Chương 57: Terms and Conditions

The room was thick with the scent of sex. The sheets beneath us had turned into a tangled, damp cocoon. Fifteen years ago, I would have been lying there with a stupid grin plastered across my face, mentally congratulating myself for getting such an incredible woman into bed. But at my age, hormonal surges faded fast. The dopamine haze cleared within minutes, leaving behind only my usual mental clarity. I was an accountant again, balancing debits against credits.

Reviewing the last half hour, I had to admit something: [Trainer] activated during any kind of physical activity, even sex, but it operated strictly in my favor. Invisible mental threads simply adjusted my movements to protect my musculoskeletal system. They pushed me to straighten my spine to optimize oxygen flow to my lungs or altered the angle of my leg to reduce strain on my knee joint.

Now, if I had used [Special Command] to squeeze every possible ounce of pleasure from my partner's erogenous zones, that would've been interesting. Still, this was good enough for an initial field test. Any proper study needed a clean control group.

"So, what's the verdict, Professor Langstrom?" I turned my head and watched her casually brush damp, tangled strands of hair away from her forehead.

"You certainly have stamina, Cadet Ross," Selina replied. Her voice was deliberately flat, dry and academic, as if we were still sitting in her lecture hall instead of sprawled across a crushed mattress.

"But otherwise…"

"You expected more?" I prompted calmly.

"Yeah." Her verdict did not bother me in the slightest. Not even a trace of wounded male pride stirred inside me. In business terms, it would have been foolish to expect Michelin stars from a restaurant critic for a perfectly prepared but completely standard chicken-and-rice dish. I had not added any spice this time.

"Next time we'll test [Special Command] in bed," I promised, folding my hands behind my head.

"We can start round two right now if you've caught your breath."

"Tempting offer, Tom, but not tonight." Selina suddenly fell silent, rolled onto her back, and assumed a rather ridiculous position. She pressed her palms against her lower back and lifted her straight legs vertically toward the ceiling. I gave the display a skeptical look.

"And what exactly's this performance supposed to be?"

"Helping the sperm reach the uterus," she explained calmly.

"It increases the chances of successful conception several times over." My eyebrows slowly rose. An unpleasant chill stirred in my chest.

"You said you were on birth control."

"I lied." Selina turned toward me and put on the most innocent, almost childlike expression imaginable.

"You wouldn't hit a woman wearing glasses, would you?" Let's just say that claiming I had not immediately wanted to grab her and shake her would have been a lie. Being manipulated behind your back and used like a prize breeding bull without your consent was not exactly an enjoyable experience. My office years had trained me to despise hidden clauses in contracts. Only one thing stopped me from telling the professor exactly what I thought of her methods.

"Why'd you do it?" I asked. My voice remained perfectly level, without a single extra decibel. I simply shifted my gaze toward the blank ceiling, unwilling to look a liar in the eye.

"You mean the contraceptives?" She gave a faint shrug.

"Well, I believe it's always easier to ask for forgiveness afterward than to get official permission beforehand. So sorry about the little trick." There was unmistakable smugness in her tone, the confidence of someone convinced she had already won. It irritated me, but I forced myself to breathe more slowly.

"I'm not talking about the pills, Selina. I mean the long-term plan. Why do you even want a child? Especially from me?"

"Oh, there's no conspiracy here," she replied easily, without the slightest embarrassment.

"Let's stick to the facts. I'm almost thirty. In the Corps, I'm probably the only woman my age who still doesn't have children. Behind my back, they openly call me an old maid."

"So you want a child just to shut up the local gossip?" I asked, feeling my opinion of her dropping rapidly.

"If I genuinely cared about the opinions of those sex-obsessed primates in the barracks, I'd have gotten pregnant before my very first portal deployment. Like half the girls around here do." I gave a faint nod. Danny had once explained the local culture to me. Among the cadets, there really was a hormone-fueled race to sleep with someone between graduation night and their first combat mission. Considering the mortality rate on the other side, many of them reasonably feared they might never get a second chance.

