Page 51 of Man Vs. Woman
Colt
What the fuckwas all that about?
What should have been a simple tour of my gym turned into a fucking public mauling. Who would stoop so fucking low to pay the elderly to come and protest me? Jesus fuck, some of these guys were WWII vets. Whoever set up that fucking protest should be in jail. Someone’s trying to fucking bury me, and there’s no doubt in my mind about who would try something as fucked up as this.
Fucking Hiram.
“I don’t see any protests here,” Serena tells me, her forehead pressed against the window of our SUV as we close in on her spa. “I thought it’d be the same thing here.”
“No, they’re too smart to pull the same trick twice,” I tell her. “But you were right. Keep your guard up. This thing isn’t fucking over. If Hiram staged a protest like that, he’s definitely going to try and pull some shit with you too.”
Protest or no protest, shit is definitely gonna go down.
We get inside Serena’s empty spa easily, no one paying any special attention to us. For about an hour she takes the whole board through the many rooms of her operation, going over all the services she provides and the high-tech she installed there. Oddly enough, Seymour seems too content with the way things are going. He keeps asking Serena polite questions about the spa and its services, and I start having a weird feeling.
Why was I the only one being attacked?
This shit doesn’t make any fucking sense.
And that’s when my phone rings.
“Yeah,” I start, moving away to a corner of Serena’s main floor, one hand over my mouth. “Any news, Taylor?”
“Dude, have you seen the fucking news?” He asks me. “I’ll send you a link. This shit is getting traction. It’s blowing up really fast.”
Cutting the call short, I quickly scroll through my phone’s menu and open the article Taylor sent me. My stomach drops as I see the fucking headline—MUTANTS ON THE LOOSE. For more than twelve paragraphs, the article goes on and on about how Serena’s spa might be a cover for unlicensed and illegal experiments concerning the creating of a fucking mutant race.
Hitting the internet, I feel my pulse quicken as I realize the stories have already started to pile on. It’s still tabloid media, but some of the more respectable news organizations have already started to feed off the frenzy.
Not fucking good at all.
Find out who was the original reporter, I text Taylor. Whoever got the ball rolling has to have some pretty obvious ties to Hiram. No doubt about it. The fucker is trying to steamroll any way he can. And I’ll be damned if I’ll let that happen. I’m still gonna win this fucking contest, but there’s no way I’ll allow a fucking weasel like Hiram pull this kind of stunts on Serena. Not after she saved my ass.
“Something wrong?” Serena asks me, wandering away from the board members.
“Yeah.” I show her my phone screen. In there is a Photoshopped image of her wearing a X-men suit. “Congratulations, Serena. Seems like you’ll have your own movie franchise soon enough.”
“Is this fucking real?” She hisses, stealing the phone from my hands and quickly scrolling through the dozens of articles I left open. “This is fucking surreal.”
“I see,” I hear Hiram say from the other corner of the room. “Seems like you have some problems, Serena.” He struts toward us, cell phone in his hand, and then shoves it right under Serena’s nose. “This is not good. Not at all. We can’t deal with a business with this amount of bad press.”
“Are you crazy?” She cries out. “I’ve just showed you every single room in this spa. Do you really believe this bullshit? Does it seem to you like I’m trying to create a superhero team in here?”
“Well, there was that one situation…”
“That was my ex-boyfriend,” Serena hisses, her words dripping with rage. She’s seconds away from punching Seymour, and I place one hand on her shoulder to calm her down. If she goes that far, we’re fucking doomed. Although, yeah, I wouldn’t mind punching the asshole myself.
“It was an accident,” I try to explain. “He was just having an allergic reaction.”
“Oh, look, even the politicians are tweeting about this,” Seymour cuts me short, grinning as he reads whatever’s on his phone. “Take a look.”
“We’re a nation of equals—doesn’t matter the color, the religion, or if you’re a mutant or not. Your vote still matters to me! #mutantlivesmatter” I read from his phone screen, a comment made by some Senator.
There are more.
“Congress must tighten legislation when it comes to experiments on mutants!”
“Mutants should be allowed to go to spas! Say no to discrimination!”
