Symbiote 0257: Planning and Development

Once the hoard was taken care of, the widows finally retreated along with the infantry soldiers into the barrier. While some abominations were still straying to the city, the numbers weren't nearly as many as before and could easily be taken care of by the border patrol infantry.

"Don't let too many abominations crowd around the shield. The power consumption will be immense otherwise. While we do have a nuclear reactor in the shield generator, replacing the core will be a hassle once the material is depleted. Not to mention, you won't have a shield during the downtime." Yelena told the mayor, who was eagerly nodding, happy that he would get to keep his position in the settlement. While their settlement would be subordinated to The Sanctuary, his direct superior was Yelena, who would be supervising him. Otherwise, his job was pretty much the same as before, just much better since he didn't need to worry about as many problems as before.

"What will the widows be doing during this time?" The mayor asked. "Will you all be staying in the settlement? We do have some empty houses."

"Don't try to get your people paired up with the widows, Mayor. It's useless," Yelena knew the kind of slime that Alex was. Despite saying that the widows had the freedom to choose their partners, he had probably already taken root in their psyche by using subtle manipulation tactics, many of them relying on his special brand of pleasure and submission.

[Get your mind out of the gutter, Yelena. I can read from your face that you are thinking something rude about me.]

The blonde spy didn't respond to Alex's words in her head and continued speaking, "The widows stay in The Sanctuary," Yelena pointed to the flying fortress that was still airborne above the settlement. "We will make regular trips down here to help with various things, yes, but don't think any of us will be staying here. Make sure that the people know about the contribution of the widows accurately. I don't want to hear people mouthing off against my people, understood?"

"Understood," The man said. "I will ensure that The Sanctuary is hailed as the savior of our little settlement. Merely the part with the shield generator has changed everything for us. It is why we can now move outside without covering ourselves in those uncomfortable and hot hazmat suits."

"Less ass kissing, more work," Yelena said. "I'm going. If you need to contact me, use the walkie-talkie. It is already calibrated to the fortress's frequency."

"How will you be returning?" He asked, looking at the fortress flying almost half a mile above the surface.

"It's easy, really," Yelena said before turning to the fortress and waving her arm at it. In the next moment, the leader saw a blue beam of light enveloping Yelena as she floated above the ground and flew up to the fortress.

"I really can't risk turning these monstrous women into enemies …" The mayor's resolve to stay a faithful subordinate was strengthened even further by the visual that he received.

…

"How was I?" Yelena asked excitedly as she entered Natasha's office.

"You did very well," Natasha said.

"Truly, I am pleased with your results," Alex said, happily looking at his current EP storage which had finally crossed into the four digits for the first time since he'd depleted it with Jane.

«EP: 2789»

"Thank you," Yelena gave a curt bow with a haughty expression as if she were royalty.

"I want to spank that expression out of you …" Alex mumbled, " … And then fuck you right in front of — Ouch!" He looked at Natasha with a betrayed look.

"I have more where that came from," She said threateningly as she showed him her fist. "Stop making things weird."

Yelena coughed to hide her thoughts and showed a normal expression. Her mind ran with vivid images of what kind of reward she would be getting from Apex.

"Anyway," Natasha shook her head. "I'm going to leave tomorrow, Yelena."

"So soon? Why?" She asked, her eyes widening.

"Because I have stuff to do back home. We talked about this. You can clearly take care of yourself without me. So I'm just going to leave the command of the widows in your hands. Apex will be with you the whole time, supporting you with everything." Natasha looked at Alex, letting him speak next.

"Your two main objectives are to kill Abominations and to expand our widow forces. Use the jets and start sending the widows out on missions to retrieve stragglers and refugees. Bring them to the settlement and eventually take over that other settlement that these guys were talking about. Once your prestige level is high enough, people will come asking how they can join your ranks. Tell them about the Sanctuary's Protector Program where we will train young budding talent into deadly killers who will defend them from abominations. As for making sure that they are loyal to us and only us, you don't need to be involved in that process. That's my domain." He was more than qualified to use subtle psychological tricks to enhance the loyalty of the trainees toward him and The Sanctuary in particular.

"What about those two teenagers?" Yelena asked. "Kamala and Laura. What's their deal? You've tethered them together by your collar or whatever. Are they some kind of experiment you did? What's the deal?"

"Just think of them as a package deal," Alex said. "They will tell you their story when they are ready. For now, you can start by training them. Laura already has extensive combat training, but Kamala doesn't. Once they are both at a similar level, both of their collars will change their ranks to make them official widows."

"So I treat them as one unit?" Yelena asked and Alex nodded.

"What about the new recruits? What ages should I target?" Yelena asked next.

