The door swung open and soldiers marched in heading directly for JI. They stood him up while covering him with their guns. The nearest ones locked his hands to his waist then unlocked the chain from the wall. Barely seconds this took, then they marched him from the room, and locked her in again, only this time she was alone.
Neither of them had said a word to the other.
And she regretted that.
Come back.
She’d pulled away from him, in horror.
Fern buried her head in her hands and sobbed, once, before she caught herself.
Remember. Hope.
They blindfolded her off and on for what seemed days, messing with her perception of time.
They’d feed her, lead her to a bathroom, and not molest her at all. That possibly scared her most of all, as if the judge were saving her for something else, something special.
She lost track of the days, but she did begin to practice coercing a mechling. There was one…an ordinary one of course, not sun-mad and awakened.
It inhabited a floor above her, cleaning, and she would wriggle a thought into its one-track brain, and leave it there, and wait.
Move this way.
Move this way.
Saying it, over and over.
Move. This. Way.
With nothing else to do except worry, she’d eat her meals and sit down with her back to the wall and begin again.
Move.
Please move.
She wasn’t sure she achieved anything. How could she be. Except that, once, it did feel as if it had obeyed, and she heard a strange repetitive knocking, above.
As if a mechling were running into a wall, over and over.
Though blindfolded by a strapped-on hood and unable to see, Fern inclined her head and stared upward at the ceiling, and she wondered if that hope was, after all, real.
What if she could do this?
And then when she was ready to try something new, like come find me, the soldiers came for her again.
They left the hood on, leashed her, and led her away to a different place, a long way from her cell, and up many stairs.
“We’re in the KI-mech,” someone told her, with a grin in their voice. “Wait until you see what he has ready for you. You’ll piss yourself, girl.”
Frightened, she could only hold on to her hope. He wouldn’t kill her. Not the judge.
Not in one go anyway.
He liked to savor his cruelty.
Always there was a plus.
Then they removed the hood. Before her a wide semicircle of windows, divided by thin bronze supports, looked outward into a cavern. This cavern she’d glimpsed on the way to her cell. If this was the control room of the KI-mech it had a Doctor Who theme with a touch of steampunk. Men in uniform were adjusting dials and buttons while talking.
The outside jarred as the floor she stood on slipped sideways, then everything outside sank.
The KI-mech was standing.
“Turn. He wants to see you.” A soldier pulled on the leash and she was forced to face about.
The judge sat at a bolted-down table. Between him and her stood a nearly twice-man-height circle of shiny metal. Into the center, dangled silver wires that jolted and swung with the movement of the KI-mech. On the floor were more long coiled wires, also attached to the circle.
“Start.” The judge waved a hand. “Sew her in.”
Sew was not a word she liked. Screaming and cursing, she aimed to make it as hard for them as possible. They only gagged her with a cloth tied about her face, then pulled her over anyway.
Whenever she looked at the judge, he was smiling. He liked her struggling.
They locked her hands to the circle above and her ankles below, using chains. Then a man approached her, and he picked up the first wire. The end came to a point.
“Where, sir?”
“Well.” The judge rubbed his jaw, slow to answer, and she couldn’t stop trembling.
All those? All of them? More than twenty. Thirty? Fifty? Why though? Just to hurt her. Yes. In his eyes she saw an evil so abysmal, so pitiless. She’d stabbed him once and this was his retribution.
“Her breast, of course. So he can see it when he finally turns up. Then just, oh, her arm. After that go clockwise.”
Mouth dry, she tried to gulp but the cloth made it hard to do, and already it was moist from her saliva.
It was impossible not to look as the man opened her shirt and rolled down her top, then took a pinch of skin to the side of her breast. He pressed the tip to her and she froze, whimpered. The tip sank in.
Don’t scream, was all she could think. Just don’t. Only a fucking needle.
Chapter 32
With his neck collared and controlled by a rigid metal rod attached to it, that was held by a soldier, with his hands chained to his waist, JI had zero chance of running. He shuffled where they directed him – up some steps, into the KI-mech. He wondered how they would enter the mech once it was functional. A lift somewhere? A ramp perhaps, if it lowered itself. It was far bigger than he had ever been. Stories higher.
Nearly as massive as a landship and far better armed.
The nose was wide and blunt. An armored see-through section that curved across it gave a wide one-eighty-degree view. No doubt there’d be mechlings feeding the internal monitoring screens for the rest of the periphery.
The hull was a dull red with white mekker numbers, as was their way, and partly black underneath.
Inside, in the control room, sat the judge.
JI knew before he saw the man. Not premonition – mechling echo, via her. Knew, dreaded, cringed, his breath rasping in his ears, his legs moving slower than they should.
They’d brought him to her, and of course he was not expecting this, how they had her, not after the climb up to the pretty KI-mech on the pristine, polished steps.
He swung his gaze to the right as they approached, because someone was babbling, and the judge was looking there, and he knew who it was, already. Her. His Fern. He almost stumbled. They were making her hurt, and the pain ran across his own skin like an invasion of bugs nipping him with pincers.
The pain clawing deep in his chest was the worst. It threatened to pull him into an abyss from which he might never emerge.
