.5

***Warning*** As a follow up to the previous chapter, there is some passing mention of domestic violence - however this short story should have a very different tone than Chapter 4.

This is a story set in CorruptingPower's Quaranteam Universe. Despite my inexperience, I have been granted permission to write in the setting!

Thanks to AgathonWrites and The_Licentious_Laureate for their editing and story input. As well as to the other QT authors who contributed to editing and whose work I would recommend you check out:

BreakTheBar, AgathonWrites, BronanTheLibrarian, OtterlyMindblowing, SilverRyden, RonanJWilkerson, BirchesLoveBooks, The_Licentious_Laureate, DisquietCertitude, 32inch, Ranthoron, Percheron and EldritchMuppet.

This story, based in Scotland during the DuoHalo/Covid pandemic, is a slower burn story than most of the other QT series. Again, no sex here, but we're building to it!

This mini-chapter was originally written as part of Chapter 4, but wasn't included for various reasons. While Chapter 5 goes through the process of getting approved and ready for publication, and Chapter 6 is about half done, I thought I should post this in the meantime.

Constructive comments are always welcome!

---IV.V---

Quaranteam -- Hebridean Hame, Chapter 4.5

Monday afternoon, 28th September 2020

Renfrew, Glasgow, Scotland

Sarah sat on the sofa, almost too afraid to move. The silence in the flat stretched on and on.

She stared at Steven's body, which lay at an awkward angle in front of the bathroom door, expecting him to wake up, get up and then begin shouting at her and blaming her for his fall.

But he stayed absolutely still.

Some blood could be seen, starting to pool on the carpet under his head.

She was glad he was hurt. After all the suffering he had inflicted on her, it was a fraction of what he deserved. Still, that wasn't who Sarah felt she was, and so the feeling of being happy to see someone else hurt sat uncomfortably with her.

And gradually, as the minutes passed, she began to worry he wouldn't get up. Ever.

Who would believe that it had been an accident, that she wasn't involved? It'd be his colleagues in the police investigating, so whatever he had told them about her would be in their minds.

Sitting and watching him not move, various scenarios ran through her mind. She gradually built up the courage to move closer to him so she could at least see if he was still breathing.

A few careful steps from the sofa let her see that his chest was rising and falling gently, for now at least. Relief and disappointment were odd emotions to feel at that discovery. But the question remained as to what she should do next. Calling an ambulance was a reasonable step. But she'd need a phone for that.

Sarah looked past Steven and into the bedroom. Debbie also seemed to be out for the count. Beyond her repeating of the odd 'imprinting' phrase, the young policewoman hadn't stirred when Steven fell despite the noise he'd made.

It was like she was living in some sort of dream. The whole day had been so strange that she wouldn't be surprised if she woke up from a head injury Steven had inflicted.

But Steven had come out of the room as if fighting to remain awake. Could it be due to the side effects of the vaccine? And Debbie had fallen unconscious as well, after some orgasmic screams that would have made a porn star blush.

Sarah's mind returned to the unbelievable description she'd read about the vaccine minutes before. Most of what had happened did match the descriptions.

Still trying to decide what to do, she pulled the pamphlet from where she had tried to hide it and began flicking through the pages while keeping one eye on Steven, still expecting him to wake up. She intended to double-check what she'd read.

No sooner than she'd tried to start reading, she'd stopped.

The thought of him waking up was too distracting to allow her to concentrate on anything else. Her eyes moved from Steven to Debbie's discarded police utility belt on the floor near him - her gaze specifically settling on the handcuffs.

She quietly rose to her feet and approached Steven's prone form. His penis was flaccid by this point, but just looking at it caused some of those 'other' thoughts to pop into her head. Just a little time in her mouth, and he would be hard again...

She gritted her teeth, shaking her head and focusing on the task. Carefully trying to minimise the risk of him grabbing her, Sarah extracted the handcuffs and, with small tentative movements and exaggerated care, she gently clipped one side of them onto Steven's wrist. She realised she was holding her breath, her hands shaking slightly.

She stared at him as she backed off, and breathed as she prepared herself for the next task. Steven didn't move. He still showed no signs of consciousness.

Carefully, she pulled his hand and arm closer to the radiator and then clipped the other side of the handcuffs to the thick metal outlet pipe, which ran into the floor. Her heart was in her mouth as she expected him to wake and grab her at any second.

With a final click, he was secure. She still jumped back, however, convinced he would grab her.

Feeling a little safer seeing him secured to the radiator, she returned to the sofa and the pamphlet. She quickly skimmed through the pages, finding the wording dry and clinical. She'd watched enough hospital dramas to have at least some idea of what the words meant. She stopped at the description of the bonding process, recognising the word others had used today, noting the reference to 'partners'. The text also aligned with what she had witnessed. This time, she read quickly rather than just skimming.

She read and then re-read the explanation of how the vaccine worked and what it required. She muttered the unbelievable phrases as if trying to force her brain to absorb them. 'Priming orgasm', 'sexually transmitted protection', 'permanent attachment', 'requires regular unprotected sexual interaction', 'unconsciousness'. She focussed on that last word, finding a reference to the phrase 'imprinting'. That indeed fit with what Debbie had exhibited, as did the orgasms the pamphlet described.

