Athenium

Article 2 (sorted chronologically)

Owner: Stiles, R.

Item: Written Log Fragments

(2/23/48: 1141 Hrs)

Athenium (section missing) victim. Was expecting to retrieve another vegetable, but Nomi appears to be merely unconscious. Signs of (section missing) of cranium (fragment ends)

(2/23/48: 1521 Hrs)

...CT and MRI show a completely normal brain. He had to be convinced that both were necessary. Nomi looks completely healthy, and says he feels-

(2/24/48: 0012 Hrs)

Another (section missing) by the substance. No one saw him actually go in but (section missing) since the first inundation. (section missing) to get it to give people up, but ARCOM is adamant to get him out now. No good ide-(fragment ends)

(2/24/48: 0617 Hrs)

-was gone for literally 90 seconds. I get back, and Hunziger (section missing) said he saw the substance close over his head. Says ARCOM will have my head for this, and I've gotta try to go in myself and get Bryant out.

If I don't come back, whoever is reading this: tell Hunziger to go fuck himself with a snowmobile.

******

The first thing I notice when I wake is the taste of the air, like metal in my mouth. My throat is parched.

Thinking of that taste, though, sends blood flowing to my cock and stirs dormant fantasies...

The vitals monitor beeps loudly, signaling that my pulse has dropped below 50 again. I ignore it; I have had the pulse of an Olympic athlete since the second time I emerged from Athenium, so the low pulse is no concern. More frustrating is my recognition of its meaning: a sure sign that I am back above the surface. I'm going to have to explain what happened down there soon. I find myself wishing that she had kept me down there, not for the same reason Marco wanted to be down there, but so that I wouldn't be part of whatever this scheme was.

"Dr. Stiles? Can you hear me?" I hear Daniela ask.

A woman, Athenium urges. A woman. Deliver her.

No. Damn it, no. I try to suppress the influence of the temptress, but the subtle influence she had on me before has turned into a full-blown voice in my head.

A woman - I assume it's Daniela - is two meters beneath the center of a pool of goo that is now kilometers wide. It's penetrating her, squeezing her thighs and ass. She pushes at the ooze with the balls of her feet, bobbing up two centimeters before Athenium responds in kind, pushing her the same two centimeters back down...

"Look at his face...is he..." Daniela asks someone nearby.

"No. No, he's awake. Rod, rise and shine, buddy, we've got problems to deal with," A male voice replies. It's the only voice I wanted to hear less than that of Athenium.

Hunziger. I yawn, groan, and consider stripping off my hospital gown and telling Athenium to just fucking take me already, to end this guinea pig bullshit.

Disdain. Interesting.

"Brought the Inquisition this time, Zig?" I say, more to the dozen or so scientists that are standing behind him, eyeing me like I'm some kind of hazardous exotic life form. Maybe I am now.

"How about we, uh, give Rod some space," Hunziger says to the other scientists. They murmur something and clear the room. I consider yelling out to them a sarcastic "I'm fine, thanks for your concern," but I'll have plenty of time and opportunity to do that in a few seconds.

"The beauty rest isn't doing it's job, Zig, you look like shit," I say. I'm joking, but completely serious.

"Can't all be prom queens like you, Rod," Hunziger shoots back, sending Daniela out of my tiny "room" with a quick hand gesture. I don't have a comeback for this quip. Damn it, I ask, why did the team lead have to be a

smart

asshole?

"Daniela says you were here when Marco left that bed. Figure that makes you the only one who knows what made him take a dip in the pool a

second

time," Hunziger says; it's more of a statement, an accusation, than a question.

"That the only reason I might know, Zig?" I say, the weight of previous irritations with this asshole finally breaking my will to stay professional. The sound of his voice is giving me a headache...I think. I think that's what's...

You could give him to me, I hear Athenium suggest. He'd never speak a word again.

The image of Hunziger screaming breathlessly into his gag of slime as the mass consumes him flashes before my mind's eye. He does not find Athenium's omnidirectional compression so pleasurable.

I entertain the thought for a moment longer than I should.

"Something funny, Rod?" Hunziger asks, raising his voice.

"Hmm? Did I...? Sorry, no. Being down there has some...weird side effects," I reply, smiling as I internally practice my acceptance speech for the award for understatement of the century.

Doesn't the will to fight back taste...delicious?

