Christmas in Zonei - 6. Chapter 6

Raeden ran through the forest, his bare feet crunching softly on the leaf-strewn path. The woods were deeply shadowed, the air cool and fresh. Birds twittered in the trees, their song lifting his soul. Lyzel’s joyous laugh mingled with that of the birdsong, a beautiful counterpoint. She was so light he almost couldn’t feel her clinging to his back, but he was ever aware of her loving presence.

“I would not have imagined a place so wild and beautiful still existed on this earth,” she said, using their mind link.

“It is amazing,” he agreed. “I wonder how long it will take K-Corp to destroy it?” He tried to block that last cynical thought from her.

Lyzel had somehow managed not to become jaded as, day after day, year after year, they were sent to fight. Often they fought against other corporations—corporate states as corrupt as their own whose citizens were pitiable victims of corporate greed. When they destroyed giant conglomerates of corruption, he felt a grim satisfaction. But all too often lately, they’d been sent out to fight the free peoples. There weren’t many pockets of them left. “Free peoples” were what the mod’s called them. The Corporation called them savages, but they weren’t. They were resource poor, but he thought they lived a much richer existence than any of the corporate citizens. He had heard they made their own rules, with freely elected leaders and laws that benefitted all. He knew that large areas of the world used to be covered with free peoples, before The Holocaust that had made most areas of the planet uninhabitable.

That devastating war had lasted twelve long years. He knew by heart the history that K-Corp had taught him and, when he was young, he even believed it. Over the years, he had come to question all of the information that K-Corp disseminated. He realized that they twisted the truth to suit their own ends, which were never for the people, only for those few in power. Lyzel had begun to distrust the Corporation too, but somehow she’d managed to hold onto a childlike innocence. She still had hopes for a better world, saw corporate evilness as a challenge to be overcome, and generally put a positive spin on events that left him bitter and morose.

Now he felt a wave of sadness roll off her and regretted his errant thought.

“I hear water running,” she said excitedly. “Can we go see?”

“Of course.” He could never deny her wishes, nor would he want to. She was the light of his life.

He slowed to a walk as he left the path. He had to duck under branches and pick his way around clumps of bramble and large ferns. The air grew noticeably cooler as they descended a small incline and approached the stream. Water tumbled and burbled over the rocks in a haphazard fashion. Water features were common in the upper zones, but they were always controlled. In comparison, this natural stream was wild and chaotic.

“Breathtaking!” Lyzel’s thoughts carried even more emotion than her voice did. “Look Raeden! There are falls!”

Raeden followed her gesture upstream to see a series of small waterfalls cascading down a steep hillside. He walked toward them and observed that, at the base of each fall, a small pool had formed, the rocks beaten away over time by the force of the water. Lyzel squealed in delight and swung off his back onto ground mossy with dew.

“Oh Raeden, we could go swimming!”

“Swimming?”

“Well, we could get wet. Rinse off the trail dust.” She immediately began shedding her clothes.

Raeden looked around slowly, stretching his senses. The woods seemed deserted except for small animals and birds. Their assignment was to see if they could find evidence of human habitation. So far, they hadn’t seen any, and with such an open-ended assignment, they could get away with spending an hour or so shunning their duties.

By the time he’d made up his mind to join her, she had striped down to her underwear. He undressed at a more leisurely rate, watching her with appreciation as she took off her final garments. Standing stark naked on the bank of the stream she grinned up at him. Her tiny body was toned, her small breasts high and firm.

Hunger washed over him in a wave, causing blood to rush to his organ. He yanked his underwear down, freeing his cock. She laughed delightedly when she saw his growing erection. As he reached for her, she danced quickly away. He gave chase, and she leapt into the stream, squealing as she plunged into the frigid water, goose bumps shivering across her skin. He followed her in, heedless of the cold.

She turned and began to splash him. He laughed as he caught her up in his arms, preventing her onslaught of icy droplets. He picked her up easily, and she wrapped wet arms around his neck, wet legs around his torso, and her laughter bubbled into a fit of giggles. Her dark hair cascaded down her back, the ends shedding water onto her bare ass.

