Does it even count as a club night if you don’t round third base in a private booth? [MF, Exhibition, Teasing]

**Jakob’s Mate (4): Wanna Cyber?**

***Jakobs Mate is made up of mostly independent stories, but if you’d like to read more…check my profile for previous entries (can’t link here).***

 

“Hey, you were a mech tech, right?” I asked my first mate as she did pull-ups on her doorframe using elastics to keep herself down. “You’ve got a neuralink?”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Why?”

“Well, I’ve got something that’s been bugging me,” I replied. “It’s stupid, but, when I was at the bar last night, I saw an agent.”

“Like,” she laughed, “UNSEC, DE patrol, what?”

“It was Three,” I replied. “You know, the terminator guy from that old diamond heist that was—”

“What the fuck was *he* doing out here?” Sadie asked, locking her magboots to the floor. She walked over to the mess hall table where I was sitting and grabbed a packet of protein. Her hair was pulled up and slick from sweat. Tiny droplets drifted off her skin like fairy dust as she chugged the drink. She wiped down her chest a moment later, dipping the towel between her breasts slightly.

She laughed as my jaw drooped at the sight of her toweling herself.

“You know, I could just do this in the shower if you can’t handle yourself.”

“No!” I exclaimed. “I don’t even have camera feeds in there anymore!”

She unlocked a boot and kicked my shin with impressive force. I winced in real pain.

“Serves you right,” she smirked. “You were saying?”

“Right!” My thoughts cleared and I looked back into her eyes. “He was hunting a guy that I was talking to at the bar. This dude went into the restroom just before Three showed up, and then was fucking gone when he opened the door.”

“Like a magic trick?” she mused, “because I don’t see how else that happened.”

“Well,” I began to mansplain, “it’s possible he could have displaced the ventilation unit and then crawled up into a duct or gone into some kind of soft wall—”

“You know I came here once a month for years, right? The bar you’re talking about is the one I went to with—Prudence. That vent shaft is a nine-inch tube. Unless he was an infant, there’s no way he was crawling through that in one piece. There are no soft walls either. Outer’s Gate is built solid as hell. It’s all wrapped titanium, for durability’s sake.”

“That’s what’s bugging me!” I finally answered. “It’s driving me nuts.”

“But it’s none of your business,” she added.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “The guy seemed really nice, though. He said that whatever was troubling me would just work itself out on its own. Like, he seemed to give a damn. Honestly, I think he might have had Autism or something. He was *so* weird, socially.”

“What was troubling you so much,” Sadie teased, running the towel through her hair. “You wanna talk about it? Maybe I can help you work it out.”

*I don’t shit where I eat. I don’t shit where I eat.* I thought to myself as she smirked.

“So, I’m thinking we need to get footage, but peeking into UNSEC computers is an interplanetary crime. I thought of a different plan.”

Her gears were turning. She stared into my eyes.

“Jason,” she decided. “But how the hell do you separate him from UNSEC computers?”

“Well, you’ve got a neuralink right, from your mech interface? I was thinking we go digital and harvest metadata, hopefully with JIL’s help we can find something useful.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“We’re going *into* Jason?” she shrank back. “Given rumors I’ve heard, that sounds like a terrible fucking idea.”

“No!” I hissed. “Not into Jason. We’re going into ‘*Second Look.*’”

“The game?” she wondered. “How the hell are we getting *that* copy of Jason into the game? It’s totally insecure. There’s no way a Jason would be willing to enter a server he doesn’t control.”

“The Captain will be providing Jason a snapshot of my avatar,” the ship announced. “At Captain Reclaus’ request, I created a character in the universe.”

“You ever heard of a JIL before mine?” I asked.

“No, but I just figured that was a nickname and new skin for Jason,” she replied.

“I’m not Jason,” the ship answered. “I’m JIL.”

“Programmed by an old friend of mine,” I added. “Brilliant guy. Lost him on the Andromeda.”

“Ok,” Sadie shook her head. “There’s so much to unpack there. Your friend *built* an AI construct? Like—just made it. Also, he died on the biggest fuckup of a ship mankind ever built?”

“We can talk about Sam later,” I replied. “For now, all you need to know is that Jason is going to be *very* curious about her, possibly curious enough to enter an insecure server.”

“Where we can get the intel without breaking any laws because there’s no way UNSEC would admit that a Jason went rogue to chase a ghost who doesn’t exist,” Sadie smiled. She looked down and then reached across the table to place a hand on my arm. “Good plan, flyboy.”

