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  His friend left his spot and walked in a deliberate line to the other side of his cage to relay the message to the next cell. Then the lead stein in that one passed the message.

  Kee listened to the rasped whispers. His skin boiled with anger, hatred, and not a small amount of frustrated lust since he missed having a male to press close to at night.

  In a few heartbeats the message had reached the other end. Walking a few steps to his food bowl, Kee kicked it over. The kibble fell into a puddle left by the last time Frith had blasted water at the cages. He stirred the mess with his finger, drowning a line of ants, then stood and threw the mixture at the scientist. Through the cages, movement exploded as the other steins copied him. They hooted and cawed, picking up kibble and chucking it at the men.

  Speigel screamed and curled into the space under his desk.

  Frith didn’t move at first. But when a glop of food landed on his shirt, he rose from his seat. Ignoring the flying bits, Frith marched straight to Kee’s cage and spoke through the bars. “Tell them to stop.” Frith leveled him a hard stare.

  Kee’s forehead pinched in thought. So the scientist knew Kee understood him. He clamped his lips tight. He could have said “no” but wanted Frith to think he couldn’t speak.

  “I’m serious.” Frith held up his finger, pointing it at Kee and puffing out his chest.

  Kee fought not to laugh.

  “Get me the gun.” Frith turned to Speigel. The subordinate whitened.

  Kee knew what “gun” meant. It meant power and pain. Around him, the steins

  took a half-step back into their cages—not wanting to back down, but also frightened.

  “Stop,” Kee said, raising a hand to halt the steins.

  His men dropped their food. They settled into the backs of their cages, waiting for Kee’s next order.

  Kee lifted his chin and tried to stare down Frith, but the scientist had gone right back to his desk, chattering, “I knew it. I knew they were learning to talk.”

  Speigel looked out from his hiding spot, his brown eyes meeting Kee’s. The smaller human and Frith were different from Kee and his men, though the differences were hard to describe. Frith’s hair was white and only grew in the back. He seemed as if he was malfunctioning in other ways too. His skin was crumpled and faded, and he moved slower than the steins.

  However, Speigel looked mostly like a stein, though his skin was darker—and somehow pinker at the same time. His hair was black and grew firm and slick on his

  head. He was slender. His shape called to Kee even through his anger at both the humans. In fact, Speigel had replaced Lo in Kee’s nightly dreams. In sleep, Kee imagined Speigel trapped and prostrate, begging gently. He always woke sticky from his climax.

  “I need to change my clothes. Clean up in here.” Frith left so Speigel was alone.

  Exactly as Kee had planned.

  The younger human shivered. He crossed the room to a mop sitting on an old,

  rolling bucket. He hummed under his breath. The occasional stein shouted “Hey” or

  “Look” or “Here”. Now Kee had spoken, the rest wanted to show off their skills.

  “Quiet,” Kee growled above the din. The room fell silent except for the watery sloshing of the bucket.

  Speigel froze, both hands on the mop handle. “Um…you guys shouldn’t throw food.” He kept his eyes downcast, focusing on turning the mop in the bucket and then slopping the dull fibers on the concrete floor. A trickle of water rolled from the mop to the grated drain in the center of the room.

  “Speigel?” Kee called out in his most authoritative tone. “Let us out.”

  The young human froze. Speigel moved his lips, but no words escaped. Then he cleared his throat and made the swallowing motion he always did before Frith forced

  him to choose a stein to take. Perhaps it was Speigel’s way to show fear.

  “You… Okay, I know you understand what I’m saying now. But this is weird.

  Really weird. Crap. What have you heard us saying? Oh wait… Maybe I don’t want to know.”

  The words came so fast Kee couldn’t keep up. “Stop, Speigel.”

  The man quieted, though he still muttered under his breath. He fumbled with the zipper of his tan one-piece suit. The metal snagged the rubber gloves he always wore on his hands.

  Kee became suddenly aware of his naked chest, his hairy arms, the way his thin, loose pants hardly hid the flesh at his groin. That flesh grew thicker as Kee watched Speigel stutter and fidget. He couldn’t tell what stimulated him more, Speigel’s attention, his nervousness or his fear. No—more likely it was his obvious tendency toward submission.

