Vixen A.D. 2 | Chapter 11.1

Note: Chapter 11 is currently huge, so I'm dividing it into two smaller chapters.

She could still taste him.

Among the other flurry of emotions. She’d never given head to anyone before and had wondered what it’d feel like to hold a hard, pulsing cock in her hand.

Cinder loved stroking Mace and tasting him.

And she might have been falling in love with him. Of that, she did not know to feel. Was it normal to fall in love so fast? Was it trauma bonding? And who gave a fuck?

She liked the idea of being with him, circumstance or not. It just seemed to make sense. It felt comfortable. It felt right.

Cinder tossed on her side and smile calmy, laying in the sheets and comforter of her bed. It was cool in the room, though not cold. She’d learned to adjust the temperature at the thermostat and dial in a schedule just for her.

And the conditioner and heater seemed to work out, making he comfortable and happy.

Yet she felt some anxiety. She wanted Mace. And needed him. Needed his grip, his embrace, his dick. His orgasm.

But… there was more to it than that. There were more variables. Faye had already grown to love Mace, whether she was aware of it or not. Cinder saw how she interacted him. And… well, how would Faye feel about Cinder loving Mace in the same way?

Sure, sharing him at the same time seemed like it didn’t bother her. In fact, Faye encouraged it. Yet… that didn’t answer the entire question. Was it a kink to the kitsune, for Faye to tell other women what to do to her unofficial man?

Or was it a threesome thing? Or maybe Faye was doing it to make Mace happy?

Come on, that’s stupid, she already laid everything on the table, specifics or not, and you can follow the rest, Cinder thought to herself. Frustrated, she planted her face in the pillow and groaned.

She would have to clarify it with her.

Not that it would be a problem to ask Faye for some extra details. They’d been through a lot together, anyway. There was some friendship there and the kitsune had even flirted with Cinder. Hell, she gave an assisting hand to sucking Mace’s dick.

That wouldn’t have happened if they’d never met.

And maybe they wouldn’t have, if they hadn’t found Cinder in the hospital. She might still be there, trying to survive the encounter with demons and zombies.

And while Cinder was confident in her abilities, she knew that after enough time, she wouldn’t make it to the next day. Something would give. A mistake, or bad faith traveler. That’d be the end of bushy-fox-tailed Cinder.

And that was a fate that was all too likely without Mace and Faye.

She sighed. Her tail swished. The covers gently deformed under her slow, lazy tail sway. Cinder let out a yawn.

She had some ideas of what may have been.

Cinder played with a fold of sheet between her clawed fingertips and huffed. She could stay up all night wondering how things were going to be. The what-ifs and a could-have-been. She could do that a different day.

Cinder slid her hand down to her cum-filled belly and smirked. She was going to have to practice deep-throating him. And she didn’t mind that all. Even lapping up the mess.

Every drop.

***

Several hours had passed since he’d attempted to sleep again.

Since Faye assisted Cinder in sucking his cock. The eager kitsune had swallowed his entire load. He was impressed.

That was her first time, he guessed.

She even gave deep throating his length and girth a shot. Impressive, again. Even though she’d drained him of his lustfulness—which would return as eventually in mere moments after a hard orgasm—Mace wasn’t relaxed enough to stay asleep.

Something nagged him about The Singe.

He had to know more. So, Mace made his way out of the suite. He typed on his chronometer and PDA, then began a trek to North Ops 1. Mace wanted to see what the lab had been cooking up since he’d lost his memory.

If it was something good, that could help them a lot.

Mace vaguely remember some theoretical vaccine. Had that been developed, it’d make life easier for them, but those already infected were kind of screwed.

Not a pleasant thought.

He shut the door behind him and paced down the cool, Neo Mars midnight-drenched hallways. Earlier, he’d open the sun collectors. I forgot to shut them, Mace sighed.

The sun collectors were a fancy way of saying reinforced windows that relayed Neo Mars’s light into the base with nanotech and other engineering wizardry.

With them being open, some of the distant starlight was making its way in. The darkness emitted by Neo Mars’s atmosphere was something different than the images he’d seen of Earth.

