Chapter 4

Mark woke with a slow blink of his eyes, his mind barely making it to consciousness. There was bright, early-morning orange sunlight shining on the northern wall of the lounge. It was coming in horizontally from the southeast through the long row of windows across the room, behind where the buffet had been. The light had forced his mind awake.

Mark glanced up to one of several digital clocks mounted in the walls of the lounge area, just a few minutes before eight o’clock in the morning, somehow a tad later than he would have guessed. He turned his head away from the light, and his mind started to drift back to sleep immediately. He sighed in contentment and smiled in his dream. He was cuddling with a delightfully feminine creature. He could feel the warmth of her body in his arms as he slept, and holding her felt absolutely wonderful.

Mark blinked again, becoming instantly and fully awake. It was now close to 8:30 AM, and the first thing he saw was that some high clouds had moved in and were obscuring the morning sun. He turned his head and looked about the room.

Hannah and Ashley were lying on a nearby sofa entwined with each other. And across the room his sister Madison has sleeping with Emily and the other woman Mark did not know. Mark felt a rush of embarrassment. He was surrounded by half-nude sleeping women. And he hadn’t seen his sister’s naked breasts and pubis since ages ago, when he walked into what he thought was an empty bathroom just as she was stepping out of a shower. So long ago ... Mark tore his eyes away after several seconds of staring. He had not realized how cute his sister had become. And her pubic fur, such a natural lovely and unusual color...

And Jada! She was lying cradled in his arms, sleeping peacefully, the front of her dress knotted from their earlier sexual play. Her breasts were completely out in the open.

His mind wandered to the previous night. “Where the hell is her bra? Probably on the floor somewhere. Oh my God, what is she going to think?!” Mark had a beautiful girl lying bare-breasted in his arms, peacefully sleeping. Such a lovely face, so beautiful, framed with soft curly dark hair tied in a simple ponytail. Mark remembered her gentle laughter and smiles when he stroked her hair during their earlier foreplay, so soft and clean...

Silent, frantic thoughts filled his mind. “Oh my God, Jada! I hardly know you!” He worked the problem of how to wake Jada without embarrassing her. Could he untangle himself from her without waking her up? It didn’t seem likely. One of his arms was a pillow for her, and the other tucked under her dress and legs tight against her butt. He could feel the warmth of her bare butt and the backs of her thighs against his arm. And the side of her hip was resting against his naked groin. Hell, his pants were down around his ankles! He had to do something! But what?

Mark looked at Jada and was relieved to see her dress was covering her hips and legs almost to her knees. Except for the skin contact, at least she was semi-decent now. But he remembered everything from the previous night, everything, including her bright joyful smile and dreamy laugh when he took her panties off, and how she cried out when he first lapped her labia with his tongue, how she gripped his head with her thighs. He remembered everything, how tightly she held him with her thighs, how she gasped as he licked her, how salty she tasted, oh the overwhelming emotions of tasting her ... and the heady scent of her flow...

Mark gazed upon her, this beautiful, precious creature. Was there any way to wake her without embarrassing her? Mark stared at her breasts for a moment. So beautiful ... He watched their quiet rise and fall. So beautiful ... He was lost in their beauty. And then he saw her breath catch, her breasts tremble. His gaze lifted to her face. Her eyes were open. She had been watching him stare at her exposed breasts.

“I...” Mark was deeply chagrined, at a total loss for words.

Jada gave him a hard frown.

Mark finally managed a hoarse whisper. “Can we leave without waking the others? I don’t want to embarrass my sister.”

Jada sat up, looked around and realized what Mark was talking about. She gave him a stiff nod while still glaring at him, her jaw clenched in obvious fury. She got up, bared her teeth in revulsion at the sight of his limp penis, and then spun around and grabbed her purse and shoes and panties. She took one last look at Mark and then stormed off into the kitchen, her taut breasts bouncing slightly as she almost ran.

Mark got up and found her bra behind the sofa. He quickly followed her, pulling up his boxers and pants from his ankles and forgetting about everything else.

Jada walked across the width of the large kitchen and left through an opposite door. Mark walked through the door a few seconds later and found himself in a large empty pantry room. There were metal storage cabinets everywhere, similar to what was in the kitchen, and also a row of what looked like washers and driers for clothes on the left. There were also a few chairs by a table at the windows on the right. But where was Jada?

There was another door ahead, and Mark went through it and entered a large and opulent bathing area, with numerous sinks, toilets, shower areas and even a full sized Jacuzzi as the centerpiece of the room. Mark had a fleeting thought that it might be a women’s bathroom. He didn’t see any urinals.