  Speigel was like Lo, but not. He was firm where Lo had been soft. But there was something about the angle of his chin—a grace. Kee’s body sang to press close to him.

  Perhaps he would have to punish Speigel for obeying Frith’s orders. But afterward Kee would hold him and caress him to breathlessness.

  The human lowered his gaze again and pushed the damp mop across the floor in slow circles. The way his lips looked tight and pinched said the human knew he was being watched.

  Kee opted for a different approach. He would make the human a friend. “Um,

  hello.” Kee tried to think of more words. He knew many, but had only used them with his men. “Hello, Speigel.” Kee walked to the side of his cage closest to the cleaning human.

  “Uh, hi.” Speigel wrung out his mop again and wiped the back of his gloved hand across his brow.

  “I’m Kee.” Kee pressed a fist to his sternum. He also puffed up his chest. A second later, he became embarrassed for such a formal introduction, but Kee held his ground.

  The human lifted his chin, though he still didn’t meet Kee’s eyes. He was trying though, and his hesitance sent a hot, living pulse through Kee’s body.

  “I’m Ben. I mean, Ben Speigel. I work here.” He shrugged his shoulders up around his ears, as if he might have wanted to say more but didn’t know how. Ben lifted his arms to cross them over his chest and Kee hid his smile. The human was hugging himself. And Kee had been the cause. “Ben…” Kee repeated the name, feeling the way it sounded on his tongue.

  The human shrugged, the loose cuffs of his shirtsleeves rising to show smooth wrists. “Yep, that’s my name.” He shifted nervously.

  Kee thrilled to think Ben was getting tight inside his clothes. He peeked at the other man’s crotch, wondering if he’d be able to see him grow.

  “Um, listen…” Ben pulled a small phone out of his pocket. “I need to send another

  text to these guys.” His thumbs danced over the machine in his hands, and Kee

  wondered how he could press such tiny buttons with fingers coated in rubber.

  When Ben finished his typing he looked up, his eyes meeting Kee’s in a hot duel. “I hope they get the message. I haven’t heard back.” Ben’s mouth was open and his hands were absentmindedly stroking the tip of the mop handle. He looked as if he wanted something—for Kee to do something rough, or hot, or amazing.

  Kee understood the look, the simple locking of eyes between males. He knew the request, as well as how to fulfill it. Licking his lips, Kee wrapped one hand around the bars, and the other around his sex through his pants. He watched Ben’s reaction, hoping… Kee didn’t know what he hoped, but the human lifted a hand to his lips, his expression lust-drowned. Ben’s fingers tightened around the handle and he pulled it close to his body.

  The look of arousal was all the permission Kee needed. He pressed the rubber waistband of his pants down below the stalk and sac of his groin. Around him, his men reacted with their usual grunts and murmurs of excitement. Kee hoped none of the others would approach his cage trying to stroke or suckle through the bars. He loved his men, but none of them in the same way he had Lo. And none of them interested him as much as Ben.

  He gasped while he palmed the bare, heated flesh. A hint of embarrassment burned

  his cheeks, but Kee buried any shyness. He s
troked with speed and strength, knowing Ben wanted. The human desired with an intelligence…a sensitivity…a longing. It was completely different than Kee had ever known.

  Ben trembled in place. His hand slowly trailed down his body until it hovered at his belly.

  With a growl of satisfaction, Kee stepped his legs apart to better show off his cock.

  Chapter Two

  Ben froze, unable to tear his eyes away from the stein. It wasn’t as if he’d never watched someone masturbate before. He watched guys almost every night—on his laptop. Every evening after brushing his teeth and washing his face, Ben had his porn time. He watched for ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and then jerked off before falling asleep.

  The sight was… Well, it was causing a reaction. His groin tightened and swelled, seemingly to the beat of the alpha male’s hand. His thick coveralls became uncomfortable and he shifted—pawing at the side of his fly to move his dick into a more comfortable position. Ben saw the alpha’s eyes widen in response.

