepped closer to her. “Does it fucking sound like a request? Is there a reason why you don’t want me speaking to him, Lousia?”

She held my eyes for a few pregnant seconds before her shoulders slumped, her arms uncrossed, and she huffed loudly. “Jesus, okay. He is in there with Amy,” she nodded to the door of the hospital.

“Fuck ... nononono ... I can’t be too late.”

Without gracing Louisa with another word, or even another look, I sprinted the dozen or so feet to the hospital door and burst through it, fearing the worst with every passing step. Tom was sitting on one of the beds, his pants around his ankles, and Amy was leaning over him. Under any other circumstance, I’d have thought that something was going on between them, but at that moment, I was just grateful he was alive. He arched an eyebrow at me. Amy, on the other hand, shot up from examining a large, dark-looking bruise on his hip and spun around, looking furiously in my direction. “Dan, this is a hospital! You cannot just barge in here! What the hell are you thinking?”

“Amy, I’m sorry, but I need to talk to Tom ... alone ... it’s urgent.”

“Well, nothing is more urgent than his health. It can’t wait.”

“Have I ever struck you as a person who would barge in here like this without a damned good reason?” I glared at her. The look on my face gave her pause.

“No,” she sighed. “You haven’t.”

“Five minutes, please,” I asked, making a conscious effort to soften my expression. “It’s really important.”

Amy cast a look at Tom and then another at me, then sighed again. “Okay, five minutes,” she nodded. “I will be in the living area.”

“Thank you, Amy. I will explain everything as soon as I can,”

She smiled, nodded again, closed the lid of the medical supplies, and left the room, closing the door behind her.

“Mmmm, is everything okay?” Tom asked, looking down at the floor and still naked from the waist down. I held my finger up for a second, silently counting down from ten in my head, then jerked the door open again. Louisa toppled into the room with a yelp, a dark smudge on the side of her face from where she had her ear pressed up against the door.

“Lost?” I glowered at her.

She pulled herself to her feet, huffed loudly and indignantly, turned, and stormed back out of the room. I waited until I could hear Amy’s voice and some of the others talking to her from the central room before I closed the door again and turned back to Tom. “I need to make this quick. I don’t know how long we have before we have prying ears again,” I started. “I know you are here.”

He frowned at me, not even remotely understanding what I was talking about.

“I mean, I know you are not like the others. You are not being controlled. You are normal, and everyone else is acting strange.”

Tom let out a breath that sounded like it had been held for days. “Yes ... yes ... people acting very strange. I didn’t know if I should say anything,” he nodded, his eyes lifting to mine.

“No, you were right to say nothing. Tom, you are in danger. We are all in danger.”

I quickly gave him the rundown, fitting in as much information as I could before our time ran out. To be fair, I expected him not to believe a word of it. Goddesses, possession, mind flowers, whispered voices in the night, the story of Dr. Walker, the more I talked, the more ridiculous I sounded. But Tom just listened silently, taking all of it in.

“So I am immune?” He asked cautiously.

“Yes,”

“And you?”

“I ... I don’t know. I think so, but I’m not sure.”

“Mmmm, okay,” he nodded as if all of this were the most simple thing in the world. “What do we do if Lousia tries to hurt me?” he rubbed his hand over the painful-looking

“You have my permission to stop her,” I replied with a pointed look.

“Who is hurting whom?” Amy asked suspiciously as she re-entered the room.

“Fuck!”

“Dan, what the hell is going on? I think I have given you more than enough leeway. If you are inciting some sort of violence against the other people here...” She was getting louder and louder, more and more irate. Only a few more decibels and she would be able to be heard clearly by the others in the central room.

I moved without thinking, or at least without thinking consciously. I lunged toward her, one hand grabbing her wrist and pulling her closer toward me while the other pressed my palm to the side of her head. Her eyes flashed wide with sudden fear, held there for half a heartbeat, and then cleared.

It was like I could see the influence of whoever was with her leaving. Her eyes became sharper, her breathing more ragged, and her words caught in her throat. “Dan?”

“You with me, baby?”

“Fuck. Yes, Jesus, what the hell happened?” she panted, falling into me and wrapping her arms around me. “The last thing I remember clearly was being in that room with you and listening to that tape. Everything after that is a blur.”

“You don’t remember any of it?”

“I do, but it’s like a dream. Like I was watching a movie of the things my body was doing. But I don’t remember anything else of that night until we were in the other room...” she cast an embarrassed glance to the inquisitive-looking Tom, “ ... making love,” she finished with a whisper.

“Alright,” I sighed. “You have some catching up to do.”

It took over an hour to explain everything ... again. Although to be fair, Tom hadn’t heard the detailed version either. But where Tom seemed to have taken the entire thing in his stride, Amy turned pale-faced and looked utterly terrified. It was hard to argue the truth of my explanation when faced with the realities of her own memories. She never particularly enjoyed performing oral sex on a man in the past, for example, but now, even when not under the lust-inducing influence of the Goddesses, she was quite partial to the idea. When she was under, however, she outright craved it. The taste, the texture, the hardness between her lips, the throb of my pulse against her wandering tongue. Her eyes glazed over and took on a dreamy, hazy look just thinking of it before she snapped back to the conversation. Just the thought was enough to almost render her insensate again.

