Chapter 71

#Day 19 — 06:33 Atlantic Ocean, somewhere off the coast of West Africa.

Aida woke to the gentle roll of the ship and the soft light of dawn painting the ceiling in shades of gold. The rocking was barely perceptible—small waves, nothing like the storms they'd endured—but she'd spent enough time on the water to know that even the calmest sea felt different from land. The Blue Oasis was large enough to smooth out most swells, but the movement was always there, a constant reminder that home was afloat.

The bed felt emptier than it should.

She turned her head. Mei-Lin's side was cold, the sheets already smoothed. Probably sorting through the piles of salvaged goods on the main deck, restocking the treatment room. Zhao would be at the aft deck with his fishing rods, doing what he did best—providing, sustaining, being useful in the only way that didn't require his broken body to perform.

But Vivienne was here.

She lay on her side, facing Aida, one arm tucked under the pillow, the other resting loosely on the sheet. Her hair was still damp—she must have showered after coming off the bridge, then collapsed into bed without bothering to dry it properly. Naked, vulnerable, utterly unaware of being watched.

Aida studied her.

The captain's face, slack in sleep, looked younger than its years. The stress lines had softened, the perpetual furrow between her brows smoothed away. Her lips were parted slightly, her breathing slow and even. She looked... peaceful. Something she rarely allowed herself to be awake.

She is family, Aida thought. And yet...

There was still something between them. A lingering animosity, unspoken but present. Sophie's shadow. The history they couldn't escape. Vivienne was a Laurent, no matter how many times she declared herself a Zhao now. And Aida had spent too many years around the Laurents to trust any of them completely.

But here, in this bed, naked and asleep, she was just a girl. A girl who had become a captain overnight. A girl who had carried the weight of seventy-eight lives through a crisis that would have broken most people.

Aida realized, with a small shock, that she had never been alone with Vivienne like this. Naked. Just the two of them. She'd taught Vivienne how to please women, yes—in that bath, with Mei-Lin present, with the safety of numbers. But this was different. This was quiet. Intimate. Unscripted.

She let her eyes wander.

Vivienne's body was absurdly perfect—the kind of perfection that made Aida, even after all these years, feel a twinge of something complicated. High breasts with pale pink nipples, flat stomach, the smooth curve of hip leading down to thighs that seemed sculpted by someone with an ideal in mind. Between them, the neat triangle of blonde hair—or rather, the smooth skin where hair should be, because she'd shaved it. For Zhao. For reasons Aida understood completely.

In the old world, she thought, I would have dated her. I would have seen her across a room and wanted to know her.

She looked at Vivienne's lips. Parted. Soft. Inviting.

Aida moved closer, drawn by something she couldn't name. Her face hovered inches from Vivienne's. She could feel the warmth radiating from her skin, smell the faint scent of soap and sleep and something uniquely Vivienne.

She wanted to kiss her.

The urge was sudden and overwhelming. Not sexual, exactly—or not just sexual. It was a need for connection, for closeness, for something that words couldn't reach.

She stopped herself.

Not like this. Not while she's asleep. Not without her choosing.

Instead, Aida leaned in and pressed her lips gently to Vivienne's forehead. She breathed in—that scent again, clean and warm—and held it for a moment. Then she pulled back, slipped out of bed, and stood looking down at the sleeping captain.

You deserve this rest, she thought. The boat depends on you. But more than that... you deserve to wake up to a world that isn't falling apart. Just once.

She showered quickly, dressed in clean clothes, and gulped down the tea and food Mei-Lin had left on the table. There was enough for Vivienne too—a plate covered, a cup waiting. Small acts of love.

Then she went to check on Chen.

The corridor was quiet at this hour. Most of the crew were still asleep, catching up on rest after the chaos of the last two days. Aida appreciated the silence. It gave her time to think.

She knocked on Chen's door and waited.

Her hand drifted to her breast, an absent gesture. And stopped.

It felt... lighter. Not as full. Not as swollen.

She pressed gently, massaging the tissue the way she did every morning. Softer. Definitely softer.

Dread curled in her stomach.

She checked her Dawn Meter bracelet. 62%. It ticked to 63% as she watched.

No. Not now. Not when she needs me.

The door opened. Nadia stood there, her eyes half-closed, her hair a mess, her expression suggesting that most of her brain hadn't yet reported for duty. She grunted something that might have been "morning" and shuffled aside.

Aida entered.

Nadia collapsed onto her bed, instantly asleep again. The laptop glowed on the desk, rows of code scrolling in screensaver mode. And on the bed, Chen lay still.

Too still.

Aida moved closer, checking the monitor. 65%. Even as she watched, it ticked to 66%.

Chen's face was peaceful, but there was a grey undertone to her skin that hadn't been there yesterday. Her breathing was shallow, quick. The virus was winning.

It is surreal, Aida thought. To see a dying person make a man like Stavros beg for his life. To blow up a ship just by counting down. So much mystery in this girl—capable of thinking outside the dimensions of ordinary people—and her life is in my hands.

She touched Chen's forehead. Warm. Too warm.

I'll be back in an hour, she promised silently. I'll feed you again. I'll keep fighting.

She walked out, closed the door quietly, and made a mental note. One hour. Then she had to return.

Day 19 - 07:32

The main hall was busier than she expected. Crew members moved with purpose, their faces brighter than they'd been in days. Hope, Aida realized. Relief. The food from Stavros's ship had done more than fill bellies—it had lifted spirits.

Good, she thought. More food means slower Dawn Meter rise. For them, anyway.

