The hibernaculum started to drain, but halfway through the process, the lights flickered again—this time in the stasis room—and went out. The hibernaculum dimmed as it switched to an insufficient battery reserve. Oxygen levels were dropping. The computers no longer worked, and because they didn't work, Grayson couldn't toggle the manual override protocol. He prayed there was enough power left in the batteries for the ARP to finish cycling.
Alexia opened her eyes and put her hands on the glass. Her vitals continued dipping on the tank's readout. The battery was nearing depletion.
Pure, desperate reflex: Grayson punched the glass until his knuckles were bruised and bloody, and when that didn't work, he tried to pry the tank open, digging his fingers into the seam of the door and pulling as hard as he could, his muscles straining painfully with the effort. He managed to open it wide enough to wedge himself in the door, a cold spray of liquid soaking him to the knees, and began to carefully unhook Alexia from the hibernaculum's support system.
The edge of the door cut into his skin, and he felt warm blood seep through his shirt, trickle down his back. Grayson ignored the pain, slipping the intravenous lines from Alexia's body and untangling her from the spaghetti-work of plastic tubes and insulated wires, watching the PICC punctures in her skin pucker close, then smooth out.
Grayson hooked his arms around her and extricated Alexia from the tank, and then himself, the door snapping shut behind him. Her skin burned fever-hot (it didn't feel cool and clammy as he'd expected) and smelled of something that reminded him of hospitals, of antiseptic and medication.
He carried Alexia to his makeshift bed, laid her down. He turned on his battery-powered lantern so he could see her, and pressed the dragonfly barrette into her hand. "I kept it safe," he told her. Grayson closed her fingers around the dragonfly, and squeezed her hand. "I'm giving it back. That was our deal." He smoothed back her damp hair, and said, "Sorry about the wing. Alfred broke it."
Alexia looked at him with the sort of glazed, beaten look he'd observed in airports, in DMVs and waiting rooms. Her lips curled into a slow smile. Fifteen years had honed Alexia's face into a thing of sharp, aristocratic angles, and Grayson thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. "Is that really you, Grayson?" she asked, in a voice made brittle from years of disuse.
"It's me," he said, smiling, still holding her hand, afraid that if he let go, Alexia was liable to evaporate. "You look exhausted," he told her. "Fifteen years not—"
Alexia didn't give him the chance to finish: she dragged his head down and pushed her lips against his, kissing him slow and deep, and with a ravenous, unsettling kind of hunger. She worked her tongue into his mouth, fingers weaving into the dark waves of his hair, and Grayson returned the kiss in equal measure, cupping one of her breasts, brushing his thumb over the taut, pink stud of her nipple. The touch seemed to galvanize her, and Alexia arched up against him with an ecstatic groan, parting her legs.
Her kiss, Grayson decided, made him feel as if he were frenching a nettle bush, or a bottle of chloric acid, but there was a quality in that unpleasantness that some caveman part of him enjoyed, and it took every ounce of his willpower to pull away. His lips burned, and Grayson licked them, tasting something almost chemical. "You," he said, ignoring the aching hardness of his groin, "need sleep. We can do this later, once you've recovered and gotten some food in you."
"You can't just tease a woman like that," she pouted in that dry, straight-faced way of hers. Alexia grabbed his hand and guided it between her slick thighs, and he felt the warm cling of her vulva on his fingertips. "That's what I am now, Grayson. A woman," she said as if he needed reminding, slowly grinding against his hand. His fingers burned as they sank inside her. Alexia kissed him, smothering any further protests (he didn't have any other than her needing to rest), and there was a deep, animal need in that kiss, and Grayson wanted more, wanted to never kiss anyone else again.
Before he could even entertain the semblance of composure, Alexia was stripping off his clothes, then winding her arms around his shoulders, heaving him atop her with surprising strength. Grayson mounted the wet cradle of her thighs, and—no, he said to himself, go easy, and he did—eased himself inside her, inch by inch, and Alexia squeezed hard around him. Her nails dug into his shoulder-blades as she became accustomed to this thing inside her, and she sweltered down there, almost uncomfortably so, but Grayson didn't care. He began to thrust tentatively, then more boldly when she moaned her approval and told him—no, commanded—to keep going, and he did.
Fifteen years of wanting her, of wanting nothing but her, unspooled from him as he pinned Alexia beneath him and rocked mercilessly between her thighs. She raked her nails down across his back, wrapping her long white legs around him—then pushed him down and straddled him in one smooth motion, riding him in slow, sinuous waves. She kissed him again, and there was a possessiveness in that kiss which told him that he was hers now, and nobody else's, and especially not Annette's.
Grayson didn't have a chance to give Annette any further thought, his orgasm spasming him suddenly and explosively, blowing his mind into a warm spray of post-coital bliss. Alexia groaned and shuddered around him, tossing her hips, riding the last waves of her orgasm. Then she rolled down next to him, clinging tightly to his side and pressing her face into the crook of his neck, trailing hot branding-iron kisses along the pulsing line of his carotid.
"That," she purred between kisses, throwing a leg across his thighs, "was your late Christmas present."
"You heard me say that?" he asked, surprised. "About Christmas."
Alexia just gave him an ominous little smile before curling up against him, then closing her eyes and sleeping like the dead.
Grayson slept for a little too, but when he woke with an urgent need to piss, he found Alexia was still fast asleep, and he didn't want to get up because lying next to her was like cuddling a kerosene heater. The lights still weren't on, and that worried him: without power, it would only get colder, and they were, he realized with a sudden stark clarity, trapped in the stasis room—the door was electronic.