He looked into her wide eyes, captivated by their depths. Her long black lashes were a startling contrast to the vivid green of her irises. Her gaze shifted from his eyes to his mouth, and he kissed her without hesitation. Her tongue tangled with his and she let out a small moan.

“Raeden, I love you so much,” her thoughts reached him.

“You are my life, my love, my everything, Lyzel. I love you more than the heavens are wide ... more than the ocean is deep...”

At that point she jabbed him in the ribs—hard. “You are so corny!”

Raeden laughed. “Corny, maybe. But I meant every word.”

They caught each other’s eye and immediately sobered as lust overtook them. He kissed her again, relishing the feel of her lithe body in his arms, his tongue thrusting hungrily against hers.

The only warning he got that they were in danger was the swish of something whizzing through the air. He heard the sickening sound of a hard, sharp object slicing through flesh and bone. Her body stiffened in his arms. He felt pain shred through her back and chest and she let out a small cry.

He drew back from the kiss to look at her in horror. Her eyes reflected the pain she felt.

“Raeden,” she gasped. “I love you.” Then her eyes rolled back in her head even as redness bloomed across her breasts. She sucked in one last painful breath of air and then was still. He felt her life force wrenched suddenly from her body and she was gone.

He stared at her in shock.

“Lyzel! Lyzel!” He shook her slightly even though he knew she was already dead.

Of course, she’s dead. This is a dream. She died last spring—without me.

His dreaming mind knew this.

The Corporation had separated them … insisted on doing training maneuvers with the Warrior Pairs as separate units. He had hated it, and the very second time they had trained apart, he’d lost her to a stupid mistake. One of the other female mods had been so disoriented by being without her mate that she had lost control of her automatic weapon and fired into a group of women. Many had been injured. Lyzel was the only one who died. She’d been hit in the back of the head and had died almost instantly. Even over the miles that had separated them, he had felt her die. It had been the worst moment of his life.

The beginning of his dream had been almost as much a memory as a dream. Lyzel and he had shared an idyllic interlude in the cool forests of what had formerly been called Argentina and was now known as QZone. They had not found any evidence of human habitation and had emerged from their assignment unscathed.

So he realized he was dreaming, but that did not lessen the horror he felt at watching her die in his arms.

As he stared at her lifeless face, she suddenly blinked her eyes open. Except they weren’t her eyes, they were Kim’s eyes, dark and exotic. Her chestnut hair became ebony, her face broadened, her lips plumped, and her body transformed until he was holding a naked and uninjured Kim in his arms.

A smile spread across Kim’s face, lighting up his eyes with affection.

Raeden startled awake. In the aftermath of his painful, confusing dream, the first thought that occurred to him was that he’d never actually seen Kim smile.

*****

Raeden winced and stifled a gasp of pain.

“Sorry, sorry,” Kim said, trying to be even more gentle as he unwrapped the bandages from Raeden’s feet. He hated acting as nurse to Raeden. It always made him queasy to look at the devastation that had once been beautiful feet.

“I don’t think you’re getting any better,” Kim said, shaking his head.

Raeden grunted.

“I wish … we need to figure out how to get you another intel so you can afford to get them fixed.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Raeden said.

“You want to lose your feet?”

Raeden shrugged.

Kim hated it when Raeden got so despondent. When he had first moved in, he had been morose most of the time. Lately, however, he had been coming out of his gloomy world more and more often. He seemed happy to see Kim when he got home from work and would chatter on about whatever book he was reading or even talk about sports, education, politics, or religion. He had some interesting perspectives and was very knowledgeable on a variety of subjects.

Raeden told Kim that he had lived in Zonesee when he was working, and that information was much more readily available to residents in the higher zones. He held that the government purposefully kept the masses uneducated and took every opportunity to move people to lower zones. Those with wealth and power wanted it all for themselves. “Greed is a sickness that grows like cancer,” he said.

Kim thought Raeden was perhaps a bit touched—had ingested too many drugs or maybe it was his altered DNA that made him paranoid. Kim didn’t want to believe the corporation was as sinister as Raeden described, however, he himself was already jaded. He’d come to the conclusion that the corporation really didn’t care about its citizens quite a while back, the first seed being planted when his father disappeared and the corporation did nothing to help them find him. If one of his mother’s employers hadn’t upped her wages considerably at that point, they would have had to move to Zonekay or Zonel. Perhaps even to Zonem. They probably wouldn’t have survived their first winter.