Hunziger sighs. Rage and desperation fill his eyes as he clenches his teeth.

"It took him, Rod. Prisoners is one thing, but you said it wouldn't take staff anymore," Hunziger raises his voice.

Yes. His anger rises to meet yours. Your satisfaction...it's a rush.

Ohhhh it's almost as good as the orgasms...

"I said it SHOULDN'T take staff anymore. Clearly, I was wrong, but if you've got any other volunteers to take over? Want to put anyone else a few feet under in the alien goo? Maybe you'd like to try it yourself, see if you can pick up her vibes?" I rant.

"HER vibe? We've been over this, Rod. It's not her. It's-" Hunziger begins.

"Shit on a stick, Zig, is that really important right now? You really gonna split hairs over a pronoun?"

Just feed me this fool, she says. The cutaway image of Hunziger reappears in my head, more vivid this time. He's a meter below her surface, being spanked by undulating goo. It thickens as it whips his ass twice a second. He's squirming, so frustrated at the ooze's obstinate grip that he's ready to cry.

I don't think Hunziger would literally cry, though. Likely he'd just hold his breath until he passed out. But then again, can't really do that when Athenium is throat fucking you.

I'm entertaining the thought again. No shit-eating grin this time, that's good.

"Fine," Hunziger relents, "Can you PLEASE tell me...something? Anything?"

He's desperate, she says. It doesn't take a genius to see that. Withholding information could make him even more nervous. He'd deserve it. Lie, and watch him fucking freak out over the next couple of days while I take a few more, she urges.

She has almost convinced me to do it, but to my surprise, I find that I have just enough control of myself to pity this asshole. ARCOM might have him thrown in jail for losing control of the situation when they come down here to find out what happened. Might throw us all in jail, actually. No, I decide, he needs to know. We're in this together. I take a deep breath.

Think carefully about what you're going to say, she says.

Her voice is low, teasing...threatening. She sounds like a dominatrix giving her sub an order that she knows he'll fuck up.

"Marco..." I begin, "Asked what it's like down there. It seemed like...like he wanted to try it himself."

Not judging, I say to myself, trying to reassure my lewd mental passenger. Don't unleash the killers, I'm begging you.

"Yeah. That...makes as much sense as anything else, I guess. You didn't see him leave or anything?" Hunziger asks.

"No," I reply far too quickly. He eyes me for a moment, and I'm sure I've been caught.

The thin man is starting to turn grey, I realize. If his hairline kept receding at the rate it had these past three months, he'd have a giant racing stripe on his head in about two weeks. I'm laughing again, strangely enough. Hunziger sighs and gives up, which is something I've never seen him do. The man is normally a bulldog.

My low pulse alarm dings again.

"Well, that's great," Hunziger stands up and silences the alarm, "Get better soon, Rod. May need to find another place to store our guests here soon."

"Wait, what?" I say. No, no, no. I want to tell him how bad an idea that is, how brutally we'll die if he does that.

Relax, she assures me, you're doing great. Let him walk out. This will all be fine.

Hunziger doesn't turn back to explain, and I'm stopped in my tracks, unable to speak, so he leaves the sick bay without another word.

Thought he'd never leave, she says. Now...let's get some attention from the nurse.

We need to lay down some ground rules, if you're going to be talking to me all the time, I think to myself, hoping she hears me. The first of those rules: we're not going to just steal some random woman.

It sounds wrong saying it that way. Weak. Like me. Athenium either does not hear me, or does not care to hear me.

******

Almost without realizing it, I had struck up a conversation with Daniela. My joke about quarantine wasn't

that

funny, I knew. That damned taste in the air, the metal, it wasn't going away, either.

"So this

isn't

the weirdest near drowning you've ever treated?' I ask.

"Oh, everything here is the weirdest thing I've ever done," Daniela says. Her Brazilian accent is making me smile, or at least, I think it's the accent. I find myself wishing I had talked to her more before this. She's smiling back, so I'm not making a complete fool of myself after two years hiatus on talking to hot women, I guess?

Hot women? When the fuck did I start thinking like that?

"But it's not

that

odd? Is that what you're saying?"

"One of my ER shifts, guy shows up, completely yellow-orange. He looked like a Simpson, had the comb over like Homer, even. We start peeling him off the stretcher, and we're worried, what, is this some jaundice we've never seen? Why's he sticking to the sheets, are we ripping his skin? Turns out...nacho cheese," She says, starting to giggle.

