Quaranteam: Phil's Tale - Ch. 16 (Patreon)

Chapter 16

November 3rd, 2020

It was ridiculous how fast the world could go tits up without warning.

The morning had started with some good news – one of the other research teams across the country thought they might have a different solution to the DuoHalo virus, one that wouldn’t involve quite so many quirks and foibles. Initial non-human tests had gone well, and they were starting human tests today. If things went well, they could pivot to this other solution within a matter of weeks, ahead of the President’s upcoming speech where all the facts were going to be laid out for not only the nation, but the world at large.

Phil had mixed feelings about the whole thing – he was hopeful that the other team’s vaccine would work, but untested optimism had gotten them into a lot of the mess they were in now. The virus wouldn’t spread that fast, they’d hoped. It wouldn’t be that deadly to those that caught it, they’d hoped. The virus might have had an aggressive start but would die off after that when somehow humanity had developed herd immunity, they’d hoped. He’d learned not to trust hope, so until he had confirmation that the new vaccine worked without any long-term side effects, he wasn’t going to go relying on it.

They were also approaching 25% of the surviving male population of the United States being partially staffed with imprinted women. The resistance rate varied from the 50s to the high 90s, but over 25% of the living men in the United States now had at least three or more partners pumping life giving Quaranteam serum into their veins. That number felt low, dangerously low, but the ramp up speed was accelerating, and the thought was they’d be at 50% before the end of the month, and in some cases, the ‘stud trading’ was in full effect.

In early September, Project: Funnel Cake had begun with just a handful of target countries: Japan, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Canada and South Korea. The term ‘stud trading’ had been chosen explicitly to spell out what was going on – men of low education were being sent to other countries in exchange for more desirable (usually for education, but occasionally for things like beauty or exceptional physical health) women, often at a somewhat ridiculous exchange rate. This was because in several of these countries, the male survival rates were far worse than they’d been in the US.

South Korea, in particular, had only 10% of the men it had had a year ago, and was in desperate need of stabilization. As such, they were sending women at the rate of nearly twenty in exchange for one man to be sent back. Some of the men sent over to South Korea spoke Korean, but most of them were just being sent over to live lives on something of a stud farm, trying to sleep with and impregnate as many women as possible. Finding one woman to translate for all the others would be easy enough.

The rates varied from country to country, but none of them were anything less than ten to one rate. Poor Canada had had whole portions of it truly kicked in the teeth, but the more remote and disconnected parts were doing better, if it could be described that way. The casualties were astronomical in some areas, Vancouver particularly, but others, like Ontario, had been almost militant about their lockdowns and were holding on strong.

By early October, several other countries – Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Greece, nearly half of Africa and most of South America – were offering blocks of women for ‘stud trades,’ although it was clear the US was no longer the only game in town, as it seemed Germany had somehow gotten their hands on enough of the Quaranteam serum to reverse engineer it and start mass production of their own, much as the UK was doing.

There were suspicions that the Russians might have also been doing some stud trading, although it was difficult to get a read on what their situation looked like, especially since the reports of heavy internal political infighting were clouding the matter.

China continued to be a giant dark void, although Phil had seen some satellite photos digging mass graves, and he suspected it was only going to be a matter of time before the Chinese were going to be asking for help. He’d seen a report floating around that one of the key aspects of giving aid to the Chinese was that Taiwan become a part of the United States, or that their independence would have to be completely and totally guaranteed, which Phil was certain were terms definitely chapping the hides of what little remained of the Chinese government power structure.

And lately, there were reports of Northern Korean women simply walking or driving out of North Korea into South Korea or China, as there were basically no men remaining left to stop them. The current operating intel was that NK might, in fact, be one of the first regions to hit a 0% male survival rate, due to second and third wave infections, but the complete media blackout from that country meant that information was, as of yet, unconfirmed.