Below, it was mentioned that 'one or both partners may enter a regenerative state', and a further page reference was provided. Skipping to that page, it defined a period of unconsciousness post-initial pairing, detailing a potential list of unbelievable seeming effects, and stating that the male may also enter that state on occasion and would be unconscious for more than twelve hours.

She looked back at Steven. He hadn't moved. His breathing was shallow. It seemed like that's what had happened. Still, the blow to his head was outside the scope of the pamphlet, and her problem of deciding what to do remained.

Looking around the flat, Sarah spotted Steven's trousers and utility belt on the bedroom floor. His mobile phone would be there, somewhere.

The fact that getting there would involve stepping over Steven, however, gave her cause to shiver.

Gathering herself, she approached him gingerly, trying to find the best angle. She had intended to step over him carefully. However, her courage left her at the last moment, and she lept into the bedroom, scurrying along the floor away from him when she landed. He still hadn't moved and was now facing away from her. With a little more confidence, she crept back to the piled clothing.

She crouched to check his trouser pockets, hoping to find his phone.

Instead, her hand touched the keyring holding the flat and car keys. She withdrew them carefully, almost afraid to look at her hand in case she was imagining what she had found. Opening her fist, the shiny metal and black plastic came into view. The keys.

Weighing them in her hand, they felt like the most tangible, most substantial things she had ever encountered. The keys. Her freedom. She glanced again at Steven's body, then at Debbie lying spreadeagled on the bed.

Sarah's eyes were at matress level from her position, crouched on the floor, and she was presented with a perfect view of Steven's cum leaking from Debbie's pussy.

Suddenly, she could smell the sex that the other two had engaged in. She could also smell the pearly white emissions leaking from the unconscious woman.

Sarah's mouth watered, and she moved toward that substance without conscious thought. The 'other' thought, suddenly in control, presented a powerful compulsion to bury her face in Debbie's pussy, to lick her clean and taste Steven's cum. These thoughts forced their way past the resistance she had been trying to maintain, the sight of the leaking cum bypassing her mental defences. She scrabbled forward, sliding herself up onto the bed, using her hands to spread Debbie's thighs wider while pulling her own knees up to kneel on the edge of the bed.

As her face got closer to the still engorged pink pussy lips, the traces of Steven's semen splashed over Debbie's skin, leaking from her pussy and down between the cleft of her cheeks...

There was a jangling 'chink' behind her. The sound of handcuffs on a radiator.

In less time than it would have taken her to blink, Sarah had launched herself away from Debbie and spun around, falling off the bottom of the bed in the process and landing on her bum on the carpet, desperately backpeddling away from where Steven had been.

Panic drove her actions now. Her fear of him overrode even the vaccine-induced compulsion.

But he hadn't moved, and she realised that when she'd acted on the 'other' thought, she had dropped the keys on the bed, which had then fallen onto the floor when she climbed on.

She gagged, leaning to the side as that sense of nausea and disgust flowed through her again. The thought of what she'd been about to do making her want to vomit. Not helped by the after effects of her sudden moment of terror.

As she sat, catching her breath and trying not to be sick, she came to a realisation. She needed to get out of the flat. And quickly. If she'd tasted that cum, she'd have potentially begun the process of binding herself to Steven. She would not, could not, submit to that. She'd been trapped for long enough.

Sarah hurriedly returned to searching Steven's clothing, eventually finding his phone in a utility belt pocket alongside his bank cards. She grabbed the handcuffs from his kit, considering using them to cuff Steven's free hand to his other wrist, before dismissing the idea. Instead, she kept the cuffs in her hand and retrieved the generic plastic cuff key.

She then rose from the floor, roughly throwing the bundled up quilt over Debbie without looking back at her. Sarah quickly opened the wardrobe doors and dug through them, finding a sizeable duffel bag that belonged to Steven. She threw as many of her belongings into the bag as she could, along with his phone charger, moving as swiftly as possible - spooked by the most recent compulsion and wanting to be clear of the space.

The bag filled up all too quickly. But thankfully, she didn't have all that many possessions.

Her last task in the bedroom was searching Steven's wardrobe and recovering a small metal lockbox. He had thought it was hidden inside an old golf bag, but she had long ago found it. Being alone in the house with nothing else to do for so long, she was familiar with everything he owned, but had never been able to access that box.

She was sure the key was on the keyring she'd just recovered, so she added the lockbox to the bag.

Throwing the heavy bag out of the bedroom, over Steven and into the living room, she again lept over his body and hauled the bag to the flat's door. She had no winter jacket, so she grabbed one of his and put it on. Looking around quickly, Sarah was caught between finding more of her belongings or getting out as soon as possible. Her eyes settled on one item she had to take, and she dashed over to retrieve the picture of her and her parents from the shelf. As an afterthought, Sarah grabbed Debbie's police utility belt with its extendable baton and CS spray and threw the whole thing in the bag. The pamphlet was the last thing she picked up, keeping it in her hand.

