Inventory of a Dead Room

The vault smelled of recycled air and old paper. Dr. Marina Caldwell pressed her gloved thumb to the lock plate and felt the seal hiss open. Six years since anyone had stepped inside. Six years since Professor Hendricks had vanished into whatever academic black hole consumed tenured xenoarchivalists who spent too much time with active relay technology.

Maren stepped through the threshold and cataloged the room in a single sweep. Eight feet by ten. Climate controlled to sixty-two degrees. Humidity held at thirty-four percent. A single desk stood in the center, its chair pushed back at an angle that suggested sudden departure. Against the far wall, the relay itself waited.

She set her coffee on the desk and pulled her tablet from her bag. The university had been clear. Hendricks was declared deceased in absentia. His assets reverted to the department. And no one else wanted the listening post. It was a dead room, they said. A waste of controlled environment space. They gave it to her because she was the only one who still believed inert hardware could hold secrets.

Maren knelt before the relay and ran her fingers along its casing. Dark metal. Warm to the touch. That was odd. The temperature should have kept it cool. She made a note on her tablet.

Unit exterior temperature elevated fourteen degrees above ambient. Possible residual power cycling.

She found the access panel and opened it. Inside, the relay looked exactly like the archived schematics. A crystalline core sat nested within conductive loops. Standard Orryn communication array. Dead as a doornail. She logged it as such.

Relay 7-Alpha. Status: Inert. Condition: Preserved. Recommendation: Decommission or storage.

She took a sip of her coffee. It had gone cold. She made another note.

Ambient temperature may require insulated beverage containers for extended cataloging sessions.

Then she touched the crystal.

It was not a shock. It was not a burn. It was a hum that started in her teeth and spread down through her jaw, her throat, her chest. Maren jerked her hand back but the hum remained. It had moved into her bones. Into the fillings of her teeth. Into the spaces between her ribs.

She heard a chord.

Not with her ears. With her skull. With the soft tissue of her brain. A chord that resolved into a voice. Alien. Deep. Resonant in a way that made her think of vast spaces and bodies pressed together.

You are the one who opens.

Maren stumbled backward, hit the desk, sent her coffee cup spinning across the surface. She watched it fall in slow motion, watched the brown liquid arc across Hendricks's old notes, and she did not care. Because there were other voices now.

A woman's voice. Human. Close. Oh god oh god oh god yes.

And Maren felt it. Felt what that woman felt. A rushing heat between her own thighs, sudden and insistent. Her labia swelled with blood that was not hers, that belonged to a body light-years away. She felt a clitoris throb with a stranger's arousal, felt the inner walls of a pussy she had never touched begin to clench and flutter with building need. A tightening in her belly. A pleasure that was not hers but was happening in her body anyway. She gasped and pressed her hand to her mouth.

The alien chord deepened. I am Orwell Omega of the Distant Choir. You have accepted the link.

I didn't, Maren thought back, and the thought rang through her head like a bell.

You touched the relay. You opened the connection. The claim is registered.

The woman's voice came again, breathless, laughing. Oh, she's a new one. She doesn't know yet.

The pleasure surged. Maren felt fingers that were not her own working between thighs that were and were not hers. She felt the ghost of penetration, something thick and deliberate pressing into a channel that tightened around it with wet, greedy pulses. The woman's body was being fucked. Slowly. Thoroughly. And Maren felt every stroke as though the cock were sliding into her own cunt instead.

Her knees buckled. She caught herself on the edge of the desk, fingers white-knuckled against the metal. The orgasm built in waves. She felt the woman's breath catch. Felt the muscles deep inside begin to rhythmically contract, pulling, milking. The pressure swelled. Her own nipples hardened against her bra, aching with borrowed need. Her own thighs trembled. Her own cunt clenched around nothing, desperate to match the fullness the other woman felt.

Oh god, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm

The woman's orgasm crested. Maren felt every spasm. Felt the muscles of a body not her own clench and release in rapid, shuddering pulses. Felt the flood of wetness, the clenching of slick walls around an intrusion she couldn't see. A wave of warmth and satisfaction that left her dizzy and wet and shaking. Her own underwear was soaked through. Her own thighs were slick. She had come without being touched. Or she had been touched by something that didn't require proximity.

