48. Inch
Inch
Isaak
His heart raced as he waited by the door to their room, where last night they had confronted their shared guilt. There was blood on their hands.
He shook his head, wishing the thoughts away.
One hour until the mission. One hour until they would raid Cardinal Row. One hour before they put their lives on the line… again.
The dim yellow bulbs framed Dylan walking towards him down the concrete corridor. The black faux-leather jacket really suited her.
He waved a hello.
“Hi… Look, there’s something I’ve been meaning to say.” She got straight to business.
He focused on controlling his breath. “Anything.”
“When I didn’t know where you were, I had these weird cravings. I wanted meat. Meat!” Dylan’s eyes widened. She walked into the room, a pulsing energy to her movements.
He followed her inside and shut the door.
“Craving something you’ve never eaten?”
“After I saved you, it stopped happening.”
He fixed his eyes on her. “Because of the tape. You heard Elodie, how the Sleeper overloads the user’s brain with so much junk, they can’t escape. The cravings are probably a side effect from when we stole the Gunkatana. The house was snared.”
She clicked her tongue, brows furrowed. “What about you? Have you experienced anything… weird?”
He paused for a second, then decided to tell her everything.
“Until you saved me, my mind kept jumping between events from my past, replaying them like they were tape-spaces. It took me back to when I injured my knee during the game, and to when Sacha came to visit me afterwards in the hospital. It even took me back to when I was a little kid and my parents were arguing. I just stuck my head into video games to block out their noise. Then my dad shut off the console, ruining my save. The Sleeper was fucking with my head.”
Dylan walked over to him and started smoothing his hair, tucking rebel locks behind his ear. “Fucking hell… Did she handpick those moments, do you think?” Her hand came to rest on his waist, the two of them standing close together.
“I don’t know. Right after I met you, I relived one of my ReSports matches. I slapped a piece of tape on my head and, instead of landing in my tape-space, I was playing ReSports. I didn’t even realise I was in the Tapeworld until Sacha glitched when talking to me.”
“Sacha?” She let go of him in surprise. “You never told me about that. Was I that hard to trust when we met?”
“No, it’s nothing like that.” Her words made his chest ache. “I just didn’t know what to make of it. Since the Sleeper, you having these cravings, and my fucked-up tape strides… It’s clear Astrid has been manipulating me all along. Who knows if the heists she sent me on were even real…? Fuck.”
“You think she was having you steal data that she planted herself? Studying you like a test subject?”
Goosebumps rose along the skin of his neck and arms. “No… No. The Gunkatana, she wants it! That had to be real. And she… she knows about you and me.”
“Of course she would… She probably reads your brain every time you go into one of her tape-spaces. Bitch.”
“Right.” He looked at her sombrely. “Maybe the Sleeper making you relive terrible memories again and again is part of the process of turning you into a mindless drone. A sleptigrade.”
She nodded slowly. “It kind of sounds like ‘tardigrade’.”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t know what they are?”
Now he felt like the dumbest kid in class.
She smiled, making him feel a little less stupid. “They’re these cute microscopic creatures. Insanely resilient, can survive the highest and lowest temperatures. Sleptigrade… Do you think she means like someone hardy who’s asleep? Is that why she called them that?”
He shrugged. “As long as we can save them, bring their consciousness back to normal with the lobster phone, I don’t care what she calls them.”
Dylan scratched her chin. “All this research, all these gadgets. Elodie knows more about how the Tapeworld works than she’s letting on…”
“No doubt. I just barely trust her.” Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and back.
He feared the worst. Astrid strapping the Sleeper device on him again, sapping his confidence and will to live, making him another sleptigrade in her army.
“It wasn’t just the dreams. When I was in Cardinal Row, or rather, just before, my diagnostics program said I had LSD in my system. ”
She frowned. “You didn’t tell me you partied that hard.”
“That’s the thing, I don’t. I don’t do any drugs harder than a joint. It was the tape-space I was in.”
“Made by Astrid.”
“Why though?” he said. “What does she want with all these people?”
“Like Elodie said, she could amass an army in the Tapeworld, muscle in before anyone else makes a play for it. And, as evidenced by my meat cravings and your dreams, she’s trying to control people’s minds. Seeing how far she can push us, what she can make us believe.”
He nodded in quiet agreement as a new, terrible thought took root that he didn’t want to confront.
As soon as he considered it, he tried to put it aside.
But looking at her, her eyes like constellations, bright and beautiful and all-encompassing, this idea kept pushing itself to the forefront.
He walked away, towards the slits in the wall, seeking solace in London’s nightscape.
“What is it?” she asked. Then Dylan seemed to have the same thought as him. “No, no, no! There’s no way. There’s no way!”
Fists wrapped like rocks, he was desperately trying to stop the rising urge to punch the wall, to ruin his hands and put all of himself into the rock.
She went to him and enlaced her arms around his waist.
“You… You do love me, Isaak. I love you. This isn’t one of Astrid’s tricks!” She paused, as if to think. “I always had a crush on you. I know my feelings are true. I just… I just know yours are too. Believe me, please.” Face against his back, her tears began to wet his skin through his t-shirt.