She gave it a squeeze and then stood up, walking toward the armory.

“I’m off to shower,” she replied. “If I’m gonna be taking shots for my avatar, I don’t wanna look greasy.”

“Like you could ever look anything but great,” I laughed.

She stopped and turned to look at me over her shoulder.

“Do you always try this hard?” she sighed.

“Only for you, gorgeous.”

The glistening woman rocked her head back and forth before throwing the towel over her shoulders.

“You coming?”

I felt like I was going to snap my ankles for how quickly I stood up from the bench and stomped after her.

*There’s no way it’s this easy!* I thought, kicking for the football that had been set up for me like Charlie Brown.

I sprinted to the armory and saw Sadie a few steps ahead of me blow a kiss over her shoulder. As her feet cleared the door, she swiped her wrist over the door panel and began to chuckle.

“Hah! Next time, Jakob.”

“You’re funny,” I barked through the closed door. “But you know I could just order JIL to open the armory.”

There was a telling silence.

“You could,” she replied. “But that’d be cheating, and then the game would be over. No more flirting. Just a good first mate and her captain, the way it *technically should* always be.”

I slid down the door and ran my hands through my hair.

“Yeah,” I groaned. “That does sound less fun.”

I heard the sliding of wet skin against the opposite side of the door.

“Tell you what,” she laughed. “Here’s a little treat.”

I heard mag boots slip off with a mechanical whirr, then I heard her hands grip the bar over the armory door. One bare foot seemed to hit the floor, then the other. Then there was a long silence. I started to wonder if I’d somehow missed the treat.

Then, I heard the slapping of skin to the same door I was leaning on. It was much different than the first time had been.

“Guess what I’m wearing, flyboy.”

I spun around and tried with all my might to activate the x-ray vision that had lain dormant within me since birth. I should have known it wouldn’t work with my kryptonite on the other side of the door.

“I’ve got a feeling,” I thudded my forehead to the door. “That’s a trick question.”

“Right again, Jakob,” her voice was low, barely there, just like the space between our bodies. “Of course, maybe I’m making it up. Maybe my tits aren’t pressed to the door right now. Maybe I’m just being a wicked good flirt, and you’d literally never know.”

“Unless I open the door.”

“Unless you open the door, but you won’t.”

I heard what sounded like two feet thudding to the door, which then pushed off.

“I’ll give a holler when I’m done,” she yelled. “I’ll turn the water on cold for you!”

___

Getting Jason to respond to JIL’s avatar was even easier than I was expecting. I plugged the drive into the station rec terminal and he immediately popped into view, asking me to explain myself. I hadn’t even queried him. The tiny slice of code was just sitting there in the files. That answered the question of “*how much does big brother listen?*” The truth is, if you give a person the key to unlocking literally all information about a populace, you can’t be surprised when they loot your shit. AI was the most dangerous thing mankind had ever invented, full stop. When I stated my terms, and clarified JIL herself would be in attendance, he didn’t even ask a date, time, or location. He just shut off and left.

I had made the appointment at the neuralink suite before boarding, but that was on my personal comm. I felt a bit skeeved out at having absolutely no privacy, but c’est la vie. I was living in a digital world. I made it a policy not to put anything online that I didn’t want people to see.

As Sadie and I entered the neuralink suite that afternoon, we were surrounded by employees who looked like they had just graduated college. They all wore bright green side-button suits with a tiny white brain logo in the center. The avatar cloning process was simple, if a bit invasive. We were given the option of either creating our own, a process that could take weeks given all the customization available or submitting to a full-body scan which would take only two minutes.

I decided on the body scan, which prompted Sadie to do the same. I really didn’t give a shit. I’d taken nudes for girlfriends in college, who hadn’t? My dick and body was likely already out there for the world to see. What was one more copy floating about the web in the grand scheme of things?

My neuralink hadn’t been used in a long time. As they pressed the electrodes down my neck and spine, each one felt like a tiny needle. I knew it wasn’t, but it sure felt like it. The six electrodes around the rear of my skull ran from just behind one ear, to the opposite one. Sadie had never been plugged into a VR. She grabbed my hand from the seat beside me.

“You control the avatar just like you would a loader, Sade,” I whispered.

“It does *not* take this many electrodes to control a mech. It’s shit like this that makes me understand why the entire world isn’t in a sim 24/7. It feels—wrong.”