"I've been thinking about motherhood for a long time," Selina continued, still keeping her legs in the air.

"But the selection, so to speak, was disappointing. There weren't any suitable candidates."

"And what made you change your mind about me? If I remember your lectures correctly, superpowers aren't hereditary. The child's chances of awakening would be exactly the same as any ordinary civilian's."

"Powers aren't," Selina purred almost like a cat, and pure scientific fanaticism flashed in her eyes.

"But your muscle fiber density's unique. And your immune system's phenomenal. If a child inherited even half your physical traits, they'd start life with an enormous genetic advantage over their peers."

"Pragmatic to the core." Judging by the twitch at the corner of her lips, she appreciated the questionable compliment.

"So according to your logic," I continued, "I'm supposed to buy a ring and officially propose now?"

"Absolutely not," she cut in without the slightest hesitation.

"A husband would just be an unnecessary variable in my schedule. I don't need a partner to manage a household. I'm fully self-sufficient, and I can raise a child on my own." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"And what if I'm not okay with that arrangement? What if I decide to fight for custody rights?"

"Then you'll have to sue me," Selina said crisply. The words rolled off her tongue with the ease of a line rehearsed in front of a mirror dozens of times.

"But keep in mind, I've got excellent lawyers, and we'll respond aggressively. In the absolute best-case scenario for you, a judge might grant you supervised visitation a couple times a week. Is that really something you want?" I stayed silent, feeling a dull anger slowly boiling inside me. The American legal system already favored mothers in custody disputes, and this case involved a leading military research scientist versus a rookie cadet.

Getting dragged into that fight would mean volunteering to have every ugly detail of your life ripped apart and smeared through the mud.

"Come on, Tom, don't mope. I'm not a monster. I've actually got a gift for you." Selina nodded toward the desk, where a thick green plastic folder rested on top of a pile of paperwork.

"Inside, you'll find my personal theories on unlocking your evolution. Considering your manic obsession with running biological experiments on yourself, I had to hurry up with conception before you injected yourself with some new garbage and grew donkey ears or a dog tail. I'd like to give birth to a healthy, attractive heir, not a museum specimen."

"I see. And thanks for the honesty." I calmly got out of bed, pulled on my pants, and picked up the plastic folder from the desk.

"Don't forget to shut the door on your way out," Selina called after me without even bothering to abandon her ridiculous pose. I stopped at the doorway and turned around. There was neither anger nor triumph on my face, only cold calculation.

"By the way, you can put your legs down now. Before I got into bed with you, I activated [Special Command] and completely sterilized every sperm cell for three hours." Selina froze. Then her legs dropped onto the mattress with a heavy thud. A whole spectrum of emotions crossed her face, from genuine shock to rapidly rising fury.

"Why'd you do that?!"

"Because I'm a paranoid man, Selina. If a beautiful woman takes the initiative herself and doesn't ask for anything in return, there's definitely fine print hidden somewhere in the contract. And as you can see, I was right." I grabbed the doorknob.

"And yeah, I forgive you."

"Don't you dare walk away!" Selina practically launched herself off the bed, forgetting all about clothes.

"Cadet Ross, I didn't give you permission to leave!" Something inside me tightened like a steel cable. The knot of anger I had been suppressing for the past several minutes was on the verge of snapping. This woman had coldly used me like breeding stock, lied to my face, and was now trying to lecture me like a misbehaving schoolboy standing in front of the principal. A dozen vicious insults hovered on the tip of my tongue, each one perfectly aimed at her ego.

But the former office clerk inside me hit the brakes in time. Picking a fight with a senior military research scientist would amount to pure career sabotage. Her theories accelerated my personal evolution faster than any training regimen ever could. Burning bridges now would mean throwing away every future benefit.

"Why're you still standing by the door?" Selina stared at me as if she wanted to bore a hole through my skull.