With the stud trading going on, Phil and his team had been required to add a small amount of information to their Oracle files – languages that they and their existing Team spoke. Phil spoke English, Tagalog, Japanese and Spanish fluently, Vietnamese and Korean passingly and knew enough French to tell a few bawdy jokes. High profile, high importance members were going to get their numbers up well beyond the recommended number, but if that meant they could take on imports from other countries, the more the merrier. Bill McKenna had joked with the Major General when he’d asked them for the updates if the summer he’d spent studying in Sweden back when he’d been in college oh so long ago meant he was going to be sent members of the Swedish Bikini Team. Neither Phil or Bill had been certain the Major General had been kidding when he’d responded, “Would you like them to?”

Phil had been told in no uncertain terms that he needed to get his numbers up, and if he didn’t, they’d eventually just start telling him he couldn’t say no anymore. He didn’t particularly care for the way they were saying that as of late, but he also knew that he couldn’t decline them forever, so he was letting Audrey and Linda do initial screenings of profiles, and reviewing the ones they and Oracle thought would be good matches for his Team. They wanted him up to at least a dozen by the end of the month and would prefer him to be closing in on 18 by the end of the year, so that he was overly protected. He was too important to be allowed to be down dealing with even the shortest bouts of DuoHalo.

The same applied for poor Bill, but Bill’s wife was thankfully doing the job of turning women down for him, trying to make sure that while some hot young things got through, he was also doing his fair share to take on more age-appropriate women. She knew that Bill was going to be expected to be fathering more kids soon but was okay with those women making up the minority of Team McKenna, considering her and Bill’s only daughter was in her early 20s, and had been paired up early on in the process to her long-term boyfriend.

Phil’s most recent addition had arrived two days ago direct on a flight from Helsinki, Finland. Her name was Ingrid Virtanen, she was 23, she was a physical therapist, and she was a titanic Nordic blonde goddess of a woman, clocking in at 6’8”. Even Linda’s first words to the woman had been, “Damn, I hope you come with a built-in ladder.” She was going to function as his house’s personal doctor, or at least their front-line defense.

That was the good news he’d had over the last few days, however, and now it felt like shitty news was starting to drop left and right. There had been a lot of folks who’d been reported dead, and most of the time, it was easy to look at them as statistics rather than as individuals, but there were handfuls of people that Phil had a lookout for, people who were on the priority list to get the serum as soon as they could. But priority still meant ‘as soon as possible’ and in some cases, that just wasn’t soon enough.

A couple of days ago, Phil’s friend Andy’s older brother Matthew Rook, had checked into a hospital with DuoHalo symptoms in full effect. Phil had dispatched a group to get a handful of vaccinated women to the man as quickly as possible, but by the time his life raft had arrived, Matty had already died. Phil had done what he could for most of the direct family of his good friends as he could, but Matty had been very much ‘I’ll be fine’ right up until the very end, and Phil hadn’t been quick enough on the draw to see past that. He was going to resolve to stop taking people at their word unless it was absolutely necessary.

As that information was rolling around in Phil’s head, while he was decided how he could possibly tell one of his oldest friends that his only brother was dead, the most unexpected thing happened – Andy called.

“Hey Phil, sorry to bug you at work,” Andy said. “You got a moment?”

“Sure,” Phil said, deciding not to bring his brother’s death up right at the start. Clearly Andy had called him with a reason in mind. “What’s up?”

“Would you be willing to take Doctor Charlotte Varma on as one of your partners?”

That threw Phil completely for a loop. “What the hell are you talking about, Andy? The good doctor was dispatched to join someone’s household yesterday.”

“She was, and now she’s currently with me, and unpaired. Dr. Varma didn’t think it would be a good idea for both her and her daughter to be paired to the same man, so her daughter, Asha, is now paired with me.”

“Andy, you’re not making any sense. What about the man she was supposed to be paired with?”

Andy sighed on the other end of the line. “You’re going to be mad at me, Phil, and frankly, you have every right to be, but I have to tell you, I didn’t know what the hell to do here…”

“What to do… Andy, give me a straight answer and tell me what the fuck you’re going on about, and I mean right now.”