"If the girl is an orphan, less than twelve years so that my subtle physical modifications can work better. Any older and their physique will be on the developed side, making enhancement more difficult and less effective. As for children with parents, talk to the parents. If they don't have the resources or willingness to raise the girl, take her. But less than five years. Otherwise, the child will have an imprint of their parents in their psyche, leaving a mental block."

"Just talking about this makes me feel like a villain …" Yelena shuddered.

"Don't think that way. You aren't forcing anyone. You are giving these children a way to survive in this harsh wasteland. They have the choice to refuse. We will only take those who are completely on board with the training regime and even then, they will be allowed to quit if they wish to."

"Whatever, I guess …" Yelena felt that she was just being childish and allowing her past experiences to interfere with her thoughts and impression of the situation. Unlike a semi-stable world which, while war-torn, was still livable, the new recruits are going to be coming from a land where every living breath one takes is a blessing.

…

Yelena spent a while discussing the situation with Alex and Natasha after moving to her room where her partner in slime brought her an untold amount of pleasure in the most unexpected ways possible. She felt that she was able to explore facets of her own sexuality that she never even knew existed with Apex, loving every second of the unbelievably pleasurable experience that he brought to her.

The night was soon over and Natasha bade her farewell to Yelena, leaving the younger sister alone in a wasteland with a predatory slime who had turned her into a slut who was addicted to submitting to him. Still, she made do.

She sent two jets out with five widows each in different directions to explore and search areas where Apex had sensed some human presence. As for the rest of them, they all stayed in the fortress except for a group of twenty that went down into the settlement to 'promote their brand' by helping clean up the abominations and by involving themselves in the multiple facets of their society. Before the people realized it, they would be heavily dependent on the presence of the widows.

Out of the almost seventy that were still in the fortress, Yelena gave two of them the task of training with Laura and Kamala, who were already somewhat experienced and merely needed combat training. As for the rest of them? They were deployed outside the fortress to start clearing out abominations. They were all given set targets that were represented by a loading bar in the vision of their visors. They could return once the bar had finished and they had extracted the necessary EP for Alex.

They were allowed to rest once they returned after generating 10 EP for Alex. It might not seem like much, but with almost sixty-five trained killers at work, Alex got 650 EP in a matter of a few hours with zero involvement from him. Once they returned, they could do whatever they wanted, which, for most of them, included a very intimate kind of reward from the very suit that they were helping with EP extraction.

As for the ones who were in the settlement, by the time the day ended, the widows made a show of returning to The Sanctuary, which, at this point seemed like a kind of paradise to the people in the settlement. They returned via the tractor beam that pulled them up from the square in front of everyone. As for the last two groups, who were out looking for refugees, they had made multiple successful trips, bringing back a total of fifteen refugees to the settlement. With Apex providing them with a wide-range human detector radar, it was very easy for them to find people despite the scarcity.

As the days passed, the prestige of the widows and The Sanctuary skyrocketed among the people of the settlement, many of them longing to someday travel to the flying fortress like the widows. That was when the recruitment offers rolled around. On the very first day, they had almost thirty applicants. All of them were young eight to ten-year-old orphan girls. The widows made a big show of bringing the new recruits up to the fortress with them.

The recruits were all provided with the same chokers as the rest of the widows, all with a single streak of red as the marking of a trainee. At the same time, ten of the most well-performing widows from the past two weeks were promoted to three marks and were going to be the tutors for the young girls. The next day was similar, a little less than before, but ten orphan girls signed up for the program, bringing the trainees up to forty.

During this time, not a single parent had offered their infant child up, which made sense. Especially because the widows hadn't targeted those children just yet. Their initial limit was going to be somewhere around seventy-five, which was hit within the week solely by taking in the orphan girls. They cleared out almost all of the young orphan girls in the settlement as seventy-two new trainees joined their ranks. Including Kamala and Laura, they now had a total of seventy-four new applicants. That brought the total number of widows to an even one hundred and seventy excluding Yelena.

Not only were the girls grateful, but the widows made sure to teach them all of the necessary things with care and patience. The women could intimately relate to the situation of the girls and made it a point to make them feel welcome and establish a sense of camaraderie with them while also training them extensively. The new trainees continued learning from the ten tutor widows who all sported chokers with three marks, expressing their status that was slightly different from the widows who only had two marks.

As almost a month passed, Yelena continuously got better at managing the situation as the widows all got stronger and more efficient at gathering EP. Even though only fifty widows were going out to gather EP daily — the rest of them were either busy training the new recruits or looking for stray refugees — Alex's daily EP gain was two thousand, which meant that each widow was gathering forty points for him after merely a single month. At this point, Yelena decided to expand their territory and targeted the next settlement.

***

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