Eve was unsure how it had happened. She lay on the sofa with her head on Isabelle’s lap, facing the TV. Her patroness’ fingers ran through the strands of dark hair. At first it had been idle conversation about the gala, distractions regarding politics. Then more personal questions arrived. A gentle probing that Eve had rebuffed. Though as she thought over their conversation, the undying woman’s eyes slid to the painting that now sat on the piano. She had painted herself, entwined with the snake. A hand had been stretched upward, reaching toward the sun. She wasn’t sure what had been so concerning about it. In her mind, it was quite hopeful. Perhaps Isabelle, now wearing comfortable sweatpants and red T-shirt, had seen the snake and interpreted it as a feeling of being stifled. It wasn’t an unfair reading. Eve was unsure why the serpent haunted her so. There was something deeply unsettling about her dreams.
“He was like a father to me,” Isabelle’s voice drifted from above. Coming back to the moment, Eve’s eyes fell upon a tastefully sombre piece on the life of Theodore Augustus. It was apparently not a branding exercise but his real surname. Architect of the synthetic nerves that made mods possible, he’d been over a century old at the time of his death. Sporting a beard intended to make him look like the philosophers of yore and a bald head to match, AmTech owed its existence to his purchase of it. Though impressive, what drew Eve’s attention was the fact that Isabelle seemed to care for him. “He used to teach my engineering classes. Part owned every damn company on the exchange and there he was, teaching a trust fund brat how to make a Type 22 curl its fingers.” She continued, her voice infusing with sorrow as she traversed the hallways of her memory. It did briefly make the woman in her lap ponder how old Isabelle actually was.
Eve sat up, looking at the woman who’d helped to save her in a new light. Perhaps it was just a façade to incite pity. But in that moment, she didn’t care. Closed off from even the remnants of her old life, the former soldier lifted a hand to Isabelle’s cheek to brush away her tears. The other woman started slightly, as if surprised by the gesture.
“Sorry if it breaks the illusion of stoic soldiering hardass,” Eve grumbled, withdrawing her hand carefully. It was her turn to be surprised as Isabelle wrapped her fingers about the receding fingers, leaning her head against the other woman’s chest. Blue eyes darted frantically as the mind behind them thought of any platitude or comforting words. Words failed her, coming falteringly before her other hand came up to run a thumb over Isabelle’s shoulder. A voice could rarely bear the weight of such losses. All that remained in bereavement were the tin-tinged sounds of your own heartbeat and a hollow, frigid chill.
“I’m tired of pretending to be unfazed by it. The other board members are popping corks,” Eve’s charge grumbled, eyes closed as she thought over the strength Isabelle had in that moment. To have people actively celebrating the death of a teacher. It was unconscionable. “Most people who realised they’d been resurrected to be a billionaire’s pet project would be doing cartwheels. Asking for mods, penthouses, collectibles. Did you wanna die or something?” Came a bone-chilling question from her arms. Had it been a ruse? It didn’t matter. Eve took a breath.
“I got home from the war and just wanted a normal life,” Eve began haltingly, wincing as if the pain were still fresh. “I died. It hurt. And I didn’t get asked if I wanted it reversed. Then I got told the one person who made it worthwhile isn’t in my future,” she concluded with a stilted, suppressed anger that shook her voice even now. Isabelle had seen the file. Her hands bloodied and slashed. Shaking with delirium. She didn’t need to know more than that. What she’d thought in her final moments. And how it had burned. “I’m afraid of the person I was in that moment,” she concluded, remembering well the hate that had carved its home into her as she was tended to. The fear in her eyes. Why couldn’t she remember her name?
Isabelle sat in silence for a few moments, the pair absorbing the confession with similar reactions. Neither wanted such a novel creature to be dangerous. At least, as a scalpel rather than a volcano. Though the subject was never far from her thoughts, Eve had not felt the same violent anger. Not even when the full gravity of what had been done to her had been revealed. It had simply frozen in her chest. The burning, terrifying anger that had consumed her as she died was but a distant memory. And may it remain so.