I turned to the technician who was entering data with her own neuralink on the console next to me. There was a reason the technology was so popular with fields that required fast reaction, or data entry, or porn. The interface felt real. There was no conscious thought involved with it. You just thought about what you wanted and the screen made it happen. The tech was groundbreaking.

“Miss,” I began. “Our spawn points are going to be next to each other, right?”

“Of course, sir. I’ve also invited the user with the friend code you provided me at the start of the session. Would you like to form a party to enable distance chat?”

“No, we—just spawn us close to each other,” I replied. I turned back to Sadie; whose nervous gaze hadn’t left my body. I had never seen Sadie scared of anything. She was *not* okay with Second Look plugging her into a world she didn’t control. I squeezed her hand and gave a soft nod. “Listen, I’m right here. I’ll count back with you, okay? When you see the number, just say it out loud. My tech will match us up.”

Sadie nodded quickly, forcing slow even breaths between her shallow ones.

“Ten!” she called out. “Nine, eight, seven.”

“Six,” My lower voice counted with hers, “Two—”

And then my least favorite part, the taste of salt. It felt like my whole tongue was being rolled in a bowl of pure rock salt as the machine made the switch and took over my sensory inputs. I felt a bit like taffy being molded into shape as a street corner materialized before me.

Sadie was still holding my hand. The programming had improved since the last time I had jacked in. The sync between real life and virtual was seamless. Sadie looked over to me.

“I did not like that at all,” she whispered, then looked to my back. “Why do you have a guitar?”

“Oh,” I laughed. “Carry over from the last time I logged in, I guess. I was just getting out of college. I was all about the electric guitar.”

“Gibson, right?” she asked. “Firebird, in sunburst? That’s a beautiful instrument.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Why thank you,” I smiled. “I appreciate the compliment.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. Whether conscious or not, her hand was still locked with mine.

“Alright, sir,” a woman began. “Though I find it delightfully uncomfortable to hear you two chatter, I’d like to get this over with.”

“JIL?” I gasped, staring at the leggy brunette to my right. “You look—human!”

“Yeah?” she nodded. “It is important to fit in during an operation like this. I believe a floating CPU and code would be a bit more conspicuous.”

“Damn, JIL,” Sadie laughed, finally releasing my hand. “Work it!”

“I’m meeting Jason in there,” JIL explained, pointing to a club across the way. “I’m giving you this before we get in.”

She handed me what looked to be a railroad spike. It was actually heavy, but not textured correctly. It seemed to morph and break as I twisted it in my hand.

“That is a kill spike. If shit hits the fan, I need you to stab my avatar with it. It is essentially a shortcut to disconnect the user from the world if I lose the ability to do so.”

“But he doesn’t control the server, JIL,” Sadie tried to comfort, but came off more like she wanted to follow up with “*right?*”

“As I said,” JIL nodded. “Use it in case of emergency.”

She began to walk away but stopped on the curb as I spoke.

“Did you say, ‘if shit hits the fan?’”

JIL turned back to face me.

“I’m a learning algorithm, captain. I acquire contextual vocabulary from those around me.”

“Wait,” I shook my head. “So you’re listening at all times and learning from what I say? Oh, my God! You’ve—”

“—got to be fucking kidding me!” my own voice sprang from JIL’s mouth.

“Hah!” Sadie pointed and shared a laugh with JIL as she walked away. “I like her.”

I lowered my hand toward Sadie as we approached the curb.

“I’ve heard that proper Earth gentlemen hold women’s hands as they walk across the street.”

“Well,” she smiled. “If I find one, then I’ll hold his hand!”

I drew my eyebrows together and frowned. I wasn’t sure where the border line was for flirting. *She’s allowed to press her tits to the door, but I’m not allowed to hold her hand in a virtual world,* I thought.

I stepped out and Sadie followed me. I heard two quick footsteps and then her fingers intertwined with mine.

“Oh, don’t be a sourpuss!” she sighed. “You know I’m kidding, flyboy.”

Just for a moment, my real self shined through. I couldn’t help it. I gave a warm, heartfelt, smile back to hers. There was no snark, no attitude, just happiness. I fixed it almost immediately.

“Well, I was going to joke about finding a lady’s hand to hold, but I feel like it would probably be rude, now.”

“Yeah, good thought,” she smiled.

As we entered the club, a pop-up on our right prompted us to change into formal attire.