"No way," I say flatly, mouth agape in surprise.

"Yeah! His frat bros had dunked him a little bit too long in the stuff, he inhaled it."

"Nacho. Cheese."

"So alien goo is... sort of the same thing, I guess?" She makes an adorable "so-so" motion with her hands, and briefly, all I can do is smile like an idiot.

"Oh. Uh...sorry. Um..." I stammer. The statement is a question, I realize. We've been talking for nearly 30 minutes, and Athenium hasn't interrupted my thoughts. Her silence concerns me more than her lewd interjections. I try to physically shake the confusion, looking into her eyes.

"Yeah, except...

maybe

a little smarter?" I reply. If Athenium is insulted, she says nothing.

"Only maybe?" Daniela laughs.

"Well I've never been in nacho cheese before, so I can't say for sure."

She snickers and meets my eyes. I like her, I realize, and I'm liking her more and more. She's smart - everyone on Deret Station is - but she doesn't seem consumed by a fetish and she's not a complete asshat, making her much better company than the ones most from my most recent past. She's quite pretty: darkly-tanned skin, two inches shorter than me at 5' 11", wavy hair halfway down her back. Her face has the razor-edged African jawline, but her thin lips and green eyes are distinctively Portuguese.

Before I even realize it, and I imagine running a hand across her thigh. It's just the right amount of thick, soft and warm. The fantasy quickly becomes more intimate. Gotta think about something else...

"Daniela, can I ask you a question?" She gives me a quizzical look as she writes something on the clipboard with my medical record.

"Uhh...sure?"

"If I asked you to come with me into the Athenium, to uh...to test a hypothesis, how quickly would you call security?"

Shit. I think I hear the quietest hint of the redhead's laughter. Surely I was meant to fail, maybe to get Daniela to feel...something before Athenium bursts in here and takes matters into her own hands.

Daniela opens her mouth to answer, but stops herself. At first, I'm merely surprised that she didn't recoil in horror. But the more time that goes by without an answer, the more I see... she's thinking about it.

"I...uh...it depends, I guess," She says, somewhat sheepishly.

"Not the answer I was expecting. Depends on...how far away the phone is, maybe?" I self-deprecate. She doesn't laugh. She scratches her neck, purses her lips, and opens her mouth to speak again, but the words don't come to her immediately. She clears her throat instead.

She's thought about it. She's thinking about it. My god.

"Depends...on what it's like down there."

"Oh?"

"Is it as cold as it is up above?"

"Pretty comfortable temperature, actually. It adjusts itself to how you're feeling."

"I'll admit, I'm..." She bites her lip, "Curious. I used to love mud baths, but I haven't had one since first year of undergrad."

"Never had one, but it's probably close to the same feeling, if not a bit, uh...thicker."

"You like thick, Rod?"

She may be flirting, but I'm not sure. She smiles when she says it, but I'm not sure if it's a smile that is inviting something more. The pace of this conversation is beginning to feel dizzying, and it occurs to me that I have probably been in Antarctica too long.

"I'm not opposed to thick, as a general rule."

The taste of metal intensifies, and now I'm sure that Athenium is doing something to me. I'm a scientist, a nerd; this kind of small talk is not one of my abilities. Athenium does not help me resolve my suspicions one way or the other. I'm listening for words, observing for some kind of feeling that I didn't notice before, but it's...different. I can't explain how. For a moment, I wonder...

"So, you're saying there's a chance," Daniela winks. I smile back, and before I know it...

Does attraction really happen that quickly? Is it really just as simple as two people think the other is hot, and then they fuck?

"Daniela-" I begin, not sure exactly what I'm beginning.

"Dani, please," she interrupts, "Only my parents called me Daniela. Usually followed by five middle names and whatever I did wrong."

"You were a troublemaker then?" I try my hand at a subtle flirt.

"Mmm...most of my trouble, they never saw," She laughs. I laugh.

Her hand touches mine, and she does not take it back.

I see it in her eyes, hear it in the deep breath we both take: the euphoria of another's touch. I've been at this station for two damned years without feeling it. Just a touch, was all it took. We lock eyes.

Finally.

She takes a quick breath as she moves atop me. She has my head in her hands, I have my hands at her sides, and we lock lips. We skip past gentle pecks and dive into a dance or tongues. She's so hungry. I'm just as famished. In moments, we're at the buttons and strings of each others' clothing.