Revenge.
Kill.
Dismember this man.
Shudder in a breath, shudder one out.
Oh the stars above. He saw and could not comprehend at first, feet stilled, planted. The cruelty of the judge was incomprehensible. Why was all he could think.
Why?
They were stitching her clothed and standing upright to a huge metal circle, her arms and legs making an X. She whimpered and blood ran down her limbs and breast.
The KI-mech rocked gently, having broken through to the sky, on its way to the Chasm he was sure, and the white light of day haloed her.
He would not yell. It would do no good. Veins bulging, fists in a ball, he asked his question. “Why?”
The judge rose to his feet, placed a drink he held on the table beside him.
“Because I like to show people they must not hurt me, or else I will hurt them back. And also because I enjoy hurting my enemies. You are going to obey me, fuck her in all her holes, sort of to celebrate my KI-mech being born. I’m told you have a spiked cock so that is going to enthrall me, I’m sure. We’re going on a trip to see the others at the Chasm. So. I’ll undress her for you, and then you amuse me.”
“Fuck. You.” JI discovered he’d frothed that out, spit flying – could not stop himself being angry.
A little out of control. He must stay calm.
Must.
He could help Fern only if he was in control of himself. His heartbeat slowed, a little, as he watched the judge lay hands on her. His teeth ground on each other.
Dull-eyed, lips moving around the gag, she shuddered as he tore apart what was left of her shirt, then took a knife to her clothes, reducing them to shreds.
Sl
ice by slice he removed her clothing. “There you are, little Juliet,” he said, stepping away. “All naked so your Romeo can fuck you for me.”
He retreated to the seat and sat, then tapped his fingers. “Wait. One more stitch to do.”
A soldier hurriedly inserted a final wire into her thigh and twisted it back on itself, tightening it. Her gasp and small keen, were heard, felt, but were unseen. He’d had to stare at his feet.
“Done. Go, JI. Don’t worry about pleasing her, it’s me you have to.”
“What if I refuse?” Those words were sludge on his tongue.
There’d be a catch, a clause the judge would come up with to compel him, but he had to ask. He wasn’t doing this willingly.
“When a few hours from the Chasm…” The judge flicked a spot of dirt from his pants. “She will be mounted outside the KI-mech. A decoration if you like. Or a warning. Be good, do what I ask, and it will be at the front. Refuse and my men will fuck her instead, maybe do a little more than just fuck her because I have to reward them. Then…I will have her mounted over one of the engine heat dissipators.”
JI heard his breathing hoarsen.
Control thyself, mech.
“Understand? Those get extremely hot and will burn a hole through her, fast.”
“I understand.”
“Good. Go. Fuck. Amuse me.” He clicked his fingers. “Another drink while I watch this.”
They unlocked his neck from the rod and collar, unchained his hands and feet, freed him entirely. He stood there resisting the impulse to charge at the judge because that would get him hurt, probably killed, and Fern too…or worse.
What should he do? Obeying the judge was terrible, terrifying, and would be only adding to her hurts.
Not obeying would achieve little more than charging blindly at the judge.
He had to keep them both alive. Life was hope, remember. Nothing is ever perfect.
He straightened, hearing his back crunch, feeling the pains in her body and how scared she was also. He was the one who could change things.
Do this in the least traumatic way, yet also satisfy the judge because he had to do that. No matter how vile it might make him feel,
They had to survive past this. Past this, after this, then he could find a way to destroy the man. How then. Gentle but not gentle. The mechlings would amplify her pains and pleasures to him. Could he reverse that? Feed her with his pleasure?
He took the first hesitant step, feeling the deck underfoot vibrating as the KI-mech trampled through the land on its way to the Chasm.
The judge was going to string her up outside.
He wiped his forearm across his forehead then walked to Fern.
Blood streaked her, still trickling.
Wasn’t much, his logic system tried to tell him. No? Seen against her skin, it was a stark contrast that killed him.
He leaned down and whispered to her, a mere breath away from her ear. “I will take care of you. Trust me.”
The reverberations of those words did calm her. How she managed that amazed him. With this… All this.
He trembled as he touched her shoulder and pulled the gag from her mouth. Touch, how had he lived without this when not a man? So simple a thing, so momentous. At the camp before they came here, he’d reveled in just sitting with her on his lap and talking.
The judge had turned his touch into a possible nightmare.
He must be gentle yet was compelled to be rough.
Wires ran from her everywhere. All down her legs and arms, her shoulders, from her wrists, belly, and breasts. The blood meandering over her nipples and dripping from them became ever-more obscene against the perfection that was Fern.
She’d said something to him, and he swallowed his disquiet and turned his head to listen.
“I love you.”
Those words fell like flowers on to rocks. He the rock. She the beautiful origin of the flowers.
What else could he say in answer except. “I also. I. Also.”
True? Or was it not true? He’d said it for her.
If on their final day they said this, even if he wasn’t quite sure of what love was, he was sure he felt something for her. Love had never reached an exactitude for him – a precision point. How did one tell?
Was it this all-encompassing need to protect someone, know someone to the fullest, make them stay alive so you could suck the best from them and make them yours?