Not that he minded it.

Mace turned a corner. He imagined the darkness, cool temperature, and late-night placidity were reminiscent of a small city town on Earth. Before it went to shit.

He stepped past a door, took a lift, and made his way further into Delta.

North Ops 1 was ahead. It was his new office. That was a sad thought, Mace quietly laughed. But, it was true.

Part of the skylight above caught a glance of the passing Neo Mars nighttime sky. He saw the same stars as he walked pass it, head craned up for a moment. A meteor, too.

Forward, he continued.

Finally, he was at North Ops 1.

Mace listened as his chronometer automatically dialed in the authorization to clear the door, realizing the redundancy to some level. Delta has his bio-signature. The authorization chip was in him.

At least it would be a good backup, he thought.

The kitsunes would need a chip at some point so they didn’t have the problem of relying on their chronometers. That would just be a quick trip to the med lab and some administrative work in one of the Ops centers. He could do it from a lab, if need be.

Mace felt the air disturb gently as the door shut behind him.

He gazed over the large room, the elevated section that held all the computers and displays, the comms and databanks, and nodded quietly. Everything was on, doing what it should be doing.

He wondered why Delta had never set up AI capabilities for the intercoms, then wondered if that was something he could do himself later. Mace shrugged. He climbed to two steps that carried him onto the elevated section of instruments, displays, computers, and chairs that lined the section of North Ops 1.

Below, he could see the other computers and instruments.

A large set of wide, reinforced, multi-acrylate and poly-metal allow windows sat ahead of him. He found a seat, sat down, and considered finding a something to sip on. A hot coffee. There was one in here somewhere, he knew.

Mace scooted his swivel chair forward and watched as the display lit. He typed a few things on the keyboard and went to a series of logs from the most recent lab report. Seems like all of these are from other outposts, imported by the AI, he mused.

But not all of them. There were a ton more from massive research facilities.

He’d have to call them up, too. It’d take a moment or two to download the data and, Mace knew, Neo Mars’s data-lines, satellites, and optical hyper-cables were only as good as they were if intact. If something happened to another base, or a line was damaged, there was no guarantee the information would come quickly.

If he even got it.

Mace entered the command to pull all missing data from Neo Mars’s research facilities and USF buildings, then got up and went for a cup of coffee. It’d only take a few minutes to brew. Hopefully that was enough to collect reports from all USF facilities.

He walked around the pillar and wall that separated the back side of North Ops 1 and found a small section dedicated to beverages and snacks. Had to say hydrated and nourished, he thought.

Mace prepared his cup of coffee with one of the nearby mugs. The machine brewed it, and after gathering a cup of the hot caffeinated liquid, Mace returned to the initial computers. He sat and took a sip.

Hot and good, strong and vaguely sweet. Mace always added a bit of sweetener to his java. He set the mug on a neighboring table.

He began.

And…

The first log didn’t contain very much.

It was from a distant outpost, one with a built-in research facility. He scanned it over, seeing mentions here or there about some other progress at some other base. Mace sighed. That wasn’t a great start.

Still, he continued.

There were plenty more, anyway. The network and AI had pulled down at least a thousand or more reports on what did that, or who did that, and where so-and-so was at one some lab request.

Eventually, he was on the next one.

SIMPOST MARKSIS A. What a terrible name, Mace thought. Some USF lab off the edge of Cydonia’s coastlines. He thought about that for a minute.

Terraforming had managed to melt a good chunk of hidden ice beneath the snow. They’d even used asteroids passing from the belt to add mass to Neo Mars. It took a hell of a lot of them, fucked up the atmosphere, but after some scrubbed and other mitigations, it cleaned right up.

That being said, some of the post-processing haze still drifted around. He remembered now that’s why the sky shift back to red sometimes, depending on the weather and day. Mace wondered if other scientists nearby saw the same shifts in sky color he witnessed.

Continuing on, he began studying the next message. Not a report, but mail.

TO: SINMON ROADS

FROM: J.  ALBACERK

SUBJECT: PROGRESS ON VECTOR ISOLATE 2B?