"Get back here. Now." My self-control was hanging by a thread. One more second and I would explode into pointless shouting. [Special Command: disable emotions for 3 hours] The effect exceeded every expectation. The boiling mixture of wounded pride, anger, and hormones vanished instantly, as though it had never existed at all. My mind cleared completely, turning into a blank sheet of paper. My pulse stabilized. I no longer felt like a humiliated man.

Standing in front of me was not an arrogant, manipulative woman but a complex operational problem requiring the most efficient solution.

"All right," I answered. My voice lost every trace of emotion, sounding flat and mechanical. I turned around and walked back toward her with calm, measured steps.

"I'm prepared to hear your sincere apology, after which we can proceed to constructive negotiations." For a second, Selina looked genuinely caught off guard. My abrupt transformation from barely restrained fury to absolute, unsettling calm had clearly thrown her off balance. She took a small step backward.

"Fine... sit down at the table," she exhaled, trying to regain control of the situation. I remained where I was.

"First, I expect an apology."

"Are you deaf, Ross?" She irritably adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose.

"I already apologized."

"That apology only addressed the misinformation regarding contraceptives," I explained in the lifeless tone of an answering machine.

"What I require now's an apology for the manipulation as a whole. If you don't acknowledge the destructive nature of your methods, I see no commercial value in continuing this conversation." Selina drilled into me with a furious stare. Earlier, it would have affected me. Now I did not care in the slightest. Even if the commander in chief or the president of the United States had been standing in front of me, my dopamine and cortisol levels would have remained at zero.

"I deeply apologize for my behavior," she said, her voice dripping with poisonous sarcasm.

"I'll clearly be haunted by nightmares about this disgraceful act for the rest of my life. Is your ego satisfied now?"

"Completely." I acknowledged the fact with a slight nod, fully aware that genuine sincerity was impossible to obtain from her anyway, while the formal conditions had technically been met. We sat down across from each other at the table. The only thing Selina still wore was her glasses, but with my emotional filter disabled, her nudity registered as nothing more than a collection of physiological data. The silence dragged on. Apparently, Selina herself did not fully understand why she had forced me to stay.

Her wounded pride demanded that she get the last word, but she had no actual plan beyond that.

"We were discussing the subject of our potential child," I began evenly, breaking the silence.

"After analyzing the available variables, I've concluded that your proposal's economically and strategically advantageous."

"Seriously?" She looked at me suspiciously, searching for a catch.

"Is this some kind of joke?"

"I'm currently in no condition for humor." That was the absolute truth. Under normal circumstances, resentment and stubbornness would have pushed me to cut all contact with her immediately. But now, stripped of emotional noise, the advantages of her proposal were obvious.

"And what exactly made you change your position so suddenly?" She adjusted her glasses again, studying my face carefully.

"Your arguments regarding the irreversible nature of evolutionary processes, along with the realistic understanding that every portal mission carries a probability of death." I calmly folded my fingers together and rested my elbows on the table.

"As long as I remain functional and possess high-quality biological material, it'd be irrational to waste the opportunity to continue my bloodline. If I die during one of the operations, my mother'll at least have grandchildren. That constitutes acceptable compensation."

"That's mature thinking." Selina nodded approvingly, clearly pleased by my pragmatism.

"If you die, I'll make sure to bring the children to visit your mother on weekends."

"Your verbal assurance's insufficient," I replied just as coldly.

"After my death, I'll have no ability to verify your integrity. Therefore, before any fertilization procedure takes place, we'll sign a detailed contract." Selina frowned, and irritation flashed through her eyes again.

"And how exactly d'you imagine that working?"

"At this stage, I lack sufficient legal data to draft such an agreement," I answered honestly as I rose from the table, signaling that the meeting was over.

"But without signed documents, I reject your proposal. Once I leave the training camp and regain freedom of movement, we'll hire independent attorneys. Assuming this matter still interests you by then. On my end, I promise not to take any radical steps related to the further evolution of my body until that point." With the matter formally concluded and both sides' positions established, I turned around and left Selina's apartment, carefully closing the door behind me.