Kim gingerly cleaned Raeden’s feet, his stomach twisting into knots. He had already observed that Raeden had no feeling in his black toes at all; he was going to lose them. He might lose large chunks of the rest of his feet as well and several of his fingers. Kim wondered if Raeden would ever be able to walk again. He could, of course, get prosthetic feet if he could afford them, but they would never be the same. And time was running out for getting the electroregen treatment. It was supposed to be done within the first month and it had already been three and a half weeks.

Kim bit his lip as he worked and refrained from looking at Raeden. He didn’t want the big man to see the pity in his eyes. Finally, he finished bandaging Raeden’s feet and began to pick up the supplies.

“Thank you,” Raeden grunted.

Kim glanced up at him in surprise. Raeden had never thanked him for treating his feet before. In fact, he usually acted put out that Kim would even try.

“I wonder if I could hire someone to carry you to the nearest CorpSec security office,” he said.

Raeden snorted. “The nearest office is more than five miles away. I can’t take the rail or a bus without an intel. I weighed over 300 pounds, last I checked. You’d have to hire a bunch of guys.”

“And I don’t know anyone who would do something like that except Carlos and Pablo. They might have friends who would help, but they don’t have clearance for Zonei. This is so stupid! How can Corpsec be so inflexible that they won’t come pick you up?” Kim had called them more than once on the issue, but always with the same result: he had hung up worried that he was going to get himself in trouble.

“Corpsec is pure evil,” Raeden said. “They don’t care about citizens. They are structured to keep the members at each other’s throats in a dog-eat-dog fight for advancement and survival. It’s rather like watching a salamander eat his own tail. Sure, those high up in Corpsec live lavishly, but if you fail during the climb up, you end up dead—or worse—reformed.

Kim shuddered. He had heard horror stories of reform, had seen empty-eyed citizens performing menial tasks, had been told that they used to be brilliant professors or doctors or scientists. His already queasy stomach churned.

“There must be a way we can save your feet—and your fingers,” he said.

Raeden shook his head. “I haven’t come up with a plan yet. I was hoping my metabolism would kick in and start healing them, but I seem to have lost that ability.” He closed his eyes and lay back on the bed, and Kim knew that he’d be grumpy the rest of the evening.

*****

Raeden was dreaming again—a sex dream. The only time he ever got to have sex anymore was in his dreams, but they were always so emotionally painful, he hated them. He would be with Lyzel for a brief happy time only to lose her again when he awoke, or often, she would die in his arms at some point before he climaxed.

Even as he sucked on the tender skin at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, he tried to rouse himself. He did not need to go through another of these fucking nightmare dreams. Her scent was spicier than usual. She moaned low and writhed against him. He couldn’t help himself from stirring with desire.

He ran a trail of kisses down over her breastbone and to her nipple. Confusion washed over him as he realized she didn’t have any breasts, just hairless nipples on a flat chest. He looked up at her and realized, it wasn’t Lyzel he was making love to, it was Kim.

His beautiful face was etched in ecstasy, his hands twisted in the sheets. Raeden took a deep breath, savoring his scent. Kim’s naked body was smooth and toned, not as tiny as Lyzel’s had been, but still exquisite. Goosebumps pebbled his skin and his nipples jutted up in invitation.

Raeden took one in his mouth and sucked, eliciting a moan from Kim. His fingers found the other nipple and he pinched it gently. A small wail came from Kim and his hips jerked forward.

He woke with a start. What a bizarre dream!

He heard Kim, who was sleeping on his back next to him, make a small, needy sound. Raeden opened his eyes and propped himself up on an elbow to look at him.

It was clear he was dreaming. His face was scrunched and his breath came in shallow gasps. His fingers clenched the blanket, much like they had in Raeden’s dream. Is he dreaming about sex? Raeden wondered.