“It’s fine to feel grief. I was a little scared you didn’t feel anything,” Eve smiled bravely, attempting to raise her employer’s spirits. Damned be how it sounded but Isabelle was the closest thing to a friend in that moment.
“Unfortunately for you, I’m weighed down by a lot of things,” Isabelle smirked up at her, a hand coming up to run her fingers along her jaw. Just as she’d done what felt like an eternity ago. Though it was probably just a day. “Everyone wants me to be a caricature. A sociopathic business magnate or daddy’s rich daughter. They want me to be an insatiable harlot or calculating genius. It seems everyone gets input on who I am except me.” She expounded as she noted the confusion in Eve’s eyes. Those strange sapphires that conveyed emotions as if through a lens. Perhaps it was simply her personality to seem distant. Others saw them as off-putting, yet Isabella found her thumb caressing Eve’s cheek gently, staring almost involuntarily before they shifted away. A twinge of offence passed the magnate’s expression before her attentions expanded to her bodyguard’s whole face. Without blood to fill her cheeks it wasn’t nearly as obvious. She felt shame. Though over what neither could rightly fathom.
Eve cleared her throat, shifting her legs from beneath Isabelle. The uncannily beautiful woman had stretched herself languidly over her to caress her cheek. She removed her suit jacket, an uncomfortable heat building under her skin. At first, she worried that it was a flaw in her new body. Soon enough, the realisation hit her that with her brain functionally being no different she would feel the shame just as she always had. With an inhale she pressed the nail of her thumb against her palm, silently counting. The pounding of her heart refused to slow even as she counted every beat. Why did Victoria see fit to equip her with that infernal organ?
“You already died, Eve.” Isabelle’s voice cut through her anxiety, an arm wrapping protectively about her waist. Its fellow pulled at her jaw, pressing her head to the undead woman before her. “You get the opportunity no other human has ever had. To choose a heaven or hell of your own making,” she continued with a breathless confidence. Her words stung particularly deeply for their intended audience.
From her first moments in that purgatory, the voice of her father had sounded as a thunderclap. Beyond life and death, with every fibre of her being wrought by another, she was far from his reach and the reach of his masters. Foul thoughts slithered into her mind’s eye. A thousand, thousand sins presented themselves alluringly. And a fire long since dormant rekindled but a little.
Isabelle recoiled with surprise, Eve’s lips meeting her own almost cautiously. The taller woman attempted to stammer out an apology, silenced as dark curls bounced with another. With a firm hand she pushed Eve onto her back, laying herself on top with a languid grin. The other woman looked positively petrified, both for own actions and those of her saviour. Her body had become rigid beneath the ethereally beautiful patroness, her green eyes acting as mesmeric foci for the terrified soldier.
“Stop thinking, Eve,” Isabelle instructed with a gentle voice, lips caressing the other woman’s neck playfully. Her nimble fingers reached down to the expensive shirt she’d bought and briefly considered tearing it free. But no, Eve sensed a more tender motivation as her topmost buttons came undone. “Listen to yourself. What you want,” she continued, thighs parting over the athletic woman’s hips possessively. Another button came undone. “Is this what you want?” the magnate asked, her hands snaking within Eve’s shirt. Her eyes were alight in the dim penthouse, the lights refusing to come on without their mistress’ command. It gave the faint luminescence of Eve’s eyes an alluring quality as she rose from her position on the sofa, shirt falling from her shoulders. The magnate’s quick fingers slipped her bra over her head, exposing the full beauty of what Victoria had wrought.
