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  They came to the park, a small ornamental garden that was kept looking nice by the androids from the hotel, and which seemed mercifully free of any of the random wild animals one could sometimes find in Newtown - taken in and cared for by medic robots who desperately wanted something to look after in the absence of humans. Curtis brought them to a stop next to the big iron gate that led to an old cemetery. Beyond the bars of the gate, it was completely deserted and lit only by the moon inside. Curtis put his arms around her and rubbed her to warm her up.

  “You know, there are a few secluded little benches in there…” he suggested.

  Even though Madeleine wanted him really badly, he knew he was pushing her outside of her comfort zone a little, suggesting they fuck in a place a religious woman like herself would usually consider to be God's territory. But he found it really hot to make her try things that made her feel a little bit wrong - it somehow brought out the best in her.

  “I don’t know, Curtis…” Madeleine began to say, but before she could voice any protest he pushed her against the wall by the gate and began kissing her mouth and pressing his body against her.

  Madeleine, he was sure, could feel his hardness through his jeans, pushing against her hip. As he squeezed her soft ass underneath her miniskirt and pressed firmly into her mouth with his tongue, he could tell that she knew that it was far better to put up with any uneasiness about the location than to go away without having him, or even wait the extra four minutes or so it’d take to walk back to the hotel. He could feel it in the way she pressed herself against him and kissed him back hungrily, and the way her breath was coming faster and harder through her nose against his face. She needed him now.

  “OK…” Madeleine said, nervously.

  She leaned on Curtis as they made their way up the path to avoid stumbling on the gravel path in her heels. After a short while, they found a suitable bench. It was made of a dark, sturdy wood, and looked very old. It crossed Curtis' mind with a wry amusement that the bench had been put there to give someone a place to sit in peaceful contemplation of nature, or perhaps death, rather than for people to fuck on generations later after mankind had fallen. He wondered what the ghosts of the people who'd sat here when this bench was new would make of how this insane world had ended up.

  Curtis sat down on the bench, and Madeleine immediately straddled him, kissing his face and neck and grinding herself against the promising bulge in his jeans. He pulled up her little pink top, and urgently pulled down the white lace of her bra, exposing her breasts to the cool night air.

  He began to suck on her hard nipples, starting with one at a time, using his fingers to pinch the alternate one, then he used his hands to push her breasts together so he could lick, suck and bite on both nipples at once. Madeleine continued to grind her crotch against his erection. She was certainly acting like she was no longer feeling the cold, and could almost forget any discomfort about where they were.

  Madeleine reached down between her spread thighs and undid his jeans, feeling around in his boxers urgently. After a few seconds she managed to free his hard cock, which sprang out readily on account of how aroused he was by the idea of having her ride him out here like this. Madeleine pulled her panties to one side hurriedly, and used her hand to guide him into her. She was extremely wet, and as she took him deep inside her, sliding up and down the full length of his big, hard cock, his mouth still working on her nipples, Madeleine could hear him moan in pleasure, the sound vibrating against her flesh as her breasts muffled him.

  Madeleine fucked him slowly for a few minutes, on top, riding his cock, and it felt great. The chilly night air and the somber stillness of the moonlit cemetery in this dead city contrasted exquisitely with the heat between them, making the sex feel incredibly intense.

  Curtis wanted to penetrate her even deeper, so he quickly, and easily given how much stronger he was, moved her off of him and got her to lie down on the bench with her legs spread wide, one with her foot touching the ground, the other up on the back of the bench. He moved between her thighs, holding her shoulders down, and penetrated her again forcefully. He pressed his mouth onto hers to muffle the screaming he expected as he thrust into her harder and faster.

  And so, the-night-before-the-night-before the battle passed happily, for the people who would, in exactly 30 hours, be strapping into their mecha suits for the long march to Brightvale.

  Chapter 13

  The journey to the site where they had planned to leave their cars - a large dusty expanse of nothing but flat land that looked like it had once been a space for outdoor events like fairs, or perhaps one of those drive-in movie theaters Curtis had read mention of in the archives - went almost impossibly smoothly. As planned, the androids had staggered their departures so that groups would arrive at the recharge points at different times, with Curtis traveling in his mecha along with the first group and keeping in touch with Madeleine via their monitors as she traveled with the last set of vehicles.

  Once he had arrived at the parking site, he had several hours to kill while they waited for all of the other parties to arrive. He left his mecha to go over some details again with some of the military androids who were tasked with firing longer range missiles onto the western side of the city as the first wave of the attack, before leaving them to go and get into their positions with their heavy weapons - the very reason they had been scheduled to arrive first. He watched the bulky men effortlessly hauling their missile launchers and bags of missiles over their shoulders and sauntering off to climb down into the ditch around the populated part of Brightvale, and his shoulder muscles ached as he imagined the weight. He was happy to get back into his mecha after that little reminder of how much weaker even he, a guy who worked out a lot, was than the androids he commanded.