“Alright, so I know Niko is working on the Quaranteam project in some way or another, and she found out that Dr. Varma and her daughter were going to be sent to a man neither she or I think is a very good person, Arthur Covington the 4th.”

“I already hate where this is going, Andy,” Phil sighed, “but continue.”

“Covington has a poker game where he and a handful of other men from New Eden gamble with women before they're imprinted, allowing them to be reassigned to other men in question.”

“WHAT?!”

“I know! I know it’s horrible, Phil, but the two women that showed up on my doorstep yesterday, one of them seemed great, but the other… the other was Erin.”

Phil groaned. “Christ, I am slipping. If I’d have known—”

“It’s been taken care of, Phil,” Andy sighed. “Because Niko refused to let Covington have both Dr. Varma and her daughter, she got me an invite to the poker game—”

“Fuck sake, Andy, you’re good at poker but—”

“Yeah, well, good at poker is apparently good enough to clean most of these idiots out, because I won… well, I won a lot of different women, all of whom I’m offering the chance to pair again with other people if they want to. Charlotte’s asked if she can be paired with you. I, uh, was going to send Asha your way, but Charlotte says she prefers non-white men, so Asha imprinted herself on me on the way back to the house.”

“Okay, sure, I can take in Charlotte, Andy, especially if she’s asking me to, but when you say that you ‘won a lot of different women,’ how many women are we talking here?”

“Uh, seven.”

“SEVEN?! Jesus, Andy, you didn’t get any diplomats or rock stars I should know about, did you?”

“Well, no rock stars or diplomats, no, but…”

“But what Andy?”

“Er…”

“But what Andy?”

“Piper Brown, the athlete; Emily Stevens and Sarah Washington, the actors.”

Phil couldn’t help but laugh at that. “You fucking dog. I know you’ve had a celebrity crush on Sarah Washington for a while. If I’d have known she was passing through our offices, I might’ve tried to redirect her to you. And none of them refused?”

“Emily and Sarah were more than happy to get imprinted onto me and join my family,” Andy said, “but I have to tell you… I’m not sure Piper really even had a choice, and that’s weighing pretty heavily on me.”

“What do you mean she didn’t have a choice?”

Andy sighed on the other end of the line. “Covington had clearly confined her to quarters since she’d arrived, and it was clear she’d been given the serum some time ago, but hadn’t been imprinted yet, and it had driven her around the bend some. She was nonverbal, uncommunicative. In fact, she basically tackled me as soon as I walked through the door. What’s even worse, it seemed like my first load of cum wasn’t enough to trigger an imprinting.”

“How long had that bastard kept her in there?”

“A week? Maybe longer.”

“A week?!” Phil could feel the vein on the side of his neck throbbing, and maybe the one on his forehead as well. He was going to kill Covington with his own bare hands if given the chance. The man was lucky he wasn’t going to be on trial for murder. Piper Brown had gone longer between injection and imprinting than anyone else, and that by at least double. Around 2 days after injection women started having trouble thinking clearly. Around 4 days, they were basically incapable of logic or reason. When Niko had been brought to Andy, she’d been about 3 days out from injection, and she’d barely been able to put one word in front of the other. Nobody had wanted to push it any further than that. “Is she okay?”

“I checked in on her this morning, and she’s still in the imprinting sleep, but other than that, she seems fine. When we brought her back to the house, I had a few of the girls hose her down, wash her up and put her into some clean clothes, because she was filthy. I think she was covered in piss and shit, because they’d just locked her in a room and hadn’t done anything with her.”

Phil groaned but had to laugh a little bit at the imagery. “I’m a little impressed you could get hard enough to do the deed with her.”

Andy laughed a little himself. “Not going to lie, Phil; it might well have been a fear boner. She was feral and just basically attacked me. I think I got a few scratches on my arms and chest, and it took a second orgasm to get enough semen in her to trigger the imprinting process.”

“If you see any weird skin flaking on her, that’s probably just regeneration happening, Andy,” Phil told him. “There’s no way she went through something that traumatic and didn’t trigger a regeneration. Ask Niko about it, and she can detail the whole thing for you.” He inhaled a long breath then blew it out again. “So you need me to handle getting all the paperwork in getting women assigned to their correct houses in the system?”

