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  RE:THINK

  Android Alien Apocalypse Harem: Book Five

  (The Second Part of The Brightvale Arc)

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  © Natalie Hunter 2019

  Chapter 1

  The sight that greeted Curtis when he finally made his way into the place that had once been a human boarding school was not the strangest part. Yes, the school had the remains of some Aerquan workers who had been taken out by the androids who went in before him creating an interesting veneer on some of the floors and ceilings, and yes, the strange scrawlings on the walls of the empty corridors were a bit unnerving, but other than that, it looked pretty much how he had expected it would from the pictures of the outside he had seen from Osiris' recon drones. What was strange was the sound.

  The place had been stormed by his androids not long after the other half of the city had been decimated by missiles, but before he had had the all clear to come into this part of the city with Maddy in their mecha suits. The people inside the school were supposed to be terrified, having heard all of the explosions in the distance, and then the sounds of the Aerquan who had presumably been their only contact with the outside world being efficiently murdered. There was supposed to be chaos here, people crying and panicking, only for him, their liberator, to appear triumphant in his powerful mecha and tell them all that they were to be lead to new lives of freedom. That was how this had gone down in his head every time he'd pictured it.

  But there was no palpable terror in the noises coming from the other side of the big double doors he was about to open. The microphones on his mecha could only hear what sounded like a debauched orgy of some kind. Not revelry, not the joyous celebration of people who understood that they were now free, but more the sound of crazed, animalistic fucking, and lots of it.

  "Maddy, do you hear me?" he asked, wanting to know what things were like where she was, and get some assurance of something going to plan.

  He'd decided, when they'd met no Aerquan resistance (on account of the androids who had been sent to clear the way for them doing such a damn good job), that to cut down their time inside the city of Brightvale, it would be better if they split up. Madeleine had therefore gone to free the alien hybrid people at the old hospital, as this was a place they had a lot more intel about thanks to Sky having grown up there, and having told them all about it. They even knew some of the people to expect to find there, and that it would be easy enough to convince them to leave with them, if they told them that their former friend was now living with them (and would have been there herself, were she not pregnant with Curtis' baby and under the vigilant eye of the most dedicated medical android ever programmed). It had seemed like the hospital would be the easy part, and the school with the humans bred by the Aerquan for whatever strange experiments (including no doubt creating the hybrids in the first place) would be the place where unknown variables would exist.

  It seemed this had been an accurate assessment, as Maddy's face appeared on one of the monitors inside Curtis' mecha wearing a big smile.

  "Hey there! Yeah, it's all fine at this end, one of the older hybrids came to meet me at the entrance after the androids had checked the place was clear of Aerquan, and now she's rounding up all of the people here to meet in one ward so we can organize the evacuation. Everyone is delighted! Oh, and, they all can't wait to see Sky again. Or to meet you - I think some of the girls might be kinda hoping they might be able to, well, carry your babies, too, for want of a better way of putting it..."

  Curtis chuckled. Well, no matter what strange scenario he was about to walk into, at least there had been no surprises when it came to the hospital. At least one of them was getting to enjoy the thrill of being a rescuer.

  "Well, things are a bit odd here. I haven't actually met any of the humans, yet, I think they're all in this one big room, which I'm just outside of right now... It sounds weird, though, Maddy. It sounds like a bunch of savages having a crazy beast orgy or some shit."

  The words that Countess Gwendolene had said nagged at his mind as he said this. Hadn't she said he shouldn't hold out much hope for these humans, that they would be used to living like animals? He hadn't wanted to listen. He had been picturing these poor, withdrawn, frightened people, refugees who would embrace all of the things he would provide for them in Newtown, who would be passionate about rebuilding a human society, and freeing others like them. But what if he was way off? What if they were all insane cannibals or something, after being farmed here by aliens?

  He wasn't afraid that they'd hurt him. He had his mecha. He was afraid that beyond this door were complicated questions he didn't want to have to answer, like whether he, someone who thought all he wanted was freedom, should be forcing civilization on people. Like whether his city could hold them without the need for things he had just assumed a small group of humans, reliant on each other, wouldn't need - like armed androids keeping the peace. Like whether he shouldn't have come.

  "Do you want to wait for me there? I can have the androids escort the people here out of the city and to the cars once I've addressed everyone and told them the plan - I could come there and back you up if things are weird?"

  "Nah, I mean, two of us bursting in in mechas would probably look like overkill, and if there are the kind of problems I am worried about, just having extra manpower won't solve them anyway. You should enjoy this - it's a big win for us. Stay with them and lead them out - I'll update you when I know more about the situation here."

  She beamed back at him, and he felt good about the choice he'd made, even if it would really have been nice to have her here with him, to have the one and only normal human left in his life beside him, to keep the awry feeling in this school from getting to him quite so much.

  "Well, if you're sure. I guess I have a speech to make, so I'd better go..." she said, her excitement barely concealed.

  "Good luck - I'll see you on the other side,"

  "Yes. Good luck to you, too..."