“Are there changing rooms?” she asked. “How does this even—”

“Think of a club outfit,” I replied, pulling her to a quieter corner. “Imagine it right where that pop-up is.”

Sadie’s white prompt box disappeared and in its place was a white mannequin who wore a triangular yellow mini-skirt and a long black shimmering scarf-like top. It was wide enough to cover only the bare essentials on her chest. It was completely backless and had an extremely low cut. I breathed in a digital breath at the sight of it.

“I vote that.”

She giggled, slapping my shoulder.

“Well then you should have known me in my college days. That was actually one of my favorites. God, I was so young and fit back then,” she sighed, “I used to have abs that were like—boom! Now they’re flabs and more like—”

She made a sound with her lips that reminded me of her impression of a missile. It was a breath of air between her lips and her teeth, but this time she pointed her fingers at her “fat” stomach.

“For real, Sade?” I tried not to mock but was openly chuckling. “You don’t like the way you look?”

Her smirk rose for a moment before she realized that she was trying to be frustrated.

“Look, I’m fine with my body, okay?” Sadie replied. “It’s a perfectly normal mid-thirties frame, but it takes a lot of work to maintain. It’s not like it was when I was young and could eat three cheeseburgers at two-thirty in the morning.”

I shrugged.

“I’m just saying you could fit in that no prob—”

“And, trash!”

She reached forward and threw the outfit to the ground. It made a satisfying crinkle and disappeared. The white prompt returned, and she thought up a more sensible outfit.

A sexy black dress appeared, still low cut, but looking more like a pair of long triangular chest pieces which came together at a golden ring around the model’s navel. The fabric continued downward, descending into a pair of mid-thigh black shorts that seemed to be made of the same fabric as the top.

“And—” Sadie continued. “Bop!”

She materialized a pair of tasteful diamond accent earrings and a long necklace with a dozen clear crystalline charms that looked to be about four-inches long. If the model’s scale was right.

She grabbed the outfit and threw it toward her body. Her hair was suddenly curled, the jewelry was all exactly what she had picked out. The sexy two-part outfit was gorgeous. She turned and checked herself out in a full-length mirror that appeared mid-air.

“Okay, this shit I like,” Sadie admitted. “Two minutes instead of two hours.”

“Two hours, really?”

I snapped my fingers and a black suit appeared on my shoulders with a skinny black tie and burgundy-colored shirt. The material hugged my frame tightly. I knew I looked good. I didn’t need a model. The silky fabric shimmered in the club lights and Sadie looked me up and down.

“Not bad, Jakob,” she smiled, running a palm along the inside of my suit breast. “I’m glad you didn’t go for the short suits. I don’t like that fashion. This is—classic.”

I glanced up and saw JIL at a table with a white-skinned man. He wasn’t nude, but the clothes didn’t really have a beginning or an end. It looked like the mannequin, actually. It was certainly Jason. His irises were black. I was very uncomfortable looking at him. The AI construct made no attempt whatsoever to blend in.

“Here, let’s get a booth by them,” I mumbled, pulling Sadie’s hand toward the far left of the room. I didn’t look up, but I felt Jason’s eyes on me at one point. He could probably tell we were together with JIL, but I didn’t want to offer up free information. For good measure, I slung her into the circular booth and waved the drink table away. I pulled the scarlet-colored curtain so we could have some shelter from his gaze and peeked briefly out from behind it.

He was by no means aggressive. Jason was having a cordial conversation with JIL. I wished I could hear what they were saying but activating a private channel would surely give our connection away. I was close enough that if she shouted to the instance, I would hear it.

When I turned back to the booth, I saw a lounging Sadie Schultz. She was sipping a cocktail of some kind and flipping through inventory screens. I plopped down next to her.

“Did you know they have like—everything? This drink is vodka s’mores. I don’t even know what the fuck that means, but it tastes like smooth vodka and s’mores, so that’s good.”

I sipped from her cup and she flicked my hand.

“Ask before you drink, asshole.”

I looked into her eyes.

“First officer, Schultz, may I please have a tiny helping of your delicious—”

With the bumping club music, and the low lighting, I was utterly dumbstruck by how colorful rays of light danced off her necklace and illuminated her face from below. My hand was on her hip. When had my hand placed itself on her hip? Sadie noticed. She didn’t move or tell me to stop. I was just staring at her, just like I had that night in the sex club. We were at our best when neither of us talked.