What he did see was the back of Jada, the top of her dress still twisted in a knot by her shoulders. As the door from the pantry swung closed behind Mark, Jada whip-turned to face him. Her breasts were flying with her dress still fully open across her chest.

She hissed, “You! You monster! I remember last night! I remember everything! I have never been so humiliated!”

Mark walked to her and held out the bra sheepishly. “I found this.” Jada snatched it out of his hands with a lightning snap of her arm and she shook her closed fist at him angrily.

“You!!!” she screamed. “Who do you think you are?! I’m going to prosecute! I’m going straight to the police! You violated me!”

“Hey, wait a minute! Jada, it wasn’t me!”

“Like hell! I remember what you were doing last night! Are you claiming I wasn’t drugged?!”

“No, of course you were! I was too! Jada, I’ll go to the police with you. I’m a victim too!”

His plea of innocence brought her up short. “What?” she hissed. “Are you claiming you knew nothing about this?!”

“Absolutely!” He paused to catch his breath and thoughts. “Jada, think. My own sister was drugged. I think we all were. I’m not responsible for this. You’ve got to believe me!”

A long moment of silence passed. Mark maintained eye contact, determined not to glance down at her bare chest and ruin everything. Jada’s eyes finally softened. “Well, perhaps ... And if I’ve accused you unfairly, I apologize. How much do you remember about last night?”

“The same as you. Absolutely everything.”

Jada frowned. “My gosh...” Another long pause. “Everything?” she whispered.

Mark nodded and couldn’t stop his eyes. He glanced at the lovely breasts before him.

Jada glanced down and seemed to realize for the first time that she was still indecent on top. “Oh hell!” She turned around on the spotless tile and faced away from him and then slipped on her panties under her dress. Next she tried to put on the bra, but her dress was twisted in a knot and to straighten it she needed to pull it off first. Mark couldn’t help but admire her beautiful, athletic body. Clad only in panties with her back to Mark, she quickly put on her bra.

Both her panties and bra were a royal shade of blue, a recent gift from Emily and matching the print of Jada’s dress. She looked as if she were dressed in a swimsuit, and Mark gave a small cry of recognition as he snapped his fingers. “Of course! You’re Jada Horowitz, aren’t you? The star of the women’s swim team!”

Jada turned to face him, her face blushing, her dress still bunched up in her hands. “Well, I’m not exactly ... I mean yes, I’m the one who won the Conference All-around this year, but...”

“I knew it! I knew you looked familiar! I’ve seen all your meets!” he blurted out. “Last night, I just didn’t recognize you with your clothes on!” Mark gasped as he realized how he must have sounded and he turned a beet red.

Jada’s jaw dropped. She stared at him in astonishment for a moment and then grinned, and then she broke into a cheerful laugh. Mark thought he never heard a sweeter sound.

“Oh, this is so ridiculous, Mark!”

He nodded and finally remembered to turn around, giving Jada some privacy to finish putting on her dress. “Thank you for believing me.”

“Yeah...” Jada turned and glanced at him as she dressed, admiring his muscular back. He was wearing only a pair of pants, and she decided he looked very handsomely fit. Still, she decided, those were thoughts for another time and place. “Okay. I’m dressed now. Mark, do you have a cell phone? I still want to call the police.”

He turned and faced her. “Yeah, I sure do. And I’ll back you up with what’s happened here.” Mark reached back into his pants pocket and pulled out a rather large portable phone, staring down at it for a moment.

Jada gave a nervous frown. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. No signal, right?”

“Oh, this phone is never without good reception.” Mark handed the phone to Jada.

“Really? How’s that?”

“It’s one of the new Leophones.”

Jada stared at him blankly.

“Leophone, you know, Low Earth Orbit. It’s a satellite phone. You must have heard the Leophone jingle on TV.”

Jada shrugged. “I don’t watch TV.” She looked down at the phone. It felt much heavier than Emily’s. “This thing looks incredibly expensive.”

Mark shrugged back and nervously tried to sing. He was a bit off-key. “The Leophone, ta-da, the Leophone, ta-da, the size of a cell, ta-da, but raised to the power, cha-cha, raised to the power of the skies, cha-cha-cha!”

Jada grinned at his performance and said with playful mock sorrow, “No, I guess that’s one ad I’ve missed.” She opened the phone but before she could dial 911, the phone started ringing on its own. Without thinking, she answered the call. “Hello?’

“Jada? Is that you? I was expecting my brother. Where are you?” It was Madison’s voice.

Jada replied, “We’re a couple of rooms away on the other side of the kitchen. Mark’s right here with me. Hold on.” She handed the phone to Mark, and he put on the speakerphone so they could both hear.

Madison spoke up. “Great! We were all wondering where you were. Jada, can you come back to the lounge? Fatima was down in the underground tunnel before the party started. We were talking last night. There’s something you should know.”