“I think that’s being taken care of Phil.”

Phil’s eyes narrowed angrily. “You know by who?”

“Niko thinks it’s someone named Doctor Rachel DeMarco, and she said you’d know who that was if I told you.”

“I do know who that is. She’s one of Covington’s partners, not so coincidentally enough, although I bet that doesn’t come as a surprise to you.”

“No, Phil, it does not. Covington seemed to be able to do whatever the fuck he wanted to without impunity, and frankly, I’m just glad he decided not to renege on the terms he’d set for the game in advance, because I have a feeling that if he wanted to, he could’ve, and could’ve made me disappear, and you’d never have known any of this. I wouldn’t have even entertained the stupid poker game, but Niko made me promise that I’d try. I was scared as hell that I was going to let down Sheridan, who’d chosen to be here, but I guess I got lucky or skillful.”

“What’s happening to Erin?”

“She’s been sent off to get paired with Nathaniel Watkins and his family.”

“The techbro’s techbro?”

“The one and only?”

“He was part of Covington’s little game?”

Andy clicked his tongue a little bit. “It felt like there were two kinds of people at the game – those who were there eagerly, and those who were there reluctantly, or out of a sense of obligation. I got the impression Watkins was the latter.”

“Who was in the former?”

“The mayor, Haunton. Big burly Russian fellow named Vikovic. And some skeezeball named Jacobson. Plus Covington himself, obviously. Vikovic was hard to read, so he might’ve also been there semi under duress, but Haunton acted like he was some fucking big shot, and Jacobson made my fucking skin crawl.”

Phil grumbled. “Yeah, well, Haunton comes as no big shock to me. The man’s got the spine of a leech, and the social skills to match. And I know who Jacobson is. Vikovic’s going to merit some looking into, though. You remember any of the other names of the women who went to other people?”

“Teresa Kenzington, Jane Flowers? Janice Flowers? Something like that? And something Childs… Elaine Child? Something like that? I remember the last name because I remember wondering if she was related to the guy who writes the Jack Reacher books, but I’m unsure on the first name. Sorry,” Andy said as he struggled to recall. “It was a lot of names all being thrown at me at once.”

“No no, don’t worry about it, Andy,” Phil said, scribbling more notes down on the sheet of paper on his desk. “You remembered way fucking more than I would’ve in your shoes, okay? Besides, you’ve got so many new women now, I’m amazed you’re even conscious right now. How many of them have you got imprinting right now?”

“Uh, let’s see… Piper, Asha, Sarah and Emily, so… four? There was apparently some mix up with one of the girls that Watkins was supposed to be bringing over, so someone else is showing up here in a couple of days instead. I told him it wasn’t necessary, but he insisted.”

“Okay, tell you what – I need to do a few things over here but I’ll be over there in about half an hour or so, alright?”

“Sounds good. See you soon. Charlotte said to tell you she’s looking forward to it.”

Phil hung up the phone and then let out a deep, frustrated groan before banging his fist once on top of the desk, then a second time, which brought Linda in from just outside of his office in.

“Whoa! Easy there, babe, or you’ll break your desk,” Linda said to him. “What’s going on?”

“About a million things all went to shit at once, but at least we have one glimmer of light. You okay with Charlotte, Dr. Varma, joining our family?”

Linda smiled, rolling her eyes at him. “Like I’m gonna say no? She’s a sweetheart. I thought she was off to someone else’s Team though.”

“I have a story to tell you while we’re on the way over to Andy’s.”

During the car ride over, Linda got angrier and angrier as Phil relayed the story Andy had told him just a little bit earlier.

“I swear to god, I’m going to rip her fucking head off, babe,” Linda snarled. “I’m going to cut open her throat and shit down her neck.”

