Chapter 12

Thanks to markf52 and sorvinofan for the editing help.

During the run after our workout, I had a lot more feet on the ground behind me. The fact that there were one-hundred-fifty-two women running with me was a bit perplexing, especially since twenty of those women were going to be with me, everywhere I went, no matter the time of day. I ran by the stables to look at them and liked what I saw. The stables were corner to corner in a circle with a covered arena in the center of them. When we were done with our run, I went inside, showered, and turned on the news.

There wasn’t much on the news, so I had Mom tune in to the Law Enforcement channels. They, on the other hand, were a fury of chatter and calls for assistance. I decided to make a story up that all the missing people were a part of a sex trafficking ring, had fled the country to avoid prosecution, and to give the evidence to the major news stations.

Daisy came in and sat on my lap crying. I asked her, “What’s wrong?” and she began to cry harder, so I held her tighter to me. She finally gathered herself together and told me, “When we went to one of the city councilman’s houses, he had a girl who was dead in his basement, who had been so badly beaten you couldn’t recognize her.” She went on and said, “I did recognize her from the earrings she was wearing, and the birthmark on her neck. It was my friend Bailey, who I shared a room with. She was fifteen and was as sweet, and the most loving person, as anyone could be.”

I didn’t want to ask the question, but if I didn’t it would eat at me until I was consumed by the thought. So, I asked Daisy, “Were you both forced to be escorts, or had you been forced at all, in any way?”

She said, “The attendants would sometimes drug the girls and have their way with them, but it hadn’t happened to us. I’m glad you had chosen us to be with you.” I held her tight and composed myself as much as I could.

A shiver went down my back as I thought that it could have been Daisy, Mary, Heather, or Calista, lying dead in that basement, or beaten to hell and sold, if I hadn’t met them when I did. The only thing that was bad about being connected by the nanites, is in times like these, you can feel the heartbreak and pain in the others. I pushed out as much love as I possibly could to all my Maidens, near and far.

I gave a call to Marion letting him know that I was going to send the information to the news stations. He said, “I agree and thank you for giving me a heads up on your plan.” I gathered my Maidens and had them get ready to go back to Australia. I then called for my mothers-to-be to join me.

When they walked in, I told them, “We’re going to leave within the hour, and I want to see you before we leave.” I knelt in front of them, raised their shirts, and kissed their bellies, telling the babies, “Be good for your mommies, I love you very much.” I got hugs and kisses from Cece and Deborah, and I told them, “I do in fact love you, and we will be home as fast as humanly possible.” They hugged me at the same time with tears in their eyes and reaffirmed their love for me. I got one last kiss and left the room to go to the plane.

The flight back seemed longer than it did going back to the states. I contacted Maggie and told her, “We will be going straight to the complex and stay the night there.”

Maggie said, “I will meet you there, I’ve missed you.”

Daisy came over and sat in my lap again and asked, “Can we call the complex, “Camp Bailey,” after my friend?” Everyone on the plane agreed to the name, so we named the complex Camp Bailey. We landed at eight p.m. and got a shock, there were a bunch of Maidens at the camp. Maggie came up and told us, “We had to move the new Maidens out here because Valkyrie Plaza was a difficult place to work out.”

“We have only been gone for three days! How...?”

“Friends, friends of friends, we also looked at homeless and women’s shelters and picked those that qualified to be Maidens.”

“How many in total?”

“Two-hundred-fifty.”

“In three days?”

“Yes, are you mad at us for doing it?”

“No, not at all.”

I pulled her into a hug and kissed her. I was hungry and wanted a shower, so we went to the house. At the house, I called and talked to Margeret and asked her, “How are you doing?”

To which she said, “I’ve missed you and want to see you.”

I told her, “I will come by tomorrow to see you,” then we hung up and I went to get something to eat. It was ten p.m. when I got out of the shower, so I got ready for bed along with my Maidens. As I was lying in bed, I had Mom set up a trust to make sure the shelters never went without, both here and in the states. After all, we didn’t really need money, I had an all-powerful Mother that could hack anything she wanted. So, if I needed money, she could hack into a bank and create an account, putting however much money she wanted into it.

Tonight, Casey wasn’t her happy sleeping self, she was twitching and mumbling. I sat up in bed, picked her up, carried her to the den, and sat down with her on my lap. She was already crying by the time we got there, so I asked, “Tell me what’s bothering you?”

“At one of the houses there were six bodies of girls and women, just thrown in a pile like trash. They had slashes and cuts, and what looked like cigarette burns, all over them. None of them were from the home, Mary confirmed that. They were all naked, crumpled, and bruised. The basement was some kind of torture chamber,” she said to me as her eyes got a faraway look in them.

“I’m sorry all of you had to experience such a horrible thing.”

She got off my lap and took me by the hand, leading me back to bed. I had Mom set a time for the Maidens to do a debrief, so we could get all the things they saw out in the open. I didn’t want any of them holding on to any guilt or bad feelings. I crawled back in bed and Casey took her spot on top of me. I lay in bed and thought about what we were going to need for her, the Maidens, and what was coming. I decided we needed to do some recon and see what we were up against.

I felt as if I had no sooner closed my eyes than it was time to get up. The Maidens sat around the kitchen table, telling their accounts of what they saw, and felt, during their outing. When they got done, I asked, “Would you allow the nanites to scrub the emotions tied to those experiences?”

Molly asked, “Will we remember them, or will they be wiped away?”

“The memories will still be there, but the emotions that the memories caused, will not.” They all agreed and the nanites wiped the emotions from them.