He dressed, found a corner and relieved himself in the whiskey bottle—then hid it, because he didn't want Alexia to know he'd pissed in a bottle.
Maybe they could pry the door open, together, once she was awake.
But that wouldn't matter either, he thought, because without power, the elevator wouldn't work—and Don had locked it.
Now Grayson was starting to panic, and he considered waking Alexia and asking her what they should do. No, something with his voice said, let her sleep. You're a grown-ass man. You can figure this out. When a cursory search of the room turned up nothing (no radios, no sat-phones, nothing), Grayson made his way back over to Alexia and snuggled in beside her until his shivers subsided. Whatever freaky genetic voodoo T-Veronica had done to her, Grayson was glad it had made her so goddamn warm.
He'd drifted off at some point, and when he woke, Alexia was watching him. "Did you just get up?" he asked, and his breath steamed in the air. He wiped the sleep-crust from his eyes.
"No, I've been up for a while," said Alexia. Then, very earnestly and matter-of-factly, she said, "I've been watching you sleep."
"I'm more flattered than freaked out."
"As you should be," she agreed. "You've grown into a very handsome man, Grayson."
"Didn't do too badly yourself," he said, smiling.
Her cheeks turned pink.
"You were just fucking my brains out, but now you're suddenly playing it coy?" he teased, and sat up, shivering a little. Alexia hugged him, and he said, "Feels like you're on fire."
"A much more accurate statement than you would think," she said.
"Why haven't they gotten the power back online?" he asked, looking at her. "It should have been on by now. I thought this room had a dedicated generator."
"It does," said Alexia. "But those planes likely damaged some things when they crashed."
Grayson stared at her, furrowing his brow. "How do you know about those planes?"
"I," she said as she smoothed his hair back into place, "know everything that goes on in this facility, my love."
"Did T-Veronica make you psychic or something?"
"No," she said, with an unladylike laugh. "Mechanoreceptors. Chemotropism." Alexia shook her head at the uncomprehending expression on his face, then said, "Don't worry about it, Grayson." Then she gave him that cryptic little smile, and said, "Besides, you'll find out soon enough. Also, I have a question—if you'll indulge me."
"I'll indulge you all day long," he chuckled.
Alexia grinned. "Don't make promises you don't intend to keep, darling. Anyway, my question," and she gestured at her nakedness. "Did you intentionally not leave out any clothes for me, you hound?" She giggled, tilting her head like a cat. "I would think staring at me in the hibernaculum for these last fifteen years would have dulled your interest in my body." Then she held up one of the porno mags Don had brought him, adding, "You're absolutely incorrigible, Grayson. Are these the same ones you'd kept in that shoebox under your bed when we were teenagers?"
"That one's from last year, Lex. 1997," he pointed out.
She looked at the cover with renewed interest, and said, "So it is." Absently, Alexia flipped through the pages and said, "Fashion's certainly changed."
Grayson snatched the magazine out of her hand and tossed it aside. "A lot of things have changed in the last fifteen years. Wait until you see what Michael Jackson looks like now. Also, you knew about my shoebox?"
"I did."
"Were you snooping around my room again?"
"I was."
"Why?"
Alexia shrugged.
"Unbelievable," he said, smiling.
"Your business is my business," said Alexia, as if that was an inalienable fact. Then, "I don't care that you read those sorts of magazines." She crossed her arms. "Though I would hope you'd come to me first."
Grayson kissed her, then said, "Of course." He grinned. "Why stare at pictures of naked women when I have the real thing?" Then he kissed Alexia along the jawline, down to her neck, feeling her hot blood pulse against his lips. She tipped her head to one side to offer more of her neck to him, curling her fingers into his hair.
They made love again, this time from behind, then collapsed, sweating and panting, onto the blankets. He felt like he'd just finished making love to a poison oak bush, but it was a price Grayson was more than willing to pay, the pain transmuted into a strange kind of pleasure by some degenerate alchemy. "If we keep this up," said Alexia, stretching, cat-like, beside him, "I shall never walk again."
"It's not like we have anything better to do." Grayson went to fix his pants, but Alexia took him into her hand and squeezed, and he relaxed under her careful, deliberate ministrations. "We're stuck down here. No power. Barely any food. Can't even access the water, and I'm almost out of the bottles I brought with me."
"I'm not worried," said Alexia.
"Yeah, well, I am," he said, and looked at her. "If they don't get this power back on soon, I'm gonna freeze to death—if I don't starve first. And I will starve first, because I'd feed you before I even thought to feed myself."
Alexia stood up and put on an oversized lab coat she took from a foot-locker by the hibernaculum. "The mansion's power is independent of the facility," she said. "Truly independent. There's a sub-level power-station for it."
"Great, but how will we get there? Without electricity, the doors won't open. And the elevator's locked."
Alexia didn't answer him. Grayson felt vibrations under his feet, and before he could ask Alexia what it was, two long, black, tentacle-looking things, like the tendrils of some prehistoric sundew, erupted from the floor in a spray of concrete and dust. The tentacles ripped the door from its gaskets with a loud squeal of metal, crumpling the steel like cheap aluminum and hurling it over the catwalk's railing. The ants chittered angrily at the disturbance, but as Alexia stepped out onto the catwalk, they quieted, retreating from her in swarms of glittering reds and blacks.
"What the fuck," was all he managed to say.