She went to the door, unlocked it, and took a deep breath before opening it. She half expected Steven to spring to his feet, having staged some elaborate trap for her. But nothing happened. The flat and the building were quiet. Pulling the door open almost felt anti-climactic.

Never before had the chill of the tenement stairwell been so welcome.

Grabbing the bag, she dragged it onto the landing, fully intending to go straight to the car.

But her worry about what she might be accused of in the future caused her to pause for a second.

Heading inside again, she returned to Steven, carefully using the handcuff key to remove the cuffs from both him and the radiator. She then left the flat for the last time, leaving the door ajar as she exited, putting those handcuffs with the others in her bag.

Taking out Steven's phone, Sarah called for an ambulance as she half-carried and half-dragged the bag down the stairs. Her earlier aches and pains were forgotten, fear and the joy of being free giving her aching body a boost of energy.

She had to wait for the call to be answered, listening to inane messages about maintaining lockdown and 'unusually high demand'. Not at all what she expected from an emergency number. In the meantime, she'd thrown the bag on the back seats. Sarah was just getting behind the steering wheel when the call was finally answered.

She kept her report brief, giving the address and stating that a man had fallen unconscious and hit his head after having sex with a woman who had received the Gemivax vaccine. Then she ended the call.

***

Sarah took a few moments to familiarise herself with Steven's car. Her car had been sold years before, and she had never been allowed to drive his, a Volkswagen Golf, one of his pride and joys. It roared to life on the first turn of the key, and she was off down the road.

She glanced in the mirror as she left the flat behind, expecting to see Steven come running after her. But the street was empty.

Still trying to figure out where to go, she drove to the Newmains Road Tesco Superstore, where she often visited for her weekly shop. It would allow her to distance herself from the flat before any emergency services would turn up.

She also figured the car park would be an excellent place to stop and think. With the roads dead, she arrived there in record time. The car park was quiet, with only a few widely spaced cars near the superstore entrance. There was some traffic elsewhere in the carpark, however. A queue of widely spaced cars waited on their turn at the click-and-collect points while heavily wrapped people hurriedly loaded their online purchases into their vehicles. Staff in low-quality PPE - mainly women - brought stacks of blue boxes out, ready for the next collections. No sooner had one vehicle departed than another took it's place. Spaced out as they were, even the cars looked like they were keeping a safe distance.

A few people on foot came and went from the main entrance, and a security guard ensured those waiting in the widely spaced queue to enter kept safely apart and wore at least a face mask.

Sarah sighed, leaning back in the seat and closing her eyes. The day's events just a swirl of unusual revelations. Now she had gotten out, she had no idea what to do or where to go. She felt both hope and hopelessness. She was free, but to do what? The vaccine she'd been given put a time limit her very existence, unless she could find someone to pair with.

Putting those thoughts aside for a moment, she turned in her seat to look at the bag in the back. She retrieved the lockbox she'd found earlier, searching for and finding the appropriate key on Steven's keyring, opening the lockbox with bated breath and carefully checking the contents.

As she'd suspected, inside was her mobile phone - out of contract and out of charge, but hers. Important due to the photos and memories it contained. Her passport, and other documents, were there, as was some jewellery she thought long lost - precious gifts or heirlooms from her mum and two grandmothers.

Steven had spent weeks shouting at her for losing these items following a house move. Bringing up their loss constantly, reminding her how important and valuable they had been and how stupid and careless she was for losing them. Her anger at him deliberately torturing her like that tempered her relief at finding them.

The box also contained a bundle of important-looking letters, each open and addressed to her, despite the fact she had seen them before. Lastly, she found her bank cards.

She grabbed the first envelope and saw a postmark from June, some three months before. She roughly pulled the letter out of the envelope and scanned over the contents. It was from her mum and dad's solicitor and addressed to her. It contained many regrets for her loss and a lot of legalese. But amongst the text, a name jumped out. Callum Scott. She focussed on that section, reading it carefully several times. Callum was managing her parent's business! He was named in the will, but the solicitor hadn't discussed anything with him yet as she'd been the one to be named executor.

June. He'd been on the Island back in June. Would he still be there three months later?

Would he have moved on?

Unlikely, she thought, after some frantic deliberation. No one was going anywhere with the lockdown in place. So, he should still be there.

Her hand trembled as she held the letter. She was momentarily overcome with a wave of huge emotions. Relief, hope, and joy - it was almost too much, too quickly. Some tears found their way down her cheeks, dripping onto the paper she still started at, as if it might vanish should she take her eyes from it.

Suddenly she had somewhere to go. He would help her. Callum had never let her down. She was as certain that he would help her as she was about the sun rising in the morning.

Sarah briefly contemplated the impact her arrival might have on whatever family he might have there, but it wasn't like there was any shortage of space on the island.

The pamphlet made it clear she needed to bond with someone. She'd need to partner with someone, and soon. She'd be safe with Callum. But if he wasn't an option, she was sure he would help her find someone else who was safe.

She closed and locked the box with shaking hands before throwing it back into the duffel bag. The letter went onto the passenger seat beside her, on top of the vaccine pamphlet, all thoughts of further reading were gone from her mind.

She had somewhere to get to.

***