The red T-shirt soon left its owner’s body, floating to the ground as Isabelle resumed her amorous attack. Their lips were locked, needy and desperate as their hands explored every inch of bare flesh. Eve’s tail, so often an afterthought in its owner’s mind, entwined itself possessively about the other woman’s waist. It brought her closer, kiss separating as their laboured breaths passed between them. Eve’s lips then moved to Isabelle’s chest, the latter wrapping her hands through her hair. They parted once more, taking every opportunity to experience every scintilla of sensation from prickling pleasure to the sharp whispers of Isabelle’s nails across her scalp. Her mind raged against her, but the siren call of her partner’s directive pushed all reason from her. The ravenous chill in her chest shrank to nothing, giving way to a new sensation. A greedy warmth that suffused her whole body, pushing her onward as she pressed Isabelle’s wrists to the cushions beneath them. Her expression had shifted from temptress to tempestuous nerves as the far stronger woman now held sway, all sense of shame melting from her as she wrapped fingers teasingly about her lover’s throat. Not as a threat but an invitation.
The pair lay in that moment for a good while, faces a picture of heedless hedonism. Callous smiles painted their faces as Eve’s tail brought Isabelle to her feet and drove their lips together once more, the last of their garments leaving them as they trotted toward the bedroom, wrapped in each other’s embrace. There, in the darkness the sunset was slowly affording them and the ever-present green sheets of light to guide them, they began to find what each lacked.
Eve found her head ensnared by Isabelle’s thighs, feeding her lust and want with all the pleasures her prey’s body offered. Part of her mind screamed at such a comparison yet the pleasured, almost pained moans from above her drove all such worries from her. Her fingers like claws raked the curly-haired magnate closer, inhuman blue eyes gently glowing from her hips. Fingers soon took the place of her mouth as the tailed woman settled into a passionate embrace. Isabelle, not content to be a bystander in her carnality, found her fingers trailing down her lover’s strange metallic spine. It elicited the desired reaction as a shiver of pleasure passed through her savage partner.
She soon sat upright on her knees, as if determined to return to her previous feast. Isabelle’s fingers wrapped about the armoured portion of her thigh, digits digging into the soft flesh just above. The businesswoman looked into those cold, almost bestial eyes with a needful, almost pleading expression. One that this Eve seemed to appreciate as a confident smile began to form.
“I’m almost there,” she explained breathlessly, as if it needed explanation. The territorial authority Eve brought her closer with spoke volumes. One hand delivered pleasure, the other pressing her into the embrace of the other woman’s chest. The two sat in an avaricious tangle, the more diminutive of the two shuddering with pleasure every so often. It built within her until her spine arched from her lover’s body, muscles tense along their length. Her own hunger abated for a moment as every nerve sung in a symphony of satisfaction from the merest whisper to the deafening screaming of her frantic heartbeat. Without realising, she fell against the bed with Eve looming over her panting form. Illuminated against the lights of the city below and the blue blood flowing through her thigh, Eve took on an almost ethereal affectation. It made her appear all the stronger as every sinew and protruding muscle stood out with their exertions. The soldier saw the hunger begin to rise in Isabelle’s eyes once again. It seemed on that score, at least, she was truthful. She certainly had a type.
~*~
The sunrise’s intrusive light shone into the bedroom that morning, casting its warmth across the sleeping form of Eve. It was not the dawn that caused her artificial body to wake but rather a song. A beautiful melody sung in Italian. As the tailed woman righted her protesting body, flashes of the previous night asserted themselves. Bereft of lust and loneliness, the full weight of her actions crashed onto her shoulders. Leaping from Isabelle’s bed as if it were a viper nest, Eve covered her naked form with her hands. Her eyes slid to the bathroom where her patroness was likely still showering before she slunk over to her clothes where they’d been strewn near the sofa.
To call it shame would be inexact. Isabelle could do better, in fact had better than a revenant. A married revenant. The betrayal stung at her pride. It was eloquent as to what kind of person it made her. Though their vows had been until death parted them, some small part of Eve clung to the notion of that union. A part that hoped against the reality and body she now inhabited. She looked briefly to her form as she ensconced it in the suit. A bulwark against her discomfort. Like the woman who’d paid for it, it was unsettlingly bereft of small flaws. Not simply her myriad scars from serving in active warzones but also something as small as the birthmark on her thigh. It had been the shape of a dragon’s head which, of course, had only ever been fuel for her father’s paranoia about his daughter. She missed that small act of nature’s defiance.
