Chapter 7: A Thoroughly Embarrassing Conversation

Evelyn had thought that after recounting the way the head cultist had been reborn through the womb of Shub-Niggurath herself in excruciating detail the day couldn't get any grosser. But then the Professor had brought her to the other research specimen, a disgusting fleshy cocoon that Elaine had apparently brought with her from her trip with Cassie and Abigail.

“What does your skill tell you about this?”, he had asked and then he'd let her get to work.

One nice thing she could say about the Professor was that he didn't hurry her. If he asked her to read something he gave her time to do so. She could tell that he wasn't a patient person and felt a certain kinship in that but she was still grateful that this impatience didn't translate to him hurrying her to read faster. He wasn't patient but he clearly hated sloppy work even more than he hated having to wait.

After skimming through what was and wasn't relevant she began to read out some of the more pertinent passages: “'Entity was terminated partway through a metamorphosis from a common Thrall of Shub-Niggurath into a Wendigo of Shub-Niggurath. While theoretically part of the Thrall's life cycle the nature of these creatures usually prohibits them from settling down and metamorphosing. This suggests that the conditions that led to this metamorphosis were artificially induced'.”

“Does it say anything about who may have induced it?”, Stollos asked.

“Yes”, Evelyn said. “Hold on. 'Traces within the area the specimen was found in suggest that this tampering may have been caused by a member of an organization known as IDS, or Intelligent Defense Systems'.” She frowned at what she'd read. “Never heard of those guys.”

Stollos felt himself go cold at those words.

Intelligent Defense Systems was a private security company specializing in what they claimed to be 'artificial intelligence'. Except such phrasing made them sound much more benign than they were. In truth, their products combined technology, magic and living tissue in the vilest possible ways. One of their most popular and least disgusting products was a line of vat-grown clones with cybernetic enhancements and built-in PSI devices. Or, in other words, lobotomized cyborgs with magic enhancements. He knew because the company's founder had been one of his colleagues once upon a time.

“You alright, Professor?”, Evelyn asked, pulling him out of his thoughts.

“Yes, thank you”, he said.

“Who are these guys?”, she asked.

He really didn't want to answer her. It would lead to a thousand annoying questions down the line. But if Caulder was indeed working together with the Outsiders then it was unavoidable that their past would come to light. “They used to be a private defense company led by a reprehensible man who calls himself Professor Caulder”, he finally said. “But now they're apparently working with the Outsiders.”

**

Elaine smiled as she saw the notification, knowing that Evelyn must have bought the Akashic Knowledge skill to help out the Professor. She also noticed that Evelyn hadn't spent all her EXP. She was now at the same level as Alexis and Ophelia at least but she'd elected not to spend the rest.

Elaine wondered if Evelyn just didn't want to feel left out when the others were going to level up or if she was planning on increasing her Bond Level before spending the points.

**

“So”, Ophelia said. “How did things go?”

“Well, Alexis wasn't wrong”, Cassie said. “She's lonely. She was way too excited about a dweeb like me wanting to talk to her.”

“Why do you put yourself down like this?”, Ophelia asked.

“It's just how I talk”, Cassie said with a shrug.

“Why?”, Ophelia asked.

“My viewers seem to like it”, he replied. “They think it's cute.”

“Well I don't”, she said. “It's off-putting. How can you expect others to like you if you talk as if you don't even like yourself?”

“I think you're reading way too much into this”, Cassie said, though he looked a bit uncomfortable as he said it.

“We don't need to have this conversation if you don't want to”, she said in a much gentler tone of voice. “But if you want to talk about it then I'm willing to listen.”

“You're speaking from experience, aren't you?”, he asked.

Now it was her turn to shrug. “I'm passing on good advice I've had to learn the hard way.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I think that interview with a vampire thing is starting to sound more and more intriguing.”

She rolled her eyes. “You were trying to win a date with Elaine, not me, remember?”

“Just because I'm curious doesn't mean I want to get into your pants”, he said. “And besides, as I understand it you're basically all dating each other, aren't you?”

She gave a wry smile. “Sort of.” She paused long enough to indicate the topic was over before she asked: “So, anything else of note?”

Cassie almost got whiplash from the sudden change in topic but he did his best not to show it. Women normally only bounced back and forth between topics like this with other women so Cassie always got a little excited when a woman talked to him as if he was just 'one of the girls'. “Right”, he said. “So she's super sorry for the way she alienated Elaine but she doesn't really know how to approach her. Or any of you, for that matter. She talked to me because I approached her but I think she's too shy to make the first move.”

“A supermodel with the attitude of a wallflower”, Ophelia muttered. “Typical.”

He snorted. “Other than that, she's surprisingly competent with a gun. She admitted to me that she didn't expect she'd be as comfortable with them as she ended up being.”

“Elaine's a bit of a gun nut”, Ophelia mused.

“Exactly what I was thinking”, Cassie said. “Maybe they can find some common ground with that.”

“Yeah, that might work”, she said.

“So, why do you want them to get along so bad?”, he asked. “Do you want Elaine to add her to her little harem?”

Ophelia rolled her eyes. “I don't really care about that. But getting along with Elaine is the only way she'll get stronger. If we don't push them together she'll become a liability sooner or later. She has all the EXP she could possibly need but her Bond Level is so low that she's got nothing to spend it on.”