Clearly he was. His body was mostly covered, but Raeden could make out the bulge of his hard cock as his hips made small upward thrusts. He could smell his precum, strong and pungent. Kim whimpered softly.

Gorgeous! Raeden thought. Kim’s waist-length ebony hair was splayed out about his face, cascading over his shoulders. A light sheen of sweat had broken out on his forehead. His barely writhing hips picked up their pace and suddenly he let out a loud groan. His face clearly showed that he was in orgasm and Raeden watched in fascination, wishing that Kim was naked so he could see the whole show.

Kim blinked his eyes open, still gasping for air.

“Oh,” he said, his face reflecting his confusion. His eyes focused on Raeden who was probably staring at him with a ferocious intensity. “Oh!” They widened in understanding and then a flush quickly climbed his chest onto his cheeks.

He looked away, tossed off the covers, and ran for the bathroom.

I wonder if he was dreaming about me, Raeden wondered, a small smile playing at his lips.

*****

Kim felt heat flooding his face as he rinsed out his underwear and wiped the cum off his stomach with a cold, wet cloth.

If he knew I was dreaming about him like that, he’d kill me.

Kim’s dream had been unbelievable. In his dream, he’d woken up to Raeden kissing down his neck and collarbone. He’d moaned and Raeden had taken his mouth, his tongue thrusting hard and deep with passion. Kim had never been kissed by a lover and the sensations overwhelmed him. There was something terribly intimate about having Raeden’s tongue down his throat. He’d sucked on the organ and Raeden had let out a low rumble, deep in the back of his throat, that had sent sex shivers down Kim’s spine.

His cock had exploded into rock-hard readiness and he had whimpered around Raeden’s invading tongue. Raeden had ended the kiss to lave his tongue down Kim’s neck, sucking gently on the soft skin beneath his collarbone. Raeden’s fingers, uninjured in his dream, had crept up to tease one of his nipples.

Electricity had swept through him, igniting his body like never before. He’d climbed rapidly toward climax, his body alive and desperate, his muscles tightening as he thrust against Raeden’s washboard abs. When Raeden bit down gently on one nipple, still pinching the other, an intense orgasm had washed over Kim in waves. A loud groan had escaped him as his balls turned themselves inside out.

Kim wondered how much Raeden had seen. Surely, he knew that Kim had just had a wet dream. An awesome wet dream. Kim shuddered and sighed and pulled his sweats back on over his now-bare butt.

*****

Bitter cold wind whipped around Kim and he shivered as he stopped abruptly and squinted into the darkened doorway, trying to spot an address. There were no nice areas of Zonei, but this one was seedier than most. Trash was piled high at the edge of the street, many of the upper windows in the buildings were broken—boarded over on the inside, and not a soul was in sight. That didn’t mean there weren’t people watching him. He suppressed another shiver as a chill raced up his spine. He was sure there were eyes on him.

He stepped into the alcove, turning sideway so that his back was to the brick the wall of the alcove and not to either the street or the door. Searching the gloom, he saw no sign of a number plate or even a security panel. The building was old, mid-last century. The only upgrades he saw, if you could call them that, were the solid newsteel door and the newsteel bars on the windows. He pulled up his sleeve to access his intel while keeping an eye on the shadows, trying not to appear nervous.

He touched the face of the intel to expand the screen and, as the faint blue light dispelled some of the shadows, he once again glanced around in vain for an indication that he was in the right place. He spotted two small security cameras recessed into the brick wall and shielded with security glass. They were positioned above the door on either side so they’d be able to capture anything in the alcove. Looking back at his intel, he saw that the blue dot that represented his location was almost on top of the green dot that showed his destination.

This must be it, he thought without relief.

Bringing his intel close to his lips, he spoke into it quietly: “Intel: connect me to Dr. Finneas Marcus, Zonei.”

“Connecting,” the male voice with a Japanese accent replied.

Kim tried not to fidget as he waited for the connection to go through. It seemed to take an eternity, but finally a female voice came through the speaker.

“Dr. Finneas Marcus’s office. How may I help you?”

“Uh, this is Kim Takemoto. I have an appointment with Dr. Marcus. I think I’m standing in front of your office, but I don’t see a number.”