Phil frowned. “Easy on the defecation in newly created orifices, will you? There’s a good chance she’s been hard compelled by Covington, which is something I can’t believe we didn’t even think of in advance. And I’m going to want to hear her side of the story before we even get into it. Now, tell me, how the hell do I tell Andy about his brother?”

Linda closed her eyes and looked down, shaking her head. “You … you just have to tell him, Phil. Be honest and give him as much detail as you have, and let the man have his space to grieve.”

Phil punched the inside of the passenger side front door of his Tesla with his fist. “I should’ve been watching out for these things, Linda.”

“Weren’t you literally just telling Andy he couldn’t save everyone, babe? Take your own advice. It’s going to hurt, but at least he’s hearing it from you.”

When the car pulled up in front of Andy’s house, Phil felt the weight of the whole damn world on his shoulders. “Jesus, Phil, you look like shit,” Aisling said to him.

“Yeah, thanks for that.” Phil glanced over at Charlotte, seeing a warm and welcoming smile on her face, as he walked up to the porch. “Heya, Doc. I hear you're going to be happier with me, so I hope you don't end up regretting that.”

“Thank you for agreeing to take me in, Dr. Marcos,” Charlotte said. “Andy's a sweetheart, but I'm simply not attracted to white men. You, on the other hand,” she said, moving to wrap her arms around him. “I'm going to take you home and gobble you up whole.”

Phil laughed, kissing Charlotte only for a moment, and clearly not for as long as she would have wanted. She’d understand why soon enough. “I need to talk to Andy for a little bit first. I'll be back in just a little bit.”

“What's going on, Phil?” Andy asked him.

“Let's go for a walk.” Charlotte pulled away and started to load her things into the car with Linda’s help.

“Yeah, okay.”

At Phil’s suggestion to move someplace private, Andy brought him up to the den hidden behind the bookcase, which seemed a fitting enough place to break the news to him. “Oh good, you’ve got booze on hand,” Phil said, seeing the bottle Linda had left for the Rooks still there.

“We going to need a drink for this?” Andy asked him.

“Yeah, and don't be skimping on the pour.”

Andy poured a large glass of the whiskey for Phil, and a smaller glass for himself, holding out one to Phil, but his friend reached over and took the lesser glass instead. “You're going to need the bigger one.”

“I don't drink that much, Phil.”

“Trust me on this.”

“Okay. Phil, now you're scaring me. What the hell is going on?”

“So let me give you the good news first, so you know that there's something to hold onto,” Phil said with a sigh. “They're pretty sure they've developed another vaccine, one that can be transported cheaply and is going into mass production, unlike the one you and I have been getting for some time delivered second hand from our partners. It's progress, I guess. We'll be getting shots of that vaccine too, and as long as the population goes and gets vaccinated, the quarantine will start to slowly get lifted in about three- or four-months’ time. At this point, Congress is so desperate to keep people alive that they're going to do anything they can think of, what's left of Congress, anyway.”

“That's great news, Phil! So why are you so glum?”

“They're going to announce that vaccine next week, and people should start getting shots in about a month, but with that news, they're going to also release the death tolls, the actual death tolls … and it's very, very bad.”

“Like, how bad, Phil?”

Phil lifted the glass and drank all the whiskey. It was good whiskey. It needed to be. “Three million women dead. Eighty million men dead.”

Andy poured Phil another glass worth, which Phil appreciated. He was easing Andy towards the real numbers bit by bit. “That's... that's over half the men in America dead. How the hell have they been keeping all this quiet?”

“Lots of suppression at the hospitals, of the media. Anything they can do to prevent a panic. Shit, I know I'd panic. I am panicking. Fuck, I panic each and every day. I mean, fuck, we're having to do mass cremations just to prevent the whole fucking system from collapsing. Too many people refused the first vaccine and those people each became a Typhoid Mary, infecting thousands of others. Hell, like a third of Congress is dead, although let's be honest, we won't miss most of the fuckers who died there from their own fucking stupidity. Teach them to say the whole goddamn thing will just disappear one day. Fucking morons. Why couldn't they just do their fucking jobs, just fucking tell people to stay the fuck at home, and we could've weathered this whole thing with only a couple of thousand people dead instead of this SHIT!”

