A Man of His Time
by NFalc
14
Mary
"I don't need to hear another word," Jot Orem says in a flat, emotionless tone. There's something in his manner that tells me he is struggling to control himself. "I know who you are. I know what you've done. Leave before I kill you."
My mind is reeling. What is he talking about?
"No," the Truthseeker leader says, "She might be able to tell us more about the Establishment. We keep her alive, and retrieve information."
"We know enough about the Establishment to get by," Orem says through gritted teeth. "I will kill her if I get the chance."
"Please give me a chance to explain!" Mary says again, tears welling in her eyes. She keeps staring at me, waiting for me to step in.
"Let's listen to her," I say. "We need to hear both sides of the story."
The blonde considers this for a moment. "There is no need to rush to judgment," she finally says. "We may as well listen to her."
Jot gives the briefest of nods, then stares directly at the polished surface of the table under his feet.
"I worked for the Establishment, that much is true," Mary says, "And I regret doing it. But it was a job, and I was good at it, and it provided well. In the end, I realized that what I did was wrong, and I tried to change my ways. I was the one who kept Adam from being drugged, who saved his life, and who told him to come to you..."
Jot glances at me, as if to confirm that this is true, and I nod. He looks a little shocked.
"All the same, I would never have come here myself, if it wasn't for what I'd heard..." And now she begins to cry in earnest.
"What? What was it?" The blonde demands.
"She told me that I'd disobeyed orders, but that it didn't matter in the end... She said they'd killed the one I'd let go... I thought Adam was dead." She sounds truly miserable.
The blonde relaxes, although she looks slightly disappointed. "Is that all?"
Mary continues as if she hadn't heard her. "They fired me, and I needed someone to help. I had to save you somehow, and I couldn't do it alone... I figured I'd tell the Truthseekers about the existence of men, and they'd be so grateful that they'd help me get you back..." She wipes her eyes with her hand.
There's a moment of silence. Everyone seems to be thinking. I know I am.
Jot speaks first. "I don't believe her. She is telling us this as an excuse. The Establishment has sent her in to spy on this meeting. If we do not kill her or restrain her, she poses a threat to us all."
The Truthseeker leader looks to me. "What do you think, Adam?"
I take a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Yes, what I'm about to say is true. "I believe her," I say. "She is the one that set me free. She's the one who told me to come to you."
Jot turns to me, his eyes blazing. "Adam, you don't know what she's done. I've seen what she's capable of. She could kill us all without any mercy or regret." I look into his eyes, and know he's also telling the truth. But their statements are opposites of one another - it doesn't make any sense...
Mary is looking at Jot now, and there's desperation in those huge, beautiful blue eyes. "I've changed since then. You have to believe me. I was following orders then, and I can't anymore. I never enjoyed it, and every day I regret it..."
"Regretting it isn't enough!" Jot has turned, and he is yelling now, raising his voice louder than I've ever heard it before. He is consumed with rage. "How many of us did you kill for them? How many died at your hands, because you were told we had to be eliminated? And all you can say is that you were following orders! Do you have no mind? No conscience?"
Jot's hands are balled into tight fists. His face is twisted with anger. Mary's face is as white as a sheet. All I'm left with is a fading sense of confusion and a gnawing feeling growing in my stomach. Say it isn't so. Don't say that it's true.
"I was there when you killed them," he says. "You would have killed me too, but I got lucky. I was the first one to ever escape. But the only reason no one had gotten out before was because you were there, ready to murder anyone who tried! You killed them all!"
I see light glint off his cheek, and I'm astonished to recognize tears in his eyes. He isn't lying. But it can't be true... Her lower lip is trembling. Please no.
I have to ask. "Is this true, Mary?"
There's a second of hope before she says, "Yes." Then the world crashes down around me as my shoulders slump and my knees feel weak. I want to melt into the ground. I want to die. It's true.
"Why?" I ask, struggling to say the single word.
It comes out in a teary, stuttering rush of words. "They told us that you were animals, who didn't think or feel. They made it seem like we were so much better, so much more advanced, that we had the right to do it. So I did it without thinking much about it, it was just one more of my duties which I tried to hide from myself, pretending everything was all right.
