Chapter 1: The Gym of the Gods
The steel groaned, a low, pained sound that vibrated up through his palms and into the bedrock of his bones. Plates shivered on the bar. Twelve hundred pounds. It was nothing and it was everything. A testament. A warm-up. Magnus’s arms were granite pillars, his back a mountain range in violent relief as he straightened, taking the full weight from the rack.
A cracking sound came from the ruined marble floor beneath his feet.
He ignored it. The air in the gym was thick with the smell of old sweat, rust, and something else now—a pheromonal musk that was his, and his alone. The shattered mirrors on the walls reflected him in jagged pieces: a slab of a shoulder here, a quadrant of a veined thigh there, the smooth, brutal dome of his shaved head. A giant rendered in broken glass.
He lowered the weight, the controlled descent more demanding than the lift. Tendons stood out like cables. Every breath was a bellows heaving in the cavern of his chest. This was prayer now. This was how he communed with the new world.
The door to the street-level gym clanged open, a harsh metal shriek that was instantly swallowed by the room’s dense atmosphere.
He didn’t need to look. He felt them. A shift in the pressure, a new, complicated scent cutting through his own—vanilla, jasmine, a sweet, clean sweat. The rhythm of their footsteps was different from his; not impacts, but a heavy, rolling sway that made the scattered weight plates tremble on the floor.
He racked the bar. The final clang of iron was a period at the end of a sentence. Only then did he turn.
Sasha entered first, because she always did. Six-eight in her bare feet, she moved with a prowling certainty that cleared space before her. Her platinum crop was sharp, her ice-blue eyes scanning the ruins of the gym like she was assessing a conquered territory. The simple black tank top she wore was a formality, a sheer nylon prayer stretched over the impossible geography of her chest. The fabric strained diagonally from the burden of a 140-pound bust. Her hips flared, making the pathway between them narrow, and the curve of her ass behind black shorts was a pronounced, spherical swell.
“You’re going to put a hole through to the basement,” she said, her voice a cool, amused rasp. She kicked a chunk of marble aside with a booted foot.
Behind her, Vera hesitated in the doorway, as if unsure she was permitted. The virus had made her lush, overwhelmingly soft. Honey-blonde hair fell around a round, gentle face. Her breasts, massive and heavy, strained against a thin cotton shirt, the nipples visibly pebbled against the fabric. Her hips were wide, her belly soft, every line of her begging to be touched, held, weighed in a man’s hands. She clutched a canvas bag like a shield.
“Come on, Vera. Don’t block the view,” Sasha said, not looking back.
Vera jumped and scurried in, her eyes darting to Magnus and then quickly to the floor. A faint blush heated her cheeks.
And then came Cherry.
She had to turn slightly to get her shoulders through the door frame. The sight of her still punched the air from his lungs, even now. Golden hair, a face of stunning, innocent beauty—wide doe eyes, plump, parted lips. And the body the virus had given her… it was a masterpiece of absurd, breathtaking proportion. Her breasts, 310 pounds of them, hung massive and full, their sheer weight and size pulling her posture into a graceful, forward-leaning arc. They shifted with a slow, oceanic motion as she moved. Her ass was a phenomenal, jiggling expanse that filled the rear of her stretch leggings completely.
She saw him and a smile, utterly docile and adoring, spread across her face. “Magnus,” she breathed, the word a reverent sigh.
He grunted in response, a deep rumble from his chest. He flexed his pectoral, watching the muscle roll and separate like tectonic plates. The sight of them, his women, stirred the always-present hunger in his gut. It was more than want. It was a claiming, a possessiveness that was cold and absolute.
“You’re late,” he said, his voice the low boom of distant thunder.
“Picking out loot takes time,” Sasha shrugged, walking toward him. Her eyes trailed over the sweat-slicked canyon of his spine. “The old sporting goods store on Fifth. It’s picked clean of anything useful. Just spandex and shame now.” She stopped within his shadow, looking up without a hint of submission to anyone but him. “Vera found some things, though.”
Vera hurried forward, eager to please. She knelt, an awkward, graceful movement given her size, and pulled items from her bag. Protein bars. A few cans of beans. A bottle of pre-war multivitamins. “The… the expiration dates are mostly good,” she said softly, offering them up like a tribute.
Magnus took a single protein bar. It looked like a toy in his hand. He ripped the wrapper with his teeth and consumed it in one bite. “Fine.”
Cherry had waddled to a nearby bench, the only one reinforced with welded steel I-beams to support her and Sasha. She sat with a soft, heavy thud, the bench groaning in protest. Her enormous breasts settled in her lap, a staggering heap of soft flesh. She just watched him, her eyes wide and liquid.
“Report,” Magnus said, his gaze locking on Sasha.
“The west side is quiet. The small ones are hiding, or they’ve been scooped up by the pack that runs out of the old precinct house.” She said ‘small ones’ with a dismissive curl of her lip—the unaltered men and women, the ones the virus had left behind or diminished. They were ghosts, prey, furniture. “Heard some noise from the north, towards the highway. Sounds like a fight. Might be worth scouting.”
Magnus finished another protein bar, crumpling the wrapper. A scouting mission. A hunt. The energy in the room tightened around him.
Vera was nervously organizing her cans. Sasha watched him, a sly smile playing on her lips. Cherry simply waited, her breath slightly quickened.
He walked towards Cherry, each step a quiet earthquake. He stood before her, looking down at the breathtaking valley of her cleavage, at the obedient tilt of her head. He placed a single, massive hand on top of one of her breasts, his fingers too large to span even half of it. He felt the awesome, warm weight, the softness over unyielding gland. He squeezed, not gently.
A sharp gasp escaped her lips, her eyes fluttering shut. A deep blush spread from her cheeks down to her chest.
“You’ll stay here with Vera,” he commanded, his voice leaving no room for anything else. “Keep the door barred. Sasha comes with me.”
Cherry nodded, eyes still closed, leaning into his touch. “Yes, Magnus.”
He removed his hand and turned to Sasha. The predatory gleam was already in her eyes. This was what she lived for now.
“The pack at the precinct,” Magnus rumbled, striding toward a pile of gear in the corner. He picked up a length of heavy chain, wrapping it around his fist. “They’ve gotten bold.”
Sasha fell in beside him, taking a spiked bat from the same pile. “Bold is just another word for stupid.” She glanced back at Vera, who was helping Cherry up. “Keep the home fires burning, girls. We’re going to go remind the neighborhood who owns it.”
Magnus pushed the main door open, the gray, dusty light of the dead city washing over him. The street was a canyon of broken glass and silent cars. He filled the doorway, a giant stepping into his kingdom.
He inhaled, the air tasting of decay and concrete and endless possibility. The hunger in him was a live wire now, thrumming with a need for more than protein bars. For conquest. For proof.
“The parking lot first,” he said, the chain swinging loosely in his grip. “Then we pay the precinct a visit.”