Chapter 2: The Brown Jacketed Stranger

I awoke sometime later that morning in a CT scanner. I had no idea how I got there, all I knew was that I was strapped down on a cold hard stretched and moving through a CT scanner.

"Uh, Hello?" I ventured cautiously.

"Master!" screamed Angela and she was at my side a second later clutching my hand, kissing it and crying on it all at the same time.

"Ma'am, you need to come out of there, the scanner is still going," I heard someone call from the other room where Angela's scream had originated. Just then the table reversed and started moving me out of the metal ring that was the CT scanner.

"So you are awake," Jonathan said with a sly smile on his face as I slid out of the scanner. "We were starting to get a little worried about you."

Angela was still gripping my arm and hand tightly and sobbing, and it was difficult to understand Jonathan over her and the noise of the machine.

"How are you feeling?" he asked as he shined a penlight into my eyes.

"I'm a little freaked out," I admitted. "What happened?"

"Do you know your name?" Jonathan asked me.

"I hope I do, Jonathan. It's Ka- I mean Josh." I replied, stammering and wondering what had happened.

I heard another scream just then and a commotion in the next room. Jonathan gave me a look and headed toward the door to see what was going on there.

I tried to pull Angela up and comfort her, but I was still strapped down to the table. Just as I started to ask her to help me, she stood and rapidly removed the restraints. She then threw herself into my arms and started kissing me before she resumed sobbing into my shoulder.

I tried to sit up and Angela, seemingly instantly knowing what I was trying to do, helped me until I was sitting on the stretcher with my legs hanging over the side. She refused to let go of me and for once I was glad to have her since I was feeling a bit woozy.

Just then, Emily came running into the room.

"She's waking up too!" she exclaimed as she fell to her knees, wrapping her arms around my legs and kissing them as she cried.

I freed my arms and grabbed Angela by the shoulders, pushing her back until I could look into her eyes.

"What happened?" I asked her.

"Oh Master!" she cried. "We were so worried and I didn't know what to do when you didn't wake up. Emily wanted to call an ambulance but I called your friend Jonathan instead and he met us here."

"Where is Kayla?" I asked next. I was vaguely able to sense Angela and Emily, but Kayla seemed strangely absent from my mind.

Emily perked up and tilted her head to look up at me. "She's next door in the other CT scanner," she answered.

"Is she alright?"

"I think so, Master," Emily answered. "Jonathan is in there now checking on her and seeing how she is doing. Oh Master, I'm so glad you are alright. I was so scared."

With that, Emily started sobbing again and clutching my legs.

I concentrated on Angela then, looking into her eyes to see if I could connect with her and find out what had happened. It took a minute and I had to concentrate, but then I felt something give and I was filled with Angela's thoughts and emotions.

"Calm down." I mentally ordered her and suddenly all the noise and emotion died off.

In a moment, Angela had shared with me what had happened and how I had gotten here.

Apparently when Kayla and I climaxed, we both passed out. Angela didn't think too much about it at the time. She knew that the sex could be incredible, even mind blowing. But it had always been a temporary event. A few minutes of non-responsiveness and then we'd be back to normal.

This time, however, was different. Angela had rolled me off of Kayla and made sure I was arranged comfortably. Emily had done the same for Kayla. They had started cleaning off Kayla, and only got worried when they had cleaned both of us and we still hadn't recovered.

Emily had immediately wanted to call 911, but Angela had suggested that they try and get in touch with Jonathan. He had arranged to meet them, but when they had arrived and we were still unconscious, he had called for the CT scanners and had us rushed right in.

When Jonathan walked back into the room, he was accompanied by the neuropsychiatry specialist that we had considered contacting earlier. She was staring at me warily and I noticed she was wearing a nose clip.

"Jonathan tells me that you've been having an interesting time?" Sarah said as she absorbed the sight of Emily and Angela clinging to me.

"That's not exactly what I would call it," I replied somewhat hostilely.

She smiled and gave an apologetic nod of her head.

"Do you think we can do a PET scan of your brain and Emily's brain while you are here? I have some pull and can get the machine cleared and ready for you in a few minutes."

I looked down at Emily who nodded her head.

"I've already called into work and told them I wasn't going to be able to make it today," her voice said inside my head.

"How long do you think it will take?" I asked. "I did have some business meetings this morning, but I'm not sure I should be going into the office this morning until I know what happened to me."

"We'll certainly have you out of here by lunch," Sarah replied and then turned to head out the door.

Jonathan helped me to my feet and Angela wrapped a sheet around the back of me, and we walked over to review the CT scan they had just done. Neither Jonathan nor I saw anything that appeared abnormal, but it would get reviewed by the neuro-radiologist later today as was the hospital standard.

We also looked over Kayla's CT scan, and it also appeared to be normal. She was rolled out of the other CT room a few minutes later and then Jonathan insisted that we both be rolled back to the Emergency Room until Sarah was ready for us in the PET scanner. So Emily grabbed Kayla's wheelchair and Angela grabbed mine and we made our way back to our room in the ER.

It seemed like forever, but eventually Sarah called for us to come to the PET scanner. She had Angela's PET scan pulled up and was reviewing it while I got onto the scanner. They injected me with some radio-labeled glucose and I laid as still as I could. An hour or so later, they were done and Kayla took her turn on the scanner.