All of Phil’s anger was coming to the forefront, and he wasn’t even being completely transparent with Andy yet. This was the politely sanitized and softened version of what was really happening.

“Is it … is it this bad around the world?” Andy asked him.

Phil shook his head. He needed to give Andy some sense of hope, even if it was going to be yanked away again in a few weeks’ time. “Lots of places took this threat more fucking seriously! They hunkered down, bubbled up and took the advice of their fucking doctors! Doctors know more about medicine than braindead politicians! So, in the parts of the world not run by fucking morons, we might be looking at countries losing only about five to ten percent of their male population, although there are a few outliers. India has numbers like ours, UK's got about half our losses per capita, maybe more, and China, well, nobody fucking knows what's going on in China, but the working theory is they're about as fucked as we are, if not even more so. Nobody will fucking tell us anything, though. The phone keeps ringing and ringing at their embassy but nobody's answering, so that's fucking scary as shit...”

“Goddamn, who's going to recognize this fucking country once we're on the other side of this? Hell, how does this fucking planet go on from this?”

“None of this is public information yet, so don't go talking about it to anyone outside of your household. You're still going to probably get a few more girls added to your household before all of this is done, if for no other reason than to start bringing our population numbers back up. A lot of the surviving males in this country are currently under ten. The children, it seems, could handle the virus better than us old farts. The country's going to go through a whole 'Give Birth To A New Generation To Save This One!' campaign soon. It's post WWII on crack. Polyamory's going to be the lay of the land with the announcement late next week, encouraging men to be married to multiple women and to be getting them pregnant as soon as possible. They've already got the rewritten laws ready to be passed as soon as the announcement hits. Our generation, the generation before us and the generation after us are all mostly wiped out. Pretty much anyone we went to high school or college with is probably dead. Sooner or later, the President'll give us all a much clearer picture of what's happening outside of the US, but I'm pretty sure it ain't good either.”

“No wonder it's been impossible to get a hold of people for the last few months,” his friend muttered to him. “There's nobody fucking out there.”

“Yeah, all of which brings me to the real reason I'm telling you all of this, Andy,” Phil sighed. He was just going to have to come out and say it. There wasn’t any way to soften the blow, so best to just rip the bandage off all at once. “Conner and Samantha are okay, your mom's fine, but Matty died this morning. I'm so sorry man.”

Andy was quiet for a long moment before he took a long draw from his glass of whiskey. “Do you know anything more?”

“Shit, Andy, I shouldn't even be telling you this much. I know it was quick and he didn't suffer. He was barely in the hospital 48 hours before he passed. They had him on a ventilator for a bit, but his body just couldn't take it. I know you've often told me you guys weren't all that close, but he was still your brother.”

Andy’s expression was so blank that Phil knew his friend was in total shock. “He was nine years older than me, and he went off to college out of state when he was 16. Smartest son of a bitch I ever knew, but that meant I was seven when he left, so we never really bonded like proper brothers.” Andy slumped back in his chair. “He was a good man, though. Always called on Christmas, or my birthday, and always trying to find new things I might like. He always told me he was so proud of chasing my dreams and becoming a writer. He was always a little pissed at himself for staying to the safe route, selling real estate, and not chasing his dream of working for NASA and going into space, but his family was so goddamn important to him. Christ, Conner's only eleven and now he doesn't have a fucking father anymore? Goddamn this fucking virus. Do you know how he caught it?”

“One of his neighbors was trying to get their storm doors shuttered before a lightning storm and he went out to help them. Apparently caught it from them.”

Andy nodded, as if that made things make a little more sense. “Typical fucking Matty. Always willing to help out, never quite thinking it through before he did. I assume Sam knows? And my mom?”

“They've both been told. Your mom's in intensive care herself, but it looks like she's going to come through it relatively okay. She's on a breather, but she's showing steady signs of improvement. That's why I'm here telling you instead of her telling you over the phone. Sam's a total mess and said even talking to you would set her off crying all over again. She and Conner will come out okay on the other side.”