"Then you came, and I watched and saw that you were different, and I knew that you were from the wild, and I started wondering. I wondered if maybe, the men weren't what they seemed. Maybe what I was doing was - was making them that way. So I didn't drug you. I wanted to see what would happen. And when you didn't change - that's when I knew - and all those years I'd done these things - I'd been murdering real people, living people just like me all along. Crippling their minds with drugs, then killing them if they rebelled.
"It was before I even talked to you that I knew I would never kill for them again. But then they told me to take you out of the Plant, and they told me that you were a rebel, and that they expected me to... To do you in as well. And I couldn't. Because I loved you... I love you."
Her words dissolve into sobs. I hang my head, and I try to understand the mess we've all been thrown into. It was Mary who brought the men and the Truthseekers together. But she is a murderer of my species. In her actions, she is no different than Cheryl. But she regrets what she's done, and wants to change. She loves me. But can I ever forgive her for the crimes she's committed against my kind?
The blonde waits for a few minutes before speaking. "You will be placed in a holding cell for the next two days," she says. "In that time, I expect you to write a full report on anything, and I mean ANYTHING that could be considered valuable information on the Establishment, as well as detailing your role in their actions to this point. I expect the report to be a long one. Once the results we receive are considered satisfactory, you can go free."
"Go free?" Mary asks. "I can't leave here, they'd kill me for telling you all this. And besides, I want to help bring them down."
The blonde looks at her coolly. "We'll see," she says, then signals two female guards to take her away.
She looks back at me as they escort her out of the room, each holding an arm lightly. "I love you," she whispers one more time.
I'm ashamed to think that I love her back.
"Are you seriously going to keep her here, Ashley?" Jot asks the blond. He is no longer raging, but I can still hear the anger in his voice.
The blonde leans down towards him so that she can look him in the eye. "You know better than to call me that, Jot," she says. "My full name sounds too girly, call me Ash."
"Ash," Jot says. "Why are you keeping her alive? Why are you keeping her here?"
The blonde's lips fall into a slight pout as she thinks. "I agree with Adam. I believe her. I think she wants to change. And any grudges you have against her will just have to wait until we can deal with her fairly. For now, we have more pressing matters to discuss."
Jot bites his lip and nods, then turns to me. "Adam, you were the one who brought us together. You seemed to have a plan as to how we could defeat the Establishment. As such, we thought it only right that you were given an opportunity to help us plan the attack. Do you have any thoughts?"
My head whirls. I never really thought of any exact tactics - I simply assumed that the women could provide the brute force, while we men... But there was the basis of an idea there.
"The key," I say, "Is to make sure the Establishment is distracted when we strike. They're in complete control right now, and if we attacked they'd beat us easily. We need to get them worried about something else, something so important they'd be completely unprepared when we entered the picture."
"I see your logic," Ash says, "And I agree with it. But what could provide enough of a distraction to throw them off-balance?"
I grin. "That's simple. We can."
The flashbulb goes off, leaving traces of weirdly colored light inside my eyelids. "Are we done yet?" I ask.
The woman nods, and hands the camera off to another. Ash lowers her hand to the table, and I slide off of her soft palm. She looks down at me and smiles. "You were a great model."
"Thanks," I say. "You think this'll work? That people will believe?"
"There will be a few doubters, as always," she says. "But I know a few people who said that if we found hard evidence, they'd get it moving through the right channels. These pictures will be on the cover of every legit newspaper hitting the stands tomorrow. People will know they aren't fake. With any luck, we could have a full scale riot on our hands." She giggles.
"One other thing that's been bothering me," I ask. "Do you and Jot, um, know each other?"
At this, Ash's face falls into a cross between a grimace and a smirk. It would be invisible to anyone her size, but since her face is the size of a small building I can tell that she's blushing. "Oh... Yes, we do know each other. Very well."
"You don't have to answer if it's personal," I say quickly.
"Oh, it's all right. There are just some memories involved." she says. She waves the photographers out of the room, leaving me and her alone, before continuing. "To put it simply, after Jot escaped, I was the first one to find him. I was just eighteen years old. Ever since I was little, I'd always wanted to see a man. Even when I was young, men were semi-mythical creatures.