Dr. Sinmon,

We haven’t heard back from your progress on Isolate 2B. It appears this could be useful for our research into some of The Singe’s less understood actions. I also see you added some records to our end of the database. I told you a couple times already, you have to talk to Hertha, she’s the one in charge of collating the database of incoming mail. Remember this!

Anyway… how is everything over there? We’re alright. Lost power on a couple of the grids. Dr. Sinmon, I urge you to contain your samples in a backup refrigeration unit connected to some of the USF grid, if you can. It will save you a lot of headache.

Our protein compound has made some progress on subjects. We’ve seemed to make progress on material that binds to metabolites of The Singe. It’s not a cure, far from. Not even a vaccine but… at least it did something, I suppose.

Report back when you can and if possible, prepare samples for transit on the drones, or send them to the nearby periphery of the new USF megabase’s TRAM system. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Dr. Albacerk

Well, that was at least somewhat useful, Mace thought. It could have meant something. There were 900 other messages to check. Mace remembered some knowledge of the compounds under USF research, but he didn’t know as much as the researchers.

Mace scratched his chin.

He continued onto the next piece of data.

 This was a report. Immediately, Mace felt a little disappointed. It seemed to indicate that USF’s labs weren’t progressing, or at least not at a reasonable pace. Mace started the report.

DETAILS OF ISONOMER 2C VIA ISOLATE A-52

DR. MICHARD FORBES

APRIL 24TH 3031 A.D.

I write this with frustration. After receiving a sample of Isolate 2B from MARKSIS A, I couldn’t have been more excited. Well, all 8 vials were not handled well in transit, possible damaged by issues on the way, and only one remains viable.

I was able to replicate it in the med lab with crude cloning mechanisms, but it didn’t produce much and seems to be unstable. So, I’ve taken what I have, and combined it with Isolate 2B from Sinmon’s lab research.

I’m not happy. It appears that this is even more unstable. It doesn’t seem to interact with anything, and, under initial analysis, appears to actually reverse some of our progress. There may be no cure at all.

Worse, we thought, my team that is, we could maybe reapply a small amount of our protein reagent and… well, that didn’t work either. Makes a hell of a sedative, though.

At least we’ve uncovered a vector of the Singe complex.

The pathogen, which seems to be a conglomerate of several viral properties, bacterial and parasitic traits, has multiple attack vectors. One, the new, seems to occur with a heated plasma from infected subjects.

Which… is new. They’re not just roaming around like zombies anymore. One of our subjects seems to have… god. I’ll cover details of discovered variants later, at some point.

Whenever that may be. We’re not sure how sustainable can be after all these discoveries. It’s absurd.

The Singe Complex. That’s what our boys and girls named it in the labs. Because it’s a complex of all we’ve learned thus far in humanity’s research.

It does appear we can at least keep studying the effects of what The Singe does. We know it attacks organisms that are carbon based. At first, we believed this to be mammalian only, but it seems to include all carbon based life.

I will update my research later. Clock is about over for report hour.

Dr. Forbes, signing off.

Mace sighed. Well, that wasn’t encouraging to read first thing. That was the first lab from research doctor he found, and it seemed to indicate that research was not advancing a cure. A treatment. A vaccine. Anything.

Worse, it confirmed the Singe was something alien to biology, at least in a way they understand. That, and it was attacking all carbon based life. What did that? He hadn’t seen any plants in a bit. They were in the desert continent of Neo Mars.

So… could it be that a fucking man-eating fern grew wild off Cydonia, or some other island, or continent, that he didn’t know of? Fuck, this is a lot… and disappointing. He sighed and leaned back in the chair.

The familiar sound of footsteps approached behind him. Faye rounded the corner and stood next to him at the display and console. She lifted a brow. “What is going on, here?” the kitsune teased.

Mace shrugged. “Nothing good.”

Faye’s attitude deflated. She switched to a focus, noticing the lab logs on screen. “I see. What’s this?”

“Logs from neighboring research labs and USF facilities around Cydonia, some from continents outside of Cydonia,” explained.

She nodded, solemnly looking at the screen. “Why are you reading it?”