Was love letting her die because it took away pain? He’d heard that said. To the end of this fucked-up world with that.
JI frowned, blinking.
He wanted to keep her with him, not give her to death. Keep her. Her pain though, he’d take that if he could.
He kissed her lips, then lowered himself, kissing over her bloodied chest, and downward to her navel. JI rested his forehead on her belly. He took that echoed pain, gathered it, scrunched it up, and tossed it away. Praying that if he leeched it away, she would lose sight of it, and find joy in this act instead.
And Fern… She let out the first tremulous sigh.
JI stared up at her face. Maybe this would work.
He kissed her navel again, ran his palm along her slit, and thought he felt the first hint of wetness and swelling, and the slightest angling forward of her pelvis. If she arched too far, she’d rip at those wire insertion points. He dropped to one knee and licked over her clit with the broadness of his tongue, gifting her with his spit, did it thrice. A mix of blood and girl came to his taste buds.
The judge said an acerbic, “You bore me, mech man, hurt her.”
“I will,” he rasped. “I will. Wait.”
Damn him.
He’d drop the judge, his men, maybe Aunt M too, into the center of this KI-mech’s engine and see them burn. It was written this day, this second.
Love. A powerful word.
His erection had been an impossible task until she said I love you. This was no torture act, never had been, even at New Hope, he’d fucked her how they both wanted it to be. Hurt her how she craved it.
Today would be the same.
He kissed her as he rose, then found her mouth and felt her lips move on his, and a new light come into her eyes.
This was not torture.
His cock grew in his hand, pumping upright as he stroked it, squeezed it though the cloth of his pants, letting pleasure take its natural path.
JI ran his hand between her legs then over her body, squeezing her breasts, her butt, while kissing her now bare neck. His collar should be there. “You’re with me. Nothing but me. I feel you. I’m in your head and you’re in mine. You are mine.”
Her eyes remained on his, focused, riveted, intense.
Then he kissed her with his fingers threaded in her hair, ignored the spat cry of the judge to do something painful, or else.
“Wait,” he croaked to the others. He undid the front of his pants and made a point of showing the spikes on his cock to the onlookers. Let them see. Let them think he would ream her hard, make her hurt.
This was love.
“Sharp enough for you?” he challenged the judge, hand on his cock, waggling it, a crude bestial gesture. He was a big man and doubted the judge had anything as impressive. “Can’t do her mouth unless I’m upside down. But these are sharp. Will I fuck her ass with this?”
Maybe soon he’d get to fuck the judge up the ass with a glass shard.
Someone at the controls spoke. “We’re at the day mark for a truck soon, sir!”
The judge’s eyes acquired a greedy gleam, and he eyed the humming walls for a second.
“This KI-mech is fast. Very well, Romeo, fuck her ass. Make her bleed there or I will be done with you.” He lay back into the chair, crossed his legs at the ankles, toyed with his cup. “I’ll have time afterward for more shit like this.” His teeth briefly showed. “If she lives.”
The wires and metal meant he had to circle around her to get to the back of Fern. She followed him, turning her head, watching until he was fu
lly behind her. There was bright blood on her mouth from his kisses. He’d transferred it there.
His heart acquired another ache to add to the mountain weighing on it.
Be good. You’re her hope.
Gently, then firmer, because that was how she liked it, he caressed her ass, parting her there, subtly slicking her with sweat and blood and even spit, when he kneeled and bit next to where her cheeks split. He tongued her.
Lubrication was key.
Standing fully behind her, he whispered as he crammed his cock head in the general direction of her asshole. “I made you wet,” he whispered as he fucked her a little, rocking in, rocking out, ages before the spikes would meet flesh. He had to get her to relax.
“Let me in, pet-girl. Let me in.” And he nuzzled her and nipped. Fucked and withdrew, massaged her clit.
Though her mouth fell open with sighs and quiet moans, despite the coarse laughter of the men watching, her ass was far too tight.
He fed her back his lust, because he’d nurtured it, built on it, and fucking her was a pleasure because she was his. No matter who told him to do this, she was his.
“You’re mine,” he whispered. Nudging, pushing.
Tight. Still. And he almost wept in frustration but was caught by a new idea.
They’d disarmed him, searched him, but did he still have it.
The sliver of black crystal turned white. His pants pocket?
Somehow, using it had drugged her that day, in spite of her being nowhere near him. His voice had converted over fifty scavs to a righteous cause that was utterly the opposite of what they should have been inclined to believe. Somehow, he’d made them believe.
His pet-girl with her mechling echo might tune into this even more, and he had to try. But was there anything left of whatever it’d held, that strange distortion of waik power?
If he hadn’t dreamed it.
He thrust at her ass again, jammed in, his spikes touching her there, glancingly. Another deeper thrust and he’d be in. His cock pulsed at the tightness squashing down on it, thumping pleasure through his veins. Bleeding? She’d be worse than that, torn, if she didn’t open for him…and his hand found the crystal fragment, buried deep in a pocket.
Exquisite Possession: A Dark Scifi Romance (The Machinery of Desire Book 4) Page 18