“One moment please,” the woman’s voice intoned.

Kim heard a whir and a click.

“The door is unlocked. You have eight seconds to enter,” the woman said.

Kim was having misgivings about this whole venture, but eight seconds didn’t give him time to waffle. He twisted the door handle and pulled hard. The heavy steel moved grudgingly, and as soon as there was a gap wide enough for him slip through, he did so.

He found himself in a long, dim corridor with doors leading off to either side at regular intervals. He hesitated until he heard the female voice intone, “Third door on the left.”

Just as he got there, he the snick of a lock. He opened the door and peered in.

“Come in and close the door,” a harsh male voice growled.

Kim’s nerves were taut wires, trembling, ready to snap. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The scent of garbage and sweat assaulted him. He was in a small room that was crowded with … junk. Machines of various shapes and sizes, most looking in need of repair, were piled along one wall. There was a tall bookcase that took up another wall, overflowing with haphazardly stacked books and piles of papers. A large, old-fashioned wooden desk was also strewn with books and papers, as well as knickknacks and fast food wrappers. A large, rotund man sat behind the desk, glaring at him with beady eyes that were heavily hooded by folds of fatty skin.

The only light in the room came from a small desk lamp. The man tilted it so that the light shone in Kim’s eyes. He blinked as the man became a silhouette, black against gray.

“So, you are interested in electroregen,” the man said. His eyes were now just a glitter in the dark of his face, but Kim felt them raking him up and down. “You don’t seem injured.”

“It’s … it’s not for me,” Kim stammered, cursing his unsteady voice. “It’s for a friend. He’s not mobile. You’d have to come to our place. Your advert said you had a portable machine.”

The man grunted, then picked a soiled napkin up off the desk and spat into it. “I do. You don’t look like can afford it.”

Kim took a deep breath, trying to quell the flare of hope that ignited in his breast. It was a slim chance at best, but he had to try, for Raeden’s sake. “I … I can pay you some now, and then make payments with each paycheck,” he said. Worried that the man would reject him outright, he hurried to add, “If it works … I mean, as soon as he’s mobile, we can pay you in full—even some extra for floating us.” Kim held his breath and tried to look sincere and humble, not desperate.

The man steepled his fingers and looked at Kim without saying anything for a long moment. Kim yanked on his braid, running his thumb down the plaits. It was a nervous habit.

The man stood up and he seemed huge, although certainly not nearly as tall as Raeden. He probably weighed as much as Raeden, though, Kim thought. His stomach bulged out over the top of his pants, making his silhouette half again as wide as it was tall.

“I am not running a charity,” the man said, his voice dripping with acid. “Nor am I a loan shark.” As he spoke he stepped around the desk, moving out of the shadows until he was standing in front of Kim.

Kim forced himself not to shrink away. In the light from the lamp he could see that the man’s shirt was stretched taut over his massive belly, showing every roll of fat. It was stained dark at his armpits and the acrid stench of his body odor permeated the air.

The man stared down at him with his piggy eyes, his expression unreadable. Kim felt a wave of heat rush through him as adrenalin coursed through his body. He really wanted to run, but he was sure this man was Raeden’s last chance.

He steeled his nerves and looked up at the man boldly, holding his ground even as he felt his heart beating frantically in his chest. The man’s posture was not overtly threatening, but there was something insidious about him. A smile curled the man’s lips, but it was not friendly.

“The cost per treatment is $80,000. And most people need more than one treatment.”

“Eighty thousand dollars,” Kim repeated, his mind boggling at the price. There was no way—no way!—he could ever pay that back. He had $150 per paycheck in disposable income if he was careful with his food and power consumption, and some of that was needed for incidentals, like new shoes when his old ones wore completely out. He wondered if Raeden even had that much money.

Suddenly the man reached out and grabbed a firm hold of Kim’s braid. His other pudgy hand slipped under Kim’s chin and, with a tug on the braid, he forced Kim’s face up to look at him. Terror streaked through Kim, but he was caught fast. The man’s fingers had a sour, smoky smell. Opisigs, Kim guessed.

“I can think of a way you can pay me.” The man’s voice slithered over Kim’s skin like a snake.