“And here I was hoping you’d join me,” Isabelle’s voice drifted from behind her. Eve turned suddenly, abandoning attempts to finish buttoning her shirt. The other woman had swaddled herself in towels, bending down to retrieve her clothes before regarding the soldier with a critical eye. “I’ll have to buy you more threads after work. You might not sweat but the normies don’t know that” the curly-haired woman noted before taking her laundry towards her bedroom. After returning from her errand, she picked up her phone and began scrolling nonchalantly, not even attempting to preserve her modesty. There wasn’t much to preserve between them now, Eve supposed. Though the observation brought another issue to the fore.
“How do I keep myself cool?” she asked, her eyes darting in turn to each strange and obviously biomechanical element.
“You’ve got vents. And internal liquid cooling. Your lungs help with the bulk of it though,” Isabelle noted as she ran through the morning’s messages, snorting as she arrived at a particularly egregious one. “Fucking Waleed. Invites himself as my date then gets mad when I don’t play along,” the board member grunted to herself, summoning memories of the previous night that didn’t bring a look of shame to Eve’s face.
“He showed up here. I told him you went without him,” the soldier reported casually, finishing her buttons. A very formal style for, presumably, watching TV and pottering about the apartment all day. Though the look of suspicious irritation in her landlady’s eyes gave her pause. It was only when she asked whether Waleed knew who she was that Eve realised. “Oh no,” she placated, settling into the sofa with a gentle smile, “I told him you’d hired me for company.”
Isabelle smirked before a chuckle escaped her, shaking her head at the irony. Eve had to confess it was mildly amusing when one ignored the extramarital element. She settled for a diplomatic expression, trying desperately to keep her disquiet contained. Her curly-haired employer was a smart woman, unlike many of her ilk. Guilt was leverage.
Her employer seemed to have a suspicious amount of trouble dressing herself, demanding assistance with her bra clasp and straightening her tie. Eve had never seen her wear a tie before now. Perhaps it was a Tuesday only affair. As Eve stood there, eyes running over Isabelle’s form to check her work, the green-eyed woman leaned forward, placing a hand gently just below her neck. She looked curiously over her roommate, lifting an eyebrow as if to invite explanation.
“Last night you were a different person,” Isabelle began, bringing that averted stare from Eve once again. The muted expression of shame. “You were ravenous, wild, almost scary. Where does she hide when you’re in charge, I wonder?”
“It’s not all that complicated. She scares me too,” Eve explained with a slight embarrassment. Her hands waved aimlessly for a moment under Isabelle’s inviting gaze. If her intent was to make her squirm, it was certainly working. “Getting satisfaction from another person’s pain is evil,” she eventually asserted with an almost childish tenor. Her thumb had once again found its home in her palm, clawed toe scraping along the carpet audibly. Thankfully, it seemed that Isabelle was too dumbstruck by the admonishment to reply. The two stood in awkward silence for a moment before Eve gingerly took a step back, wishing that she could at least have the pretention of needing breakfast.
As Eve prepared for the day, the green eyes of her patroness never left her. They were saturated in curiosity, as if trying to tease out what had caused such a reaction. She couldn’t be faulted, really. Eve had known many women with similar situations to her own. There were really only two choices; embrace the rigid structure their upbringing had enforced upon them or rebel against it. In her case it was a continuous war. Her blue eyes sifted through the city below them as she wondered whether there’d ever be peace on that front. She closed Isabelle’s briefcase and offered it to her, keeping a respectful distance from her. Her eyes narrowed with suspicion, yet she left the apartment all the same, Francois standing at the ready in his sharp dark suit. He gave Eve a warm smile before wishing his employer a good morning, ushering her into the lift he’d called for the pair.