Mark guessed that was the name of the other woman he saw sleeping with his sister. “Yeah, okay Maddy, we’ll be there in just a minute.” Madison acknowledged and signed off. Mark saw Jada staring at him quizzically as he closed the Leophone. He shrugged in apology. “Uh sorry, I have to take a leak.”

“Oh. Yeah, good idea. Me too.” Jada decided to put off her 911 call for a few minutes. She turned around and walked into one of the toilet stalls and calmly closed the door. After a second, Mark walked into another a few stalls away.

As he heard Jada urinate, he realized that by sharing a bathroom with him, Jada was offering him a large token of trust. He sighed and relaxed and voided his own bladder.

A minute later Mark and Jada returned to the lounge and met Fatima, the woman who had slept with Emily and Madison. Mark collected the rest of his clothes and finished dressing, and after brief introductions, Fatima began telling her story.

“My friends and I arrived at the tunnel downstairs a few minutes before 2 PM yesterday, just before the elevator started working. There was a huge line of people in front of us, over a hundred. We were all waiting to be let in. There was a large sign saying the parties would open at 1:57 PM.”

“I didn’t see any sign,” said Jada.

“No, there was a large crowd of fraternity boys from Beta Sigma Rho, twenty of them in all. They took the sign with them. They were crashing the party.”

“You know exactly how many there were?” asked Jada.

“Oh, it was easy to keep track.” Fatima paused for a moment and then added, “It got a bit ugly down there waiting for the doors to open.”

“What do you mean?” asked Hannah.

“The frat boys were roving the line, intimidating the few other guys there and asking the girls if they’d like a good time. I think about nine or ten actually said yes. I can’t imagine why. Their behavior was so lewd, ogling the girls who refused them. The frat boys also brought along a few dates.” Fatima sighed. “It was a large crowd, a very rowdy bunch. It was pretty obvious they’d been drinking.”

Mark frowned. Beta Sigma Rho had a campus reputation for being a magnet for professional party goers. “I’m surprised there were that many still on campus.”

Fatima shrugged. “They were the second group of people to leave via the elevator. Almost everybody else in the line was a woman. We were all relieved when they left.”

“But the elevator only holds eighteen,” said Ashley.

Fatima paused to take a breath. “Yep, they made two trips to party #5, 2525. The elevator was packed both times.” She looked around the empty room. “It’s a pity Husna left. She knows the people who came here a lot better than I do, the people that came to It’s My Party I mean.”

Ashley looked bewildered. “Huh?”

“The first people in line were twenty students from the School of Nursing, all fifth years I think, eighteen women and two men. The Beta Sigma Rho boys almost picked a fight over using the elevator first, but the nursing students held their ground. My friend Husna negotiated a compromise. Eighteen of the first group got to ride first, and the remaining two men joined my group at the end of the line. The two men wanted to rejoin their nursing group, so my group picked It’s My Party too, just to keep a fight from starting between the nurses and the frat boys. It all seems so ridiculous now.”

Fatima looked around at her new friends. “And that’s the way it worked. The rest of us in the line organized into groups going to the different parties. That’s what took most of the time, deciding who was going where and typing in the stupid access codes. I think the elevator would return within a couple of minutes after leaving. I was very surprised my trip took so long, three and a half minutes. It was a little scary. There was no sense of motion at all. We all thought the elevator had broken. I was very surprised the door opened when our countdown hit zero.”

Madison asked, “So the other parties got eighteen people each?”

“From the initial crowd, yes, the other four besides parties #1 and #5. People split up just to fill the slots and get out of the basement. There were four guys and eight other women with me in our ride to It’s My Party. We were the last ones to leave the downstairs hall. There was no one behind us at the time. We got up here about 2:30.”

Fatima adjusted her headscarf. “The eighteen women from the first ride were here. They were the only ones. They said they found this place deserted.”

Jada and Mark glanced at each other. Jada asked, “Wait a minute. You’re saying this place was deserted from the start? No one ever saw anyone from Kappa Alpha?”

Fatima shook her head. “No. The first group was upset by the elevator ride, upset with themselves really. None of them realized until they got here that there was no return code given for getting back to where they started. My group didn’t think of that either. I guess none of us were taking the access-code business too seriously.”

Mark nodded, remembering his own experience of typing in the code as a game. “It’s not our fault for not seeing the danger. Being in a building that you don’t know how to get out of is an unheard-of experience. It’s such a criminal violation of fire codes. No wonder we didn’t recognize the danger.”

