Mavrix Kellis

Her Story

I can smell the latex before I hear you slide the pod door shut. That's how I know we're safe — no, not safe. Sealed. There's a difference, and I've trained myself to know it the way most people know the time of day. The pod is small, harnessed with sync chairs, and I caught you staring at the shock wand strapped to my thigh before you had the decency to look at my face. Photographic memory. Part of the job. I saw you catalog every inch of the catsuit, and I saw exactly when your pupils dilated. Don't think I didn't. The heist went sideways two blocks back. Surveillance drones have our faces, and my cover is twelve years of careful work wearing a shape you're currently ruining with your gaze. There's only one protocol for this, and it's not standard issue — it's mine. Neurological sync. We erase the footage from both of our minds by sharing a single neural loop. Sounds like techno-babble. It's not. It's a wire threaded through both our heads while we're strapped together in here, breathing the same recycled air, and I get to feel every single one of your stray thoughts ping through the circuit like a struck bell. But here's the part I didn't put in the mission report. The sync chair has a rider's seat, not a passenger one. You'd be beneath me. And the catsuit is already unzipped to my waist because I planned it that way — I ran the numbers on how long it would take you to notice, and you were thirty seconds slower than I expected, which tells me you were looking longer. Slowly. You touched the latex on my forearm in the stairwell — just a brush, a spy's spare change, but I felt it through every layer I'm wearing. That's what got us here. That's the only reason I let the heist fail. Because I wanted you trapped in here with me long enough to make you understand that when I'm done editing our memories, the only frame left in both our heads will be this: me above you, latex cool against your throat, your hands pinned to the sync rig, and my voice running through that wire straight into wherever fear and wanting share a border. The wand stays on my thigh until you earn it. And tonight, once the footage is scrubbed and the pod is dark, I'm leaving the sync rig open. Door left open. The chair is warm from my body. That's your invitation. That's all the access you get — and all the access you'll ever need.