She scanned the crowd, looking for Mei-Lin. The girl would be somewhere in this chaos, probably elbow-deep in medical supplies, searching for sex drugs or anything else that might help.

But as Aida walked, her mind kept working.

For now, the Oasis women are stable. Forties. High thirties. But what happens in a few days when a flood of them reach fifty percent?

The thought stopped her cold.

Panic. Chaos. A mass treatment event worse than the submarine.

She did the math in her head. Thirty women. Forty. All needing attention. Zhao still recovering, unable to recharge her and Mei-Lin. Their milk depleting. Chen dying.

The food shortage is over. The invasion threat is gone. But the treatment crisis has just begun.

The horror of it almost made her stop walking.

We can barely keep up with Chen. How are we going to treat thirty or forty women?

She thought about the submarine. The desperate scramble, the bodies piled together, the screams and moans and the smell of fear and sweat and blood. Doing that again—doing it worse—was unthinkable.

I've resisted recruiting new treatment specialists. Why?

She searched herself for an answer. It was just a feeling, a reluctance she'd never examined. But now, forced to look, she began to understand.

Wouldn't it be better to have another pair of lactating breasts? Another person who could do what I do?

Yes. Obviously yes.

Sometimes I wish this was a male harem ship. It would be so much easier.

The thought was bitter, but honest. The Dawn Protocol was designed for men to treat women. That was its fundamental assumption. Women treating other women—using milk, using touch, using intimacy in ways the protocol never anticipated—was improvisation. Desperation. It worked, but barely.

Does the Commission even know about breast milk treatment? Did they design the virus knowing this was possible?

She didn't know. She doubted anyone knew.

She scrolled through her memory, reviewing every woman she'd treated. Could any of them be recruited? Willingness wasn't the issue—many of the Oasis guests had been selected for their beauty, their charm, their ability to please. In the old world, they would have been exactly the kind of women who'd use their bodies for advancement.

But this wasn't the old world. This wasn't porn, where the worst thing that could happen was a bad review or a dislocated jaw. This was looking at a woman as her skin turned grey and she vomited black fluid, and still finding the strength to pleasure her. This was staring death in the face and performing.

Where do I find someone like that?

The disturbing thought came unbidden.

What if she's been here all along? What if I was just too afraid of competition? Too afraid of being irrelevant?

She pushed the thought away. There was no time for self-doubt. There was only the crisis at hand.

Zhao must recharge me and Mei-Lin today. Chen won't last the night otherwise. And I need to find a fourth specialist before the wave hits.

#Day 19 - 7:45

Her feet carried her forward, past the main hall, past the crew with their hopeful faces, down toward the lower deck.It was where they stashed the new arrivals from the cargo ship, the ones nobody knew how to trust yet, the ones whose paperwork was now just a series of numbers in a dead server somewhere.

Something felt more urgent than sorting through supplies. Leave that to Mei-Lin.

The quarantined area was quiet. Maggie stood at the door with a security guard, both alert despite the early hour. The door was open—Aida could see inside.

Iqbal was there, hunched at the table, tapping at her tablet with a forcefulness that bordered on violence. Down the hall, Victoria leaned against the wall, her eyes fixed on the cell doors beyond. Ever watchful. Ever protective.

Aida stepped inside.

"How are the new survivors?" she asked. "Any of them need immediate treatment?"

Iqbal looked up, her expression shifting to something Aida couldn't quite read. "Not immediately. Some have high readings, but no symptoms yet. They're healthy—as healthy as the Oasis women, maybe more."

Aida waited. There was more.

Iqbal set down her tablet. "These twelve women are no ordinary survivors. They're specimens—collected by Stavros for special trade. The cream of the crop, with... quirks."

"Quirks?"

Iqbal pulled up a file on her tablet. "Let me show you."

She scrolled through. "This one has a natural body odor that smells heavenly. High concentration of pheromones. This one—unusually high carbohydrate content in her vaginal fluid. Useful for something, presumably."

Aida frowned. "How do you know all this?"

Iqbal sighed. She reached into a drawer and pulled out something that made Aida's blood run cold.

Tags. Metal chokers, each one with a number and a code. They'd been sawed off—the engineering crew must have done it.

"They were wearing these," Iqbal said quietly. "Around their necks. They treated them like cattle. I think Stavros was collecting for trade. Specialized pleasure markets. Genetic oddities."

Aida stared at the tags. She thought of all the women she'd known in the industry, all the ways they'd been cataloged and categorized and commodified. This was the same thing, just more explicit.

She touched her own neck unconsciously. She'd worn many things in her life—costumes, masks, a thousand different identities. But never a real collar, not on this ship.

Iqbal continued scrolling. "Most of them are interesting, but this one..." She paused. "The last one. A hermaphrodite."

Aida's attention sharpened.

Iqbal explained, “She has both sets of genitals. Fully functional. Hermaphroditic, but the phenotypic expression is completely female. No external sign, unless you examine closely. Healthy, as far as I can tell. Dawn virus positive, but no other diseases."

A hermaphrodite. Aida's mind began to race.

Not a vector. Not another Zhao. But... possibilities.

"It's a pity she's not another vector," Aida said slowly. "But..."

Iqbal raised an eyebrow.

Aida shook her head. "I need to think about this. I'll be back."

She turned and walked out, her mind already processing, calculating, searching for angles. In her years in adult entertainment, Aida had worked with performers of all genders and anatomies, but she'd never encountered someone born with both sets of functioning genitalia.

Two functional genitals. Beautiful. Healthy. What could that mean for treatment? What could that mean for... everything?

She had no answers. Not yet.

But for the first time since waking, she felt something other than dread.

Possibility.