Author's Note:
Sorry about the delay—hopefully Chapter 3 will be out sooner. Be advised that this chapter, while similar to Chapter 1 with its elements of mind control and voyeurism, deals mainly with group activity, including both hetero- and homosexual action. If you haven't read Chapter 1, you really should read that first. This one's a bit longer, but stick with it!
*****
He wasn't frowning when he burst into the control room; he was seething. His techs jerked in surprise when the door hit the wall with a hollow boom, Left nearly falling out of his chair. Furious, Dr. Mahler stalked into the room, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Right's mouth moved but no sound came out. He swallowed and tried again. "Um, sir? Is something wrong?"
Mahler didn't seem to hear him. "Unprecedented," he growled darkly. "They want something unprecedented, do they?" Left and Right exchanged bewildered looks. Neither, however, had the nerve to try and snap Mahler out of his reverie. That would bring his attention onto them, after all, and having Dr. Mahler focused entirely on you was rarely healthy.
Mahler, for his part, was barely aware of either of them. His thoughts were still on the meeting he'd just left, where the faceless, be-suited fools who controlled his funding had laughed at him. Laughed! He'd shown them the video of Test Group Six, proudly displaying the utter success of his latest formulation of Agent 739. He'd walked them through the physiological data he'd collected from the pair, which demonstrated their near-total descent into sexual frenzy within seconds of exposure to his compound.
And the VP of Operations, who had ultimate power over all funding allocation, had laughed. "All I see there," he'd rumbled in his crass Southern accent, "is a couple of college kids doin' what comes naturally. Put a pair of college kids in a room with a flat surface, and it's even odds you'll come back to find them fuckin' on it." He chuckled again, spawning sycophantic echoes around the room.
"I believe what Vice President Reynolds is trying to say," came the more reasonable voice of Dr. Petersen, the Vice President of Research, Mahler's immediate supervisor, "is that there's little evidence here that it was your compound which induced..." he gestured vaguely at the screen behind Mahler, which was paused on a scene of the couple at the height of passion. "Erm...that. There's no way to be certain it wouldn't have happened on its own." There were general murmurs of agreement from his fellow board members.
Dr. Mahler was momentarily speechless with fury. Moderating his tone with an effort, he said, "We selected these subjects specifically for their history of limited sexual activity. Neither is the type of 'college kid' to fall to rutting uncontrollably at the drop of a hat, as Vice President Reynolds seems to believe."
Reynolds waved a hand dismissively. "That just means they're even more horned up than most kids their age." Before Mahler could more than splutter in disbelief, he went on. "Tell you what, though, Mahler. I think there's potential in this drug of yours, assuming it actually does what you say it does. If you can prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, you'll have all the resources you could ever want—I promise you that."
Mahler opened his mouth again, but once more the executive cut him off. "On the other hand, if you can't come up with the proof, you'll be out on your ass so fast your head might be left behind." The deadly tone of his voice made Mahler less certain he was speaking metaphorically.
Petersen spoke up again. "There you have it, Dr. Mahler. I expect you can demonstrate unequivocal evidence of your compound's efficacy, can't you?" Mahler managed a nod, so choked with rage he didn't trust himself to speak. "Excellent," said Petersen. "Show us something...unprecedented."
Right and Left were staring at him. Mahler abruptly realized he'd been standing in the middle of the room, growling incoherently, for quite some time. "Get your equipment together," he snarled suddenly, making both techs jump. "It's time to initiate Phase Two. I'll show them unprecedented..."
*
Jake's arm snapped out reflexively to silence his blaring alarm clock before he was conscious enough to comprehend the noise. Stretching, he opened his eyes. The motion revealed that the other half of the bed was empty and cool. Melissa was gone, and had been for a while.
Sighing, Jake looked at the now-quiet clock. Six a.m. the morning after. He paused.
Morning after what?
he wondered. The events of last night were decidedly blurry in his memory. Not blurry enough that he didn't know what had happened in general, but he was struggling with details.
The taste of her skin. The weight of her atop him. The smell of their sweat. Their soft moans as they clutched at one another.
Jake shook himself. All those bits and pieces were certainly interesting—and causing a sizable tent in the sheets—but he didn't have time for a stroll down memory lane; he'd set the alarm because he had a workout with his teammates this morning before class. He rolled out of bed and grabbed his discarded athletic shorts from the evening before, slid them on, and rummaged around until he found a clean-ish sleeveless shirt and some sandals to go with them. No one expected to smell good during morning workout; his teammates wouldn't care, and neither did he. Anything else he might need was in his locker at the gym. What he was wearing would suffice to get him across campus.
He racked his brain as he walked, trying to remember what precisely had happened the night before. He and Melissa had gone back to his room for...for what? Math. It had something to do with math. Tutoring! He'd asked Melissa to come back to his room to help him with his homework, but they'd barely started when...something...happened.
Jake stopped in his tracks. "The cloud," he said to no one. "That freaky cloud of gas or whatever!" A passing jogger eyed him strangely, but Jake ignored him. That creepy cloud had started all of it.
Touching, tasting, sighing, moaning
...he shook himself again. It was proving more difficult than he'd anticipated, keeping his mind off of what else had happened last night. He started walking again.
Where had that cloud come from? It had descended onto them...the ceiling? The vent! It must have come out of the ventilation system—but what did that mean? Had there been some kind of gas leak into the air ducts? Jake mentally kicked himself. What kind of gas leak spontaneously induced frenzied animal lust? Not that he'd minded, overmuch. There was only one explanation that made any kind of sense, as crazy as it seemed: someone had done this to them. Deliberately.
This revelation led to Jake spending his workout deeply wrapped in a mental fog, trying in vain to recover further details of last night's events—
the beads of sweat on her skin were salty and cool as he licked them off—