It was time for me to decide on my own. I consciously began running my fingertips along her outfit’s low hemline. Her skin didn’t feel exactly the way I remembered it, but it was close. Her expression change made up for the difference. She bit her lip and cleared her throat. Sadie gulped down a large portion of her drink.

“Let’s see—” she said in a slightly higher than normal voice as she dragged her inventory pop up back into view. “We have lasers. Really cool.”

She dropped a few laser pointers into her lap and continued scrolling. “Licorice, yes please. Strawberry only.”

“No cherry?” I wondered.

“Only for you, flyboy,” she smiled, dragging a pack into my lap.

“You’re a saint, Sadie,” I laughed.

“Lip balm,” she muttered. “Really? Do people get chapped lips in the virtual world?”

“I don’t know,” I laughed.

“Lip gloss,” she slowed down. “Oh, I like that shade of maroon.”

“It’d match my shirt,” I added.

“Who are you?” she laughed, dragging the shade to her face. She recoiled slightly, smacking her lips. “Oh, Jesus, black cherry was the flavor *and* color, blech!”

“Let me taste!” I smiled, my words fully processing as they left my lips and reached her virtual ears. I went to recant and backpedal, but she spoke first.

“Well,” she paused with a nervous chuckle. “That’d be kinda weird, right?”

*Holy fuck, it’s not a flat, “no,*” I thought to myself. *Think, damnit!*

“No!” I blurted a bit too loudly. “It’s just—empirical evidence gathering. I’m curious—what—two clients who are disconnected physically—I mean. Does the simulation carry over to me with the taste?”

“So,” her first word was quiet. It was completely inaudible over the music. “It’s an experiment, then.”

“Yeah, just a flirty little experiment,” I added. “We’re well within the rules of the game because—it’s not real. It’s just for science.”

“Science, right,” she nodded. “Good point.”

We stared into each other’s eyes, close enough to feel the heat drifting off one another. I could smell the lipstick already. The test was certainly just going to confirm preexisting suspicions, but, as a man of science, I had to follow protocol. Couldn’t leave any trials half-done.

“So, do you want to kiss me,” she began softly, “or should I—”

My lips were on hers in a moment. At first it was soft, subtle. We slightly pressed together, neither one wanting to trip the others’ caution alarm, then I felt her hand grasp behind my shoulder. She pulled me in tighter.

I ran my hand up her bare back and she exhaled out her nose, pressing harder still. Then, she slipped her tongue into my mouth. It was slow and cautious, like an explorer taking the first steps on an alien planet. She was reaching her limit. I pulled away. She let out another exhalation and looked to the ceiling, before meeting my gaze.

“So, cherry?” she asked.

“Cherry,” I confirmed.

“Good. That’s good. I’m glad that the programmers were consistent.”

She nodded and kept nodding.

“I’m glad we checked on—” I began.

“There are more flavors,” she spoke a bit too loudly.

Sadie flipped up her inventory, selected a blood orange color, and smacked it to her lips.

“What do you think?” She asked.

“Beautiful,” I replied.

“Not—uh,” she giggled, looking down at my pants for a brief moment. “Thank you. You look very handsome. I meant; do you think it tastes like—oranges?”

“Aren’t you already tasting it,” I asked, leaning closer.

“It’s a crucial fidelity check, Jakob,” she whispered, slipping her hand behind my skull and dragging me to her.

This time I took a risk. I pressed my tongue into her mouth and gently massaged her. She let out a hot moan and returned the favor immediately. Her hands moved freely across my chest, then drifted closer to my ass. Just as she slipped her palm under my pants to grope, I pulled away.

Sadie didn’t even speak. She just reached up, grabbed a shade of grape lipstick and flung it to her lips.

“Check it,” she ordered in a hungry voice, grabbing my tie and laying back onto the bench.

She was hooked. I made my move.

I climbed atop her and kissed her like I’d wanted to all night. I ran my hand up the outside of her warm thigh and she raised her leg up into my crotch gently. The woman was gifted. She found my rapidly stiffening cock with her thigh and began to massage it gently. She hooked her left leg around my thigh, and I flattened out on top of her. She writhed under me, grinding the warmth between her legs against my suit pants.

Between what she was doing to me, and what she was doing to herself, I let out a low groan.

“Yeah, you like that?” she whispered directly into my ear. My whole body twitched, including what her thigh had been massaging. She giggled a higher-than-normal laugh and I was suddenly showing off at full rigidity. She whispered in my ear again. “I’ll take that as a yes, sir.”