“Yeah, that's fair”, he said, then brightened up. “So, did I earn that date?”

**

After learning about the involvement of IDS the Professor had dismissed Evelyn for the time being. He'd seemed shaken by the revelation and while Evelyn had been curious she also hadn't wanted to bother him. Of course she also wanted to try out something else. Once she'd been dismissed she had headed back to her room. Her plan had been to chat up Elaine the moment she was done with the Professor but now she wanted to try something else first.

She pulled up her CARD's search function and then tried to search for information on these IDS people, hoping that even if Base 15's database had nothing on them that at least her new Akashic Knowledge skill would yield some answers.

It barely even took a heartbeat before her CARD regurgitated more information than she knew what to do with. She reflected that the main problem with Akashic Knowledge was that it quickly resulted in information overload and sifting through everything was the real challenge.

Either way, after a good five minutes of skimming over stuff that didn't matter to her she found out who these guys were and what they were all about. Almost as soon as she did she realized that the revolting research specimen that had led them to this trail had been a sign of things to come. IDS was into some vile shit.

They provided defense solutions for utterly immoral lunatics. Autonomous weapons, cyborgs (grown from either humans, animals, or both), biological weapons, guns, you name it. Everything they offered was a disturbing amalgam of technology, magic and biological components and all of it was the kind of stuff that was either illegal or not yet illegal because nobody had drafted legislation against it yet. They sounded like the Umbrella Corporation from Resident Evil except without the pretense of being just a pharmaceutical company.

Some of their best customers were Mexican drug cartels, the different mafias and the Yakuza as well as several governments. Evelyn was extremely relieved to see that the US government wasn't among their customers but she was slightly concerned by some of the names that were listed.

Well, she supposed it didn't really matter anymore since the Invasion had destroyed most of the world. But then again, if these IDS guys were now working together with Outsiders then that wasn't quite true, was it? They were still very much an issue.

She decided to shake it off. It was above her pay grade. Her superiors were going to decide on how to deal with it and all she could do was follow orders. For right now she had something much more personally important to do.

She pulled up her CARD's messenger function, selected Elaine, and typed out:

The reply was immediate.

Evelyn bit her lip. There was a reason she'd wanted to do this via messenger. The very idea of talking about this was mortifying. Talking about it face to face would be more than she could bear.

Evelyn could almost hear the smug smile in Elaine's next message:

Evelyn took a deep breath before typing out:

Her face felt like it was on fire. It was one of the stupidest things she'd ever done but it had also resulted in one of the hottest memories of her life.

**

Elaine had to bite her lip when she read that. When Evelyn had sent her the first message she'd been worried that the redhead had been upset, that she'd been feeling neglected, but apparently Evelyn had had something else in mind.

Evelyn's reply took so long that Elaine started to worry that she'd said something wrong but then:

Elaine was immediately rock hard when she read that message. Apparently that night Elaine hadn't been the only one to think how hot the situation had been. She'd held back from jerking off to it, not wanting to objectify Evelyn like that, but clearly the redhead had had no such scruples.

The reply was immediate.

Elaine smiled. Apparently back then she'd awakened some sort of BDSM kink in Evelyn and now the poor girl thought she was the deviant when in truth Elaine had always been a little bit of a pervert. She had some ropes, handcuffs, manacles, gags and blindfolds in a drawer in her room. She hadn't gotten to use them since joining Project Divinity and after the side effects she'd thought she'd never get to use them again but apparently Evelyn was game for at least some of it.

So she admitted:

**

Evelyn had to bite her lip at that. Apparently she hadn't been the only one to think so. She wanted to pretend to misbehave so that Elaine would punish her for it but she'd been worried about Elaine being grossed out by the idea. But now Elaine was using the actual BDSM term for what Evelyn had planned, telling her that Elaine was probably fine with it.

Evelyn's hand almost shot into her panties at that. The thought of Elaine bending her over and spanking her was almost more than she could bear.

Evelyn grinned. She did think she had a great ass. Her breasts weren't much to write home about but she was proud of her ass. It was firm and shapely but had just enough heft to it that it jiggled when struck. And so the knowledge that Elaine liked it so much she wanted to spank it excited her.

When she didn't get an answer for almost a minute Evelyn started to get nervous, thinking she may actually have grossed Elaine out, but then:

Evelyn bit her lip again. This was it. Elaine was outright asking her what she wanted to happen. Should she be honest? Should she hedge her bets and only mention the harmless stuff?

She shook it off. This kind of thing was based on trust. Elaine was extending her a lot of trust by talking about this so openly so the least Evelyn could do was to return that trust.

Evelyn's breath caught. Somehow the mention of a safeword made it all that much more serious, more real. She wasn't scared though. She was excited.

Evelyn didn't get that reference but she wasn't about to argue. She knew a safeword had to be something she wouldn't accidentally say in the bedroom and a made-up word she'd never heard before would be great for that.

Evelyn couldn't decide if she should raise the other topic, the thing she'd talked about with Sam. She started to type out a question only to then delete it in embarrassment before starting anew, again and again, blushing harder with each failed attempt to admit what she wanted.

Evidently Elaine had noticed the three dots flashing up again and again because she finally asked:

And for the rest of the conversation the almost crimson flush never left Evelyn's face.

ChrisLensman

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