The idea that she could be controlled in a similar manner to the aggression shown in rabid animals - the example Dr. Walker had used - plus what little she could remember of the recording was very disconcerting to her. Amy was a woman who prided herself on how far she had come in life. Countless months and years of devoting herself to her studies through medical school. Every single shitty night shift during her internship. Every single position and procedure that she didn’t want to do was another step on the road toward the ones she did. She had dreamed of being a doctor since she was a girl, and the level of self-discipline it had taken to achieve that dream would blow the mind of most people. Getting my degree in structural engineering had been no walk in the park, but compared to hers, it had been a breeze. She had denied herself relationships, a social life, and more sleep than she could possibly measure, and now she was regularly being reduced to acting like a sex-crazed bimbo without her even realizing it.

She had no regrets about her time with me, and the hazy memories were enough for her to know that they had been some of the most liberating and pleasurable experiences of her life. But they were now tinted by the simple knowledge that the choices that led her to those experiences were not hers.

She was sitting on the bed next to Tom, none of us commenting on the fact that Tom was still entirely naked from the waist down.

“What do we do about Louisa?” She asked softly.

“It’s not Louisa,” I replied with a sigh. “It’s the entity controlling her. Mother. When that woman killed Dr. Walker, she was made to watch through her own eyes. I’m not even sure which of the women it was, but even though she was working with Mother, I don’t think it was voluntary.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Amy frowned. “If Louisa was under Mother’s direct control in the tunnels that night, why was Mother giving her instructions? Surely she wouldn’t need to if she was controlling her. She’d just do it.”

“I’m still piecing this together myself,” I nodded. “I don’t have all the answers. But Dr. Walker said that Mother’s control was different; not only was it more aggressive, but it was more intense and shorter lived. I wonder if there is a difference between these entities’ outright control over us and their general influence. I’m not sure any of us have been controlled by Mother yet, but we...” I gave a pointed look to Amy,” ... certainly have been controlled by Freja. When under her control, I seem to know exactly what to do and say to, well, to get you off. I can feel it coming, like an itch in the back of my head.”

“I ... I don’t think I’ve felt that since the day at the lake when we all passed out,” Amy frowned.

“That’s because you have been under Freja’s influence in the times between. I don’t think I have. I am either completely lucid or completely controlled, and I only seem to be controlled when I am...”

“Fucking our brains out,” Amy finished for me, not able to contain the teasing smirk despite the seriousness of the conversation.

“Yeah, that,” I couldn’t help but let out a soft chuckle. “You all seem to be working towards Freja’s goals even when you are not being controlled. Hell, for all I know, you may not even need to be directly controlled by her.”

“There is a certain logic to that,” Amy nodded. “Her influence seems to be making us want to have more sex, which we all enjoy, and to make us want to be bred. I mean, that last part is a huge deal by modern standards, but biologically speaking, it’s not much of a leap. I’m not sure how much I can speak for the others, but I know I have always wanted to have children one day. I’m not sure it would be much of a push to get that desire to the forefront of my thinking when I am under the influence. A little push in the direction she wants and our own biological impulses would do a lot of the rest of the work for her.”

I nodded slowly.

“But Mother’s control, that aggression, is against our characters, or at least against our characters,” She looked between the three of us. “Maybe Mother needs more time to get people like Louisa to work for her because it goes against our natural instincts.”

“Mmmm, so what do we do about Lousia?” Tom repeated the original question.

“I don’t know,” I admitted after a pause. “I’m not sure there is anything we can do about her. Even if we were to imprison Lousia or somehow keep her away from the group, Mother would just switch her control to someone else. I think all we can do is stay vigilant. Watch her. Try to work out what her plans are and then stop them.”

“That’s what Dr. Walker tried to do,” Amy said in a resigned tone. “And they killed him for it.”

“No, he didn’t. He tried to work alone. He even said that if he had known that it was possible to work together, he would have done that sooner.” I rested a hand reassuringly on her shoulder. “I will wake the others over the next few days and explain all of this to each of them. We will have to come up with a system where everyone can report what they see to Tom or me.”

“Dan, that makes Tom the lynchpin,” Amy warned. “You heard how they killed Doug on the tapes. There were five of them; they dragged him outside and...”

“I know,” I nodded. “But Tom has something that Doug never did.”

“What’s that?”

“Information,” I turned to our group’s youngest member. “Tom, I need you to visit the comms room and listen to Dr. Walker’s message yourself. Listen to it carefully. If you start to see anything like what he saw, especially when it comes to the dark-haired woman or if any of the rest of us start to act aggressively toward you, I need you to run!”

“Mmm, run to where?”

“Damn, good question. Where could he go that Mother wouldn’t think of looking?”

“North,” I answered after a few moments of thought. “If it comes to running, go as far North on the Island as you can go. If I am lucid when it happens, I will do everything I can to defend you. Doug was taken by surprise when he was attacked; he didn’t have a chance to fight them off. I’d rather not hurt anyone if I can avoid it, but I will if I have to. This ability to wake people up seemed to have worked on Amy. I will use it on Ray if we are attacked. Between the three of us, we should be able to at least keep ourselves safe, even if that means locking ourselves in a room and waiting Mother’s control out. But we are going to need to stay vigilant. Complacency could get us killed.”

“But what if she comes for him while the rest of us are sleeping? I can’t be the only one who has noticed that Lousia likes to sleep apart from the rest of the group.” Amy asked.

“I’m not saying there are no risks, but what choice do we have?

Silence filled the room for a few moments. “The labs,” Amy finally said, her head jerking up.