  The missile assault was due to start at exactly 7:00 hours, 24 hours after leaving Newtown, by which time all of the parties of androids who were participating in the next phases would also have arrived, and crossed the ditch. There were all different roles in this phase - firing on any Aerquan who tried to evacuate Brightvale, taking to the burning streets to take on any who had survived the missiles, and most crucially, heading into the quarter of the city where the old hospital and Chandler's Ladies Academy stood. There they would have to defend those locations, kill any Aerquan who were working there or had escaped into the old quarter during the missile assault, and then ultimately free the captives. Madeleine and Curtis in their mechas would head into the city last and head straight for the old quarter, to avoid being attacked while there were enough Aerquan still alive to attempt the kind of group psychic kill they had done on Sanctuary. They were going to go first to the half-alien compound, because they had more information about what to expect there thanks to Sky, and then, after confirming it safe for the people to leave the city, send them back across the ditch with an android escort before moving on to do the same with the humans. Android fighters would go to both locations ahead of them to clear out as many Aerquan as possible, but it would be they who would officially liberate the people, so as to be able to explain to them what was going on and why they needed to follow. And of course, to feel the satisfaction of being the ones the captive humans and half-aliens recognized as their rescuers.

  After watching everybody else make it across the ditch, while the sun hung just over the horizon on what looked like it would be another gray morning, creating a light the color of cigarette ash, Curtis and Madeleine made the descent into the ditch, skidding down slightly on their mecha-feet, before loping across to the other side and hauling themselves out and onto the dry, cracked earth. They were just outside of the part of town that still looked human - or at least, like the ruins of a once human place - and perhaps a quarter of a mile across the land they stood on began the parade of shabby old houses and shops, the maze of worn out asphalt they would run through to reach the people they came to free. Their spot was chosen for its proximity to the hospital, but they couldn't see it from here through the wind
ows of their mechas - though they could, when the time came, bring up maps Osiris and Carla had created on their monitors.

  When the time display inside his mecha made it to 7:00 precisely, Curtis held his breath and aimed the head of his mecha to look skyward, and show him on one of his screens the haunting sight of forty-three missiles arcing into the air above Brightvale, before plunging down just beats apart to meet with their targets in the western part of the city.

  He felt a strange sense of detachment inside his mecha, as though he was watching the destruction, at his orders, of this population of Aerquan and their homes and businesses from somewhere else, or in a movie. He couldn't smell the smoke that was now filling the air off in the distance, and the sounds of the explosions were dampened by the shielding of his mecha's cockpit. The vibrations each detonating missile caused, along with the crashing down of alien architecture he couldn't see, made the ground quake beneath him, but the shock absorption of his mecha cushioned him from a lot of even that tangible evidence that this was all actually happening. It felt surreal, and he wondered if, if he got out of the machine for a moment, it might all hit him, if he might somehow feel different about the chaos going on so close to where he stood.

  But he knew that he would not feel remorse, or even pity for the Aerquan who were right now burning, or being crushed, or being filled with bullets by the androids who would now be running through the madness of the stricken part of the city, ending the lives of any of the blue, flat-eyed bastards they encountered with extreme prejudice.

  07:12 and the air was thick with smoke, and communications were already starting to come in from leaders of different android teams. Ground teams were in the city now, and while it was chaotic, they weren't having much trouble massacring the Aerquan that had avoided being killed in the strategic blasts. The Aerquan had suspected nothing, despite the throngs of people making their way across their crappy little ditch defense as dawn had fallen, despite the drones hovering over their city for months, despite the cars, trucks and motorcycles in their many hundreds arriving just out side of the city overnight. This had meant that the shock of the missile attack had had the desired effect, and the massive combat superiority of the androids over the aliens was making it barely inconvenient to take out the surprised blue creatures in their droves.

  This was what he had been expecting, of course, as all of their intel suggested that the Aerquan would be completely unsuspecting, but it still amazed Curtis that the Aerquan had such hubris. They hadn't, it seemed, created any security measures at all, and seemed to never venture outside of Brightvale, let alone remain vigilant about what was going on so close by. Sure, they had had no enemies for a really long time, but how could they have been so certain that there would be no retaliation for what they had done at Sanctuary? Did they think no humans had survived the incident? Did they underestimate him? Or Sky, the runaway half-alien who had lead them to the mountain - did they assume she didn't have any capacity to cause problems for them down the line? It just made him think, more than ever, that they deserved to die. Whether for their arrogance or their stupidity.

  07:38 and it was practically all over in the western part of the city. The whole community of Aerquan, along with their buildings, had been cleansed from the Earth in less than three-quarters of an hour. Androids were that efficient. It had been such a comprehensive victory that aside from a couple of android fighters who had been crushed under a falling structure (and whose motherchips were going to be recovered as soon as fighting stopped, to be put into new android bodies, in accordance with the protocols that had been agreed for dealing with android fatalities), there had been no major injuries or losses of any kind. It was pitiful how easy these creatures who had wiped out so much of humanity were to beat when one could prepare for it.