"I spotted him trying to run down a street. I caught him, persuaded him to come home with me. It took time, but eventually I got him to become friends with me. We made love.
"The morning afterwards, he was gone. I didn't know whether I had scared him or he had simply decided to leave. But I knew that he was real, and I knew there were others like him. That's when I began the Truthseekers, to search for him and other little men, and protest against the Establishment, who kept them hidden from us.
"But that was years ago," she says, and she suddenly sounds tired. "Seven years, to be precise. And now I meet up with him again..." A faint smile plays around her lips.
"I see," I say. I don't know how to reply.
"Jot and I have to go work out the logistics of our battle plan," Ash says, getting up. "There will be someone coming along to get you soon."
I wave farewell as Ash leaves the room, then sit, immersed in thought. In a way, Jot's story resembles mine. Found by a caring woman whom he loved and left, then was reunited with. He escaped from the Plant through a combination of wits and luck. And his friends have all been murdered. I find myself sympathizing with both Jot and Mary at once. Neither have any choice but to hate and fear one another, although neither wanted it to work out the way it did...
The door opens softly behind me, disturbing my thoughts, and I feel the cushion sink as someone sits down behind me.
"Hey little guy," Kyra says. I turn to find myself staring straight into the swells at the back of her jeans. "How'd the photo shoot go?"
"Okay," I reply in as normal a voice as possible. "I just hope the plan works."
"I'm sure it will," she says, and lifts a huge finger to tousle my hair. "Did I tell you that I joined the Truthseekers after seeing you?"
I shake my head.
"Left Sable and everything. Once I knew you were real, I knew I had to be a Truthseeker."
"I guess that was a good decision," I say. "Because now you can see me any time."
"You know, I got Ash to make me your personal caretaker. I'm going to be with you wherever you go." She smiles, and there's a slightly naughty edge to it. "We'll have lots of quality time to spend together." She winks.
I smile and play along like I'm interested, and when she kisses me I kiss her back, and it's still great, but I have other things on my mind. After she's fussed with me, I ask her to take me to Mary.
She looks shocked at this, and a little hurt. I want to tell her that she shouldn't be jealous, but that would be a lie. Both Kyra and Mary love me, but I can't come close to figuring out who to choose.
Kyra places a hand out for me to ride in, and I climb on. But instead of beginning to walk, she lifts me up to her chest, then I feel myself begin to slide to the left as she tilts her hand. I turn and try in vain to grab at the edge of her hand and pull myself up, but she just giggles and tilts it further. "This isn't funny, Kyra!" I yell up as she tilts it vertical, then continues to move her hand, so that I'm leaning upside down. Then I lose my grip and plummet downwards, only to land on her soft, warm flesh.
I slip right down her and into the valley between her breasts, eventually coming to rest somewhere between them. I can feel her laughter reverberating through her ribcage, causing me to vibrate. I'm torn between kicking and screaming and laughing right along with her. I know she didn't mean any harm, and if I wasn't in such a weird mood, I would be really enjoying it. As it is, I can't complain too much about the view.
"Comfortable?" I hear her say behind me. Then the world goes into motion as she begins to walk. I get jostled around, slamming into the walls of female flesh that surround me, but I only hit hard enough to feel their resistance, which simply turns me on. By the time she stops walking, I'm hard and craving to be with her. But though my body wants her now, my mind is still somewhere else.
Two fingers squeeze me gently on either side, and she fishes me out of her breasts, then holds me in front of her face. "Tell me that wasn't fun," she says with a grin.
"It was," I say. "But we can't do it right now. I've got to talk to Mary."
Kyra's eyes narrow, and her smile falls flat. "Is there something you're not telling me about her?" she asks.
Yes! I want to scream. Yes, we're in love, she and I, but I'm in love with you too, and I don't know what to do. Instead I simply shake my head, and say, "I need to make sure I know all the facts, that's all."