She grabbed the relay's access panel and slammed it shut. The chord did not stop. She yanked the power cable from the wall. The chord continued. She pressed both hands to her ears, but the sound was inside her head.

The link persists, Orven said. It is not a machine you can turn off. It is a connection. A bond. A claim.

Maren backed away until she hit the wall. She slid down to the floor, her cataloger's fingers pressed to her temples, her breath coming fast and shallow. The hum was still there. The alien chord was still there. The woman's residual pleasure was still warm in her belly, still pulsing faintly in her cunt. Her clit throbbed with the aftershocks of a climax that belonged to someone else. She could feel the other woman's come leaking from her, could feel the slow relaxation of well-fucked muscles.

She closed her eyes and tried to think in inventory terms. List. Categorize. Control.

Event: Unauthorized connection.

Cause: Contact with relay core.

Effect: Auditory hallucination. Possible neurological contamination.

But the thoughts did not stay private. They leaked. She felt them being caught and held by something vast and patient.

Event, Orven repeated, tasting the word. Unauthorized. Connection. You catalog even now.

It's my job, she thought, and the thought was sharp.

It was your job, Orven said. Now you are a node. A living archive. Your body will sing the catalog.

The woman's voice returned, softer now. I'm Briony. You'll get used to the way he talks. He means it literally, though. Your body will sing. Wait till you feel the training hymns.

Maren felt a phantom touch on her cheek. Gentle. Almost kind. She flinched away from it.

Don't touch me, she thought.

I'm not touching you, Briony said. I'm in a ship a thousand light-years from your little room. But I can feel your skin. You can feel my pleasure. That's how it works.

And I can feel how wet you still are, Briony added, her voice warm with amusement. How your nipples are hard. How empty you feel after I came. You want to be filled. The link makes you honest.

Maren opened her eyes. The vault looked the same. The same gray walls. The same humming relay. The same scattered notes and cold coffee. But everything was different. She was not alone in her head anymore. And she was not alone in her body. The ache between her legs was real. The slick mess in her underwear was real. The slow throb of her clit was real.

She stood up slowly. Her legs were shaky. Her underwear clung to her, cold and wet against swollen flesh. She had never been so aware of her own body as a thing that could be felt by others.

This is temporary, she thought. I'll find a way to break the connection.

You won't, Orven said. But you will try. That is acceptable. Resistance is part of the song.

Maren picked up her tablet. Her hands were trembling. She typed a new entry.

Relay 7-Alpha. Status: Active. Condition: Connected. Recommendation: Further study required.

She stopped typing. The words were wrong. They were inadequate. They were the language of a woman who had not just felt a stranger's orgasm in her own body, who had not just soaked through her clothes with borrowed pleasure, who was not still aching and empty and wanting.

She deleted the entry and wrote nothing.

The tones continued in her teeth. A low, patient hum that promised more. Promised training. Promised a choir that would teach her to sing.

Maren grabbed her bag and walked out of the vault. The door sealed behind her. She stood in the fluorescent hallway of the university basement, her heart pounding, her body still resonating with alien music. Her thighs were still slippery. Her nipples still ached. She pressed them against the cold fabric of her bra and tried not to think about how good it felt.

She could still hear them. Faintly. Like a radio playing in another room.

She pressed her hand to her chest and felt the hum under her skin. Her breast was heavy in her palm. Her nipple pressed against her hand through layers of fabric. She could feel Briony's amusement at the contact. Could feel Orven's vast patience.

This isn't real, she told herself.

But she knew it was. And she knew she would go back to the vault tomorrow. Not to catalog. To listen.

The tones followed her all the way home. And that night, alone in her bed, she felt Briony's pleasure again. Felt the slow building burn. Felt the thick intrusion. Felt herself clench and come around nothing while the Choir hummed in her bones. And when it was over, when she lay shaking and wet and satisfied in a way she had never been with any partner, she heard Orven's voice.

The first hymn is complete. Tomorrow, you will learn the second.

Maren closed her eyes. Her hand was between her legs. Her fingers were slick with her own come and with Briony's borrowed pleasure. She could not tell the difference anymore.

She did not want to.