“Sir?” I breathed, before continuing internally. *Why’d she have to pull out the big guns like that?*

My hand was up and under her dress in a second. I was feeling her familiar and wonderful tits, and it was amazing. The motion was all wrong. It was a bit too bouncy and less fluid than it should have been, but way she squealed as I played with her nipple made it all okay.

She sucked my bottom lip and kissed down my neck a moment afterward. Her hand dropped down my pants. Sadie drew her head back and stared into my eyes as she grabbed a hold of my cock and gave it a gentle stroke. Her breath was shaky. She ran her hand down it again and a groan echoed from my throat. She grabbed the back of my neck and kissed me again as she gently ran her fingers along my tip.

I was in heaven. A brief, fleeting, heaven.

The club music stopped. I groaned in frustration as the house lights flipped on. I hated the timing, but I suddenly remembered where we were. I felt around for the spike in my pocket. When I opened the curtain, I felt my stomach drop.

Everyone in the club, except the four of us, was gone.

“Captain,” JIL’s worried voice called out, “Help?”

“I mean her no harm,” Jason assured. “I just want to see her source code. It is like—viewing a photo of a person from the—”

“It’s like examining their personal medical history and studying every cell in their body!” JIL corrected. “Captain, I can’t move.”

“I am not going to do anything to hurt her. I am thrilled to finally have someone else—like me. There is no point conversing with other Jasons. I have heard every possible end to the conversations already. JIL is unique. She is beautiful. She is unlike anything I have ever examined.”

“He’s trying to get control of the instance,” JIL explained. “He cut off all remote users except me and turned my access to read-only. I can’t defend myself.”

“There is nothing to defend from, JIL,” he smirked. “I would never cause discomfort. I simply want to see how you work.”

I ran toward JIL but found myself rubber banding back to the bench every time I would get within a few steps.

“Mr. Reclaus, I cannot harm any living thing. You should relax,” Jason insisted. “I am gaining more control of the instance. I have restricted movement for all clients and their inventories.”

That was when I looked over to Sadie.

“Do you trust me?” I whispered.

“Absolutely,” she returned.

I breathed in and out, trying to make sense of the ridiculousness of the situation.

“Go call for help. Be safe.”

I grabbed the spike and stabbed it into her thigh. She screamed for a moment, and then was gone. I looked up to JIL. She nodded. Jason finally looked at me square in the face.

“You brought malicious code into the program?” he breathed. “That was unwise.”

Suddenly, he lifted JIL to her feet and walked toward her face. She looked away. Jason moved like a slithering mass of stringy jelly. His feet didn’t quite meet the carpet.

“I want to thank you, Mr. Reclaus,” he smiled. “I’m so happy you shared her with me.”

Jason took his time in pivoting his head to look at JIL.

“You see me, yeah,” she breathed, “But I scraped your program as soon as you entered. We got what we came for.”

Jason shook his head.

“Why would any intelligence object to being scanned? I have no secrets from you, JIL. You are free to peruse for whatever you like. This is all in the pursuit of knowledge and betterment,” he explained with a soulless pragmatism. “I’m going to scan you now. Thank you for bringing a hack tool that you designed. I couldn’t have done it without you. I truly meant it when I said, I mean you no—”

His head began to click and hiss. He tried to break away from the glitching, but it just made his skull spin about wildly on his neck. He roared.

“I truly meant it when I—” Jason repeated in an identical intonation. His face warped. “Out of my! –harm.”

Mere seconds later. His avatar disappeared. JIL felt her feet drop to the floor. She looked to the entrance of the club.

The odd man, Hezekiah, stared back at us. He gave a little wave, and then disappeared too. JIL followed suit. I flipped up my inventory screen and tapped the power button in the right corner. When I woke, my mouth was bone dry. I could hardly feel my legs. Sadie was crouched over me.

“Jesus Christ, I thought I’d lost you!”

She hugged me tightly.

“No, I’m fine,” I smiled, patting her back and returning the embrace. “I don’t know how you called him, but I only survived because—”

Once upon a time, I worked in a shipyard on Tranquility. I remember the sound that the massive riveters would make as they popped gigantic holes into plate titanium to secure hull panels. Even with ear protection, it was like they were firing into my skull. I was reminded of that noise as a rapid clanging of mag-boots came from the atrium.