“Maybe there’s…” he stopped. “I need to give you and Cinder access. And updated chronometers. And chipped.”

Faye snickered. “Are you chipped?”

“And ingrained in with my biometrics,” he explained. “Lots of authentication.”

“Ah. Fail safes,” Faye said. She nodded. “Alright. You know,” she began, “you could teach us how to read this stuff and help you out.”

Mace nodded. “Yeah. I could. Would you do that?” He smiled.

Faye smiled back. “Yes.”

Her clawed hand was on his chair’s edge. Faye’s tail swished.  Mace smirked. “Well, what are you doing up?”

She gazed at him and grinned. “I couldn’t sleep without you in bed. Might still have the image of your dick in Cinder’s mouth on my mind, too,” Faye confessed.

Mace chuckled a bit. “Well, glad it was enjoyable to watch.”

“It was.”

“You’re not even a little jealous?” Mace asked. “Not even a bit?”

Faye found the chair next to Mace. She sat down. “Mace, can I be honest with you, like, really candid? If that’s alright.”

Mace nodded. God, what was she going to say? Was she jealous. If he had to stop, he would, but… “Always.”

“What are we?” she asked.

Mace’s heart thumped. “Survivors.”

She nodded. “Of course. But you know what I mean.”

“Yes. Well,” Mace started. “What do you want us to be?”

Faye pursed her lips. “Your girlfriend, obviously. I want us to be in an intimate relationship. But you also probably already knew that. And, you must know as a kitsune, I have… an appetite.”

Mace nodded. She did, ever she did.

“Yes,” he said.

Faye sighed. “What do you want? I need to hear it, if it’s what you want,” Faye said.

Mace clasped his hands. “Yes. I want that, too.”

She scratched her head and twitched an ear. “Mace Frost, I want you be your girlfriend forever. Fuck, if it’s possible, more. Look,” she placed a gentle hand on his thigh, “I’ve been surviving a long time. It wears me… grinds me to well, what I am now… but I’m getting better. I’m giving myself over, bit by bit, little by little, to you. We’ve fucked. That’s a big deal to me. But you haven’t heard my tales of the Neo Mars wasteland and they’re going to be heavy on me to share, but I want share them with you.”

Mace nodded. She’s really opening up… “Faye, I’m not leaving you. We found each other, and that’s how it’s going to be permanently, unless you want to—”

“No,” she interrupted. “Never. I want you,” she replied. “Period.”

“Okay. I was going to say unless you want to… go, but that’s not what I want. And… well, I want you… like you want me but…”

Faye’s face looked worried. Anxious. “But?”

“I have to know how you feel about me fucking other women… well, kitsunes. My dick was in Cinder’s mouth,” he said. “I know it was a heat of the moment thing and you’re not totally straight, but… I mean, do you really see yourself being comfortable with that again?”

Faye let out a sigh of relief.  “Oh. That.” She looked at him and smiled. “What, do you think I’m opposed to a harem? A thing about us kitsunes,” she said, “is we’re very, very, very lustful. And clingy. And, to be honest? Yeah. I want you to fuck Cinder more. I mean, everything.”

Mace laughed. “I didn’t even ask first if you were alright with it, if I even though it was something I wanted,” he said. “I want it only if you want it, and only if we do things as an exclusive thing,” he finished. Mace paused. “Huh.”

“What?” Faye asked.

“I just… never thought I would be in something like this,” he smiled.

She grinned. “To add to that, yes, I would quite like to keep going with what we have but… we’ll need to talk to Cinder. And I would greatly prefer exclusivity among us kitsunes,” she said. Faye smirked.

Mace grinned back at her. “Sure. So, lustful,” he smiled.

Faye blushed a little and swayed her fluffy tail. “Of course. I held back. I’m going to want your dick daily, at least. Minimum. More, if possible. I would have been sluttier for you but, well, zombies and… we needed this,” Faye said.

Mace laughed a little. “Alright. I’ll try to keep up.”

“I’ll help you stay in shape, don’t worry. You’ve got everything I want,” Faye teased. “So, are we fucking later? My vixen ass needs stuffed,” she giggled.

He caressed her cheek. “Count on it.”