  Chapter 2

  Once Madeleine had turned off the connection between their mecha units, and the monitor she'd appeared on had gone blank again, there was nothing left for him to do but enter the doors. They seemed to lead to what must have at one time been an assembly hall of some sort. He appreciated the grand design of the school building, because it accommodated his mecha without him having to wreck things up, but these doors, well, they may have been tall and broad enough for a mecha to get through, but they also, unfortunately, had little handles that Curtis frankly couldn't be bothered to figure out if he could open with his mecha's 'hands'. These hands had been designed for many things - grabbing, crushing, firing out blasts of hot death, but they had not been built with delicate little procedures like opening ornate door handles in prissy old world girls' schools in mind.

  Oh, well, everything's going to descend into madness when I show up at their party whether I smash the door down or not, I guess.

  With a colossal kick of his mecha's right leg, followed by a forceful advance, the heavy, dark, wooden doors were bashed clean off of their hinges, and thudded to the ground. Curtis was already inside before they made their crash, which echoed cacophonously around the drafty looking hall.

  Silence followed, which at the very least, allowed Curtis to take stock of just what might have been going on in here.

  There was a stage at the far side of the hall, where he guessed, based on what he knew of high schools from the things he'd seen in the archives, was once where wholesome students had performed little plays and songs for their parents. There was nothing wholesome about the group of ragged, dirty people rolling around like a strange mass of entangled flesh on the stage now, however, framed by fade
d, dusty red velvet curtains. There were women, he could make that much out, naked, or wearing fragments of rags, their hair long and unkempt, making it impossible to discern what they truly looked like. Sky had been a mess when he'd first met her, after weeks of homelessness, but this was a whole new level of neglect, something that would have frightened the people of Sanctuary, and which was even troubling to Curtis, who was used to the outside world as it was in Newtown, where everything was kept pristine by androids. The women on the stage were making no attempts to cover themselves, their spread legs and naked breasts on show, and the fact that he had interrupted them being fucked in various different ways by the equally derelict looking men who lolled beside them apparent, by the fact some were covered in smears of semen, and the men were all, without exception, still sporting erections.

  The stage then, had been where the sounds he had heard had been coming from, but it wasn't the only place where there were shabby humans. In the main part of the hall, in front of the stage, some lay on piles of filthy rags and blankets, perhaps sleeping, perhaps sick. He noticed only enough movement to tell him that they weren't corpses. At the sides of the room, other humans in pairs and trios had stopped what they were doing, frozen in the middle of laughing, punching each other, or just staring gormlessly, to stare gormlessly at Curtis in his mecha. Their eyes were big, and hollow, and they all looked underfed.

  Well, they're not eating each other, at least. Those weird troughs around the room seem to be their food, and it looks more like some kind of grain than human flesh.

  But that small blessing wasn't enough to stop the sinking feeling inside him. Could these people even communicate? Why were they just gawping at this mecha, this thing that had stormed into their midst, clearly armed and dangerous, clearly like nothing they had ever seen before? Why weren't they reacting, beyond just looking at it?

  Wait though, there's something strange here... this is a place where the Aerquan breed humans. Clearly the humans here don't have any inhibitions about sex, so I guess the breeding isn't done in some alien science-y way. So where are the babies and kids, and the pregnant women? There are only adults in this hall, that I can make out, anyway... If they're kept somewhere else, I'm going to need to find out.

  If he was honest, he'd been looking for children, or better, babies, for signs of some people he might actually have a shot at helping, at raising to be normal. He wasn't sure about how one actually did raise a baby, having never seen one outside of the archives, but he was going to have to figure that out anyway when Sky gave birth, and he was sure turning a fresh slate into a valuable part of the future of humanity would be easier than... whatever it might take for the adults here.

  The disgust and wariness he felt looking at these people, when he had been expecting to feel sympathy, disturbed him. He didn't want to be the kind of person who reacted this way, but the revulsion, and the sense that maybe coming here was just inviting unnecessary problems into his nice little city, were real. Was he no better than Janice, who had looked at him and seen only a man, only a young man who would ruin everything with his urges? No, he had to remember that these were humans, that these were the people he'd come to save, and that just because they didn't live up to his fantasy of meek, grateful, hopeful people who would recognize what he'd just done for them, that didn't mean they weren't worthy of kindness.

  "Can I have your attention please," he said, his voice blaring out through speakers in the hip area of his mecha when he pressed the button that Lena had told him was for this kind of address. He'd never pressed it before, and he winced a little at the reverb and the loudness. Even from inside the machine, it was earsplitting, and made his voice sound weaponized. Perhaps Lena had designed it thinking he'd be using it to try to talk to the Aerquan, or perhaps, being an android, she just didn't really understand that humans might not react well to that kind of sound.

  At least this had the effect of making the people in the hall react somewhat more appropriately than they had been. Some of the women screamed and wrapped their arms around their heads to cover their ears, and three of the dozen or so men on the stage leapt to their feet and adopted crude fighting stances, their faces forming grimaces of menace, the effect of which was somehow amplified by their nakedness. Their cocks were still hard, Curtis noticed, finding this disturbing rather than absurd.