  There was a tension on Madeleine's face when it appeared on one of Curtis' monitors. He understood it. Even though they were winning - had won, essentially - they were both waiting for their part to actually begin, and to use their mechas in earnest for the first time. They were also completely unsure about what to expect in the compounds - particularly the one with the humans, which Sky hadn't been able to describe to them as she had her former home in the old hospital. He and Maddy had discussed what horrific things they might find in a place where humans were being bred as lab rats at so much length, on so many occasions, that they thought they had practically desensitized themselves to the worst of their imaginings, and yet, now they were about to see it, to actually meet the people they were to be basing the future of their own society on, and to see what trauma they might have endured, it felt as darkly mysterious as it would have if they'd never speculated at all.

  "I guess we'll get the signal to move in, soon..." she said.

  There was no reason to say it - it was stating the obvious - and Curtis knew she just wanted to be speaking, to use up some of her nervous energy. He felt the opposite way, like he just wanted to tense his jaw and endure these long moments of anticipation and unreleased adrenaline in stoic silence, so he was happy for her to jabber on to him all she wanted.

  "Do you think they'll be confused? Scared? Maybe they won't trust us... Maybe they won't want to come with us. What if they liked the Aerquan and are mad at us? What's that thing called where people start to sympathize with their captors and side with them? Sweden syndrome? What do we do if they're like that?"

  "There's nothing left for them here, and we've got mechas. They'll have no choice but to come with us. If they don't like it, we'll just have to force them, and then work on explaining it to them and making them see how much better life will be in Newtown once we're away from here. It'll work out," he said.

  Maddy nodded. It wasn't the first time she'd asked any of this and she had presumably known the answer Curtis would give, but perhaps she needed to hear it all again in this moment, when the Aerquan really were all but defeated in Brightwater, and they really were about to present a load of bewildered people with new lives.

  08:05 and the message flashed up inside both of their mechas at once, and their eyes met through their cameras and screens.

  "OK, let's move!" Curtis yelled, relieved to finally be able to take some action.

  The two mechas sprinted across the empty space in front of them and down through an opening between two old, long abandoned buildings, moving single file through the gap and on into an alley that would lead them in the direction of the hospital.

  They would think it strange, later, that they had stood in that spot for all that time, waiting for the signal, without noticing the water rushing to fill the ditch behind them.

  TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 5 - RE:THINK

  OUT NOVEMBER 2019

  A Message From Natalie Hunter

  Hey there! Hope you are enjoying this series so far! Please give me a follow on Twitter @NatalieXHunter to hear the latest about my books, to learn when new episodes in this series are out, and to say hi! Part 5, RE:THINK, will be released in mid-November 2019.

  Have you checked out my new novel-length steamy harem book, Unknowable Chaos: Halloween, yet? If you haven’t, then here is the first chapter as a preview – it’s available now on Amazon and included, as with all of my books, in Kindle Unlimited.

  Chapter 1

  Jack gazed vacantly into the darkened window of the closed shop, as he made his way home from the office on a dreary, nondescript evening in late October. Halloween decorations almost made it hard to tell what the store actually sold, unless it was cornering the market in shabby looking fake cobwebs and unconvincing, hard plastic spiders. It always amused him when he saw these kinds of pieces of plastic tat to think that somewhere in the world there was a machine that made these things, and a person whose job it was to design them. Someone had put some work in, somewhere along the line, to conceive of that plastic cockroach nestling in the bright orange crepe paper at the bottom of the display, the shape of its legs, the dingy brown color it would be. Who were they? What was their life like? Did they enjoy th
eir job?

  So, I guess it's Halloween, soon, he thought to himself, with only mild interest. Some people thought of Halloween as a proper holiday that one should decorate for and celebrate, but Jack was fairly sure that something should only count as a real holiday if he got the day off from work for it, and he most certainly didn't have the 31st of October off. He'd given this year's Halloween no thought whatsoever until he'd noticed the crappy decorations. Maybe he'd go out for a drink after work that night though. Maybe he'd be lucky and some of the girls from the office might decide to dress up as slutty nurses or cops. He was just trying to imagine Sarah from reception in a skimpy witch costume as he kept on walking, past the Palladium Cinema (which was of course, showing classic horror movies), when it hit him.

  Quite literally.

  The huge, nail-polish red letter D that had formed part of the Palladium's old timey sign (for it was one of those retro movie theaters for hipsters) had decided upon that exact moment to come loose and fall from on high, smashing into Jack's poor, unwitting skull, and killing him instantly.

  ***

  The spotlight that shone down on Jack, the desk, and the woman across from him was almost painfully bright, but everything else around him was in total darkness. The scene would have been reminiscent of a surreal job interview, were it not for the fact that the woman, whoever she was, was wiping her eyes, and shuddering with fits of unsuppressed laughter as she looked at the contents of a faintly glowing folder. That, and the fact that the golden nameplate on the desk in front of her read, simply, 'Angel'.