Left to her own devices, Eve made her way to the piano and slipped her phone into her pocket, making her way over to the sofa. She sat down to watch the morning news with a disaffected expression as more peals of intra-national politics bored her to tears. She supposed that was one benefit to the dubious question of whether she was legally a person. She couldn’t be compelled to serve. Not that she ever would. AmTech had truly dropped the ball selecting her for their experiment. She checked the time before shutting off her distraction and making her way to the door. There, she turned the handle against the slip of metal she’d applied to the magnetic lock, sliding it free as the door opened. An old trick one of her less scrupulous army friends had taught her. With a cocky grin she propped the door open and began her journey to the streets below.
She was unsure exactly what her intention was as she wandered. All she knew was that to spend another day in that gilded cage was to fall even more under Isabelle’s spell. And that was unconscionable to several parts of her, including the parts she never spoke about. So, she found herself penniless and curious as she meandered down the street toward the underground station. Wherever she would end up, it had to be somewhere AmTech wouldn’t find her immediately. It was a test of sorts. A test of whether they had upheld their end of the bargain. A test Eve had no doubts they would fail. How could they not? If they were any scale of competent, a potentially lethal liability wandering about was always a risk no sane person would take. Then again, she supposed, everyone was lethal with the right motivation.
Once she’d travelled through the palatial halls of the underground and ridden the train for what felt like long enough, she emerged in the more tourist-centred district which commanded views of the bay. She inhaled the sea breeze gratefully before looking through the crowds that pottered about. An eclectic grouping from all over the world, many sported fashions utterly alien to Eurovallis. Still more came from the far-flung territories of her country. Places like the Californian Republic or Gran Colombia. She even spotted a few daring adventurers from China. Their country’s recent trend of simple, more traditionalist clothing made them stand out against the synthetic fabrics and ostentatious mods of Eurovallans.
Through this throng, Eve stood taller than many and found her strength an asset in shifting through those desperate to see the statue of Consul Cortez. Every consul got one at the end of their five years. Her blue eyes briefly took on an amused sheen as she considered the reign of Consul Haversham. Would people even vote for someone without a gram of meat in them? The smells emanating from the nearby restaurants made her deeply wish she could change that as she eyed a side of Bake. They grew it in a lab but that didn’t stop it tasting good enough to wish she had a stomach.
Taking mental inventory of all the distractions available to her, she began walking toward the piers that jutted out along the harbour. The larger, uglier machinery of the economy had been kept to another bay, artificially constructed. Eve’s father had been stationed as security. As her clawed feet clipped the well-carved wood, she felt her mind turn to the young woman she’d fallen for. Jenny. She wondered what had become of her. Poor homeless waif. It likely wasn’t good, even before her father had turned her away. So much for Christian charity. There she was again, souring her own mood. Didn’t she have any happy memories to parse through? She wracked her brain from her young childhood sat on her mother’s lap, ruining perfectly good canvas to building a treehouse with the boys. And there he was again, yelling at her.
Her tail flicked agitatedly, freeing itself from the confines of her trousers. Realising her mistake, she wrestled with it, succeeding only in wrapping it around her own hips as a strange belt. She remembered shipping out with grenades, ammo and all manner of lethal accoutrement. The buzzing of a thousand bullets in the air and the screams of the dying. She was beginning to wonder if it was truly her pessimism or whether it was realism that was souring her mood.
“Ms. Haversham? An acquaintance would like a word,” a voice sounded behind her. A masculine voice that drew her from her ennui like a fish from deep waters. She looked over her shoulder, taking care to shift the sunglasses she wore. Isabelle had been right about her eyes, after all.
A young man with dark hair and tanned complexion stood before her wearing what could only be described as his Sunday best. Scruffy around the edges, with the tails of his shirt untucked and his jacket sitting unbuttoned about his elbows. He was followed by a heavily tattooed, large man sporting a braided beard and jeans. Eve recognized the band on his T-shirt. At least his tombstone would say he had good taste.
The vicious thought came unbidden from a feral part of herself. She had to agree with it on some level. These men weren’t AmTech. And Isabelle would not send anyone so unkempt to fetch her. It was the kind of woman she was.
With subtlety, Eve’s hands slid to her front, hidden by her body. Her tail, hidden by her shirt, undulated aggressively.