Andy nodded. He didn’t seem capable of much else. “Well, I guess I'm glad the news came from you, then.”

The two sat in silence for a couple of minutes.

“You going to be alright?”

“We weren't close, but he was still my fucking brother, Phil.” Andy threw up his hands, his face bunched up in frustration. “No, I'm not fucking alright. I'm fucked in the head!” He looked like he was ready to collapse under his own weight. “It's a fuckload to take in.”

“I'll come by in a couple of days and make sure you're coping as best you can. We can play poker if you want.” The words got out of his mouth before he even thought about them, and both men had a laugh at the suggestion, awkward as it was.

“Let's take a few weeks off from poker, alright?”

“I mean, you're never going to get a prize like that ever again. You're banging Emily Stevens, which I would love to break your legs over, but I can't say I fault you for.” He’d outgrown his crush on Dahlia Hairtrigger, but it didn’t hurt to overplay it up a little, to make Andy focus on the good a bit to distract him from the darkness.

“Did you know she and Sarah Washington are already a couple?” Andy asked him with a wry grin. “Like, they were together long before they got here?”

“What?!” Phil chuckled, thankful for a bit of good news that he hadn’t had already when he walked in the news. And it was just like Andy to have such mixed luck. “No! And you landed them both!”

“Well, Emily made sure I landed Sarah and then was delighted to see she came along for the ride. I'm sure she'll tell you the story at some point, but she had more of a hand manipulating things than I think any of us knew, even Niko, who had her fingers in stirring that pot as well.”

“At least you're going to have plentiful beautiful bodies to drown your misery in.”

“I suppose. Eventually. Right now, I just want to break down crying, and yet I can't feel the tears coming.”

“You're in shock, man,” Phil said as he hugged his friend tightly. “You're just in shock. There's no one set way to grieve. It'll sneak up on you, or it'll hit you in waves, or it'll just come at you a little bit at a time again and again and again. Nobody can tell you that you're grieving wrong. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you'll get through it, day by day. And tell the girls. Tell them what's going on, what you're going through. Don't hide any of it from them or try and underplay it. You'll get through it, even if we have to carry you through parts of it. That's what friends are for.”

“Thanks man. I'm going to sit and have a think for a bit if that's okay?” Andy looked completely wiped out, like he didn’t even want to risk standing, not that Phil could blame him, what with the rollercoaster couple of days his friend had had. “You know the way back?”

“You kidding? Finding your way out of here's got to be easier than finding your way in. You want me to send any of the girls up?”

“Nah, I'll be down soon enough and talk to them then.”

“Got it. Sorry to have been the bearer of bad news.”

Andy shrugged. “Better you than some stranger.”

He even looked like he really meant it.

Phil headed back down the stairs and then opened the bookcase door, closing the door behind him, leaving Andy alone with his thoughts. He’d barely gotten two steps away from the hidden door before running straight into Aisling.

“What’s happened, Phil?” the redhead asked him with a look that made it clear not telling her wasn’t an option.

Phil took a deep breath and then wrapped his arms around Aisling and gave her a soft hug. “Andy’s older brother Matty died yesterday evening,” he told her, feeling her start to sob even as the words hit her ears. “He’s going to need a little bit to process, so give him a bit of space but when he comes out, you smother him with as much fucking love as you can assault him with. He’s going to be a mess for a bit.”

“Yeah,” Ash said, trying to stem back her own tears. “I was really looking forward to meeting Matty in person. Fuuuuuuck…”

“Just look after him, Ash. He’s gonna need you and Niko now more than ever, okay?”

Aisling nodded. Phil had always liked her – she complimented Andy in all the best possible ways, and they made up for each other’s shortcomings so naturally. “We’ll make sure he pulls through and doesn’t get too lost in the shadows. What about you?” she asked as she pulled away from the hug. “What’re you going to go do?”

“Me and Linda are going to go fucking root out how the hell this whole Covington shit ever fucking happened in the first place…”