Eyes still fixed on the horizon, his mind was a storm.
Manipulated. First by Astrid’s bullshit sex, then by the tape itself, then by the Sleeper. Have I been programmed to fall in love with Dylan?
“I feel like it’s real,” he said. “But I also feel like I sometimes don’t know what’s real anymore…”
She tightened her grip on his waist, lips against his back. “This is real! I’m here, holding you. I love you. I want to be with you all the time. And I want to make that bitch pay for what she’s done to you!” Her voice reverberated through him.
The pain threatened to explode his heart and his chest, his breathing all over the place. His voice lowered to a pained whisper. “I don’t know…”
“Yes, you do!” She spun him around to face her. “Tell me. Tell me how you feel. Forget this idea that she manipulated you into this. I feel your love for me, have felt it this whole time. It can’t have been programmed… It just can’t!”
One hand on her face, he wiped away her nascent tears. Her skin felt cold. A caring warmth filled him. His swirling emotions resolved into one truth.
“I love you, Dylan.” This was real. “I would have fallen in love with you in every reality.”
He pulled her to him, his lips a magnet attracting hers. Her tongue invited itself into his mouth and he welcomed it with his own, his hand on her waist, the other going down her back, fingers light on the white fabric, darting towards the curves of her bottom.
A thirst ran through the both of them. To prove their humanity to each other, to taste each other’s love.
Her caresses stopped to let him lift her dress over her head.
She stood in front of him in a white minimalist bra and black neoprene shorts.
They both looked down as his erection shot up, hitting the inside of his jeans.
“Lemme help you with that.”
The sight of Dylan going down to her knees and unbuckling his belt filled him with desire.
His jeans fell with a clang of his belt, and they quickly did away with the rest of his clothes.
“Um, are you staring?” he asked, uncertain.
She shook her head, like she was coming out of a daydream. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen you like this, but I’ll never get tired of looking at it.” She grinned.
The same guiding impulse that led him when he called a shot for the London Lazarus, the same one that pushed him to lead this stalwart team to infiltrate Astrid’s Night of Entertainment, also guided his words now.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
His cheeks warmed as soon as the words escaped him, like he’d said something forbidden. They were still so new to each other, and they hadn’t talked beforehand about each other’s likes and dislikes and boundaries. He simply felt like saying it.
Dylan’s eyes went wide, but it was momentary. Desire quickly turned her features as she pulled her hair into a loose ponytail.
And then she engulfed his erection with her mouth. He turned his half-shut eyes toward the skyscrapers and the zeppelins as she brought a carnival of sensation to him from her kneeling position.
The tension built within him, but before it climbed too high, he touched her shoulder and she paused her motion, looking up at him.
“I want to taste you.”
She smiled and got up, and he moved her onto the bed. She lay on her back, blonde-blue hair loose again and draped around her shoulders and chest, her knees lightly reddened from kneeling on the bare floor.
“Take that off.” He pointed at the bra.
She obliged, teeth sunk into her lower lip.
As she bared her breasts, he pulled her shorts and black underwear down with no more than a few jerks, eyes fixed on her chest. Their previous times together were a warm-up for tonight, the confidence between them ready to be explored, to be pushed further.
Now it was his turn to lower onto his knees, skin on the rough concrete. He yanked her closer, his grip on her legs leaving a red mark. She let out a surprised half-shout, half-moan.
He realised he might be acting too brusquely, and his expression softened, silently asking for her approval.
She smiled and gave a quick nod. Then she rested her hand on his head and pushed him down gently.
His mouth touched her, his head nestled between her thighs. He allowed his tongue to explore her freely, two fingers helping him find the way. She held on to him, hand digging into his hair, her legs moving, pushing and pulling him, her moans feeding his erection and his soul.
The pleasure of pleasuring her was filling the void inside him, helping him forget the fear and the danger of what they were about to embark on. He longed to be here forever, making her squirm and writhe, worshipping Dylan the way she deserved to be worshipped.
“Fuck… Yes… YES!”
All of her motion stopped, a loud gasp as she went perfectly still, legs tensed against his head. Her rapid breathing gave way to a slower pace.
His heart swelled.
“Goddess, boy… You know what you’re doing.” She beckoned him to come to her.
His reply was a grin. He moved on top of her, making space for himself between her legs. He was ravenous, hungry for her. Stealing kisses from every inch of her skin within reach, he plunged deep into her. She moaned directly into his ear, hands on his shoulders, as he intensified his movements.
With one final stroke he released himself within her, arms at the sides of her head, all of him stretched on top of all of her, their union bringing him peace.
Then, in silence, he sought refuge, hugging her closer and closer.
A few minutes later, their hunger sated, she rested her head on his shoulder, fingers playing with his chest hair once again.
“We don’t have much time,” she said.
“I know.”
Reality pierced the thin veil of their isolated reality in that cold, sterile room.
“I don’t want to lose you.”
“What did I tell you? I’m your girl, boy. You’re not going to lose me. Ever.”
He wiped the tears off his face.