While Kayla was finishing her scan, I got dressed in some clothes that Angela had brought with her. Kayla got dressed when she was done and we all headed over to review the scans with Sarah.

"I must say, Josh, that these are some of the most interesting scans I have ever seen." Sarah said as we walked into the reading room.

"Well, I'm an interesting kind of guy!" I replied in a joking manner.

Sarah looked at me and I realized that she still had on a nose clip. She saw me looking at it and I must have made a face, because she said, "A girl can't be too careful around you, now can she?"

"Well, at least lately that seems to be the case," I answered.

Sarah then turned all business. "These are Angela's scan from a few days ago, and this is Kayla's scan from today. As you can see, Angela's has more intense uptake, but the pattern of the two is nearly identical. These are the pattern that we see when people are incredibly comfortable and their pleasure centers are very active."

I nodded my understanding and she continued.

"They also seem to have intense uptake in the areas of the brain where we see activity in people with addictions. The difference is that addicts tend to down regulate their pleasure centers over time so that it takes more and more stimulation to achieve the same effect, while your women seem to have found a way to activate both at the same time.

"So either they have just become addicted to a very pleasurable chemical, or there is something very strange going on here."

"I'll choose option two!" I replied with a grimace. She was confirming my worst fears about what was happening to Angela and Kayla.

"Now your scans are quite a bit different. In your scans I see marked hyperactivity in the thalamus and the hypothalamic area. In addition there seems to be increased activity diffuse through the frontal lobes."

"Alright, so in my scans, the more primitive areas of the brain seem to be active along with the most advanced part of the brain where thinking and emotion reside?" I asked to ensure my distant recollection of neuro-anatomy was correct.

"For the most part, that is correct." She replied.

"So, do you have any theories or ideas?" I asked.

"Well, I'd like to do some studies on this new chemical that Jonathan has identified. See if we can find a non-human species that we can test it on to see where in the brain it may bind. If it is a pheromone like he suspects, it is probably mediated through the olfactory part of the brain and some of the more primitive pathways that are left over from our evolution."

I nodded. "That sounds like a good plan. But I want to be clear that I don't want to spend the rest of my life in some cage being the subject of an experiment. Nor do I want the wrong kind of people getting their hands on this chemical. For now, only the people in this room know about the chemical and I would like to keep it that way."

"I can certainly understand that. My greatest fear is that I'll become another of your harem." She replied with a twinkle in her eye. "Of course, I understand the side effects are thoroughly enjoyable." She smirked.

I chuckled nervously and a picture of her naked and kneeling on the floor in front of me appeared in my mind.

Just then her face went as white as a ghost. There was a very tense moment, when I could feel a tug in my mind. I pushed it away, almost instinctively, and then watched, in amazement, as she turned and ran from the room as fast as she could, leaving her high heeled shoes laying on the floor behind her where they fell off her feet in her haste.

Jonathan developed that deer in the headlights look.

"Do I need to run after her?" He asked.

I shook my head. Somehow I knew that I could have taken her in that moment. Just following that tug and concentrating on Sarah could have made her mine.

"Well, we did learn one thing today." I said as I began to get dressed. "The effect is not only pheromones. I think Sarah needs to not be around me again, I'll need to talk to her by phone or let you serve as an intermediary."

Jonathan looked confused, but Angela just nodded. "The pheromone appears to be affecting you as well, Master. I think it has had an effect on your brain, making you more sensitive to thoughts and perhaps even letting you influence them."

"But none of this seems to explain what happened with Kayla." I muttered.

"But it has." I heard Kayla say.

"How so?" I answered her.

"I think it was a step in your evolution. You and I are now so intimately connected that we can communicate without talking, without even concentrating. I am now bound to you like my sister," she replied.

I looked up then, and realized that she was correct. We had been communicating without talking, and in a way that seemed so much more natural that my earlier communications with Angela.

"She's right, Master." Angela replied. Her voice was as clear in my head as any voice had ever been, but I had been watching her mouth and she was not talking. "We all seem to be connected more closely than previously and I agree that it is likely due to your increased abilities."

Angela paused and then with a snicker, "Besides, I was hoping you would take Sarah!"

I swatted Angela on the backside and realized that Jonathan was starring at us.

"You three were just carrying on a conversation, weren't you?" he asked.

"Yes we were." I replied without further elaboration.

We finally made it out of the hospital. It seemed to have taken forever, but we had finally gotten dressed, got checked out of the emergency room, after much persuasion by myself, and had gotten in Angela's car to head home.

As we were leaving the hospital, though, I began to get a creepy feeling that we were being watched.

At first I thought it was Sarah, watching us from some remote part of the hospital, making sure we were gone. However, when I concentrated on her, I could tell that she was in her office, studying the films from the CT scan and PET scans to try and understand what was happening to me and how it had affected her.

"I feel it too, Master." Emily piped in. "I get the sensation that there is a man watching us from the parking deck."

Angela agreed. "I sense that he is an older man, and he seems to be wearing a brown leather jacket."

"He is looking for you Master, but I don't sense that he means you any harm." Kayla said thoughtfully. "He does not want to expose you, but he does want to talk to you."

I paused, realizing that we were communicating without talking again.

"How do you know that?" I asked out loud.

"I'm not sure, Master." Kayla replied. "But somehow I can sense how people are thinking about you. Like Sarah, she now thinks of you as a very powerful person in her life. She's not sure whether to be afraid of you or to devote herself to you."