Chapter #6Me, Myself & Will Prescott by: imaj   "Hmmm," purrs Lucy throatily. "Is it Will Prescott you want, or Lucy, or someone else?"
You stare back at your lover. It isn't their body that you want, and why would that even matter when it can be changed so easily? No you want the man behind the mask for one reason and one reason only. Will is the only one you trust. Truly, completely, one hundred percent trust. You'd protect your team with your life, take a bullet for any one of them. They'd do the same for you, but not one of them, not even Kipper, comes close to having the bond you have with Will. None of them have been inside you the same way he has, and you'll never let anyone else into that most guarded and secret place.
Your own mind.
And there is that other bond you share - the secret knowledge that one day you'll be the ones in charge. Karol Lillis - the Moustache - might be the chief of research at the Diana project, but he works with secret guidance from Lucille. Steve Patterson might rule the roost here today, but Lucille whispers in his ears at night. Jamieson Hyde-White might pull the strings from over at Vulcan, but it's Lucille he turns to whenever he wants to cut past whatever line of bullshit Patterson is hiding behind.
And none of them know the truth: That as Lucille, Will has secretly been guiding Diana in the directions you want it to go. Opening up paths of research for Lillis, and hiding other. Gently manipulating Patterson into running the jobs you want to. Hiding part of what Diana does from the rest of the Dark Stars projects. All in preparation for the day that you and Will can take it all for yourselves.
That day is coming soon. Sooner than you thought, if what Lucille said on the way down means what you think it means.
"I saw you looking at the Aliyev twins on the way," smirks Lucy. "Are you up for a little twincest?"
Well I did want to spend more time as Lucy, you think to yourself. "Maybe," you tell her. "But I'm more interested in hearing what you have to tell me about the Moustache's pet project."
"And I thought you didn't care about all that," replies Lucy coyly.
"If it gives my guys an advantage in the field," you answer. "And if it gives us an advantage I want to know more," you add. A little shiver of anticipation runs down your spine and you briefly explore Lucy's mouth before she can answer.
"Hmm, you always did know how to incentivise me," she draws lazily. "Yeah, this is the breakthrough. I pushed Lillis on this, made sure Plante and the rest of the elves weren't distracting him. Do you know how hard it was keeping him focused and at the same time stopping from getting too far ahead of me?" Lucy doesn't wait for you to answer before continuing. "We cracked enough of the Libra before Jamie whisked it off to Vulcan for complete P1 duplication with the tats, and we've always had the Doombots too. We've never got anywhere with copying P2."
You nod, half following his explanation. "Whenever the celebrities lay a red carpet on us we can't do anything about their starpower. That's why, right?"
"They've got something we don't have, most of us anyway. Until now," smirks Lucy. "P3 reintegration is our workaround. We don't copy the celebrities P2, we steal it and wrap it round the P3 of one of our players..."
"Let's say yours or mine," you interrupt. "This is going to be a face card and we want our best in the game."
"Well, I've got an idea about that," replies Lucy, one hand gently stroking the side of your face. "But yeah, you and me all the way Paige."
You pull Lucy in for another long kiss. "So the Moustache is ready to do this," you ask her after.
"He and I are of one mind on this," smirks back Lucy. It takes a few seconds for the penny to drop and your eyes go wide in surprise. "Literally," adds Lucy, dispelling any doubt. She's already used the new technique, on Doctor Lillis of all people. "It makes him easier to control, now he's me on the inside."
"Could we use it on the whales," you jump in. "On the other projects?"
Lucy frowns. "I don't think it would hold up in front of a patterning."
"Which the other projects use for security," you complain.
"We had to give it to them," sighs Lucy. She's heard this argument before. "Jamie knew we had it, and he'd have sent Spartacus through here in flash if we'd held out on him. I think the other projects only tolerate us because we can pull our shit on anyone except them."
"We could run internal security on them more easily if they didn't have it," you sniff, trotting out your well rehearsed reply.
Lucy barks a short laugh. "Try telling a room full of whales that you want to be better at spying on them. They've all got secrets they want to keep hidden from each other. We do too. Do you know who doesn't have patterning," she drawls. "The celebrities. Think about it Paige, the celebrities could come in here and roll us over any time they wanted to."
You start to grumble, but you know it's true. Elmore and Firecracker blew through Yam last month and left a trail of corpses in their wake. Yam was tight lipped about the incident, but your sources say they lost a high value asset in the attack.
"So even if we could get past the patterning checks and take control of the other projects, a premiere could happen anytime," continues Lucy. "But if we take a few celebrities of our own. Our people in key places, we could roll a red carpet under each Dark Star team in turn and then move on the rest of Fane."
A delicate hand slips inside the waistband of your charcoal cargo pants as Lucy finds her way to your thigh. You feel her slender fingers trace over one of your tats and she mutters a few words. Your vision blurs for a moment, and when it clears you are looking level into her eyes, you view framed by strands of platinum blonde hair.
You tilt your chin to the side as she tries to kiss you. "Our people," you say. "Are you sure they'll be on board with this?"
"I know how to make sure they would be," replies Lucy, pulling your mouth back to hers roughly with one hand. She kisses you quickly, sharp darting kisses one after the other. "Put in our P3 again."
You freeze. Put your P3 in your team. In Muniz? Stoddard? Kips? They're your team. The implicit betrayal almost makes your stomach churn, but despite this a little siren voice whispers at the back of your head: I don't really trust them do I? Not like I trust Will. Not like I trust myself.
A dark, twisted idea starts to grow in the back of your mind: I would trust them more if they were me.
"What about patterning," you ask, the rapidly shrinking part of you that finds the idea abhorrent prompts. "Our P3 will show up."
Lucy grins impossibly widely. "We sell it to Patterson that we're implanting some of our memories and skills into the players to make them better. He's greedy, he'll buy that. That means we have to do a patterning to establish new baselines, right after we switch the P3. It's all open, there's no suspicion that someone's tampered with our players, because we come out and say we're doing the tampering."
"Devious," you smirk. Your fingers work at the buttons of Lucy's blouse, all thoughts of loyalty to your team forgotten. She shrugs off her suit jacket and lets it crumple on the floor. "And we grab celebrities, starting with the game I pitched to Patterson."
"...starting with the game you pitched to Patterson," says Lucy in unison with you
"This is why I love you," you murmur to Lucy, gently taking her by the hand. She doesn't resist as you lead her into the honeypot set in the room next to your office. Done up like a hotel room, you often use it to fake a blackmail video with two (or more) players taking the part of your targets. You gaze at the two way mirror that covers one of the walls. "How about a home video," you ask her with a smile.
Lucy grins right back at you.  You have the following choice:  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
| Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author