  Is there a volume control on this thing? Ah, fuck it, I've started, so I might as well carry on.

  "I am the leader of a city called Newtown. I was told of your captivity here, and my army of androids and I came to free you. We have destroyed the Aerquan in this area, and we have vehicles waiting to take you to Newtown, where you'll have everything you need to start new lives, as free people."

  The words felt different than when he'd practiced them in his head on the journey to Brightvale. He tried to sound confident, like somebody these people could depend on, but he realized now that they had no reason to trust him, and that he hadn't really prepared a way to convince them. He'd thought this little announcement would be met with cheers, not the belligerence radiating off of the largest of the men, or the bewildered mistrust of the women, some of whom had been only peeking at the mecha through their fingers since it had begun to speak.

  "The bangs. You made 'em?" yelled one of the men on the stage, one of the ones who looked ready to fight the mecha. His voice was hoarse and his beard and hair covered most of his features, but Curtis got the impression he wasn't especially old. A little older than him. Actually, he noticed, none of the people here looked very old, from what he could tell. He tried not to think about what that might say about the Aerquan and their experiments - about these people growing up knowing that before they were even in their late twenties, they'd disappear from this strange life. From what Sky had said, the hybrids were kept alive as long as they naturally survived, because the Aerquan wanted to know the lifespans of the different species they created, but it probably wasn't the same with the humans. No wonder Madeleine was having an easier time with her group.

  "You mean the explosions? Yes. That was my army killing the Aerquan."

  "Errr-kwon?" the same man said, with the air of someone whose frustration at the intruder's nonsense would turn to rage very soon.

  "The blue aliens. Your captors."

  "You killed the silent ones? The watchers? Why?"

  "Why? Because they destroyed humanity! Because they were breeding you and keeping you locked up in here for their horrible experiments. Because they're fucking evil!"

  "We don't know about that. The silent ones bring food. They watch. They don't do nothing else. We do what we like here. They don't stop us."

  Curtis had no idea how to explain it in a way they'd understand. Were people always this way? In Sanctuary, most of them there had thought they were free, and their lives were good, and that it was worth doing what they were told and obeying the rules to keep that 'freedom'. He'd been the only one who'd really felt restricted, and he'd had his reasons. Would say, Fliss have rushed out to freedom in his world if she'd had the choice, or would she have just thought it wasn't worth it, that she was fine where she was? Were these people the same, not missing freedom because they had no concept of what it really was? Not noticing they were locked in, because all of their basic needs were met?

  But no, all humans weren't like that. In Sanctuary there had been Maddy. Here, too, there would be at least one who'd questioned their life here, there had to be. He just had to find the right way to reach them, and then the rest would follow.

  With a sigh of resignation, he pushed the button combination that made his mecha lower itself into the crouching position that allowed him to get in and out, and opened up the lid of the cockpit - keeping himself encased, but revealing himself to his audience.

  "Tell me," he said, bolstered by the fact their eyes were, without exception, now all glued to him, taking in the sight of a human like themselves, but one pampered by a life of nutritious meals, hygienic conditions, and lately, android healthcare
, "who is the oldest person here, and how many years have you lived?"

  But something strange was happening. Now that they had seen him, seen that the metal machine housed a human man, the people weren't as interested in answering his question as in getting closer. No, he realized, it was only the women. The women from the stage were standing and rushing down the stairs at the sides, into the main hall. Women from groups around the sides were shambling towards him too, and from the piles of people lying on rags, some were getting to their feet, to join the movement in Curtis' direction. The women were less than half of the people in here - perhaps the rest of them were wherever the children were, the pregnant, or at least heavily pregnant ones - but the men did nothing to stop them. In fact, the men who had stood with fists clenched, had dropped their fighting poses and were now standing far more casually. Was he not seen as worth fighting, now they could tell he was just one man? How stupid, he was still inside his mecha, in seconds he could be sealed back in, and he could lay waste to this room. Surely they knew that?

  It was then, as the women began to reach him, stopping just in front of were his mecha stood, that he began to get at least some idea of what the dynamic here was.

  Chapter 3

  The people here, they just survive off of instinct. The Aerquan don't speak, or do anything but provide food and watch them. These humans probably only even speak English because they're descended from people from the old world, who were immune to the Aerquan psychic attacks - I guess that they spoke to their kids, and so on, so a level of language survived. They've been living as an isolated tribe, and they have a dynamic and a power structure based around access to resources. And if they have never had to worry about food, then the most important resource, for people acting only on their instincts, would be sex.

  The women who reached his mecha were getting on all fours in front of him, presenting their naked pussies to him submissively. There were perhaps thirty of them, and they weren't trying to fight each other to be closest to him, to be the most likely to be chosen by him, they were simply making offerings of themselves. The men were letting this happen because clearly, the women were what decided who the leader was in this group - who they wanted to be impregnated by, who was the strongest and best mate. And Curtis, well, to them he practically looked like a superior species.