  Sweat spread under Ben’s outfit. He vacillated between wanting to lock the door, shrug off his clothes and yank out his cock and wanting to run screaming from the room. So instead of letting the moment drag him under, Ben channeled his anxiety the way he always did—he focused on the person under his care. Clearly, Kee wanted an audience—and Ben suspected he knew why. Kee must have understood the Department of Health’s orders that all the remaining steins were slated to be destroyed.

  The stein must have understood he was going to die.

  “Yeah, Kee.” He urged the stein on, giving the creature what he wanted. “Come for me.”

  The stein groaned, his hips bucking forward so that the tip of him poked through the bars. Ben could fall on his knees, take the ruddy cock in his mouth. Instead, he bit his lip and palmed his erection through his clothes.

  Ben beat back his remorse, focusing on the moment. He should have called the Zombie Underground sooner. Then again, if the organization actually existed in the first place it had probably been shut down. Free steins were illegal. Ben had a hard time believing any of them could live freely among humans.

  “Yes, Ben. You show me. Show me your…” Kee didn’t finish the sentence. Perhaps he didn’t know the right word.

  “Cock?” Ben clutched through his pants harder, to underline his meaning. He groaned at the increased sensation, wondering if he could come just from Kee’s hard stare, and the pressure through his coveralls. He wasn’t fifteen anymore, but at barely twenty-one, Ben still had the occasional wet dream. Most of them about the alpha.

  The stein called out, “Look at me, Ben.”

  Only then did Ben realize he’d closed his eyes. He forced his attention onto the panting stein. Maybe, Ben thought, Kee needed the validation of coming in front of a human before he died. For some strange reason, Ben understood the need. Sometimes a man just wanted another man…to know. To know he mattered, that he wasn’t invisible.

  Allowing Kee this last stand was the least Ben could do.

  A snarl—or maybe a smile—rolled the edge of Kee’s lips. His fist tightened on a sex turned ruddy. The cap beaded with pre-cum. Kee lifted his hand to his face and licked a damp line across his palm. He gave Ben a filthy grin.

  Ben might have groaned. His cock felt thick and achy in his hand, but he focused on Kee—the hard way he stared, his one-handed, white-knuckled grip on the bars. Ben allowed a feeling of pride to course through him—maybe for the first time since he started working for Built. He was giving a stein his dying wish. It was more than most ever got.

  Kee yanked a few last jerks from a sex grown enormous, and shot long spurts of cum on the bars and the floor. He closed his eyes, slumping against the metal poles. His hand dropped limp to his side. The stein rubbed his face on the bars and then lumbered to the back of his cage to settle on a worn, gray blanket.

  A jostling on the doorknob startled Ben back into awareness and he clamped a hand over the door to hold it closed. “Hold on. The floor’s still wet in here.” Willing his sex to shrink, Ben threw the lock. Then he rushed over to Kee’s cage and dropped to his knees.

  He mopped the semen from the floor. Then, with an illicit shudder, he used a damp

  towel to clean Kee’s cum off the bars. Ben looked Kee right in the eye as he did it— probably the most intimate sexual experience of his life. Of course, Ben was wearing the rubber gloves he always did while performing cleaning tasks, but still…

  “Mr. Speigel?” Frith called through the door. “I just need to gather my notes before you…” The scientist trailed off. He never said the word “kill” out loud. Heck, he avoided “sacrifice”, “destroy” and even “dead”. Instead, he alluded and insinuated and wrote orders, shifting the tough choices to the less fortunate. Frith never spoke of the room they used to sedate the steins—the one equipped with vents to gas as many steins as the room would hold. Only Ben and the even less fortunate night janitor ever entered that chamber.

  “Sure. Come on in.” Ben looped the wet cloth over a metal hook on the mop pail and rolled the entire apparatus to the corner. He unlocked the door.

  “Thank you, Mr. Speigel.” Frith hurried in, careful of the damp floors, and grabbed his pile of papers off the counter. He looked sadly at the computer screen, as if he’d lost a good friend. “It’s a real setback they’re shutting us down for now.”

