CHAPTER THIRTEEN: EPILOGUE
"Come back and do yoga with me," Melanie whined. She effortlessly assumed crow pose, hands on the ground and body curled up in the air. With feline grace, she straightened and spread her legs, the minx! Elle knew that if she so much as glanced at her fiancée's pose-exposed, barely-concealed crotch head on, neither of them would be doing anything useful until they had to leave for class.
"We just did yoga for like an hour," Elle pouted. She was getting better, but she had nowhere near Melanie's stamina.
"Yeah," Melanie said. She pulled her legs back in and folded them into a handstand lotus. "Cheese!" Her phone went 'click'. "But that was for fitness. I got like two good pictures out of that. Get your cute butt back here and make mama famous."
"You're already famous and I need to study organic chemistry," Elle said. She was still wrapping her brain around SN2 reactions and the quiz was on Wednesday.
"I get twice as many likes if you help me," Melanie whined. "And if you study any more, you're going to annihilate the curve. Again. I am not getting an A-minus in orgo-chem. Help me, Elle!"
"Get Cabana Boy to help you," Elle said, but it was a foregone conclusion. She was going to do more yoga. Ash was at work and Elle could study after breakfast. She set the book down and sashayed out, assuming an ustrasana pose next to Melanie, back bent way back, cleavage practically defying physics. With that camera angle, it would give their subscribers plenty of Mel and Elle to ogle.
After another half-hour of poses - this time, mostly for Melanie's camera and without much mind to personal fitness, Elle padded off of the deck and prepared some breakfast smoothies. She still couldn't believe she and Melanie... well, mostly Melanie (but she helped!)... could afford the place. It was four bedrooms and three baths with a pool and nice big deck overlooking Lake Vernon and half the valley. But Melanie assured her that they could and showed Elle her growing bank balance to prove it.
She responded to some texts from Nolan. He'd asked Elle to be the best woman at his wedding... he'd agonized for weeks before asking, but now she couldn't go a day without being inundated with questions and requests - booking arrangements, media management, and dozens of wedding dress and tuxedo options modeled by Nolan and Tara. Nolan owed her a lifetime of breakfasts. She told him as much. Before Elle could put the phone down, it buzzed with a video update from Dr. Turcott and some texts.
<Daniel and Luci singing with the Sweetwater Choir! - It was almost humorous, hearing and seeing the basso profundo bear of a man singing next to the petite, fire-haired soprano, but they both had amazing singing voices.
<Saw you on RealNews! You did great!
<I hope Mel's and your new digs are working out!
They were. They'd got a great deal on the place, too. Petra knew the developer. Or the developer's cousin. Or something. Truth be told, she was probably fucking all of them. They were in the little AHS-preferred enclave that had popped up in North-North Corona in the aftermath of the outbreak - an enclave that was quickly expanding as AHS folks from around the country got wind of the place. Sometimes tourists got bussed in just to people watch and new AHS residents were moving in by the day.
Hammers and nail guns sounded in the near distance. Any one of those might be Ash.
Ash was working construction for the summer on the development houses (courtesy Petra's same connection). Five days a week, he got up before even Melanie did and worked his tools all day. Presumably, he did some actual construction work, too. He got fifteen dollars an hour installing sheet rock and cementing concrete blocks in the new developments. When he set out his camera and live streamed himself, shirtless, tan, and rippling in the California sun, he could make a lot more than that. And when he returned in late afternoon, AHS-streamlined muscles barely taxed by the day's work, Ash was only too happy to show Melanie and Elle, vigorously and repeatedly, exactly how much he appreciated the free room and board. They (jokingly!) called him their Cabana Boy and he was staying in their six hundred square-foot pool house.
Elle finished her smoothie and was just about to return to SN2 reactions by the poolside when her phone buzzed again. It was Royce Boyle from 'New Herald' and 'The Boston Mariner'. AHS Royce. Bigwig journalist Royce. Elle's favorite journalist (after Miranda Cuthbert) Royce.
"Royce!" she said. Elle hoped she didn't sound too eager.
"Elle, thank god!" he sounded excited. "There's been an AHS outbreak in Redding... probably not a big one, but who the hell knows? I need a camera-friendly AHS expert on the ground who sounds like she knows what the hell she's talking about... are you available? Soon?"
Elle nodded, her yoga-loosened bun giving up the ghost and spooling golden tresses to her lower back. Nodding? That was dumb. He couldn't see her. "I hope so! I'll see if I can take my orgo quiz early," she said. Royce or not, Elle was a serious person and she had her priorities.
FIN
I don't think it'd work as well if you shifted PoV away from Elle in the sequels. This whole story so far feels like only a prologue, and that Elle has only gotten started.
The plan (it's very vague right now, but there's a vague plan) is to have two POVs - Elle and her brother Nolan. The basic premise is that the small New Mexico college town that Nolan lives in has an AHS outbreak and Elle flies in to cover the outbreak and help the affected. However, it soon becomes clear that unscrupulous forces have attempted to manipulate the AHS vehicle and the affected victims to make the syndrome into a population control and pacification device.
@OvidLemma Sounds like that requires some industrial espionage to get research to Elle to analyze so she can, at the very least, 'factory reset' the nano, all in the weeks it would take before AHS solidifies in people. Needs a Bond villain. Sounds fun, very fun.
@OvidLemma Definitely looking forward to reading it!
@Xexter I'm looking forward to writing it!