Alex's Point of View
Alex Wagner wasn't always smart.
Well, that wasn't strictly accurate. He'd always been bright, but like anything, there are levels to this shit. As his mom, a teacher most of her life, told him, a typical classroom of thirty can be divided into three groups. There are five dumb kids who won't get it no matter what you do, five smart kids who will get it no matter what you do, and twenty average kids "on the bubble". The skill of a teacher was reaching the average kids.
For most of his life, Alex was kid number five, the dumbest of the "smart kids". He knew what real big brains were like and it wasn't him.
Until a radioactive rocket bit him.
September eleventh happened when Alex was a kid, and he'd spent his childhood and teen years looking up to all the older boys in his hometown who joined to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. By the time Alex was old enough, the wars were over, or so he thought.
The day after his eighteenth birthday, Alex walked into the local Marine recruiter's office with thoughts of free college, action, and adventure, all the stupid shit they used to trick young people into signing their lives away.
The recruiter fucked him, as recruiters do. He'd wanted to be infantry, a grunt, the "tip of the spear", the cool guy doing high speed shit on the front line. Towards the end of boot camp he found out his enlistment contract had a clause that allowed him to be reclassified according to the "needs of the Marine Corps". They made him an "artillery cannoneer", essentially, an ammo bitch humping shells. Just great.
Lance Corporal Wagner spent the next nine months painting rocks at Twentynine Palms when the word came they were going to Syria.
What the fuck! Since when were we in Syria?
Newly-elected President Harriet Clayton made destroying ISIS her top priority, and ordered his battalion to the outskirts of a city he'd never heard of: Raqqa, the capitol of ISIS, apparently.
For months, they rained down pure hell on Raqqa, bombarding the city to soften it up so the "good Syrians" (whoever they were) could take it back from the terrorists. It wasn't as exciting as it sounded. Fire missions become pretty routine after a while, too routine, as it turned out.
One day, a small group of ISIS fighters crept close enough to Alex's fire base and launched a rocket attack. He didn't wake up for two whole days. When he did, Alex still had all his arms and legs, thankfully, but the doctor said he was badly concussed. They didn't bother to evacuate him and he returned to duty a week later. The deployment wrapped up a few months after that.
Alex felt salty as fuck, walking around the base with his shiny new Combat Action Ribbon and Purple Heart. Only the old guys still had those. There was something different about him, though. Lance Corporal Wagner started seeing things, noticing things.
It started small, like calculating the change in his head automatically when he bought something at the PX. He wasn't trying to do it, he just did it.
Was I always this good at math?
The word came down that the Corps was replacing the old 155 mm howitzers with HIMARS rocket artillery, and Alex received orders to reclassify as an artillery radar operator. Learning about radar was so fucking fascinating, and above all easy.
What happened to me? Did that ISIS rocket knock something loose in my brain?
Whatever it was, Alex retook the SAT when he had one year left on his enlistment contract and got a perfect score. He applied to the Miskatonic Institute of Technology on a lark and actually got in!
Covid ruined his freshman year at MIT but the Clayton administration handled the pandemic pretty well and things went back to normal after that. School was great. He learned a lot, even walked on to the football team. It was only Division III, but still. Alex got pretty swole in the Marines. There wasn't a lot to do at Twentynine Palms but train. By his senior year he was starting at linebacker; it was great!
Academically, he found himself enjoying school for the first time in his life. It wasn't hard, just interesting. At MIT you could major in electrical engineering, computer science, or electrical engineering & computer science. Alex took all the core classes for both, learning everything he possibly could.
The only complaint he had was his social life. Balancing a heavy engineering course load and football practice with making friends and meeting girls was the one problem he couldn't solve, until he met Alice.
Alice Adelman was the woman he'd been waiting for his whole life, his person, his partner, his everything. A student at nearby Wecksley, the women's college, Alice struck up a conversation with him at a frat party and the rest was history.
He should've been way more suspicious. Gorgeous blondes don't just throw themselves at you, even if you're a jacked MIT student with a high-paying job lined up after graduation.
His familiarity with the HIMARS system got Alex an internship at Lockhole-Merlin, which suited him just fine. He had no interest whatsoever in going to San Francisco and coding up bullshit, time-wasting apps. Alex wanted to build real, physical hardware!
After they'd been dating for a year Alice broke down into tears and confessed. She was part of a special government program to assign American girlfriends to American engineers working on classified weapons systems, lest they date a Russian or Chinese spy by accident.
Alex was hurt, really hurt, but Alice swore to him that her feelings were real. Their relationship had begun under false pretenses, but she promised to be truthful with him from then on. As the saying goes, the truth hurts.
Alice wasn't just his government-assigned girlfriend, no, that'd be too simple. Alice was a goddamn assassin! She seduced men, fucked them, and killed them!
There were nights when Alice would come home to him, impossibly horny, and she'd just take him. It was like making love with a whirlwind. The information he had now put everything in perspective. Killing was her foreplay, her familiar pattern. Their hottest sex always happened after a fresh kill.
It was hard to take, so hard, but eventually he came to accept it. Alice's openness and honesty really helped the bitter pill go down. She always made it very clear that she only loved him and could only properly enjoy sex with him. Alice swore she didn't enjoy fucking her targets; it was the kill that got her hot. They'd talked it out; they could talk about anything, except her past.
