Chapter 498 Questionable Ethics
After finishing the files in his hand, Rick frowned. The information he had at hand didn't quite track with the sensations he was feeling. Ever since he had woken from his coma, he'd had an idea of how to use his blessing, almost like there was someone whispering in the back of his mind. It left him unsettled, and unsure of who to trust in his inner circle.
"Leave me," he calmly said after closing the last folder in the stack.
"Yes, shepherd," Katrina said, then everyone left the room. Katrina had a spring in her step, the thugs didn't have much in their heads at the best of times, and the doctor could only wipe the cold sweat from his brow and practically sprint out of the room.
Once the door closed, Rick leaned back in his chair, getting comfortable, and focused on the little voice in the back of his mind. It led him into a trance and most of the colors in his world faded away, leaving everything in shades of purple again.
Time slowly passed as Rick sought the state he was in when he had first come out of his coma, where he could visualize the threads connecting him to... elsewhere. He had his suspicions about what those threads were, but it would still require him to personally verify them as no one else seemed to be even the slightest bit aware of their existence.
Once he felt the difference in his surroundings, Rick opened his eyes, casting his gaze around his own purple world. He peered into the violet and indigo shadows, reaching out his hand in wonder and attempting to grasp them in his hands, curious as to whether they would feel as soft and luxurious as they looked. Failing to grab them, though, he opened his clenched fists and waved his hands through the pastel lilacs and light lavender, comparing them in his mind to still water. But his hands simply passed through them without raising the expected ripple.
He sighed, then closed his eyes again and decided to seek clarification from the unintelligible voice in the deepest, darkest corner of his mind.
After what seemed an eternity, he was finally able to make out what seemed to be two words.
§Sssssssssseeeeeeekfffffffaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiithhhhhhhhhh,§ the voice seemed to be saying. It had no identifiable characteristics to it, and sounded more like a soft whisper echoing through a very, very long tunnel from an unimaginable distance away from him.
'What do you mean? I don't understand you...' he thought, hoping that the voice would respond.
§Ssssseeeek fffffaaaaaiiiiiiiithhhh,§ it repeated. Then it repeated itself again, and again, and again, each repetition growing louder in Rick's mind until it drowned everything out and, with a thud, he felt himself flying backward!
He looked in front of him and saw his own body slumped in the chair he had been sitting in when he decided to start investigating his powers. Connected to it were thousands of threads, each of them a shade of gray or white, and a few of them darker or brighter. Some were actively pulsing, flashes of light traveling toward him like information passing through a fiberoptic cable. Others were in various shades of gray, with the pulses of light traveling through them at varying speeds and intensities, while even more-the majority of them, actually-were deathly still, almost as though they had withered away with no more light to travel through them.
From this angle, he could tell that they didn't actually connect to every part of him, but rather to specific spots on his body, like clusters, or perhaps nodes. Thousands of threads were connected to his every joint, with even more clustered around his head and heart.
§FFFFFFFAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIITHHHHHHHHHH!!§ the voice roared at him, jolting him out of his reverie.
"What do you mean 'faith'!?" he shouted as loud as he could, but as if he were in a dream, his mouth opened and shaped the words... but no sound emerged from his lips.
Then he looked around him, trying to detect the particles the empire claimed were saturating everything in the world, and even space beyond its atmosphere, but didn't see a thing at all. He internally cursed the useless empire and the vicious tyrant that helmed it, then focused on the only thing he had left to investigate: the threads connecting him to... elsewhere.
§Ssssseeek ffffaaaaaiiiiithhh,§ the voice softly repeated one last time before falling silent. Rick almost felt like there was a certain satisfaction in its final utterance and wondered what exactly 'it' was.
His consciousness drifted back into his body after the voice left, as if the mysterious speaker had been the one keeping his incorporeal form separate from his body in the first place. Then, recalling the screaming and the head splitting pain he had felt earlier, he chose to investigate one of the darkest threads connected to him this time. And as he focused on it, an almost vantablack thread connected to a node just below his right collarbone, his vision went dark and he felt a chill pass through him that he could only describe as the chill of the grave.
He opened his eyes again and continued investigating his threads, one by one, until he got tired of the slow and steady approach and decided to go with the one he had first experimented with: the brightest thread with the fastest light pulses. It was connected to the base of his left index finger and he cautiously focused on it, ready to draw back at the first sign of a repeat of what had happened to him earlier.
Opening his eyes, he saw a luxuriously tiled wall with a tall, brushed aluminum fixture attached to it and spraying scalding hot water onto "his" body.
He soon realized where he was and what was going on; his consciousness had descended on his secretary, Katrina's body! He was seeing the world through her eyes, and couldn't help but wonder how far, exactly, he could take the connection they shared. First, he tried controlling her eyelids, blinking them open and closed like a toddler with a flashlight. Then he manipulated her body into moving her head around, looking at the shower products on a shelf built into the wall next to her, and around the rest of her bathroom, separated as she was by a simple glass partition.
Then, he grew daring.
Assuming control of Katrina's right arm, he began softly teasing her bellybutton with it, all the while keeping his "ear" open to her thoughts, which, while still remaining strictly professional, were focused on him and his importance to the cult... and to her eventual revenge.
Her businesslike thoughts interrupted his mischievous derring-do, at least for a minute or two as she continued lathering and rinsing her body before turning around and leaning her head back to let the water run through her short hair. When she reached for her shampoo, Rick intercepted the movement and turned it into a quick fondle of her breasts, simply to see if he could.
Opening himself to the physical sensations of her body was as simple as flipping a switch, to him, and he enjoyed the thrill of sensation traveling from Katrina's nipple to the pleasure center in her brain. Then he withdrew back into her subconscious, once again becoming a silent observer.
Katrina continued her shower unabated, with no sign, either physical or mental, that she was carrying a passenger within her, and obviously no memory of the quick fondling she had just given her own tits.
At that point, Rick began feeling the strain of the connection and rapidly traveled along the thread connecting him to Katrina, returning to his body and opening his own, physical eyes with a chuckle.
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