Kyra's lips curl slightly into a frown, but she lowers me down onto a table in front of Mary's cell, then taps on the glass. "Someone here to see you," she says, then turns and heads for the door.
Mary comes to the window, standing at her full, impossible height, and looks around. When she sees no one, she looks down, spots me, and quickly drops to my height, so we're eye to eye. "I'm so glad you came," she says. "I was worried that you would just forsake me -"
I hold up a hand for silence, and she bites her lip. For a second, I think she might cry again. "I never said that I approved of what you did," I say, and I know I'm being cruel but this is how it has to be. "Or that there's anything between us."
Her face shows so much hurt that it breaks my heart, but I could never forgive myself if I let her think that it was all okay. It was anything but all okay.
She says, "You know I didn't want to do it, I didn't know what I was doing and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."
"I know," I say, and allow a little kindness to enter my voice. "But that doesn't change the past. How come you never told me about this?"
"How could I? Was I just going to say, 'Hi, my name's Mary, I usually kill your kind, but I like you?'"
"I know it wasn't going to be easy, but to make me... to make me feel this way, without knowing..."
"Feel what way?" She asks, immediately seizing on the part of the sentence I'd left unclear.
"I love you, Mary," I say. "Is that what you wanted to hear? Yes, I love you. And it makes me sick when I think about that, and then think about what you've done."
There was a light in her eyes that sparked when I said 'I love you," but it dies as soon as my sentence ends. "You were the one that changed me. If it wasn't for you, I would never have known... I wouldn't have tried to find out. But then I saw you... And I was yours."
I sigh. "I don't know how I can forgive -"
My speech is drowned out by an alarm that suddenly rings loudly all around the Truthseeker base. "What's going on?" Mary asks.
"I don't know!" I yell back at her.
Suddenly, the ground beneath me shakes violently, almost throwing me off the desk I stand on. The door bursts open, and Kyra rushes in. She quickly sweeps me off the table, then tucks me in her shirt pocket. "Get ready to move!" she says to me, then begins to run.
We plunge into the hallway, which is quickly filling with a very familiar pale gray fog. "I didn't know they used the gas on women!" I call up.
"Neither did I," she mutters down to me, "But it obviously means we have to move quickly before it gets to our level."
I catch glimpses of Truthseekers fighting giants in gas masks, I see men climbing along the walls using lines, and many more of them passed out on the ground. If the Truthseekers don't win this battle, we'll all be captured. It will mean the end of the Underground.
"We're getting close to the exit," Kyra says as she rounds the corner, then she suddenly lurches violently forward. I see a giantess in a gas mask lifting a huge metal bat behind her.
Kyra begins falling straight towards the ground. In the seconds before she hits it, I realize that being in her shirt pocket won't be exactly safe, and grab the material and swing myself over the edge, falling straight downwards. A strand of hair passes by and I latch onto it, swinging up and over, to land on top of her head.
I know I don't have much time before the gas gets to me, so I quickly slide down her hair, hitting the ground in time to see the giant woman in the gas mask teeter, then fall. A harpoon is sticking out of her neck.
Antoine runs up to me, toting his gun. He throws me a black rubber object, which I recognize to be a gas mask, then pulls a gas mask of his own over his head. I quickly tie the mask on, and breathe deeply in relief. Antoine gives me the hand signal to move.
We dash down the hallways as fast as we can, but they were built to the women's size, and it's tough going as a result. I'm not even sure where we're headed to, or where we could go. Still, Antoine always seems to know how to avoid the clusters of Truthseekers and Establishment that are fighting around the base. If I wasn't following him, I'd probably be crushed underneath some woman's foot.
We're running down another hallway when I suddenly feel something slam into my back, knocking me head over heels. A huge leather boot bears down on me, and I see Antoine rushing forwards, trying to get me out of the way. Instead the boot crashes into him, hurling him out of my vision.
I feel a burning sensation in my eyes as the gas-mask clad woman kneels down. The kick must've knocked my own mask off. I try to back away, but my muscles feel weak and useless. It might have been the kick, or maybe the gas, but I'm not going anywhere.
I watch helplessly as she bends down, swiping up Antoine, then moving her hand towards me...
Giantess World