There was a darkness in Alice Adelman, a darkness he dared not ask about. Something really bad happened to her once and cast a shadow over her whole life. Bits and pieces would trickle out occasionally, but Alex knew better than to pursue that line of questioning. Sometimes she'd randomly burst into tears. Sometimes she'd wake up next to him, terrified and confused. Sometimes it took hours to calm her down and remind her who and where she was.
"Someday," she promised, "someday I'll tell you why I'm like this, but not today."
Alex would just have to accept that.
He checked his phone. "Working late again, shit." That could mean a kill or a "dry hole", a wasted night hunting for a target that wasn't there. Alex didn't know which he preferred.
Their apartment in Arlington was eerily quiet. Even if she left now, it'd be at least an hour before she could come home from her hunt in the district.
When the pizza came he placed it in an insulated bag they used for takeout. Say what you want about the DMV, the area had some of the best restaurants in the country. Alice usually preferred to eat at home rather than go out, the less she was seen in public outside her work, the better. So Alex would often pick up dinner on the way home, or his girlfriend would.
Thoughts about what Alice was doing right now started intruding, so Alex forced them away by thinking about work. The new big contract at Lockhole would be some of the most satisfying, challenging, and impactful work of his life. As a bonus, it was for the Marines. It-
The door burst open.
Alice was wearing one of her hunting outfits, a sexy, low-cut red dress that hugged her body suggestively. Her breathing was labored, with short, shallow, stuttering gasps of air, almost hyperventilating. Her white skin was flushed and inflamed from her cheeks to her chest. Those blue eyes were dark with desire, pupils dilated, looking at him hungrily.
She definitely killed a man tonight, he thought.
"Honey, I did a bad thing," she confessed.
Alex sighed. "What happened, babe?"
"I let a target kiss me! I'm so fucking sorry. I was sloppy, frustrated by another dry hole, and this guy kept pestering me. I wasn't taking him seriously and once we were in private he kissed me before I could stop him. I know you hate it and I feel awful. I didn't mean to hurt you!"
This could've been way worse. If Alex could deal with her assassin life he could deal with this. Her instant confession and obvious guilt did a lot to put him in a forgiving mood.
"I understand," he said. "I forgive you."
"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" she babbled, wrapping her arms around him. Her words gradually deteriorated into little nips at his neck and Alice started walking him towards their bedroom. Her hot breath at his ear, her firm breasts pressed against him, the scent of her hair in his nostrils, it all combined to drive him wild. They were about to dance their familiar dance.
One article of clothing after another was carelessly tossed aside and soon she pushed him down on the bed they shared. Only their underwear remained.
Her lips devoured his, her tongue insistent, invasive, almost violating as she claimed his mouth. Alice's long blonde hair hung over them like a shroud, private as death. She grabbed his hand and placed it on her breast. The intimacy thrilled him.
His girlfriend was sensitive about her breasts. She didn't like it when men looked, and especially didn't like it when they touched. The fact that she specifically did this for him alone made him feel so close to her, so trusted. Only their love could ever conquer her trauma.
"Take it off!" she commanded heatedly.
Alex obeyed without a word, reaching behind and unhooking the clasp on her bra. Once her boobs were free Alice bore down on him, crushing their bodies together, kissing, rubbing, seeking any skin-to-skin contact she could, like she was trying to melt them into one being.
Their sweat mingled; Alice half moaned/half growled as she ground herself into his erection. Snaking her legs underneath him, Alice flipped them over.
"I want you on top tonight," she stated. "I belong to you, only you."
She shimmied out of her panties and Alex did the same for his boxer shorts. His dick was so close to her wet slit, but he didn't just shove it in. Alex leaned in for another kiss, sweeter this time, more gentle. "I love you," he whispered against her lips.
"I love you too. I need you so bad, Alex. I'm ovulating."
She wasn't, actually. Alice was on birth control. This was dirty talk for his benefit, but Alex wasn't complaining.
"Yeeees," she moaned as he entered her.
They rocked gently together, little half-strokes at first, gradually picking up the pace.
Alice locked her legs behind him.
"I love you, Alex. I want your baby."
She kissed his neck and dug her fingernails into his back. That was his cue to go harder and deeper.
Tump! Tump! Tump!
His girlfriend whimpered softly with every thrust.
They were so close now, close in more ways than one. Her pussy clamped down on him, jealous, possessive, unwilling to let him go, her firm abs flexing as they moved in perfect sync.
"You feel my flat stomach, baby? It's ready for you," she urged him on. "I'm going to cum soon, and when I do I want to feel you gush!"
Alex increased the tempo again, desperately seeking his own peak.
"Yes, just like that," Alice praised him. "I'm yours to impregnate. I'm, I'm-"
A low, guttural, animal sound erupted from her throat, a sound she muffled by biting him. Her pussy pulsed and fluttered, drawing him deeper.
With a last, desperate thrust, he buried himself in her body as deep as he could and released his seed.
"Alice!" he cried, eyes shut tight in ecstasy.
They held each other for a while, two sweaty, tired bodies coming back down to Earth from wherever you go when you cum like that. After some time their hearts slowed down and their breathing evened out.
His girlfriend looked radiant, so perfect, so raw. Nobody else got to see her like this. So what if she was an assassin? Alice was his. The people she killed probably had it coming anyway.
"Ah," Alice sighed contentedly, "this is the best. Your love keeps me sane, Alex. Anyway, I'm famished. Think that pizza is still hot?"