Is it really this simple?

My hands brush her upper thighs, supple even through the thick pants, and find their way beneath her scrubs. The smooth skin of her sides feels electric in my fingers, and I squeeze gently, pulling her closer to me. She pulls the string tying my hospital gown behind my back, raking her fingernails lightly over my shoulders as she begins to remove the ridiculous thing from my body.

Do I know her from somewhere? A long lost lover, perhaps? Why am I so suddenly hungry for her?

I feel like a teenager. My chest on fire with a raging hormonal need. She feels so good, tastes so good, and I just want to live in this feeling. My cock gets the message and awakens to perform its part in our primal ritual.

"Wait, wait, wait," she says mid-kiss, "Not here."

"Why not here?" I ask. My voice is slurred with the lust I am already drunk on. My body protests furiously - you

need

her, why are you stopping? But her grin is filled with mischief, and I am probably too eager for greater pleasure to resist.

"I've...got a better idea."

******

I leave the infirmary an hour after our short make-out session, partially because I'm an adult and I'm not carrying any infectious diseases. I hope. No one can

make me

stay.

Mostly, though, it's the bewitching thought of Dani that spurs me on. She had told me to meet her near one of the equipment rooms, said that she knew a place where we could be alone. I'm happy for the distraction. Hunziger could go fuck himself for a minute, I decided, I need this. I need to disconnect from all of the crazy shit, and since Athenium seems content to not interfere with this hookup, I'm not going to question it.

I should question it.

What the hell am I doing? This is no time for a hookup. And how did I even-

Athenium, this is you, isn't it? I'd like to think that I wouldn't be overwhelmed by the need for a quickie in the middle of a crisis. What do you-

Dani is where she said she'd be. She's in a sherbet green strapless bikini that contrasts against her milk chocolate skin. Her wavy black hair is undone and rests on her shoulders, almost reaching her generous cleavage. She nervously twirls a few strands of it, breathing through her teeth. For a moment, it looks as though she is going to bolt back down the corridor.

She looks fucking amazing. I...I really...maybe...

She locks eyes with me. Her nervous smile changes to a genuine one, and she strides towards me. Her quivering eyes focus themselves on me. I open my mouth to say...I don't really know, but she places a finger to my lips. I am silent as she wants me to be as she extends the other hand to me.

My mouth is agape. Her exotic beauty contrasts ridiculously with this industrial white hallway. This is really happening, I have to remind myself. She went back to her room to...change into a bikini and fuck a stranger?

This is wrong. Something about this is wrong, but I don't have the strength to right it.

I can't help myself, I have to stare. My eyes first dart to her thick thighs; my cock becomes hard again as I imagine sinking my fingers into them. My gaze stops ascending at the small dimples where her legs meet the gently bouncing cheeks of her ass. She turns to look at me, eyes wide with what is either excitement or disbelief that she is about to do this.

She's actually doing this. Oh fuck, we're actually gonna do this.

My eyes drift to gaze at tits the size of cantaloupes. Social etiquette and years of training to not ogle my coworkers avert my stare back to her eyes, but she is still wearing the same mischievous smile, as if to ask if I like what I see.

And I do. Oh fuck, I really do.

But...I was doing something before, something important. It...I...

I'm holding the hand of this luscious angel, and she's leading me somewhere to fuck. And I really want to fuck. She's so fucking hot.

Those loose curls belong on a god-damned supermodel. Her ass, bouncing lightly, inviting my eyes to follow. She's in a strapless bikini, like we're going to the beach or something. Every inch of that light brown skin looks delicious, and I want to taste.

I tug at her hand, turning her towards me in the same motion. There's surprise in her eyes, but an excited lust there, too. She grabs the back of my light jacket and leans in closer.

Her hands are shaking. Her breath is ragged. Those green eyes give me a once over. She's just as confused as I am. We have no idea what we're doing, but we're going to do it.

I lean in to kiss her. It's slow, sweet. We close our eyes, lips pressed to one another's, and break off slowly.

And...

We kiss again. And again. And again. Our hands voyage and claim the spaces they find: she's underneath my jacket and shirt, and my hands are at the small of her back and descending. The deep kisses become frantic as we invade each other, desperate to give, to take, to join.