Foregoing breakfast, we did our workout and morning run. During our run, a Maiden that I didn’t even know came up to me and planted a scorcher of a kiss on me and said, “Nice to meet you, Thumper.” While I stood there looking stupid, a line of Maidens ran by, and each one gave me a swat on my ass. I collected myself and finished my run.

Back at the house, I showered and got ready to go to meet Margeret at her office. We loaded up in an H225 and headed to Bondi. We did a fly over the pier, which was now complete and in use, by Midnight Sky and one of the CH-53s. We landed on the office roof and went to the garage to get the Jörs, to go to our meeting. The drive to Margeret’s office was quick so when we got there, I had the Maidens hold back unless I needed them. They didn’t like it, but they did as I asked them.

I walked into the building and was greeted by a receptionist who asked, “Can I help you, Sir?”

I told her, “I’m here to see Margeret Townsend.” The receptionist made a call, and I was shown to Margeret’s office. Margeret ran up and greeted me with a kiss that took the receptionist by surprise, by the expression on her face.

The receptionist left the room, and I sat across from Margeret at her desk. I was talking to her when a big guy came in and was being followed by the receptionist, as he barged into Margeret’s office.

“You can’t be here, Sir!” the receptionist called out.

“Fuck you, Bitch!” the man yelled at the receptionist.

Margeret told the receptionist, “It’s okay. I will take it from here.”

She came from behind her desk and stood behind me, “And just, who the fuck are you?” he asked me with an angry voice.

“Nobody told you?” I asked him with mocking candor.

“No!”

“Did I tell you?”

“No!”

“Then you don’t need to know.”

As our conversation went on, I became more of a smartass to goat him into doing something stupid. While he spoke foolishly, my smartass candor continued.

“You won’t be such a smartass when I’m beating the shit out of you.”

“Oh, I doubt that.”

“You doubt that you’ll stop being a smartass?”

“No, I doubt you’ll beat the shit out of me.”

‘Smug fucker, aren’t you?”

“Snug.”

“Snug?” he asked with a confused look on his face.

“Yeah, it’s always a snug fit when I fuck a woman.”

“You’re a cocky little, motherfucker, Boy!”

“It’s not little. What do you think, Margeret?”

“It’s rather large actually,” Margeret replied putting her hands up palms facing each other to show how big.

“You fucked my wife, you cocksucker?” Sven asked with shock in his voice.

“Yes, yes, I did, but she was the one that did the cock sucking.”

“Sven, you need to leave right now, and I’m soon to be your ex-wife,” Margaret told him with exasperation in her voice.

“I’m not going anywhere until I beat the fuck out of this boy!” the rage becoming apparent in him.

“Well, that’s not going to happen, so I hope you brought a sack lunch with you,” I told him.

“We’ll see about that, won’t we?” He said, with a little spittle at the corners of his mouth.

“I guess we will,” I said, with some antagonism in my voice.

I told Margeret, “Get behind your desk and stay there.” She got behind her desk and yelled at Sven, “Leave!” again. I was almost an even match as far as height and weight between us, but I had my nanites, and youth, on my side. I messaged the Maidens, told them what was going on, and had them stay outside, unless I called for them. Sven made the first move and tried to sucker punch me as I looked to see if Margeret was going to be safe.

I dodged the punch and spun behind him, slapping his ass in the process saying, “Now we’re cooking with grease!” He turned and charged at me, to which I did a sidestep making him miss saying, “Olé!” and made the gesture like a bullfighter would. When he turned to face me, his face was almost as red as the Maiden insignia. I was done playing with Sven and it was time to end this tomfoolery.

“You ready to end this yet?” I asked.

“Not until your ass is begging me for mercy.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen. Best man wins?” I asked him as I held my hand out to shake his. When he grabbed my hand, he thought that he had the upper hand. My nanites alerted me that he had alpha nanites in him, so I told them, “Destroy all but one of his nanites, then return to me.” I pulled him towards me, as I kicked his right leg out from under him, spinning him around, pinning his arm behind his back, as he fell to his knees. I grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head back to tell him that he had lost, when the office door opened, and Erik Himler walked in with quite a few of his henchmen. I messaged the Maidens that now would be a good time to come to my location.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Erik said with a condescending tone.

“Stop hiring morons and we will, where do you find these guys, Morons “Я” Us?” I asked mockingly.

“So, what is happening here?” Erik asked with a dismissive tone in his voice.

“I was having a discussion with the lady, when he, pulling Sven’s hair to force his head back, came in and made a horse’s ass out of himself.”

“I see, and what were you about to do to him?” his voice began to show his disdain for me.

“I was about to explain the error of his actions to him in a painful way and make him leave,” I said with confidence.

“And now?” his voice now dripping with disdain.

I let go of his arm and hair, placing my left foot on his back between his shoulder blades, and gave him a nice push with it. That caused Sven to fall face first at the feet of Erik. Erik told Sven to get up, that he was embarrassing them both. Sven got up, straightened his hair, and then his suit coat. It just so happened the first two Maidens through the door were Eira and Freya. Erik’s face turned as red as Sven’s had been moments earlier.

“What are you doing here, Uncle Erik?” Eira asked with surprise.

‘I should ask you two the same,” Erik replied with a bit of shock.

“We’re with James,” Eira and Freya said at the same time with pride.

“Are you now?” Erik said with contempt.

“Yes!” Eira and Freya said together with conviction.

“I see,” he said with annoyance in his voice.

His men had started to move towards me when the rest of the Maidens came in. He raised his hand, and the men stopped moving towards me. He walked over to where Melissa, Molly, TJ, and Tabi were standing and tilted his head left, then right, studying the four of them intently. He turned, looked at Eira and Freya, and told them, “Come along.”