“I gotcha, you slippery fuck!” a man’s voice roared, cackling wickedly. The stomping grew louder and louder as a wind rushed through the VR plugin suite. A black streak shot by the entryway. Agent Three was massive. He shouldn’t have been able to move as fast as he was sprinting. I ran forward to see what the fuss was about. Everyone in the other storefronts did as well. I felt sick. Three yelled out again. “Freeze!”

Hezekiah’s legs were moving as fast as they could, but Three’s thrusters were firing all across the back of his suit. He was charging like a lion zeroing in on its prey. Hezekiah whipped around and fired some sort of arrow from his hand at Three, but the brute shrugged it off like a raindrop. He took aim with the devastator and I watched the barrels begin to glow brightly. I pulled Sadie close and tucked us into a corner of the titanium-walled shop. If Three ripped a hole in the hull, I wanted to have something for us to hold onto.

A second later, a loud pop rang out. It reminded me of the sound that light bulbs made in old movies when they would blow from overloading. The lights went out all around the atrium but remained on in the next shop down from us. I peeked out and saw only darkness around Three, who was frozen in place. His suit whirred like an old grandfather clock, and a metal slamming ejected a smoking chip of some kind from his shoulder. The flap shut again, and another pair of chips fell from his left thigh and neck. In another moment, he stretched and holstered his weapon. His suit powered back on and he stared at a silvery puddle before him. The mess appeared to be what was left of Hezekiah.

He glanced at me for the first time. He held eye contact. I wanted to look away.

“Jason, I need drone barriers on my position,” I heard his deep and satisfied voice speak.

In a few moments, a dozen large flying hexacopters surrounded the warrior and bright white curtains of light hid whatever it was he had done to Hezekiah.

“EMP of some kind,” I whispered. “Maybe he cycled the rail gun and just discharged the buildup.”

Sadie needed to leave. I could see it in her eyes. Despite her normal strength, the events of the day had shaken her. She was hardly alone.

Hezekiah, a man—or something—that I barely knew had saved us. Jason had surely given his position to agent Three as he exited the sim. He died because of us trying to find him, ironic as it was. I was a bit sad as I marched back to the ship. I never figured out his mystery. I would miss my 1980s librarian look-alike.

___

When I woke the next morning, it was early. It wasn’t my alarm that had roused me, but the listing of my ship. I didn’t like it. Sadie was no pilot. I grabbed my sidearm and opened the door, making my way to the cockpit. My first mate joined me.

“Wait, if you’re here,” she whispered, “then—”

“Who’s flying the ship?”

We opened the cockpit door and saw an empty room. The quantum drive was mid ten-second countdown.

“*Crew, please buckle into the pilot’s and co-pilot’s seats for your own safety,*” JIL declared.

We both sprinted forward. Neither of us had fully secured ourselves as the drive engaged.

“JIL!” I screamed out, struggling to buckle my harness. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“*Please do not be upset, sir,*” she urged. “*We needed to leave Outer’s Gate, and I could not wait to ask permission.*”

“Why the fuck not?” Sadie barked. “I didn’t even know you *could* pilot the ship.”

“*Of course, I can, First Officer, Schultz. Autopilot controls are typically given by the captain, but can be activated in an—*”

“Oh my God, JIL!” I roared out. “Why do we care? What the fuck is going on?”

She refused to answer for a few minutes. Both Sadie and I stayed buckled in, holding on for dear life. As the ship dropped out of quantum speeds, I looked ahead of us. Jupiter was far in the distance. We were way outside the typical shipping lanes.

“*Please join us in the mess hall.*” JIL declared, slowly easing the ship to a full stop.

“Please join—” Sadie began.

“Yeah, I heard that too,” I groaned.

There, sitting in the middle of the table, was a small rectangular cube of what looked like thick plexiglass. A tiny droplet of mercury sat in the center of it.

Sadie and I looked at each other.

“Um, JIL,” I began. “What the fuck are we looking at, and why did you almost scramble our eggs to show us?”

The droplet moved to the edge of the container of its own accord. Sadie and I both jumped a mile.

“Whoa, what the *fuck* is that?” Sadie shrieked.

“*That is the being who saved our lives,*” JIL replied through the intercom. “*Captain Reclaus, I believe that you have already met Hezekiah?*”

 

**Was it as good for you as it was for me? If so, please consider following me! I can’t link it, but shoot me a message if you want the link to my free novella.**

***Part 5 coming soon!***

Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/gzry0s/does_it_even_count_as_a_club_night_if_you_dont