  Ben struggled not to laugh at the insinuation the cease-operations order was temporary. Dr. Frith and his backers had begged billions from a variety of investors and never paid the money back. They’d broken clearly stated laws in keeping the neutrals long past their sell-by dates. But guys like Frith had friends in high places. He’d have a new facility and a brand new grant in a few years. All Ben could hope for was a decent recommendation.

  Frith hoisted his papers and briefcase and headed for the door. It couldn’t have been clearer he was washing his hands of the whole “destroying twenty-seven sentient beings” thing. “Thanks for taking care of this, Mr. Speigel.” Frith opened the door, presumably to his new life and new projects. Then he closed it, leaving Ben alone with the dirty work.

  *

  Zombie Underground operative Shani Brown slowed the big yellow school bus to a crawl and eased past the entrance to the Built parking lot. She scanned the area for cars, but only saw two. Frowning, she spoke to Q-ter at headquarters though her headset. “Are you sure the call was legit?”

  The building was wide and squat, like a shoe factory or a junior high school. Two windows showed lighted rooms beyond, though one of the bulbs flickered.

  “The guy who sent the text message works there. We know that much. Frank contacted him months ago.”

  The exit to the building opened and an older gentleman emerged with a briefcase.

  He spotted the school bus and Shani drove on. “It could be a trap, Q.”

  Shani curved the bus around a corner and searched the dashboard GPS for ways to double back. She watched in the giant rear-view mirror out her window as the human’s car pulled onto the street and drove away. For the first time, Shani wished she’d brought her boyfriend, Royce. On the one hand, she didn’t think he was ready for fieldwork, but on the other she could have used a little help.

  “The guy risked his job to call us, Shan, you have to go in.”

  She eased around a block. Shani cursed the bus, and the rural highway system, and finally her boss for sending her out alone. Frank could have at least given her Bane or Kuri as back up. Not that Shani minded working alone, but there were over twenty steins inside. It felt less like a rescue and more like picking up kindergarteners for school. “We don’t normally save lab neutrals anyway. Without chips and wiring, they’re just walking corpses.” A twinge of guilt snuck up her spine as she said it. Even if neutrals weren’t of human intelligence, they didn’t deserve to be experimented on.

  “The last text we got said they could talk.” Q-ter sounded as if he were losing his patience. “And Frank wanted us to go in for them months ago when he fi
rst got ahold of a contact in the company.”

  “Fine.” She drove into Built’s parking lot and pulled up next to a beat-up Honda.

  “What kind of car did you say the guy who called us drives?”

  There was clicking over the phone as Q-ter drew up the information. “A Civic.”

  Shani nodded. “So, I guess he’s the only one in there with them.” She didn’t want Q-ter to know how much this setup freaked her out. Built was huge. Any number of steins or humans could be inside waiting for an ambush. “It still seems risky.”

  More clicking carried over the line. “I drew up the news reports. He wasn’t lying about getting shutting down. Company records show multiple rounds of layoffs over the past few months.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Shani wrenched the handle to the side, opening the school bus door. “It just seems crazy for a lifer to risk going to jail to free a bunch of steins.” She descended the steps, her eyes wary and assessing for hidden threats. Shani had been brought into the world by the worst kind of human. Her makers built steins for the illegal sex trade and treated her worse than a slave.

  “You’d be surprised, Shan. There are plenty of decent lifers around.”

  She shrugged, though Q-ter couldn’t see it. Despite her knee-jerk hatred of lifers, she had met some halfway decent ones recently. A human had even helped her to free

  Royce. Shani figured she owed the guy who called the benefit of the doubt. “I suppose.”

  Shani lifted her gun out of her holster and approached the door. It required a key, but someone had wedged a piece of cardboard in the doorjamb. She started her inspection of the grounds. “Well, I hope this lifer is as noble as he sounds.”

  *

  Ben returned to the lab but stood at his desk, cradling his face in his hands.

  “Ben?” Kee called out. He worried Ben was upset by what Kee had done. A drip of his essence glistened on the bars of the cage—the lone spot Ben had missed in his washing. Kee felt a stab of remorse—maybe Ben was not eager like Lo had been. Maybe Kee should have gone slower. “Ben, come here.” Kee gestured for the human. He spoke