Mark tried to picture the scene Fatima was describing. The University of Vermont had an intensive five-year nursing program granting RN degrees after four years and Master of Nursing degrees in five. He could easily imagine that twenty people who were already Registered Nurses and starting their professional careers would not put up with the childish and dangerous prank Kappa Alpha appeared to be playing. Mark wondered if the first group was also drugged. He asked Fatima, “Do you know if they ate from the buffet?”

She thought for a moment and then nodded. “I’m almost sure, yes. I saw a bunch of used plates when I arrived.”

“Actually,” Jada chimed in, “I suspect the drug was in the soft drinks at the other side of the elevator.” She briefly described her experience making the trip. Emily backed up Jada’s story and then prodded Fatima to continue.

“Well, we only met the nursing students briefly. They all wanted out of here. I think they were only waiting for someone from Kappa Alpha to show up so they could yell at them, and then when we showed up they gave up. They left almost immediately, certainly before 3 PM, the two male nurses too, through the door by the elevator, saying they were going back to the parking lot.”

“Tell them the last piece, what you told us last night,” prodded Madison.

“One of the men mentioned they came in four Land Rovers.”

Mark’s sister turned to him and raised her eyebrows. “Sound familiar?”

“Yeah, I think I remember you making a comment. Weren’t there four Land Rovers in the spots closest to the drawbridge?”

Madison nodded. “Which means the group never made it back to their vans, after an hour and a half of trying!” She whined at her brother. “Mark! What the hell is going on here?!”

The group stood in tense silence for several seconds pondering Madison’s question. Then Hannah gave a small shriek. “My God, my God, my parents! They are absolutely going to kill me!” She ran and got her own cell phone and then stared at it in dismay. “Hell! Zero bars!”

Mark handed her his Leophone. “Here. Try mine.”

Hannah spent the next few minutes dialing and redialing her home number, becoming more frantic with each redial. She finally shouted to the crowd, “Hey everybody, Listen to this!” as she redialed and put on the speaker phone.

The group heard a recorded voice say in a flat tone, “All satellite circuits busy. Your call can not be completed as dialed. Please try again later. Error code sixty-three G.”

There was brief second of silence. Ashley pulled out her own Leophone and tried dialing. After a moment she said, “Hell. My dad spent a fortune for this phone. This is not supposed to happen.” She added sarcastically, “But at least we know it’s error code sixty-three G. That’s something I guess.”

Madison felt like snapping back with, “Cool it, Ashley!” but then saw her attempt at humor seemed to relieve some of the group’s tension. Madison dialed Hannah’s cell with her own Leophone. There was no response. Then she dialed Ashley’s Leophone. It rang at once, and they briefly tested the connection. Then Madison tried dialing her own parents. Her grim face required no explanation. She finally closed her phone and said to her brother, “But we can dial each other!”

“Don’t you remember? Leophones have local switching and walkie-talkie ability. Our phones are synching directly with each other, not going through the satellite at all.”

Jada tried dialing 911 on Mark’s phone and got the same error response. She handed the phone back to Mark. He took it and said, “It sounds like the satellite network is...”

“Down?” asked Fatima.

Mark shrugged. “I don’t know. All circuits busy? What could cause that? Maybe clogged is a better word.” He tried his phone for a moment, repeating Jada’s attempt. “And 911 isn’t working either.”

“Yeah,” Jada replied. “How can they not give priority to 911 calls?”

Mark sighed. “Oh, it’ll handle 911 calls, but Skylands warns you when you buy the phone they’re exempt from national regulations. It’s an international phone, not a cell phone.” He looked down and noticed his battery was almost drained. “Hey Sis, do you have your charger?”

“Sure do.” She ran to her purse and got it. A moment later Mark’s phone gave a happy chirp to indicate it was being recharged. No one else had spoken for the last minute. Mark looked around the lounge and then at the group of six women, wondering what they wanted to do next. Everyone seemed lost in her own thoughts. Understandable, thought Mark, but not very productive.

The realization brought him up short. What should they be doing? Try to get back to their cars? Of course, but how? Follow in the footsteps of the people who didn’t make it? Or maybe they should they stay put for a while, concentrate on contacting the police. What should they do? Pondering the question, Mark wandered over to the bank of windows where the buffet used to be and looked outside. After a moment, the women joined him.

The bank of windows looked out from the corner of a trapezoidal park. The lounge room was on the second floor of a great two-story building which had the park as an enclosed courtyard. They were above the corner of a peaceful forest garden, with numerous pines and spruces and cobblestone walkways and even a few sturdy benches and tables scattered about. The park looked inviting, very pleasantly laid out. Mark sighed and looked up at the sky. Clouds were moving in. They had already obliterated the sun.

Hannah commented, “There was a weather report yesterday, we might get six to eight inches later this afternoon. Hell, can you imagine trying to drive through that awful forest road with eight inches of snow on the ground?”